By H.D.
I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."
Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it
You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:
"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"
or
"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."
--------
Daniel had robotics and Adam went to volunteer at Hebrew school on Sunday morning, so I had a fairly quiet morning with cats climbing all over me. After lunch, Adam voted down a plan to hear the US Marine Band play songs of the sea in favor of going downtown to take photos of flowers -- there are orchids at the Smithsonian's Natural History museum and in the US Botanic Garden -- but in the course of juggling various things to bring in the car, I managed to forget my camera (I was terrified all afternoon that I'd left it sitting in front of the house, though it was inside). So although I had a lovely time looking at the live plants and the photography exhibit of landscape design in Scotland at the gardens, I have only photos taken on my mobile phone, which has many virtues but a great camera isn't among them:
We had parked at the far end of the Mall from the botanic garden, so we had a nice walk there and back on a day that was chilly but very pretty. I convinced the family to postpone watching the last episode of Downton Abbey so I could watch the SAG awards, which were utterly delightful -- not only because The King's Speech won the two major awards I really cared about on top of the DGA award the night before -- it makes me sad that Geoffrey Rush keeps not winning, but it's not like he doesn't have a shelf full of Oscar-Tony-Emmy-etc. trophies and it's not like I begrudge Christian Bale anything -- but because Boardwalk Empire has been cleaning up this awards season and I really think that show is terrific, I don't even like shows with mobsters, but the sets and period atmosphere and particularly the complexity of the women characters and how generally sympathetic the show is to all of them makes me very happy.
Belated The Friday Five: Actors/Actresses
1. Favorite actor/actress growing up? I had many, ranging from Carrie Fisher in the Star Wars era to Lee Remick in The Competition to Anne Bancroft in absolutely everything. I liked Robert Redford but I was all about awesome women in those days.
2. Favorite tv show/movie they were in and why? The Lion in Winter was my favorite film from the first time I saw it, though I didn't fully appreciate Katharine Hepburn until later, when I'd seen more of her films.
3. Favorite quote by said actor/actress? Since I'm all over the place already, I'm just going to quote something Viggo Mortensen said that I absolutely love: "When you go to the movie theater: you and the movie have a secret. It might even be a god-awful movie and you could still walk out with this little secret -- or a big secret -- inside you: a discovery that might stay with you for a day, for a month or two, even years."
4. Favorite image of said actor/actress? My favorite-ever movie star portrait is Grace Kelly in the promo shoot for The Swan, the last film she made before she married Prince Rainier and disappeared from movies.
5. What would you like said actor/actress to appear in? Since no one has yet made a movie of Marie Jakober's The Black Chalice, I keep recasting in my head who I want to play the leads. I come back quite often to Sean Bean, though.
Belated Fannish5: Name five fannish opinions of yours that have changed since you entered fandom.
1. I thought strong female characters were the most important thing to me. I've reluctantly been forced to admit that it's relationships that draw me -- they can be romantic or platonic, couples or multiples, and they don't have to focus primarily on women.
2. I didn't think there would ever be a Star Trek I wouldn't find a way to love.
3. I didn't like Russell Crowe all that much.
4. I wasn't at all a fan of superheroes. I'm still not, really, but considering that I joined LiveJournal in search of Smallville fandom and I'm still watching the show ten years later, I can't pretend not to have enjoyed the ride.
and, in honor of Colin Firth and The King's Speech:
5. I didn't think I would ever be absolutely delighted that Paul Bettany didn't take a role for which he was the director's first choice.
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