Wednesday 11 June 2008

Watching for the Break

„Помнишь, где ты сломал свою судьбу?‟

I have finally caught up with the Russian sequel Daywatch or Дневной дозор and a line leaps out at me. It stops me in my tracks. It is a question I have been asking myself now, for the best part of a year. Do I remember where I broke my destiny? Not yet, but I am perhaps starting to see.
Could things be about to turn? Is my dark night moving into the light, my year of pain and lack shifting to brighter times? Well, no surprise to see there is a card in the road to tell me how things are.
It's the Three of Diamonds today, or Three of Pentacles, as they would be in the Tarot. More appropriate it could not be. "It signifies a business proposal or undertaking," one of my many guides says. "Everybody has periods when things go terribly wrong, bad luck, lack of money, disputes and separations... The period of such a run of misfortune is usually three months or three years... So, if you have experienced such a period, take heart if the three of Pentacles turns up... for it can signify that such a period is coming to an end."
Fingers crossed! By the way, while looking for a good image to use, I stumbled on this fabulous new Tarot. It is a magnificent piece of work, I must say, full of dark Victorian fantasies, M.R. Jamesian horrors, Doré-esque fantasies, Fading Away fey, opium dreams and the roots of Ur-Goth, but I shall respect their wishes not to hotlink and instead leave you to discover its delights for yourselves:
http://www.bohemiangothic.com

Monday 9 June 2008

Don't eat the caviar!

There’s a curious, perverse blend of ironies in this story, of contradictory mortalities, and the bite of the credit crunch all coming together. Of course, the very people able to give it up are the ones least likely to, I suppose. As reported in today’s Sueddeutschezeitung
Rettet den Stör: Nie mehr Kaviar
Die Umweltschützer haben schon vieles versucht, um den Stör zu retten. Vergeblich. Nun hilft nur noch eins: auf Kaviar verzichten...

[My trans] Environmental protectors have tried to save the sturgeon, in vain. Now only one thing can help: giving up caviar. Lower Saxony’s environment minster, Hans-Heinrich Sander, has called for people to forgo caviar on the grounds of saving the species. “Um den Stör zu retten, soll man Kaviar nicht mehr verzehren...”
“To save the sturgeon, don't eat any more caviar,” said the FDP-politician in Hanover. “All other protective measures have been fruitless up to now”, he went on...

Sunday 8 June 2008

In which the author is maddeningly cryptic

Earlier on today I posted up a book review which I was excited to share, because it had so freaked me out that I could hardly believe what I had discovered. Why had no-one else seen it before? I took the post down later on the advice of a trusted confidante.
‘Don’t put that on your blog!’ she gasped. ‘Someone’ll steal it! There’s a book in this, and you mustn’t tell anyone about it! I’ve got my Gypsy intuition going on this one - take it down now!’
So I did. I shall have to be mysterious, then, but it is an absolute stunner. I’ve found evidence, incontrovertable, though very subtly tucked away, that a classic, much-loved novel will have to be radically reinterpreted. So radically, in fact, that it will not only never be seen in the same way again, but it will turn from being a charming comedy into... something almost scary.
It’s as though... well, imagine you’d been leafing through The Wind in the Willows and wondered, in passing, why you had never previously noticed that Ratty lives on a canal and not a river, but you let that go and read on. Then, say in the chapter entitled “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”, you spot a reference to “the twin moons”, and then see the sun described as “a twinkling star in the red sky.” Then you flick to the front and see a note on the fly-leaf that somehow you had never bothered to read before - that nobody has ever bothered to read, apparently. It says: “This story takes place on the Planet Mars”.
That’s not what I’ve stumbled on, incidentally. Ratty, Toad and Mole are still safely on Terra Firma, but that is the scale of the thing we’re talking about. The book in question is that well known and this is every bit as big a rethink as the one I have just described. With luck, all will be revealed in due course!