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Mar. 11th, 2011 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsMan, there is something about writing about New York nightlife that makes authors lose ALL SENSE of literary proportion. Admittedly, the last time I picked up a book on this topic, it was written by a sensationalist in the 1850's, so there is some excuse for "the festivities of prostitution and the orgies of pauperism". New York Night: The Mystique and its History, on the other hand, I acquired from the library with the impression that it was meant to be a fairly straightforward history of New York nightlife, with a chapter covering each decade or so from 1643 to the 1990s. And yet - well, okay, I'm just going to give you some prosaic gems from the prologue:
Collaborating with land, water and buildings, this astronomic nightfall, every day different and striking no other place on earth at just the same angle, dictates the look and feel of the oncoming dark hours
The silky forms laughing and chattering behind the tinted glass of a club or restaurant are probably cutthroats engaged in the first skirmishes of the evening, when a hundred thousand gang wars for love and success are waged at their fiercest
Toward dawn, as if released by the rasp of iron hinges, succubae and incubi fly out: nightmare thoughts, in check during the day, point with skeletal fingers to remorse, death and vanity, their victims everywhere
SUCCUBAE AND INCUBI, GUYS. I read bits of this out loud to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
innerbrat and rushin_doll and they thought I was reading from an urban fantasy novel. The whole first chapter is like this. It is the purplest prose I have ever read in nonfiction; it ranks among the purplest prose I have read ever.
As one goes back, few towers, however remarkable in themselves, diminish Manhattan's urgent verticality as they vanish one by one OH GOD GUYS I CAN'T STOP. *cough*
Anyway, once Caldwell settles down into actually writing about history, the density of metaphors lightens to a significant degree and he turns out to be an entertaining and often witty writer. Occasionally he'll go off on a long enthusiastic purple tangent about something and you just sort of have to sigh and wait it out, but the content is incredibly interesting. I mean, it's no secret that I find New York fascinating and New York history fascinating, so this is especially tailored to my interests, but. The sneaky nineteenth-century gay nightclub ads disguised as censorious comments in the gossip pages! The burlesque wars in Times Square! The 1849 riots over competing performances of Macbeth that killed 31 people! (SHAKESPEARE KILLS, GUYS.)
The book, however - alas! - contains no actual succubae or incubi, although there is a possible case of spontaneous combustion (but don't worry, Caldwell seriously assures us that "to this day no one knows whether or not spontaneous combustion really happens (it has never been witnessed by an observer who could satisfy skeptics.)")
And speaking of cities that I love - hey, I'm going to London tonight! I have no idea what my level of internet access will be there, but my guess is 'available but extremely limited,' so expect radio silence around these parts until I get back next Thursday. I am SUPER EXCITED, in case you did not guess. After all, as Mark Caldwell will tell you,
in London, the Thames at night urges itself on, a cold void in the city's midst; light ranges from garish Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square to serene neighborhoods of knitted, sibilant greenery and thick-curtained windows.
UK-ers, if you don't show me some knitted, sibilant greenery while I'm there, I will tell you frankly I will be disappointed.
Collaborating with land, water and buildings, this astronomic nightfall, every day different and striking no other place on earth at just the same angle, dictates the look and feel of the oncoming dark hours
The silky forms laughing and chattering behind the tinted glass of a club or restaurant are probably cutthroats engaged in the first skirmishes of the evening, when a hundred thousand gang wars for love and success are waged at their fiercest
Toward dawn, as if released by the rasp of iron hinges, succubae and incubi fly out: nightmare thoughts, in check during the day, point with skeletal fingers to remorse, death and vanity, their victims everywhere
SUCCUBAE AND INCUBI, GUYS. I read bits of this out loud to
innerbrat and rushin_doll and they thought I was reading from an urban fantasy novel. The whole first chapter is like this. It is the purplest prose I have ever read in nonfiction; it ranks among the purplest prose I have read ever.As one goes back, few towers, however remarkable in themselves, diminish Manhattan's urgent verticality as they vanish one by one OH GOD GUYS I CAN'T STOP. *cough*
Anyway, once Caldwell settles down into actually writing about history, the density of metaphors lightens to a significant degree and he turns out to be an entertaining and often witty writer. Occasionally he'll go off on a long enthusiastic purple tangent about something and you just sort of have to sigh and wait it out, but the content is incredibly interesting. I mean, it's no secret that I find New York fascinating and New York history fascinating, so this is especially tailored to my interests, but. The sneaky nineteenth-century gay nightclub ads disguised as censorious comments in the gossip pages! The burlesque wars in Times Square! The 1849 riots over competing performances of Macbeth that killed 31 people! (SHAKESPEARE KILLS, GUYS.)
