The Sword in the Stone

"It is well fixed," he said.

He took hold of it again and pulled with all his might. The music played more strongly, and the light all about the churchyard glowed like amethysts; but the sword still stuck.

"Oh, Merlyn," cried the Wart, "help me to get this weapon."

There was a kind of rushing noise, and a long chord played along with it. All round the churchyard there were hundreds of old friends. They rose over the church wall all together, like the Punch and Judy ghosts of remembered days, and there were badgers and nightingales and vulgar crows and hares and wild geese and falcons and fishes and dogs and dainty unicorns and solitary wasps and corkindrills and hedgehogs and griffins and the thousand other animals he had met. They loomed round the church wall, the lovers and helpers of the Wart, and they all spoke solemnly in turn. Some of them had come from the banners in the church, where they were painted in heraldry, some from the waters and the sky and the fields about – but all, down to the smallest shrew mouse, had come to help on account of love. Wart felt his power grow.

"Put your back into it," said a Luce (or pike) off one of the heraldic banners, "as you once did when I was going to snap you up. Remember that power springs from the nape of the neck."

"What about those forearms," asked a Badger gravely, "that are held together by a chest? Come along, my dear embryo, and find your tool."

A Merlin sitting at the top of the yew tree cried out, "Now then, Captain Wart, what is the first law of the foot? I thought I once heard something about never letting go?"

"Don't work like a stalling woodpecker," urged a Tawny Owl affectionately. "Keep up a steady effort, my duck, and you will have it yet."

A white-front said, "Now, Wart, if you were once able to fly the great North Sea, surely you can coordinate a few little wing-muscles here and there? Fold your powers together, with the spirit of your mind, and it will come out like butter. Come along, Homo sapiens, for all we humble friends of yours are waiting here to cheer."

The Wart walked up to the great sword for the third time. He put out his right hand softly and drew it out as gently as from a scabbard.



from T.S. White's The Once and Future King (p 203)


This scene reminds me of the incredibly moving moment in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when Harry and Voldemort's wands connect and temporarily lock together causing ghostly echoes of Cedric, Lily and James Potter, and others whom Voldemort has recently murdered to come out and offer their protection.




IMAGE: "Arthur with Excalibur" by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Bookish things

Though Mr. Darcy is apparently the ideal romantic hero for many modern women, it would seem that Austen wasn't one to hold out much hope in real-life soulmates:

"There are such beings in the World, perhaps, one in a Thousand, as the Creature You & I should think perfection, where Grace & Spirit are united to Worth, where the Manners are equal to the Heart & Understanding, but such a person may not come in your way, or if he does, he may not be the eldest son of a Man of Fortune, the Brother of your particular friend, & belonging to your own County."

Jane Austen in a letter to her niece, Fanny Knight
(November 18, 1814)

I think I've finished my Jane Austen kick, though there are still a few articles and quotes that I'll probably be posting when I get around to it. I've read Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion, and Emma over the last few weeks. Persuasion was definitely my favorite - Anne Elliot is an endearing, sympathetic heroine and the themes of sadness, regret, and lost youth make the final happy resolution of the story a very satisfying one.

This just leaves Mansfield Park (I've already been through Pride & Prejudice and Northanger Abbey) - which I think I'll save for another time. I bought a copy of MP from Aqua Books the other day but I haven't been able to move past the introductory essay. Mansfield Park is so far my favorite Austen film-adaptation, but supposedly Fanny Price is Austen's most hated heroine.

So instead I've moved on to Heart of Darkness and a Y.A. series by Tamora Pierce that I've been wanting to check out for a long time, ever since I read that it didn't shy away from plotlines related to gender and sex. That's pretty rare for a medieval fantasy series - especially a Young Adult one. (Can you imagine a young character having sex in a Susan Cooper or a Narnia book?)

I'm at a hilarious bit right now where the heroine Alanna has just been given a magical gold pendant that will keep her from getting pregnant indefinitely. (Well, its hilarious to me anyway - in the book I don't think its necessarily meant to be funny.)

"Of course I'm Meg"

“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

* * *

"...Christians build up little gods, little temples of Baal. We begin to worship them. And we must tear them down, destroy them. The gods we erect are easier to worship than the Creator of the universe. They're more comprehensible. The God I believe in is not comprehensible in finite, mortal terms. God is infinite, immortal, all-knowing."

