Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Poem for Wednesday, Huntley Meadows, Fantasy TV

Alice at Seventeen: Like a Blind Child
By Darcy Cummings


One summer afternoon, I learned my body
like a blind child leaving a walled
school for the first time, stumbling
from cool hallways to a world
dense with scent and sound,
pines roaring in the sudden wind
like a huge chorus of insects.
I felt the damp socket of flowers,
touched weeds riding the crest
of a stony ridge, and the scrubby
ground cover on low hills.
Haystacks began to burn,
smoke rose like sheets of
translucent mica. The thick air
hummed over the stretched wires
of wheat as I lay in the overgrown field
listening to the shrieks of small rabbits
bounding beneath my skin.

--------

We all slept late the day after graduation -- Adam had no exams so didn't have to be at school, meaning Paul didn't have to get up early to get him up early, and Daniel slept practically till noon even though it's not like he was out partying all night the night before. I had laundry and writing and stuff to do, so I had the downstairs to myself for a while in the morning. Eventually Adam got up and went over to the school to run on the track, then he went to play tennis with my father while I took Daniel to an oral surgeon for a consultation about his wisdom teeth, which his dentists agree need to come out. The lower two are impacted, meaning it won't be a quick extraction like mine were, and both oral surgeons to whom I've spoken think it would be a better idea to do it under more than local anesthesia, but I am uneasy about anesthesia outside a hospital, though it's the colonoscopy sort rather than the surgical sort. Daniel really wants to be out rather than aware of the tooth-splitting drilling, though.

Our evening television was the season finale of Camelot and the seventh episode of Game of Thrones. I will confess that I liked neither one very much -- given my dislike of this season's Doctor Who, I would think maybe I'd just had it with sf/fantasy if it weren't for the fact that I'm liking Sanctuary better than ever before. On Camelot, I've been rooting for Morgan all season -- she was treated like utter crap by her tyrannical father, she's smarter than Arthur, she's no more evil than Merlin, just not on the same side about who is "legitimate" -- clearly she is as capable of uniting her people as Arthur when Merlin stops his meddling, and Arthur is capable of just as much bad behavior. Plus Morgan surrounds herself with other women, including the only dark-skinned character of any substance on the series. Yet we're supposed to root against them and be impressed by Igraine, who comes out with lines like, "You can give birth to a king or marry one but you will never get the crown" -- UGH.

As for Game of Thrones...as Adam said in his blog, "contrary to the writers' narrow minded beliefs, men do more than kill and rape, and women do more than suck up to men." I am really disappointed in this series, not least because I like the actors and want to like their characters or at least admire their characters or find something remotely interesting and not cliched about their characters but it is not happening. Plus I read that Sean Bean got into a bar fight -- first Russell on Twitter, now Sean with a Playboy centerfold, can I trust none of my imaginary boyfriends to behave? (Or girlfriends -- I am still upset with Emma Thompson over the Polanski petition, which she should have read before signing.) Here are some more Huntley Meadows photos from the weekend:















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