Flutterings

Altogether Your World (9554 words) by Slantedlight
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Bran Davies/Will Stanton
Characters: Bran Davies, Will Stanton (Dark is Rising), Jane Drew
Summary:

Will Stanton has been watching for years, and now it seems there's something to see.

What I keep coming back to in this Yuletide 2020 story is the happy Will/Bran dynamic, where they're cheerfully sassing each other, as they did from their very first meeting. For instance, when Will hosts Bran at the place he's house-sitting . . .

"Speaking of kettles – tea or coffee?”

“Have you got the kind that percs in the kitchen, or do you make all the noises yourself?”

“Nothing but Nescafe’s best for you…”

“Tea it is, then,” Bran said easily, following him down the short hallway to the living room, and dropping his rucksack onto the floor.

And:

Bran struck a pose, lifting a foot onto the sofa, one hand on his hip, and the other flourished in the air, then held Will’s gaze and declaimed.

“Mi gerddaf gyda thi drwy weddill f'oes,
Pan fydd yr haul ar fryn neu'r dyddiau'n groes;
A phan ddaw'r alwad draw, pwy wyr pa awr,
Mi gerddaf gyda thi i’r freuddwyd fawr. ”*

He should have looked ridiculous, and he’d started with a mocking twist on his lips that suggested he’d meant to, but the light from the fire caught him so that his hair shone white-gold, and his eyes flashed with age and history, and for that minute he was the Pendragon again. There was a pause when he’d finished, until he tossed his head in dismissal and plonked himself back down on the couch beside Jane.

“Well I never,” Will said at last. “And do you speak Welsh?”

And they were off then – Bran launching himself across the table to Jane’s surprised shout, tussling and giggling until they were breathless.

---

Die ich retten kann is incapability87's German translation of "Those I Can Save," which I wrote for Snupin Santa 2007. That fic also sparked three delightful illustrations by Dido, featuring Hooch, Snape, Lupin, two kids, and a cow.

Dido's Assorted HP Gift Fanart by Didodikali
Chapter 3: Illos for Those I Can Save for Bronze Ribbons

---

I keep humming "Lo, How a Rose Is Blooming." It's used so well in When Harry Met Santa (the Norwegian postal service m/m romance par excellence), and last night I was caught up in a rendition by Sting and friends in a Durham Cathedral concert (about 18 minutes in).

This essay was nowhere on my radar when I went to the eighth floor of the Central Library stacks this afternoon. I knew I was likely to haul back across campus more books than I'd come for, but I still absolutely blame Daniel da Silva and his banter with Archie Curtis about sonnets and Seurat:





The fic's at 5880 words, with at least four more scenes to go. Daniel's about to quote Robert Louis Stevenson to Fen. It may well be a darling to be killed, but in the meantime, have this beautiful bit of soundtrack:

To my immense and admittedly outsized relief, the England World/Will Darling Adventures epilogue the author posted to her chat and newsletter contingents this week is funny and lovely and doesn't make me go EW(E). It did put paid to some of the Fen stories I'd started sketching out as a possible eleventh-hour NYR treat to someone who frequently commented on my fics back in the day (i.e., more than a decade ago. Strewth . . . )

. . . and I have all-too-characteristically bunnied myself twice since starting that sentence, so it's back into the "When I Have Time" folder for "Unruffled" and "Obvious Competence." "In on the Joke" (in which Daniel da Silva and Peter Wimsey get on each other's nerves) and "Professionally Foreign" (where they oh-so-elegantly fray everyone else's nerves) remain in that folder.

. . . and this is all pastry frisbee where the near future is concerned anyhow. (AKA, will I get around to these before 2023, if ever? You'd be better off betting on Le Peace Treaty, Imagine Neverland, or Nth Power, which all happen to be horses running at Laurel Park this Thursday.) But it's nice to have a bundle of frothy-bubbly knife-sharp possibilities tickling certain corners of my brain while HQ contends with heavier stuff. Which put me in the mood to listen to Elgar's Cello Concerto this afternoon while addressing postcards, which in turn put me in the path of an article about Julian Lloyd Webber's love of the piece, and -- ohhh:

Lying on his deathbed, 15 years after the concerto's completion, Elgar "rather feebly" tried to whistle the first movement's haunting 9/8 theme to his friend, the violinist William Reed.

"Billy," he said with tears in his eyes, "if ever you're walking on the Malvern Hills and hear that, don't be frightened. It's only me."

---

On a far more frivolous note, I've been thinking that the woman on the cover of Proper English reminded me of someone, and I finally realized this week that it was Gustine from the 2020 season of La Plus Belle Voix.

