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radfrac_archive_full) wrote2004-12-06 09:46 pm
radfrac_archive_full) wrote2004-12-06 09:46 pm
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bride of the ten-minute story
Everyone knows that the ahhhtist feeds on beauty alone; if that beauty happens to come in the form of roasted-garlic potato soup, as it did repeatedly for me this weekend, so much the better.
Friday, Bee (not a Honey Bee, exactly, though sweet, nor yet a Spelling Bee, though well-read; a Queen Bee in spirit, but of a more democratic bent; in this circumstance, a Wine Jelly and Chocolate Chip Cookie Bee) came by with bagels (I am trying so hard not to be alliterative and failing so badly) and an array of other delicacies to feed my, er, soul. (But I *do* find the soul is very well-satisfied by milk chocolate. I really do. Dark chocolate is delicious, but it is more of an intellectual substance; or, say, a spiritual *challenge* rather than comfort. Dark chocolate makes me feel bleak and noble.)
Saturday Grumpy Bastard repeated his Hell and Gone feat and we drove out to Bee's Mum's pottery studio for her yearly craft fair. The studio is a gorgeously rambling shake-covered being (surely not just a building) heated by a central woodstove, on which they brewed hot apple cider. Off to one side is the hobbity (or -- more playful -- Barbapapa-y) outdoor kiln. Windows in the downstairs studio framed views of mist-filled trees. Upstairs was the show-room, with slanted attic ceiling and not only Bee's Mum's work, but that of her students as well, and some lovely knobbly-yarn scarves by a Young Artist arcanely connected with Bee. Bee's Mum makes gigantic teapots in the shape of rhinoceri. Everyone else pretty much made bowls, but they were terribly nice bowls.
And if you had gone, you too could have had a marvel of a little pottery cup to take home, for everyone who had cider got to take their cup home. Mine is speckly blue, and I believe G.B.'s had a glossy blue-green glaze. I wandered around repeating "This is wonderful!" every few minutes, and people were in such a good mood that no one hit me with anything heavy (and there were lots of heavy things about.) G.B. more sensibly got a scarf. (The latest incarnation of the Eternal Scarf, but that is not my story to tell.)
Today I spent most of the day doing housework and ironing anything that would lie flat long enough. Tomorrow morning I go for my job interview, and as Caro-mi-caro says, we know not what outcome to pray for. Pray anyway, children. Pray very hard. Every time a bell rings, some poor sod has to answer the phone.
* * * * *
I read the following fragment to Grumpy Bastard last night, after much fretting about whether it was Too Trivial for Words. He pronounced it just trivial enough to suit words very well, but he was annoyed that it was unfinished. I thought I'd finish it today, but unless I stay up all night to do it, no. Since my time is so uncertain just now, I thought I'd post what I had.
I know you've often thought, as I have, that the real problem with A Midsummer Night's Dream is not its lack of narrative momentum, or its excessively prolonged denouement, but its insufficient levels of Gay.
I watched a recent movie of MND in pieces over the last few days. The casting was terrible. (I heart Stanley Tucci, but Puck?) The staging was awkward. (Titiana jumped around magically through the art of poorly cut film.) They used Received Standard Shakespeare Delivery, which means that you can garble your lines completely so long as you emote a lot. And Callista Flockhart... tried.
Still, lots of running around after the wrong person, and I kept thinking that it would be fun to write one of those love-potion-confused-identity comedies, but with more Gay, since that allows for so many more degrees of misunderstanding. (I think we are all agreed that the crossdressing in Twelfth Night is essential to happiness.) (Do we think MND is stronger than TN? I suppose we do. But think how much better it would be with more crossdressing.)
So, then, a midsummer night's ten-minute story. This lumpy little cake is also flavoured by C.S. Lewis, since I just re-read The Magician's Nephew courtesy of Grumpy Bastard, and by Jane Austen, since when I can't think of anything else to do I just copy Jane. Oh, and everyone has made-up fantasy-style names, but I wonder now if it might not be more fun to use the MND ones.
