Chronicles of an Abaxial Russia and some other stuff
May 8, 2008
So after encountering a mention of Nochoy Dozor on Sarah Deming's weblog, I happened to see the books at my local. I bought and read all three and they're pretty cool. Russian vampire novels: need I say more? Night Watch, Day Watch, Twilight Watch, and, apparently coming to the English speaking only readers this July, Final Watch. OOh.
Not that I've been to Russia, but the novels do seem to catch the flavour of Moscow quite nicely. And the author, Sergey Lukianenko, must be added to my mythy-puissant list for his night watch world. So it goes:
I really want to see the movie...any film with imdb Plot Keywords: Witchcraft | Blood Splatter | Attempted Murder | Tiger | Stabbed In The Chest must be worth a look even if it's just the key words that are a bit silly.
Finally, via Neil Gaiman's blog, a super new weblog, English Russia--"a daily entertainment blog devoted to the events happening in Russian speaking countries, such as Russia (Russian Federation), Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, etc. Everyday something interesting happens in the countries occupying 1/6 of the populated world."
My favourite entries are the ones with the "abandoned" tag. A sample:
Its shores on the west are washed by the waters of the North Pacific May 3, 2008 Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go. -Blaise Pascal So we've been obsessed with swimming the Sooke River in our wetsuits. It's bloody zero degrees cold and just a tad rocky but all the rocks are smoothed by long centuries of thick-veined spring runoff coursing along a channel perhaps 20-30 feet deep in places, although only ten or so feet wide. (Note my undeniably muttly usage of Standard measurements in a Metric country. It's terribly hard to think only in one mode or the other. For example, I think of myself in lbs but the temperature in degrees Celsius. Is this a result of being part of a generation that saw the transition from Standard to Metric, or of having done five random out of twelve years of schooling "at home"--read: reading prolifically all year and ignoring my maths till June--?) The rock formations along the river bed are lovely, bubbly and smooth in some places, smooth and undulating in others, lined along both sides by tall avenues of spruce and fir. Occasionally loons fly overhead, tremoloing or wailing down the High Street created by the river's channel of trees. What might they see with their quantum eyes? At one particular wee waterfall there's a kind of back eddy which allows one to swim out into the fervour of the prevailing current, shoot along a while and then loop back around and float upstream to the falls again. In another place the river banks rise into canyons topped with madrones/arbutus trees and sword ferns--but because the bed is so deep the current simply meanders along. Here's a spangling waterfall in the canyon: The water is clear and clean except at the waterfalls, where it's green as, say, absinthe being prepared the proper way, and gorgeously bubbly: ( Here're a couple of Mark and meself. Note the smoothened rocks. A quote from "Notes on the Physical Geography of Vancouver Island" by C. Forbes, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 34, 1864: Vancouver Island, first made known to us by Cook, is situated on the coast of north-western America, between the latitudes of 48 degrees 20 feet and 51 degrees N.; and the longitudes of 123 degrees W. It is sepparated on the south from Washington territory by the Strait of Fuca, and on the east from British Columbia by the Straits of Georgia, and by Johnstone Strait. Its shores on the west are washed by the waters of the North Pacific. Essentially a mountain ridge, its buttress-like walls descend for the most part abruptly to the shore, fringed, however, in many places, more especially on its south-eastern and eastern sides, by the undulating country, thickly wooded in general, but here and there containing patches of open grass-land. The island is of an elongated oblong form, nearly 300 miles in length, by from 30 to 50 in average breadth, attaining, at Mount Arrowsmith, an elevation of 5900 feet. Its outline is boldly picturesque; its shores are characterised by abrupt cliffs, rocky promontories, sheltered coves, pebbly beaches, and fine harbours. The whole western side presents a gloomy, frowning aspect. Numerous areas of the sea, fjord-like in character, penetrate between the walls of metamorphic and trappean rock... China Beach I think I'm addicted to geophysographies. It's odd and melancholy and thrilling to hear my home described in such distant, wrong-end-of-the-telescope terms...like something from the Odyssey, or Voyage of the Dawn Treader. (Did CS Lewis research his book by reading such reports?)