Madeleine L'Engle has died.

(Links by way of the Claw.)

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

-- William Butler Yeats

Goodbye, Harry Potter

From the Salon review by Laura Miller (there are definitely spoilers in it, so consider yourself warned):

"But Rowling is most definitely a novelist; she writes about people and stuff, not about elemental forces and unconscious urges. Like all true novelists, she is the champion of the specific and the domestic, the often unsung pleasures and perils of a good lunch, a crush, a ball game with friends and a little gossip about machinations at the ministry -- which is why the doings at Hogwarts and in the Weasley household were always the best parts of the series. Her books, for all their spells and incantations and magical creatures, have never been the stuff that dreams are made of. Instead, they're the stuff that life is made of.

That's why Harry's great reward isn't something otherworldly, like Frodo Baggins sailing into immortality with the elves in the Uttermost West. He gets married, settles down with a good woman and has a few kids. His fate is to make many return visits to platform nine and three-quarters, even if he never again boards the Hogwarts Express. He gets to feel that twinge, that "little bereavement" that every parent feels on his child's first day of school; time passing, life going on. It's a very ordinary, unheroic sort of feeling, and that, more even than the assurance of the book's final sentence, tells us that all really is well. "

I also like her response to A.S. Byatt's criticism of HP. She doesn't dispute it, but she does justify why HP lacks the sublime quality that other (higher?) fantasy achieves:

"Some critics have objected to an Op-Ed the British novelist A.S. Byatt wrote for the New York Times in 2003, in which she complained that Rowling's books lack the "shiver of awe" she expects from superior fantasy. But you don't have to dismiss Harry Potter the way Byatt does to recognize that she has a point. The sublime is missing from Rowling's series, but then you won't find it in "Barchester Towers" or "A Confederacy of Dunces," either, which doesn't make them anything less than masterly novels. The sublime and the comic don't mix well, and to try to squeeze both into a children's book is the kind of experiment even a master potion-concocter like Severus Snape would wisely avoid."

And lastly - to this, of course, I would answer YES!

"Much as we may love Harry, Hermione, Ron, Hagrid and Dumbledore, don't we all love Hogwarts just a little bit more?"

You can read the whole review here.

The Deathly Hallows: Predictions

Last night was a complete fiasco. I would have thought that the park was more than ample room for an event such as this, but no - it was insane. As packed as it is for the Teddy Bears' Picnic (which is a big deal in Winnipeg). There were security and police everywhere directing traffic. We ended up parking on the road down by the Zoo and trekking back to the Conservatory area. Not a bad walk since it was a beautiful night out.

But anyways, I'm not going to go over the night in detail - the main thing is that it was a pretty amazing thing to be out there with all of those people who were feeling the same excitement that I was and, more importantly, I did end up with a book. It was in my possession for approximately 30 minutes before I passed it along to someone more deserving. All I had read was the introductory page.

When I got home at 3 a.m. I tried to continue reading The Half-Blood Prince where I'd left off but it was no good. I couldn't concentrate, couldn't keep reading it now that the final book was out. I ended up sitting in bed sleepless (unable to even solace myself with the Gilmore Girls since Stephan had fallen asleep on the couch), berating myself for giving up my book (even if it was to a good cause/person).

Today we're having a bbq party at our place and so there was a lot to do this afternoon to get ready. But first things being first, I picked up my own copy of the book at McNally and then proceeded with errand duties. I'm going to start reading it in just a few minutes. Well, unless I get distracted again by party tasks and cooking...

To reiterate - all I've read so far has been the intro page. With that in mind, I'm going to make some very last minute predictions. Maybe reading the first page means I'm disqualified from doing so, but I can't resist.

First, here's what's prompted me to do so. These are the quotations on the preface page of the book:


Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death
and the stroke that hits the vein,
the haemorrhage none can staunch, the grief,
the curse no man can bear.

But there is a cure in the house
and not outside it, no,
not from others but from them,
their bloody strife. We sing to you,
dark gods beneath the earth.

Now hear, you blissful powers underground --
answer the call, send help,
Bless the children, give them triumph now.

Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude


After reading these quotes - these extremely moving, powerful quotes, my predictions are as follows:

1 - Snape is going to die saving Harry
2 - Dumbledore had a master plan all along
3 - Regardless, Harry is going to die
4 - Voldemort is going to die
5 - Ron, Hermione, and Ginny will live
6 - I'll be crying by the end of the book

Harry Potter's significance

So, this is it. In five and a half hours all will be revealed.

