Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Hi everyone! Initial thread for If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino where we can clock in and get our bearings.

Wow, I'm learning a lot about tisanes and tea here! B-) ;) An unexpected boon to reading The Blind Assassin. :D

Weeellll.... Xbox -is- a cheaper alternative, and they have a lot of titles, although I admit they tend to lean towards the shooter side. (I don't really do shooters either unless they're RPG's like Mass Effect and Fallout 3).

But yeah, PS3 was pretty expensive and the games ain't cheap either...

A game I had been sneaking in because I loved Witcher 1, has been Witcher 3. I'll finish it up with the latest DLC in my soon - to be vacation. Shoon!

Btw. do you play adventure games at all? I suppose a console gamer wouldn't though... Anyway, because looks like Syberia 3 is really coming!

I need to catch up on games like FF (and Zelda!). I've always been more of a PC gamer especially because I'm quite big into strategy, especially of the fantasy variety.
Not that I have time to game anymore, but one can always dream... :D

I am planning to game during my coming Xmas vacation though.
Oh, and I don't really do survival horror either, but I loved some of Bethesda's other games, which is why i got that one.

Yeah, well, not pleasantly - how about satisfying? We're talking comparatively now.....:P

The game was this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of...

Ha, I was going to say Poe is more.... (ok, but I couldn't find the right word) - his work is more atmospheric in a ....what is the word I'm looking for - in a more pleasantly macabre sense, is more or less what I'm trying to say.

That said, I once played a videogame based on the Chtulu mythos, and it was easily one of the creepiest games I had ever played...

I have read a bit of Teatro Grottesco, and find it a similar kind of psychological horror. I haven't read the others yet. If you're not in a hurry, we can maybe do it (Ligotti) kinda together-ish after the 3 Ambergris VanderMeers?

I need to try out some of Barker's fantasy. IMO he's technically good and also an intelligent writer.

I found Lovecraft a bit bland, grey and bleak.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I've decided that is the correct reading also. I'm reading Lovecraft's (almost) complete works now, ..."

Ha, wow! You might also enjoy (or you might actually enjoy the more, the later works of Clive Barker. His first books of blood are yucky and gory, but I really enjoyed In the Flesh; they're more psychological, and reminded me a bit of the work of Thomas Ligotti.

Yolande wrote: "I find the different names of Carmilla amusing since it is just a shuffling around of her name in the title: Millarca and Mircalla. This kind of shuffling usually signifies to me the flexibility an..."

Indeed! Interesting that she still physically looks the same, and also interesting that that fact never seemed to phase the father much.... (on the portrait).

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Three bags sounds strong, but then maybe you're using a big pot."

Or small bags! My wife routinely throws three bags in a travel mug (so, big for a mug), because even two is two ..."

Ah, I remember now, that you get a kind of little round bag meant for a single cup, yes. So, now that you're back in the UK, do you find the tea in public places much different to the counterparts in Canada?

(view spoiler)[ Boy, talk about Freudian slips! Before I re-read my post, I had that as: Ah, I remember now, that you get a kind of little round bag meant for a single cup, yes. So, now that you're back in the UK, do you find the tea in pubic places much different to the counterparts in Canada? (hide spoiler)]

Oy vey! ..and now I will have a bunch of Mammoth Horrors, but no Mammoth Terror! Grrr at ya, Murphy!

Cool!

Hmmm, though, the initial remark was 'lesbian'. What exactly is lesbian? What exactly is a gay person? Does that include bi people? ...and if not, why not?
After all, GLBT stands for: "Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian, or Transgender".

I know there are subcultures, but I don't think any subculture should try and claim the GLBT label for themselves.
...it's rather similar to that syntactic bugbear "normality". Now, exactly who falls within that label and who falls outside of it?

I'm not for making boundaries too narrow. I admit that I haven't researched Le Fanu's orientation, and I have to leave the internet for a bit, but yeah, although I said myself earlier that I don't agree with the reviews who called this a pioneer in lesbian lit, it's more for other reasons, such as that it doesn't pioneer lesbian attraction in literature, (because it doesn't- "pioneer" means "one of the first" ) rather than that I'd want to make my distinctions too narrow.

