heliopausa

For me, in summer, it's the longest day, and shaping to be another long, hot one; I love summer, or the thought of summer, but one can have too much of a good thing. 
Still, one good thing summer has been bringing has been the mangoes from next-door-but-one's tree, thudding down into the front yard here - it's a big tree, and the houses are built very close together, so they fall into several yards, as well as into the lane..
I have been thriftily picking them up, the ones in the yard, not in the lane, and eating them, unless the ants have got to them first - or else when there's too many accumulated, I've been slicing them up and freezing the pulp.  The ants get to quite a few, though, because a ripe mango falling on a brick-paved courtyard - well, you follow.  But this morning, hooray!  There were two, and with skin unbroken.  :)

We have been having very heavy rains of later, in short bursts - so heavy that it seems amazing that so much could have been up there to start with.  Of course, this means floods and landslides and much loss and sadness in the mountain areas, but here in the city there's very little flooding, and blessedly no buildings collapsing that I've heard of (not that I'd expect them to, but the city is built on river delta land, not on solid rock, so it's possible, especially where people might have built their home themselves, piecemeal). 
The wetness has been a pleasure to the three quiet toads who live in our garden, at least.  They are Big, Middle and Little, and like to lurk under damp things - leaves or the edges of the old lily-bowl.  (Garden is a bit of exaggeration - there's a small paved yard, and in the corner a quadrant of earth, about a metre/four foot in radius.  Not big, but big enough for three toads.)

There was a break in the weather on Sunday, and we took advantage of it to take a walk through the back lanes, and as it happened, found ourselves passing the Water Temple complex - it's not a big complex, but one with a long history, and with two temples, and multiple side-altars and shrines.  It was marking a great day of some sort - the day wasn't in itself especially auspicious in the general calendar, so I think possibly the festival ceremonies were for particular community or family occasions, such as an upcoming marriage - there was a young couple front-and-centre in the side temple - but then again it's just over a week since the birthday/translation day of Princess Steadfast Jade, who is linked (if I've got my history and translations right) to this temple, and possibly it was just her celebration happening late.  (It may have been two different events just happening in both temples at the same time, too.)

Anyway, everything was very splendid, with big paper horses and paper elephants and slightly smaller paper boats with dragon prows, and multitudes of paper guards and attendants, some with swords and some with cymbals, and of course real people as well...  :)   Most of the horses were lined up in front of the central temple, but the side temple had one horse and one elephant and one boat; the paper attendants were too many to count (ie while behaving properly, as opposed to standing up and craning!) in both places.  In the central temple there were preparatory prayers going on when we first arrived, and then later the shaman/priest began to embody different personas, with different costumes and characteristics - the Forest Princess who dances, the General who declares, with swordplay, his determination to see justice, and so on.  Meanwhile, in the side-temple, a scholar/priest was reading and chanting and striking a wooden bell, while people sat quietly and listened. 

And here are some photos!  :)


The elephant stands proudly with eight horses in front of the central temple.  Every horse has a groom, but the sage elephant stands alone. :)





Mandarins and Generals and advisors as attendants in the side temple.  (The thing that looks like an airconditioning duct is a snake - snakes wind around through the rafters.)




Musicians and ladies-in-waiting and a Queen (?) stand in attendance on the left-hand side of the side-temple; the side-altar is like a cave because the Mother-Goddess devotion is very nature-linked, very much seen in terms of mountains and forests.

Well, "all this"  is probably false advertising, but here's two things which caught my eye in the morning's news:

Horse-snowboarding!  A new snow sport. (link goes to German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, with link to video, 1 min 40 seconds.)

This one doesn't reflect well on me, because the article is about serious stuff (refugees in Belgrade) but I was distracted by the photo that went with it.  It struck me as very Caravaggiesque, in the bold perspective as well as in the light-and-dark of it. At first I didn't understand what the main figure was doing; his lifted hand seemed to me to be raised in recognition of significance, or maybe sheltering/shielding the other figure - which was my misreading entirely, of course, but I thought I'd share the picture with you nonetheless.  (And the article's good, too.)

