I'm short on words today because I've got an hour before a three-day scramble that's going to take in four different towns ranging 30 minutes to nearly three hours from home. And I want to spend some time working on my book. I want to, actually want to, which is amazing. Of course, I've been trying to get everything else done first, but at least I cleaned house to techno music. That makes it go faster. Even while taking a little time to dance.
Right, where was I? Short on words. But here, pictures:
Stars of Bethlehem... one of my favorite blooms of the year
Snowball bush
Golden chain... Mom, this is what that baby bush I gave you
will grow up to be someday, if I didn't kill it in the transplanting
Rhododendron.
This bush puts its whole heart into flowering.
I love it.
She had me at 'Dante'. I'm already trying to learn it on the piano.
Also proven by Christie's playlist: Seth was right; I do like Maire/Moya Brennan. How could I not like Enya's sister? Music from her coming after I have time to listen around to more of her repertoire on YouTube and pick a favorite.
* * *
I've finally got my coffee and about thirty minutes. That ought to be enough to get a couple of paragraphs down.
It finally happened: I didn't finish a book in time to review it on Wednesday. Granted, I read half of two books, but that's not particularly helpful here.
If you're desperate for a review, try Giffy Reviews. This one is my favorite—I've heard that about The House of Leaves, though I've never read it. Also, there's a cat. But there's plenty of awesome to be had in other entries as well.
Peace offering: a cat picture blooper. Is it just cat eyes in the flash, or is Maia wearing Spectrespecs? You decide.
Hail, Muggles and wizards! We're hanging out in chapters 2-4 of Sorcerer's Stone this week, as Christie's post is yet to come. We can't blame her for the delay; she's been off among flutterby bushes and floating champagne bottles, wearing her best dress robes and witnessing a supreme example of that which is stronger than magic.
Rowling does a lovely thing with Harry in allowing him to forget that fear. Because while it’s true that “fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself” it’s also true that speaking the name of another gives, in a vague and magical sense, a hint of power over him. We do not speak the name of God, but when we cast out demons, we do so by name. I like the subtle reminder here, that Harry is unafraid of Voldemort’s name because he has no need to fear. He rests in the power he has only begun to discover.
I should also add that Masha has come up with the first butterbeer recipe for us to try, the concoction of which will require me to make a trip to the grocery store, which is why you don't have pictures of my own attempt in this post. It hasn't happened yet. Wait till next week. :D
Despite his dearth of lines,
there's an image of him on the internet.
By Annezca.
Here's the thing: The single most dangerous thing I've ever seen come out of Potter fandom, including my own, is a tendency to identify ourselves with the heroes and our principles with theirs to the point of making dissenters into villains and therefore enemies. Black-and-white moral tales carry this danger alongside the good they offer, and even a tale like this one, designed to encourage love and a righting of injustices, can turn into a justification for a complete lack of mercy and empathy toward anyone who can be perceived as an enemy.
The thing is: regardless of whether they're Republican or Democrat (which is where American Potter fans draw the lines surprisingly often), no one with any innate compassion is going to naturally feel much kinship with the Dursleys (or the Malfoys, or the Death Eaters, or Voldemort, or or or...) This is the way a moralistic tale works. We sympathize with the good guys, and despise the bad guys, and find ourselves championing whatever virtue the author wants us to approve. What we tend to forget is that we all do so in the context of our own pre-formed opinions and priorities.
But while it might be fun to let myself go off on a long-suppressed rant* over the mean-spirited nonsense contained in the idea that the American Republican is the epitome of the Dark Side (Star Wars reference? Not entirely; Harry himself uses that term at least once), it seems my time is better spent considering what ultimately makes characters like the Dursleys bad, and whether that ought to teach us anything about ourselves. I'm sure we'll all agree, anyway, that our own minds could use a good Scourgifying from time to time. Mine does. Disclaimer: never use a Vanishing spell to clean out your own mind.
Anyway, the Dursleys (didn't know I could talk about them for three weeks running, did you?):
You're too quick to judge, Too quick to hate. Too quick to speculate. You're too blind to see, That truth sets you free. But then again, You don't know jack about magic or me.**
I don't like the Dursleys—no one ever does, as far as I know. They're child abusers for one thing, and fatally unimaginative to boot. It horrifies me to think that I might have anything in common with them besides the mere situational fact of being middle class (although not high enough in the middle class tier to afford the outlay of presents Dudley received for his eleventh birthday... sheesh). It's certainly possible to argue that Rowling mocks middle-class values through them; if she did, she only jumped on the popular political bandwagon that suggests a correlation between financial status and virtue or lack thereof, with opinions on what financial status correlates to which virtue depending on whether one leans capitalist or socialist, and on one's own set of background difficulties and personal resentments.
