God søndag og velkommen til nye smakebiter!
I dag har jeg vært på jobb, noe som var virkelig travelt. Vi hadde film for barna og en politimann som leste billedbøker, så det var mange, mange barn med foreldre på besøk. Nå er jeg hjemme igjen og det var godt å sette seg i stolen med føttene på krakken. Mannen min er i Sandefjord og hjelper til med å feire sin mors 80-års dag. (Jeg måtte jobbe). Så det er stille og rolig her, og perfekt for å lese litt.
I dag leser jeg Quicksilver av Neal Stephenson, den første boken i «The Baroque Cycle». Det er en ukjent bok for meg, så jeg er spent på hvordan jeg liker den. Helt fremst står det en «Invocation» (påkallelse/åkallan):
State your intentions, Muse. I know you’re there.
Dead bards who pined for you have said
You’re bright as a flame, but fickle as the air.
My pen and I, submerged in liquid shade,
Much dark can spread, on days and over reams
But without you, no radiance can shed.
Why rustle in the dark, when fledged with fire?
Craze the night with flails of light. Reave
Your turbid shroud. Bestow what I require.But you’re not in the dark. I do believe
I swim, like squid, in clouds of my own make,
To you, offensive. To us both, opaque.
What’s constituted so, only a pen
Can penetrate. I have one here; let’s go.
The secret of flying is to throw yourself at the ground, and miss.
Den siste uken hadde vært røff. Smekk hadde hatt vansker med å konsentrere seg. I går overkokte han potetene, og dagen før var fisken gått usaltet på fatet. Selv om ingen hadde brydd seg, følte han skam og lovte seg selv at det ikke skulle skje igjen, for det lille var alltid beskrivende for det store, og fikk man ikke til de enkle tingene, hvordan skulle man da klare de kompliserte?
Demi-monde- which is French for “half-world” and an old euphemism, according to Miss Redmayne who teaches humanities, for any sexually active woman who failed to conform to the strict patriarchal gender norms that permeated French society in the dark days before Tinder.
This is why magic is worse even than quantum physics. Because, while both spit in the eye of common sense, I’ve never yet had a Higgs bosun turn up and try to have a conversation with me.
I do not care for posturing women. But she struck me. I had to stop and look at her. The legs was well apart, the right foot boldly advanced, the left trailing with studied casualness. She held her right hand before her, almost touching the window, the fingers thrusting up like a beautiful flower. The left hand she held a little behind her and seemed to push down playful lapdogs. Head well back, a faint smile, eyes half closed with boredom or pleasure. I could not tell. Very artificial the whole thing, but then I am not a simple man. She was a beautiful woman.
The mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleening his little home. First with brooms, the with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and pile of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and wery arms.
Agatha Christie was sitting quietly on the train when she overheard a stranger saying her name.