Actually, that's rather an exaggeration since the book is over 500 pages and I'm not necessarily extreme enough to stay up all night reading until the end. (Although perhaps that would be a nice way of paying homage. So maybe I will stay up, we'll see.) But still, for those who flip to the last chapter - all will be revealed very shortly.

I don't think I'm the biggest HP fan out there. Not even close. I do love the books. I think the movies are mediocre but I still go to see them either opening night or week. I've gone to a book release party - the 2005 one at McNally for The Half-Blood Prince. I've dressed up as a Gryffindor student for Halloween. I've got an HP poster on my bedroom wall.

But this is all unusual for me. I don't usually dive into fandom like this (seriously). And not all of my HP memories are nice, happy ones.

In fact, my first memory of HP goes back to before I'd ever picked up the first book. Dip into the pensieve and you'll see my mom sitting at our old kitchen table, reading the Winnipeg Free Press. The third book has just been released and the article describes the frenzy of fans rushing to Chapters to get their copies. My mom is exclaiming in a dismayed voice about how troubling it is to see so many people are interested in a book filled so blatantly with witchcraft. She sees it as another sign that we're living in the Last Days.

I don't know if this was the moment I became intrigued by Harry Potter. I honestly can't remember when that was or what went through my head when I decided I wanted to read the books. But I know it was sometime around then that I bought the first book from our local Chapters. This was probably around 2000.

This wasn't the first contraband book I'd ever read (or even the first that I'd read and kept in the house). My reading of literature that went against the JW grain started in Grade 4 when my class read The Witches by Roald Dahl. I wasn't allowed to read it, of course. So while my class would gather on the floor around my teacher while she read, I was sent to play Winnie the Pooh on the computer.... all the way on the other side of the room. Noteworthy is the fact that the other side of a room is rarely out of hearing distance. It certainly wasn't in this case. As I played I couldn't help but hear the story being read aloud and finally I didn't even bother trying not to listen. To this day, The Witches is one of my favorite "kids books." (If you've never read it, read it - its fantastic!)

The next "turning point" (although at the time I'd never have called or recognized this as such) was reading the Chronicles of Narnia. My teacher had the entire set in our classroom reading section and she recommended them to me (she remains one of my favorite teachers to this day... unfortunately I can't remember her name).

I picked up The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and couldn't put it down. I was so into that book! I had never, ever read a book as good before and I was in heaven. I went through the whole series as fast as I could. I brought them home from school with me - getting them past my parents somehow. In fact, I remember reading them on the couch just before our family study began and being reprimanded by my dad - not because of the book but because I was reading when I should have been getting my Bible. They didn't even notice the title (that time).

And so it went - through our entire time at home, my sister and I read books that deep down we knew our parents and our congregation (church) wouldn't have approved of us reading. But that didn't stop us.

Why? Were we just willfully disobedient and rebellious? Well, partially yes - we were pretty stubborn kids and I feel sorry for my parents somewhat, in hindsight, and hope that my kids aren't as stubborn and bratty as we were at times. But at the same time, I've always thought of our stubbornness - when it came to challenging authority - as rather special and something to be proud of. It meant that we always questioned things - even things we were told we shouldn't question and that we were being taught as "gospel truth." This didn't mean that we didn't believe - at least, I know I did - but we never saw a problem with debating our beliefs in order to understand them more fully or to see if there was another way of doing something or interpreting something. (For me, this was particularly when it came to the JW interpretation of womens' role in the church - it began when I was 12.) I don't think it was until much later that we realized that there would never be another way and that challenging would never do any good because this was very definitely not a democratic or egalitarian religion. And I never would have thought that asking questions would ever get us into so much trouble.

Of course, we weren't reading books because we wanted to get into Satanism or the occult or even because we were purposely trying to piss off our parents'. We were reading because we couldn't help being drawn to good books and that was that. Coincidentally, the good books were often the ones with the timeless stories of good verses evil. Just because the books featured magic didn't mean we weren't going to dismiss them. We refused to believe that magic in itself was an evil thing (or, in my case, that it even existed in real life and not just in a story as something fictional and intangible). In all of the stories we read, there were always two sides and the good side always won - the right side, the god-approved side, or even, in my interpretation of things, the "JW side."

