Clouds hide the stars and the helicopters

[sovay]

Yesterday we had entertained plans to hit up a park or the grounds of a museum, but with the sudden advent of snow in the afternoon, the day turned instead into a combination of grocery errands and returning the car to my mother. The Star Market in Porter Square was a vortex. When we separated briefly for the classic last-minute dash after a forgotten item, the cashier in spatch's lane had to semaphore across the crowd in order for me to locate him. I did manage to collect two books I had ordered from Porter Square Books, Hope Mirrlees' Paris: A Poem (1919) and Gillian Freeman's The Leather Boys (1961). Because rain in winter now feels ominous as well as insulting, I was disappointed that by the end of the night the flurries had deliquesced into slush and puddles and wet needles of streetlight. I am no longer disappointed. It is not just flurrying out there, it is thickly drifting in a way that makes me worry about the existence of shovels in this building. I may go out and trudge through it. The cold seasons have always been my favorites and I am already missing them.

P.S.

Comments

[gwynnega]

That is a beautiful snowy photo.

[sovay]

That is a beautiful snowy photo.

Thank you! It was a really nice walk. I visited the berries whose name I still don't know.

[gwynnega]

Oh, that's a great shot.

[sovay]

Oh, that's a great shot.

Thank you. I like it. It came from a digital contact sheet of several less satisfying shots.

[kindkit]

The Leather Boys is such an interesting book.

[sovay]

The Leather Boys is such an interesting book.

Talk to me about it! I am just about at the midpoint: making love for the first time. So far I am finding it low-key, more observational than plot-driven, which I am enjoying. [edit] I am indifferent to spoilers, but I have also finished the novel, so the plot kicked in.

[kindkit]

It's been a while since I read it, but from what I remember, the last section does a lot of the most interesting stuff.

In general nonspoilery terms, it feels simultaneously very of its time and very prescient. There's a feeling of huge cultural changes about to happen, as Britain emerges from postwar austerity and the post-war generation become adults. And Freeman feels . . . excited about it, as the author. The novel's pitched as a "social problems" sort of book--the Yoofs of Today, growing up too fast, riding their motorcycles and having sex! But the story itself is very much about how good it is to escape from constraints. For instance, as I recall the POV character has a certain amount of axiety about the sex, but no guilt whatsoever. And that's not presented as a bad thing.

I can't help but compare it to Renault's The Charioteer, published just 8 years earlier. So much of TC is about explaining and justifying homosexuality, pitching a case that someone can be queer and a good person. Meanwhile TLB just vaults over all that (it helps that its characters aren't particularly worried about whether they're good people). Class seems behind a lot of that to me. TC is hugely bought in to middle-class concerns about respectability and decency, and TLC isn't at all. I don't know about Freeman's background, but the working-class POV feels, despite my historical and cultural distance, true to me.

And it's interesting that the book was initially published under a male pseudonym. Renault had a little bit of cover--writing about gay men as a woman*, nobody was going to accuse her of special pleading. Freeman, writing as "Eliot George," at least somewhat invited readers to assume the author was a queer man. Though of course the play on "George Eliot" may have clued some folks in.

(*It's abundantly clear to me that Renault identified a lot with the male characters she wrote. Her gender identity seems to have been complicated.)

[minoanmiss]

As I watched the snow fall I thought of my snow loving friends such as you :)

[sovay]

As I watched the snow fall I thought of my snow loving friends such as you

*hugs*

[asakiyume]

Because rain in winter now feels ominous as well as insulting... --I know what you mean about the ominous part...

Thank you for sharing the beauty while it lasted, though. I sent a photo of the woods in snow to my guides in Leticia--a look that they never see in their own woods ;-)

[sovay]

--I know what you mean about the ominous part...

I understand the planet is too destroyed to sustain it, but I am still used to the model of New England where it started to snow seriously in November and kept it up into April if necessary and despite the quantity of shoveling entailed, I still miss it.

Thank you for sharing the beauty while it lasted, though.

You're welcome! It hasn't even melted entirely, which I am sure will change at any second, but currently it's heartening.

(Actually, it is snowing outside my window as we speak. Perhaps it will continue.)

I sent a photo of the woods in snow to my guides in Leticia--a look that they never see in their own woods

I like the idea of exchanging weather in woods.