Off the Cliff

Somewhere in this here journal I noted that the coda to Bede's story about the sparrow in the meadhall* was actually a passage from  a Russian short story by I think Gogol. Can't find it anywhere, can't think what else I might have tagged it with, cannot find it online, cannot find it.

Argh.

* "The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all." 

The coda is the oldest of the king's men saying 'Even in the dark the sparrow is not lost but knows her nest.'

ETA Ha! Ha! Ha! Found it, and it's Turgenev after all, Rudin:

"I remember a Scandinavian legend,' thus he concluded, ‘a king is sitting with his warriors round the fire in a long dark barn. It was night and winter. Suddenly a little bird flew in at the open door and flew out again at the other. The king spoke and said that this bird is like man in the world; it flew in from darkness and out again into darkness, and was not long in the warmth and light. . . . 'King,' replies the oldest of the warriors, 'even in the dark the bird is not lost, but finds her nest.' Even so our life is short and worthless; but all that is great is accomplished through men. The consciousness of being the instrument of these higher powers ought to outweigh all other joys for man; even in death he finds his life, his nest.’"

Went out every day of my three day weekend and really wished I could have stayed in. Weather wasn't bad but knees ached anyway, and Monday's acupuncture didn't help them at all.

Followed then two early mornings, and my scheme of double dosing myself the night before may have made me feel happy but didn't get me to sleep any earlier or make a 7 a.m. rising any easier. And because of a communication mixup (between two other people, not me) today's early shift needn't have happened at all.

So I have tomorrow off, and it's freezing rain out there, so tell me why I booked a noon acupuncture session? Hope, I suppose.

Reading-wise, I finished only Deep Secret which I didn't like nearly as much as the sequel, and Tales from Moominvalley which tells me that I am a Fillyjonk. Haven't decided what to read next, but path of least resistance Pratchett or Dick Francis both look likely.

Winter Brane will not parse anything new: well, is unwilling to parse anything new- so I'm now re-re-reading The Merlin Conspiracy and enjoying it immensely. Because almost all Diana Wynne-Jones' works are imbued with a kind of Don't-See-Me spell, which makes the memory slide off them, I might as well have never read the work before. I vaguely remembered the King's processions, and when I came to it the flower classification as well, but Roddy's grandfather? Nope. Romanov? Nope. *Anything* to do with Nick? Nope. The elephant? You'd think I might at least have remembered the elephant. But nope nope nope.

I suppose this is a plus in an author. But Merlin isn't even one of the twisty ones, like Hexwood or Fire and Hemlock; those guys you don't know what you're reading even as you read.

Meanwhile I walked the bike over bumpy ice to my cafe, and bought more salt for work against Tuesday's promised freezing rain. This year is a replay of 2005 when it isn't replaying 2008, and as in both those, one simply hangs in until it's over.

1. The April wind gusts outside to the accompaniment of disturbing thuds and bumps, but the fascia no longer bangs against the house as it did this morning, because the Phantom Roofers came while I was at work and pinned it back in place. Heavy-duty bill will arrive shortly ('We have a minimum $400 charge') but worth it, if it holds.

2. My 21st return from Japan anniversary. Sometimes I forget it entirely but this year's weather (grey and feeling colder than it is) reminds me of it. To say nothing of those Papuwa djs the other day.

3. Finished Howl's Moving Castle in less than a day. *That's* what a book should be like, not the slog-slog-slog of everything else. Resolution happens in the book- dog-man is mostly spoiler, turnip scarecrow is mostly spoiler, and the Witch has been spoiler longer than one thinks.

4. Succeeded in losing my sleep-shirt and sleep-hoodie last night. Y'day morning I took them off and put on a bathrobe before going downstairs. At night bathrobe was hanging on its hook on the back of the door but shirt-and-hoodie ensemble which should have been hanging there too were nowhere to be seen. Not in front room, not in back room, not in bathroom; gone. This morning I happened to look down instead of up; they had fallen off hook and into the corner behind the door. Have suspected for a long time that my vision was getting worse; how lucky I have my check-up on Friday.

