that's right, poppet, you can say goodbye to your floppy lover
I took today off, because I have days and I am lazy and haven't had a real vacation in two years, and four-day weekends are awesome. So of course, this morning at 8:30, there was a cement mixer on my block, involved in construction work. Joy.
So I did a little grocery shopping and then came home and reviewed some yuletide source, which I enjoyed, though there are problems with the canon that set my teeth on edge when I think about them too much. I think I will be able to write a story, though. I mean, I know I will, but I think I know what it's going to be now.
Then I put on the tv to watch Inside Man, which I recorded the other day off HBO and which I missed in theatres, but have been assured I will love it, and I hit the wrong button and ended up watching the last forty minutes or so of Curse of the Were-Rabbit and omg the AWESOME cannot be textually rendered. And as an homage to King Kong, I swear to god, SO MUCH BETTER than Peter Jackson's version. And also shorter, funnier, and with 100% fewer gross bugs. (No Kyle Chandler, but you can't have everything.) The dogfight is a thing of brilliance.
I still need to watch Inside Man. I am sure I will get to it soon.
***
I finally read Sam Noir: Samurai Detective. Um. Possibly I am the wrong audience for this, though the fact that the very title made me excited when I first read about it (A SAMURAI DETECTIVE! HOW IS THAT NOT AWESOME?) would suggest otherwise, and yet I can't say I actually enjoyed it or was emotionally engaged by it.
I am not sure if it's the tongue-in-cheek-ness of it or the fact that it's a comic made the writer feel okay about going completely over the top, but I found it really hard to take seriously, even as comedy, and thus, really hard to invest in emotionally. The artwork is gorgeous, in a very angular, shadowy black and white, can't quite tell what's actually going on way, which, well, I am not one to read comics for the artwork, because I find it completely unintuitive - I am a big fan of text. Reading pictures isn't my strong suit. So it was pretty but I am sure I missed things.
I don't know if I'll pick up the next volume whenever it comes out, if it comes out. This ended on a cliffhanger, which I didn't expect - I thought it was a self-contained story - so I might just to find out what happens, and there is some amusement to be gleaned from such gems as, "He's fast as a barracuda riding a gazelle. And that's super fast. But the thing is, I don't mean to boast...but I'm fast like a cheetah riding a bolt of lightning. You don't even know I'm gonna strike until you've got four fangs in your neck and a million volts runnin' down your spine."
So we'll see.
***
Meme time, gacked from pearl_o and fox1013:
You are the _____ to my _______. It works like this: Basically, comment telling me that I am the (SOMETHING) to your (SOMETHING). I.e. if you think of me as a good friend, you may say I am the Ron Weasley to your Harry Potter. Or if we're lovers (?! it would be news to me, I must admit), you could say that I am the Tuxedo Mask to your Sailor Moon. Get it? Pretty simple.
***
This is the poem the title of The Long Silence of All That Lies Behind comes from, and it was definitely influential in the writing as well:
There Is No Clear Light
There is no clear light,
no clear shadow, in remembering.
They have grown ashy-gray,
a grubby sidewalk
crisscrossed by the endless feet of those
who come in and out of the market.
And there are other memories, still looking for something to bite,
like fierce, unsatisfied teeth.
They gnaw us to the last bone, devouring
the long silence of all that lies behind us.
And everything lies behind, nights, dawns,
days hanging like bridges between darknesses,
cities, doors into love and rancor,
as if war had broken into the store
and carried off everything there, piece by piece,
till through broken doors
the wind blows over empty shelves
and makes the eyes of oblivion dance.
That's why daylight comes with slow fire,
and love, the whiff of far-off fog,
and street by street the city comes back, without flags,
trembling perhaps, to live in its smoke.
Yesterday's hours, stitched by life
threaded on a bloodstained needle,
between decisions endlessly unfulfilled,
the infinite beat of the sea and of doubt,
the quiver of the sky and its jasmine.
Who is that other me, who didn't know
how to smile, who died of sheer mourning?
The one who endured the bells and the carnations,
destroying the lessons of the cold?
It's late, late, but I go on, from example to example,
without knowing what the moral is,
because, in my many lives, I am absent.
I'm here now, and I'm also the man I was,
both at the same time.
Perhaps that's it, the real mystery.
Life, steady flow of emptiness
which filled this cup with days and shadows,
all brightness buried like an old-time prince
in his own infirm and mineral shroud,
until we are so behind that we don't exist.
To be and not to be-- that's what life is.
