All the things that split us up are soft-spoken
This morning when I woke was full of sunlight and spring blossom against the sky; now the view out my window is full of slate-blue steel-lighted clouds suggesting either imminent thunderstorm or sorcerous apocalypse, although the forecast tells me it's just going to be cold. The cherry blossoms are doing their impermanence thing and covering a block of our street with small fallen fragile pink petals. I didn't get a picture of them, which is all right.
Yesterday the buses were so terrible that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I just walked to Davis Square so that I could make my doctor's appointment and he could get to work, in between which we had bowls of different kinds of soup (boat noodle, khao soi) at Dakzen. Today I walked to the library to discover that my traditional route of access—a concrete stair up the hill behind the high school—has been blocked off with chain-link and plywood, which with all the GLX going around makes me instantly nervous. I would prefer not to have to feel protective about every single piece of twentieth-century architecture within walking distance of my house, especially since some of it is objectively meh. The library's on the National Register of Historic Places, at least. I am fairly confident Eleanor Farjeon's The Glass Slipper (1955) is a novelized play like The Silver Curlew (1953); it has the same feel of translated pantomime, although I liked the other, sillier, more numinous story better. Samuel Fuller's Brainquake (2014) was gonzo and now I really want to read The Dark Page (1944).
I have been sleeping very badly for weeks, but last night I zonked out at something halfway resembling a reasonable hour and dreamed of rafting down the Charles, which I don't know if anyone actually does. Then I dreamed of rafting down canals which are currently train tracks; awake I recognized one from the commuter rail, one from the Orange Line, both rather attractively framed between Venice-walls of brick. I hope that wasn't prophecy.
This first-century cameo of Minerva looks amazingly over everyone's nonsense.
Yesterday the buses were so terrible that
spatch and I just walked to Davis Square so that I could make my doctor's appointment and he could get to work, in between which we had bowls of different kinds of soup (boat noodle, khao soi) at Dakzen. Today I walked to the library to discover that my traditional route of access—a concrete stair up the hill behind the high school—has been blocked off with chain-link and plywood, which with all the GLX going around makes me instantly nervous. I would prefer not to have to feel protective about every single piece of twentieth-century architecture within walking distance of my house, especially since some of it is objectively meh. The library's on the National Register of Historic Places, at least. I am fairly confident Eleanor Farjeon's The Glass Slipper (1955) is a novelized play like The Silver Curlew (1953); it has the same feel of translated pantomime, although I liked the other, sillier, more numinous story better. Samuel Fuller's Brainquake (2014) was gonzo and now I really want to read The Dark Page (1944).I have been sleeping very badly for weeks, but last night I zonked out at something halfway resembling a reasonable hour and dreamed of rafting down the Charles, which I don't know if anyone actually does. Then I dreamed of rafting down canals which are currently train tracks; awake I recognized one from the commuter rail, one from the Orange Line, both rather attractively framed between Venice-walls of brick. I hope that wasn't prophecy.
This first-century cameo of Minerva looks amazingly over everyone's nonsense.
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I love Minerva's expression.
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I can recommend this one, at least. It would have made an absolutely nuts movie. I should find the rest.
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It makes me so happy.
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raft
Fun fact about searching for raft for rent in Boston (at least on duckduckgo, my default) - what comes up is the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) program, which I am glad to know exists.
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Thank you! Apparently Minerva doesn't disapprove of me sleeping. I appreciate it.
Re: raft
I was wondering less whether it was healthy than whether it was done at all, but since it doesn't sound like it's illegal, I shall consider this dream vaguely aspirational. Awesome.
what comes up is the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) program, which I am glad to know exists.
That is good to know!
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I am glad you got sleep and soup and I do hope you don't really need to worry about every 20th-century building in your immediate radius. When I read about the various demolitions I keep thinking of the beginning of The Bird's Nest. It is disturbing to one's psyche to have this kind of thing going on.
P.
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She can hold that expression for all of us!
I am glad you got sleep and soup and I do hope you don't really need to worry about every 20th-century building in your immediate radius.
Thank you. I hope so, too. The whole project makes me uneasy.
When I read about the various demolitions I keep thinking of the beginning of The Bird's Nest. It is disturbing to one's psyche to have this kind of thing going on.
I believe that, although I haven't read the novel. Shirley Jackson?
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P.
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Re: rafting on the Charles, they used to have races with handmade rafts? Do they still?
The cherry blossoms are doing their impermanence thing --yes they are... so beautiful.
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It does! I could see her over the door of a movie palace, except that might suggest that nothing they were showing was any good.
Re: rafting on the Charles, they used to have races with handmade rafts? Do they still?
They did? Oh, my God, they did! That's wonderful.
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ETA: And yes, having that cameo on a theater door would only work if the theater was called something like "Second-rate shows"
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I had no idea that was a thing! It does have a slight daredevil feel to it. What I grew up knowing about the Charles was fantastic levels of pollution and that my father who had been dumped into the equally heavy-metal-laden Schuylkill while teaching his younger brother to sail in the '70's did not want to repeat the experiment with me and the Charles in the '80's.
(She also made her own fabulous costumes--I remember a handmade mermaid's tail.)
I respect that very much.
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I have! My mother had a copy, so I grew up on it.
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It's stunning! The sequel Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field (1937) is not as strange or as beautiful to me, but some of the inset stories are very fine—"Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep" is frequently and deservedly reprinted.