(Apologies to Grumpy Bastard if the horses behave unrealistically for the sake of the narrative.)
never did run smooth
By noon, the wedding site was a shambles. Garlands unflowered, ribbons slashed to, well, ribbons, banners churned in the mud, chairs overturned -- the bridal platform itself riven as by a lightning-bolt, splintered like kindling, like matchsticks, like straw. And they had not even got as far as the ceremony.
Mynia was weeping in her chambers. Adzonia was weeping in a forest clearing, her wedding-dress spread around her in a lavish radius of ruined hopes. Damio was standing very still with his forehead pressed against a tree trunk and his eyes shut; he had been standing thus for upwards of an hour. His boon companion Ottrio was submerged in a bath (to soak out the dried blood), with a bottle of the wedding wine in each hand.
The situation as it stood was almost, but not exactly quite, entirely Damio's fault, which goes towards explaining why he leant his brow so firmly against the rough bark, as if carefully crushing some essential self-knowledge between the two, to release either the Juice of Insight, or the Seeds of Forgetfulness.
He could not really blame Mynia for not loving him. Their personalities were complementary, being robust in joy and quietly forbearing in sorrow. They liked the same books and songs. They were almost exactly of a height. There was nothing at all unsuitable about Damio, so Mynia, who was very romantic, naturally despised him.
It was wrong of him, all the same, to procure a love-potion and to bribe a servant to administer it to her in her hot milk the night before the wedding. He knew it was wrong, but told himself that he would be such a good husband after they were married that it did not much signify how they began. He was not a cruel man -- since he suspected Mynia's dislike was largely on principle, the potion was specific: the label read sovereign elixer to encourage an ignored or suppressed affection. Still, it was very far from a sporting thing to do.
For her part, it was not very sporting of Mynia to obtain a strong emetic powder and bribe Damio's valet to administer it. She did this in order to postpone the wedding and (possibly) to give her betrothed a last chance to do something scandalous. The valet put it in the port, which was most unsporting of all.
Damio began vomiting just before sunrise, which was how he missed being the first person Mynia saw when she woke (it was that kind of potion.) He'd arranged to carry in her morning chocolate, as an affectionate gesture befitting a betrothed husband.
His being delayed might not have mattered so very much had not Adzonia, waking early to examine her wedding-clothes, and finding a snag in the fabric, come running into Mynia's room in her slip and woken her with a cry of despair. The two young women had been at school together in a convent, so you see how things stood even before the potion was administered. It was already difficult for each to put a mostly hypothetical affection for a future husband ahead of years of girlish intimacy; for Mynia it became immediately impossible.
I don't know quite what Adzonia's excuse may be, except that she hadn't slept very well. In any case, matters rapidly progressed to the point, if not exactly of no return, certainly of great difficulty in finding the way back, breadcrumbs or no breadcrumbs.
If you think about it, it is a very nasty thing to give someone a love potion: almost as bad as giving them poison. Poison can kill a person outright, but a potion kills the person's free choice. And to infect someone with love can be as bad as giving them cholera, in extreme cases, or at least ague, with its fever and chills.
Mynia and Adzonia took very little time, relatively speaking, to make up their minds to run away together. For this purpose, they quickly obtained a quantity of provisions and useful objects: a lantern, a compass, a joint of ham, six dried apples, a basket of figs and one of cherries, an extra set of warm underclothes each, and a broken pistol that still, as Mynia said, looked very fierce. These items, and a few smaller sundries, they concealed under the skirts of their wedding gowns. The metal things clanked a bit, and the ham-hock impaired a graceful step, but they assured each other that no one would notice these details in all the excitement. This proved to be true, in the main, although Adzonia lost the sack of apples in struggling to get up onto her horse, and Mynia cut herself rather badly on a cake-knife she'd thrust into her shoe at the last moment.
First, though, they had to shuffle down the back stairs (to attract less notice) to the gardens, where the wedding platform was being arrayed in that glory of blossom and silk that would shortly be torn to pieces. Their main concern was how to distract or delay the bridegrooms. Mynia explained that Damio was sufficiently occupied. There only remianed Ottrio to account for, or so they believed.