* "Its shores on the west are washed by the waters of the North Pacific"--like that Decemberists song "Island" part one, "Come & See" that I have quoted on the side column: I really love anyone, anyone, who rhymes parallax and sycorax. Here's the Decemberists site, where you can hear a produced version of the song. Oh, one final thing: scientists have done a video autopsy of one of those giant squid. Poor squids. I can hear them booming from the deep even now, "Don't get mad: get even! Leviathans of the abyssopelagic benthos unite!" And what about that Hadal zone? But still. It's pretty fascinating:
So I came across a poem in Medieval English Lyrics: A Critical Anthology, edited with an introduction and notes by R. T. Davies about the man in the moon, circa later 13th century to earlier 14th century, written in the alliterative tradition of Gawain and the Green Knight. It goes: On his bot-forke his burthen he bereth. It is muche wonder that he ne down slit-- For doute leste he falle he shoddreth and shereth. When the forst freseth muche chele he bid. The thornes beth kene, his hattren to-tereth. Nis no wiht in the world that wot when he sit... Which means, to wit: THE MAN IN THE MOON STANDS AND STRIDES; HE BEARS HIS BURDEN ON HIS FORKED STICK. IT IS A GREAT WONDER THAT HE DOESN'T SLIP DOWN--FOR FEAR OF FALLING HE TREMBLES AND VEERS. WHEN THE FROST FREEZES HE ENDURES MUCH COLD. THE THORNS ARE KEEN, HIS CLOTHES TEAR TO PIECES. THERE IS NO PERSON WHO KNOWS WHERE HE SITS DOWN... And one more from the omnibus, featuring the same waxy-wavy haired man: I still find the Kincaid illustrations fantastically grotesque: the people's features are so knobbly: very English indeed. Reading the Omnibus even now triggers the smells of my granny's house--wool and mutton; and the sounds--the tick tock of a grandmother clock, the crackle of the fire; and the colours--the uniquely plum and claret shag carpet, the green and mustard kitchen. This is the same house about which I had recurring underworld dreams for years. It was a perfectly normal basement. Except when it wasn't. Anyways, I then I went to google and watched George Melies' most soothing and surreal 1902 Le voyage dans la Lune; I'm so very glad this film wasn't melted down to make boot heels like so much of his stuff was... Here it is: In addition, his hilarious Eclipse: More moon lore: Moon Lore, by Rev. Timothy Harley, 1885 Tolkien's poem, very fun to read out loud: The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon. And finally, the valkyriean Feist's words on the matter: April 20, 2008 Another small happy note, a kind mention from Endicott Redux for the spring edition of Goblin Fruit--and 'Seeds'! Also I got tired of orange and purple, so for a while we're going with black and purple and mint green. April 16, 2008 A small happy announcement, I sold some poems in a series called 'Seeds' to Goblin Fruit (mine's the final title listed on the table of contents). It's up now and will at some point also be read by myself and a number of others including Catherynne Valente whose lovely Orphan's Tales books I happened to be reading when I got the news. She reads Greek which is fortunate since I don't know how, and yet the poem includes some. (Maybe I should write a poem in Old English and then I'd be able to read it myself...although it would probably have a vocabulary limited to things to do with seafaring, honey, mare's milk, last battles and bone cages. Actually that sounds kind of cool. Hm.) Anyways, Valente's books are written like the 1001 Arabian nights, frames within frames, and are obsessed with strange metamorphoses. And, they are incredibly readable. Which is neat because not all extended, braided, mythypuissant* narratives are. As a preface to 'Seeds', should anyone follow the link: They are a collection of monologues on the incident of Persephone's abduction. A few minor details accompanying the version of story of Persephone and Hades which I've read, which I think might fill in where the characters are coming from: after Persephone was abducted, Hecate (goddess of childbearing, the moon, crossroads, owls, etc, and one of the few Titans not killed or squashed under a volcano after Zeus' revolution) suggested that Demeter, who was tearing the world apart looking for Persephone, ask Helios, the sun god, about it. He'd seen the incident, but didn't say anything to Demeter until she asked. Zeus, father of Persephone and also incidentally brother