Off the Cliff

Let me say to have it said, I hate  waiting for people to call me back. I never did like it but in my current socially feral state, the thought of the phone suddenly ringing when I'm not prepared gives me the cold grues. I hope my doctor is on vacation, and I bet she is because it went immediately to voice mail. Don't care if my hernia is bulging (and anyway, half of that is fat because that's where those twenty pounds went on.) I don't want her calling me.

Anyway. Finished The Magician's Daughter which was excellent reading, and am now dithering between Raising Steam, which I have read once only and now I see why, and The Shepherd's Crown, which is good at the beginning but one must stop at the right place, and you don't know the right place u til you've passed it. So instead I'm time travelling via Peter Hunter Blair's Anglo-Saxon England, bought half a century ago in uni and now out of date.

But it's still essence of '72, the Brit.Mus and Sutton Hoo, Widsith and The Wanderer, even if also dry as dust. No matter. On he goes about the Icknield Way and off I go to google and the ancient and heavy god is it heavy out of date atlas, that gives me a detailed map of England so I can  find where the Chilterns are, and Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire, and the fens and Hadrian's wall, all the bitsy pieces of English geography that I never got straight because lord there's so *much* of it. Amazes me that I can keep Japanese prefectures straighter than English counties. But that's probably because I don't have +/- 65 years of literary and historical associations with Tottori or Yamanashi. Whereas I saw  Shakespeare's history plays, Richard and the first three Henrys, at an impressionable age, so the names are familiar (oh saucy Worcestershire!) even if I haven't a clue where they are. I mean, from the looks of it, they're now mostly in the sprawl that is London. There's a reason I never had a mental image of the Home Counties, which are probably almost as depressing as Saitama and Kanagawa, the slop over of Tokyo. But still, but still: I wish I could go back once more and doubt I ever will.

Quite a lot of leaves fell in Wednesday's all day rain, including the maple across the street that glows so lovely under the streetlamps at night, and the aspen beside it is half denuded, reminding me of what November will look like. My own two trees have shed enough to cover mine and NND's front steps and walks. I swept some this afternoon, but I need a leaf bag and rake to do the job properly.

The view up the street is still autumn brocade-- old gold, maroon, lemon yellow, bright red, deep green, and various others. Walking in the other direction earlier and passing under a stretch of all gold maples, I flashbacked to a length of gold velvet I'd had in my early teens. I've no idea where I got it from but the why I remember clearly. It reminded me of the production of Richard II that was my first experience of live action (or, come to that, film action) Shakespeare. Presumably there were other bright colours involved in it, but the sumptuous gold and velvet was what stuck.

My childhood reading of that English classic, The Gentle Falcon, had acquainted me with the historical background sof the play, so that I could explain it to my fellow students. We saw Richard because that was what was on, not because we were studying it. The choice that season was between Richard and King Lear, and presumably the nuns thought the former to be less traumatising. Good call: everyone who does Lear loves to pull out all the stops with the storm and my startle reaction to sudden loud noises would have been sorely tried. 

Otherwise I trundle about on aching muscles, not joints. Am being disappointed on the food front. Went down to the greengrocers to see if there were still strawberries to be had and there were: Ontario for $7 a carton or organic for half that. So I got two organic cartons that have the bonus of being in papier maché boxes, not unrecyclable green plastic crates. Turns out they have no taste at all. Then tried out the new fried chicken place that replaced KFC, Mary Brown's. Supposedly a Canadian Maritime chain, supposedly better chicken than Popeye's. And yes, the chicken was plump and tender but you have to ask for the non-spicy version or else they slather the bun in hot sauce. I'm not only not a fan of hot as a sensation, I hate the taste of hot sauce,  period. It kills the flavour of anything you put it on, much as catsup does. And catsup at least has sweet noted in it; hot sauce is sour.

