Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

This weekend I’ll be at TusCon 53, though only on Saturday the 14th (we have scheduling constraints). In addition being part of a group reading (I’ll probably bring a Tang ghost poem or two), I’m on two panels:

Let’s Create a New Mythology - From drafting an epic fantasy to building an immersive tabletop experience, mythology can be the critical ingredient for a memorable story. These storytellers will guide you on a journey of creation and share their insights for building a new mythology for your unique story. (9-10am)

Studio Ghibli and the Modern Fairy Tale - Since time immemorial, humanity has used narrative to digest complex experiences and emotions. In this panel, we’ll discuss how Studio Ghibli and its auteurs utilized a mythpoetic narrative structure to navigate the nuances of love, war, loss, and the consequences of industrialization. (4-5pm)

Ought to be fun. Anyone in town interested in a chill traditional sf/f con experience, come on by.

---L.

Subject quote from All Things to All Men, The Cinematic Orchestra ft. Roots Manuva.

For Poetry Monday:

The Egg-Shell, Rudyard Kipling

The wind took off with the sunset—
    The fog came up with the tide,
When the Witch of the North took an Egg-shell
    With a little Blue Devil inside.
“Sink,” she said, “or swim,” she said,
    “It’s all you will get from me.
And that is the finish of him!” she said,
    And the Egg-shell went to sea.

The wind fell dead with the midnight—
    The fog shut down like a sheet,
When the Witch of the North heard the Egg-shell
    Feeling by hand for a fleet.
“Get!” she said, “or you’re gone,” she said,
    But the little Blue Devil said “No!”
“The sights are just coming on,” he said,
    And he let the Whitehead go.

The wind got up with the morning—
    The fog blew off with the rain,
When the Witch of the North saw the Egg-shell
    And the little Blue Devil again.
“Did you swim?” she said. “Did you sink?” she said,
    And the little Blue Devil replied:
“For myself I swam, but I think,” he said,
    “There’s somebody sinking outside.”


The first and third stanza were first published as a chapter heading to “Their Lawful Occasions” in Traffics and Discoveries (1904), and the second was added when collected in Songs from Books (1912). This is a coded retelling of events from the story: an Egg-shell is a torpedo-boat (which was built lightly for speed), Royal Navy officers of the time wore blue uniforms, and Whitehead was slang for a self-powered torpedo, invented by one Robert Whitehead, and the someone sinking is another boat (or rather, per the story, two boats hit in friendly fire while strictly obeying orders).

---L.

Subject quote from The Death Lay of Bowie Gizzardsbane, John Meyers Meyers.

For Poetry Monday:

New Mexico, Mark Kirschen

It might begin again here:
A desert circled by wind and mountains
Where life-forms move
Under miles of silent light
And into the sockets
Of cow-skulls for shade

A desert where love is
Related only to small pools
Of water—
Cool mercy of the water
That mirrors at night
The hotter light of the stars


Kirschen (1948-1980) was a Long Island poet who committed suicide a few weeks after the 1980 publication of his first and only collection, Pier’s End (1980).

---L.

Subject quote from The Boxer, Simon & Garfunkel.

For Poetry Monday:

Grace, Wendell Barry (ambiguous referent for “it”)

The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”


---L.

Subject quote from Gwilan’s Harp, Ursula K. Le Guin.

A few links for all of us:

226 photos by Ansel Adams, mostly from 1941, mostly of western National Parks, commissioned for a mural. (via)

Weird Al’s The Brain Song. (via)

Hack’s Law: Every stream on Earth has a length that’s proportional to its drainage area raised to the power of 0.6 (so L ~ A^0.6). There’s some variation based on local conditions, but this is still really strange and really interesting. (via lost)

Thread of stories older than the Torah also told in the Torah. (via lost)

---L.

Subject quote from Doubt Comes In, Anaïs Mitchell, which is on-point only in it’s also telling an older story.

For Poetry Monday:

The Book of the World, William Drummond

Of this fair volume which we World do name,
If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care,
Of him who it corrects, and did it frame,
We clear might read the art and wisdom rare;
Find out his power which wildest powers doth tame,
His providence extending everywhere,
His justice which proud rebels doth not spare,
In every page, no, period of the same.
But silly we, like foolish children, rest
Well pleased with colored vellum, leaves of gold,
Fair dangling ribbons, leaving what is best,
On the great Writer’s sense ne’er taking hold;
Or, if by chance we stay our minds on aught,
It is some picture on the margin wrought.


