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The ocean comes to fill my cup
So most of today has been a ball of stress and errands and I appear to have dealt with it by reading, with great enjoyment, a reprint of an Ace double reprint of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's The Blank Wall (1947) and The Innocent Mrs. Duff (1946), but yesterday was wholly lovely.
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derspatchel came out on the buses to meet me; for my birthday, he gave me the sea. We had to run an inland errand first, but we came back by way of the harborwalk at Rowes Wharf, had lunch at Legal Sea Foods (it was their annual oyster festival, so I made out like the Walrus and the Carpenter), and then spent the rest of the afternoon at the New England Aquarium. I hadn't been in two years. There were sharks and rays, fur seals and sea lions, leafy sea dragons, newborn seahorses, anemones and sea cucumbers, the long, spiraling walk from the top of the three-story reef tank down. There was a moray eel swimming. The octopus exhibit is being renovated. I don't remember the lobster and shark nurseries from our last visit. We don't know which species the penguins of the damned were, but they made an unearthly racket. Blue light wavering everywhere and the smell of salt. Things with fins and gills and translucent skins and the branching sway of live corals and the cold tide-braid of kelp. I miss the black light on the wall of shark-shapes, but I'm glad the electric eel has a real habitat now. We stayed until the aquarium closed and kicked us out into the pouring rain, for which I had brought the pink-and-black Marimekko umbrella I need to return to its rightful owner someday. And then Rob had to work, so I left him at the Somerville Theatre and joined my family for dinner in Lexington. My parents gave me books. Out-of-print books, academic books, titles I had been looking for on my own time with limited success, considering what my own time has been like lately—Glenn Markoe's Phoenicians (2002), Elizabeth Donnelly Carney's Women and Monarchy in Macedonia (2000), Alice Notley's Songs and Stories of the Ghouls (2011), the aforementioned two suspense novels by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and Dorothy B. Hughes' The Expendable Man (1963). My brother got me the collected first Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novel, Gene Luen Yang's The Promise (2012). There was hazelnut cake.
I had a skullcrushing headache by the time I got home and did not sleep anywhere near as much last night as I wanted, but it was worth it.
Oh, and in case you thought only Monty Python and bored classics students invented hilarious Latin names: meet Calidius Eroticus and Fannia Voluptas. I had actually heard of this couple before, but I hadn't known they have their own booze now. That's no small achievement for people whose inn hasn't been open in two thousand years. Optissime!
derspatchel came out on the buses to meet me; for my birthday, he gave me the sea. We had to run an inland errand first, but we came back by way of the harborwalk at Rowes Wharf, had lunch at Legal Sea Foods (it was their annual oyster festival, so I made out like the Walrus and the Carpenter), and then spent the rest of the afternoon at the New England Aquarium. I hadn't been in two years. There were sharks and rays, fur seals and sea lions, leafy sea dragons, newborn seahorses, anemones and sea cucumbers, the long, spiraling walk from the top of the three-story reef tank down. There was a moray eel swimming. The octopus exhibit is being renovated. I don't remember the lobster and shark nurseries from our last visit. We don't know which species the penguins of the damned were, but they made an unearthly racket. Blue light wavering everywhere and the smell of salt. Things with fins and gills and translucent skins and the branching sway of live corals and the cold tide-braid of kelp. I miss the black light on the wall of shark-shapes, but I'm glad the electric eel has a real habitat now. We stayed until the aquarium closed and kicked us out into the pouring rain, for which I had brought the pink-and-black Marimekko umbrella I need to return to its rightful owner someday. And then Rob had to work, so I left him at the Somerville Theatre and joined my family for dinner in Lexington. My parents gave me books. Out-of-print books, academic books, titles I had been looking for on my own time with limited success, considering what my own time has been like lately—Glenn Markoe's Phoenicians (2002), Elizabeth Donnelly Carney's Women and Monarchy in Macedonia (2000), Alice Notley's Songs and Stories of the Ghouls (2011), the aforementioned two suspense novels by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and Dorothy B. Hughes' The Expendable Man (1963). My brother got me the collected first Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novel, Gene Luen Yang's The Promise (2012). There was hazelnut cake.I had a skullcrushing headache by the time I got home and did not sleep anywhere near as much last night as I wanted, but it was worth it.
Oh, and in case you thought only Monty Python and bored classics students invented hilarious Latin names: meet Calidius Eroticus and Fannia Voluptas. I had actually heard of this couple before, but I hadn't known they have their own booze now. That's no small achievement for people whose inn hasn't been open in two thousand years. Optissime!
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All of those books sound amazing.
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Thank you! Short of spending the day in the ocean, it was the best birthday present I could have had.
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Thank you! I like that blessing.
All of those books sound amazing.
So far I've read The Blank Wall and The Innocent Mrs. Duff (after which I ordered all the Elisabeth Sanxay Holding I could from the Minuteman Library), Avatar: The Last Airbender—The Promise (about which I wish to post briefly, because it did a character thing I have rarely seen and appreciated very much), and I am halfway through The Expendable Man, which is ridiculously good. I'm kind of saving the academic ones. Women and Monarchy in Macedonia was a book I coveted greatly while writing "ζῆ καὶ βασιλεύει." I like this thing where I have time to read.
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Thank you!
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Panis et pulmentarium is just what I had for dinner yesterday--challah and meze.
So glad for your wonderful birthday.
Nine
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It is really not the fault of Calidius Eroticus and Fannia Voluptas that I envision them slightly as the sleazy-adorable screen version of Les Mis' Thénardiers.
So glad for your wonderful birthday.
It was spliced in between difficulties, but in itself it was very, very good.
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This gives me pictures of lost souls in icy landscapes.
Also, sea dragons! I had never heard of these before I saw them (in the aquarium in Monterey). Aren't they amazing?
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The best present in the world for you.
There were sharks and rays, fur seals and sea lions, leafy sea dragons, newborn seahorses, anemones and sea cucumbers, the long, spiraling walk from the top of the three-story reef tank down.
So beautiful. I like the idea of tiny seahorse babies.
For your birthday, let me show you the bird with archaeopteryx claws on its wings, which I learned about from
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Thank you! Honestly, I would like that very much.
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. . . We didn't listen closely enough to tell. We may all be doomed.
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They sounded like them! There are three species of penguin at the New England Aquarium and one of them is possessed.
Also, sea dragons! I had never heard of these before I saw them (in the aquarium in Monterey). Aren't they amazing?
Yes! I have seen many photographs of them, but I have rarely seen them live. They look so beautifully like kelp and seaweed. I envy them.
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Thank you. I am very glad, too.
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They are minute! But perfectly formed. The adults were all wound round the same clump of seagrass, their tails entangled, like a seahorse-king.
For your birthday, let me show you the bird with archaeopteryx claws on its wings, which I learned about from heliopausa: the baby hoatzin.
Oh, that's beautiful. Thank you! How prehistoric and adorable. Last survivor of a 64-million-year-old lineage!
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like a seahorse-king
marvelous.