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A post from a far embassage
Jul. 1st, 2008 06:53 pmAm in Henley. Where ought I to be...?
Being here is a good thing, but it never feels quite justified. The streets are full of pretty people, the river is full of muscle and splash, the shops are full of temptation. Right now, the house is full of the smells of olive and shallot, for I am making sauce vierge. There will be tagliatelle to soak it up, and fried fillets of sea bass on top. I am here as cook/housekeeper, as I took pleasure in explaining to the charming girl trying to wring charity out of me in the public square: I'm broke, I said, this is other people's money that I'm spending [as she cast doubtful looks at my Waitrose shopping]. I'm just a domestic, I said, as I ducked into the best butcher-cum-fishmonger in town.
I have done what I can to deserve these pleasures, if not to earn them: I have skinned and deseeded tomatoes. When did I last do that? Not sure, but it will have been years ago. Many years, perhaps.
Also, I have written the first thousand words of a new story. I think that makes the fourth in a week. A short week. I am, as we established over the weekend, committing displacement. I don't want to work on the novel, because I'm stuck: or not stuck, so much as terrified. I have to deal with a goddess now, and I don't do deities. If there were such a word as deitied, meaning perhaps [mis]handled by a deity, it would be a palindrome: but again I am displacing, ducking the issue. I don't do gods, but here is one. And I have no idea what to do with her, what she wants, how she handles the world or why she would bother. So instead I read (M John Harrison! whom I adore, without in the least understanding...) and visit friends (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
la_marquise_de and the Marquis, who housed and fed me all weekend long, if you can believe that; and showed me Hong Kong movies to boot, to which I might quite easily become addicted...) and write the beginning of this and the beginning of that, instead of what I oughta.
And cook, of course. And drink, alas, which is folly. A grand folly, but folly none the less. People shouldn't let me do it, yet they do.
Being here is a good thing, but it never feels quite justified. The streets are full of pretty people, the river is full of muscle and splash, the shops are full of temptation. Right now, the house is full of the smells of olive and shallot, for I am making sauce vierge. There will be tagliatelle to soak it up, and fried fillets of sea bass on top. I am here as cook/housekeeper, as I took pleasure in explaining to the charming girl trying to wring charity out of me in the public square: I'm broke, I said, this is other people's money that I'm spending [as she cast doubtful looks at my Waitrose shopping]. I'm just a domestic, I said, as I ducked into the best butcher-cum-fishmonger in town.
I have done what I can to deserve these pleasures, if not to earn them: I have skinned and deseeded tomatoes. When did I last do that? Not sure, but it will have been years ago. Many years, perhaps.
Also, I have written the first thousand words of a new story. I think that makes the fourth in a week. A short week. I am, as we established over the weekend, committing displacement. I don't want to work on the novel, because I'm stuck: or not stuck, so much as terrified. I have to deal with a goddess now, and I don't do deities. If there were such a word as deitied, meaning perhaps [mis]handled by a deity, it would be a palindrome: but again I am displacing, ducking the issue. I don't do gods, but here is one. And I have no idea what to do with her, what she wants, how she handles the world or why she would bother. So instead I read (M John Harrison! whom I adore, without in the least understanding...) and visit friends (
la_marquise_de and the Marquis, who housed and fed me all weekend long, if you can believe that; and showed me Hong Kong movies to boot, to which I might quite easily become addicted...) and write the beginning of this and the beginning of that, instead of what I oughta.And cook, of course. And drink, alas, which is folly. A grand folly, but folly none the less. People shouldn't let me do it, yet they do.