"Blankets" [.]

[fiefoe]

Wish I could offer some informed critique of Craig Thompson's drawing style, (like what this guy said of Heath Robinson), instead of just saying that it's a bit like woodcut. (Favorite panels: His brother and he pretended the bed they shared was a boat, and the floor was endless stretches of ocean - and they'd inevitably run into a storm.)

Given my long-time addiction to romance books, it's somewhat odd to realize that I rarely get to read any realistic love stories. (In not too distant memory, there are lovers in both "Paladin of Souls" and "Possession", but they don't quite qualify as real.) Here, intimacy can be just two people sharing small pieces of poetic truth:
    In one sequence, it began to snow. Raina told him that that soft, tinkling sound is the STATIC being discharged by each snowflake because the air is so dry. Craig in turned told her that he and his brother as kids thought the sparks of light dancing about the sheets they witnessed were Tinkerbell.
    During a walk in the woods - Craig: I've never seen shadows stretch so far. Raina: They're AMBITIOUS today.

<Scenes from a young love:>
__ While (Raina's father drove and) talked, we STUDIED how the entire weight and taste of the air had shifted in each other's presence.
__ Maybe it's that these poems are all DATE-marked and written before we met - and I'm a bit jealous.
__ Swarms of electrons swam back and forth between our bodies as if contained within the same cage.
__ By day, we keep each other at arm's length. Underwater, we're drowning victims, STRUGGLING over and under each other's bodies. But ABOVE, we bob with the tide, UNDERCURRENTS pulling us just far enough apart.

It ends thus: 'Sometimes upon waking, the residual dream can be more appealing than reality, and one is reluctant to give it up. For a while you feel like a ghost - not fully materialized, and unable to manipulate your surroundings. You wait with the promise of the next dream. But the act of waking is dependent on remembering. We use ritual as a mnemonic device - holiday as a ritual with meaning - and the seasons as increments of measurement.'

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