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One of my favorite words is palimpsest. It is a great crunchy specific word, with the potential for really lovely metaphor.
I will now use it in a sentence:
We are all palimpsests, never truly free of what we once were.
Now if you want (or if you want a gold star from teacher) you may use it in a sentence. It’s zany fun, English-major style!
I bring you these wise words from our Presidedent. They are sponsored by “They Misunderestimated Me! The Very Curious Language of George W. Bush”, a daily calendar we have at work. I dislike this calendar, because it depresses me and makes me inch closer to an ulcer before the age of 30.
Sometimes I want to be this guy’s English teacher so much I swear he must hear a spectral voice saying, “George! One more spitball and I’ll have you doing double spelling homework this week! I don’t care who your father is!” Most of these quotes are on the comprehension/American History and Government side though.
Without further ado:
Going to post something a little different here. This is a background story for a character I wrote for a roleplaying game. I have not yet gotten to play this character, so this is about as far as the story goes. If you want to know more about the game or are confused in general, just post your questions.
This is for a roleplaying game called Exalted. It’s an epic fantasy game, set in a very detailed and varied world. Here’s some stuff that will help you with my story. Skip it if you want.
One further proviso: For roleplaying backstories, I don’t care as much about language as plot and character-building, so this may not be my most beautimous verbiage ever.
Exquisite Stillness of Jasmine Blossoms was born into the service
of Ledaal Kebok Omeger, an Air Aspected wizard, courtier, and Power
within the tangled courts of the Realm. The self-contained world of the
servants’ quarters was her playground, and the airy marble halls of the
palace itself, glowing of themselves like ivory skin, were her temple.
Her mother was a fifth generation Palace Servant, Dragonfly’s Shadow
on the Water. She had never dropped a dish, never spoke or stepped too
loudly, never offended the nose of her master or his guests with a breath
that spoke of food, never let them see her sad, tired, or disapproving.
This is not slavery, this is service. It is not shame, it is honour.
Her mother was pretty, with pale ivory skin and hair the same shade.
This was part of her perfection, and part of the reason she was high in
the ranks of the Palace servants. Only those whose color matched the
high walls could wait upon the master in company, or see to the needs
of his most favored guests.
The only thing her mother ever did that caused even a murmur of
disapproval was bind herself to Dato the Silent Hand for children.
Dato the Silent Hand was also a loyal servant of House Ledaal, worthy
of respect and a master of his art, but his art was of the world, and
his place was in it. There was much talk that this binding was not for
children, truly, but for love. The Principal Source of Savory Enjoyments
said that such a binding was above the station of a Palace Servant.
The Master of Coach and Rapid Conveyance muttered that such a fancy was
below the dignity of a Palace Servant. Dragonfly’s Shadow on the Water
heeded neither murmur, and invited the world into her bedchamber in the
person of the Silent Hand.
The Silent Hand was from the Western Isles, though he had learned the
ways of the Realm and was always, outwardly, correct. His hair was a
shocking blue and his skin was swarthy. He was one of the House’s most
trusted assassins. He met Dragonfly’s Shadow in the Palace Kitchens,
when he had an assignment in the Court. Her hands shook under his
gaze, and the other servants were amazed at her lack of self-posession.
They spoke that once, then again, six months later. They were bound
after only two conversations. He continued to be at the disposal of
the House — it was only proper, and Dragonfly’s Shadow would not have
had it any other way. He was often away.
Exquisite Stillness of Jasmine Blossoms was born in the second year of
her parents’ binding. Her father was away, but her mother stroked her
silky head and saw that the consequences of her rash passion would strike
not her, but the child, who was innocent of it. Among the child’s downy
white hairs there was a stark streak of blue. Small, but unmistakable.
Cupping her hand over the child’s head until the midwife had left, she
carefully twisted each bright hair around her pale finger and pulled.
Then she comforted the child as she cried. Every day of her life,
upon waking, the young girl knelt with her mother and bit her lip as
Dragonfly’s Shadow carefully plucked out the offending hairs, which
threatened to break the line of Palace Servants and cast her family into
dishonour, and out into the world.
