S P A C E | BABY

The title Winter's Bone refers to the relentless cold of the Ozark Mountain region, the chilled skeletons in the closet of a family who are as stretched and hardened as the economic landscape.  It took me a few chapters to realize this was a contemporary story, meant to be present day and not the depression era like it seemed.  The book is easy to read and devoid of frill and poetic flourishes.  In a way similar to the main character, Ree Dolly who is curt, hardened and devoid of any flourish yet who is not dark or devoid of desire.  " Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again." She is strong-willed, responsible and puts her desires on hold, or at least until she can join the army, and teaches her younger  brothers how to fend for themselves, cook and shoot squirrels and take care of their mother who's mind has gone...

At the heart of this memoir there is a fateful connection of two people who meet as lazily as they coexisted. It is a wonder if Patti would've ended up wandering the streets of New York City with the guy from Venus is he hadn't disappeared one day leaving her alone to find another fellow wanderer.  Patti seems to float along becoming a pregnant teenager who unceremoniously gives it up for adoption.  She is convinced (like most of us) New York City is Valhalla where some friends have already made their way.  By the time she is ensconced in the city atmosphere her original friends are an afterthought in the coming wave that took her over.  Robert Mapplethorpe.  She, a transient meets him who seems to be in constant repose.  as I am writing this I have no idea what his birthday is, but I'm guessing Taurus or Taurus rising or maybe he's just someone with a birthday like mine who looks like a lazy bum when they are at their most creatively attuned and rea...