How much free smoke can you breathe and still be young in the bones?
I have had a wonderful day.
Not very much happened in it. I woke up late. It was beautifully sunny outside and it smelled like late spring, not premature August. I called![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rushthatspeaks to find out if they wanted to take the baby for a walk and found that they had already had the inspiration; I changed my keys and wallet out of my coat pockets into the one purse I own (I am pretty sure I have had it since high school: it started out moss-green and has bleached and abraded to army green over the years; the string has been broken since something like 2015, but I temporarily repaired it using the twist-tie off a bag of bread, which made me feel like a successful tool-using creature) and got dressed in the lightest shirt I've had occassion to wear all year and stepped out in the beautiful sunlight and met Rush and Fox at the corner of Highland and Crocker. The trees are flowering and uncurling green. Davis Square was full of people who had all clearly had the same idea to emerge blinking from their winter caves and soak up as much sun as possible before the weather did something irresponsible like flash-forward through summer or start snowing again. I had a frustrating interaction regarding my health insurance at the pharmacy, but it does not seem to have left the dominant note on the afternoon; Dave's Fresh Pasta had restocked its supply of switchel since last night. We took the bus back from Davis, in the course of which Fox charmed the woman sitting to my left and later engaged in extensive dialogue with the four- or five-year-old who took her place (along with her mother and a vaguely Fox-aged sibling in a stroller) despite the fact that she spoke both English and Spanish and Fox mostly speaks glossolalia and drool. They held on to the pole like a regular commuter, but we had to dissuade them from starting to chew on it. Rush handed me the first volume of Kore Yamazuki's The Ancient Magus' Bride (2013–) when we got back to their house and I had finished it by the time we got back from picking up gaudior after work; I have made a huge tactical error in not borrowing the second volume while I had the chance, because it has great Faerie, great stealth weird, and reminds me for some reason of Diana Wynne Jones. I was going to nap as soon as I got home because I was yawning all the way in the car, but then Autolycus presented me with such a fluffy belly and such an appealing look that I have in fact just been petting the cat for about an hour now while he purrs and grooms my arm, which is very relaxing for both of us. A mysterious benefactor off the internet sent me a copy of Andrew Moor's Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces (2012), which looks wonderful; the author has already observed something about A Canterbury Tale (1944) that I've noticed a lot of reviewers miss, so I feel I can trust him to have seen more or less the same movies I have. spatch just let me know that the lobby-level bathroom of the Somerville Theatre is now gender-neutral. I am tired and should probably take it easy tomorrow, since Rush and I are planning a day trip to New York on Sunday and I don't want to burn out, but I think I am definitely on the mend. There was a gorgeous smoky slate-and-peach sunset over the commuter rail tracks as I walked home, cut across with one white-reflecting line of jet contrail.
I like days like this.
Not very much happened in it. I woke up late. It was beautifully sunny outside and it smelled like late spring, not premature August. I called
rushthatspeaks to find out if they wanted to take the baby for a walk and found that they had already had the inspiration; I changed my keys and wallet out of my coat pockets into the one purse I own (I am pretty sure I have had it since high school: it started out moss-green and has bleached and abraded to army green over the years; the string has been broken since something like 2015, but I temporarily repaired it using the twist-tie off a bag of bread, which made me feel like a successful tool-using creature) and got dressed in the lightest shirt I've had occassion to wear all year and stepped out in the beautiful sunlight and met Rush and Fox at the corner of Highland and Crocker. The trees are flowering and uncurling green. Davis Square was full of people who had all clearly had the same idea to emerge blinking from their winter caves and soak up as much sun as possible before the weather did something irresponsible like flash-forward through summer or start snowing again. I had a frustrating interaction regarding my health insurance at the pharmacy, but it does not seem to have left the dominant note on the afternoon; Dave's Fresh Pasta had restocked its supply of switchel since last night. We took the bus back from Davis, in the course of which Fox charmed the woman sitting to my left and later engaged in extensive dialogue with the four- or five-year-old who took her place (along with her mother and a vaguely Fox-aged sibling in a stroller) despite the fact that she spoke both English and Spanish and Fox mostly speaks glossolalia and drool. They held on to the pole like a regular commuter, but we had to dissuade them from starting to chew on it. Rush handed me the first volume of Kore Yamazuki's The Ancient Magus' Bride (2013–) when we got back to their house and I had finished it by the time we got back from picking up gaudior after work; I have made a huge tactical error in not borrowing the second volume while I had the chance, because it has great Faerie, great stealth weird, and reminds me for some reason of Diana Wynne Jones. I was going to nap as soon as I got home because I was yawning all the way in the car, but then Autolycus presented me with such a fluffy belly and such an appealing look that I have in fact just been petting the cat for about an hour now while he purrs and grooms my arm, which is very relaxing for both of us. A mysterious benefactor off the internet sent me a copy of Andrew Moor's Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces (2012), which looks wonderful; the author has already observed something about A Canterbury Tale (1944) that I've noticed a lot of reviewers miss, so I feel I can trust him to have seen more or less the same movies I have. spatch just let me know that the lobby-level bathroom of the Somerville Theatre is now gender-neutral. I am tired and should probably take it easy tomorrow, since Rush and I are planning a day trip to New York on Sunday and I don't want to burn out, but I think I am definitely on the mend. There was a gorgeous smoky slate-and-peach sunset over the commuter rail tracks as I walked home, cut across with one white-reflecting line of jet contrail.I like days like this.
