reconciled among the stars
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtYesterday was a public holiday*. Owing to the featureless slide of pandemic days spent working from home, I had completely forgotten about this, so I staggered out of bed at a quarter to eight as usual, placated the cats, watered the garden, sat down at my desk and cleared my inbox before realising, an hour later, that I needn't be working, actually. Apparently the pandemic and attendant socio-cultural wossnames is capable of delivering pleasant surprises occasionally. Pleased, I spent the rest of the Day of Reconciliation peaceably slaughtering raiders and supermutants in Fallout, so at least I was on theme.
Other tiny silver linings to this year's horrible black clouds: working from home means I am actively and somewhat more effectually druiding than usual. The giant granadilla vine in the big box died a few months back, which I honestly don't think was me, the neighbour's spirited attempt at Audrey II died at the same time, so I am darkly suspecting a granadilla-fancying disease. Possibly COVID. In the spirit of battening down the hatches in an apocalypse, I tried planting veggies again, which worked appallingly when I tried it when I first moved in here (I killed tomatoes! tomatoes are unkillable!), but which has seemed to benefit from the continuous attention. I now have broad beans, and spring onions, and fancy dark-leaved lettuce! One bean plant randomly died for some reason, I think something gnawed its feet off, I shall cautiously put a baby tomato into the gap and hope.
* Day of Reconciliation, which is, if you think about it, a bizarrely edgy and blood-soaked sort of commemoration, representing as it does two opposed military achievements: the Afrikaner victory over the Zulus at Blood River, and the founding of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's armed wing in the struggle years, and its subsequent campaign of bombings etc. Which didn't, I have to say, create nearly the body count of Blood River. I find the duality of the date to offer rather an odd notion of "reconciliation". More of a meaningful nod, with aggressive eye contact, from the new dispensation to the old. And ritualistically and slightly threateningly remembering war doesn't seem to me to be a good basis for peace, really.
My subject line is T S Eliot, weirdly, the one oddly rhythmic and rhyming bit in the middle of "Burnt Norton" which I've always loved, and around which I once wrote a largely unsuccessful science fiction story which was rejected, with a very nice note, by an sf magazine.
Other tiny silver linings to this year's horrible black clouds: working from home means I am actively and somewhat more effectually druiding than usual. The giant granadilla vine in the big box died a few months back, which I honestly don't think was me, the neighbour's spirited attempt at Audrey II died at the same time, so I am darkly suspecting a granadilla-fancying disease. Possibly COVID. In the spirit of battening down the hatches in an apocalypse, I tried planting veggies again, which worked appallingly when I tried it when I first moved in here (I killed tomatoes! tomatoes are unkillable!), but which has seemed to benefit from the continuous attention. I now have broad beans, and spring onions, and fancy dark-leaved lettuce! One bean plant randomly died for some reason, I think something gnawed its feet off, I shall cautiously put a baby tomato into the gap and hope.
* Day of Reconciliation, which is, if you think about it, a bizarrely edgy and blood-soaked sort of commemoration, representing as it does two opposed military achievements: the Afrikaner victory over the Zulus at Blood River, and the founding of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's armed wing in the struggle years, and its subsequent campaign of bombings etc. Which didn't, I have to say, create nearly the body count of Blood River. I find the duality of the date to offer rather an odd notion of "reconciliation". More of a meaningful nod, with aggressive eye contact, from the new dispensation to the old. And ritualistically and slightly threateningly remembering war doesn't seem to me to be a good basis for peace, really.
My subject line is T S Eliot, weirdly, the one oddly rhythmic and rhyming bit in the middle of "Burnt Norton" which I've always loved, and around which I once wrote a largely unsuccessful science fiction story which was rejected, with a very nice note, by an sf magazine.
