"Time is like a river..."
Currently Reading: The Painted Girls by Carol Marie Buchanan
Currently Watching: Fringe: Season 5 <---- We'll finish it yet! So good, but looonng.
My long time cohorts will immediately recognize my entry title as part of a quote from Gargoyles that continues thus, "...correcting its course against any change." Last week I finished my marathon read of Stephen King's absolutely fantastic 11/22/63 and spent much of my time meandering through 1963 thinking that very quote over and over again as it is the book's most forefront theme. Mostly I'm just here to add my voice to the multitudes highly recommending the book. It is easily one of the best books I've read in recent years and the first one since A Song of Fire and Ice and Ready Player One that so completely captured my imagination that sometimes putting it down was absolutely out of the question. I blew off a good week's worth of work and a day off to just read like a mad woman. Sometimes 100 pages or more in a sitting. Apparently other people have found themselves going so far as to call out of work in order to finish the thing because they had to know how it ended. Man, I love a book like that... one that has you so completely in its thrall that reality seems quite distant and unimportant. I've always been an admirer of King's based on his essays, but due to being a giant pussy, this is the first real work by him I've read. As such, I didn't even know that Derry, Maine and its residents were really a cameo from It until after the fact. I could tell there was something important there, but I didn't know what. Now I really want to read the story that was referenced between the lines of 11/22/63, so I guess I'll have to put on my big girl panties and see if I can face It without giving myself sleepless nights!
Have you ever heard a song that reminds you so much of a story or character that you hold dear that you think, surely, that character must have played some part in inspiring the artist - even in cases where that seems really unlikely. Case in point is the wonderful song Hopeless Wanderer from Mumford & Song's new album, Babel. Every time I hear it, it reminds me so much of the best parts of Rurouni Kenshin that often as not I end up with a dopey smile on my face while I'm listening:
"You brought me out from the cold
Now, how I long, how I long to grow old...
...And hold me fast, hold me fast
'Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer
I will learn, I will learn to love the skies I'm under
The skies I'm under"
Likewise, every time I hear Vanessa Carleton's Ordinary Day I can't imagine how it wasn't inspired by Doctor Who - except that it predates Nu Who by three years and, like myself, she's too young to be that attached to the old one. But with lyrics like:
"And he said take my hand,
Live while you can
Don't you see your dreams lie
right in the palm of your hand
In the palm of your hand.
Please come with me,
See what I see.
Touch the stars, for time will not flee.
Time will not flee.
Can you see?
I mean, seriously! That's like everything that makes me love the show, even at it's worst, encapsulated into a few lines of verse. Inevitably these are the songs that quickly make their way to the very top of my quite long Favorite Things playlist because they sometimes represent the things I love better than the music actually written for those things.
/rambling
On a more grounded note, our planning for our trip to The British Isles and Ireland is coming along beautifully. I plan on posting a tentative itinerary here once I've written it to get thoughts and feedback from people whose opinions I value most highly. At the moment, it looks like the bulk of our time is going to be spent in and around Inverness and the Scottish Highlands and then In and Around London with a weekend set aside for the Lake District. It's starting to feel more and more real to me, but I still think the moment when I find myself standing on the lawn of Downton Abbey (Highclere Castle) itself is going to be incredibly surreal. Not to mention countless other places that have been the backdrop or inspiration for countless tales from my childhood onward.
Now, if only I could find my Passport. I have torn apart my house, my attic and my parent's house trying to find the damn thing. I've found every small detail and precious thing from Kindergarten to present day... things I haven't seen in decades. All of the pieces of memorabilia from my last trip to Europe. Quite literally my whole life except for the one thing I'm looking for. It is nowhere. Which means at some point, I, like an idiot, set is aside "for safekeeping" in such an unusual place that I may never see it again. Which is too bad, because I really would have liked to have just renewed it and gotten more stamps added to my collection from my first trip abroad 12 years ago. It may yet turn up, but I would be surprised. Ah well, there's always funny little things like that, aren't there?
"And as he asked if I would come along I started to realize that everyday he finds just what he's looking for, like a shooting star, he shines."