of Demeter and Hades, sends his son Hermes, psychopomp and sometime rapist, to extricate Persephone from Hell. But because she's eaten pomegranate seeds (of all things to be undone by), both he and Demeter fail. In the monologues I think the characters are still trying to work out what happened. Most of them are perhaps a bit selfish. ð *mythy-puissant is my slightly ridiculous euphemism for 'mythopoeic', which I overuse. Apropos, let's add to the M.P. list: April 10, 2008 Been trying to cultivate a taste for Warren Ellis' work. It is a strange juxtaposition, reading his webcomic FreakAngels for example, while working as a nanny for innocent young children (well, sometimes not that innocent, when they're plotting to take down that large ficus for months and then do it the minute they learn to crawl...). One reads something like, "Oh, just use the big steam gun and pepper whothefuckever it is from above, Con..." and then one goes to sing "Old MacDonald had a farm" when the wee ones wake up from their naps. The juxtaposition makes one's mind wander to wondering what old man MacDonald was really doing on that farm (I'm from BC after all) and it also makes Ellis' ever so devout pursuit of crooked little veins seem rather silly. Still, he is a master of elegant (brief yet vivid) exposition and although I don't love psychos for, apparently, psychos' sake, his stuff's effective. Theodora Goss' thoughts on the matter: "Without some sort of ugliness, stories have no edge. Perhaps that's what I miss in so much fantasy nowadays. Either the beauty or the ugliness is missing. You have to have both – the fairy godmother and the stepsisters who chop off their toes."). I certainly can't blame the salty son of a curmudgeon for enjoying his fuck-bombs and his shite-goddams... Oh, and I have my new computer! It's pretty brill. March 15, 2008 As the title says. Am awaiting, for two weeks hence, a sparky new desktop with a good screen for viewing certain sci fi shows not widely available in North America... Until then, blogging is intermittent. Sigh. February 24, 2008 Free on Dark Horse's myspace. Kinda shiny, n'est-ce pas?
Mon in the mone stond and strit; 
And I was like, ooooohhhh. Because in my Omnibus of Nursery Rhymes by Eric and Lucy Kincaid, which I read as a little kid all the time at my Granny and Grandad's house, there's the most fantastical picture of the man in the moon sitting on thorns. And now I'm beginning to see how far back this whole man in the moon and thorns thing goes. (The pumpkinny moon image to right is by David Haworth.) Here's the picture: 
The robins are mustering in the chestynutter trees
Goblin Fruit
Warren-Ellis-likes-to-swear (ee-i, ee-i, oh)
Computerless
Joss Whedon web comic
French kiss for hire
February 15, 2008 Orlo says: Habby Balantineth Thday.
Say no to junk mail
February 11, 2008
Go to the Red Dot Campaign website to stop that endless barrage of greasy pizza cupons and RRSP flyers, and get taken off public telephone solicitation lists too. Hug a tree: you'll never go back to pulp. Or something.
Holding your breath
February 1, 2008
Some items:
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It's called freedom. Today is an earmark in my life as I have just paid off my federal student loan in full. This is cause for celebration and so Mark has been commissioned in the identification and purchasing of fantastic syrups and liquors and other mixed drink accoutrements for the evening, whilst I blog and pretend to cook an organic whole chicken and marinated mushrumps. We'll be toasting to a life less ordinary tonight...though I've jumpstarted the occasion with a small glass of champagne on my own. Is there anything more soothing and yet titillating than drinking alone, quite alone?
[Update: So Mark bought this amazing award winning creme de cassis that is terribly delicious. And some good champagne. I love the contrast between the tizz of good champagne and the oily swirl of blackcurrant. Obefreakinyum.]
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Oh, Doctor Who. Also of note--a couple new weblogs on the blogroll: Do the Math, the weblog of a New York dwelling jazz musician who loves Doctor Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Via Spiral Staircase. Very cool post-essay-thing by him here, in which he states:
A rubber suit will always, no matter how well done, look like a rubber suit. Therefore, the imagination of the viewer is required to complete the circuit, just like in cartoons, comics, or even a child playing with dolls or toy cars.
Word. Sounds like this dude's been reading Anne Carson on Eros. And apropos Eros...