But the Dursleys' problems, in the end, rely on internal issues rather than external ones.
This is not the face of a happy Muggle.
Art by Tr1nks1e.
Vernon's capital sin is pride manifested as the need to control. In that one attribute, he is more like Voldemort than—as we'll later see—even some of Voldemort's head Death Eaters, though far be it from me to suggest he's remotely similar in level. He is happiest when his daily life is running hitch-free under his supervision, and when he's handed the unmanageable problem of an adoptive son with uncontrollable powers, he makes a go of pretending the "problem" doesn't exist.
Petunia's moral weakness is envy:
"How could you not be [a wizard], my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that—that school—and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was—a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!"
She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years.
It would be spoilerific to say too much more, and we can't have that! But the prim little border-garden flower has, we see, never gotten over the fact that she wasn't the tall, white, eye-catching Lily—she's never submitted to the call of humility, never accepted her own status in life. Her failure to do so has enslaved her to the need to prove herself superior to others, which is presumably why she likes spying on neighbors so much.
I don't spy on my neighbors. I promise! Nor do I make my nephews sleep in closets. But if any of you readers can look at Vernon and Petunia and not see at least hints of their sins in yourself—not see the instances when you've made another person's difficulties all about you, the times when you've tried too hard to be attractive or attention-grabbing or likable, the people you've caught yourself judging for their not being as successful as you in some way or other, the times when you've made a point of getting out of an uncomfortable situation even though the discomfort-maker had at least the claim of Christ*** upon you—you're better souls than I.
Oh, and in the spirit of Kat's post... I sincerely hope I never find myself identifying with Bellatrix Lestrange. Because her taste in magic and men... ew. And, she's crazy. But mostly, ew.
* Yes, there's a long-suppressed rant, and I'm not even much of a Republican. I'm disenfranchised. But that bumper sticker and the ideas that go along with it are still mean-spirited nonsense. And that's the truth, so there. Pthththbbth. ** I LOVE that Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls disc, and may link every track by the time this book club ends. Christian Caldeira, you rock. *** As in, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
Some passing angel broke a half-dead sprig of purple lilac off some neighbor's bush two nights ago and threw it in our yard. Lou found the sprig and brought it in, and now our whole living room smells like it.
Goal for this year: get a purple lilac bush. I love our white ones, but the scent is just not the same.
You're falling behind. You're lazy. Why are you so lazy? Stop making excuses. Be professional! Be professional!
I don't have an industrial mind. Sometimes, it weeps for days at a time. That isn't very professional. Some days, it wants to sink to the bottom of the sea. Some days, it dissociates, like the key that's supposed to match up to the keyhole of reality just doesn't fit. Some days, I don't have the right key.
At the moment, I don't even feel like reading, and can't keep my mind on it, which is pretty weird for me. I've been finishing books on Wednesday afternoon and reviewing them Wednesday night.
As for writing, I'm having to dig and scrape through gravel for every word of my favorite section of my own beloved novel. The blinking cursor in a Word document sometimes puts me to the point of tears, though it never lets me actually get there. When I read back over the half-a-book I've gotten polished in the last few months, the gravel-dug feeling disappears and the story delights me—truly delights me: it makes me laugh, catches my attention, pulls all my heartstrings. But every step forward is so blind, so grating, so... just damn hard.
The blue pimpernels and dark red verbena
were some of my favorites last year.
I was so excited to see them at the grocery this week.
I'm not sure what to do with the end of Hilary's post. I'm not sure it is okay that nailing a Chopin prelude and getting blue pimpernels in the garden interest me more than my writing work right now.
It's just hard to know what to do about that. My best instincts, I think, tell me spend some quiet time with sunshine and flowers, love on my piano and guitar and choir, and let myself be taunted daily by the cursor in hopes of getting at least a few words down.
