Catherine Eaton

@sparrowpost.bsky.social

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Writer, naturalist, myth and oak lover, museum and play goer. Pursuer of whimsy. she/her. sparrowpost.com

ending at Chapter 11: The story continues in chapter 12. To read Agatha Christie's original unpublished ending to the book instead, turn now to page 233.
Meadow of Queen Anne's Lace
Joanna Childe was a daughter of a country rector. She had a good intelligence and strong obscure emotions. She was training to be a teacher of elocution and, while attending a school of drama, already had pupils of her own. Joanna Childe had been drawn to this profession by her good voice and love of poetry which she loved rather as it might be assumed a cat loves birds; poetry, especially the declamatory sort, excited and possessed her; she would pounce on the stuff, play with it quivering in her mind, and when she had got it by heart, she spoke it forth with devouring relish.
Swirling impressionist clouds in a sky of blue above a field of Queen Anne's Lace
Front of an antique shop in 1902
3.2.159 berhymed...rat This alludes to Pythagoras's doctrine of the transmigration of souls and the popular lore that Irish bards killed rats with rhyming incantations.
River reflects a blue sky and white clouds. Green vegetation and trees line the riverbanks.
Mauve flower heads of milkweed with tiny light yellow flowers dangling at the ends. Blue sky and clouds overhead
Expanse of the river like a mirror reflecting summer blue skies with clouds above
Please note: The first 2 rows in the corner of the theatre may experience small amounts of stage blood splatter. This blood is food grade, washable, show blood and our Audience Services Associates will have plastic ponchos if you would like to use them. We will also have cleaning instructions should you experience any splatter. For more information, please contact the Box Office For Untitled Vamprie Play at Lookingglass Theatre, Chicago
cover of Crazy Genie by Inès Cagnati
Incredibly blue summer sky with shining white clouds over the river
British shorthair resting on the back of sofa, eyes squeezed shut, one arm and paw extended.
Don't fret about the champagne-glass neck. Drink champagne. Inner-arm flesh, crepe bat wings. Train for night flights. Expect body hair to thin, disappear, Alpinize. Trash tweezers, shavers. In the bath, discover a warm atoll of flesh on the belly. Cup gently in your hands like raw tortilla dough. Admire its satin finish. Give thanks.
Mount Fuji and Flowers Cool blue hues of a mountain and possible lake with a boat in the background. In the foreground, a simple vase with two white flowers on a mauve ledge
A British shorthair looking down from the top of a desk
little magenta roses in full bloom with a bumblebee buried in one blossom
A grey British shorthair stretched out on the kitchen table in morning greeting.
Little yellow coreopsis flowers and blue flax flowers bending in the breeze.
a little orange and white british shorthair kitten with large eyes looks out carefully from a soft black and white play tube
Purple violas in the foreground with yellow and oranges ones behind
Cover of This Little Art by Kate Briggs
ECOLOGIES OF PERCEPTION On a day so hot not even the housefly watching you can move, you notice its eyeballs almost favor the shiny black domes that cover airport security cameras. The housefly's compound eyeballs look like headlights wearing prescription Coke-bottle goggles in a violent heat. When your fingernail scrapes a lash or flake of ash the size of a fat fly's wing from your eye, it's multiplied several thousand times in the housefly's eyes. The blackfly breeds in streams & rivers during the dog days of summer, but cannot survive on sadness like the housefly. Bubbles of good & bad air flare in individual hexagonal lenses known as ommatidia. Each ommatidium functions like an eye, but none sees spectrums of red or yellow. To the fly you are myriad mosaics of ultraviolet, gray, blue & green trichromatic visions scraping something from your eye: a tear of oil or sweat in some ommatidia,
Deep layer of fluff of cottonwood seed between a cement walkway and ornamental grasses
Little wooden dollhouse kit
ROSALIND But cousin, what if we assayed to steal The clownish fool out of your father's court. Would he not be a comfort to our travel? CELIA He'll go along o'er the wide world with me. Leave me alone to woo him. Let's away And get our jewels and our wealth together, Devise the fittest time and safest way To hide us from pursuit that will be made After my flight. Now go we in content, To liberty, and not to banishment.