In fact, as the runaways edged down step by step, clutching baskets of fruit between their knees, Damio was stumbling along the upstairs hallway to Mynia's room. His face was ghastly, and he clawed along the wall with one hand as he went. Every few steps he stopped to retch and wipe the froth of saliva from his mouth. In his right hand, rocking with each step and liberally annointing the carpet, was a cup of rapidly cooling chocolate.
Boldly, he threw open the chamber door by the expedient of falling against it. Brandishing the mug, he cried, "My darling, it is I, your own beloved!" Then he fell down in a dead faint. The cup dropped and bounced along the carpet.
Mynia's maid, much startled, stared at him for some moments. She was the only other person in the room. She fluffed the pillow in her hands absently, set it down on the bed, and crossed the room to nudge Damio with her toe. He belched mournfully in his sleep. She bent down and gently straightened his collar, then went out.
The reader will have noticed that Mynia's maid forgot to remove the fallen mug. This was not really her fault; the cup was a dark colour like the carpet, and no one had told her to watch out for obvious plot devices. Still, if Ottrio, thinking to find his friend in beloved Mynia's company, had not seen the cup near Damio's hand, in addition to the very figure of his prone friend, face resting in a shadowy drool-stain that a nervous glance could mistake for blood, he might not have leapt to the conclusion that the dearest companion of his youth had been poisoned.
It is instructive to see what great misunderstandings can arise from such very small things.
Ottrio soon appeared outside, shouting for guards and buckling a brace of pistols over his nightshirt. He found his betrothed Adzonia in the inexplicable act of leading two white horses behind the bridal platform in preparation for the escape. Shielding his eyes so as to avoid sight of her wedding gown, he demanded to know her purpose.
Mynia was nearby, procuring the cake-knife, which she hoped would prove a useful weapon in the event that the menace of the broken pistol was insufficient. The hamhock, however, proved more expedient: Adzonia drew it and knocked Ottrio unconscious. Mynia came running up, drawing the cake-knife from her shoe with a warlike cry, and thus sustaining her only serious physical injury of the day.
Ottrio dropped like a felled tree. Adzonia strapped the hamhock back into place. The lovers threw themselves onto horseback and raced away. They took down a quantity of bunting as they passed, for the horses were confused by their odd shape and unsteady balance, and ran wild until Mynia got hers under control by riding round and round the cake table. Adzonia's followed suit, and after a moment they struck off into the forest.
The guests began to arrive, and the sensible ones to leave again almost immediately. There might still have been something to salvage of the day, or at least of the dinner, had further events not intervened.
Not long into their ride, Mynia's injury began to trouble her. The young women pulled up in a clearing to have a look at it. Adzonia pronounced a poultice the necessary thing. They tied the horses, and while Mynia cleaned the wound, Adzonia gathered dock leaves for the two of them to chew into a paste.
I do not know if you have ever chewed dock. Besides making an excellent poultice and being very good for the liver, dock leaves are quite bitter. You see what a mistake it was for Adzonia to give Mynia some of the leaves to chew, for bitterness is ever the enemy of love.
Mynia spat the dock out almost at once, but already new thoughts were springing up in her mind. The impropriety of what they'd done, the burden of its consequences, and the futility of the cake-knife crowded in upon her. When Adzonia pressed the poultice to her wounded foot, the bitterness entered her blood and went to her heart. She leapt up with an angry shout, and, knocking Adzonia back, climbed onto her horse and urged it away. Since it was still tied, the horse could not oblige her, though it tried with the best will in the world. She shouted tearfully at the bewildered Adzonia until the horse was freed and she could ride off in slightly subdued outrage. Adzonia watched her go. When the last fold of wedding gown had vanished among the trees, she threw herself onto the ground and wept.
Although all ethical persons must be opposed to the use of love potions, I think the reader can see that another one would come in very handy at this point. It could be usefully administered to any of our unlucky lovers -- to Adzonia, to make her love her intended instead of Mynia; to Mynia, to resign her either to Damio or to Adzonia; to either Damio or Ottrio, for symmetry and convenience. Alas, I do not have such a one, and I'll wager the reader does not either. We will have to muddle on without.