Of course, the standard industrial comfort likes to come around and haunt me: "If you're not enjoying writing it, nobody will enjoy reading it." Which I once believed, but which now makes me want to throw this month's six-hundred-page book club choice at whoever said that to me first. O aphoristic would-be comforter, that is not how things work. But that's another blog post.
* * *
Some of the sunshine and flowers, just for the heck of it:
...okay, these are pumpkin seedlings. I'm just so happy that they're alive.
You can do it, second set of baby pumpkins!
* * *
This week in life with our cat:
Maia: "Hey, it's fun walking on people who are lying under blankets. It's like the uneven floor of the jungle."
Me: "...mmmph... Maia, what time is it? Four-thirty? Six-thirty? It is not morning yet. Get off me."
Maia: "Ooh, make a cave. I want to hide out like a wild cave lion."
Me: "I'm not rolling over on my back and putting up my knees so you can crouch under the blankets and stare at me with glowy cat eyes and pounce on my hand if I happen to scratch my ankle. Go throw socks around the living room or something. Let us sleep."
Maia: "I'll bat your things off your bedside table."
Me: "Do. Not. Do. That. Now scram!!"
...later...
Maia: "MEOW."
Me: "I've got my hands covered in makeup, and the curling iron's hot on the counter. Don't jump up here. What now?"
Maia: "MEOW."
Me: "I don't understand what you want."
Maia: "If you were a good cat person, you'd just know. MEOW."
Me: "MEOW."
Also, there's zefrank's hilarious Sad Cat Diary. Maia could've written two-thirds of that herself.
* * *
Music of the week: The good thing about knowing you tend depressive is that you can actually be aware of the danger when you're skirting the abyss on a particularly unstable stretch of trail. You can see the demon creeping up on you. And sometimes, after a bad day or week, you can put on some fighting music, make a flying leap for a higher path, and shake the devil off. At least, for long enough to catch your breath.
Masha and Christie, thanks for introducing me to Florence and the Machine. This is now one of my favorite songs. (Advisory: admittedly dark video.)
* * *
I'm going to clean house and try and get some sun. And maybe blow off the last five hundred fifty pages of book club book for today and read The Last Unicorn instead. And make fresh bread, and hopefully re-string my guitar, and memorize the communion antiphon so I don't have to rely on shaking fingers to hold the music when I have to intone it in front of God and everybody on Sunday. And maybe I'll spend a little time digging for words.
They lingered, still and silent, Scarlet straining to listen for what had Wolf on edge. Slowly reaching behind her, she pulled the gun from her waistband. The click as she released the safety echoed off the trees.
Off in the woods, a wolf howled. The lonely cry sent a shiver down Scarlet's spine.
Wolf didn't seem surprised.
Then, behind them, another howl, this one farther away. Then another to the north.
Silence crept around them as the howls faded longingly into the air.
"Friends of yours?" Scarlet asked.
Clarity returned to Wolf's expression and he glanced at her, then down at the gun. It struck her as odd that he could be startled by it, when the howls had garnered no reaction at all.
"They won't bother us," he said finally, turning and heading down the tracks.
Author: Marissa Meyer
From Goodreads: The fates of Cinder and Scarlet collide as a Lunar threat spreads across the Earth...
Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She's trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she'll be the Commonwealth's most wanted fugitive.
Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.
Notes: Having spent comparatively little time with manga and anime, neither came to mind while I read Cinder. Knowing that Meyer credits the genres—particularly the crossover story Sailor Moon—as influences, however, made Scarlet an easier read and gave me a better understanding of the series as a whole. The juxtaposition of fairy tale and science fiction is too splendid to cause me any difficulties, but odd little details ranging from the erratic naming patterns to the sudden, shocking bursts of violence hadn't made sense to me outside the anime genre.
Inside, they fit right in. I haven't read Sailor Moon, but my hours with the Elric brothers (Fullmetal Alchemist) set me up well enough for accepting out-of-place names (on account of which, I assume I don't have to pronounce 'Scarlet' as 'Scar-leh', à la français). Likewise, the anime prepared me for the fact that teenage Scarlet is as casual about picking up a gun and shooting a human being as teenage Cinder is, despite neither of them apparently having had previous experience.
