Make known the unknown

Sep 19, 2009 21:44

It is certain: my thesis is to be published in the Explorations undergraduate academic journal! I am absurdly excited about that. Look out, world. I will conquer you, one excessively long paper on Tolkien at a time.

Distressingly, it would seem that my coworkers do not take Talk Like a Pirate Day seriously. I, however, had a blast on Friday (Talk Like a Pirate Day Observed), and dressed in appropriately piratey attire (which was mainly an excuse to go barefoot all day long, since I think it impossible that Floridian pirates would wear boots in this climate).

I realize I keep clogging people's friendlists with hideously long entries, so in an effort to spare you all, I will try to employ lj cuts more often.

Sometimes I have shockingly boring work dreams (I do data conversion all day, and then I have to do it all night?? LAME, subconscious. We expect better.), but sometimes lately I've been having really wonderful narrative brain-ramblings at night. I dreamed about a little girl, she was in conflict with a beautiful, evil witch-queen. She managed to escape the queen's castle and flee across the plains to a flooded city. She was too tired to run any farther, and besides, there was water everywhere, so she just floated quietly through a flooded street filled with water lilies. She realized that this really wouldn't do for a long-term solution, however, so she snagged a passing oil painting and climbed on top of it for a raft. Suddenly, she looked up, and a man was looking down at her from a stone railing. She looked at his face very intently and decided that he was a very good man, and he reached his hand down and pulled her out of the water, and they walked away on the stone bridge together. And then I woke up. I do sometimes wonder what it means if you dream dreams where you're not even in them. I think maybe I wandered into someone else's dream.

Another night, all of the dream characters were talking about how a certain war was unavoidable, that there could never be peace in their time, and that they were all too warlike; the only hope for peace lay in the next generation. Then someone spoke up and said, word for word, "Turns out the real trick is to die and let the children happen quietly." And I woke up and tumbled out of bed and wrote that line down and fell back into bed and asleep because even my sleeping self was like, "Dang, that is a great line." I will use that one day, mark my words.

I've been finding lots and lots of good trees to climb down here. I'm not sure I'm particularly *supposed* to be climbing them, but nobody has actually stopped me. Though my apartment complex did suddenly hack off a lot of branches from many trees, including the best climbers. But I can still climb them, mwahaha. THOUGHT YOU COULD STOP ME, DID YOU?? Next up: I see some great trees outside of a nearby elementary school. Perhaps tomorrow...

I finished The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, and it was lovely, but wow, very bleak. I forget the incredible Norse capacity for woe and savagery. Do not mess with Gudrun. She'll kill her own kids and make you eat them just to spite you. This may be terrible of me, but I sort of loved the part where they threaten to cut out Hogni's heart, and they cut out the heart of some random serving dude instead and bring it to Gunnar, Hogni's brother. Gunnar laughs and says the heart quakes too much on the plate for it to be Hogni's: he was fearless. They then cut out Hogni's heart and bring it to Gunnar, and this time he recognizes it as his brother's, for it quaked little on the plate and little in his chest when he lived. I highly recommend reading the whole thing; tragic endings aside, I do wish I lived in that world sometimes. Perhaps I should be concerned by these violent tendencies...

Then, for something completely different, I read The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald. I should've years and years ago and just...didn't. It wasn't bad, though I think it was poorly titled. It should've been something like The Formidable Curdie. Wish I had a friend like that when I was 12, we would've had grand times saving the kingdom. Today I started The October Country by Bradbury, which is naturally wonderful because Bradbury simply cannot write something that's not fantastic.

And now some links!
It's an easy mistake to make (??).
Darn it, I missed Time Traveler Weekend.
Enaid on the Wing is a new blog started by cobaltmist. The premise: learn something new everyday. Go check it out and post what you learned today! Plus she gets crazy cool points for using the Welsh word for soul or spirit.

And that's all. :)

tolkien, linkage, randomosity, books

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