Plus, our friends were bending the rules, too - only in slightly different ways. They'd listen to music with explicit lyrics (I still remember the first time I listened to Shawn's Redman CD and my horrified reaction) or get drunk at parties or go to dance at "worldly" clubs or "school date" worldly boys (oh, man, I can't believe we had a term for that), and they had no problem with watch the Lord of the Rings movies when they came out. What we were doing seemed pretty tame in comparison.

Of course, ultimately it ended up being the reason for everything.

So back to Harry Potter. One of my other not-so-sweet memories is of my dad finding one of my HP books and ripping it into pieces in front of my sister and I. Another not-so-sweet one is of my dad going through the books that my sister had been given by the Claw and taking all of the ones he thought looked questionable, putting them in the car, and tossing them into random dumpsters. For two girls who loved books as much as we did (do), this was a travesty and there were tears and rage.

Its weird to remember all of this right now, actually. But as I think back on it, I notice that we were always on the side of the books. Always. Knowledge - no matter what the cost?

When we were called in for "questioning" before our church elders, I defended the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter even then and chimed in when Karina defended herself for having taken out "questionable" books on evolution out from the public library. (I remember using the good verses evil argument, but comparing Frodo to Jesus - not explicitly, but I guess it was pretty much implied - didn't really go over very well.) In hindsight, this was of course incredibly stupid of me and I should have realized how it would have been taken as a sign of deviance and rebellion.

But then, I've never been very good at keeping my mouth shut when I think that someone or something is wrong. Something wells up inside of me and I have to speak out (Jeremiah 20:9). And, even though it ultimately ended up with our leaving them, I still credit the JWs with giving us all this boldness. I still see it in each of us and I think that its one of the more admirable parts of our characters.

Back to Harry Potter again. I've lost a lot in the way of family and friends, but I've gained the freedom to read whatever I choose. I think my indulgence in HP fandom is the way I exercise this right.

And now, with that abrupt conclusion, I'm off to the release party in the park. Its going to be a historical night.

A conflict of interest

Emma Bull and Will Shetterly are going to be at the Grant Park McNally Robinson next Wednesday at 7:30pm. Going to see them would be so deliciously ultra-geeky. I don't think I've ever met an author I've loved in person before. The closest I've ever come was talking to Carol Matas on the phone (by total fluke). That in itself was a pretty neat experience. (I think I even gushed a little bit.)

However, Wednesday night is also my final Religious Studies class... and we're going to be reviewing for our final exam.

Grrr.

Oh, what to do...

The Abduction

Some things I do not profess
to understand, perhaps
not wanting to, including
whatever it was they did
with you or you with them
that timeless summer day
when you stumbled out of the wood,
distracted, with your white blouse torn
and a bloodstain on your skirt.
"Do you believe?" you asked.
Between us, through the years,
we pieced enough together
to make the story real:
how you encountered on the path
a pack of sleek, grey hounds,
trailed by a dumbshow retinue
in leather shrouds; and how
you were led, through leafy ways,
into the presence of a royal stag,
flaming in his chestnut coat,
who kneeled on a swale of moss
before you; and how you were borne
aloft in triumph through the green,
stretched on his rack of budding horn,
till suddenly you found yourself alone
in a trampled clearing.

That was a long time ago,
almost another age, but even now,
when I hold you in my arms,
I wonder where you are.
Sometimes I wake to hear
the engines of the night thrumming
outside the east bay window
on the lawn spreading to the rose garden.
You lie beside me in elegant repose,
a hint of transport hovering on your lips,
indifferent to the harsh green flares
that swivel through the room,
searchlights controlled by unseen hands.
Out there is a childhood country,
bleached faces peering in
with coals for eyes.
Our lives are spinning out
from world to world;
the shapes of things
are shifting in the wind.
What do we know
beyond the rapture and the dread?

by Stanley Kunitz

For I am persuaded

"Buried with my own hands five of my children in a single grave... No bells. No tears. This is the end of the world." - Agniola Di Tura, Siena 1347

I just finished Connie Willis' Doomsday Book and despite a few quibbles I ended up liking it very much. I'm not going to write a regurgitated synopsis of the book - if you want to know what its about you can read the Amazon or Wiki synopses. Instead I'm going to cheat and mostly just take snippets from the email conversation Elliot and I had about it earlier today. Oh, and there will be spoilers.

