Don't you really think about it?
When I got out to my parents' house this afternoon, I found my niece scrambling around the driveway with two of her friends, a rapidly vanishing bucket of stubs of colored chalk, and a puddle left over from last night's rain. They were covering the asphalt with wet chalk handprints in five colors. I told them that their art looked like cave paintings and they asked what I meant, so first I tried to describe Paleolithic hand stencils and then I went inside and got a book and brought it out and showed them. They asked how to get the effect of negative space. Technically we have red and yellow ochre in the house, but it occurred to me that trying to teach three seven-year-olds to blow handmade paint through a straw was a recipe for at least one coughing fit, especially since I have no clue how to do it myself, so I swallowed my sensory sensitivities and gave my rings to my mother and demonstrated how to outline one's hand with a handful of chalk glop and they took to it with great enthusiasm and experimentation, overlapping prints with stencils and sometimes filling them in with contrasting colors. When they were finished, they entitled their magnum opus Paint Dot Com. My father took a video of the artists posing in the middle of a sea of chalk hands and I went inside and washed intensively. I'll take a picture in the morning if the painting is still there. At least one of them signed it.
1. I liked this poem at once: John Challis, "Thames." It reminds me of U.A. Fanthorpe and Sean O'Brien and probably means I should check out the collection it comes from. I wrote a mudlark poem some years ago, though more specifically: "The Drowning of the Doves."
2. I can't figure out why I own British paperbacks of Michael Dobbs' To Play the King (1992) and The Final Cut (1995) and appear to be missing House of Cards (1989), especially when I can't remember reading any of the novels as opposed to watching the television serials. In any case, I started reading the first of the ones I own and while I haven't seen any of the series in decades, I am going through a mild phase of Colin Jeavons and am therefore extremely entertained that however his character was originally written, he is now played very recognizably on the page:
[Tim] Stamper had ideal qualities for the job—a lean, pinched face with protruding nose and dark eyes of exceptional brightness which served to give him the appearance of a ferret, and a capacity for rummaging about in the dark corners of his colleagues' private lives to uncover their personal and political weaknesses . . . 'Prime Minister.' He offered a theatrical bow of respect. 'Prime Minister,' Stamper repeated, practising a different intonation as if trying to sell him the freehold. He had a familiar, almost camp manner which hid the steel beneath, and the two colleagues began to laugh in a fashion which managed to be both mocking and conspiratorial, like two burglars after a successful night out.
How often does it happen that an actor's portrayal of a character influences the writing of the character from then on? I know it happened to John le Carré with Alec Guinness and George Smiley and to Dick Francis with Mike Gwilym and Sid Halley; most of the other performer-to-character instances I know about are serial numbers filed off, including my own. I would think it harder for Jeavons to keep getting compared to a ferret if I didn't like so much both ferrets and his face.
3. I promised![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie a translation of Pausanias 1.32.4–5, otherwise known as the haunting of Marathon:
All night there can be heard horses neighing and men fighting. Setting out deliberately to get a clear look has never done anyone good, but the anger of the spirits has never come out against anyone who is there unintentionally and for other purposes. The Marathonians name them as heroes who died in the battle and worship them, as well as Marathon from whom the deme gets its name and Herakles whom they claim they were the first of the Greeks to consider a god. They say that in the battle there happened to be a man equipped and looking like a peasant; he slaughtered many of the barbarians with a plough and was nowhere to be seen when the work was done. To the Athenians who came asking, the god gave no oracle concerning him but the command to honor Echetlaios as a hero. A trophy of white stone has been put up. The Athenians say that they gave funeral honors to the Medes, as it is universally a sacred duty to cover a human body with earth, but I could find no grave: neither a burial mound nor any other marker was there to see, but they had taken and thrown them however into a pit.
Always bury your enemies; mass graves get you ghosts. On the other hand, so does violent death. Marathon might have been screwed from the start, ghost-wise. Probably don't do battlefield tourism at Thermopylai, either.
1. I liked this poem at once: John Challis, "Thames." It reminds me of U.A. Fanthorpe and Sean O'Brien and probably means I should check out the collection it comes from. I wrote a mudlark poem some years ago, though more specifically: "The Drowning of the Doves."
2. I can't figure out why I own British paperbacks of Michael Dobbs' To Play the King (1992) and The Final Cut (1995) and appear to be missing House of Cards (1989), especially when I can't remember reading any of the novels as opposed to watching the television serials. In any case, I started reading the first of the ones I own and while I haven't seen any of the series in decades, I am going through a mild phase of Colin Jeavons and am therefore extremely entertained that however his character was originally written, he is now played very recognizably on the page:
[Tim] Stamper had ideal qualities for the job—a lean, pinched face with protruding nose and dark eyes of exceptional brightness which served to give him the appearance of a ferret, and a capacity for rummaging about in the dark corners of his colleagues' private lives to uncover their personal and political weaknesses . . . 'Prime Minister.' He offered a theatrical bow of respect. 'Prime Minister,' Stamper repeated, practising a different intonation as if trying to sell him the freehold. He had a familiar, almost camp manner which hid the steel beneath, and the two colleagues began to laugh in a fashion which managed to be both mocking and conspiratorial, like two burglars after a successful night out.