[END OF FRAGMENT]
Friday, Bee (not a Honey Bee, exactly, though sweet, nor yet a Spelling Bee, though well-read; a Queen Bee in spirit, but of a more democratic bent; in this circumstance, a Wine Jelly and Chocolate Chip Cookie Bee) came by with bagels (I am trying so hard not to be alliterative and failing so badly) and an array of other delicacies to feed my, er, soul. (But I *do* find the soul is very well-satisfied by milk chocolate. I really do. Dark chocolate is delicious, but it is more of an intellectual substance; or, say, a spiritual *challenge* rather than comfort. Dark chocolate makes me feel bleak and noble.)
Saturday Grumpy Bastard repeated his Hell and Gone feat and we drove out to Bee's Mum's pottery studio for her yearly craft fair. The studio is a gorgeously rambling shake-covered being (surely not just a building) heated by a central woodstove, on which they brewed hot apple cider. Off to one side is the hobbity (or -- more playful -- Barbapapa-y) outdoor kiln. Windows in the downstairs studio framed views of mist-filled trees. Upstairs was the show-room, with slanted attic ceiling and not only Bee's Mum's work, but that of her students as well, and some lovely knobbly-yarn scarves by a Young Artist arcanely connected with Bee. Bee's Mum makes gigantic teapots in the shape of rhinoceri. Everyone else pretty much made bowls, but they were terribly nice bowls.
And if you had gone, you too could have had a marvel of a little pottery cup to take home, for everyone who had cider got to take their cup home. Mine is speckly blue, and I believe G.B.'s had a glossy blue-green glaze. I wandered around repeating "This is wonderful!" every few minutes, and people were in such a good mood that no one hit me with anything heavy (and there were lots of heavy things about.) G.B. more sensibly got a scarf. (The latest incarnation of the Eternal Scarf, but that is not my story to tell.)
Today I spent most of the day doing housework and ironing anything that would lie flat long enough. Tomorrow morning I go for my job interview, and as Caro-mi-caro says, we know not what outcome to pray for. Pray anyway, children. Pray very hard. Every time a bell rings, some poor sod has to answer the phone.
* * * * *
I read the following fragment to Grumpy Bastard last night, after much fretting about whether it was Too Trivial for Words. He pronounced it just trivial enough to suit words very well, but he was annoyed that it was unfinished. I thought I'd finish it today, but unless I stay up all night to do it, no. Since my time is so uncertain just now, I thought I'd post what I had.
I know you've often thought, as I have, that the real problem with A Midsummer Night's Dream is not its lack of narrative momentum, or its excessively prolonged denouement, but its insufficient levels of Gay.
I watched a recent movie of MND in pieces over the last few days. The casting was terrible. (I heart Stanley Tucci, but Puck?) The staging was awkward. (Titiana jumped around magically through the art of poorly cut film.) They used Received Standard Shakespeare Delivery, which means that you can garble your lines completely so long as you emote a lot. And Callista Flockhart... tried.
Still, lots of running around after the wrong person, and I kept thinking that it would be fun to write one of those love-potion-confused-identity comedies, but with more Gay, since that allows for so many more degrees of misunderstanding. (I think we are all agreed that the crossdressing in Twelfth Night is essential to happiness.) (Do we think MND is stronger than TN? I suppose we do. But think how much better it would be with more crossdressing.)
So, then, a midsummer night's ten-minute story. This lumpy little cake is also flavoured by C.S. Lewis, since I just re-read The Magician's Nephew courtesy of Grumpy Bastard, and by Jane Austen, since when I can't think of anything else to do I just copy Jane. Oh, and everyone has made-up fantasy-style names, but I wonder now if it might not be more fun to use the MND ones.
(Apologies to Grumpy Bastard if the horses behave unrealistically for the sake of the narrative.)
never did run smooth
By noon, the wedding site was a shambles. Garlands unflowered, ribbons slashed to, well, ribbons, banners churned in the mud, chairs overturned -- the bridal platform itself riven as by a lightning-bolt, splintered like kindling, like matchsticks, like straw. And they had not even got as far as the ceremony.