So, having eaten the chicken without the coating or the bun, I came home intending to stir fry some broccoli and tofu in ginger. I don't use enough non-olive oil to buy bottles of peanut or canola or grapeseed or anything you can heat to high temps, and anyway oil is also getting expensive. But I was pleased to find small bottles of stir fry oil at Loblaws, that I could use up before it went rancid. What I hadn't noticed was that it was garlic-infused oil which I think is intended to supplement, not replace, a more regular oil. And though you don't need much for the small portions I was cooking, still however I feel about garlic (not a great fan), garlic definitely still dislikes me. Stomach has been rumbling all evening.

On the up side, my Ima Ichikos arrived in extremely prompt fashion. Worth the additional $25 I paid for delivery, though why the Japanese PO still won't deliver things by airmail or SAL is a mystery to me. Or maybe they do but Buyee insists on using a delivery service for everything overseas.

Sorted through my box of Stratford programs and discover that I have indeed seen King John, Winter's Tale and even Titus Andronicus. That I don't recall even the latter must be due to the fact that it was the late 70s, which I've blotted from memory. But even the earlier programs from the late 60s give me the fantods, so unlike the happy-making ballet R&J ones. Yappari, after 16 it was all downhill, and my 20s were no better. Perhaps I should throw the lot in the recycling.

Ordered clothes online which arrived very promptly. I can't tell you *when* they arrived because like everyone else my time sense has been screwed by two weekends in the middle of the week, and no work on eithr side of them. But I note sadly how thinthe material is nowadays. I bought a top from Old Navy in 2007 that's still robust. These Old Navy tops are half the thickness. As for tanktops... I still have one from 2006 that I've worn and washed every week or two. I've had to embroider over bleach stains, and the area around the embroidery has grown thin, but the rest is old boots tough. Tops that wear out in a year or two are a problem, no two ways. There's a limit to the number of dusters one needs, after all, and what else can ond do with them?

It snows. I hope that this three day marathon of acupuncture and massage will have loosened up the hip flexors etc so I can walk in it, because I couldn't in the snow before Christmas. I walked a little, gingerly, once or twice this last week, and my legs were not happy about it at all.

1. Lost one of my excellent bright pink gloves on the weekend. Dollar store specials, but that dollar store closed a year ago, and I discover that all my other dollar store gloves are nowhere near warm enough.

2. A discussion online led me to order a pillow from Ikea billed as 'firm'. It arrived yesterday, rolled up in a way that does not bode well for firmness, and is both flat as a pancake and limp as a noodle. The label says 'firmer' which strikes me as a piece of legalese ass-covering. Certainly it's firmer than a jellyfish, but most things are.

3. Had acupuncture yesterday, told myself not to be a wimp but take transit rather than calling a cab, as has become my extravagent wont. Streets dry, wind calm, certainly I can walk to the station. So allowed myself an hour to go two subway stops over and the equivalentof three down, and even caught a non-existent Christie bus to the station. Got to Dufferin and waited for a bus. And waited. And waited. And consulted the app,that said a bus would be along in 19 minutes. So had to cab it anyway, at only $5 less than a cab from home would have cost.

4. Snow today, 6-8 inches. Fluffy because the temps are cold, but going to become slippery sodden in the warmer days to come: and then more snow on Saturday.
( Wednesday's meagre offerings )

Finished Shakespeare's Rebel, and once again, thank god. Not enough Shakespeare, for one, and author over-identification for another. John Lawley the hero is introduced as an alcoholic waking from a month-long binge in a cheap hostelry full of fleas, thieves, rats and piss, to muse on his glory days with the Earl of Essex at the siege of Cadiz, which Essex won with Lawley's indispensable aid. As befits a Mary Sue, Lawley has been everywhere and known everyone in the late 16th century world: has the whole Widsith thing down pat, in fact:

With Franks I was
And Frisians and Frumtings; with the Rugs,
And with the Gloms, and with the Rumwealhs;
So was I with Albuin in Italy;
He of all men was readiest of hand
In shaping praise, most liberal of heart
In sharing rings, bright collars, Eadwin’s son...

