On this grey and drizzly summer solstice, here's a winter solstice gift of darkness and light for you all from The Book of the Night:
The finger of the moon touched the face of the rose window and suddenly, as if in answer, a thin film of flesh covered the bones of the abbey and the bones of the abbey became rounded and soft, and the towers became … what is it … knees. And the crack of doors, a human, fleshy ass, and the rose window—the great seat of birth—burst open with the light of birth as a living eye. A cathedral of flesh, the abbey became, her belly the roof of it all. I raced from the barn but stopped at the Tree of Life and hid, somehow, in its shadow. (Aah, Nicholas, you fool.) There I saw her navel, the nave, her arms outstretched into the apse, and her head as altar. Her woman part opened in the red-gold of light. I saw her and knew that I looked upon a woman with her knees in the air, giving birth to living light. What had been the soft gold reflection on the glass, now became her own fire. I watched. Stars rested on her fingers and glinted on her kneecaps.
And then she stood and shook stiffness from her limbs and the transparency of flesh became solid and she walked along the Street of the Dead down toward the sea, past me, knelt, dropped her long dark hair into the pool of sea, and washed herself. And then she stood and spun over the fields, her robes of moonlight twisting about her, twisting until she became a triangle of light, five parts four, four parts three, shimmering, and the moisture from her hair dripped as dew on the fields. She lay down again where the abbey had been, lifted her knees to the sky, stretched out her arms across the fields, opened herself, her woman part, and was stone again. Doors, towers, window, stone. The moon rose above her knees as if it had been born from them. I saw the miracle, that night, only once, but I knew then that the true light came from the darkness and it was to the darkness I must go. I could not hide.
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lpetrazickis ]
The 5 Love Languages quiz:
| Score | Love Language |
| 11 | Quality Time |
| 9 | Physical Touch |
| 4 | Words of Affirmation |
| 4 | Acts of Service |
| 2 | Receiving of Gifts |
Via rozk,
You scored as a Existentialism
Your life is guided by the concept of Existentialism: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life.
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
“It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”
--Jean-Paul Sartre
“It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.”
--Blaise Pascal
More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page...
| Existentialism |
|
90% | |
| Hedonism |
|
70% | |
| Utilitarianism |
|
60% | |
| Justice (Fairness) |
|
50% | |
| Nihilism |
|
45% | |
| Kantianism |
|
35% | |
| Strong Egoism |
|
25% | |
| Apathy |
|
15% | |
| Divine Command |
|
0% |
No surprises there; I'd probably choose "Phenomenologist" if I were to choose a label, but I guess that's more metaphysics than philosophy. Hedonistic Existentialist it is then.
ETA, in utter irrelevance, that "Bubo" is a good name for a rat.
The bike trailer that ramtops found and ordered for me on eBay (from this retailer) arrived this afternoon from Germany. A small w00t! at least is in order; I've been wanting such a device for quite some time, and it means that pretty much all of our shopping from now can be done without firing up the car. The thing even has a waterproof cover so, within reason, weather can be disregarded.
It weighs 7½kg, and you hardly know it's there when pulling it (empty at least; the load limit is 40kg :) though it's a bit of a pig getting through bollard chicanes. I took it for a test run along the village cycle path and up Glebe Road, which is enough of a hill to judge how much work the thing is going to be in practice: I dropped a gear (middle 2nd AOT middle 3rd) getting to the junction at the top, but it really isn't nearly a gear's worth of extra effort.
It's really well thought out: it folds flat when it's not in use and is remarkably simple to set up and collapse. You pull it along with an articulated tow bar that mates with bracket that sits neatly inboard of the back wheel quick release, held on with a pin and circlip (and emergency strap). My only minor quibbles (apart, of course, from the beast being utterly insecure: order of shopping is going to have to be taken into account) are that the knobs holding the crossmember in place are irritatingly overendowed with thread and there's no strap or other mechanism to hold the folded trailer closed, or its detached wheels to the rest of the machine. Oh, and there's nothing to hold cargo in place, but a suitably sized bungy spider will fix that.
Turns out, of course, that we don't actually need anything bulky from the shops this weekend, but its time will come soon enough…
Recommended.
I've not posted anything for a while - not even about last weekend's rather fine Eurovision-fest with agc, purple_peril, Pat'n'Dave WANOLJ joining ramtops and me - so here's a completely pointless post to prove to anyone reading that I'm still in some sense alive.
Today, ramtops and I went to the garden centre in Cleeve, for hanging basket plants and basket liners, and some herbs. They had sold out of 16" liners, which we need for the largest basket that's going to be filled with strawberry plants, normal and (Blessed Be!) metsämansikat, we bought along with a whole raft of other herbiage from D the LibDem. So, we stopped at the Brockley farm shop on the off chance they had some (they didn't) and walked out with a punnet of strawberries, a tub of cream (we already have chocolate cake; these will be combined later tonight :), a small loaf of bread-with-roasted-peppers, some sossidges and a pack of locally sourced pig bits which we're going to consume tonight.