Drummond (1585-1649) was laird of Hawthornden and a Scottish follower of Spenser who nonetheless was a friend of Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson. The shift from generalities to more and more particular details is brilliant.

---L.

Subject quote from The Fly, U2.

One of Eaglet’s projects over the summer, alongside working on their photography, was to rework their personal style. The result was switching from funny graphic t-shirts and athletic shorts, grabbed without attention to color, to plain t-shirts coordinated with jeans or cargo pants.* Making this happen required a lot of thrifting, and along the way they’ve been picking up other objects—some to try to flip for profit, but also some for their own use. (One such was a second camera, a film one. They now know that film is both fussier and more expensive to deal with than digital.)

Their most recent thrift find was a decent, functional turntable at a steal of a price. Which of course requires LPs, which they now know are another thing more expensive than digital.

Which brings me to their last summer project, which was to explore with their trumpet teacher other brass and wind instruments. This was fun but brought them back to preferring trumpet, at least for now. With that renewed dedication, they started finding and practicing unassigned pieces at or just above their current level. Which, go Eaglet.

One result is that they’ve become something of a fan of Herb Alpert.** It turns out it’s not all that hard to find old Herb Alpert albums cheap. But not, unfortunately, the album Eaglet really wants, the iconic Whipped Cream & Other Delights.***

They are debating buying it new, even though this will cut into savings otherwise devoted to video-games. Which is, like, serious dilemma.

ETA: As of this afternoon, Eaglet is officially collecting Herb Alpert, even the stuff from the 80s 😂


* Also switching their hair to center-parted. Undoing a decade of side-parting has been a couple months of work and it still hasn’t fully taken.
** A fandom shared with and encouraged by their trumpet teacher. He’s still touring at 91, and will return to our state in December.
*** They are now amused rather than baffled by that cover. Ah, puberty.

---L.

Subject quote from When the Chips Are Down, Anaïs Mitchell feat. The Haden Triplets.

TIL that in mainline Pokémon games, if your party is full when you catch a wild pokémon, if goes into computer storage.

For three years, I’ve been leaving a couple slots open and finding a town to offload what I catch. This —

This changes strategy so much.

—L.

Subject quote from the cure, Olivia Rodrigo.

For Poetry Monday, more weather aspirations:

Autumn: A Dirge, Percy Shelley

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
            And the year
On the earth her deathbed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
                Is lying.
        Come, months, come away,
        From November to May,
        In your saddest array;
        Follow the bier
        Of the dead cold year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
            For the year;
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
            To his dwelling;
        Come, months, come away,
        Put on white, black, and gray;
        Let your light sisters play—
        Ye, follow the bier
        Of the dead cold year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.


First published, like so many of Shelley’s best lyrics, in Posthumous Poems (1824) and has been set, like so many of Shelley’s lyrics period, to music many times.

---L.

Subject quote from Way Down Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchell.

For Poetry Monday, something in the way of weather aspirations:

The Autumn, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
    And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
    Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them—
    The summer flowers depart—
Sit still—as all transformed to stone,
    Except your musing heart.

How there you sat in summer-time,
    May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
    Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
    You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
    Doth cause a leaf to fall.

Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth
    That flesh and dust impart:
We cannot bear its visitings,
    When change is on the heart.
Gay words and jests may make us smile,
    When Sorrow is asleep;
But other things must make us smile,
    When Sorrow bids us weep!

The dearest hands that clasp our hands,—
    Their presence may be o’er;
The dearest voice that meets our ear,
    That tone may come no more!
Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,
    Which once refreshed our mind,
Shall come—as, on those sighing woods,
    The chilling autumn wind.

Hear not the wind—view not the woods;
    Look out o’er vale and hill—
In spring, the sky encircled them—
    The sky is round them still.
Come autumn’s scathe—come winter’s cold —
    Come change—and human fate!
Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,
    Can ne’er be desolate.


---L.

Subject quote from Everybody Hurts, R.E.M.