Exquisite Stillness of Jasmine Blossoms learned to be a servant.
In the careful symmetry of her master’s house, she served the children
of important guests from far away. Children, the servants said,
do not notice small imperfections — only large ones. Children,
they also mused, can be cruel — it is well for a servant to learn
tranquillity before she has learned pride. She learned to speak to all
people with respect. To disrespect from superiors, she did not listen
or attend, only reflecting inwardly how shocking such behavior was.
To disrespect from inferiors, she must respond with gentle correction.
If gentle correction proved useless, correction must be administered
more severely — in the case of an inferior servant, correction could
graduate from mild remonstrance right up to a private beating, and from
a private beating up to a public castigation. She learned to listen,
and report only to those in authority. She learned to be a warm and
helpful shadow, moving unseen to perfect.
Her father visited sporadically. He insisted on taking her outside the
palace, to her terror and delight. She experienced the world outside as
a dangerous drug. She rode a wave of confusion and sensation — smells,
sounds, loud and colorful and shocking — until her head ached and her
ears rang and she wished she could go home, or cry.
At 16, she was to take her place as an adult Palace Servant, the sixth
generation so honored. A formal ceremony would be held on the Day of
Long Shadows, when continuity and inheritance was celebrated each year.
She would be presented to Elder Kebok, and he would accept a hand-written
scroll in token of her loyalty. She wore a robe woven of raw silk,
in a fine pearl gray, with the symbols of the house embroidered on it.
She stepped quietly from the coterie and made her way to the foot of
the master’s chair, where she kneeled, offering the scroll. There was a
pause. She had been told that the master would take her scroll at once.
She began to blush, feeling that her few seconds of attention were
rapidly stretching beyond endurance. She had always been told that
silence was perfection, but this silence was flawed. It did not flow,
it stopped, held, froze. She waited for the ritual response to come.
Instead, the master called for Dragonfly’s Shadow on Water. He called
upon her to explain a single blue hair, a sly, ambushing slip of silk,
that mingled with the snowy strands on the girl’s head.
Afterwards, Exquisite Stillness of Jasmine Blossoms was not sure which
incensed the household more — that she, first in generations in her
family, was not perfect; or that her mother had foisted her off on them
as such. She was not unfit for the service of the House; but certainly
her appearance was a sign that she should follow the trade of her father,
and not her mother. The transgression, she was carefully but coldly told,
was not her own. Her mother, though, had denied her her true path, out
of pride. As correction, she would never be allowed to see Exquisite
Stillness of Jasmine Blossoms again. The last time Exquisite Stillness
of Jasmine Blossoms saw her mother, it was in the morning, before the
ceremony. She knelt at her feet, smelling the soft tang of soap in her
robes, and felt the familiar pain of the ritual of hair-pulling, the pain
which somehow seemed a part of being loved, being cherished, belonging.
She and the secret belonged to her mother. The last time she saw her
mother was the first time she ever knew her to make a mistake.
So Exquisite Stillness of Jasmine Blossoms left the palace with her
father, who had been at the ceremony to see his daughter come of age.
The other servants helped her pack. They made her leave her livery -
all her clothes – and brought her instead a plain coarse set of clothes
she thought she recognized as stablehand wear. She took a pendant in
the shape of a dragonfly, which her mother had given her on her 10th
birthday, and a volume of poetry she’d received at the Elder’s 200th
birthday festival.
The servants watched her quietly. She knew that officially her mother
was the one who had done wrong — but they blamed her, the product of
the strange union, the temptation that had led Dragonfly’s Shadow into
dishonour. She would not cry. She would never smell the scent of her
mother’s robes again. She must enter the chaos of the world outside,
the world where the Blessed Hierarchy was a theory, not a thing you
could touch, feel, and rely upon.
She walked through the servants’ halls, which echoed in lesser stone
the marble archways of the palace proper. The smell of wisteria crept
from the inner gardens. Her father waited like a shadow by the door.
