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When I awoke it wasn't Alexandria, just cats and blankets tucked around me snug
Today was very long, very medical, and very expensive. (These last two items are unrelated.) I was operating on a grand total of two and a half hours of sleep, thanks to the little cat who decided to pounce on my head at five-thirty in the morning and coax me out to play by repeatedly biting my wrist. After dinner, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel very kindly accompanied me to the MFA so that I could decompress surrounded by cylinder seals and black-figure pottery and antique coinage of America. I am re-reading Mary Renault's The King Must Die (1958) for the first time in several years. It is even more difficult for me now to ignore the novel's at best ambivalent attitude toward women, even or especially the powerful ones, but it formed so many of my ideas about ritual and sacrifice and when there was still a potentially inauthentic snake goddess on display in the classical wing of the MFA, I could not look at her without thinking of the Bull Court, earthquakes, darkness and fires, the sea-surge speaking for the god. I think I shall start a program of handing the book to readers who have enjoyed The Hunger Games.
Someday I would like to be able to own some classical jewelry. Probably what I will be able to afford are potsherds. They will be very old and I will cherish them.
My poem "Foxstory" is now online at Through the Gate. It is a splendid issue—M Sereno, Bogi Takács, Lisa M. Bradley, among others. Despite their strong childhood importance to me, I believe the poem to be my first published foray into foxes; then again, I've never successfully written that much about trees, either. It was directly inspired by Jenn Grunigen's Storyfox: A Database of Vulpine Science Fiction and Fantasy.
It turns out that I will actually take a dress home from a vintage store if it is from the 1950's (as far as can be determined from the materials, the style, the label, and the internet), black and sewn all over with glass beads and artificial pearls, and has a geometric look like fashions from the '30's. If I succeed in wearing it out anywhere, I will make sure there are pictures. I am as surprised as anyone. The last dress I actually agreed to wear was for my wedding and I didn't buy it for the occasion. Anyway, that's what was notable about yesterday.
derspatchel very kindly accompanied me to the MFA so that I could decompress surrounded by cylinder seals and black-figure pottery and antique coinage of America. I am re-reading Mary Renault's The King Must Die (1958) for the first time in several years. It is even more difficult for me now to ignore the novel's at best ambivalent attitude toward women, even or especially the powerful ones, but it formed so many of my ideas about ritual and sacrifice and when there was still a potentially inauthentic snake goddess on display in the classical wing of the MFA, I could not look at her without thinking of the Bull Court, earthquakes, darkness and fires, the sea-surge speaking for the god. I think I shall start a program of handing the book to readers who have enjoyed The Hunger Games.Someday I would like to be able to own some classical jewelry. Probably what I will be able to afford are potsherds. They will be very old and I will cherish them.
My poem "Foxstory" is now online at Through the Gate. It is a splendid issue—M Sereno, Bogi Takács, Lisa M. Bradley, among others. Despite their strong childhood importance to me, I believe the poem to be my first published foray into foxes; then again, I've never successfully written that much about trees, either. It was directly inspired by Jenn Grunigen's Storyfox: A Database of Vulpine Science Fiction and Fantasy.
It turns out that I will actually take a dress home from a vintage store if it is from the 1950's (as far as can be determined from the materials, the style, the label, and the internet), black and sewn all over with glass beads and artificial pearls, and has a geometric look like fashions from the '30's. If I succeed in wearing it out anywhere, I will make sure there are pictures. I am as surprised as anyone. The last dress I actually agreed to wear was for my wedding and I didn't buy it for the occasion. Anyway, that's what was notable about yesterday.
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Thank you! I am happy about it.
*hugs*
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Thank you!
I should reread The King Must Die one of these days; I bet my library has it.
I should think so. I know a lot of the archaeology is a complete handwave nowadays, but the Bull Court still really holds up for me.
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Thank you! I am not responsible for any of the rest, but I enjoyed reading them. I like the way the table of contents shifts every time you view the page.
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The fox is eating hearts, rice, that sandwich
you thought you made yourself for breakfast,
the sullen punk at the bus stop
and the elegant professor on the bullet train
showing their white, white teeth as they smile
and slip into something more casual, like a life.
And, overall, what a lovely celebration of foxes.
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Thank you!
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Interesting! I think I would keep the potsherds as potsherds, if only because a lot of the jewelry I stare at is this sort of thing.
(Tangentially, Tyre had great coinage.)
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I have never seen anything so intricate that could be dangling from someone's ear! Gorgeous and unbelievable, if one didn't know that it really existed. And the other pieces are very beautiful too.
And Tyre sure did. *reblogs*
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Good to know!
It was close to the edge of affordable, and I would have treasured it immensely, but I was hunting for a house at the time and had to let it go.
I understand the tradeoff. I hope you find another one someday, now that you have a house.
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Thank you!
There's something wonderfully droll about fox-spirits
The mythos of werewolves is compulsion and torment. The mythos of foxes is, why not?
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I really like it. I will put up photographs!