![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
In the perverse way of brains, mine has decided that after having listed all the fics I might work on, what it is really interested in just now is a) catching up with RL stuff, b) being distracted by things like this delightful (and deliciously food-porny) serial Hathaway/OMC and (not unrelatedly re Oxford-based slash) rereading ![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
linman's Florentine Politics; c) mooning over my own original universe. None of which I'm going to argue with; the second is enjoyable, the first is practical and so, actually, is the third, even if it appears not to be, because that's where my focus needs to be in the new year. (Which is not to say I won't write the fic; I have a decent start on Aral's Conversations, and as soon as I can go for a walk without hurting too much I'll work out a plot for the "Sparrow" sequel. And it's been nice to have the time to noodle with the Lewis one before I have to turn it in this week.)
But sitting here doing knee stretches and rereading bits of Not Time's Fool (book four) is not a bad thing to be doing on a rainy day, especially when I hit what's possibly my favorite exchange in the entire series:
"You came to my wedding," she said flatly.
"Yes, I did. But after all, you came to my funeral."
Because, oh B. and W., that is your whole timey-wimey solemn and farcical relationship in a nutshell, not that one can tell that without the context, but believe me, it is. And W's "It is an inherently dramatic situation, you have to admit" and this bit (under cut for incomprehensible spoilers):
"And you've never wanted to draw out all the funds you could and run away?"
He put his head back against the cushions and looked up at the ceiling. "What did you feel in the grove, Beatrice?" he asked.
He needed an answer, so she did her best to give him one. "Wonder," she said. "Spiritual wonder, a sense of God's presence... once removed, I suppose, through the medium of nature. Somewhat filtered through an awareness of disappointing suburbia, and inadequate socks, and the unease of being held by someone I have uncertain feelings for."
Thanking her with a nod, he said, "My emotions were not dissimilar. But overlying that -- and it is rather like layers of net cloth draping over my authentic reactions -- I knew that, for example, there had been numerous acts of copulation in the grove last summer, and that before the trees had grown up St. Simon's had held a festival there each spring that in one particular year in the late twentieth century featured a baby elephant, for no discernable liturgical reason, and that a Union soldier had died there of dysentery during the Civil War."
And you still managed to put that much effort into kissing me? thought Beatrice. "And you can't get away from that?" she said. "You did say, not even with the drugs..."
"I am what I am."
What, not who now. "Is it omniscience? Are you truly aware of everything that happened on that spot? I would think you'd be a gibbering idiot."
"The potential for complete awareness is there, I suppose, but I can't access it all at once. I get what's useful when it comes to traveling through time; otherwise I get what I can't manage to block, what leaks through most strongly, sometimes according to what I'm feeling at the time. Hence the sensitivity to others' sexual conquests. And failures." He gave her a wry smile. "And my mind is on death as well."
"And the elephant?"
"Well, it's interesting. Sex and death are universals, but I don't mix up the sexual feelings of the randy adolescents in the grove last summer with my own memories of randy adolescence. And I don't quite have memories of my own death to compare with the sensations of others dying. But on occasion I do seem to coincide with... I suppose you'd say a kindred spirit, seeing or sensing something quite different than my current preoccupations but akin to my essential self, and... there it is. Joy in elephants. And disapproval of them, simultaneously. I am a complex personality."
"George would have it that you only sense the physical presence of people and objects in the past, so you don't run into them when you jump and can make use of them if they're convenient. He didn't say anything about personalities."
"Well, he was a rank beginner. I don't know these people, of course; I can't tell you their names or anything about them and if I try to tie them down to a particular day the glitter-dust of the butterfly wings rubs down to clear and skeletal. Once I fell in love with a girl because of the way she saw a field of cornflowers, and when I found her she was forty-five and had a mouth full of rotting teeth, and I just couldn't; I was about twenty then. At least she was female; I suppose really it was like falling in love with some aspect of myself. I wouldn't make that mistake now."
