Poem for Wednesday

Egyptian Death Song
From the "Dispute of A Man with His Ba," papyrus manuscript of the 12th Dynasty
Translation by Erik Hornung

Death stands before me today
like the hope of health for a sick man,
like stepping out into the open air after
a time of suffering.
Death stands before me today
like the aroma of incense,
like sitting under the sail on
the Day of the Great Wind.
Death stands before me today
like the odor of lotos-blossoms,
like the first moments on the
edge of sweet drunkenness.
Death stands before me today
like the end of a long rain,
like the homecoming of a soldier
a long time at war.
Death stands before me today
like the clarity of heaven,
like the answer long-desired
to a heavy riddle.
And Death stands before me today
like the way a man feels about home
after he has spent many years
in bondage.

--------

Above swiped from who is trying to pimp me into Highlander fandom from across the Atlantic. has promised to give me a thorough recruitment demonstration next week. *g* I can see why the poem would be relevant to Immortals, but the bunny it wants to give me right now is about Sirius Black. *hangs head*

I met my beloved for lunch (if I am the minion, does that make her the mistress or the evil overlord?) at the mall, making this the first time in I don't know how many years that I've been in the mall two days in a row, and I bought myself fuzzy slippers on sale. Any day with new fuzzy slippers must be considered a good day. Otherwise it was mostly uneventful, involving work, a dispute with a cat who needed her claws clipped and a son who did not want to finish his spelling homework.

Tonight, because the wonderful had provided me with the goodness, we watched Windprints (a.k.a. The Killing Wind). I know a decent amount about what was going on in South Africa in the 1980s but next to nothing about Namibia -- in my public school system we were taught African history for eight weeks in seventh grade, so except for events in Egypt and Morocco that directly impacted European history, that was the last time I had it formally taught to me -- and we were both absolutely fascinated. I know the note at the beginning said that the film was based on actual events, but does anyone know how directly? It's about a liberal South African of Afrikaner roots (though he can't speak the language and is "accused" of being English) sent to work on a theoretically objective BBC-type documentary who finds that everyone makes up their own myths concerning a renegade Nama accused of killing black people on farms in the region. It's a very dark story yet every scene is almost absurdly bright, set under the desert sun, and it has some twistedly funny moments involving the various racial and cultural prejudices that keep flaring up. I kept thinking too about how people complain that there are too many guns in the U.S., but the number of guns carried around in this film is pretty startling. The film concludes quite abruptly, without trying to draw any morals or conclusions, which I really like; it's very emotional but it doesn't have any pat lesson for viewers.

On a related note, I'm curious, people who've seen Hotel Rwanda: is it a good movie? I've talked to a couple of people who thought it was weakened greatly by cliched characters, particularly Nick Nolte's, and to a couple of others who insisted that it was an important and meaningful film that played almost like a documentary. Obviously there is a great deal of ignorance about what went on in Rwanda, just as there's not a lot of talk about the nightmare that continues to unfold in Darfur (with all the talk about helping tsunami victims, I wonder why this is so very rarely mentioned in anyone's journal -- do other people just feel completely helpless at getting any sort of aid to the people who need it there, as I do, or do a lot of people simply not know, given how it tends to be buried on page 31 of my local paper when it's mentioned at all?) So of course I think it's wonderful that someone made a film that attempts to make the tragedy in Rwanda comprehensible, but at the same time I can't figure out whether this is a film I want to see, or whether, like sometimes happens with movies about the Holocaust, people are afraid to criticize the movie because it seems insensitive to the subject matter. If it deserves ringing endorsements please tell me.

Earlier was talking about the vagaries of LiveJournal and I was trying to explain that my friends list does weird things in terms of dropping entries, which I used to think had to do with the times that people posted in different parts of the world, but I now suspect are just completely random. For instance, I have on both my default list and my list of people I know in the flesh (I try to keep up with people I know in real life, particularly when we've known each other for many years), yet her posts never show up on my friends page no matter which version of my list I'm reading -- I have to remember to go read them at her journal. Also, whenever I go over 500 total entries on my Friends list -- because LiveJournal combines individuals, syndicated feeds and communities once the total is over 500, and stops listing them on the User Info page -- then LiveJournal promptly takes and off my list even though I still show up on their "friend of" lists; it's always those two individuals, both of whom have been on my friends list for quite some time and have never been taken off by me. I keep ditching communities from my friends list to keep the individuals from being kicked off, but I am running out of communities to unfriend. Does anyone know why this happens, and whether, if my friends list gets longer, more people will be arbitrarily unfriended by LiveJournal?

On a happier fannish note, the lovely and wonderful has links in her journal to Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts videos, including some hosted at gruntland.com (TOFOG's official site). M&C fans, you must go watch the video of "Sail Those Same Oceans" on the ship! And "The Photograph Kills" has footage from Virtuosity. Am guessing from the two un-guessed lines in the movie meme earlier that 80s noir is not terribly popular; shall post answers tomorrow when I am awake enough to explain why I picked the films I picked. Younger son has yet another dentist/orthodontist appointment to see how the pulled tooth is doing and to adjust the braces...


Stephen the squirrel takes a rare visit to the front of the house in search of berries fallen from the neighbor's tree.