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I can't make the weather do what I want
I learned today that my worries about technology were not unfounded: Craigslist has been treating all my e-mails as spam. I couldn't confirm the problem until this afternoon (thank you, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aedifica). I have a Gmail account now for these cases, but in the meantime I lost even the chance of looking at an apartment in Winter Hill that sounded near-perfect from the ad. The poster never saw my message. The listing was taken down this morning. Regardless of whatever might have happened, I am still rather upset.
On the other hand, this afternoon I went to look at a room in Allston that I'd heard about through a friend-of-friend-of-mailing-list-I-don't-read only to discover after an hour of conversation that the person who was showing me around and discussing Diana Wynne Jones and Romance languages and Yuletide is a friend of bothcirne and rushthatspeaks, so the very small world that is not confined to Somerville strikes again. That was cool.
From Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways (2012), which is rapidly becoming one of the best books I've read in the last six months:
The existence of the ancient seaways, and their crucial role in shaping prehistory, were only recognized in the early twentieth century. Until then, pre-historians and historical geographers had demonstrated a 'land bias'; a perceptive error brought about by an over-reliance on Roman sources that tended to concentrate on the movement of troops, goods and ideas on foot and across countries. Certainly, the Roman Empire's road network transformed internal mobility in Europe and, unmistakably, Roman roads were the key to uniting the empire's dispersed territories, as well as generating its military and economic power. 'The sea divides and the land unites,' ran the Roman truism. But for millennia prior to the rise of Rome's empire, the reverse had been true. The classical sources misled subsequent historians—allied with the fact that the sea erases all records of its traverses, whereas the land preserves them.
One alternate history, please, in which the winning of the Punic Wars by Carthage preserves the maritime Phoenician way of looking at the sea as the linkage of the world rather than the foot-miles of Rome. (Don't tell me to write it: I have one classically-rooted alt-history already that stalled out in 2009. And it can't do without Rome; its entire raison d'inventer was to allow for a votive statue of Neptune in a student's room in 1968.) I'd like to think that in the same way "Mother Carey" is said to have come down through mater cara, there would be sailors' slang and superstitions deriving from Tanit in her aspect as the Venus-star, rising over sea. And treaties with the Etruscans and blue eyes on all the boats.
aedifica). I have a Gmail account now for these cases, but in the meantime I lost even the chance of looking at an apartment in Winter Hill that sounded near-perfect from the ad. The poster never saw my message. The listing was taken down this morning. Regardless of whatever might have happened, I am still rather upset.On the other hand, this afternoon I went to look at a room in Allston that I'd heard about through a friend-of-friend-of-mailing-list-I-don't-read only to discover after an hour of conversation that the person who was showing me around and discussing Diana Wynne Jones and Romance languages and Yuletide is a friend of both
cirne and rushthatspeaks, so the very small world that is not confined to Somerville strikes again. That was cool.From Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways (2012), which is rapidly becoming one of the best books I've read in the last six months:
The existence of the ancient seaways, and their crucial role in shaping prehistory, were only recognized in the early twentieth century. Until then, pre-historians and historical geographers had demonstrated a 'land bias'; a perceptive error brought about by an over-reliance on Roman sources that tended to concentrate on the movement of troops, goods and ideas on foot and across countries. Certainly, the Roman Empire's road network transformed internal mobility in Europe and, unmistakably, Roman roads were the key to uniting the empire's dispersed territories, as well as generating its military and economic power. 'The sea divides and the land unites,' ran the Roman truism. But for millennia prior to the rise of Rome's empire, the reverse had been true. The classical sources misled subsequent historians—allied with the fact that the sea erases all records of its traverses, whereas the land preserves them.
One alternate history, please, in which the winning of the Punic Wars by Carthage preserves the maritime Phoenician way of looking at the sea as the linkage of the world rather than the foot-miles of Rome. (Don't tell me to write it: I have one classically-rooted alt-history already that stalled out in 2009. And it can't do without Rome; its entire raison d'inventer was to allow for a votive statue of Neptune in a student's room in 1968.) I'd like to think that in the same way "Mother Carey" is said to have come down through mater cara, there would be sailors' slang and superstitions deriving from Tanit in her aspect as the Venus-star, rising over sea. And treaties with the Etruscans and blue eyes on all the boats.
no subject
It is one of those books that is actively improving my life.
Although I'd have to say that the concept of the sea as a uniting thing's lived on in folk culture along the fringes of Europe.
Much of the chapter is about this phenomenon, in fact: story-crossings, loanwords over the water.
There's a poem I will share with you, soon's I find the book as it's not to be found online, or at least not to be found by me. I don't spell well in Shetlands, so I'd not trust myself to write it down from my memory.
Thank you. I'd be curious to see it.
no subject
Definitely I'll have to get a copy. Only question is whether I'll get it on the Nook or go hunt up a paper copy.
Much of the chapter is about this phenomenon, in fact: story-crossings, loanwords over the water.
Excellent.
Thank you. I'd be curious to see it.