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Torchwood. If you like multi-gendered sci-fi, give it a go. Not saying it's brilliant, cause it's not; as NG says:
...yesterday I composed an entire thing in my head I didn't write down about Why The People in Torchwood Season One Are All Too Stupid To Live -- including the astonishingly puzzling incident where someone in 1941 has written something down on paper with black ink (a medium that will last legibly for centuries if kept out of the sun), and, unaccountably worried that ink on paper will fade and become unreadable in time, first she takes a prototype Polaroid photo of it, and then writes some of it in blood and puts it in a coffee can in a damp cellar, because these media will still be readable seventy years later. Why she didn't make a model of it out of chocolate as well, I will never know.)
Which made me laugh. Because it's pretty bloody true. And yet I really like Gwen Cooper and her green Converse sneakers. And all the kissing in a sci fi show, which seldom happens in sci fi shows, is somehow tremendously satisfying.
Whilst living in China I had tonnes of dreams involving men on men... No idea what it means...I found it neither erotic nor repugnant. What does it mean? What does it mean?
...Have I mentioned Neil Gaiman's weblog has been better lately? He's even got a link on how to make one's own oak gall ink.
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Edinburgh.
Next blog, an Edinburgh writing man who likes to write: Freedom from the Mundane. Apropos Edinburgh, a fantastic panoramic shot I've been contemplating: it includes all that Georgian loveliness and Arthur's Seat. This wee image doesn't do it justice so be sure to click on it to see it in full.
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Baking bread. Via Crabapple Herbs, an intriguing new/old way to bake bread, which involves letting time do the work. Supposed to produce a crunchy crust and flavourful, moist crumb. Must give it a go.
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Octopussy. (Sorry, it had to be done. Anyways, who doesn't want their own circus and floating island??) I love cephalopods. And corvidae. And a few other things that lots of other people love too but it's okay, because they're so damn cool. Here's an extremely relaxing video of an octopus casing the joint and snacking on crabs. And here, women + octopi. Via Blue Wyvern Tea. And didja hear about the giant squid invasion of San Francisco Bay? Truly bizarre.
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Eloquent stick figures. XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language. And I quote:
Excuse me, but real programmers use butterflies.
They open their hands and let the delicate wings flap once.
The disturbance ripples once, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the upper atmospere.
Which act as lenses that deflect incoming cosmic rays, focussing them to strike the drive platter and flip the desired bit...
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Breathing. Before paying off my federal debt and then going on a celebratory bikeride in the wind and sun I went down to MokSana studio for a great yoga class. And in that class it just felt so bloody good to breathe properly. Often under stress I withold breath from myself.
I often dream that the ocean is rising up, welling up over the cliffs on Dallas Road and flooding Victoria. It's quite a soothing dream. So check it: Ujjayi Pranayama or Ocean Breath.
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Comics + Buddha = Enlightenment. Reading Osamu Tezukama's multi-volume comic on the life of Buddha. So far, extremely good. Good old Bookslut characterizes it as both ridiculous and sublime. I concur. Is there any other Way?
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Mia. Too cool.
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Nightmares on Wax. The best of both worlds. Both worlds being jazz and electronica.
...
I believe him, I know it’s my only chance to – my only chance, I believe all I’m told, I’ve disbelieved only too much in my long life, now I swallow everything, greedily. What I need now is stories, it took me a long time to know that, and I’m not sure of it.
–Molloy, Part I, Samuel Becket.
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My Favourite Doctor Who Episodes
January 21, 2008
When I was a kid my dad and I watched Doctor Who. Along with Star Trek, and Looney Tunes, and a lot of other seminal classics of that sort. Star Wars. Blade Runner. My absolute favourite character was Mister Spock. At the age of six, I taught myself how to raise one eyebrow, just like him. Hours of kneeling on the sink, staring into the bathroom mirror, one finger holding down one eyebrow while quirking the other brow rapidly. Twenty three years later I do believe my eyebrows are permanently crooked from this long-time exercise. But so worth it to be so cool.
Nowadays I'm paying a lot of attention to Doctor Who, the new series. Like Spock, the Doctor is a stranger, a stranger in a strange land. And by the way, thank you Stephen King for finding me the passage, 'for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner. Spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.' Actually with Doctor Who, one might apply the whole of the psalm. This translation even uses the word alien. Ha!