I can't say just how typical this is for anime, but Fullmetal Alchemist contained a lot of gut-kicking horror, and Scarlet had its moments as well. Scarlet is significantly darker than Cinder, in much the way that its base fairy tale—Little Red Riding Hood—is darker than Cinderella (except for maybe versions like the Grimms', where the stepsisters cut off parts of their own feet to get into the slipper). Marissa Meyer's werewolves are more Fenrir Greyback than Jacob Black: not simply frightening, but flat-out abhorrent.
That said, her werewolves, while not unique as a sci-fi human/monster trope, were kind of a neat spin on the much-done teenage werewolf meme. This is true both in terms of monster creation and monster romance. The attempts at Wolf's redemption also reminded me of one of the small handful of things I loved about Mockingjay, without coming off as a copycat treatment.
As fairy tale, the story is well handled; Cinder's character arc continues while her place in the traditional tale is on pause, and the take on Red Riding Hood was fascinating and sometimes a little bit lovely around the grotesque and horrible. I found myself reminded rather forcibly of Phantom of the Opera a few times, too.
The book isn't faultless. Cinder and Scarlet are both basically angry, independent, work-focused, gun-toting sixteen-year-old girls, with not much to differentiate them outside the obvious physical variances—which is odd, because Wolf and Kai manage to be perfectly well differentiated despite certain strong similarities. Meyer's France is no more culturally interesting than her New Beijing, and her prose is often sketchy. I can overlook a lot for the sake of good characters, however, and if I could barely tell Cinder and Scarlet apart, at least they didn't bore me. And I'd be remiss if I didn't praise Iko and Thorne, who both turned out to be quite entertaining.
Considering that I couldn't wait two weeks to read the sequel to Cinder, I suspect it's going to be a long year waiting for the sequel to Scarlet.
Even wizards must occasionally deal with droll, nitty gritty business details, such as the question of writing decent sentences, and Christie, in her introductory post, made a point that made me shoot jubilant sparks at the ceiling out of sheer exuberance and shout, "YES, thank you":
As someone trained in literature and an amateur writer myself, I noticed things like simple diction, trite turns of phrase, and tendency to rely on adverbs. But I've never been a fan of the high-brow literary school of critics—why can't plain but clear writing, as much as beauteous writing, be an effective stylistic choice?—and when I try to imagine HP written in a florid post-modern voice, it loses an essential quality I can't quite put my finger on.
This writer thinks it highly unlikely that famous Harry Potter (I should really stop quoting Malfoy) would have been nearly so famous if he had been written by a stylist of literary aspirations, particularly one aiming at hooking adult readers along with the youngsters. There's nothing wrong with simple writing; it's a good way to reach young audiences, and it's the only way to reach a broad audience.
Christie also had great things to say about Dumbledore and Muggles and Christmas—heartily recommended. Meanwhile, Masha, having been cheated (by me) out of the chance to be the first to argue with Michael O'Brien (if calling him "a naughty dragon-hating Muggle" counts as arguing), set her sights on John Granger instead:
None of us have the wish or temperament to argue against [magic or dragons]; but that doesn’t mean I won’t be bringing up the problematic aspects of Harry’s magic (there are plenty), and I think a good long discussion of this whole ‘incantational vs. Invocational’ [Granger's] argument has to happen at some point as well, which will be fascinating! Well be talking about the character of the characters, about Rowling's worldview, about the role of men as fathers in the books... Do [the books] inspire readers to see the world in rich possibilities or do they tie readers down to a secular-relativistic worldview in which evil is decidedly banal and suburban and good is its very near twin??
...as well as reminding us that "even if all the books bother you, it’s ok to be delighted by sections, just as it’s ok to be appalled by some things, even if you love the series overall. No author gets it all right!" I wholeheartedly concur.
And now, onto this coming week!
* * *
Read: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, chapters 2-4
Photo from Shelagh's page, as linked above.
Looks good, Shelagh!
Recipe:(Shelagh's) Knickerbocker Glory. Magic or Muggle, you'll need a whole mouthful of sweet teeth to down this tall-glass concoction, made with fruit, ice cream, fruit syrup, whipped cream, wafers, glazed cherries, and in some variations, even jelly. I'm not sure I could handle jelly, myself... even strawberry ice cream is a bit much for me... but it definitely looks like an exciting parfait.
I'm not sure I'd want to eat after Dudley, though. Cooties!