Okay! Resolutions - ( How did I go in 2016? )
and

( So what's the plan for 2017? )

There!  The long-delayed New Year's resolutions post is done - and now to make a sticky post to record books I've read, as I read them, in 2017

I wish I had the energy to write the post you all deserve.  But since I haven't, here's the last few days in point form:
- I have turned a heel, and done the next bit as well, and am nearly down to the toe of Sock One.
- I saw a motor-bike which was 1800cc, which was bigger than any motorbike I have ever seen.
- I walked along a nearly deserted and nearly, nearly plastic-free beach (just one bit of pen, and one bit of ice-cream container in more than a kilometre), which ended in mangroves.  Oh, and the sea was unutterably beautiful - or if not unutterably, beyond me right now to describe.
- I've travelled many miles, but not over hedges and stiles.
- I've cleaned up after a bee invasion (down the chimney) but not yet blocked the bees.  Tomorrow.  :)

November already.  It's shaping to be a busy month, but less stressful than October, anyway.  (Sympathy and support, by the way, to those of you anxiously waiting to vote, or to hear the results, in the US elections.)

This month is my last chance to make a dash for completion - even beginning! - of my New Year's resolutions.  One resolution was to knit (for the first time ever) a pair of socks; it's not begun - not even the wool bought, or the pattern sorted.  I'll try for those essential beginnings this week, at least. 
And there was also Chinese character-learning... well, eight weeks to go!

Shakespeare!  The stageoffools Shakespeare fest has happened, and gone public.  To my delight I was given a terrific reworking of Hamlet: I am to do a good turn for them, by days_of_storm.  It's a great story, reworking Hamlet's canonical account of kidnap by a pirate ship to reveal very different underlying realities - I won't spoil anything, but I will say that days_of_storm gave us a wonderfully Macchiavellian Hamlet, quick, intelligent and hard as nails.  As Horatio nearly says - what a king he might have been!  (I always thought the pirate story sounded suss.  :D )

More on Hamlet - and other Shakespeare-related matters - tomorrow.  :)

I hope I manage to see it rising tonight - of course (of course!) I'm double-booked with a lecture, but still, one can hope.  It's Mid-autumn Festival, which has (I'm told) different meanings in different places, but here is for children, with lanterns, masks, presents and parties.  For the last few days there's been a buzz of the excitement approaching, and little children seen unexpectedly in party dresses, or carrying boxes of mooncakes home, or selecting with great care their masks at shops or stalls, and this morning there were signs in the community space - one long paper chain strung all across the yard, and slightly squashy rained-on balloons hanging from it at intervals - that there'd been a party there last night (tonight is more for families). 

This is also Narnia Fic Exchange time - twenty-three brand-new stories, all beautifully crafted to fit recipients' prompts, and being eagerly devoured as I write. as always, there's a terrific range of stories-wildly cracky, intricate histories, domestic vignettes,full-blown erotica... is there a detective story in there?  I bet there is,somewhere!  They range right through the Narnia canon, too, from pre-TMN to well post TLB. I've started reading, and will be having lots of fun catching up with all the stories in scattered bursts over the next few days. Recommended!

Otherwise, life for me is plunging into seasonal busy-ness.The rest of this month, and the two following will probably be pretty flat-out. (Shakespeare still to be shoe-horned in there somehow.)   But pretty flat-out doesn't mean only work!  Expect reports on concerts, - oh, and travel planned for next full moon!   Which I've already arranged to be free for, to see rising! How's that for forethoughtfulness! :D

Late addition:  I did see the moon, though not rising, and it was looking like the squashy balloons left after the party.  The full moon we were celebrating was a calendar full moon, not an astronomical full moon!  Real full moon, any day now!

The weekend was crammed full of things, so I didn't get around to reading or posting much - and the week is also looking pretty full-on - but yes! there's still time for self-indulgence and various cultural excitements.  Not the terrific free lecture with excerpts and explanations of the puppetry of Bao Ha village, though - it was crammed full by the time we got there.  But never mind, there was a very nice indeed new (to me) patisserie nearby (cue: tarte framboise and iced coffee) and I was also able to spend some time in a bookshop buying delayed birthday presents for a quasi-godchild plus bonus treat of a new big Vietnamese-English dictionary for me.

and later that night culture reigned! in that I continued the Season Eighteen Old Who project,and saw the story titled "Full Circle", with the introduction of the mysterious adric  ( Read more... )


There's a Shakespeare story exchange happening! on both LJ and DW - I'm pondering it as a possible way to help rejig my story-writing zest.  :)  I'd have to find four plays (excluding histories) that I'd feel capable of writing a thousand words on, to an unknown prompt, sometime in September.   Hhhmmm... 

and as mentioned previously, an ongoing salute to International Year of Pulses - this time, courtesy of asakiyume , Spicy Roasted Chickpeas, a pleasingly spicy snack, involving cayenne pepper and chickpeas. Thank you, asakiyume !  I snacked on them through the weekend, and ate them all up!