Produced by BBC Wales, I really think the show's quite brilliant. Well, of the fifteen or so episodes per series, most are, anyways. Daleks still have proboscises in shape of toilet plungers and the TARDIS still malfunctions juuusst riiight, serendipitously steering the Doctor and his assistant into the path of oh so many adventures.
But the writing. But the sheer wing-nutter comedic energy in combination with operatic melodrama. As well as--I think--great Doctor Who character reinventions on the part of both Christopher Eccleston and David Tennnat, and the very funny characters of Rose (Billie Piper), Captain Jack (John Barrowman) and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate).
Actually, I've been paying attention to TV script writing in general lately. 'Northern Exposure', 'Lost', 'Battlestar Galactica', 'How I Met Your Mother' and 'Firefly' as well as 'Doctor Who' astonish me with their yarn-spinning invention, dramatic power, sheer wordmanship, structural brilliance and/or monological whimsy--and pure imaginative sillyness.
I speak in generalities. So now I'd like to list my favourite DW episodes, and link to a couple wiki quote pages and a Doctor Who monsters compendium, just as a miser would finger her jewels--for the sheer accumulative joy of it.
Series one:
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The Doctor Dances ~ Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once! Everybody lives! (2006 Hugo Award winner)
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The Parting of the Ways ~ Christopher Eccleston says bye.
Series two:
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The Girl in the Fireplace (2007 Hugo Award winner)
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The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit ~ Beastly, existential.
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Love and Monsters ~ Wonderfully silly.
Series three:
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The Shakespeare Code ~ Expelliarmus!
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Blink ~ Brilliant structuring, fantastic monsters, written
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The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords ~ Oh the apocalyptic angst; and the only time I really like Martha Jones, she was heroic. (But do just ignore the bit about clapping if you believe in the Doctor...)
Can't wait for series four, more Rose and Donna. /Fanilow.
"And we never stopped, did we? All across the universe. Running, running, running, then one time we had to hop! Do you remember? [starts hopping on the spot.] Hopping for our lives! Yeah? All that hopping! Remember hopping for your life? Yeah? Hop, with the... [stops hopping.]...no?"
Four cool items of note
January 8, 2008
1) My husband Mark has now implemented the best blog in the world at northerwester.blogspot.com. First post concerns parkour as a kind of freedom-response.
2) After pondering the nature of Michael Alexander's translation of 'wuldortorhtan weder' I wrote and asked him about it and he was kind enough to reply as follows:
I think I found 'torht' a particularly bright word, and spring is a season which has rainbows. 'weder' brings the possibility of rain, especially on an island in the North Sea. But my thought-processes of the 1970s are elusive to memorial reconstruction. I always consulted Bosworth and Toller as well as the editions then available; but final decisions were affected by the way the sense could be reconciled with the metre and its alliterative demands.
I'm too chuffed about it at the moment to have replied to him but shall do so tomorrow, probably. I find 'torht' to be a very bright word too, even more so than 'beorht'. I wonder why. Perhaps it all goes back to phonaesthetics.
3) Vertical gardens. Beautiful. Wicked, even. Actually, probably wick. Check it.
4) freedocumentaries.org. Want know about the Jewish anarchist movement? How about the red light district situation in Calcutta? The Fox news bias? Not light stuff but a pretty amazing concept.
PS: Check out these watercolour-on-glass-like photos of Japan, early 1900s, by Herbert Geddes.
The shape of oxygen
January 4, 2008
Since all plant life exhales oxygen at certain times during its diurnal/nocturnal cycle, that cloud of oxygen, even just for a few µm, must mirror the peculiar array of each plants' stomata.
Do leaves of grass produce long spaghetti ribbons of oxygen?
Does an oak leaf produce a little lobed, oak-leaf-shaped cloud?
...It would make sense of that lovely line in 'Gawain and the Green Knight' (in which, by the way, I sometimes think Gawain has a bit of a crush on the Green Man), about the castle that 'schemered and schon þur3 þe schyre okez'--that 'shimmered and shone through the shining oaks'. I can totally imagine a green haven exhuding so much oxygen that the air shimmers like a heat haze.