He smelled like saddle soap, from his leather armor. “You know,” he
said softly as he led her away, “It’s all right to cry.”
The Silent Hand was an assassin on retainer to House Ledaal. Of course,
they could not be so bold as to use a permanently hired assassin on the
Blessed Isle…but he criss-crossed the lands under Realm influence on the
rim of the Inner Sea, furthering the House’s interests. His orders from
the House were simply to make his daughter into an assassin. However,
he realized her life heretofore had not at all prepared her for such work,
and so he decided to ease her into it slowly.
While Exquisite Stillness of Jasmine Blossoms wished to do her duty,
she was frankly repulsed by fighting. This was not so much from the
violence, which she recognized as sadly necessary, but the chaos of her
father’s multifarious style. At last, her father decided to teach her
ritualized sword-fighting, with katas for her to practice and deploy.
She managed to make sword-practice into a place of stillness within the
world. She used a pair of butterfly swords — she admired their symmetry.
As for the rest, he trained her intensively. He realized that while
he, branded a stranger by his looks and accent, must rely on stealth
and intrusion to ply his trade, his daughter, impeccably trained as a
high-class servant, had a far better manner of disappearing and appearing
where she oughtn’t be. He therefore began her field training by having
her help him on his assignments. She infiltrated palaces to get keys,
let down a cord and bring up a rope, unlock a back doorway. When she had
become used to the dangers of that, he had her begin to poison people —
inject a fruit with poison, or drop a tablet in a bedside cup of wine.
This, he reasoned, would get her used to killing people before she had
to see their eyes as she did it. He was right, in a way. She smoothly
and quietly carried out these duties, serene in the knowledge of a task
well-accomplished. She made arrangements and was gone, in the manner
of an excellent servant.
He thought her ready. The task was hard for him — a Dynast sleeping
in the far inner reaches of a Palace on the outskirts of the Imperial
City, far from any window. The nearest roof access was an open courtyard
several busy corridors away. Worst of all, the door was guarded by two
Dragon-Blooded officers. Peleps Elessan knew his life was threatened.
Dato decided to send Exquisite Stillness to kill him.
Dato picked the locks of the watergate on the banks of a great river,
and they waded into the Palace Grounds in the waste flow, still scented
with hibiscus, of the garden fountains. Dato concealed himself near
the stables, and Exquisite Stillness rock-chimneyed two stories up to
the roof. She walked quietly among the roof tiles to the small garden
courtyard. She crouched in the bole of a fruit tree until no one stood
or walked in the corridors all around. She shed her gloves and her
hood, and checked that her short sword lay still among the silk folds
of her new livery. She slipped into the corridor and walked with the
confident diffidence of a palace servant to the guarded door of Peleps
Elessan’s room. The two officers crossed their weapons across the door
in ritual token of their office.
“Yours to guard, mine to serve.” she said, surprised to hear her voice
so clear.
“We guard his sleep.”
“I tend his fire.”
The weapons withdrew, and Exquisite Stillness of Jasmine Blossoms softly
turned the handle of the inlaid door. It close behind her without a
sound. The fire was, indeed, smouldering low. For a moment, she almost
went to tend it. But that was not why she was here. She drew her sword,
quietly, from her robes. The Dragon-Blooded was a lump beneath a rich
indigo blanket. The walls were hung in silk and velvet, and a tapestry
showed the Water Dragon coiled around the emblem of his House. She could
not breathe. What she was here to do was the ultimate disrespect.
To wake unbidden was rude — how much ruder to wake to death, to shatter
the sanctified privacy of the bedchamber and introduce the void? Kill,
she could, but here? She stood. “By duty to my father, this deed
I do,” she repeated silently, “By duty to the Elder, this deed I do.
By duty to my mother, this deed I do.” She walked to the bed, and all
breath left her.
He was beautiful. Even in sleep, he was graceful, a dangerous grace
like a tiger in a nap. His skin was the color of an aquamarine she
had admired once in the Master’s study. His hair flowed in short
blue-black waves on his silk pillow. His arm and shoulder flowed
like a line of ink, they hurt her with their beauty, and though she
was filled with urges and promptings, not one of them said, “Kill.”
