Dirt swallows dreams, but you know worse things happen at sea
Vacation. I am having a vacation. I don't think about national holidays most of the time, but I went out of town for Memorial Day Weekend and am accidentally having a vacation.
Despite the eight hours' sleep, I determined that I did not really have the stamina for further running around today if I wanted to be functional for the rest of the weekend, so I sat quietly in the sunlight in the window-walled crafting nook that used to be a balcony—it has a work table and also a quilted leather ottoman which makes a great window seat—with several mugs of hot water and a box of seaweed snacks and read some of the books lying around the Selkie-Rami apartment—Greer Gilman's Cloud & Ashes (2009), Joanne Harris' Chocolat (1999), and Ursula K. Le Guin's Very Far Away from Anywhere Else (1976). The first two were re-reads, although I don't think I had read Chocolat since it came out; I remember stocking it at Waldenbooks. I remembered strange pieces of it, mostly the cards of the Tarot and a twisting pang of sympathy for the antagonist; I am wondering whether the author felt the same thing, since I see that of the two (three?) sequels revisiting Vianne Rocher and her daughters, the second name-checks her old adversary in the title. The Le Guin might have been the last novel left of hers that I had never read. I think it is just as well that I didn't read it when I was seventeen; it would have hit far too close to home. Now it chimes for me with some of the Orsinian Tales (1976), specifically with "Brothers and Sisters." I'd love to know if they were written around the same time. They feel like they're working out some of the same questions. Then again, Le Guin's fiction was always working out the question: how to be human. I stood there and did the human act as well as possible.
In the afternoon my godchild came home and flopped down on the couch and asked me a lot of questions and didn't answer much about their day at school. I am astonished by how much they seem to like me. They said yesterday that they wanted me to be part of their family; when reminded that I am part of their family, they clarified that they meant the family that lives with them, like Mommy and Mama. They asked so many questions about my place in the guardianship hierarchy—who gets charge of them if their parents get hit by a pig truck—that the conversation began to resemble Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). They want to come stay in Boston with me and![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch. They want their whole family to move to Boston. They want me and my partners to move to live with them. They like the fact that even though I have less than a foot of height on them (they are such a tall nine-year-old), I can pick them up and tote them around like a particularly lanky, ice-hockey-playing cat and they keep springing into my arms for it; they list approvingly the ways in which we are similar, starting with nocturnality. They snuggled under my corduroy coat and wanted me to share a bunk bed with them and hung on my arm and said possessively, "Mine." I almost don't know what to do with it. I happen to love them fiercely, but I didn't expect it to be reciprocated. The rest of this paragraph deleted for Tiny Wittgenstein. I cannot think it is true that if they saw me more often, I would stop being loveable to them. We made brownies from a mix in the evening.
I will be at morning services tomorrow for the first time in more than a decade. I should see about sleep.
Despite the eight hours' sleep, I determined that I did not really have the stamina for further running around today if I wanted to be functional for the rest of the weekend, so I sat quietly in the sunlight in the window-walled crafting nook that used to be a balcony—it has a work table and also a quilted leather ottoman which makes a great window seat—with several mugs of hot water and a box of seaweed snacks and read some of the books lying around the Selkie-Rami apartment—Greer Gilman's Cloud & Ashes (2009), Joanne Harris' Chocolat (1999), and Ursula K. Le Guin's Very Far Away from Anywhere Else (1976). The first two were re-reads, although I don't think I had read Chocolat since it came out; I remember stocking it at Waldenbooks. I remembered strange pieces of it, mostly the cards of the Tarot and a twisting pang of sympathy for the antagonist; I am wondering whether the author felt the same thing, since I see that of the two (three?) sequels revisiting Vianne Rocher and her daughters, the second name-checks her old adversary in the title. The Le Guin might have been the last novel left of hers that I had never read. I think it is just as well that I didn't read it when I was seventeen; it would have hit far too close to home. Now it chimes for me with some of the Orsinian Tales (1976), specifically with "Brothers and Sisters." I'd love to know if they were written around the same time. They feel like they're working out some of the same questions. Then again, Le Guin's fiction was always working out the question: how to be human. I stood there and did the human act as well as possible.
In the afternoon my godchild came home and flopped down on the couch and asked me a lot of questions and didn't answer much about their day at school. I am astonished by how much they seem to like me. They said yesterday that they wanted me to be part of their family; when reminded that I am part of their family, they clarified that they meant the family that lives with them, like Mommy and Mama. They asked so many questions about my place in the guardianship hierarchy—who gets charge of them if their parents get hit by a pig truck—that the conversation began to resemble Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). They want to come stay in Boston with me and
spatch. They want their whole family to move to Boston. They want me and my partners to move to live with them. They like the fact that even though I have less than a foot of height on them (they are such a tall nine-year-old), I can pick them up and tote them around like a particularly lanky, ice-hockey-playing cat and they keep springing into my arms for it; they list approvingly the ways in which we are similar, starting with nocturnality. They snuggled under my corduroy coat and wanted me to share a bunk bed with them and hung on my arm and said possessively, "Mine." I almost don't know what to do with it. I happen to love them fiercely, but I didn't expect it to be reciprocated. The rest of this paragraph deleted for Tiny Wittgenstein. I cannot think it is true that if they saw me more often, I would stop being loveable to them. We made brownies from a mix in the evening.I will be at morning services tomorrow for the first time in more than a decade. I should see about sleep.
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This seems to be how it is with children sometimes. It's quite a gift. I'm so glad for you.
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It feels like a gift. It makes me happy and I can't depend on it, but I never want to let them down. I have told them I am theirs, always. Thank you.
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I really liked it.
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Nine
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Thank you! Definitely "Imaginary Countries" over "A Week in the Country"; I will not accept anyone getting shot by the police.
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Nine
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It's been forever since I read any Joanne Harris but I have been thinking about going back and reading some of the early stuff, lately.
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It's being a really nice trip!
It's been forever since I read any Joanne Harris but I have been thinking about going back and reading some of the early stuff, lately.
What else of hers do you like? I read Blackberry Wine (2000) and Five Quarters of the Orange (2001), but remember almost nothing about them. (I am going to pursue the Chocolat sequels when I get home.)
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I feel very lucky. They are important to me.
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I deleted it!
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Thank you!
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I'm glad to know it works for the age it was written for!
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Thank you! I hope so, too.
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Thank you.
(They are asleep in the top bunk as we speak.)
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I'm glad to know that!
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Yay for the godchild thing! That sounds lovely. And sometimes children and adults are just sympatico and it does last - that was true for me and one of my uncles.
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I thought so too on re-read; it's one of the things that makes the book more complicated than its thumbnail sketch of Church vs. chocolate. I remember reading it the first time as a version of the Bacchae and it still feels that way, even though everyone in it is human. It's the same kind of challenge, the same breaking. That made the sequels even more interesting to me; if Peaches for Monsieur le Curé is characteristic, it looks as though she's ringing changes on the original configuration, reflections, refractions, taking different roles by turn. I do want to track down the other two.
And sometimes children and adults are just sympatico and it does last - that was true for me and one of my uncles.
That's wonderful! I really hope it lasts here.