Some private enterprise--the Artemis Project-- is plotting to produce oxygen from moondust:
Moon dust is a mixture of many different minerals, and nearly all of them contain oxgyen in considerable abundance. One of the most common lunar minerals is ilmenite, a mixture of iron, titanium, and oxygen.
They hope to use it to fuel moonstation projects in "cislunar space"--that is, the inside of a three dimensional manifestation of the moon's orbit around the earth.
Don't they know that Lucifer is contained within that very same space-time? Dicey. Very dicey. Better to stick to translunar space-time, I think.
Maybe they're more into Hades than Lucifer.
A bit more from 'Gawain and the Green Knight', cortesye of Virginia U:
Sumwhyle wyth wormez he werrez, and with wolues als,
Sumwhyle wyth wodwos, þat woned in þe knarrez,
Boþe wyth bullez and berez, and borez oþerquyle,
And etaynez, þat hym anelede of þe he3e felle.
I like the bits about wormez and wodwos and etaynez of the heyge felle. Grr.
6 CO2(gas) + 12 H2O(liquid) + photons →
C6H12O6(aqueous) + 6 O2(gas) + 6 H2O(liquid)
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Hallo new year
January 2, 2008
Wow, I guess I took a month off away from the internet...missed you web. It's been hectic. Glad to be back.
Today I went to the library and translated one painful passage from 'Deor', which was incredibly easy about three years ago. Now, Old English seems both more clear and more distant: I can see better how it ought to fit together, and yet it's soooooo slooooow, looking up each bit and piece of word.
Worth it though. Compare the run-of-the-mill translation for 'wuldortorhtan weder': 'gloriously bright weather' with Michael Alexander's (whom I admire)--under his pen(cil) it's rendered the 'weather of rainbows'...how about that.
How does he get away with it? The literal Old English words for rainbow are 'regnboga' or 'scurboga'--'skiff-bow', as in a skiff of rain. 'Wuldor' has the meanings 'heavenly' and 'splendour', while 'torht' can mean 'clear' and 'radiant'...You put enough spin on that and maybe you can come up with that--translucent heavenly radiance in the springtime=refraction=rainbow-weather.
That's where the idea of 'intersemiotic transmutation' comes in, I guess: Eugene Nida: 'the transference of a message from one symbolic system to another.' Heck, with a term like that tucked in your boot, you can make almost anything sound like anything. I still kinda like it though.
On a completely different note: What the World Eats [in a week], Part I.
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The last Tintin, oh, & gnostical mysteries
November 28, 2007
From Wikipedia:
-Tintin and Alph-Art (originally known as Tintin et l'alph-art) is the twenty-fourth and final book in the Tintin series, created by Belgian comics artist Hergé. It is a striking departure from the earlier books in tone and subject, as well as in some parts of the style, due to Hergé having lost interest in telling more stories in the mold of his earlier 'Tintin'-books.
-It involved avant-garde art, painting and narcotics, a new age sect and a phoney guru.
-In it, Herge planned a change of lifestyle for Captain Haddock — becoming infatuated with a minimalist painter, Ramó Nash, changing his style of dress, transforming the house, and growing hashish in the cellars at Marlinspike. Haddock and Tintin are arrested, and an investigation takes place in Amsterdam.
One might also check this article at the Believer. (Possibly a lot of hooey. But interesting nonetheless.)
And just in case anyone thinks megalomaniacal monumental fantasy architecture is a thing of the past, or belongs only to the likes of Rastapopolous, check out the recent coming to light of the underground Temples of Damanhur in Italy. Their website, replete with schematic and photo tours. And a news article, written in a suitably sensational tone. When real gnostic mysteries are a bit thin on the ground, why not make your own?? Somehow I bet all this would please the redoubtable Alan Moore.
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Molasses cream
November 21, 2007
A small aside. I would like to laud molasses-flavoured whipped cream as the perfect accompaniment to pumpkin pie. Yup. It's almost brulee-ish in flavour and colour, and complements the all-spice and cinnamon glory of the pie itself. Here's a pic of my first pie, replete with molassses whipped cream:
It has a half spelt, half wheat crust made with butter--not Crisco--so it's a wee bit crunchy. But good.