We stopped to drop some of Mac's surplus shoes (yes, you read that right) at the village charity shop and discovered a small but perfectly formed crisis as we got back into the car: it turns out that Mr Rodda is less than conscientious about the fastening of his tubs of cream (bad bear!) and about a third of the tub had redistributed itself in the bag, on the floor of the car and on Mac. Thankfully, home was only a few hundred yards away, and cleansing wasn't too traumatic.
The bread, which was exceeding good, was consumed for lunch, with apples and cheese.
This afternoon, I cycled home » Ashton Court » chocolate path » centre » Slavers Quarter (where I sent water filters for recycling at Dyers in the Galleries) » Easton » St Pauls » St Werberghs (refilled washing up liquid bottle, buy more Greens cheddar, porridge and dishwasher tabs) » Ashley Hill » Montpelier » Gloucester Road (apple and blackcurrant juice, round rye crispbread (but no thin rye crispbread, and neither did the scoopshop up the hill)) » Redland » Cotham (yay! thin rye crispbread, and some green tea) » Clifton » Leigh Woods » Ashton Court » home. Weather: hot and humid; your correspondent: likewise.
Minor mishap on the cycle path through the village: I had to stop quite suddenly to avoid ploughing into two people just round a blind right angle bend; I stopped, went to put my feet down, and found that I hadn't stopped and in fact continued gracefully sideways with my bike onto the path. All most undignified (and down to not taking enough account of a raised centre of gravity caused by my fully loaded backpack), but no real damage to me, bike, shopping or (concerned!) pedestrians.
Tonight: food, wine, Dr Who and likely more West Wing (we've finally got a couple of DVDs into S4).
Tomorrow: gardening, lots of.
ramtops and I finally dragged ourselves to the North Somerset show on Bank Holiday Monday; we've been meaning to go for about as long as we've lived here, but lack of ertia has done for us until now.ramtops bought a hat, I bought a wooden spoon (though still not a replacement for the irreplaceable Spoon That Died), we ate some fairly disgusting "food", and we walked back home along NCN33. Oh, and I've added Pavane to my ever-growing to-read list should I ever actually finish Quicksilver (I'm in Lyons, and the king is dead). Keith Roberts was a reactionary arse, but he wrote some fine books nonetheless.I need a cycling icon.
I've just ridden from home to Winford via Wild Country Lane, Hobbs Lane and Barrow Lane. The sign said "Dundry 1½ miles"; how hard could it be? Dundry Lane was ok, but that last stretch of Winford Lane to the top of the ridge was fucking hard work.
I'm a lot fitter than I used to be, but I've a way to go yet before I'm truly comfortable with gravity defiance.
Still, Dundry Lane, the Bridgwater Road, Barrow Street, Hern Lane and Wild Country Lane was pretty much all downhill on the way back. Time to sort out tonight's dinner now, and finish updating our backup server's Ubuntu (having isolated the fscked memory stick that was upsetting it earlier today).
ETA route.
I was talking to someone (I don't know who) about my past; I was describing the Welly Club as it was in the early 80's, at the tail end of the Mrs Wilson years, and we ended up thern.
For some reason, there was a chap there selling records in a corner of the bar area: he looked like Dave Langford (hell, he may have been Dave Langford). I spotted the cover of a Terry Riley LP I didn't recognise (and still don't :) and went over and grabbed it. It was in some sort of gatefold or boxed sleeve and, when I opened it to check the disc was OK, found that it also had at least a dozen 7" singles stuffed inside as well. I started going through them to see what they were, then sat down so I could look at them more easily, but someone told me to move as I had sat in the record-seller's seat.
No, I don't know what it means…
ramtops photographed the extraction process from the other end.…by the sad loss of Humph of Rossmore Road (tangential I know, but there y'go).
If anyone has a spare copy, or a reasonably clean rip, I'd be interested to hear from them.
Via gmul, I find that the London mayoral candidate best matching my views is Lindsey German (Left List) by some margin from Ken and Siân (neck to neck), and Brian a little further behind.
It seems that I'm still an old leftie really then, and it's probably redundant to mention that the BNP arsewipe trails at the bottom of of my list, some way behind the godbotherer, UKIP and Winston McKenzie (whoever the fuck he might be).
<irony>So here I was, poised to go and protest the enclosure of public space and destruction of communities by First Bristol Council in cahoots with the construction and retail industries. Instead, I'm waiting for the AA to come and poke at our car, dead at the farm shop a mile South of here, having arrived there via Sainsbury's.ramtops and I have just walked home with the perishables, and I'll be going back shortly to wait for the yellow van: I'm sure this is some sort of multiversal judgment, collapsing probabilities in a way to maximise my cognitive dissonance. I may still make it to College Green this afternoon, but Broadmead (let alone St Pauls) will have to do without me.</irony>
Yesterday, I finally finished first-order processing and uploading of the photos I took of last Sunday’s railway path celebration.