Mynia was weeping in her chambers. Adzonia was weeping in a forest clearing, her wedding-dress spread around her in a lavish radius of ruined hopes. Damio was standing very still with his forehead pressed against a tree trunk and his eyes shut; he had been standing thus for upwards of an hour. His boon companion Ottrio was submerged in a bath (to soak out the dried blood), with a bottle of the wedding wine in each hand.
The situation as it stood was almost, but not exactly quite, entirely Damio's fault, which goes towards explaining why he leant his brow so firmly against the rough bark, as if carefully crushing some essential self-knowledge between the two, to release either the Juice of Insight, or the Seeds of Forgetfulness.
He could not really blame Mynia for not loving him. Their personalities were complementary, being robust in joy and quietly forbearing in sorrow. They liked the same books and songs. They were almost exactly of a height. There was nothing at all unsuitable about Damio, so Mynia, who was very romantic, naturally despised him.
It was wrong of him, all the same, to procure a love-potion and to bribe a servant to administer it to her in her hot milk the night before the wedding. He knew it was wrong, but told himself that he would be such a good husband after they were married that it did not much signify how they began. He was not a cruel man -- since he suspected Mynia's dislike was largely on principle, the potion was specific: the label read sovereign elixer to encourage an ignored or suppressed affection. Still, it was very far from a sporting thing to do.
For her part, it was not very sporting of Mynia to obtain a strong emetic powder and bribe Damio's valet to administer it. She did this in order to postpone the wedding and (possibly) to give her betrothed a last chance to do something scandalous. The valet put it in the port, which was most unsporting of all.
Damio began vomiting just before sunrise, which was how he missed being the first person Mynia saw when she woke (it was that kind of potion.) He'd arranged to carry in her morning chocolate, as an affectionate gesture befitting a betrothed husband.
His being delayed might not have mattered so very much had not Adzonia, waking early to examine her wedding-clothes, and finding a snag in the fabric, come running into Mynia's room in her slip and woken her with a cry of despair. The two young women had been at school together in a convent, so you see how things stood even before the potion was administered. It was already difficult for each to put a mostly hypothetical affection for a future husband ahead of years of girlish intimacy; for Mynia it became immediately impossible.
I don't know quite what Adzonia's excuse may be, except that she hadn't slept very well. In any case, matters rapidly progressed to the point, if not exactly of no return, certainly of great difficulty in finding the way back, breadcrumbs or no breadcrumbs.
If you think about it, it is a very nasty thing to give someone a love potion: almost as bad as giving them poison. Poison can kill a person outright, but a potion kills the person's free choice. And to infect someone with love can be as bad as giving them cholera, in extreme cases, or at least ague, with its fever and chills.
Mynia and Adzonia took very little time, relatively speaking, to make up their minds to run away together. For this purpose, they quickly obtained a quantity of provisions and useful objects: a lantern, a compass, a joint of ham, six dried apples, a basket of figs and one of cherries, an extra set of warm underclothes each, and a broken pistol that still, as Mynia said, looked very fierce. These items, and a few smaller sundries, they concealed under the skirts of their wedding gowns. The metal things clanked a bit, and the ham-hock impaired a graceful step, but they assured each other that no one would notice these details in all the excitement. This proved to be true, in the main, although Adzonia lost the sack of apples in struggling to get up onto her horse, and Mynia cut herself rather badly on a cake-knife she'd thrust into her shoe at the last moment.
First, though, they had to shuffle down the back stairs (to attract less notice) to the gardens, where the wedding platform was being arrayed in that glory of blossom and silk that would shortly be torn to pieces. Their main concern was how to distract or delay the bridegrooms. Mynia explained that Damio was sufficiently occupied. There only remianed Ottrio to account for, or so they believed.