This is also why reading Howl is encouraging: old women who ache and pop are rarely the heroines of books. Probably should have a go at Pratchett's witches again as well.

...from which rain may fall again. Though the last downpour failed to wet the ground under the cherry tree, it did sluice everything else. OTOH the rain this year has singularly failed to produce those walls of water bouncing off the car hoods that the past three summers did on a regular basis, every time the forecast said 'scattered showers.' For which I'm properly grateful.

Finished in the last week?
First three of the Dalemark quartet: The Spellcoats, Drowned Ammett, and Cart and Cwidder. They make much more sense when read together and in order because alone and separately none made much of an impression on me, back when I first read them in the 80s.

Reading now?
The Crown of Dalemark which rather requires having read the first three (and remembering what happened in each, a thing I'm very bad at.) I suppose one coul read it standalone and see if it makes any sense that way, but I'm not going to.

Benvenuto Cellini, which I started a bare ten days ago or so, and which is never-ending.

Terra Nostra, a bit. I've read this twice but not since the early 80s. Some details come back, and names which give me an oogey feeling, but the passage I've just read might as well have been for the first time.

Next?
Along with the Max Gladstone I bought a Marjorie Liu, just to see if she's as different as some people say. Patricia Briggs was quite different from the usual run, so it *can* happen. OTOH disgruntled me thinks urban fantasy reccers have very low standards: over at goodreads, Nalini Singh's cliched purple gets four and a half stars per book.

What have you just finished reading?
Nothing since last week. On account of--

What are you reading now?
I'm still noodling away at
Winter's Tale, which fell off in interest at the end of the Peter Lake section;

The Throne of Fire, 2nd in Rick Riordan's Egypt series. Riordan is depression reading: I don't enjoy it much but I keep on reading it to be reading something. Not unlike daytime TV;

The Guizer, Alan Garner's collection of stories about the Fool figure, or rather, the Trickster. Depressing in quite another way. Why are there no female tricksters? apart from the one Le Guin wrote. (I see there's a space in that last name now; has it always been there?) Because Trickster figures are psychotic sociopaths and we can't conceive of women as being amoral *and* powerful, is it? Understand, I don't mind this: but reading tale after tale of psychotic sociopaths is depressing.

The Knife of Never Letting Go, which so far is rivetting. May stick with it. To my tastes, YA generally has a lack of complexity that makes it drag. (See Riordan, above.) Hope this is one of the exceptions. (Yes yes, I know; like manga, it's not *for* you. But still one hopes. After all, Diana Wynne Jones counts as YA or whatever, and *she* managed it.)

Have also reread The Invisible Library, picking up what's given of Vale and his family. They never did get their book back from Bradamant, did they? But was it Bradamant who stole it? They're in Leeds and her depredations were in London, I assume? Do wonder what the book had in it...

What will you read next?
Might get back to The Famished Road when the weather cools; might forge on through Winter's Tale. Discover among my nostalgic 80s Picadors a copy of Pilgermann which wikipedia discourages me from reading, promising horrors. Jew wandering through medieval Europe, yes I would think so. But still.

What have you just finished reading?
Wilkins' Tooth, a Diana Wynne Jones I somehow missed back in the 70s. Except this was the American edition, called Witch's Business, and featuring a cat and a cottage. So I was pleased and surprised, in view of the paleness of her later oeuvre, to find that the titular character comes from the West Indies. Fun fast read, but with the signature neglectful parents, and her 'old women are awful!' theme as well. Which I think she inherited from Jane Austen, actually; IIRC Austen doesn't have a single sympathetic female character over 30. (My guess at Mrs Gardiner's age FWIW.) This book probably needs to be balanced by some Granny Weatherwax, just because.

A Bride's Story, vols 1&2. Lovely detail and 'nicer than I expect anyone to be' manga characters. Feel it probably reads better in Japanese than English; might read the whole series when I'm feeling less apocalyptic.

