Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Questions from ursula:

1. Tell us about a book you liked when you were sixteen.: I'm pretty sure sixteen was the year of LOTR, all the LOTR, overwhelming LOTR. I still have not made the post about re-reading LOTR this summer.

But, hmm. Let me think. I think sixteen was the year I read Sara Douglass The Betrayal of Arthur. You could make a good case that that book shaped the next decade and a half of my life. I haven't re-read it since about 2006, and am slightly afraid to (although I think I did scan the intro in 2011, decided it wasn't terrible, and recommended it to undergrads). It is, essentially, a pop history not of King Arthur but of Arthurian legend, structured around key differences between English and French traditions.

I definitely don't share Sara Douglass' sense that the English Arthur was 'betrayed' by French romanticisiation, but, well. I do care a lot about cross-cultural comparative Arthuriana.

Beyond that... I had already read Douglass' high fantasy quest series, and her alt-medieval fantasy Crucible Trilogy, and the latter said in its bio that she was a medieval-early modern studies researcher. This book gave me a sense of what that meant, and of the connections between the fantasy worlds I identified with and the world of academia. I mean, there was also Papa Tolkien, but he was long dead, whereas Douglass was Australian and alive.

I'm still sad for myself that she had moved out of academia by the time I joined ANZAMEMS, and now she's passed away. I cherished a hope of encountering her in academic spaces one day.

2. Tell us about a book you discovered when you were a university student.

Which time around?

I've been thinking a lot this year about the books I read in first-year English: Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things' and Drusilla Modjeska's 'The Orchard'. Small Things I cherish: i have the same copy, I have read it multiple times and it's on the relatively short list of books I will never discard. I loved it for its beautiful prose, and I loved what the first-year lecturers did with it - it was a great tool for Patriarchy and Colonialism 101.

The Orchard I cast off at some point - it was confusing, thought provoking, but weird. I thought I wouldn't read it again. I was wrong: I bought it in e-book in 2013 (commentary here) and re-read it and was blown away. I definitely did not have the emotional maturity to process it properly at seventeen, and I know I will re-read it again multiple times more as I age.

3. Are there any habits you are trying to create or destroy? I am attempting to become a Morning Person. Or at least, a person who is awake early enough in the morning to be a late morning person. I reluctantly accept that it's just going to take me two to three hours to be functional - if i move wake-up time earlier maybe I will be functional by a normal time! Gosh.

Also apparently my guts hate me less if I get up early, which let me tell you, is the most depressing reason to get up early I've found yet. Ugh.

4. Tell us about a plant you particularly like?



This is a plant that is both new and familiar to me! It's now growing - and growing huge, see below - just below the septic tank in my parents' backyard.



I must have seen this plant on previous visits, because it got planted there before they moved to Perth in 2012. So it would've been there when I visited in Jan 2015, and all the times after that. But I guess this time was the first time I'd visited in early spring, and hoo boy - this tree attracts parrots! This past August it even had a wooden climbing frame attached to it, which Dad built for a flightless juvenile lorrikeet they adopted. Lorrie would, I'm told, eat and sleep in the enclosed verandah with Peachy, but go outside during the day to hang with his birth family. Dad built him ramps up into the tree so he wouldn't miss out on anything. Alas, it seems like Lorrie's flightlessness was a product of ill-health - after a couple of months he suffered a rapid demise.

My parents' couldn't identify the type of tree, so were just calling it the Parrot Tree. It began life as a potted plant, and when I was a kid lived unremarkably in a pot on the verandah under the name of Umbrella Tree. Turns out, after I sent photos to various corners of the internet and then via Katie to her mum, that is in fact its common name - it's Schefflera Actinophylla, a tropical native of northern Australia, which is much beloved of parrots.

5. Can you choose a favorite Knight of the Round Table? Me, choose? Amongst such noble doofuses?

Of course. Team Gawain all the way. (The REAL question is which Knight would I vote off the island?)

Comment if you want questions from me!

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Hey uh speaking of Gawain I have a short story out, in an actualfax anthology! I haven't got my copy yet, international postage being what it is, but it is in A Hand of Knaves, ed. by Chris Large and Leife Shallcross. If what you really wanted in life was Gawain, in Space, here it is! (If that wasn't what you thought you wanted, I have it on good authority that it will be what you wanted once you read this.) It's called 'A Tale of the Marriage of Gawain', because I am bad at titles, and it's a queered, spacecowboy retelling of the Loathly Lady folktale.

Also the book is pretty and there's a lot of great people in it! I don't know what they wrote because my copy hasn't arrived yet!

There once was a man from Tuscany
Who went home to his Dad seeking money
He was studying the law
but wanted books more
His pa didn't find this at all funny.