Lots happening: At Moonsick, my poem "Nowhere to Go" (trigger warning: harassment). Over at soundcloud, a song with my name. I'm hoping to get to Simchat Torah dinner and dancing Monday night, at a synagogue whose rabbi delivered the benediction at our new mayor's inauguration in Spanish
(his Twitter bio: "With a real southern (a.k.a. Argentinean) accent! :)").

My original plan for the evening had been to head across town for ice skating, but a wave of tiredness hit during dinner, so the new plan is to review tomorrow's music and then go fall asleep in the bathtub. But first, some photos in response to Upper Rubber Boot's 100 Untimed Books challenge (most of which is taking place over at zirconium, but it's nice to relax with something that doesn't require absolute order or comprehensiveness [she says, enjoying the lull before her next indexing gig]).

Prompt 19: same sex

This is a book I copyedited four years ago:



Our new mayor officiated at the first SCOTUS-legalized same-sex ceremony in my county earlier this year. From the Scene's report:

Councilwoman At-Large Megan Barry opened a book--a copy of the works of William Makepeace Thackeray with the ceremony taped on some inside pages. This is standard procedure for the current mayoral contender, who has the authority to perform weddings as part of her standing as a council member; she always picks up a used book when she's asked to perform a wedding. She then presents the book, with the verbiage of the ceremony, to the newly nuptialized couple.

Prompt 20: travel

A book I couldn't resist after walking around the Tuileries: Fabrice Moireau's album of Paris



I'm still periodically dipping into Anthony Glyn's The Seine. I couldn't resist sending the following excerpt to a friend yesterday:

Centuries of royal boredom have done something to the building, to its very stones; the place glows with boredom and the sensitive passer-by cannot but be aware of it. It is for this reason, of course, that the palace still survives. Nobody has ever cared enough about it to burn it down; even the Communards were half-hearted when it came to the Louvre.

Those of you into both wolves and music might want to take a look at the artwork inspired by Judy Bertelsen's "Interval"...

http://unfoldmag.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/5-contest-honorable/

When I arrived in Paris about two years ago, the day coincided with Kehilat Gesher's celebration of Simchat Torah, which is pretty much my favorite religious holiday since it is about beautiful words and lively dancing. Getting to celebrate it in Paris was a highlight -- and I had meant to post about it before now, but I was exhausted when I got back to the flat (as I wrote to my husband before turning in -- around 10 p.m. Paris time -- "I'm so tired I can't even bring myself to open one of the beers my hostess left in the fridge"). On the upside, it has been nice to make a point of gathering back together the various notes I jotted down (as well as sifting through other souvenirs) in between Elul readings and everyday errands.

In my handwritten journal that morning, I recorded that 7:30 a.m. is a beautiful hour to fly into Paris -- the sky different shades of navy blue, the lights of the broad city below. Ninety minutes later, I was still waiting for my luggage, but not as anxiously as the French musicians who'd had to check their guitars. A woman across from me was reading Twilight, and I'd managed to converse in French with a luggage handler and a ticket agent.

The tiny flat I rented for the night was in the Latin Quarter, in the southern half of Paris. The view from the window:

From paris day 1

The synagogue alternates between two locations, one in a suburb and one in the 17th arrondissement. 17e is a ways across town from the Latin Quarter, but still a much easier shlep than getting to/from St.-Germain-en-Laye would have been. I allowed myself enough time to walk to the Métro stop at Place Monge (pink line) and take it to Chatelet, switch to the magenta line to get to Réamur Sebastopol, and change one more time to the green olive line, diréction Pont de Levallois Bécon. The stop for Kehilat Gesher is at Wagram.

From paris day 1

Kehilat Gesher is a French-English congregation. The handouts for the service were in Hebrew (with transliteration provided for some parts), French, and English:



The rabbi wore sneakers and jeans, as did a number of other people there, as well as folks in dressier garb. The other songleader was a young woman who reminded me of my mentor from Borders, looks-wise; she worked around Europe as an opera singer, but hadn't lost the ability to sing sans vibrato. There were frizzy-haired older ladies, and families with young children (including one from Britain), and younger women who danced unselfconsciously and later formed a conga line. A grizzled older man reminded me of the president of a Nashville running club; I noticed someone androgynous in a blazer, and someone else in crocheted gloves.

Some people carried the scrolls readily, and others visibly balked when asked to take a turn. They were handed to me a half-dozen times and the singing (all a cappella) was lively enough that I could truly kick up my heels without feeling out of line. During the faster (and at times near-frenetic) numbers, the rabbi danced arm-in-arm with the congregants -- which reminded me of contradancing, except that it didn't matter where one ended up.