Of interest mostly to australians: ( about the census. )

Literature!  Theatre!  Music!  and a swimming pool!!  It was a brilliant, brilliant weekend.  Oh, and on Friday night, a spectacular and silent lightning storm.  amazing!

The theatre wasn't really on the weekend - it was on Thursday night, but near enough, near enough - and it was terrific.  Sombre in places, and theatre-of-ideas in places (difficult, because I don't have enough language to follow the debates) and romance in places (pah, humbug!) and obligatory funny bits in places (ummm) but still - exciting production, and I loved the sets and the acting, and the ideas, very much.

The lightning storm - how far away does lightning have to be, to be completely silent?  It was amazing and beautiful, a huge storm around a whole quarter of the sky.

I started, and read most of, The Just City - which I'm enjoying, though not without niggles; it feels a bit two-bob-each-way between a novel and a fable, as if in all fairness (because it's a fable,a thought experiment) one shouldn't fret too much about characters or history or finicky pedantic points. (Not every number, Apollo!  You mean every number up to twelve!)  But it's fun watching the experiment work out (doomed to fail! - at least, it seems to me that it has been, but I see there's sequels, which suggests the experiment doesn't end in this volume, anyway) - and in general it's very enjoyable, and a huge step up from Hild. (I bought them both in the same bookshop swoop, last March.)  It reminds me of how Martin Gardner used to wrap up his mathematical/logic problems in very appealing and amusing mini-stories. 

The music was - still is - the Sydney Piano Competition, available via internet for a limited number of days - I think it's four weeks from when they were broadcast.  Here's the first set of three finalists, in the 19th/20th Century concerto section, playing Saint-Saens (an odd choice for competition playing), Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev.   So there were swathes of music throughout the weekend.

and swimming for hours!  This is a rare treat, and the opportunity was not wasted, not for a minute, in this hot weather!  I say, swimming, but a good bit of the time - nearly all the time - was also just splashing about, or standing chatting in the watery shade.  ahhhhh...  :)

So, all up, a great weekend.  :)

My life is at sixes and sevens again, but to at least be posting something here are three idle thoughts, and a question.

1. Trollope is hideously unfair to the Marchioness of Hartletop. ( Read more... )

2. I read a short piece in the Guardian about what is and isn't proper grammar - it was very scathing about the use of 'amongst', saying:
"How longeth wilt thou persist with “amongst” and “whilst”? Yea though thine prose doth ring fanciful, long hath the “st” lain banish’d ’pon the pebbl’d shore. (These days, it’s always “among” and “while”.)"

Bah, humbug! 'amongst' is a perfectly good word, and I will jolly well continue to use it any time I feel like it. (also, "How longeth" is simply silly.)

3. I think the science here is open to doubt, because the CSIRO say so, but it's interesting in itself, and also for a glimpse of a very country Greens Party pollie in australia: the Condamine river, famed in song and story, set on fire. (videolink, one minute.)

and the question:
Four years ago, just about, I posted my first ever fanfic to fanfiction.net. Is it worth overhauling it, smoothing off some of the rough edges, and reposting it on ao3 - or is that boring? (This is partly inspired by seeing someone asking for fics starring older characters, which this does.)

Life is getting busier and busier in the streets around me - everyone's gearing up for Tet, with frantic cleaning and gift-buying and planning to get back home (wherever home is).  Last weekend, though, ( Read more... )

For those interested in the diplomatic side of environmental matters: ( Read more... )

Fandom is bustling,too, with many challenges and fests happening - including halfamoon: 14 days of celebrating women.  I'm thinking hard about what I can contribute.  Recs? Meta? Maybe I'll seize a prompt.  Can't let the chance go by to join the celebration, anyway!

From Ethiopia - the Lion returns.  This, the dark-maned largest lion, is the kind I've preferred to write as aslan in my Narnian fanfic. 

Speaking of Narnia:  over on the NFFR site the Narnia LWW Reread has reached Chapter Twelve, with some very interesting meta, sources, questions, suggestions...

after last week's complex-character exertions ( :P to all those laughing!) it's back to the simple side for this week's character!  天

and in the tiny domestic triumphs department:  the last of the missing socks has revealed itself!  My sock-bag is now only holding pairs!