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Next stop looks like Pike Street
There was a beautiful sort of hand-tinted ambrotype light under the clouds this evening: not quite sunset, not quite storm. It looked as though it would break into rain any second, but never did. In the afternoon it showered, in a sort of tropical, condensing way.
I may in fact have maxed out on Perry Mason (1957–66) for the time being, but I appreciated William Talman immensely as Hamilton Burger, not least because it was the first time I had seen the actor outside of film noir, but also because he did a heroic job with a character whose narrative function is to lose cases week after week to Perry Mason; he did get an assist from the writers after the first season when the scripts began to make a point of observing that the character is an adversary, not an enemy, and making the case for the prosecution is literally a DA's job, but the series formula is almost immutable—Erle Stanley Gardner wasn't just around for the duration of the show, he had script approval—and Perry's clients are innocent, so Talman had to bring something besides graceful or explosive losing to the table and unsurprisingly a dry delivery and a keenly varied range of exasperation turn out to go a long way with me.
I hate not being able to ask Patricia McKillip if she read Robert Holdstock, or if they arrived independently at the notion of ice ages held within tree rings—old memory in snow—such as I had forgotten exists in the winter-wandering trees of The Sorceress and the Cygnet (1991):
"It's like being lost in a forest the size of Berg Hold . . . The trees shift, and all their memories move with them, century upon century of dreams, until you don't know anymore what's tree and what's only a dream of tree."
"It's only a small wood."
"I know. But Chrysom took them from the northern forests so long ago there must have been a sea of trees bigger than Wolfe Sea. It's that they remember, I think, and that's the memory you get lost in."
I had also forgotten until reminded that it is International Non-Binary People's Day.
I may in fact have maxed out on Perry Mason (1957–66) for the time being, but I appreciated William Talman immensely as Hamilton Burger, not least because it was the first time I had seen the actor outside of film noir, but also because he did a heroic job with a character whose narrative function is to lose cases week after week to Perry Mason; he did get an assist from the writers after the first season when the scripts began to make a point of observing that the character is an adversary, not an enemy, and making the case for the prosecution is literally a DA's job, but the series formula is almost immutable—Erle Stanley Gardner wasn't just around for the duration of the show, he had script approval—and Perry's clients are innocent, so Talman had to bring something besides graceful or explosive losing to the table and unsurprisingly a dry delivery and a keenly varied range of exasperation turn out to go a long way with me.
I hate not being able to ask Patricia McKillip if she read Robert Holdstock, or if they arrived independently at the notion of ice ages held within tree rings—old memory in snow—such as I had forgotten exists in the winter-wandering trees of The Sorceress and the Cygnet (1991):
"It's like being lost in a forest the size of Berg Hold . . . The trees shift, and all their memories move with them, century upon century of dreams, until you don't know anymore what's tree and what's only a dream of tree."
"It's only a small wood."
"I know. But Chrysom took them from the northern forests so long ago there must have been a sea of trees bigger than Wolfe Sea. It's that they remember, I think, and that's the memory you get lost in."
I had also forgotten until reminded that it is International Non-Binary People's Day.
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Happy every other day too hopefully!
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I mean, I spent too much of it at urgent care, but I watched some movies with
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There was a beautiful sort of hand-tinted ambrotype light under the clouds this evening: not quite sunset, not quite storm. This is a very beautiful sentence!
I come over here bearing some more David Collings that crossed my dash this morning, which I hope you may find cheering: https://www.tumblr.com/thisbluespirit/722903736030199808?source=share
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I do, thank you! And I am disproportionately amused by "Smash-Hit David Plays an All-Time Loser."
*hugs*
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Me, too! Don't speak too soon, reporter - he's only just got started! There will be so many more losers! XD
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There's a lot of competition for "all-time"! You could run a poll.
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Winter wandering trees are a cool idea; how do they do it?
Happy nonbinary day! I picked up a nonbino-saurus sticker from Julia Rios. ( It’s destined for the healing angel’s nonbinary SO)
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Thank you. I miss seeing everyone. I am missing most of my life right now.
Winter wandering trees are a cool idea; how do they do it?
I don't think we ever get more of an explanation than that conversation and the succeeding experience of becoming lost in a small and endless wood: in winter, the trees remember being part of a vast and ancient forest and suddenly there are impossible distances between the traveler and the edge of the trees, the trees themselves move like the parts of a maze to create the ambiguity of trackless woodlands until such time as the trees become dormant again or the traveler does something to find their way out. A lot of the setting of The Sorceress and the Cygnet has this hauntological quality, layers of time on time that can be deliberately slipped or accidentally fallen into; it's one of the things I love about the book. "I watch the stars . . . Sometimes it seems that all the constellations exist in a strange, ancient tale that we only catch glimpses of, in our short lives, while they move as slowly as centuries through it." So do trees live on a different scale of time than the humans who walk through them, who don't remember a thousand years of boreal forest until it dreams itself into being around them.
Happy nonbinary day! I picked up a nonbino-saurus sticker from Julia Rios. ( It’s destined for the healing angel’s nonbinary SO)
Oh, nice! What does it look like?
(Thank you!)
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The nonbinosaur (that’s what Julia called it; I got it wrong in my initial comment) was very cute; I can’t share it directly here b/c of only having my phone to work from, but check your email in the near future
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This idea (of woods remembering when they were part of a Wood that covered all of Britain) is in Diana Wynne Jones, too - possibly in Hexwood but more likely one of the others. Fire and Hemlock maybe? Both of those books being about memory and time, too.
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I don't mind! Good catch on DWJ. It's definitely present in Hexwood. "At the merest nudge, it forms its own theta-space and becomes the great Forest once again."