Beatrice sighed, got to her feet and padded over to the cabinet where the whisky bottle was kept. She fetched it and a glass and brought them back, putting them down in front of her host. "Please don't hold back on my account," she said, settling into her cushions once more.
Oh, you two. Just... get a room. And have a spiritual and paradoxical crisis in it, with occasional doomed flirting and complaints about rheumatism.
So that (with a lot of musical earworming added) is where my head is now.
But sitting here doing knee stretches and rereading bits of Not Time's Fool (book four) is not a bad thing to be doing on a rainy day, especially when I hit what's possibly my favorite exchange in the entire series:
"You came to my wedding," she said flatly.
"Yes, I did. But after all, you came to my funeral."
Because, oh B. and W., that is your whole timey-wimey solemn and farcical relationship in a nutshell, not that one can tell that without the context, but believe me, it is. And W's "It is an inherently dramatic situation, you have to admit" and this bit (under cut for incomprehensible spoilers):
"And you've never wanted to draw out all the funds you could and run away?"
He put his head back against the cushions and looked up at the ceiling. "What did you feel in the grove, Beatrice?" he asked.
He needed an answer, so she did her best to give him one. "Wonder," she said. "Spiritual wonder, a sense of God's presence... once removed, I suppose, through the medium of nature. Somewhat filtered through an awareness of disappointing suburbia, and inadequate socks, and the unease of being held by someone I have uncertain feelings for."
Thanking her with a nod, he said, "My emotions were not dissimilar. But overlying that -- and it is rather like layers of net cloth draping over my authentic reactions -- I knew that, for example, there had been numerous acts of copulation in the grove last summer, and that before the trees had grown up St. Simon's had held a festival there each spring that in one particular year in the late twentieth century featured a baby elephant, for no discernable liturgical reason, and that a Union soldier had died there of dysentery during the Civil War."
And you still managed to put that much effort into kissing me? thought Beatrice. "And you can't get away from that?" she said. "You did say, not even with the drugs..."
"I am what I am."
What, not who now. "Is it omniscience? Are you truly aware of everything that happened on that spot? I would think you'd be a gibbering idiot."
"The potential for complete awareness is there, I suppose, but I can't access it all at once. I get what's useful when it comes to traveling through time; otherwise I get what I can't manage to block, what leaks through most strongly, sometimes according to what I'm feeling at the time. Hence the sensitivity to others' sexual conquests. And failures." He gave her a wry smile. "And my mind is on death as well."
"And the elephant?"
"Well, it's interesting. Sex and death are universals, but I don't mix up the sexual feelings of the randy adolescents in the grove last summer with my own memories of randy adolescence. And I don't quite have memories of my own death to compare with the sensations of others dying. But on occasion I do seem to coincide with... I suppose you'd say a kindred spirit, seeing or sensing something quite different than my current preoccupations but akin to my essential self, and... there it is. Joy in elephants. And disapproval of them, simultaneously. I am a complex personality."
"George would have it that you only sense the physical presence of people and objects in the past, so you don't run into them when you jump and can make use of them if they're convenient. He didn't say anything about personalities."
"Well, he was a rank beginner. I don't know these people, of course; I can't tell you their names or anything about them and if I try to tie them down to a particular day the glitter-dust of the butterfly wings rubs down to clear and skeletal. Once I fell in love with a girl because of the way she saw a field of cornflowers, and when I found her she was forty-five and had a mouth full of rotting teeth, and I just couldn't; I was about twenty then. At least she was female; I suppose really it was like falling in love with some aspect of myself. I wouldn't make that mistake now."
Beatrice sighed, got to her feet and padded over to the cabinet where the whisky bottle was kept. She fetched it and a glass and brought them back, putting them down in front of her host. "Please don't hold back on my account," she said, settling into her cushions once more.
Oh, you two. Just... get a room. And have a spiritual and paradoxical crisis in it, with occasional doomed flirting and complaints about rheumatism.
So that (with a lot of musical earworming added) is where my head is now.