What are you reading now?
Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change (and no, amazon.com, there's no comma in the title.) Because I *need* it, with the kind of week I'm having.

What will you read next?
Kate Elliott's Cold Fire is on its way to me from the library. The library write-up promises "a pseudo-Victorian Europe at the emergence of an industrial revolution, replete with dirigibles, gas lights, and great political and social upheaval." Every other review makes it sound distinctly less steampunk than this. We shall see.

1. I've been cooking more and eating out less. It's very satisfying even when simple. Things like a poached egg on caraway rye bread spread with avocado; a few grinds of the pepper mill, a sprinkle of sea salt, and voila: Heaven. Or my stir fries, now I've learned how to handle the garlic (mash don't chop, fry with the ginger, then remove. Garlic dislikes me intensely.) Broccoli, mushrooms, celery, bok choy, and tofu. I have to freeze it almost immediately or else I'd eat a pot at a sitting.

But the downside of all this is dishes. Every day there are dishes. Somehow in the last fifteen years I've never had dishes in this quantity. I must practise daily Buddhist mindfulness and treat the dishes as an opportunity to wash dishes, much as I've sort of managed to treat flossing my teeth as an exercise in flossing teeth: the thing done for its own sake and not for the end goal. The end goal isn't worth it, really, so one dismisses that aspect and just does the thing itself.

I'd still love a dishwasher. In a renovated kitchen. With an attached powder room. In the rebuilt mudroom. Will be a while before the impermanence of downstairs toilets leads me to give up the dream of having one.

2. So I've been reading books on Buddhism for almost three months now. So far I respond best to the ones by easterners. The westerners talk as if they're selling something, and there's an awful lot of Self present for a religion that's all about the non-existence of the Self. There's no Self in the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, just a serene 'this is how it works.' Granted, the Dalai Lama is a bad place to start: he's teaching the graduate course, and a lot of the BA basics I got from westerners. Still.

Among the western examples is something called Just Add Buddha! subtitled 'Quick Buddhist Solutions for Hellish Bosses, Traffic Jams, Stubborn Spouses, and Other Annoyances of Everyday Life.' His solution for hellish bosses is to imagine yourself as your boss' mother, observing your little boy having a tantrum. 'You can't truly stay angry at toddlers. They're too puny and helpless. They lack a sense of their own failings.' Well maybe. But you can give them time outs until they cool off, and you can't do that with a screaming irrational adult.

His solution for barking dogs is to imagine you are Kanzeon 'the bodhisattva who hears the cries of the world'. 'You are to the barking dog as Kanzeon is to you: a being of enormous compassion and inconceivable powers.' This is bad enough. But worse: when you find yourself in times of trouble, follow the lead of the Lotus Sutra and call on the Bodhisattva:

repeat these words...

Eyes of compassion, observing sentient beings, assemble an immeasurable ocean of blessings

...And if you're really in trouble, don't worry about the whole of the verse, just cry "Kanzeon!" and feel comforted.

And no I say no I can't no. Guanyin maybe, Chenrezig or Kwanum or Avalokiteshvara if it wasn't such a mouthful. But Kanzeon to me is firmly and unmovably an ijiwaru-ppoi hermaphrodite who wears too much lipstick, and that's that.

3) My local library renovated and half its books disappeared, or so it seems. Luckily everything I want is at the branch down the street from work, even if half of it doesn't circulate. (The Judith Merrill collection buys *everything* SFF so nobody else has to, but it's a reference library. A pain.) To round out my DWJ reading I went there and snagged an armful of volumes I'd never heard of, plus those missing Brusts. Plowed through the Brusts doggedly and then turned to dessert. Dessert was a disappointment.

A Sudden Wild Magic was... odd. Didn't sound like her at all. The three stories in Shopping for a Spell touched that same puzzling thing I noticed in Black Maria: extreme paralysis in the face of social intruders and appalling behaviour. Granted a certain kind of Canadian niceness dislikes telling people to get out, we're still capable of saying no on occasion. DWJ's people don't say no. They are wet and a weed and ultimately irritating.