This was it, the dangerous feeling that pulled from duty into disgrace.
This was the fall of her mother, and now she knew it to be hers as well.
She could not kill this man, and certainly not as he lay in sleep like
a gift for her unworthy eyes. Perhaps she would wait here til morning,
beg his forgiveness for her intrusion. Perhaps she would leave, and face
disgrace blythely knowing breath still passed between his sea-blue lips.
She slowly sheathed her sword.
His eyes flew open. They were the deep blue of the sea her father had
told her of, the deep sea where the spirits gathered like whispers in a
temple. They flickered to her, to her sword. He flowed from his covers.
He wore silk trousers, but his chest was bare and the muscles danced
across it as he lifted his black jade sword. “Guards!” he bellowed,
and the harsh music of his voice broke her trance.
“No!” she pleaded, even as she drew her sword. “I don’t want —” She
blocked his first cut with a sob and quivering arms, and with confused
grace launched into an attack that should slash his lovely throat.
She sobbed again, and the cut went high. Her ugly steel drew quickly
across his nose and cheeks, and blood flowed out across his skin.
“I’m sorry!” she said out loud, loud as a lord, a servant’s shout.
The guards were in the room, the door stood open. She threw herself
like a ball between their greaves, and rolled into a run out in the
corridor. She threw her sword aside, and ran from her shame, from the
cut on the young god’s face, from pain, death, misfortune and disgrace.
The corridors of the palace shook with the armored pursuit, and her
weavings did not lose the Dragon-Blooded. She could not look behind
her, could not see if he was with them. A great window loomed ahead,
set with colors to catch the light each morning. She leapt and threw
her sorry self against it, she would fall, perhaps she would die, but
she would be free.
The glass gave, kissed her hands with blood, kissed her gratefully for
freeing it from its frame. The cold air slapped her face, and she saw
below, not the two-story fall to the ground, but a hundred feet to the
wrathful river. She did not want to die. Perhaps it was the face
of the hungry waters that frightened her. She did not want to die.
There was a ripping sound within her. The Dragon-Blooded watching her
slender form fall from the shattered window were blinded by a blast of
light, a coruscating golden fog that exploded from her and grew against
the boundaries of the night. Wrapped in the light she dove, and slipped
like a kingfisher into the water below.
“Call out the Wyld Hunt,” Elessan said, with a tone almost like regret.
“Sir, you’re injured,” one of the guards said urgently, “Permission to
seek a healer.”
“No,” Elessan said, staring at the black river. “I will wear it.”
My unusual taciturnity this weekend is easily explained; I was at my parents’ house in Bend, Oregon, where they subsist on dial-up. Maybe I should have been a better webling and provided for your amusement anyway. I apologize.
We drove through Warm Springs Reservation, which is a longer way to go to Bend (the proverbial “low road” to the Sisters “high road”), for the sake of our safety and my mother’s health. You see, the Sisters Rodeo was this weekend, which is a haven for cowboys trying to drink away the knowledge that their way of life is fading from the earth. Driving in that part of the world is…exciting…at this time of year. Like a driving game with really erratic AI. At any rate, the possibility that A) we might be écrasés (French for “run into” as applied to cars, and much more descriptive) by a small man with a large hat, a large truck, and a disintegrating liver, and B) that my mother would have a heart attack worrying about A, were enough to convince us to take the longer road.
The road starts normally enough. You drive up to Portland on 26, jump through several hoops and perform a sort of automotive ritual dance, in order to get back on 26, which is a surly road, not easily tamed. You end up going east on 26, right up to the flanks of Mt. Hood. Huge slopes of dark trees surround you, and give way only to allow Hood to glare down at you imperiously. It’s beautiful. Then Hood starts to dwindle in your rear view, and the trees begin to thin and scrubble* down into High Desert.
