wolves in the mirror

[freckles_and_doubt]

I wasn't going to post today, because really, five days in a row suggests unruly degrees of displacement, or angst, or narcissism, or something. But scroob tagged me with an interesting book meme, and who am I to resist?

"So here's how it is: you grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 123, go down five sentences, type out the next three for our reading pleasure... Then you tag three people."

OK. I'm in my office on campus, so possible books are the ones I'm teaching. In a pile next to my computer are, from the top down, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, Storming the Reality Studio: A casebook of cyberpunk and postmodern fiction, and a photocopy of Charles Stross's "Lobsters", which doesn't have a Page 125 so is not much use to man or crustacean.

Page 123 of The Bloody Chamber puts us in the middle of "Wolf-Alice", just before the perfect embodiment of the Lacanian moment.

She rubbed her head against her reflected face, to show that she felt friendly towards it, and felt a cool, solid, immovable surface between herself and she - some kind, possibly of invisible cage? In spite of this barrier, she was lonely enough to ask this creature to try to play with her, baring her teeth and grinning; at once she received a reciprocal invitation. She rejoiced; she began to whirl round on herself, yapping exultantly, but, when she retreated from the mirror, she halted in the midst of her ecstacy, puzzled, to see how her new friend grew less in size.

Just for comparison: page 123 of Reality Studio is a cityscape etching by John Bergin. Page 124 doesn't have five sentences. I shall emulate the exteemed Scroob and go for page 125, which is the start of an extract from Rudy Rucker's Software, and has really short sentences so you get extra.

The digits on his watch winked at him, meaningless little sticks. He had to keep moving or he'd fall through the crust. On his left the traffic flickered past, on his right the ocean was calling through the cracks between buildings. He couldn't face going to his room. Yesterday he'd torn up the mattress.

Hmmm. Surreal. OK, I tag wytchfynder, and wolverine_nun, and tsukikoneko. Just because I can.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Angela Carter! Quality meme. I like that.

From the exteemed Scroob. Is that, like, formerly esteemed? How have I offended thee? ;)

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Eep! No, you haven't offended me, you are the eternally esteemed Scroob... it's a typo resulting from my extremely non-esteemed campus computer, which has a cute trick of hanging every few minutes, for no longer than about five seconds, but it's enough to play merry hell with my typing. Sorry!

Will a random apologetic Jack Sparrow icon soothe the ruffled feathers any ...?

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, random Johnny Pirate will do wonders for ruffled feathers. But they weren't really ruffled anyway. I merely jest.

Hafta say, though, he doesn't look *particularly* apologetic... but then would he ever?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know you were jesting, but any excuse for a Johnny Depp. Who is not, as you note, looking apologetic in any way, so it's just as well you weren't ruffled, isn't it? :>

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Hm, I get "If the two constraints expose identical members, the compiler will be unable to determine which of the members should be invoked and, as a result, will throw a compile-time error. Suppose, for example you have defined the following two interfaces:"
From "Professional .NET 2.0 Generics" by Tod Golding

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. It is a truth universally demonstrated via this meme that the things I read in my professional capacity are much cooler than things read in the same capacity by many of my friends :>.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

I have to agree.

[(Anonymous)]

Quite. I'm very jealous. Although every now and then my professional capacity alerts me to news items like: an industrial developer is selling the roofs to its warehouses separately to the warehouses themselves. Because it's put solar panels on them, so the roofs are now income-producing assets (the solar energy being sold to a power company), and offer interesting future carbon trading potential to boot. Cool huh?

Um. I don't know any more. Is that cool? I think it's cool. Sorry if I'm being boring.

scroob

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

That's very cool, and not boring at all - environmental issues are dear to my heart and always welcome on my blog. So little of the news in this area is good, too.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Answered in my blog, but here it is anyway:
Vygotsky, Mind in Society
... the psychological implications of the fact that humans are active, vigorous participants in their own existence and that at each stage of development children acquire the means by which they can competently affect their world and themselves. Therefore, a crucial aspect of human mastery, beginning in infancy, is the creation and use of auxiliary or "artificial" stimuli ...

Take II

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Ok, everyone seems to have been interpreting "lines" as "sentences", which, combined with the fact that I'm at home and have much more interesting books at hand, means I'm redoing mine.
Cahide Keskiner, Turkish Motifs:
Their [clouds'] largest use has been in XVth and XVIth centuries. Thereafter they disappear from our decorative art. There have been times when the cloud motifs have been interpreted as symbolised figures of dragons, considered in the Chinese mythology to be the protector and ruler of skies.
Much better, yes?

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

The nearest book - Mikhail Bakunin's God and the State - doesn't have 123 pages, so I fell back on the next closest, David Cordingly's Under a Black Flag.

Mower was a Boston man, thirty years of age, "of short stature, thin favoured, and dark complexion," and he had good reason to be worried. No sooner had the pirates taken the ship than they decided to force Mower to join them. The methods which they used left him with little choice: "One of the pirates struck Mower many blows on the head with the helve of an axe, whereby his head was much bruised and bloodied, after which the same pirate forced him said Mower to lay his head down on the coamings of the hatch, and lifting the axe over his head swore if he did not sign their Articles immediately, he would chop his head off, the said Mower begging hard for his life."

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Good lord. Just in time to be not quite in time for Talk Like A Pirate Day. Stirring stuff.

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

Yup, it's official. Accurately 'talking like a pirate' involves letting loose an unintelligible howl delivered in a blast of rum-soaked scurvy breath while you run a Frenchman through the neck. Now that is a glottal stop.

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

You didn't tag me, but I wanted to do the meme anyway (rarely do I find a meme I like).

Walter Benjamin's "Berlin Childhood Around 1900":

"And his mother rises up before him - the firmly fixed mooring post around which the landing child wraps the line of his glances.

Sexual Awakening

On one of those streets I later roamed at night, in wanderings that knew no end, I was taken unawares by the awakening of the sex drive (whose time had come), and under rather strange circumstances. It was the Jewish New Year, and my parents had arranged for me to be present at a ceremony of public worship."

Oooo! Creepy! Tomorrow is the Jewish New Year! Serendipitous!
Also, Happy New Year.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Happy New Year to you, too!

Gosh, Walter Benjamin writes beautifully - I'm only familiar with his criticism, which is engaging and evocative, but doesn't give you quite as good a sense of his control over language. Lovely quote!