Entry from a page-a-day calendar: The rain has stopped, the clouds drifted away, The weather is clear again. If your heart is pure, then all things in your world are pure...• Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the way. RYOKAN
Another grouping of purple and pink clovers
Pink and purple clover against a white stone wall
first printed book of Buddhist text in Hangeul open in the middle
Two very pink peonies in bloom.
Thin long stalks of peachy-red quince blossoms and tender little leaves reaching to the sky
Cover of Nancy Lemann's Lives of the Saints: a decaying Grecian temple style mansion
Edge line of a small pond with pines, trees, and delicate pink redbuds blooming
She kept to a path that ran behind the shrubbery and entered the belt of trees that protected the garden from the sea-winds. This was an evening when she was entitled to a couple of hours of freedom. The long sea-grass rustled beneath her feet as she approached the shore. There was a drowsy aromatic scent mingling with the odours from the flowers in the garden and the faint more distant saltiness of the sea. In a few hours' time when the moon was risen there would be sharp patches of light amongst the trees, but now there was only a faint glow, heavy still with the colour from the sunset, to guide her through the trees. Lottie walked on with a new unafraid confidence in her heart.
Old Borders barcode on the back of a book
A few seconds shot in b&w film of a woman looking out the window. All her fingertips are pushed against the glass.
Drooping heads of creamy hellebores flowers, verging towards green, surrounded by their leaves.
Very blue sky with a few clouds reflected in the river. Green vegetation on the banks is taking over the remains of winter.
When Raphael died, a hundred torches were caried by painters at his funeral, and he was buried in the rotunda of the Pantheon. People were so eager to venerate his remains that skulls of his magically multiplied. Goethe saw one in Rome and swooned over its handsome bone structure, saying that it looked exactly like the kind of skull in which a "beautiful soul could comfortably meander." (It wasn't Raphael's.) Zachary Fine, Sleeping Beauty (New Yorker, April 2026)
little white whisks growing on the ends of bush branches and surrounded by nice little leaves
Three photos of Barthes working at different desks. Caption reads: My body is free of its image-repertoire only when it establishes its work space. This space is the same everywhere, patiently adapted to the pleasure of painting, writing, sorting. From Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes
A line of May Sarton books with her name taped on shelf at my favorite local indie
Slender redbud tree near the edge of a small lake. A leaning bird box is to the right. Newly green grasses and blue skies abound.
Pink and yellow magnolia blossoms on the ends of slender branches under a blue and white sky.
"Happiness," he said, always seems nothing. It is like water; one only realizes it when it has run away." "That is true," she said. She thought for a moment and said, "It is the same with the evil we do; it seems nothing, just seems foolishness, cold water, while we are doing it. Otherwise people would not do it; they would be more careful." "True," he said. She said, "Why have we ruined everything, everything?" and she began to cry. She said, "I can't leave this house. I brought up my children here. I have been here so many years, so many years. I can't—I can't leave it." "Then you want to stay here?" he asked. And she said, "No" — and went away the next day. From Voices in the Evening by Natalia Ginzburg
The first question, the first Neutral, announced subject of the course, is the difference that separates the will-to-live from the will-to-possess: the will-to-live being then recognized as what transcends the will-to-possess, as the drifting far from arrogance: I leave the will-to-possess, I move in the will-to-live.
But Gemmina said, "No one takes nurse away from me. Nurse stays with me and anyone who interferes with her can look out for himself." Gemmina is tall and thin. Her peroxide hair is cut short. Her face is long and narrow, all chin. Her complexion is mottled. An old rash she had once has left livid marks. In the winter she wears a Casentino overcoat, a beret of
delicate cherry blossoms against a blue sky
Covers of Campo's The Unforgivable and The Arabian Nights
Radiant plum blossoms even in the gloomy light