And when I see your face, I never see reason

[sovay]

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 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.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

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.

LOL, and why not, I suppose!

[isis]

The oyster mushroom music is nifty!

I visited Arecibo in 2001. It was super interesting. I suppose, though, that current technology is much better.

[selkie]

....I know standard limitations apply, but for fuck's sake, I hope you can write that. Someone ought to. It's not one of mine, so it must have come to you on the direct flight.

Child is now affecting one earring that used to be a parent's piercing and I cannot.

[cmcmck]

If it was, you'd have accused them of ripping off Blue Oyster Cult!

You have to approve of someone liking Heaney's work.

[ashlyme]

That is one hell of a dream. I hope they did speak. Do something with this, if you feel able? I'm glad Mr Elliott was good company.

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.

[minoanmiss]

When I started following your journal I didn't know how much you were going to enrich my mind with your amazing accounts of your splendiferous dreams. I am awed.

[gwynnega]

That is an amazing dream.

How wonderful that we will have a president who reads again, much less one who likes poetry!

[nineweaving]

You are a galaxy-class weird dreamer.

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

[alexxkay]

I had seen pictures of this before, bit had not previously realized the ecological impetus behind the project: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/17/underwater-museum-how-paolo-the-fisherman-made-the-meds-strangest-sight

British Library Hebrew Manuscripts

[nodrog]

https://liv.dreamwidth.org/585794.html