Simulacrum

in
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Waikiki, HI

While we were in London, D found something like this Bookcase wallpaper the glorious Dorky Medievalist sent me. (I covet it.  Perhaps for the guest bathroom?)  When D discovered it, it was like a whole new realm of strategy opened up in his war on my library.  He became very excited: "How 'bout we just get rid of all the books and replace them with wallpaper that LOOKS like books?"

There followed an acid pause.

Then I said, "I've consulted with the books, and they think I should buy D wallpaper for every room and get rid of YOU."

A mongoose and a gecko walk into a library...

in ,
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Waikiki, HI

Pop quiz. Which of the following things did Sycorax Pine see or step over on her walk home from the library yesterday?

  1. A mongoose
  2. A gecko
  3. a desiccated gecko skeleton
  4. a full 180 degrees of rainbow
  5. a toilet in the middle of the sidewalk 
Extra credit to any who can (as my mother did*) conceive of a story which makes "All of the above" into a meaningful narrative.



*  Here's my mom's explanation: "A mongoose and a gecko were walking along the street in Hawaii. 
Mongoose: 'Let's go to the library.'
Gecko: 'No, look! There's a rainbow to follow.'
After some argument on relative merits, they follow the rainbow, only to find it ends in a toilet containing a desiccated gecko skeleton.  Haven't quite figured out the moral: something to do with gold vs. libraries...?".

Bear in mind that my mother was a librarian.

Transformed and Inverted

in ,
I'm in Hawai'i again (without having caught up on my London blogging - curse it!), where, as I may have mentioned, my partner D works.  He has long days of filming, I have somewhat shorter days at the University of Hawaii library doing course prep and research.

I'm fairly sure that my mental processes are exactly reversed in Oahu,"transformed and inverted," as King Shudraka says in the Sanskrit drama I spent the afternoon reading, "even as an image reflected in a mirror is reversed so that the right becomes sinister."

Twice this week I've embarked on the fifty minute walk home from the UH library just as it started to rain at some length.  Both times I thought, "Oh good, this will make the walk pleasanter, and my hair will look better when I get home."  Both times this mental statement was untouched by even the slightest trace of sarcasm.

The effects of the rain

Who is this curly-hair optimist living in my brain???