In throwaway lines we learn that Lawley ran off at thirteen to be a player with Shakespeare, travelled round the world with Drake, kept Philip Sidney warm the night before the battle of Zutphen, fought against the Armada, was imprisoned by the Inquisition and hired as a spy, returned to England and revealed it all to Lord Burghley, for which he was imprisoned for several months while Burghley tried to figure out the rights and wrongs of the case. Oh, and Lawley's father was an Algonquin Indian or some such, and Burbage and Cecil are always asking him to get Shakespeare to write this or not write that because of course Shakespeare will only listen to one person.
( Read more... )

What have you just finished reading?
The Prose Edda, selections of, because no one really wants to know about all those kennings. Prose because the introduction says it's older than the poetic edda, and I'm sure it helps to know the stories first before trying to deal with them in poetic form.

Still makes me think, as Myth and Legend in Ireland did, that the heroic/ bronze/ iron ages in the north were not known for their high level of civilized behaviour. Heroes rarely are, but these guys are worse than most.

What are you reading now?
License to Quill, which I think I'm going to drop. For all the author's reading and footnotes, the thing really is intended as 007 pastiche, and I don't know enough Bond to get the jokes. Also it makes me want to reread Armor of Light.

White Teeth, which I think I'm going to finish soon, because 'a chapter a week' is not a good idea for someone as short-memoried as myself.

The Language of Threads, by Gail Tsukiyama. Set in '30s Hong Kong, a sequel to another book, about the hard lives of women. Why do I buy these books? Oh well. Will add to my challenge stats.

What will youread next?
I have urges to read that biography of Lorenzo de' Medici, though it's another bloodthirsty era. Truly, all those 'what era would you like to live in?' quizzes can only be answered with 'right now, thanks.'

Got Licensed to Quill and had a look at the first few pages. Not nearly as bad as I feared- its diction not even as breezily 20C as Cue for Treason's-- but it does one thing that always gets up my nose. Characters are made to say famous Shakespearean lines long before he wrote them. I can't think why people do this. It's too obvious to be a shout-out: everyone knows 'To be or not to be' is from Hamlet. Or maybe they don't. Maybe it *is* a shout-out. Or maybe the author thinks it clever or witty. I really don't know,

(Antonia Forest fanficcers are tiresomely prone to the same thing. It's as if someone's manner of speaking has been set in concrete by the author and the characters will echo their teenaged selves twenty and thirty years later. Which, yanno, one would hope not.)

And I'm not convinced the whole of the acting troupe would take exception to the anachronistic mention of a clock in Julius Caesar and wonder why they weren't wearing historically appropriate bedsheet togas instead of their everyday wear. I should look this up, but did even the 18th century have a notion of anachronism? (Google. Wiki says the awareness and reaction to it dates from late 18C, but gives no citation.)

Meanwhile I need to finish The Younger Edda even if it makes my head spin. Norse/ Icelandic mythology is a mess, and constructing a coherent narrative from it seems rather like establishing the text of a Sumerian work from a bunch of shattered clay tablets. Probably one shouldn't even try, but just enjoy he moments of 'so *that's* where Tolkien got that name!'

I keep trying to impress my daily perceptions of the lovely weather-- deep blue skies, cool breeze, sun-- into the long-term memory, but my mind has no good-weather memory ability. Mug and heat haze, that I remember perfectly. Sad, because there have been a lot of splendid days this month. But I have been at work with new babies etc, and nothing much else registers.

Twelve days' worth of Shibata Ami takes its toll, so I give myself a break with Bill Bryson's Shakespeare- The World as Stage, which I was very happy to find until I realized it's not Steven Greenblatt's Will in the World. A fun fast read nonetheless. ( Cut for Shakespeare's vocabulary )

Here we go. Make your own Shakespearian insults. For all your hi-falutin' cussin' needs.