The stories in Unexpected Magic were a slog to start but got steadily better. I very much liked Everard's Ride. And loved the moment in Little Dot where the cat is sleeping happily on the guy's lap, 'and then, suddenly, there was this huge human woman's voice screaming "Len Iggmy son of Trey, la moor Tay Una!"' ie Gli enigmi sono tre, la morte una!

That in fact is how I first met Turandot, in a now vanished dress shop on Bloor Street whose BGM came from the classical radio station that was, just then, playing an ad for the Canadian Uproar sorry pardon Opera's fall season. It turned out to be the Apocalypse Now version (heads on poles, dirty mist, generic peasants as the population of Peking) and confirmed me as a fan for life.

What a lovely day today was, largely because it began with meeting unearthly_calm for coffee down near Chinatown. Which meant meeting unearthly_calm, since in our ten or twelve years of casual net acquaintance we never have. She lives on the other side of the globe and will continue to do so, because she's off shortly to Japan to study at my old language school. Ah, Kai Japanese Language school in wonderful grubby Shin-Ookubo-- how that does take me back. To early '93, in fact (cue winged chariot theme) when the sun and the sky looked rather as they did today, bright and clear and sharp.

(You can argue that Tokyo has two seasons, sharp and fuzzy. Sharp extends from December to March-ish. Everything else is fuzzy-- blurred and softened by the omnipresent moisture in the air.)
( Read more... )

1. kintail and nekonexus came to visit with their little eeensie weensie utterly ADORABLE ball of KEWT (cough) their six month old Pomeranian yesterday. I discover that puppies are like floor babies. (Yes you know what a floor baby is. One that crawls but does not pull to stand or cruise along furniture.) They're Hoovers. Before either visits you must vacuum or sweep mightily because they'll find anything on the floor-- Oh look dust ball! Oh look scrap of paper! Oh look ancient cracker crumb! Oh look chip of rock salt!-- and put it in their mouths.

2. To discover what Christopher Chant is like grown up, I reread Charmed Life, a book I thought I knew well. Have forgotten much. See why Sabina was so appalled at Chrestomanci's approach to gifted but intransigent children. Does he ever give a reason for not doing what he says not to do? Does he ever even define precisely what he says not to do? He does not. Naturally he fails resoundingly with Gwendolen.
( Cut for more reading )

From kate_nepveu: Now would be a good time to send Diana Wynne Jones fanmail

She's decided to go off chemotherapy and let what comes come. 'Her offiical site says well-wishes sent to meredithxyz at googlemail dot com will reach her.'

Is why I finished Archer's Goon within twenty-four hours. A Diane Wynne Jones I somehow never read. Mind, there are a bunch of infinitely-confusible-in-my-mind DWJ titles, so I probably thought I had and then it turned out I hadn't. (Have I read The Ogre Downstairs? I don't think I have. But again, unless I read her two or three times I never remember her plots either.)

From which you may see that I like DWJ but find her a tad head-hurty. Partly the twistiness, partly all the stuff left out one is expected to supply. Truly, her books read as if they're only sixty-six per cent there and random chunks of text are just missing. AG however is almost straightforward, and the twists were predictable in a confused way-- as in, it's DWJ so there must be twists so what's the most likely one ah hah.

But it makes for a change from the stuff I've been reading, and change was what I wanted. Should probably tackle The Fall of the Kings again. Only a straight diet of English reading always makes me feel two dimensional, but padding it with manga just makes me feel futile. Unless it's 100 Demons. So maybe I should go puzzle out those confusing stories in vol 15...

It is so nice to have extra money these days. Means I can buy books, and sometimes safer books than the latest Ishiguro, which I still haven't finished. ( Let me count my countless blessings one by one )

So I dropped Howl back off at the library, thinking as I did so 'It's not due for another two weeks I bet this is a bad idea.' ( As indeed it was. )