But then you get to Warm Springs, and the road falls out from under you, down into a canyon between basalt-capped bluffs. I really wasn’t sure you could get that kind of landscape without sedimentary rocks—but they manage it over there. Big round hills sloping out from under the flat , hard cap-rock. Layers of color (though not as bright and splendid as sedimentary colors), oddly twisted basaltic columns. Then, just as you think you’re out of this beautiful area that looks like no Oregon you’ve ever seen, you cross the Crooked River Canyon, and if you have the luck not to be driving, for a moment you’re confronted with a labyrinthine vision, a sort of mini-Grand Canyon done all in dusty gray and black. Eery and beautiful.
We also went up to Tumalo Falls, in Bend, with my parents and walked up to the top observation area. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to look down on a waterfall in quite that way, before. The water was so clear it looked like a sheet of lace bubbles being waved over the rock, with only the occasional sunlit glint to remind you it was really there. The rock was washed to a copper-red clean, and was starkly angular through the jelly rush of the creek. It was lovely and mesmerizing.
And on the way back from Bend, we stopped at the Rhododendron Dairy Queen. Because you HAVE to.
*scrubble: to become scrubby. Coined by Felicity. Live with it!
Magic and cooking are much the same. A lot of cooking is sort of hedge-magick—you do it by feel, add herbs that seem right, summon fire. It does about what you expect it to, usually.
But baking! Baking, candy-making, and so forth—these are the schools of Higher Magics. Who can say when the time is right for the making of Divinity? A wise old woman peers at her barometer, the sky, and guesses. Often, she is wrong. And baking! To the talented young acolyte, baking is a heady power, a dangerous pastime, and a science fraught with unknown knowledge. 10 minutes precisely! Do not make the magical kneading hand motions too oft! The balance of magical powders must be precise! Be wary with your summoned fire elementals! Constantly, she wonders if her mistakes, changes, and experiments will stretch the weave of the magic too far. But somehow, always, it does not.
And, dude, rhubarb is way too weird to be anything but a spell component.
In my work, I have come across someone named Godbolt (last name). Because he speaks loudly and quickly, at first I thought it was “Godbull”. At any rate, it strikes me as one of the most delightful names I’ve come across outside of Dickens, and I thought if my little webby friends felt creative, they might make up people or things named “Godbolt”. If they do not feel creative, I will just be sad.
The point is not to be right, it’s to be funny, dramatic, or weird! Don’t look it up, look within! And eventually, I’ll tell you the guy’s whole name and his job description, if you want to know.
Well, for the first time I forgot to post something here, yesterday. I blame our newest toy, a [http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005UP2Q.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg|image| KitchenAid Artisan Series Stand Mixer]. It is beautiful. It is cobalt blue, and it simultaneously reminds you of your dad’s table drill you were supposed to stay away from; a 57 Chevrolet; your grandma’s cooking; and the Giger alien design. It is sleek and shining, heavy and beautiful.
The top tips smoothly up out of the way. The mixing bowl locks in place and is machine washable. There’s a splatter-shield with an ingredient chute. The mixing attachment moves clockwise, and the shaft it’s on moves counterclockwise, so that it traces a logowriter-daisy of mixing in the bowl—it approaches the side of the bowl at 67 points. The main mixer attachment is shaped like an arcane leaf symbol. It’s a wonderful mixer.
So, in short, I didn’t post yesterday because I was making soft molasses cookies.
I am reading an excellent book called Possession: A Romance, by A.S. Byatt. I am sorely tempted to review it, but I must curtail this tendency of mine to indulge in reviewing before I have finished reading the volume in question.
It’s partially about literary criticism and literary historians - what they do, whether it matters, what’s wrong with what they’re doing. That’s all encoded in the story, not said outright - I should note that before you think it’s a dreadfully boring book. The primary main character is Roland Mitchell, a quiet British academic—oh dear, I am making it sound boring. Wait for the review! It isn’t!
