What's in my head
Jan. 28th, 2003 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanWell, some of it. When I was typing in the first sentence of THE KINGDOM OF CARBONEL, I was very much startled to read ahead and find this as the next bit: "Then she sat down in the green cave made by the unpruned branches which met over her head. The ground was covered with coarse grass, and it made a very comfortable secret place."
If I saw a critic take this passage and point out that the Secret Country books have a whole magical order centered around some Green Caves, and are in multiple layers about secret places, I would probably shake my head derisively. And a lot of such connections would probably be spurious, for me or any author. But this one in fact isn't.
Elise came over for tea today. She was 45 minutes late, which was just as well, because at the designated time I would have been up, medicated, and dress, but with dripping hair and a consciousness in a very similar state. David came upstairs just as she had got her coat off and I had put the kettle on, and they had a conversation and scheduled some sessions to photograph jewellery.
She brought me a necklace called "Questionable Information from Rabbits," which, after I admired it some time ago, she had put away until I forgot about it, and brought out as a late birthday present. It's on white metal with glass and some plastic beads in quite an array of colors, some very candy-like and some subtle. It went very well with my thistle-colored shirt. I told her that "Alice, Long After," which is all in blues and silvers with some pale purple, also went well with the shirt, and she told me that of course they are part of a series.
She had some class projects to show us, in copper, and was full of schemes to make many things.
We had Earl Grey, provided by me, and "Pamela's" ginger-almond cookies, provided by her. I consulted her about a very knotty problem I have been chewing over and agitating myself about, and she took what she called "the hardass" approach, on the grounds that that might be the one I had most trouble adopting, and it was useful for showing the range of options.
She had to rush off to an appointment; luckily we had looked at the bus schedule in plenty of time to determine that it would take longer than she had thought to get where she needed to be. I hope she was not too late.
I shovelled the front walks again after she was gone, and then I went upstairs and broke the toilet. Well, it happened to break when I flushed it. The plastic rod connecting the handle to the top of the stopper broke clean off. But that is a problem for another day. It can be flushed by lifting the stopper manually, at the cost of a little splashing.
I am still reading VAST and glaring at my book. I have a date with Eric. It's excellent to be getting to have mid-week dates. During the Semester From Hell that was very seldom possible.
I need to get back into the habit of walking daily. I got disgusted with the cold weather and quit, and once it warmed up, there was snow to shovel.
Pamela
If I saw a critic take this passage and point out that the Secret Country books have a whole magical order centered around some Green Caves, and are in multiple layers about secret places, I would probably shake my head derisively. And a lot of such connections would probably be spurious, for me or any author. But this one in fact isn't.
Elise came over for tea today. She was 45 minutes late, which was just as well, because at the designated time I would have been up, medicated, and dress, but with dripping hair and a consciousness in a very similar state. David came upstairs just as she had got her coat off and I had put the kettle on, and they had a conversation and scheduled some sessions to photograph jewellery.
She brought me a necklace called "Questionable Information from Rabbits," which, after I admired it some time ago, she had put away until I forgot about it, and brought out as a late birthday present. It's on white metal with glass and some plastic beads in quite an array of colors, some very candy-like and some subtle. It went very well with my thistle-colored shirt. I told her that "Alice, Long After," which is all in blues and silvers with some pale purple, also went well with the shirt, and she told me that of course they are part of a series.
She had some class projects to show us, in copper, and was full of schemes to make many things.
We had Earl Grey, provided by me, and "Pamela's" ginger-almond cookies, provided by her. I consulted her about a very knotty problem I have been chewing over and agitating myself about, and she took what she called "the hardass" approach, on the grounds that that might be the one I had most trouble adopting, and it was useful for showing the range of options.
She had to rush off to an appointment; luckily we had looked at the bus schedule in plenty of time to determine that it would take longer than she had thought to get where she needed to be. I hope she was not too late.
I shovelled the front walks again after she was gone, and then I went upstairs and broke the toilet. Well, it happened to break when I flushed it. The plastic rod connecting the handle to the top of the stopper broke clean off. But that is a problem for another day. It can be flushed by lifting the stopper manually, at the cost of a little splashing.
I am still reading VAST and glaring at my book. I have a date with Eric. It's excellent to be getting to have mid-week dates. During the Semester From Hell that was very seldom possible.
I need to get back into the habit of walking daily. I got disgusted with the cold weather and quit, and once it warmed up, there was snow to shovel.
Pamela
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-29 03:26 pm (UTC)I liked your first list. Made me (I am sure this is not a new observation) consider ULYSSES as an sf novel.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2003-02-06 09:03 pm (UTC)However, the significance of "secret place" here is that young Segnbora just discovered masturbation, and those lines are part of an extremely unpleasant flashback, so, well, not exactly the same sort of thing.
I read the first two Carbonel books to my children a while back, but haven't gotten the third yet.