Of course, it's not "lesbian lit" in the sense of lit written by lesbians. But I blame the reviewers who labelled it there, rather than Le Fanu or the story, since I very much doubt that Le Fanu would have made any such claims, publicly or privately.

Bottom line: No, it's not a pioneer in lesbian lit, but not because it's too prurient, but because it was not written by a lesbian, and it doesn't pioneer the phenomenon either.

Three bags sounds strong, but then maybe you're using a big pot. I love green tea, (you're supposed to have it weak-ish as far as I know) but then I add a bit of milk - I know Cecily will gasp "sacrilege" at that... You could try the one flavored with mint which is lovely and refreshing - and no, I don't have that with milk. :P

I personally enjoy the tastes of both honeybush (is this the same as "cancer bush"?) and rooibos - they both taste sweeter to me than my usual Ceylon tea - I use the Twinings English breakfast one - I find the latter has the least soapy taste for me.

Agreed with Cecily that Jasmine is divine. :)

mark wrote: "I just read a story that references a lot of Chambers, from character names to the dread play itself: Karl Edward Wagner's "The River of Night's Dreaming". brilliant story."

Hey, thanks!

Sorry, my bad, I should have expanded on what I had meant. I've edited my post now, which hopefully makes it a bit clearer.

Yolande wrote: "Traveller wrote: "What a pity that people aren't generally more careful of minding spoilers. Most of the enjoyment of this story lies in knowing nothing about it; which is how I had initially read ..."

No, I wasn't referring to your post, Yolande, I meant out there, on the internet, and Wikipedia is a big culprit, though I already know never to read anything about books or movies on it before I read or see the books/movies first.
This is why I never read anything about books in advance, if I can help it at all :

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: " I keep reading reviews that suggest it's important because it was a "pioneer in Lesbian literature". Gag me... It was far too prurient for that. .."

Reading that made me feel sad.

(view spoiler)[When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be
by John Keats (1795 – 1821)

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;–then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
===

From : Sonnet:

Bright Star - Poem by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

==

Madonna of the Evening Flowers
by Amy Lowell. 1874-1925

All day long I have been working
Now I am tired.
I call: “Where are you?”
But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you?
I go about searching.

Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes,
You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.

A Lady

You are beautiful and faded
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.
Your half-tones delight me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colours.

My vigour is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.

The Giver of Stars
Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.

Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,
That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,
The life and joy of tongues of flame,
And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,
I may rouse the blear-eyed world,
And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.


The Temple

Between us leapt a gold and scarlet flame.
Into the hollow of the cupped, arched blue
Of Heaven it rose. Its flickering tongues up-drew
And vanished in the sunshine. How it came
We guessed not, nor what thing could be its name.
From each to each had sprung those sparks which flew
Together into fire. But we knew
The winds would slap and quench it in their game.
And so we graved and fashioned marble blocks
To treasure it, and placed them round about.
With pillared porticos we wreathed the whole,
And roofed it with bright bronze. Behind carved locks
Flowered the tall and sheltered flame. Without,
The baffled winds thrust at a column's bole.

In a Garden

Gushing from the mouths of stone men
To spread at ease under the sky
In granite-lipped basins,
Where iris dabble their feet
And rustle to a passing wind,
The water fills the garden with its rushing,
In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns.

Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone,
Where trickle and plash the fountains,
Marble fountains, yellowed with much water.

Splashing down moss-tarnished steps
It falls, the water;
And the air is throbbing with it.
With its gurgling and running.
With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur.

And I wished for night and you.
I wanted to see you in the swimming-pool,
White and shining in the silver-flecked water.
While the moon rode over the garden,
High in the arch of night,
And the scent of the lilacs was heavy with stillness.

Night, and the water, and you in your whiteness, bathing!

====
Again and Again
by: Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.


The Ragged Wood
by: William Butler Yeats

O, hurry, where by water, among the trees,
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have looked upon their images
Would none had ever loved but you and I!

Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood?
O, that none ever loved but you and I!

O hurry to the ragged wood, for there
I will drive all those lovers out and cry
O, my share of the world, O, yellow hair!
No one has ever loved but you and I.

