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So sing all your questions to sleep
I may finally, as they say, have recovered from my vacation. The first day after we came back, I slept until noon and then sat on the front steps for about an hour in the bright, windy, summer-autumnal weather, just soaking up the fact that it wasn't murderously hot and humid: this is more how I remember August in New England. In the evening, we watched The Constant Gardener (2005) and then The Hunt for Red October (1990), which made for a bizarre double feature—if Tom Clancy and John le Carré were put in a room together, I'm not sure that one of them might not combust—but at least I got to point out to my family what Bill Nighy and Stellan Skarsgård look like without tentacles and sea-change. Yesterday, mostly I transcribed lyrics and read some Vergil, worked on a new story that I started while in D.C., and my mother and I watched the first episode of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979), which promises to be excellent. And so far today, not much has happened. Housecleaning. Gardening. I think this is all right.
In writing news, contributor's copies of Full Unit Hookup #8 landed in my mailbox this afternoon, containing my poems "The Meteors I Remember" (for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
strange_selkie) and "Because the Mermaid Has No Tongue." And my story "Nights with Belilah," which could previously be found only in Singing Innocence and Experience, will be reprinted this fall as feature fiction in City Slab #9; so if you need some Lilim in your life, that's where to look.
And finally, photographs. I took about a hundred pictures on this trip, a full of third of which didn't come out for some technical reason or other; mostly from the Museum of Natural History and the Air and Space Museum, which irritates me. I must not have made the proper sacrifices to the gods of the digital camera. Nonetheless, my favorites of the remainder are posted below. Thanks totime_shark for hosting them, sucker . . . er, I mean, magnificent friend that he is . . .
(Cut for lots of photographs.)
My mother caught this shot of me, my brother, and a papyrus plant in Longwood Gardens. Frankly, I think the papyrus came off best.
I have always had a soft spot for carnivorous plants. As a child, I had an entire book on them that I used to read and re-read, mesmerized; so I couldn't let these pitcher plants get away unmemorialized. But I'll still steer clear of the gardinel.
You may remember that my favorite part of the Gardens was the Conservatory. Here's what it looked like inside. I was oddly reminded of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' never-completed Paleozoic Museum.
I love how these columns are twined and flowering: I know it's a designed chaos, but I can still imagine that someday the vines will pull down the glass and the iron and only ferns reflect in the polished floor.
These were the ornamental ponds outside the Conservatory, filled with lotuses and water lilies. My grandparents used to keep dried lotus seed cups in their umbrella stand, along with peacock feathers. Never umbrellas. I used to play with them as a child.
This is about my only picture from the Museum of Natural History that came out neither blurred nor too darkened nor overexposed: at least it's from my favorite exhibit, Life in the Ancient Seas. Ammonite, meet mosasaur.
I had never before been to the United States Botanic Garden, so my mother and I stopped there on our way to the Museum of the American Indian. The centerpiece of their conservatory is a glassed-in rainforest, but I was more taken by the "Garden Primeval"—a recreated slice of Jurassic forest, full of ferns and mosses and cycads that haven't seen the need to change much in the last hundred and fifty million years.
From the Desert Room. The label may tell me it's a cactus, but I want to know where the rest of Medusa is hiding.
And a snapshot of orchids; because.
My mother took this outside the entrance to the Museum of the American Indian. I think I look mildly concussed, but she disagrees.
Looking down into the Museum's rotunda: it's built up in spirals and open at the top, like a kiva. You can't see from this distance, but the signs for each one of those boats is bilingual: in English and then in Inuktitut (kayak), Hawaiian (outrigger canoe), and Aymara (totora-reed boat). This is cool.
Because the drive down to D.C. had taken so much more time than planned, on our way back we stopped in Philadelphia for a night. Once again, the hotel had lost our reservation, but fortunately they found rooms—even if my brother was relegated to the fold-out couch—and we cooked tortellini in the kitchen and watched The Fugitive (1993) on the television and were otherwise vacational. In the morning, we went memory-hunting: hence this picture. This is the rowhouse where my parents lived when my mother was doing her internship in the mid-1970's and my father moved down from New York City to live in the apartment above hers. After a while, it became clear that things would be much simpler if he moved downstairs into her place: if nothing else, they could consolidate the cats.
My parents in front of their old residence. We were all rather impressed that the neighborhood was still there, since the hospital whose staff had mostly lived in those blocks—the Irving Schwartz Institute for Children and Youth—no longer exists.
