And when I see your face, I never see reason
It is true that I was looking at the original text of the Mithrasliturgie right before bed, but I don't know that that accounts entirely for the spectacular dream of two women practicing mediumship circa 1923 in a way that looked pretentiously credulous and neoclassically phony until the younger one suddenly hit all five vowels of the Greek alphabet on a deep, hard-echoing note held longer than a human voice could sustain and the wax-polished wood of the table under their linked hands fell to sand and boiled up into faces and forms and landscapes all vibrating like Chladni figures or Faraday waves. Each was a different participant's answer, but I don't remember how any of them went together—something like a cluster of singing children, the tall cone of a mountain collapsing like a pot on a wheel. Everyone was watching their own resonant frequency of the world. There was an eight- or ten-year difference between the women and the older always presented the younger to their clients as her sisterly protégé, but at the height of the séance she held in her arms a shivering sand-red double of the younger woman reaching naked for her, almost bending her mouth to its own before it fell away suddenly into undisturbed candlelight, not even dust. I didn't know if they ever spoke to one another about these revelations of the living, not the dead: I hoped. After that I don't even know how to classify dreaming about sharing a hotel room at a convention with a mid-career Denholm Elliott. He was a completely reasonable roommate for the weekend. Have some links.
1. I don't think I'd read any of Christopher Brennan's The Wanderer (1901), but this excerpt reminded me of Ursula K. Le Guin and M. John Harrison, which I wasn't expecting.
2. Courtesy of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ashlyme: "Five Minutes of Pink Oyster Mushroom Playing Modular Synthesizer." That's a factual description, not a clever band name.
3. I love the idea of students creating their own incantation bowls. I know some things I would trap at the bottom of those spirals.
4. I had no idea Biden liked the poetry of Seamus Heaney. I admit it does incline me kindly toward him as a person.
5. I just didn't want anyone to think I wasn't mourning for Arecibo.
1. I don't think I'd read any of Christopher Brennan's The Wanderer (1901), but this excerpt reminded me of Ursula K. Le Guin and M. John Harrison, which I wasn't expecting.
2. Courtesy of
ashlyme: "Five Minutes of Pink Oyster Mushroom Playing Modular Synthesizer." That's a factual description, not a clever band name.3. I love the idea of students creating their own incantation bowls. I know some things I would trap at the bottom of those spirals.
4. I had no idea Biden liked the poetry of Seamus Heaney. I admit it does incline me kindly toward him as a person.
5. I just didn't want anyone to think I wasn't mourning for Arecibo.
no subject
LOL, and why not, I suppose!
no subject
I visited Arecibo in 2001. It was super interesting. I suppose, though, that current technology is much better.
no subject
Child is now affecting one earring that used to be a parent's piercing and I cannot.
no subject
You have to approve of someone liking Heaney's work.
no subject
With their cover of "Don't Fear The Bleeper"?
...*hangs head*
no subject
1. Yes, I get those reminders too. It's wonderful. He does feel as if he's walking through one of the shabbier incarnations of Viriconium.
2. presses so many buttons for me that at least two Facebook friends tried to tag me in on this. I thought: every tree-stump could be radiophonic.
3. Those bowls are beautiful, and I could gaol a few things in them myself.
5. Arecibo is a crying shame. I know how I'd feel if they were to dismantle Jodrell Bank.
no subject
no subject
How wonderful that we will have a president who reads again, much less one who likes poetry!
no subject
I wasn't complaining!
no subject
I love that someone just thought of plugging it in.
I visited Arecibo in 2001. It was super interesting. I suppose, though, that current technology is much better.
I would just feel better had it been normally decommissioned for obsolescence, as opposed to progressively defunded while still doing valuable work—or if the two cables that added up to the present irreparable damage had broken within weeks of one another instead of three months apart, when you would have thought there would have been time to repair the first. I'm glad you got to see it in operation. I never did.
no subject
*hugs*
I will see what I can do. I have so many things I want to write and so little energy for any of them, never mind time. I think my physics has gone weird.
Child is now affecting one earring that used to be a parent's piercing and I cannot.
That's a . . . fashion statement.
no subject
He was an important poet to me. I do.
no subject
I thought we were friends.
no subject
“One earring... is... awesome!!!” *invisible guitar riff* edit: oh don’t worry they’ll show you
They finished Timecat tonight and were devastated. Good thing there are more books in this world.
no subject
I will try. Right now I am snowed under by work and medical commitments on top of a complicated holiday and wishing I had time even for movie reviews.
I'm glad Mr Elliott was good company.
Thank you! I always appreciate when people are not jerks in their dream-selves.
1. Yes, I get those reminders too. It's wonderful. He does feel as if he's walking through one of the shabbier incarnations of Viriconium.
Wrecked constellations and kingdoms that might never have been.
2. presses so many buttons for me that at least two Facebook friends tried to tag me in on this. I thought: every tree-stump could be radiophonic.
Oh, please write that, while we're talking of writing things. I'm so glad your friends knew it was meant for you.
3. Those bowls are beautiful, and I could gaol a few things in them myself.
So many things, these days.
5. Arecibo is a crying shame. I know how I'd feel if they were to dismantle Jodrell Bank.
Avert! Avert!
no subject
Thank you. I never really feel I can take credit for them!
no subject
Thank you. I want to do something with it. And not fall down a research K-hole of post-WWI Spiritualism.
How wonderful that we will have a president who reads again, much less one who likes poetry!
I really think it will make a refreshing change!
no subject
1. I'd never heard of Brennan! Caspar David Friedrich fits him beautifully.
2. And speaking of Le Guin, that pink oyster mushroom is straight from "The Author of the Acacia Seeds." From therolinguistics to mycetomusicology!
3. Incantation bowls! I love hands-on classes.
4. I like his selection from "The Cure of Troy." How strange and marvelous to consider a literate president.
5. Alas, Arecibo.
Nine
Another cool link
no subject
no subject
I'm taking this pun outside. *brief gunshot; digging sounds ensue*
no subject
It's begging me to. I don't know if there's a bit of Whovian fanfiction in this, or what.
no subject
Re: Another cool link
I've seen that article! I love it.
no subject
Who else, then? You create them once and then again as you remember then and finally one more time as you share them.
no subject
Because they don't feel like things I have any conscious hand in, but I take your point. Thank you.
British Library Hebrew Manuscripts
https://liv.dreamwidth.org/585794.html
Re: British Library Hebrew Manuscripts