Of all that I was, I bear only these cruel scars,
because those griefs confirm my very existence.
~Pablo Neruda (trans. Alastair Reid)
***
So I did a little grocery shopping and then came home and reviewed some yuletide source, which I enjoyed, though there are problems with the canon that set my teeth on edge when I think about them too much. I think I will be able to write a story, though. I mean, I know I will, but I think I know what it's going to be now.
Then I put on the tv to watch Inside Man, which I recorded the other day off HBO and which I missed in theatres, but have been assured I will love it, and I hit the wrong button and ended up watching the last forty minutes or so of Curse of the Were-Rabbit and omg the AWESOME cannot be textually rendered. And as an homage to King Kong, I swear to god, SO MUCH BETTER than Peter Jackson's version. And also shorter, funnier, and with 100% fewer gross bugs. (No Kyle Chandler, but you can't have everything.) The dogfight is a thing of brilliance.
I still need to watch Inside Man. I am sure I will get to it soon.
***
I finally read Sam Noir: Samurai Detective. Um. Possibly I am the wrong audience for this, though the fact that the very title made me excited when I first read about it (A SAMURAI DETECTIVE! HOW IS THAT NOT AWESOME?) would suggest otherwise, and yet I can't say I actually enjoyed it or was emotionally engaged by it.
I am not sure if it's the tongue-in-cheek-ness of it or the fact that it's a comic made the writer feel okay about going completely over the top, but I found it really hard to take seriously, even as comedy, and thus, really hard to invest in emotionally. The artwork is gorgeous, in a very angular, shadowy black and white, can't quite tell what's actually going on way, which, well, I am not one to read comics for the artwork, because I find it completely unintuitive - I am a big fan of text. Reading pictures isn't my strong suit. So it was pretty but I am sure I missed things.
I don't know if I'll pick up the next volume whenever it comes out, if it comes out. This ended on a cliffhanger, which I didn't expect - I thought it was a self-contained story - so I might just to find out what happens, and there is some amusement to be gleaned from such gems as, "He's fast as a barracuda riding a gazelle. And that's super fast. But the thing is, I don't mean to boast...but I'm fast like a cheetah riding a bolt of lightning. You don't even know I'm gonna strike until you've got four fangs in your neck and a million volts runnin' down your spine."
So we'll see.
***
Meme time, gacked from pearl_o and fox1013:
You are the _____ to my _______. It works like this: Basically, comment telling me that I am the (SOMETHING) to your (SOMETHING). I.e. if you think of me as a good friend, you may say I am the Ron Weasley to your Harry Potter. Or if we're lovers (?! it would be news to me, I must admit), you could say that I am the Tuxedo Mask to your Sailor Moon. Get it? Pretty simple.
***
This is the poem the title of The Long Silence of All That Lies Behind comes from, and it was definitely influential in the writing as well:
There Is No Clear Light
There is no clear light,
no clear shadow, in remembering.
They have grown ashy-gray,
a grubby sidewalk
crisscrossed by the endless feet of those
who come in and out of the market.
And there are other memories, still looking for something to bite,
like fierce, unsatisfied teeth.
They gnaw us to the last bone, devouring
the long silence of all that lies behind us.
And everything lies behind, nights, dawns,
days hanging like bridges between darknesses,
cities, doors into love and rancor,
as if war had broken into the store
and carried off everything there, piece by piece,
till through broken doors
the wind blows over empty shelves
and makes the eyes of oblivion dance.
That's why daylight comes with slow fire,
and love, the whiff of far-off fog,
and street by street the city comes back, without flags,
trembling perhaps, to live in its smoke.
Yesterday's hours, stitched by life
threaded on a bloodstained needle,
between decisions endlessly unfulfilled,
the infinite beat of the sea and of doubt,
the quiver of the sky and its jasmine.
Who is that other me, who didn't know
how to smile, who died of sheer mourning?
The one who endured the bells and the carnations,
destroying the lessons of the cold?
It's late, late, but I go on, from example to example,
without knowing what the moral is,
because, in my many lives, I am absent.
I'm here now, and I'm also the man I was,
both at the same time.
Perhaps that's it, the real mystery.
Life, steady flow of emptiness
which filled this cup with days and shadows,
all brightness buried like an old-time prince
in his own infirm and mineral shroud,
until we are so behind that we don't exist.
To be and not to be-- that's what life is.
Of all that I was, I bear only these cruel scars,
because those griefs confirm my very existence.
~Pablo Neruda (trans. Alastair Reid)
***