To make molasses whipped cream just start whipping it and drizzle in cooking molasses, till it turns the colour of coffee with lots of cream and sugar. Go slow. Taste it as you go.
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Granite euphony
November 21, 2007
'Donnie Darko' transformed my opinion of Graham Greene's short story 'The Destructors'. It happened the second time I watched it, when that shoulder pad wearing, fantastically sincere crank of an English teacher Ms. Pomeroy (aka Drew Barrymore) and Donnie Darko discuss its implications. I also loved her mention of 'cellar door' as being one of the most phonaesthetically pleasing phrases in the English language.
Some people find euphony terribly seductive. GM Hopkins felt it. JRR Tolkien lived by it. Stephen King knows its place. Even the fabulous Monty Python troup mulled it over ever so cleverly, ever so irritatingly, in 'Woody and Tinny Words'. And though Wallace Stevens so pleasingly writes--
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
--I must say that anyone who's heard the red winged blackbird's whistle must know that the blackbirds themselves are in on it.
Finalmente, I'd like to quote poet Emily Dickinson, who was no bawd of euphony, but was fair ass over teakettle brill in that department all the same.
If I shouldn’t be alive
When the robins come,
Give the one in red cravat
A memorial crumb.If I shouldn’t thank you,
Being just asleep,
You will know I’m trying
With my granite lip.
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Joanne Harris
November 20, 2007
Went to the library and came across short story collections by AS Byatt, Susanna Clarke, Gerald Durrell, China Mieville, and--Joanne Harris: Jigs & Reels. (Is there anything more satisfying than using an ampersand in place of an 'and'?) And then I went to her website and discovered a few more good 'uns.
Short stories. I'm on a role. A kick. A jag. Check my sidebar for more short story links.
Actually I used to not like short stories at all. Back in highschool I thought them pretty much total rot, a real cop-out of a genre. Now, glamour, possibility, a thousand voices just waiting to have their small say--worlds suggested but not constructed. Also I like, when reading a collection of short stories, the non-linear possibilities of starting anywhere and jumping around, according to which titles sound most intriguing.
I'd like to link to Harris' Dryad. Very pretty.
I'd like to link to her wee vamp piece, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. (It has its points.)
I'd like to quote from her story, 'Gastronomicon' which is in Jigs & Reels.
In it, the protagonist, a midclass housewife, finds that the cookbook she inherited from her vaguely Persian looking mother in law is somewhat more than it seems. The book is old, ancient in places, with recipes from many times in many languages. Her husband Ernest, who passes, something like Freddie Mercury, for a Caucasian Brit, prefers that she use only the more recent receipts: good English classics such as Bubble and Squeak, and Yorkshire pudding, and trifle. And the recipes are so delicious that this housewife is able to ignore tha small changes in the quality of light, of dimension, of subterranean noises and of the furtive trespasses of small, desperate homunculi which occur when she cooks these dishes. But one day she tries a new receipt, slightly older than the rest. And the warping of the threshold between her comfy Number 4 Privet Drive type world and that of the djinn is a bit more than she can manage:
I sat down. There was a draft coming from somewhere, but it was hot air, not cold. I check the kitchen to make sure I hadn't left the oven door open. Everything looked fine. then I noticed that the serving hatch was open a couple of inches. Red light shone through onto the worktop. The kitchen door swung shut, very gently, with a small click.
I've never been what you'd call a fanciful woman. That's one of the things Ernest appreciates most about me; I'm not one to make a fuss. But when that door closed I began to shake. The sounds coming from behind the serving hatch were louder now; a single bell tolling; a thick dragging sound and something that might have been voices; murmuring, clotted voices, but in no language I knew or could recognize. The light that fell across the worktop didn't look light electric light at all; it was more like a kind of daylight, but redder, darker somehow, as if it was coming from a sun much older than ours. I could almost imagine that there was no dining room beyond the serving hatch anymore, but another place altogether; somewhere terribly old, terribly barren; somewhere hissing with dust and where the broken walls of fabulous cities were now no more than hummocks in the sand; and that where the red sky met the red earth things moved and slouched, things beyond perspective and (thankfully) beyond imagination.