You can tell this, because I get *stuff* in return for Written Things. In this case, film festival tickets in return for an article on Sherlock Holmes, to be published in the next issue of Fuse Magazine.

This is cool. I could get used to this. Editor, Alex, is very nice and says I can continue to pitch articles to him even if I leave Canberra.

Things worth noting:

- I pitched the article because Alex ran an informal social media/publicity campaign asking for more female contributors to Fuse

- I've been reading Fuse for six months, knew about their website and the fact that they take public submissions. But I never even *thought* about submitting until this specific invitation came out. Since Fuse manages to fill up with articles, I assume that either the editor knows more men personally(he IS a gay man after all) or that more men are willing to send in pitches out of nowhere, or both.

- When I put the pitch to Alex, it took me ages to actually get up the courage to do it, because I felt like my topics of interest weren't *lesbian* enough (Sherlock Holmes: Least Lesbian Movie Ever). And obviously female contributors to a GBLTetc magazine should write on *lesbian* issues. Alex's call-out said he was particularly after lesbian-focused articles (which would be grand, Fuse has few of those), but it did have the side effect of making me dubious about whether or not I would be valuable as an author of general queer interest articles. Alex was very welcoming, over email, and assured me that he's happy to have more articles by women on ANY topic.

So:
- putting call-outs for female contributors is a good idea, especially if your personal network is more likely to attract men.
- it's probably worth making it clear that you welcome women to write on *any* topic, as well as women's-interest topics.

Half my bookshelf,
most of my secrets,
even all my love:
BUT NEVER MY SOCKS!

Boundaries, I tell you. They're important!

(But Rule 34 means, now that I've said it, someone has written it and it's probably graphic. This isn't.)
The latest thing keeping me awake o' nights is character fragments. This is Hell.

Sorry the formatting's a  bit screwey.

Canon notes: I read the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospel of Nichodemus. I can't tell you if Hell is a woman in the Latin verion, but she's definitely a female creature of some sort in the AS.
You can find a translation of both the AS version and its immediate Latin source in 'Two Old English Apocrypha' edited by J.E. Cross.

This is a very rough story I wrote for

goblinpaladin  tonight. He asked me what I would say to a person in crisis if I thought that evangelism would help them. How do you talk to someone who is at rock bottom? Can you promise them that God will make everything better? What do you tell them about a loving God when they are suffering?
I said that I didn't know, but that I have known several people who hit rock bottom and found God there.
( have some of the preceding conversation )
So then I told a stowy. I have trouble logic-ing God anymore. Critical analysis and deconstructing and writing essays, that's my work now. God is in the narratives.
( At camp once, they gave me playdough and asked me to make a picture of God. I wish they had given me pen and paper. )

that last line is a shout-out to a wordsketch he wrote at my request a while back, called Eternity. it was pretty. you should all read it.

lepsdavid, daiskmeliadorn, mangelbojangel, anyone else out there: what do you think, guys? what would you say to a hypothetical subject of evangelism in crisis? is there a code of ethics for these things? isn't it manipulative to take advantage of someone's vulnerable state? would you be afraid of manipulating them into faith?

This is a Love Poem, dedicated to Kate on her birthday some months ago...

4/4 Kate

I’m so glad Kate is my wife;

She put the poetry back in my life.

Although she often drives me cuckoo,

Truly, no-one else will do!

 

So for this her birthday time,

I celebrate by making rhyme.

In her honour, we made a new verb-

A word more apt than ever heard-

When the hour is getting late,

You’ve much to do- ProcrastiKATE!

 

This is a poem I made on my own:

My rhyming is shaky yes yes I know,

My rhyming is shaky and my metre is worse-

And I’m unsure how to finish this verse!

 

So let this rhyme commemorate

The wonderous, splendiferous,

Fantabulous Kate!

The sky is a bowl. A deep, blue veil hugging the skyline.
Tonight the trees dwarf the sandstone. They cradle these monuments to human pride in their leafy fingers. The moon glimmers in the viscous blue and trails down onto the grass.
People are tucked away in the corners- fairy lights tangled around the ageless boughs, voices chattering. Somewhere, a drumming thrumming heartbeat throbs. The mown lawns might have grown that way. The veil tucks itself around the bright lights, the growing things shine brightly over the river of traffic. Salt is on the air, running through your hair. Somewhere is the sea and the horizon which never ends.
The few stars have gathered near to hear the bells. Notes cascade over cobbles and puddle in your ears. The wind dances intimately for you and the stars.
The sky is endless.
The sky is very near.

thanks to Alex for the starter verse

In honour of Ginny and Neville

( Very minor plot spoiler here )

He is currently weighed down with his academic responsibilities- as a canon, he is heavily involved with the cathedral school- and will be presenting his guest blog as soon as the students have completed their assessment.