Couldn't locate the book this afternoon--I'll check other spots tonight. For now, here's another poem from Shetland, by a different author, which I posted some years gone: Christine De Luca: 'Da Nort Boat'
no subject
Found it!
Sie-Færin
Ayont da flat ært
o da boondries o sens,
he kens--
da wirld's choost
a roond bloo baa fok sirkil
t'wirk an liv.
A gloabil awaarnis.
Du spits ida oshin
an a drap myght rekk Æshnis.
Bit hoiest du a sæl
du gjings quhar du will
tæ njoo fun laand.
--Robert Alan Jamieson
from: Wish I Was Here: a Scottish multicultural anthology
Kevin MacNeil and Alec Finlay, eds. (pocketbooks; Edinburgh 2000)
As I think on't, I'll quote you the notes as well, as I think them worth the doing so:
Sea-Faring
The global consciousness that arose from the activities of the sailing men meant that the ocean was never regarded as an obstcacle to togetherness, but rather as the means to connect one place with another. The coming of everyday air travel in the loatter part of this century has meant that the sea is now regarded differently--though perhaps the learning brought home by the merchant seamen has been replaced, and improved upon, but the new technologies. The moment of enlightenment described by astronauts, when they are able for the first time to look back at our planet and see the beautiful blue ball as a whole for the first time, is not so far removed from the knoweldge of those who have cricumnavigated the world in their ships.
***
Beyond the flat earth of the boundaries of sense, he knows-
The world is just a great round ball folk circle to work and live.
A global awareness.
If you spit in the ocean, that drop might reach the nearest shore.
But hoist a sail, and you go where you please, to new found land.
####
That translation's a bit flat, but I'm not sure it could be Englished and not be. I wish I knew Shetlands better. There seem to be multiple ways of spelling it--some more like standard Scots, and then there's the more sort of Scandinavianish style Jamieseon uses.
Here's another Jamieson poem of which I'm fond.
And Kwarna Farna by Vagaland (T.A. Robertson).
ETA: Too lovely not to share, this, and especially with the audio on it: Fauld Up Da Feddoms by Lise Sinclair.
Oh, and here's Æshnis
no subject
That's cool! Thank you so much!
(Part of what's lost in the translation is the specificity of Æshnis, which is not a generic "nearest shore": it's Eshaness, a concrete place in the Shetlands. The English runs the line breaks together into sentences for no reason I can determine, which makes the poem read as more prosaic than it is. And the vagueness is recurring: "If you spit in the ocean, that drop might reach the nearest shore" is possibly intended to sound like folk wisdom, a proverb, but "You spit in the ocean / and a drop might reach Æshnis" is arresting and immediate.)
I like "Bottles" a lot.
[edit] You edited your comment in the time it took me to complete mine; I found Æshnis as well. The Sinclair reads like it should be set to music.
no subject
I'm delighted to hear that. You're very welcome!
(Part of what's lost in the translation is the specificity of Æshnis, which is not a generic "nearest shore"...
I agree completely.
I suspect that what might be going on here is the idea that, once it's Englished and no longer in Shetlandic, it might as well be prosaic and genericised because it's no longer itself. The idea that Æeshnis is a place to be talked about in Sjetlands, whereas in English it might as well be the generic "the nearest shore" as Eshaness because in English we could as easily be talking about Block Island or Marathon Key. It's an extreme view, too extreme, perhaps, but I can sympathise, in a way. There are times when I feel very uncomfortable in the act of translation.
Actually, this is reminding me of the last meeting of the NYC Irish language book club when we were talking about Myles na Gopaleen's (AKA Flann O'Brian, AKA BRian O'Nolan) An Béal Bocht (1941). There is a translation, done in 1973, well after the author's death, which a couple of us had read at one time or another, but the general consensus was that it's not really right in English, because in a very visceral way it stops being ourselves laughing at ourselves in sometimes brutal fashion and becomes the middle class Anglophone world laughing at the poor savages in the Gaeltacht. The author himself didn't want it to be translated, and somebody brought up the rhetorical question of what he might have written had he decided to translate it.
I couldn't really articulate it at the time, but it came to me that what he might well have done, in that case, would have been to write a novel in English about an Anglophone ne'er do well from Dublin whose life story follows a parallel and equally hapless track (from birth to prison) to that of An Béal Bocht's narrator and protagonist, written as an affectionate-ish parody of the works of James Joyce and Sean O'Casey and Brendan Behan in the same fashion as the Irish-language novel parodies the works of Peig Sayers and Tomás Ó Criomhthain and Muiris Ó Súilleabháin.
[edit] You edited your comment in the time it took me to complete mine; I found Æshnis as well. The Sinclair reads like it should be set to music.
Sorry if I threw you off with that edit. I'm glad you did find. It hit me that I should do something about laying out the specificity and meaning of the place. I've a tendency to assume folk will look things up or ask if they don't know, but I know that's not always what works best for other folk. I reckoned you'd likely look it up, but obviously there's others might be reading this.
I agree about the Sinclair. Her reading of it's wonderful, but I'd very much like to hear a setting of it.