By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
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An ice storm shut down the area early this morning, so in addition to having my kids home from school, I had my husband -- he saw on the news that there had been a 20-car pile-up just off I-270 and opted to work from home. It was a quiet domestic day; I wrote a review of "Peak Performance" and attempted to edit some web pages, Paul worked, the kids played various games, we all had homemade Toad in the Hole for lunch because Paul had found a recipe and wanted to try it and I never turn down Yorkshire pudding in any form! (Turkey sausage is probably cheating, but oh well.) So yeah, again, not a lot to report, not even actual snowfall as we got less than half an inch.
The Friday Five: Name five...
1. ... things you can't live without. Cats, chocolate, moonlight, beaches, orange blossoms.
2. ... of the best moments in your life. Graduating from college and winning a big writing award, first time I saw Devil's Tower, getting married, giving birth, first time I saw Avebury.
3. ... celebrities you can't stand. Britney, Lindsay, Nicole, Mary Kate, Ashlee.
4. ... books you enjoy(ed) reading. The Fountainhead (Rand), The Leto Bundle (Warner), Forever (Hamill), The Da Vinci Code (Brown), Beggars in Spain (Kress).
5. ... items in your purse/backpack/on your desk. Desk: A pair of miniature foo dogs, a glitter lamp, a tiny statue of Shakespeare, a color-your-own Tarot deck, a little clay dragon.
Fannish 5: Five reasons a character you have a crush on/find attractive would be a bad boyfriend or girlfriend in real life.
1. Captain James T. Kirk. The good news: apparently he's never met a woman too old, too ugly, etc. The bad news: I'd be sharing him with every other woman in the galaxy, plus Spock.
2. Captain Jack Harkness. The good news: very similar to #1, only men as well. The bad news...very similar to #1, only men as well.
3. Xena. Serious martyr complex. Also, I'm more temperamental than Gabrielle.
4. President Mackenzie Allen. She'd be the perfect girlfriend, but if someone caught her with me, it'd probably cost her her office.
5. Sean Bean. Who got married for the fourth time this week to a woman who allegedly trashed a hotel room with him in a drunken fight...but hey, I'm too old for him these days, anyway!
The historic, newly restored Lincoln Train Station in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, originally built in 1859.
Wounded Union soldiers were brought here for treatment and transportation after the Battle of Gettysburg. President Lincoln took the train to Gettysburg from Washington on November 18th, 1863 to deliver the immortal Gettysburg Address.
An old style transmitter is visible through a station window.
A historic photo of the station on the plaque in front.
My head is finally, slowly unstuffing which is all to the good, especially as I got a package of Crazylibellule & The Poppies perfume I had ordered with lots of awesome samples, including a perfume called Lady Vengeance by Juliette Has a Gun, which is just a cool name. Watched SGA's "The Kindred" which definitely had its moments. Spoilers: Ronon joking about getting Rodney a present, only to take it back when Rodney brightens and says "Really?", Teyla demonstrating that third-trimester women can kick ass, Michael freaking the hell out of me (it sucks what he did to Kanaan but he's the mess they all made of him plus he's Connor Trinneer), and my family's nerd loser moment of the evening, when the Wraith was talking about who would have spread the disease and said, "There can be only one" and we all shouted together, "THE HIGHLANDER!"
I'm sure someone somewhere is squeeing about Rodney giving Teyla HIS OWN BRILLIANCE for her baby, but I will never understand why I'm supposed to consider it appreciating intelligence rather than the unbearable arrogance that it looks like to me, particularly when directed at women. With various people shrieking about how last week's episode was racist because Teal'c and Ronon did some fighting-for-bets like characters of every background did on BSG last season -- in other words, I didn't think it was racist, and there's a whole discussion to be had about "people of color" as it applies to Klingons and other aliens at one time played largely by white actors, now cast with greater diversity which is all to the good -- I'm hoping one of the regular Rodney worshippers will consider going to go on a tear about how maybe Teyla has better things to teach her baby than what the overrated white male genius thinks her baby should learn.
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