Reassure the blades of green, green grass
Nov. 3rd, 2024 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Another Sunday afternoon, another cosy autumn weekend wrapping itself up. The clocks went back last Sunday, and it's absolutely striking to see the change in the quality of light, and the relative levels of light in the sky at specific times of day. When travelling in to work, Matthias and I leave the house at 6.50am to walk down to the train station, and for weeks this journey had been under inky dark blue skies — now it's silvery and clear in the mornings again, at least for now. In contrast, the light has well and truly left the sky by 5pm, and it's already pretty dim now, at 2.30.
Saturday began as always in the gym, moved on to the market (we had vague aspirations of trying the new cheese/wine/charcuterie shop on the high street, which opened yesterday, but the endless queue out the door put us off, and I will attempt to visit next week on one of my days working from home, when things are less chaotic), and then returned to our house, where I filled the fridge with all the vegetables we'd bought. I had the uncharacteristically spontaneous idea, around 5pm, to go for a little walk in the dying light, and stop for a drink in one of the pubs in town — the one that feels as if you're sitting in someone's living room, under a canopy of string lights — so Matthias and I headed out again. Our way was barred by the Bonfire Night event, which had cordoned off a large segment of the park next to the cathedral, so we cut our intended walk short and just headed straight to the pub, which was so crowded we had to sit on the stairs, while I nursed my glass of prosecco and fetched board games from the shelf behind me (which we were blocking) for other patrons when requested.
I enjoy fireworks, and enjoy watching them from public spaces, but I resent being made to pay £12 for the privilege of standing on a hill in a public park in November, and in any case the fireworks are mostly visible from our house, and I watched the whole display while cooking Saturday's dinner. It was the perfect night for it: clear and inky and still, and the colours of the fireworks were vivid against the wintry sky.
After dinner on Saturday, Matthias and I watched Love Lies Bleeding, the lesbian romance/revenge thriller starring Kristen Stewart at her vulnerable, prickly best as a gym employee in a small town near the US-Mexican border in 1989, dealing with the triple challenges of new love with a statuesque aspiring competitive body builder who's blown into town, her cross-border gun-smuggling father who seems to be running the town like his own little mafia empire, and her sister's refusal to leave her physically abusive husband. The whole thing has a dreamy, almost magical realist feel, a synth-y 1980s soundtrack, and a spare, precise script which communicates much in what is not said.
Today began in the crisp, early morning, as I walked to the pool in a world completely absent of any other people. I was in and out fairly efficiently, back home for crepes, pottering around, and finalising plans for dinner. Around midday, Matthias and I headed out again, walking along the river, then up to the market, where we picked up pizza from one of the food trucks, and ate it in the courtyard garden of our favourite cafe/bar. It wasn't quite warm enough for me to be outside, but in my coat and my big, bulky blanket of a scarf, it was manageable. We returned home before I could freeze to my seat, clutching takeaway coffee and handmade Christmas pudding fudge, which I've been sipping and nibbling on as I write this post.
This week, my reading has been mainly all Timothy Snyder: an On Tyranny and On Freedom double-header. The former is his essay-length polemic, written during the Trump presidency, a sort of survival guide (for people as individuals, and for the institutions and norms of democratic countries) for authoritarianism, the latter is in essence a 350-page case (with personal anecdotes, analogies from history and our current times, and an accessible overview of the works of various theorists and philosophers) for Snyder's own values (i.e. liberalism, the rule of law, a robust and free press, a strong civil society with robust horizontal organisation, and a strong, well-funded social democratic state with the cradle-to-grave wellbeing of its citizens taken seriously). I read Snyder's writing (both book-length, and the shorter pieces on his Substack) for comfort and affirmation; it makes me feel less alone, as if someone else sees the world as I see it, and properly recognises the seriousness of the threats to our shared values. As always, though, the scale of what he's up against: oligarchic authoritarian populism fueled by appeals to people's worst emotions feels so overwhelmingly strong against the calm, deliberate statement of facts that forms the core of Snyder's response.
Apart from earnest essays on totalitarianism and democracy, I also read Babylonia (Constanza Casati), a historical fiction novel about the real-world female Assyrian ruler, Semiramis (Sammuramat). When I tell you that Casati's previous book was a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra, you can probably slot Babylonia into the appropriate niche: a 'feminist reclamation' of a controversial female figure, with a focus on the misogynistic obstacles she had to overcome. There's court intrigue and a love triangle, Game of Thrones-level violence designed to provoke a strong emotional response, and a relentless emphasis on the brutality of the characters' world, and the damage they do to themselves and each other in trying to survive it. It does involve one of my favourite character arcs ever — that of a person who was made to feel vulnerable and afraid, and reacts to that by remaking the world in order to never feel fear again, destroying themselves in the process — but I am ambivalent about the book's purported feminism. It's another one of those stories where its female protagonist's even action is justified, and where the author tries to sand down any sharp edges and shies away from moral greyness.
A quick note re: next week's US election. Although I'm not a citizen any more (and was only ever an 'unintentional' citizen beforehand), obviously I have a lot of people I care about both inside and outside the United States whose lives are going to be materially affected by the result, and so obviously it's been causing me a lot of stress and sleepless, anxiety attack-filled nights. Depending on the outcome, I will be taking a lengthy pause from the internet (other than whatever I need to access for work), which will include Dreamwidth, from Wednesday morning UK time onwards. If the result is bad, I know that leaping online to witness the immediate reactions will basically be like deliberately engaging in self-harm. If I receive comments during that time period, there is likely to be a reasonable delay before I reply.