At any rate, at some point in the book, Roland is reading an essay by a Scary-American Feminist Academic, in which she discusses constructing a feminine landscape. Towers, fountains, et cetera, are all “phallic”, she says, but the female poetic vision yields an “alternative landscape,” of springs that seep rather than shoot, of holes half-covered by fronds of foliage, blah blah blah. And Roland, bless his British little heart, thinks, “Oh dear.” Leonetta Stern (the S.A.F.A.) may have a very useful and interesting metaphor there, says Roland, but how horrifying to transform the world into sex, to believe that the land he walks on is a mass of genitals and pubic hair. I laughed in rueful recognition.
I have, as many of you know, an English degree. I have taken Literary Theory (history and theory of literary criticism, as well as philosophy of why it matters and isn’t just a bunch of frustrated writers ripping at successful writers for nourishment—oop, my bias is showing!). Oftentimes, sex is in fact an underlying theme, or a barely-hidden meaning (how could we get through Julius Caesar without all those naughty puns?) But the sex card is, in my humble opinion, not enough to fill an analytical deck.
Do you realize that pure Freud has been totally deprecated in the psychological disciplines? (Or so I am told, and thank Heaven!) Well, pure Freud continues not only to be employed as a basis for literary analysis, but as a foundation from which other popular schools of literary analysis grow. (Did you know that women aren’t as good with language as men, because all language stems from the realization as a baby that the Mother is Other? Yeah!)
The fact is that we are very good at reading sexual metaphors into things. Examine a jocular conversation between teens or adults, and you will see that almost anything can be a sexual metaphor. (“Beavis & Butthead,” anyone?) They can sometimes be a fruitful way to read things—but not always. I still am astonished by the ability of intelligent students to say, “Hamlet and Gertrude sitting in a tree,” and go no further. Yes, dear, you’ve come up with a sexual reading! Jolly good! Now what does it add to the meaning of the play? Could you, in fact, write an interesting essay on that? Or would it simply be, “Heh. Chick digs her son. Twisted.”
In fact, chalk it up to my years as a proto-paleontologist if you will, but I have always thought Freud was ridiculous, even without the horrible gender biases. You’re going to simplify the world down to one overarching concern, and you chose SEX? Sorry, Sigmund. Even sex is about death. Cheating it through reproduction, ignoring it through the life-affirmation of the sexual act, suppressing your urges because God says you’re naughty—it’s all about death and our fear of it. So I hereby declare all Freudian and Lacanian critics terrified of facing their own deep-seated fear of death, and therefore get to be just as smug as ever Freudian readers were about the repressed masses who thought Turn of the Screw was a ghost story.
And I will walk happily through a rich world with many different meanings and layers, perhaps muse on death, and the bodies of many years of life which form the rich loam under my feet—but I encourage the Freudians to watch where they step in their “alternative landscape.” You don’t know where it’s been!
I’m entering different surveys now, for an event held in Washington DC for some prize-winning middle school students.
From an evaluation form filled out by an “other” (probably an older sibling or step-parent who attended):
Question: What was your favorite event activity?
The capitol. After leaving our nation’s capitol every student has a new sense of how fabulous it is to be an American!
From a smattering of kids’ evaluation forms:
Question: What was your least favorite event activity? Why?
The capitol tour, our guide wasn’t very friendly.
Capitol tour, our tour guide wasn’t nice.
Walking to the capitol building.
Walking to the capitol, too long of a walk.
My least favorite activity was walking to the capitol.
My least favorite event was the tour at the capitol.
And there you have it.
Since all parties involved in last week’s hiking excursion were delighted with it, we went again this week, with the happy addition of more friends back from college. We went to Lost Lake, near Hood River, and did the Lake Loop Trail. It was 3.3 miles, a nice easy relaxing hike.
The lake was beside us, engaged in leisurely conversation with its shores and rocks. We observed the delicate sculling of Rough-Skinned Newts, the cute little creature currently holding the champion belt for “Most Poisonous Creature in the World”. We saw a convoy of ducklings hustling along in the care of one harried lady duck. We saw ferns modestly uncurling in the dappled light, and we walked under tall trees whose limbs creaked like the rafters of an old settling house. I enjoyed the camaraderie of our footsteps, tapping a hollow rubato on the boardwalks or crunching rhythmically in the gravelled path.