rowan > Recent Status Updates

so this is very much a collection of people bruce chatwin met in patagonia. they're all a bit weird. it's fun.

In the 1860s W.H. Hudson came to the Rio Negro looking for the migrant birds that wintered around his home[...]. Years later he [...] wrote a book so quiet and sane it makes Thoreau seem a ranter. Hudson devotes a whole chapter in Idle Days in Patagonia to answering Mr Darwin's question, and he concludes that desert wanderers discover in themselves a primeval calmness which is perhaps the same as the Peace of God.

I said as much to a friend.
"Lots of people say that," he said. "Last year an old White émigrée came to our place in the country. She got terrifically excited and asked to see every room. We went up to the attics and she said: 'Ah! I knew it! The smell of my childhood!'"
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》patagonia as the dustbin of history, the place where every lost exile ends up.

The city kept reminding me of Russia - the cars of the secret police bristling with aerials; women with splayed haunches licking ice-cream in dusty parks; the same bullying statues, the pie-crust architecture, the same avenues that were not quite straight, giving the illusion of endless space and leading out into nowhere. Tsarist rather than Soviet Russia.

At lunch we sat under a painting of one of General Rosa's gauchos, by Raymond Monvoisin, a follower of Delacroix. He lay swathed in a blood-red poncho, a male odalisque, cat-like and passively erotic.
"Trust a Frenchman," I thought, "to see through all the cant about the gaucho."

Also reading this as space western research. I'm collecting words and experiences.

From Ch 1: It is rare that everyone in the world has the same thing on their minds at once, but we know one thing that everyone was talking about in the spring of 1006: the star.
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brief research rabbit hole: SN 1006 and other astronomical events that may have guided various people/civilisations into making changes and building things

From Part 1: Because [other civs] left written records, historians have traditionally found the details of their histories easier to access than those of Native Americans who lived at the same time, generally assuming that eras without written records are the realm of archaeologists. Yet writing is really the exception - most societies around the world did not write until the 19th century.
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really? u sure???

Foreword, p xix: It is important to know that the Brisih attempted genocide against the Penobscots. It is even more important to know that they did not succeed.
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foreword speaks a lot abt how history regards NAs as defeated and decimated as soon as the brits landed, but that's just what Big History wants you to believe bc it's easier

i'm writing a space western so i'm on a big western kick, and i reckon some actual fact and history should balance out some of the unsavoury bits in pre-contemporary media i'm osmosing into my headspace reference library (not that contemp media is always clear and unproblematic, but from contemp authors i expect more effort; pre-contemp authors should have known better too, but they're all mostly dead by now).

ugly laughing at nearly every other exchange
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"If I had killed him I would not now be in this fix. My revolver misfired twice."
"They will do it," said Lucky Ned Pepper. Then he laughed. He said, "Most girls like play pretties, but you like guns, don't you?"
"I don't care a thing in the world about guns. If I did I would have one that worked."

Incredible

"Men will live like billy goats if left alone." gods, i love this girl

so far there have been a few words i quibble with, like "echolocating" and "confetti"

Alice, you're stressing me the fuck out. *pats top of Alice's head* you won't believe how many poor choices this depressed grad student can make.

i NEED to know why peter turned cold, i NEED to!!!

less than 20 pages in and i'm starting a reading list of all the authors/titles that get referenced here.

whoah, we're half way there...whoah-oh, livin on a prayer.......

the only way i can visualise this novel is as an 80s dramatic shounen-ai manga, and i'm not having a good time.

this looks like it's going to be a tedious read

half a star docked for the use of the tilde:
"We just got caught in the rain and found a motel, obviously~ completely innocent~"
"Was there only one bed? God. You're such a slut."
"Wh~at? No, of course there were two beds..."

g~ross and unnecessary.

aaagonyyyyy....that can cut like a knife..........

some good things happened, and a bunch of terrible things happened. reading this is making me so anxious for these characters.

10% in and suffering so much. i really want to be done with this series because the characters i like are just suffering too damn much.

i am NOT enjoying this

[progress is slow because this book is Bad.]