There are no antelopes in the city of Boston

[sovay]

Tonight ratatosk showed me and several other mostly unsuspecting persons a film called Pony Trouble (2005), which I cannot in any way recommend except as what might be called an experience. It was not the worst film I've ever seen, nor does it seem to have left me with traumatic brain injury, but it says something when a movie's utterly unraveling finale turns out to include vampire-hunting robots and they're not very interesting.

We chased it with The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953) and everything got better.

Before that, I had dinner with derspatchel at Martsa on Elm. The masala mint soda needs a Sumerian beer straw, but it's delicious and also a pleasingly shocking green; the lamb with pumpkin and cashews does not quite rival the raahra gosht at Tamarind Bay, but that didn't stop us from eating almost all of it. (He quite intelligently bailed before Pony Trouble occurred.)

I am re-reading The Lady's Not for Burning (1949). I will probably re-read whatever other Christopher Fry is not in boxes when I'm done; I have A Sleep of Prisoners (1951), The Boy with a Cart (1938), and Venus Observed (1950) within sight right now. But this one always was important to me.

All right! You've done your worst. You force me to tell you
The disastrous truth. I love you. A misadventure
So intolerable, hell could not do more.
Nothing in the world could touch me
And you have to come and be the damnable
Exception. I was nicely tucked up for the night
Of eternity, and like a restless dream
Of a fool's paradise, you, with a rainbow where
Your face is and an ignis fatuus
Worn like a rose in your girdle, come pursued
By fire, and presto! the bedclothes are on the floor
And I, the tomfool, love you.

I missed the equinox, but the year is getting brighter.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I missed the equinox, but the year is getting brighter.

In my maudlin teenage years I luxuriated in everything autumnal; now this coming quarter has my heart.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

I looked up Pony Trouble, and I wish I hadn't. Reaching for the brain bleach now...

I think I'd read the Fry; trouble is, Margaret Thatcher perverted the title of that play for me. I'd best have a double bleach, no ice.

[csecooney.livejournal.com]

I love that! That last thing! I've not read Christopher Fry -- is it from Lady? It's beautiful.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I was nicely tucked up for the night
Of eternity

What an image

What a poem! You with a a rainbow where your face is!

So this is by... Christopher Fry?

Or is this you?

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

I am so pissed off this morning, but this improved things. I am continually glad you are getting brightness.

Now I must go find a tourist and eat their pluck.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

This spring, despite or because of a lack of preceding winter seems a lot more spring-like to me than previous ones. Earlier this week (round about the equinox itself, or maybe the day before), I was told it had truly arrived. The robins are practically rioting, where once there were just the vultures and the crows (I am blessed with both turkey vultures and black-neck vultures at varying times, possibly because of the area being a small green island in an otherwise urban/suburban area or because I am JUST. THAT. GOTH.)

[larryhammer]

I reread Lady, Boy, and A Phoenix Too Frequent last year -- it was fortuitous that that's what I had on hand, but they make a good inadvertent trilogy.

---L.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

That film does sound pretty awful.* I'm glad you're not left with more serious injury from it.

vampire-hunting robots and they're not very interesting.

That... takes a sort of talent. Negative talent, I think.

I'm glad the dinner was good. Masala mint soda is something I've not heard of before.

I hope the Fry re-reading is everything it should be. I need to read The Lady's Not for Burning someday.

I missed the equinox, but the year is getting brighter.

Yes. It's lovely out.

If I may ask, have you any particular customs for observing the equinox?

*I googled. Links relating to the movie were interlaced with links to books about ponies and links to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic sites. The books about ponies reminded me of some of the girls I grew up with, who competed to see who could find the most egregious lack of equine knowledge in a novel about horses. IIRC one book had a pony's external ear be "broken" and require a splint. Another had a pony vomit on some poor child, which would be funnier if it weren't for the fact that the equine inability to vomit sometimes kills them.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I used to own a second hand bookstore, and one day we were unpacking a box and someone held up a copy of LADY, and we all started yelling out lines without even opening it.

A castle drafty as a tree!

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

As for reading LADY for the first time, pls allow time for savoring. Maybe at age 14, up late alone, with a pot of oolong tea, in an old farmhouse full of antiques, and drafty as a tree.

[selidor]

Hooray for liminal seasons. Enjoy the hibernating-in-bursts with slightly-disintegrating books! And dear goodness: your side of the planet has a truly astonishing number of excellent restaurants.