It was the smallest space I'd ever celebrated Simchat Torah in, and at the same time, the most festive in feel once it got going (even compared to the one in Nashville where a man near me was sharing swigs from a flask). The Torahs in circulation included one that was 30 years old and one that was 70 years old, and at one point an arch was formed for the children to wriggle through. Since nothing had been rehearsed, the energy level in the room surged and dipped depending on how familiar the group was with any given song ("Frère Jacques" in Hebrew was a new one for me; classics such as "Hava nagila," "Hineh ma tov," and "Siman tov ou mazal tov" brought out the liveliest, lustiest renditions; there were melodies familiar to me from services elsewhere -- and then there was the Shema, where the notes went in an unfamiliar-to-me direction).



As it turned out, though, the most magical stretch of the evening to me didn't involve voice or feet at all: there was a point where instead of singing -- in large part, I think, because many of us were out of breath by then -- the songleader and some other congregants started clapping in complementary patterns. That is, she started varying her rhythms and others did likewise, but without stopping, so you had maybe twenty people (including me) all clapping rapidly and confidently in a spontaneous, wordless, percussive chorus of hands that became its own song.

One of the songs currently in heavy rotation on my WMP is Pete Morton's "Another Train," an artist and song introduced to me via a fanmix by copperbadge.

Pete Morton's page on the song, including lyrics and downloadable copy of the song (which is different than the one on the studio album, btw)

Using YouTube as my jukebox:

Pete Morton performing it, with bonus chorus in Welsh by Les Barker (sp?)

A capella cover by the Poozies

A capella cover by Mount Holyoke M&Cs

We crawl in the dark sometimes and think too much,
Then we fill our heads with the craziest things that only break our hearts.
...There's another train, there always is,
Maybe the next one is yours,
get up and climb aboard another train.

Miles to go before I can leave the office (to work still more at home), and I just said "no" to something in August... but seriously, the caffeine's starting to kick in (and it's only my first cup of coffee of the day), the work is interesting, and cool stuff aboundeth:

It's sunny and 68 F right now, and I got to scoot outside and enjoy some of it (ran errands when someone else needed my desk for an hour, and not even getting stuck in post office traffic could harsh that glow).

Plus, "Hurts So Good" on the car stereo and catnaps in the parking lot...

Errands done! We are no longer low on detergent, beer, or pears.

Microwave-in-the-package vegetables. Eating healthy-like away from home has never been so easy.

Came across a picture book called On Sukkot and Simchat Torah at the library. Text by Cathy Goldberg Fishman, illustrations by Melanie Hall (Kar-Ben 2006). It's pretty! (Too many series books aren't.)

My grandmother says that, if you put together the very last letter and the very first letter of the Torah, it makes the Hebrew word "lev" meaning, "heart".

[Punctuation = what's in the text.]

I can't quite get over the fact there's a picture book on Simchat Torah, and that my public library has it! *am inordinately thrilled about this*

Also at the library: Falling for Rapunzel. Text by Leah Wilcox, illustrations by Lydia Monks (Putnam 2003). This is a hoot: "Once upon a bad hair day / a prince rode up Rapunzel's way..." She keeps mishearing his request for her to let him in, and the twists leading up to the happy ending are delightful.

One more from the library: A Green Horn Blowing. Text by David F. Birchman, illustrations by Thomas B. Allen (Lothrop, Lee and Shepard 1997). Gorgeous illustrations. A boy who wants to learn how to play trumpet learns the basics from a migrant worker, using a "trombolia" squash:

It took me almost a week to coax my first sound out of that trombolia. Fortunately, John Potts was a patient man. "All it takes to play a horn," he said again and again, "is a whole lifetime."

Francis Cabrel's going to be at New Orleans Jazz Fest this year!

...on a weekend I can't leave Nashville, because I'll be singing in a concert.

*headpiano*

That said, Loreena McKennitt's playing at the Ryman that same weekend. I haven't been as into her work as I used to be, but I've a lot of memories tangled with The Mask and the Mirror and wouldn't mind newer ones to go with those songs.

Not really distraught, IOW, especially considering I often don't end up even seeing the artists at such fests, what with the crowds and all. (I heard Koko Taylor and John Lee Hooker in Chicago back in '91, but could I see them? Hell, no.)

Also, the chamber concert's going to rule.

And, perhaps Cabrel will schedule some other stops in North America as long as he's over here? And if not, well, I've got other reasons to visit NOLA when I'm less squeezed. *blows kisses at Saz and Erac*