Reminds me of Charn and of Dune, and of course, of Hel and of كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة - kitāb 'alf laylah wa-laylah--that is, 1001 Arabian Nights. If that Arabic title isn't very very phonaesthetically pleasing I'll eat my, um...libary card. Yeah.
The Baital Pachisi, btw, is considered one of the main sources for 1001 Nights...mainly Hindi stories strung together in a Sanskrit frame narrative, it mentions, most alluringly, the vetala. Which is an early and no doubt highly intelligent vampire! Cool. They spin entracing stories which end with questions--irresistible questions. They can also tell the future, since they transcend the thresholds of time and space.
At this point, I'd like to quote from Maxwell Bodenheim's poem 'Ending' (and did he come to quite the one) regarding warping thresholds:
A fitting benediction of words
Stood, one by one, upon
The warped threshold of your mouth.
Dreams are wandering realities...
Ooh! Bitter.
And in conclusion, the thoughts of one Peter Gabriel upon another book:
The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It's full of charts and facts and figures and instructions for dancing
But I
I love it when you read to me
And you
You can read me anything.
The book of love has music in it
In fact that's where music comes from
Some of it is just transcendental
Some of it is just really dumb
But I
I love it when you sing to me
And you
You can sing me anything
The book of love is long and boring
And written very long ago
It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes
And things we're all too young to know.
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Well fuck me with a feather...
November 16, 2007
...If I haven't figured our how to jury rig permalinks on this host. So now, permalinks at the bottom of every post. I'll work backwards slowly when I have nothing better to do.
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Gloog
November 15, 2007
My stripey cat is licking her belly so involvedly at this moment that she's making gloog-gloog-gloog-gloog noises as she tries to breathe.
Anyhow. I was watching this Youtube video of a homeless man in Japan walking down the road with three cats and a dog. The cats are riding on his cart. And it reminded me very much of Haruki Murakami. Super cool. Super weird. So, some online short stories by this reclusive dude:
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The Year of Spaghetti--especially cool--obsessive, allusive, foodish, and, well translated by one Philip Gabriel. The opening:
Nineteen-seventy-one was the Year of Spaghetti.
In 1971, I cooked spaghetti to live, and lived to cook spaghetti. Steam rising from the pot was my pride and joy, tomato sauce bubbling up in the saucepan my one great hope in life.
I went to a cooking specialty store and bought a kitchen timer and a huge aluminum pot, big enough to bathe a German shepherd in, then went around to all the supermarkets that catered to foreigners, gathering an assortment of odd-sounding spices. I picked up a pasta cookbook at the bookstore, and bought tomatoes by the dozen. I purchased every brand of spaghetti I could lay my hands on, simmered every sauce known to man. Fine particles of garlic, onion, and olive oil swirled in the air, forming a harmonious cloud that penetrated every corner of my tiny apartment, permeating the floor and the ceiling and the walls, my clothes, my books, my records, my tennis racquet, my bundles of old letters. It was a fragrance one might have smelled on ancient Roman aqueducts.
This is a story from the Year of Spaghetti, 1971 A.D.
As a rule, I cooked spaghetti, and ate it, by myself. I was convinced that spaghetti was a dish best enjoyed alone. I cant really explain why felt that way, but there it is...
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More short stories by Murakami.
I think Murakami fits into that fascinating category, mythy-puissant--aka mythopoeic, aka, good at creating new worlds and mythos. Cats are like his heirophants. Also in this category:
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Jim Hensen--muppets
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Neil Gaiman--the Endless
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JRR Tolkien--for using mere hints from the Old Stuff (e.g. Deor)
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China Mieville--anarchaical metamorphical phantasmorgraphy
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JK Rowling--everyone wants to inhabit her world
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Susanna Clarke--for her unmitigated mastery of manner
Apropos myth-making, an article from The Guardian in which writers I don't know make up new fairy tales for the 21st century. Hm. Via Endicott.
And apropos nothing, the Spanish opener for Fraggle Rock...
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