Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 168

cinda_cite--what is the *practical* power of the One Ring

This question of cinda_cite 's is so very, very intriguing, and I'd very much like to see what people think. We're not talking about its power as a metaphor, but its actual use and power within the world of LoTR.

Her entry is here, but this is the part that especially intrigues me:

Sauron is already immortal. So, how is [the ring] practically used, then? How does that look? Is there scholarship showing point by point from LotR how Sauron would use the ring? And, would he be used by it? (As the h...

Earthly remains

Here are the tatters, fragments, and deflations of frozen soap bubbles. First the tatters. This poor bubble ended its existence among the raspberry canes. Can you see it, like a fairy handkerchief, fluttering there?



And here are some shell-like fragments on the rail, where another crash landed:



And here are two deflated bubbles, one rolling lopsidedly along the porch, the other lifted up by the wind once again.

When it's subzero outside

It's time to make frozen soap bubbles! My favorite!

See how it's all opaque? That's how they get when they freeze.

Internet love and a few other random things...

Last night I was researching, researching, and turned up a couple of good essays written by someone on the other side of the world. So useful! But I had questions.... Well, they had included their email address, so, with some hesitation, I sent a diffident email expressing appreciation for what I'd read so far and wondering if I could trouble them with a few more questions.

And this afternoon they wrote back saying yes! Someone so far away, living such a different life, seeing such different...

Xanana Gusmão, charismatic prime minister of East Timor

Reasons to love Xanana Gusmão:

As a teenage soccer goalie, he "was too busy making up sonnets to actually stop any goals" (as I found out from reading The Crossing)

The obvious: he was a total badass freedom fighter. Forced to drop out of school at age fifteen due to lack of money, he become active advocating East Timor's independence from Portugal, then led the resistance against Indonesia after the latter invaded East Timor. He was captured in 1992 and sentenced to life imprisonment, but was...

aflame

I saw the sun coming up this morning. A plane was making a temporary comet in the sky, too.



The windows of a sunrise-facing house were catching all that brilliance. And suddenly, the house was aflame--ignited by sunlight. The windows melted; everything within burned clean away--only the thinnest shell remained by the time the sun had cleared the tree line.



It's a risk, when you build your house facing east. It's why they tell you not to look at the rising sun, too. Otherwise, the same might hap...

Diving back in time

I just found out Aung San Suu Kyi and I were at Kyoto University at the same time in the 1980s--or anyway, we overlapped.

Now I'm begging my mind to turn up a memory of having seen her on the campus (that I avoided whenever I could, feeling so deficient--OH I WAS A SAD EXCUSE FOR AN INTERNATIONAL STUDENT)

Instead I'm remembering waiting to catch the bus downtown, where I had some remedial Japanese classes, and talking with a guy from Guam. It turned out we both liked the same song by the group...

good fortune, the storm thief, and a feeling of dampness

A story of a patrimony of sorrow, told to Luís Cardoso by Mali Mau... Random bolding is mine.

“When my mother was pregnant with me, she used to say that she wanted a good future for her child. She tried to find out from wealthy people how they came by their fortune, but when they spoke only of inheritances, natural talents and suchlike, she gave up. Then one day, an old woman came to her and told her that, if fate smiled upon her, she might accidentally meet the spirit of seduction, Pontiana....

At the Registry of Motor Vehicles

Yesterday I had to produce my driver's license for ID and discovered it had expired several months ago--so today I went over the hills and far away to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, where I sat on a bench and finished Luís Cardoso's The Crossing (lovely, moving, informative--more later, or elsewhere) as I waited.

An old couple were sitting in the bank of benches in front of mine, and the wife was coughing dreadfully--exhausted, harsh coughing. Then a man came out from behind the hidden counte...

snow mermaid

All our snow melted yesterday, and then this morning four or five new inches fell. "I'm going out to shovel the driveway," I said, but then, when I realized the snow was wet and pack-y, I made a snow mermaid instead.







If I had lots of time I'd model the scales on her fishy parts and shape her body and her wet hair and (...and what would really happen is, her arm would fall off, and probably the tip of her tail, too).

... I'd better do some paid work now.