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(Also, go go Somerville Theatre.)
Re: a mostly contentless comment
They are a very expressive baby in both modes.
(Also, go go Somerville Theatre.)
I'm really happy.
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it has great Faerie, great stealth weird, and reminds me for some reason of Diana Wynne Jones
*twirls* It's one of my series! You read one of my series! ^_^ I'm so glad you enjoyed it! (And presumably Rush does too, so yay!) It's one of my favorites that I'm working on these days--I recently adapted vol. 7.
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It was really nice! It's been such an exhausting last couple of weeks, I'm hoping this is some kind of corner being turned. If not, it was a wonderful day in isolation and I can hope for them to cluster more closely in future.
It's one of my series! You read one of my series!
I am happily reading one of your series! I didn't realize until I saw your name in the back matter and remarked on it to
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Magus is such a treat. And I have no idea where it's heading, but not in an "uh-oh, I don't think the author knows what to do" way. I'm happy to follow along. And for bonus excellence, my friend Lys is the letterer, and she does such fantastic work. (She letters a few different things I work on, and I'm always delighted to find out we're sharing a title.)
Another title I'm adapting for the same publisher is The Girl from the Other Side: Siúil, a Rún (vol. 2 comes out next month), and a lot of reviewers are comparing it approvingly to Magus. I think the two series are doing rather different things, and I'm still getting a feel for it (its world is very lightly sketched so far), but you and/or Rush might find it appealing too. (Lys letters this one too.)
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Thank you! Aw.
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It was!
(I ended it with a movie about which I am still thinking, mostly because by now I am very tired: Andre de Toth's Ramrod (1947), which I found mentioned in Film Noir Reader 4 as an example of a Western noir; I am not sure I would have classified it that way myself if I had encountered it cold, whereas it's how I thought of 3:10 to Yuma (1957) as soon as I saw that film again last summer, but it does have moral ambiguity and striking camerawork. At the moment I feel that the second half of the film lets Veronica Lake down—I do not think it reasonable to castigate a character for "greed and ambition" when her primary motive for striking out as an independent cattle rancher was not getting pressured into marrying her violent stalker—where previously it seemed sympathetic to her position and I can't tell if there was studio interference or I just misread the degree to which the audience is supposed to identify with the character or what went wrong between me and the film, but while I recognize that she makes some bad decisions and does at least one seriously underhanded thing, I also can't see her as a villain on the order of the man she's trying to hold off and I have become wary of movies which have only two female characters and dichotomize them. That said, Joel McCrea is very good as a hero who's just barely put himself back together in time for the plot to start and Don DeFore is acres of magnitude more interesting as a charming, amoral drifter than he was as the avenging good guy in Too Late for Tears (1949). I appreciated that if the script has to have a "good girl," she is at least an independent businesswoman. It handled its violence unusually. I don't know; it may look more complex to me in the morning. It had a cold open that I really liked.)
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Thank you.
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Nine
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Thank you! I hope there will be the chance.