Dear Sister,

I'm taking a trip to Panama to find the fabled Xichaticatanialito bird.  I'll be leaving at dawn on the NOAA research vessel, SS Cuchamonga, out of New Orleans.

I'll buy the beignets and chicory...3 am...

Care to join me?

On Being Back

Sigh. We're back from Papua where we did finally discover the mysterious beetle mentioned in the previous post. The beetle itself is rather plain and easily overlooked, but it, um, excretes a substance that is the most brilliant, fascinating, mesmerizing, wonderful, exciting, unique color. A color that is found NO WHERE else in the world.

We photographed it. We smeared bits of the substance on white paper and scanned it. We video taped it. We did everything we could to try and show you this color, but it simply does not reproduce. It photographs as a dull-ish purple black. It scans as a brownish-blue. In other words, unless you can look at it in person, it just looks like beetle poop.

Well. Beetle-poop.

Excuse Us

But we heard that deep in the rainforests of Papua there lives a mysterious beetle that is of a color found nowhere else in the known world. Imagine. An entirely new COLOR.

We've been away on the search, with no luck so far. We've just buzzed back into town to pick up our tax rebate checks, which we will be using to stimulate a foreign economy, as we read all about the presidential primaries and watched one episode of American Idol and, therefore, immediately made plans to go adventuring again. As soon as possible.

See you soon!
Hugo, please remember to feed the cat.
Love,
Lila and Dari

Taktshang

Remembering the time when we had to go find Penelope, that ditzy friend of ours who ran off to Asia in search of giant bonsai trees.

I need to run off to somewhere to escape from the pain of writing a totally made-up-and-in-no-way-relating-to-anyone-or-anything-that-is-or-ever-has-been-alive-or-that-I-have-ever-met-or-even-happened-to-live-with novel.

Tangiers

At the core of our hearts are those things we have left behind...

"What was the most beautiful thing you left behind?"

"Finest of all the things I have left is the light of the sun,
Next to that the brilliant stars and the face of the moon,
Cucumbers in their season, too, and apples and pears."


Praxilla of Sicyon
Hymn to Adonis
5th century B.C.
translated by Bernard Knox

Oh No

OhNo!Wri Mo.

That's what they should call it. What's she talking about down there with Unexpected Packages? She won't even tell me what it's going to be about.

We're very excited. We are a bit unsettled. We are, perhaps, somewhat alarmed. We won't have time for Christmas shopping ....

(Don't tell Dari, but she's getting a new book for Christmas. I don't know what it's about yet....)

Not quite a year ago...

...I posted my last post on this nefarious blog. I have just been released from the institution. What institution, you ask? Ha! I'll never tell. But, there were very nice young men in clean white coats who gave me a little paper cup with a treat in in every day. I'm better now. Okay - it's no laughing matter, mental illness, I agree. Please forgive me. I'm really doing fine with the IV meds.

To further illustrate our lack of mental stability, Lila and I signed up for the NaNoWriMo and will be tackling the work of novel-writing rapidamente-style. If by the end of November I'm still a free, non-medicated, thinking woman...it will be a miracle.

In the meantime, I'll be posting over at my own blog http://patoispoppycock.blogspot.com so Lila and I can weave our own individual, but perhaps intertwined tales of true love, unexpected packages and, apparently, dwarfs on bicycles.