Consequently, my parents were even more disturbed to realize that the pole-dancing bar around the corner, where my father kept refusing to let friends take him, was still there.
Have a random piece of Philadelphia skyline.
I cannot adequately express how happy it made me to see classical sculpture reproduced with its proper paint. I hadn't even stepped inside, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art had justified its entire existence right there.
Family snapshot in the courtyard of the Museum. I feel as though I should stress that my mother took this photograph; she did not turn into an H.R. Giger spider for the occasion.
In fact, it took me forever to take a picture of her; every time I tried, she would offer to take pictures of the rest of the family, or she'd look at a map, or she'd move. I half think I got this one only because she was out of breath on the museum steps and couldn't run.
My father does his Roman coin impression.
Meanwhile, my brother is a spirit photograph. Actually I was attempting to catch him in a rather thoughtful stance, but he spotted me and spun around and there went any hope of a naturalistic picture. I shall maintain it was an artistic choice.
My parents in the Rodin Museum, where I took lots of pictures of statuary that did not come out at all. I love Rodin, however: how his figures are always meshed in the bronze or plaster, stone or sea, from which they are half-emerged and pulled out like a god's clay-shaping; there is an elemental stress to them. If volcanoes were sculptors, I think the results would look like Rodin.
There are classical torsos with precisely this curve. It suits his surroundings.
My father, and my brother, and Rodin's "Gates of Hell."
And finally, my brother on the steps of the Rodin Museum. I swear this is a movie poster somewhere.
I think that's about it for photographs. If any other really good ones turn up, I'll post them, but I probably shouldn't stretch other people's hospitality too much. I really should get a paid account. (I really should get an income . . .) I'm still pleased with these.
In writing news, contributor's copies of Full Unit Hookup #8 landed in my mailbox this afternoon, containing my poems "The Meteors I Remember" (for
strange_selkie) and "Because the Mermaid Has No Tongue." And my story "Nights with Belilah," which could previously be found only in Singing Innocence and Experience, will be reprinted this fall as feature fiction in City Slab #9; so if you need some Lilim in your life, that's where to look.And finally, photographs. I took about a hundred pictures on this trip, a full of third of which didn't come out for some technical reason or other; mostly from the Museum of Natural History and the Air and Space Museum, which irritates me. I must not have made the proper sacrifices to the gods of the digital camera. Nonetheless, my favorites of the remainder are posted below. Thanks to
time_shark for hosting them, sucker . . . er, I mean, magnificent friend that he is . . .(Cut for lots of photographs.)
My mother caught this shot of me, my brother, and a papyrus plant in Longwood Gardens. Frankly, I think the papyrus came off best.
I have always had a soft spot for carnivorous plants. As a child, I had an entire book on them that I used to read and re-read, mesmerized; so I couldn't let these pitcher plants get away unmemorialized. But I'll still steer clear of the gardinel.
You may remember that my favorite part of the Gardens was the Conservatory. Here's what it looked like inside. I was oddly reminded of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' never-completed Paleozoic Museum.
I love how these columns are twined and flowering: I know it's a designed chaos, but I can still imagine that someday the vines will pull down the glass and the iron and only ferns reflect in the polished floor.
These were the ornamental ponds outside the Conservatory, filled with lotuses and water lilies. My grandparents used to keep dried lotus seed cups in their umbrella stand, along with peacock feathers. Never umbrellas. I used to play with them as a child.
This is about my only picture from the Museum of Natural History that came out neither blurred nor too darkened nor overexposed: at least it's from my favorite exhibit, Life in the Ancient Seas. Ammonite, meet mosasaur.
I had never before been to the United States Botanic Garden, so my mother and I stopped there on our way to the Museum of the American Indian. The centerpiece of their conservatory is a glassed-in rainforest, but I was more taken by the "Garden Primeval"—a recreated slice of Jurassic forest, full of ferns and mosses and cycads that haven't seen the need to change much in the last hundred and fifty million years.
From the Desert Room. The label may tell me it's a cactus, but I want to know where the rest of Medusa is hiding.
And a snapshot of orchids; because.
My mother took this outside the entrance to the Museum of the American Indian. I think I look mildly concussed, but she disagrees.
Looking down into the Museum's rotunda: it's built up in spirals and open at the top, like a kiva. You can't see from this distance, but the signs for each one of those boats is bilingual: in English and then in Inuktitut (kayak), Hawaiian (outrigger canoe), and Aymara (totora-reed boat). This is cool.