First, a couple of things I found frustrating about the book:

-1 - The illogic of dropping a female historian in a forest in the Middle Ages and expecting her not to be taken too far away from the drop location and for her to be able to find it again in 2 weeks with little trouble; when Dunworthy and Colin go back to find Kivrin they have a *locator device* with them - so what, they can break the rules when its an emergency but not to prevent one? In my mind the fact that the entire plot centered around a drop that went wrong, but didn't have to have gone wrong in quite that way detracted from the realism of the book. (I mean, I know academics are supposed to be a little off, but c'mon!) And I know that Kivrin's being taken away from and not being able to relocate the drop was integral to the plot, but I feel like Willis could have achieved the same effect but set things up so that we didn't question the characters' intelligence as much.

- 2 - The sparsity of character development. You never learn anything about who Kivrin is - her family, her likes, her dislikes, her more private feelings (like for Roche). And the family she's with - Eliwys and Agnes and Rosumund and Imeyne and Gawyn - sometimes they feel like carricatures. Eliwys in particular - you never find out what she's thinking about anything and her dialogue makes her seem so dense. Its too bad because you suspect that she's really a fascinating character and has a story to tell but we're never allowed to hear it. (Actually one could easily make the same argument with Roche.)

And time and again when Kivrin was with Rosamund or Eliwys or Imeyne, I was so frustrated that she didn't ask them more things - like about Eliwys' sons and husband and why exactly they were in Bath (you never find out!) and how old the sons were and whether Eliwys' marriage was a happy one and etc etc - or even show more outright sympathy, rather then just implied sympathy. I mean, Rosamund is a 12 year old child bride who is clearly going through emotional hell and Kivrin recognizes that but does a baffling job of being encouraging. She pushes her towards doing her duty and rarely shares her own opinion of things. Maybe this is Willis trying to have Kivrin be an impartial historical observer, but one wonders who would really be capable of being such under the circumstances!

However, the second half of the book became so intense that I gave up objecting and just fell into it. Despite all I just said about the character development (and my objection stands!), you still manage to start loving the people as Kivrin does (Imeyne and Mrs. Gaddson excluded - I never did stop wanting to slap some sense into them).

Especially Father Roche - I think I developed a small crush on him - well, who wouldn't love a "cutthroat"? This led to Elliot (Claw of the Conciliator) and I having a mini-debate over whether things between Roche and Kivrin should have been *ahem* consummated (hmm... this lends a whole new meaning to "'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished"...). They never are. In fact, in most of what passes between them you have to read between the lines and guess at what they truly feel for each other.

Elliot says: "...chaste love can be very classy. And really, the 'priest-breaking-his-vows-for-love' trope has gotten kind of hackneyed. That idea comes up in The Child Goddess, an sf novel I just read, except in this case it's a futuristic female (Catholic) priest, who's broken her vows in the past and now is struggling against breaking them again with the married man she loves."

I say: "Unconsummated love is sometimes better. I kept thinking of how it would have worked if they had done anything and it might have wrecked things. Or it might have been totally awesome like the scene in The Name of the Rose..."

The Doomsday book is steeped in religion (for some reason I wanted to say "dunked," like a donut, but I stopped myself just in...). This is a pretty obvious statement when you think about just how Christianized Britain and Europe had become by the Middle Ages, but this didn't have to be the case for the parts Willis set in "present day" (actually the future - around 2200 AD). She chose to set the entire story - both Middle Age and present day - at Christmas time and include as much religious paraphernalia as she could cram in - complete with numerous visits to church(es), Latin chants, bell ringers and all. She tries to diversify a bit in her present day story by name-dropping a few non-Christian religions that exist, but you can tell her imagined world is at heart a very Christian one (well, at least, Britain specifically is). Though this is a bit annoying, she does manage to do a very good job of showing a broad spectrum of Christian faith - from the absolutely galling, jeremiad-spewing Mrs. Gaddson to the gentle, quiet, subtler faith of Father Roche - and many more in between.

And then there's Kivrin - who, despite my complaints above, is still a fantastic heroine and who goes through what can only be called hell-on-earth. She's swept up in the wake of the Black Death - the most horrific disease imaginable (though one contender has put forth the Ebola virus as a possible second), which historians - as Willis reminds us through Kivrin - believe wiped out up to seventy-five percent of Europe.