This post opened with discussion of the changing light, and now the light has almost left the sky in the half-hour or so since I began writing. Winter is well and truly waiting in the wings.
Saturday began as always in the gym, moved on to the market (we had vague aspirations of trying the new cheese/wine/charcuterie shop on the high street, which opened yesterday, but the endless queue out the door put us off, and I will attempt to visit next week on one of my days working from home, when things are less chaotic), and then returned to our house, where I filled the fridge with all the vegetables we'd bought. I had the uncharacteristically spontaneous idea, around 5pm, to go for a little walk in the dying light, and stop for a drink in one of the pubs in town — the one that feels as if you're sitting in someone's living room, under a canopy of string lights — so Matthias and I headed out again. Our way was barred by the Bonfire Night event, which had cordoned off a large segment of the park next to the cathedral, so we cut our intended walk short and just headed straight to the pub, which was so crowded we had to sit on the stairs, while I nursed my glass of prosecco and fetched board games from the shelf behind me (which we were blocking) for other patrons when requested.
I enjoy fireworks, and enjoy watching them from public spaces, but I resent being made to pay £12 for the privilege of standing on a hill in a public park in November, and in any case the fireworks are mostly visible from our house, and I watched the whole display while cooking Saturday's dinner. It was the perfect night for it: clear and inky and still, and the colours of the fireworks were vivid against the wintry sky.
After dinner on Saturday, Matthias and I watched Love Lies Bleeding, the lesbian romance/revenge thriller starring Kristen Stewart at her vulnerable, prickly best as a gym employee in a small town near the US-Mexican border in 1989, dealing with the triple challenges of new love with a statuesque aspiring competitive body builder who's blown into town, her cross-border gun-smuggling father who seems to be running the town like his own little mafia empire, and her sister's refusal to leave her physically abusive husband. The whole thing has a dreamy, almost magical realist feel, a synth-y 1980s soundtrack, and a spare, precise script which communicates much in what is not said.
Today began in the crisp, early morning, as I walked to the pool in a world completely absent of any other people. I was in and out fairly efficiently, back home for crepes, pottering around, and finalising plans for dinner. Around midday, Matthias and I headed out again, walking along the river, then up to the market, where we picked up pizza from one of the food trucks, and ate it in the courtyard garden of our favourite cafe/bar. It wasn't quite warm enough for me to be outside, but in my coat and my big, bulky blanket of a scarf, it was manageable. We returned home before I could freeze to my seat, clutching takeaway coffee and handmade Christmas pudding fudge, which I've been sipping and nibbling on as I write this post.
This week, my reading has been mainly all Timothy Snyder: an On Tyranny and On Freedom double-header. The former is his essay-length polemic, written during the Trump presidency, a sort of survival guide (for people as individuals, and for the institutions and norms of democratic countries) for authoritarianism, the latter is in essence a 350-page case (with personal anecdotes, analogies from history and our current times, and an accessible overview of the works of various theorists and philosophers) for Snyder's own values (i.e. liberalism, the rule of law, a robust and free press, a strong civil society with robust horizontal organisation, and a strong, well-funded social democratic state with the cradle-to-grave wellbeing of its citizens taken seriously). I read Snyder's writing (both book-length, and the shorter pieces on his Substack) for comfort and affirmation; it makes me feel less alone, as if someone else sees the world as I see it, and properly recognises the seriousness of the threats to our shared values. As always, though, the scale of what he's up against: oligarchic authoritarian populism fueled by appeals to people's worst emotions feels so overwhelmingly strong against the calm, deliberate statement of facts that forms the core of Snyder's response.
Apart from earnest essays on totalitarianism and democracy, I also read Babylonia (Constanza Casati), a historical fiction novel about the real-world female Assyrian ruler, Semiramis (Sammuramat). When I tell you that Casati's previous book was a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra, you can probably slot Babylonia into the appropriate niche: a 'feminist reclamation' of a controversial female figure, with a focus on the misogynistic obstacles she had to overcome. There's court intrigue and a love triangle, Game of Thrones-level violence designed to provoke a strong emotional response, and a relentless emphasis on the brutality of the characters' world, and the damage they do to themselves and each other in trying to survive it. It does involve one of my favourite character arcs ever — that of a person who was made to feel vulnerable and afraid, and reacts to that by remaking the world in order to never feel fear again, destroying themselves in the process — but I am ambivalent about the book's purported feminism. It's another one of those stories where its female protagonist's even action is justified, and where the author tries to sand down any sharp edges and shies away from moral greyness.
A quick note re: next week's US election. Although I'm not a citizen any more (and was only ever an 'unintentional' citizen beforehand), obviously I have a lot of people I care about both inside and outside the United States whose lives are going to be materially affected by the result, and so obviously it's been causing me a lot of stress and sleepless, anxiety attack-filled nights. Depending on the outcome, I will be taking a lengthy pause from the internet (other than whatever I need to access for work), which will include Dreamwidth, from Wednesday morning UK time onwards. If the result is bad, I know that leaping online to witness the immediate reactions will basically be like deliberately engaging in self-harm. If I receive comments during that time period, there is likely to be a reasonable delay before I reply.
This post opened with discussion of the changing light, and now the light has almost left the sky in the half-hour or so since I began writing. Winter is well and truly waiting in the wings.