Potential Discussion Points (but by no means all the potential):
1. Harry has his first communication with a snake in Chapter Two: The Vanishing Glass. From henceforth, snake imagery in the series will—as I recall—be a very traditional, Book-of-Genesis kind of thing. Here, however, a lonely ten-year-old shares a friendly moment with another caged, controlled creature, and manages to unwittingly offer the boa constrictor a bit of helpful magic.
One of the recurring motifs in the books, and here I do owe this point to Prof. Granger, is the idea of doppelgangers—twins, mirror images, shades; pairs set up for striking similarity and/or contrast. They pop up everywhere, and Dudley is arguably Harry's first (of many), but this bored snake is a very early, very striking one. Harry sets the snake free from its confinement and mistreatment much as Hagrid sets Harry free from his. And the connection between Harry and the boa, innocent in itself, foreshadows a darker doppelganger, some sinister facts that aren't quite revealed until the last two books.
2. Voldemort. If I type 'flight of death' into Google Translate and get it turned into French*, the result is vol de la mort. Apropos, no? Of course, we're already being introduced to the fact that the Wizarding World is afraid even to speak that name. I can sympathize. I'm not fond of saying 'Satan' either—one doesn't want to draw diabolic attention, after all. But "You-Know-Who" and "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" are admittedly kind of awkward and evasive, and when great big men like Hagrid jerk and wriggle at the very sound of the syllables, things have gone a bit far.
3. Both Petunia and Vernon Dursley give short, spiteful little rants upon being confronted by Hagrid, to much the same effect, if in their own voices. You're a freak from a family of weirdos, Harry, and we swore we'd stamp out all that dangerous nonsense. It's interesting to see the subtle differences between how Petunia handles things—or would handle them, if she were in charge—and how Vernon does, however. Petunia grew up with a witch; she knows when not to run. All Vernon knows is control, and he goes dangerously near crazy when he begins losing grip on his own idealized normalcy.
4. "Yeh've got your mom's eyes." It's the first time Harry hears these words. And since we're going cautious with spoilers, all I'll say for now is that it won't be the last.
I love The Keeper of the Keys—it's a favorite chapter of mine; with Hagrid, his pockets full of sausages and dormice, and with Harry's unexpected first experience of having someone call him by his name with affection—
"An' here's Harry!" said the giant.
Harry looked up into the fierce, wild, shadowy face and saw that the beetle eyes were crinkled in a smile.
—it's the reader's earliest introduction to the Wizarding World through the protagonist's eyes. And Hagrid is such a big lovable cornball fellow, with magic clinging to him like the raindrops on his coat even though he's not technically supposed to do any... I don't care what you call the prose. This chapter is just delightful.
* * *
About spoiler warnings: Please include them in discussion posts if you're about to cover a later plot development, for the sake of Christie and others who haven't read the series from the front cover of SS to the back cover of DH yet.
Ready to discuss? Hop in!
* The spell for translating vernacular to French should be, I think, "Pretatio Franci!" Since I had to use Google Translate to get the Latin instead of actually consulting my resident Latinist(he's at work), however, use carefully or you might suddenly find yourself unable to speak anything but French. Or something equally unhelpful. I don't think you'll find yourself on the floor with a buffalo on your chest, but you never know.
It's hard not to be in a good mood today. The forecast has seventies in it for over the weekend, and the apple tree is in bloom!
as are the bluebells... and the pink bells, and the white bells:
and the Solomon's seal:
and the white lilac and the red rhododendron:
and the columbine:
and the roses are getting close:
and the sumac, after months of being an unassuming fuzzy stick, is leafing out. I love this baby tree.
Also, I love all the garden's little secrets. I've been having fun putting some of them in myself. Under the garden hoops live the tomatoes:
(and behind the garden hoops lives a ridiculously large brush pile)
and behind the rosemary, the sweet peas are beginning to climb their little trellises:
All the sunshine has me feeling positively cheery. If, as suggested, it gets to seventy-eight on Sunday—that's shorts weather, or wear-my-sundress-all-day weather. It's gin-and-tonic, read-out-on-a-blanket-in-the-sun, hook-up-the-hose-for-the-first-time-this-year-and-water-the-gardens weather. My kind of weather.
Maybe I'll take Harry Potter out on a blanket and get some reading in.
* * *
Maia in "There's something interesting on the floor, and I think I'm going to kill it" mode:
From here, it looks like a bit of already-dead koosh ball,
left over from nieces' visit.