Elliot says: "I thought Doomsday had a really interesting and sophisticated ending. She rages against God, against the meaningless of it all, which is completely the right and understandable thing to do. I mean, it's the freakin' Black Plague. But then Willis weaves in these hints that Kirvin's presence was actually a blessing, that people who saw her as an angel weren't entirely wrong. The message I got was 'it's not *that* you die, but *how* you die that matters.'"

The questioning of faith and the questioning of time - in the world that Willis has created, a world in which the past is mind-blowingly accessible, Willis questions time's significance: when Kivrin is trapped in the Middle Ages and time is a barrier keeping her from home, friends, and family, there are moments where a feeling that all times are one time comes over her - that the past, present and future are all happening at once - Rosamund and Agnes and Mr. Dunworthy and Badri and Montoya and the Black Plague and Baliol - everything. At her most despairing, with death all around her, Kivrin speaks into her recorder: "Is God there, too, I wonder, but shut off from us by something worse then time, unable to get through, unable to find us?"

I don't think I'll ever be able to get certain lines of Shakespeare or the Bible out of my head, and when I'd finished the book, one came to mind: "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God."


P.S. Elliot says that in Willis' next book, which continues in the same world as the Doomsday Book, Kivrin is mentioned briefly and offhandedly as a church-goer.

After Harry...

"Vancouver’s Raincoast Books keeps its offices over a 44,000-square-foot warehouse on the banks of the Fraser River. As the Canadian publisher and distributor of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the company’s headquarters has become a kind of paean to Potter paraphernalia. When you walk in, pennants and a huge pair of handmade quilts — depicting cover art for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — frame the entranceway. Four conference rooms (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin) are named after the houses at Harry’s fictional alma mater, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And there’s a prominent spot for Rowling, too: her only visit to the complex, seven years ago, is captured in a large photograph hanging near the front desk."

An interesting article on what the last Harry Potter book will mean for Vancouver's Raincoast Books

(But really, I think the more important question should be: What will the last Harry Potter book mean for me!? )

The Golden Compass

The first book in His Dark Materials trilogy is being made into a movie and the trailer is out!* It looks quite good, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high because they could still mess about with it enough to make it just good, rather then spectacularly good (compare the LOTR movies to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for an example of this). I think Daniel makes a formidable looking Lord Asriel, just as should be; though I'm torn over Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter. There's something about her that's just so... vanilla. Kind of boring, not enough edge. Mrs. Coulter is a very tricky character - you're always uncertain whether she's good or evil or a mixture of both. I don't know if Nicole Kidman will be able to play her and show all of her... nuances, I guess. Hmm, let's see... If I were to have cast Mrs. Coulter, my top choices might be...

... actually, Angelina Jolie comes to mind and won't go away. You know that half-smile she's so good at (and usually over uses)? Well, that would actually be perfect for Mrs. Coulter... And she's definitely lushly beautiful enough...

_______________________
*Actually, the trailer may have been out for a while, but Karina just discovered it today!

Disiri of the Aelf

Her laugh was like nothing on earth. It was as if there were golden bells hanging among the flowers through a forest of the loveliest trees that could ever be, and a wind sighing there was ringing all the bells. When I could open my eyes again, I whispered, "Who are you? Really?"

"She you called." She smiled, not trying to hide her eyes anymore. Maybe a leopard would have eyes like those, but I kind of doubt it.

"I called Seaxneat's wife Disira. You aren't her."

"I am Disiri the Mossmaiden, and I have kissed you."

I could still feel her kiss, and her hair smelled of new-turned earth and sweet smoke.

"Men I have kissed cannot leave until I send them away."

I wanted to stand up then, but I knew I could never leave her. I said, "I'm not a man, Disiri, just a kid."

from THE KNIGHT
by Gene Wolfe
(p. 57)

A Literary Trinity

By way of the Claw...

Name up to three (Ha! three, my foot!) characters from books...

1). You wish were real so you could meet them.

Heroines
Janet Carter of Carterhaugh
Eddi McCandry of the Oaks
Friday
Elnora Cornstock of the Limberlost
Cim Glowing
Dorothea Brooke of Middlemarch

Heroes
Sir Able of the High Heart
Peter Pan of Neverland
James Cobham

2). You would like to be.

Claire Randall
Susan Voight
Disiri
Dr. Eleanor Ann Arroway

3). Who scare you.

