the hue of melancholy

[cimorene]

I dreamed about kitten_head and her mother again. That probably makes five times in the last week and a half. My mother was there, too, and there was a lot of driving back and forth looking for some kind of shoes, I think. The night before my sister and I were riding the wrong schoolbuses all over a lot of snow-covered icy streets, trying to get to the school where my mom works.

I've finished rereading Barry Hughart's fantastic fantasy/mystery novels set in a mythology-and-magic-filled Ancient China, Bridge of Birds and Eight Skilled Gentlemen. The last printing was in 1991, but for some reason the latter is still to be found in warehouses, while the middle book, The Story of the Stone, is rare enough that used copies go for about twice the cover price. (I'm going to have to cave and buy one soon though. They probably won't reprint it; it'll just keep going up more.) I'd forgotten exactly how enchanting they are. He's a genius with adventure, magic, and comedy, and was rumoured (?) to have stopped writing after the third book because it didn't pay well enough to recompense the work that went into it. I have a suspicion he lapsed into depression or fanfiction or something myself, but I mourn that we won't get to read any more of his stuff.

The weather sucks. Yesterday there was a solid leaden cloud like a lid on the sky, with our end of town in the bottom of a box. Today there's that druggy pressure-changing feeling in the air and the light is weak and sickly and the wind cold and unpleasant, though cerulean is peeping through gaps in the white clouds. I still feel oppressed, and I've run out of new books, too.

Oh, and also, I need a new processor and motherboard. It's not really fair to bitch about that - this one's about three years old, so it's about time to replace it anyway. Not so fun - the recursive fault and soft lockup errors that are making it freeze in mid bootup and shutdown every single time I turn it on and off now. There goes a few hundred bucks.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_poetrix/]

driving around looking for shoes, eh? i seem to remember that actually happening before kyndra's wedding... what were the other 4 dreams about??

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but we were driving back and forth between my mom's house and a closet in an empty apartment/warehouse she owned where everything smelled of dust. We were trying to decide on two pairs, one for you and one for me, so that they would match and fit for both of us. I was suggesting you wear these metallic gold ones and I take some brown leather sandals, and we were going back to the warehouse to see if the gold ones were there, when I woke up.

In the second one you and I were FBI agents, and so was my dad's attendant Birda, who is also his best buddy now, I guess. We were with a suspect in the attic of a public building trying to disarm him, but then he shot himself and we went down to the basement to eat pizza while waiting for debriefing, and your mom was there. I hadn't seen her for years so she hugged me and we sat next to each other while we ate.

Last night you and Amanda were visiting me in Tuscaloosa, and my parents had just made a hammock bed for me that hung from some chains a foot under the ceiling, and all three of us could fly, and we were flying around on the high school graduation day trying to avoid the parties but looking for some particular antique store, I think, but then we got caught in the rain in a healthfood store, and I spit out my gum over the grocery store parking lot and some customers looked up and shouted "HEY!"

I don't remember the others at the moment, though.

[copracat]

I picked up Bridge of Birds because of its lovely cover and was utterly charmed and made happy by the story. I wish he had written more. Number Ten Ox and Master Li were fab.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I don't have that printing, alas. The edition I got hold of shows the palm-frond helicopter basket floating between a couple of mountaintops. I agree, the one you have is the best.