-Vanessa Carlton (Ordinary Day)
Currently Watching: Fringe: Season 5 <---- We'll finish it yet! So good, but looonng.
My long time cohorts will immediately recognize my entry title as part of a quote from Gargoyles that continues thus, "...correcting its course against any change." Last week I finished my marathon read of Stephen King's absolutely fantastic 11/22/63 and spent much of my time meandering through 1963 thinking that very quote over and over again as it is the book's most forefront theme. Mostly I'm just here to add my voice to the multitudes highly recommending the book. It is easily one of the best books I've read in recent years and the first one since A Song of Fire and Ice and Ready Player One that so completely captured my imagination that sometimes putting it down was absolutely out of the question. I blew off a good week's worth of work and a day off to just read like a mad woman. Sometimes 100 pages or more in a sitting. Apparently other people have found themselves going so far as to call out of work in order to finish the thing because they had to know how it ended. Man, I love a book like that... one that has you so completely in its thrall that reality seems quite distant and unimportant. I've always been an admirer of King's based on his essays, but due to being a giant pussy, this is the first real work by him I've read. As such, I didn't even know that Derry, Maine and its residents were really a cameo from It until after the fact. I could tell there was something important there, but I didn't know what. Now I really want to read the story that was referenced between the lines of 11/22/63, so I guess I'll have to put on my big girl panties and see if I can face It without giving myself sleepless nights!
Have you ever heard a song that reminds you so much of a story or character that you hold dear that you think, surely, that character must have played some part in inspiring the artist - even in cases where that seems really unlikely. Case in point is the wonderful song Hopeless Wanderer from Mumford & Song's new album, Babel. Every time I hear it, it reminds me so much of the best parts of Rurouni Kenshin that often as not I end up with a dopey smile on my face while I'm listening:
"You brought me out from the cold
Now, how I long, how I long to grow old...
...And hold me fast, hold me fast
'Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer
I will learn, I will learn to love the skies I'm under
The skies I'm under"
Likewise, every time I hear Vanessa Carleton's Ordinary Day I can't imagine how it wasn't inspired by Doctor Who - except that it predates Nu Who by three years and, like myself, she's too young to be that attached to the old one. But with lyrics like:
"And he said take my hand,
Live while you can
Don't you see your dreams lie
right in the palm of your hand
In the palm of your hand.
Please come with me,
See what I see.
Touch the stars, for time will not flee.
Time will not flee.
Can you see?
I mean, seriously! That's like everything that makes me love the show, even at it's worst, encapsulated into a few lines of verse. Inevitably these are the songs that quickly make their way to the very top of my quite long Favorite Things playlist because they sometimes represent the things I love better than the music actually written for those things.
/rambling
On a more grounded note, our planning for our trip to The British Isles and Ireland is coming along beautifully. I plan on posting a tentative itinerary here once I've written it to get thoughts and feedback from people whose opinions I value most highly. At the moment, it looks like the bulk of our time is going to be spent in and around Inverness and the Scottish Highlands and then In and Around London with a weekend set aside for the Lake District. It's starting to feel more and more real to me, but I still think the moment when I find myself standing on the lawn of Downton Abbey (Highclere Castle) itself is going to be incredibly surreal. Not to mention countless other places that have been the backdrop or inspiration for countless tales from my childhood onward.
Now, if only I could find my Passport. I have torn apart my house, my attic and my parent's house trying to find the damn thing. I've found every small detail and precious thing from Kindergarten to present day... things I haven't seen in decades. All of the pieces of memorabilia from my last trip to Europe. Quite literally my whole life except for the one thing I'm looking for. It is nowhere. Which means at some point, I, like an idiot, set is aside "for safekeeping" in such an unusual place that I may never see it again. Which is too bad, because I really would have liked to have just renewed it and gotten more stamps added to my collection from my first trip abroad 12 years ago. It may yet turn up, but I would be surprised. Ah well, there's always funny little things like that, aren't there?
"And as he asked if I would come along I started to realize that everyday he finds just what he's looking for, like a shooting star, he shines."
-Vanessa Carlton (Ordinary Day)