Fear-Inducing Villains
Voldemort
Sauron
Mr. Croup & Mr. Vandemar of London Below

Formidable Adversaries
(These women don't so much terrify me as intimidate.)

Jadis, the White Witch
Professor Medeous
Mrs. Coulter
The Queen of Air and Darkness

P.S. Whoops! I forgot to say last night when I first posted this that I tag: Namor, Stars, and Lux! Actually, I'm tempted to tag Spark too - because I'm curious about what fiction books she's into! - but she seems to be very busy.

Rehearsing for battle

Fantasies of violence,
Breaking bottles on the wall,
Hungry for the motion, for the action,
For it all.

Road noise on the night street,
See the taillights through the blinds,
Out there where your dreams slide,
Toward the night side,
For it all.

For it all, for it all,
What you're aching for,
Where the magic's real and you're like a fire in the sky,
when the deal calls for a sacrifice
And you know you cannot die.
For the edge the best ones live on,
For it all.

You want to be a hero
With the axe about to fall,
You'd buy it for the love and for the glory,
For it all.

You want to dress in black,
And lose your heart beyond recall,
Hunt a dream through rain and thunder,
On your honor
For it all.

In your head, no car is fast enough,
In your heart, no love is true.
Will it ruin all your solitary fancies
If I tell you that it isn't only you?

Keep your ankle off the tailpipe,
Keep your bootheels off the street;
We'll hit the throttle, hit the redline,
We'll find the edge,
We'll make it sweet,
We'll go for it all.

~
"For It All" by Eddie and the Fey
(or, alternatively, performed by Emma and Cats Laughing)
from WAR FOR THE OAKS
by Emma Bull
pg 227-229


Sorry, the Scribblies have enraptured me this past week. Must have something to do with rereading Tam Lin. I'm enjoying it much too much. Mix that with the GG Season 2 and I won't need to leave the house for days! (Well, or until tomorrow when I have to leave to take some pictures...)

P.S. The photos are by fakeplasticstars

Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle

The Prince and the two children were standing with their heads hung down, their cheeks flushed, their eyes half closed; the strength all gone from them; the enchantment almost complete. But Puddleglum, desperately gathering all his strength, walked over to the fire. Then he did a very brave thing. He knew it wouldn't hurt him quite as much as it would hurt a human; for his feet (which were bare) were webbed and hard and cold-blooded like a duck's. But he knew it would hurt him badly enough; and so it did. With his bare foot he stamped on the fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes on the flat hearth. And three things happened at once.

First, the sweet heavy smell grew very much less. For though the whole fire had not been put out, a good bit of it had, and what remained smelled very largely of burnt Marsh-wiggle, which is not at all an enchanting smell. This instantly made everyone's brain far clearer. The Prince and the children held up their heads again and opened their eyes.

Secondly, the Witch, in a loud, terrible voice, utterly different now from all the sweet tones she had been using up till now, called out, "What are you doing? Dare to touch my fire again, mud-filth, and I'll turn the blood to fire inside your veins."

Thirdly, the pain itself made Puddleglum's head for a moment perfectly clear and he knew exactly what he really thought. There is nothing like a good shock of pain for dissolving certain kinds of magic.

"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say to that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentleman and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

THE SILVER CHAIR by C.S. Lewis
(pg 157-159)

It does sound an awful lot like Pascal's Wager; but its still a powerful little speech, isn't it?

The Dwarf tells of Prince Caspian...

"When the night came, and his various strange subjects came stealing into the Lawn by ones and twos and threes or by sixes and sevens - the moon then shining almost at her full - his heart swelled as he saw their numbers and heard their greetings. All who he had met were there: Bulgy Bears and Red Dwarfs and Black Dwarfs, Moles and Badgers, Hares and Hedgehogs, and others whom he had not yet seen - five satyrs as red as foxes, the whole contingent of Talking Mice, armed to the teeth and following a shrill trumpet, some Owls, the Old Raven of Ravenscaur. Last of all (and this took Caspian's breath away), with the centaurs came a small but genuine Giant, Wimbleweather of Deadman's hill, carrying on his back a basketful of rather seasick Dwarfs who had accepted his offer of a lift and were now wishing they had walked instead.