How often does it happen that an actor's portrayal of a character influences the writing of the character from then on? I know it happened to John le Carré with Alec Guinness and George Smiley and to Dick Francis with Mike Gwilym and Sid Halley; most of the other performer-to-character instances I know about are serial numbers filed off, including my own. I would think it harder for Jeavons to keep getting compared to a ferret if I didn't like so much both ferrets and his face.
3. I promised
selkie a translation of Pausanias 1.32.4–5, otherwise known as the haunting of Marathon:All night there can be heard horses neighing and men fighting. Setting out deliberately to get a clear look has never done anyone good, but the anger of the spirits has never come out against anyone who is there unintentionally and for other purposes. The Marathonians name them as heroes who died in the battle and worship them, as well as Marathon from whom the deme gets its name and Herakles whom they claim they were the first of the Greeks to consider a god. They say that in the battle there happened to be a man equipped and looking like a peasant; he slaughtered many of the barbarians with a plough and was nowhere to be seen when the work was done. To the Athenians who came asking, the god gave no oracle concerning him but the command to honor Echetlaios as a hero. A trophy of white stone has been put up. The Athenians say that they gave funeral honors to the Medes, as it is universally a sacred duty to cover a human body with earth, but I could find no grave: neither a burial mound nor any other marker was there to see, but they had taken and thrown them however into a pit.
Always bury your enemies; mass graves get you ghosts. On the other hand, so does violent death. Marathon might have been screwed from the start, ghost-wise. Probably don't do battlefield tourism at Thermopylai, either.
no subject
I remember your poem about the drowning of the Doves! And this poem you link to is excellent too: I liked "the taken, the lost, the given" and "the rusted hulls of years"
I would think it harder for Jeavons to keep getting compared to a ferret if I didn't like so much both ferrets and his face. I don't know Jeavons, but ferrets are charming and fierce, and this made me smile.
Regarding battlefield tourism, could there be a battlefield that *isn't* haunted? I expect they all are.
no subject
Enjoy!
And this poem you link to is excellent too: I liked "the taken, the lost, the given" and "the rusted hulls of years"
It's just such a good hauntological water poem. I feel someone should point this person in its direction; also I felt called out by that entire post and kind of wanted to link the author to "Tea with the Earl of Twilight," but not enough to join Tumblr.
I don't know Jeavons, but ferrets are charming and fierce, and this made me smile.
I went looking for some suitable pictures of Colin Jeavons and found this post in praise of him, which includes a marvelous detail about the series/novel that inspired his mention here. This portrait and this screenshot should also help. His eyes are sufficiently remarkable that at the start of this month when I had to settle for reading AO3 instead of watching the Granada Sherlock Holmes, I could tell the source canon for a fic I ran across from the description of Lestrade alone. I don't know what kind of film it would have been, but I think he would have made a beautiful selkie when he was younger, sleek and water-black.
I unironically like ferrets and always have.
Regarding battlefield tourism, could there be a battlefield that *isn't* haunted? I expect they all are.
I can't imagine they aren't. I assume it just manifests differently.
no subject
As for the Tumblr poster who could use a link to "Tea with the Earl of Twilight," I didn't venture a message, but I did reblog the post with a link to your story (here) so... maybe if they read reblogs...
I rarely go to Tumblr these days, but when I did for that, I came across another haunted-water shot.
no subject
When I rewatched the Granada Holmes last fall, I discovered that I had somehow managed to forget just how adorable Jeavons' Lestrade is, on top of his other good qualities. In the original short story of "The Six Napoleons" (1904), there's a bit where Holmes is setting the terms of a stakeout in Chiswick that night for both Watson and Lestrade: "And now I think that a few hours' sleep would do us all good, for I do not propose to leave before eleven o'clock, and it is unlikely that we shall be back before morning. You'll dine with us, Lestrade, and then you are welcome to the sofa until it is time for us to start." The Granada episode keeps the dinner-and-sofa invitation and then elaborates into a following scene in which Holmes has evidently spent the intervening hours failing to sleep while Watson has passed out in an armchair and Lestrade is in fact out cold on the sofa, under a tartan blanket, with his head buried somewhat defensively under his arms, because Watson snores like a narrow-gauge train and Holmes has been puttering around his office the entire time. Woken with a start by an almost appallingly cheerful Holmes, Lestrade sits up looking like an otter that's had its fur ruffled backwards and claps on his bowler hat with exactly the wry resignation of a man who agrees with Watson that whichever way this night's work goes, he's not getting any more sleep out of it. The scene at the end between him and Holmes is justly admired and moving and played as beautifully as that OP describes, but I knew it was coming in some fashion because I had read the stories. I was not prepared for couch-surfing Lestrade and was hopelessly charmed.
As for the Tumblr poster who could use a link to "Tea with the Earl of Twilight," I didn't venture a message, but I did reblog the post with a link to your story (here) so... maybe if they read reblogs...
I hope it works and I hope they like it! They are the same person who uses a line from one of my poems as a tag, which still frankly blows my mind. (And I don't want to return the kindness by being creepy at them. This is so much easier in person at conventions.)
I rarely go to Tumblr these days, but when I did for that, I came across another haunted-water shot.
That's lovely. Thank you for sharing it with me!