Because the drive down to D.C. had taken so much more time than planned, on our way back we stopped in Philadelphia for a night. Once again, the hotel had lost our reservation, but fortunately they found rooms—even if my brother was relegated to the fold-out couch—and we cooked tortellini in the kitchen and watched The Fugitive (1993) on the television and were otherwise vacational. In the morning, we went memory-hunting: hence this picture. This is the rowhouse where my parents lived when my mother was doing her internship in the mid-1970's and my father moved down from New York City to live in the apartment above hers. After a while, it became clear that things would be much simpler if he moved downstairs into her place: if nothing else, they could consolidate the cats.
My parents in front of their old residence. We were all rather impressed that the neighborhood was still there, since the hospital whose staff had mostly lived in those blocks—the Irving Schwartz Institute for Children and Youth—no longer exists.
Consequently, my parents were even more disturbed to realize that the pole-dancing bar around the corner, where my father kept refusing to let friends take him, was still there.
Have a random piece of Philadelphia skyline.
I cannot adequately express how happy it made me to see classical sculpture reproduced with its proper paint. I hadn't even stepped inside, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art had justified its entire existence right there.
Family snapshot in the courtyard of the Museum. I feel as though I should stress that my mother took this photograph; she did not turn into an H.R. Giger spider for the occasion.
In fact, it took me forever to take a picture of her; every time I tried, she would offer to take pictures of the rest of the family, or she'd look at a map, or she'd move. I half think I got this one only because she was out of breath on the museum steps and couldn't run.
My father does his Roman coin impression.
Meanwhile, my brother is a spirit photograph. Actually I was attempting to catch him in a rather thoughtful stance, but he spotted me and spun around and there went any hope of a naturalistic picture. I shall maintain it was an artistic choice.
My parents in the Rodin Museum, where I took lots of pictures of statuary that did not come out at all. I love Rodin, however: how his figures are always meshed in the bronze or plaster, stone or sea, from which they are half-emerged and pulled out like a god's clay-shaping; there is an elemental stress to them. If volcanoes were sculptors, I think the results would look like Rodin.
There are classical torsos with precisely this curve. It suits his surroundings.
My father, and my brother, and Rodin's "Gates of Hell."
And finally, my brother on the steps of the Rodin Museum. I swear this is a movie poster somewhere.
I think that's about it for photographs. If any other really good ones turn up, I'll post them, but I probably shouldn't stretch other people's hospitality too much. I really should get a paid account. (I really should get an income . . .) I'm still pleased with these.
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That medusoid cactus, or maybe one of her sisters, is common in yards around here.
---L.
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So what is it actually called? I forgot to photograph its identifying tag. (Stheno, Euryale . . .)
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:-P
---L.
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That's just because you didn't see all the incurably blurry ones that I didn't post . . . (Thanks.)
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You should definitely go back and visit the gardens. I can't speak to the National Portrait Gallery, because we didn't get there—National Gallery, yes; the exhibition on Henri Rousseau was worth the visit all by itself—but the different environments of the Botanic Garden are very neat.
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Yeah. I like my family. : )
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That and pitcher plants. I think we possess a smaller version of the medusa cactus (a baby gorgon perhaps? As long as she doesn't eat or petrify the cats & pigs, I've no problem with the little mythological squirt).
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You should also check out The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965) and The Tailor of Panama (2001), which are also based on books of his and also excellent; the former is sort of the quintessential anti-Bond and stars Richard Burton, the latter is a satire with Geoffrey Rush and Pierce Brosnan. And when we've finished Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I'll let you know how that was—it's le Carré's personal favorite of all the adaptations of his work, so I have high hopes.
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Also - oh, the Rodin Museum: I've been there... (long story, and somewhat bad-tempered to boot).
Have you considered a Flickr account? You can host photos for free, and post them into your LiveJournal, provided you keep them linked to Flickr.
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All right; I'll ask . . .
Have you considered a Flickr account?
I had not. Thank you! I will think about this.
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I love Longwood Gardens!
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Honestly, I couldn't tell you. This was almost the first time I'd been to Philadelphia in my life, the other time being in eighth grade when we stopped on the way down to D.C. to look at some historical artifacts of the American Revolution. But I can ask my parents. Are you in that area?
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Yeah, nothing ruins a family vacation like getting eaten by the local flora . . .
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Heh. Awesome. All I had five minutes' walk from my high school was Lexington Center . . .