The Bulgy Bears were very anxious to have the feast first and leave the council till afterwards; perhaps tomorrow. Reepicheep and his Mice said that councils and feasts could both wait, and proposed storming Miraz in his own castle that very night. Pattertwig and the other squirrels said they could talk and eat at the same time, so why not have the council and feast all at once? The Moles proposed throwing up entrenchments round the Lawn before they did anything else. The Fauns thought it would be better to begin with a solemn dance. The Old Raven, while agreeing with the Bears that it would take too long to have a full council before supper, begged to be allowed to give a brief address to the whole company. But Caspian and the Centaurs and the Dwarfs over-ruled all these suggestions and insisted on holding a real Council of War at once."

from Prince Caspian by C. S. LEWIS

(Narnia map image by way of Into the Wardrobe)

"When I was born my father wished to name me
Seven Snows, which is a common name for girls
among our people. But I was born while he
was away in his boat; and before he returned,
my mother had left her bed and seen the Cim
blowing from tree to tree like a soft star in
the air, and completed the naming."

CIM GLOWING


From the Gene Wolfe story Tracking Song.

(There are many ways I imagine Cim Glowing might look. This is just one of them.)

FINAL FANTASY XII

As I play FFXII (12), I'm reminded a lot of Guy Gavriel Kay - especially his style in A Song for Arbonne and The Lions of al-Rassan. The essential components seem to be: an intricate plot revolving around political intrigue, fighting between multiple factions, a lush Mediterranean-esque setting, with high romance and adventure carried out by intensely passionate and beautiful people (all of the FF characters are stunningly perfect physically - just like those in a GGK book *sigh*) who dash from one kingdom to another on their quest to save the realm of [insert name of the main character's homeland].

Reasons I'm in love with FFXII:

1 - The graphics: I'm spoiled. You know those diehard fans of FF who started playing at FFI and think that it was just grand? Well, I'm not one of you. I get no pleasure out of playing a game - a game that involves hours and hours of sitting and staring at a screen - that is not enjoyable to look at. The graphics in FFXII are colorful, rich, and full of detail. The designers traveled to the Middle East and the Mediterranean in their search for inspiration and it certainly tells.

2 - A major leap in dialogue quality. FFXII seems to be trying for a semi-Victorian formality in its language. I don't care if its a historical rip-off - its still extremely refreshing to hear the characters speak using a creative vocabulary.

3 - Ivalice is 'a fully realized world': For the first time, I feel like I am playing in a book. A very good book.

4 - The characters are unique and intriguing. You wonder about their relationships with each other and want to learn more about them. They're not caricatures; they possess little quirks and mannerisms that endear them to you. I'm particularly curious about Balthier (that's him to the left). He's a "rakish sky pirate" with a sarcastic wit whose partner in crime (no pun there) is Fran, a lovely Viera. The Viera are (from what I can tell, and this is going to sound a bit funny but strangely it works quite well graphically) a half-woman/half-rabbit race that - like Tolkiens' elves - have an amazingly long life span and are bound to the Woods they live in. Fran is a Viera-exception since she left the Woods to travel with Balthier and in doing so broke her ties with the Wood's Voice and thus is shunned by her sister-Viera. Fran and Balthier's relationship with each other is hard to decipher - they're extremely close and he's very protective of her but are they together romantically or just close friends? Fran is hundreds of years old, while Balthier is only twenty-two so it would be quite an odd romantic relationship I suppose...

Anyhow, I'll leave off in my silly speculations and instead direct you to a fantastically written review of the game which probably describes things much better then I ever could (although I disagree with the writer's description of Fran's voice acting - I think she is supposed to sound subdued considering her age and background).

I dreamed I went to Heaven...

I dreamed I went to Heaven, once, and in the bookshop there
I went, the way I always go, to R.
Even though I've all the Renault, even though it isn't fair,
Even though I know there won't be any more.

And there were six new Renaults, six new books I've never seen,
Six unknown books she'd written since she died,
And I picked them up and held them feeling happy as a queen,
And a voice said, "Have you looked the other side?"

"There are four new Tolkiens waiting, he could never write them fast,
There are thirty Heinleins, written at his best,
There is Piper, there's Dunsany, there's more Sayers here at last,
And O'Brian, and Zelazny, and the rest."

And I staggered there in Heaven, as my arms and eyes spilled o'er,
And I said "Now where to start I just don't know,
I am rich in wealth of Heaven's books, here gathered on the floor,
Amd four hundred years of Shakespeare still to go!"

(June 2000)

from PAPERSKY