Apart from well dodgy blokes in shades, there were Police posing on pushbikes, vegetables, badgers, drummers, a pink souzaphone, a knight in shining armour, and childrins. The weather was perfect, and a wonderful time was had by all. Sadly, and predictably, on Tuesday the Labour group on First Bristol Council, abetted by the Tories, fucked up the Green-amended-by-LibDem motion to protect the path from the ravages of the arsewipes on the WOEP, by proposing and forcing through a wrecking amendment.
Still, if the thing does get stopped, it just gives WOEP more time to consider destroying the Malago Greenway instead. Or as well.
Guided BRT is the wrong answer to the wrong question in pretty much any existing urban area, which presumably explains why the government and its tame quangos are so excited by the things. That and their being bus, and not (still strongly Unionised) rail.
Today, I want shopping. First, to Asda - no, not to support Wall*Wart by buying anything, but to offer the knee of the cargo trousers I wtore on Sunday for repair at Johnsons, who rent a pitch in their market strip. Thence in search of new wholefood/deli experiences South of the river: the deli on Oxford Road was shut (permanently?) and I couldn’t find the one I thought was on Wells Road at all. Ho hum. I returned to North Street and got the bits we needed from the Southville deli and greengrocer, but still no concentrated blackcurrant juice.
There seems to be a terminal shortage of the stuff in Bristol ATM: all that I can find is the Crazy Jack (or whatever its called) stuff that only contains blackcurrant in homeopathic concentrations and is of no use whatsoever. The bog-standard Suma and Meridian juices might still be around on Gloucester Road, but I haven’t seen my holy grail, the little bottles of organic mega-concentrated Meridian juice, since I snaffled the last bottle the Sweet Mart on St Marks Road had over a month ago.
I’d bike up to Gloucester Road now if we weren’t waiting for purple_peril, who we’re ferrying up to CostCo this afternoon; she’s late, damnit. Hopefully she’ll arrive in an intact state soon after I post this.
ETA and here she is :)
Bristol Council announced yesterday that the plan to use part of the Bristol to Bath bike path for bus rapid transit has been “shelved” - not abandoned. This isn’t victory yet, but it’s a cause for cautious optimism. Today’s protest and celebration is still happening!
Timetable for today (times in BST :)
» Cyclists gather from 11am in Queens Square for a 12am sharp departure
» Walkers and trundlers gather at Fishponds, by Morrisons, for a 2:30pm departure, reaching the Bristol end of the path at about 3pm, then heading for College Green for the rally
Be there, or be somewhere else.
It just occurred to me how deeply sad it is that I’ve spent most of this afternoon refactoring and testing library Javascript, because it’s something I can’t justify the time for on werk days. OK, that’s not all I’ve done today - ramtops and I went shopping this morning, and I’ve changed our bed - but still…
Oh well.
The code needed (and still needs) cleaning up, honest: some of this stuff goes back twelve years, but at least I’ve got the namespace pollution pretty much under control now. I blame myself for writing a specialised codebase grep in Perl that lets me easily find all the places in our entire collection of Perl and ColdFusion libraries and client web code any given function or method is used; couldn’t do this else.
Yesterday morning, I placed my bi-monthly-ish tea order¹ with Gillards. Dreadful website; excellent service.
Yesterday evening the bit of Teh Intarweb that houses our servers and provides our DSL (but not our cable) suffered a small but perfectly formed death (still no confirmation, but it seems that a major router or switch decided to wave its legs in the air). The bits got swept up and stuffed back into the series of pipes in the early hours of this morning, and all seems well now.
This morning, my tea arrived. Huzzah! But one packet short and with a handwritten addendum to the delivery slip: “Sorry no Darjeeling First Flush until new season’s arrives”. Arse! I’ve about half a (125g) pack left from last time; it’ll have to stretch.
¹ 125g Jasmine Chung Hao, 375g Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe Assam, 250g Ceylon Orange Pekoe, 250g China Lapsang Souchong, 250g Russian Caravan, 125g Darjeeling First Flush. Oolong and green tea I get elsewhere.
I’ve just finished rereading Titus Groan (last time was maybe ten years ago), and I’m struck at how small Gormenghast feels this time round. To me now, and explicitly in Peake’s descriptive writing of outside the castle. Outside is vital: I don’t think I registered before how important Keda was, how Flay is transformed and opened by his exile, and I’m looking forward to re-cognizing Keda’s daughter in Gormenghast with a wider perspective.
The end of Titus Alone really is foreshadowed in this first book; I suspect I’ll be confirmed in feeling the last to be the best of the three when I finally get to its end.
ETA that the central theme of the first book, if there were but a single one, is the definition of, the overture to, Fuchsia’s tragedy. And its inevitability.