In fact, as the runaways edged down step by step, clutching baskets of fruit between their knees, Damio was stumbling along the upstairs hallway to Mynia's room. His face was ghastly, and he clawed along the wall with one hand as he went. Every few steps he stopped to retch and wipe the froth of saliva from his mouth. In his right hand, rocking with each step and liberally annointing the carpet, was a cup of rapidly cooling chocolate.
Boldly, he threw open the chamber door by the expedient of falling against it. Brandishing the mug, he cried, "My darling, it is I, your own beloved!" Then he fell down in a dead faint. The cup dropped and bounced along the carpet.
Mynia's maid, much startled, stared at him for some moments. She was the only other person in the room. She fluffed the pillow in her hands absently, set it down on the bed, and crossed the room to nudge Damio with her toe. He belched mournfully in his sleep. She bent down and gently straightened his collar, then went out.
The reader will have noticed that Mynia's maid forgot to remove the fallen mug. This was not really her fault; the cup was a dark colour like the carpet, and no one had told her to watch out for obvious plot devices. Still, if Ottrio, thinking to find his friend in beloved Mynia's company, had not seen the cup near Damio's hand, in addition to the very figure of his prone friend, face resting in a shadowy drool-stain that a nervous glance could mistake for blood, he might not have leapt to the conclusion that the dearest companion of his youth had been poisoned.
It is instructive to see what great misunderstandings can arise from such very small things.
Ottrio soon appeared outside, shouting for guards and buckling a brace of pistols over his nightshirt. He found his betrothed Adzonia in the inexplicable act of leading two white horses behind the bridal platform in preparation for the escape. Shielding his eyes so as to avoid sight of her wedding gown, he demanded to know her purpose.
Mynia was nearby, procuring the cake-knife, which she hoped would prove a useful weapon in the event that the menace of the broken pistol was insufficient. The hamhock, however, proved more expedient: Adzonia drew it and knocked Ottrio unconscious. Mynia came running up, drawing the cake-knife from her shoe with a warlike cry, and thus sustaining her only serious physical injury of the day.
Ottrio dropped like a felled tree. Adzonia strapped the hamhock back into place. The lovers threw themselves onto horseback and raced away. They took down a quantity of bunting as they passed, for the horses were confused by their odd shape and unsteady balance, and ran wild until Mynia got hers under control by riding round and round the cake table. Adzonia's followed suit, and after a moment they struck off into the forest.
The guests began to arrive, and the sensible ones to leave again almost immediately. There might still have been something to salvage of the day, or at least of the dinner, had further events not intervened.
Not long into their ride, Mynia's injury began to trouble her. The young women pulled up in a clearing to have a look at it. Adzonia pronounced a poultice the necessary thing. They tied the horses, and while Mynia cleaned the wound, Adzonia gathered dock leaves for the two of them to chew into a paste.
I do not know if you have ever chewed dock. Besides making an excellent poultice and being very good for the liver, dock leaves are quite bitter. You see what a mistake it was for Adzonia to give Mynia some of the leaves to chew, for bitterness is ever the enemy of love.
Mynia spat the dock out almost at once, but already new thoughts were springing up in her mind. The impropriety of what they'd done, the burden of its consequences, and the futility of the cake-knife crowded in upon her. When Adzonia pressed the poultice to her wounded foot, the bitterness entered her blood and went to her heart. She leapt up with an angry shout, and, knocking Adzonia back, climbed onto her horse and urged it away. Since it was still tied, the horse could not oblige her, though it tried with the best will in the world. She shouted tearfully at the bewildered Adzonia until the horse was freed and she could ride off in slightly subdued outrage. Adzonia watched her go. When the last fold of wedding gown had vanished among the trees, she threw herself onto the ground and wept.
Although all ethical persons must be opposed to the use of love potions, I think the reader can see that another one would come in very handy at this point. It could be usefully administered to any of our unlucky lovers -- to Adzonia, to make her love her intended instead of Mynia; to Mynia, to resign her either to Damio or to Adzonia; to either Damio or Ottrio, for symmetry and convenience. Alas, I do not have such a one, and I'll wager the reader does not either. We will have to muddle on without.
[END OF FRAGMENT]