=====

She Walks In Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

– Lord Byron

===

(hide spoiler)]

Also, if the depiction of 'love' and passionate attraction makes literature 'bad', then surely this must be confined to the dregs (and yet it can be found as a 'set work' in secondary schools the world over):
(view spoiler)[
JULIET
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties, or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.
Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle till strange love grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
-Shakespeare(3.2.5-16)

..and how about this, a poem in which I find the "toy doll" image to be pretty sexist and uncomfortable, as I find many of Neruda's poem's where he speaks of the woman's "absent eyes", and where he prefers her silence. Does the general acclaim for Neruda mean that society prefers a woman to be "absent" and passive as far as love and sex is concerned?:

I HAVE GONE MARKING

I have gone marking the atlas of your body
with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.
Stories to tell you on the shore of evening,
sad and gentle doll, so that you should not be sad.
A swan, a tree, something far away and happy.
The season of grapes, the ripe and fruitful season.
I who lived in a harbor from which I loved you.
The solitude crossed with dream and with silence.
Penned up between the sea and sadness.
Soundless, delirious, between two motionless gondoliers.
Between the lips and the voice something goes dying.
Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish
and oblivion.
The way nets cannot hold water.
My toy doll, only a few drops are left trembling.
Even so, something sings in these fugitive words.
Something sings, something climbs to my ravenous mouth.
Oh to be able to celebrate you with all the words of joy.
-from: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of
Despair by Pablo Neruda

Also, we should confine the opera Carmen to the dregs, since there is definitely sexual passion there; - also, Blood Wedding, by Federico García Lorca etc. - oops, run out of time - I should have been working...

Anyway, I could list many more examples if I only had the time... (hide spoiler)]

Yeah, there definitely is a glamor to a beautiful, masterful vampire, isn't there? Regarding the narration, I had wondered who she was writing this whole narration to - some aristocratic woman, judging by how she addresses her. It would have been cool, if she - the narrator, was now a deceitful vampire, tricking people into exposing their necks for her. :)

But still, I don't like the idea of dismissing this just because it is supposedly "prurient" and because it was written by a man. The implication is that women cannot write M/M GLBT, and yet I know that many of them do, and are read and enjoyed by male gays, so why can the reverse not be true? As a woman, I don't see anything offensive in Le Fanu's story beyond the unpleasant little detail that, you know, C is actually a vampire literally sucking her friends dry...
Isn't that so true of many sexual and non-sexual relationships, though? Where one person sucks the other one dry on an emotional level?

Ok, but back to the 'prurient'; in case anybody didn't know what "prurient" prose looks like, here is a good example: ;)

(view spoiler)[ I follow his orders immediately. Jeez, can I touch my ankles? I find I can, with ease. The t-shirt slides up my back, exposing my behind. [...]Oh, it feels good. I moan. His breathing halts, and I hear him gasp as he repeats the motion. [...]He lifts his hand and brings it down in a resounding slap against the junction of my thighs, my behind, and my sex. The balls are forced forward inside me, and I’m lost in a quagmire of sensation. The stinging across my behind, the fullness of the balls inside me, and the fact that he’s holding me down. I screw my face up as my faculties attempt to absorb all these foreign feelings. (hide spoiler)]

Guess where that came from? ;) I deliberately kept to the less juicy bits, because, you know, this is not an erotica group...

It's funny, though, what different people find sexy in literature. It looks like what is sexy for one person and what is sexy for another, is not the same thing. The material in my spoiler leaves me far more cold than the material in this novella, truth be told... I've never been too impressed with lit that focuses too much on the physical - I went through a stage where I read some....really smutty erotica that crosses all sorts of lines, out of curiosity, and my final verdict on it is : "meh".

In any case: what I am trying to say is that depicting sexuality in literature is not the same as writing smut/erotica. In smut/erotica, the entire narration focuses on sexual feelings and acts. I can give another example of 'real' smut to make my point - and this time I will post the intro to the "story" (a 'lesbian' one). It starts off very.... physical : (view spoiler)[ Allison was a freshman in college studying medicine. She was 5'6" tall, had brown hair, and always kept her pubic hair trimmed to a small landing strip above her *spoiler*. She had a bit of a bubble butt, a d-cup breasts, and a fluffy *spoiler*. She was very dedicated to her school work, but she was more dedicated to herself. She took at least an hour every day just to go around her dorm naked while playing with her *spoiler* a bit. She didn't have a roommate, so she didn't have to worry about anyone else seeing her naked. (hide spoiler)] I *spoilered* it a bit. :P