If I could make you dance for joy, could that be the second-chance decoy?

[sovay]

A handful of linkery . . .

time_shark has good news about Mythic #1! Damn, they look pretty.

fleurdelis28 and I free-associate about flying wax temples. In my defense, I can only repeat that Pausanias said it first. Well, not the bit about Baba Yaga's chicken-footed hut.

In honor of National Poetry Month, I draw your attention to watermelonpoet's "Black Arrows for a Golden Bow" (the ribs swing closed / like prison doors and the breastbone / is a lock that accepts no key) and yhlee's "Writing Anti-Exercise #1" (she saw the little teeth of ice and the day's devouring jaws).

No link; the last oracle of the Pythia at Delphi:

εἴπατε τῷ βασιλῆι· χαμαὶ πέσε δαίδαλος αὐλά·
οὐκέτι Φοῖβος ἔχει καλύβαν, οὐ μάντιδα δάφνην,
οὐ παγὰν λαλέουσαν· ἀπέσβετο καὶ λάλον ὕδωρ.

You tell the king: the carved courtyard has fallen to the ground,
Phoibos no longer has his hut, no prophet laurel,
no prattling fountain: even the talkative water is put out.

(Philostorgios, Passio Artemii 7 fr. 1c)

Comments

[larryhammer]

I always wonder about that last oracle. Got to be a way to use it in a story.

---L.

[sovay]

I found it first in Mary Stewart's My Brother Michael, actually: it's a tangential plot-point. But, yes. Someone must have done something with it sometime. And if not, someone should!

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

Well thanks for these bits. I was in a lousy mood and was going to post something angry, and this got me out a little. I mean how can you read that last oracle passage and not feel driven to do something with despair?

[sovay]

So long as that's an improvement . . . : )

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Did Baba Yaga's chicken-footed hut turn out to be a Boeing 747?

[sovay]

I can't see a 747 and a beeswax temple having quite the same rapport . . .

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Sorry, vague reference to Enchantment....

[sovay]

I recognized it: I'm ambivalent about Orson Scott Card in most respects, but I was very fond of Brother Sergei. : )

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

I no longer read him -- the only instance I can recall of my personal leanings leading me to a boycott -- but I still occasionally dust that one off. I love Bear.

[sovay]

the only instance I can recall of my personal leanings leading me to a boycott

Hence the ambivalence. Fortunately, I'd read Pastwatch and Enchantment before I found out he was a raving nutter.

[ombriel.livejournal.com]

Oh, goodness. What can be said to that? Only, I have a new Greek passage to memorize. Chaire!

[sovay]

What can be said to that?

You could write something of it. I would like to see that.