The book, however - alas! - contains no actual succubae or incubi, although there is a possible case of spontaneous combustion (but don't worry, Caldwell seriously assures us that "to this day no one knows whether or not spontaneous combustion really happens (it has never been witnessed by an observer who could satisfy skeptics.)")
And speaking of cities that I love - hey, I'm going to London tonight! I have no idea what my level of internet access will be there, but my guess is 'available but extremely limited,' so expect radio silence around these parts until I get back next Thursday. I am SUPER EXCITED, in case you did not guess. After all, as Mark Caldwell will tell you,
in London, the Thames at night urges itself on, a cold void in the city's midst; light ranges from garish Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square to serene neighborhoods of knitted, sibilant greenery and thick-curtained windows.
UK-ers, if you don't show me some knitted, sibilant greenery while I'm there, I will tell you frankly I will be disappointed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-03-11 04:54 pm (UTC)And whoa, surprise!London trip, awesome! (Or possibly I haven't been paying enough attention. It's been known to happen!) Have an excellent time!
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Date: 2011-03-11 04:59 pm (UTC)Hee, thanks! I PLAN TO. >:D
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Date: 2011-03-11 05:03 pm (UTC)Well, to each their own.
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Date: 2011-03-11 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-11 05:10 pm (UTC)It might have to be a generational duty, handed down from father to son over the years, but that's getting just a little epic for topiary.
(And if you dropped a stitch, I would not want to see the ancestral rage that ensued.)
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Date: 2011-03-11 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-11 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-11 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-11 05:40 pm (UTC)(Pine needles OBVIOUSLY ahaha I kill myself)
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Date: 2011-03-11 05:43 pm (UTC)(. . . WELL PLAYED.)
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Date: 2011-03-11 05:46 pm (UTC)There will (hopefully) be fic for you waiting when you get back. *hugs*
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Date: 2011-03-11 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-11 06:48 pm (UTC)Have an awesome time in London. Its such a great theater city.
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Date: 2011-03-11 07:48 pm (UTC)Thank you! Amy and I do indeed have a theater experience planned. >:D Although, uh, 'great' may not end up being the word to describe it . . .
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Date: 2011-03-11 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-11 08:51 pm (UTC)I hate you. Also, do not even ASK what the economy here is, I have NO IDEA.
Date: 2011-03-11 09:00 pm (UTC)It is simply a town, inhabited by very patient people, and it stays where it is.
Cardin’s famed living walls are solid and warm, something more like a flat tree than anything else, and they keep out the wind as they stretch towards the sun. To live in Cardin is to live in a landscape of green shadows and cool leaf-scents, where sunlight filters in hazy specks and hedgehogs are wont to meander into one’s parlor. Electricity has come to Cardin, and radio and television and the BBC, and indoors the earthen floor is carpeted with rugs on top of moss, and picture frames are hung carefully from twigs at convenient heights. But Cardin is a town that values its heritage, and those whose natures demand another sort of life find their way soon enough to universities and big cities and small towns with walls of drywall and plaster and stone. The rest, like their ancestors before them, like the occasional patient folk who find their way to the willow-draped doors, are tree-knitters.
The trick of this sort of hedge is not in and of itself very difficult. It only takes glacial, generational patience, and a respect for work done well, and occasionally a quantity of string. The tree-knitters train their saplings young. A young woman moves tiny plants into rows that demarcate a house where, someday, her grandchildren might like to live. She bends them gently, never too far – but then, a young tree watered well can take a great deal of bending – and twines and lashes them into a series of broad loops, and lets them grow. She waters them, trims back her eaves that the new growth might get enough sun, fertilizes their roots.
In a year, she will bend them back the other way, interweaving these first two rows of what is now something like lace. Rabbits squeeze through its holes, and sparrows peck beneath them. The knitter is unbothered. The hedge will grow, trained and trimmed and tied into rows looping ever higher, and the trunks will broaden into a solid knitted wall.
There are a few artisans who work in cables, in moss stitch and seed stitch with leaves clipped close to display their handiwork, but most work in simple lines. Stockinette for an interior wall; double knitting against the wind; intarsia of yew and boxwood and oak. There are no house numbers in Cardin, because everyone knows the living houses and their maintainers.
On a summer night, some day, you can hear the walls hiss the names of those who have shaped them, a sibilant counterpoint to songbirds and frogs. But Cardinites smile, and say nothing on this matter, and the final word must surely be theirs.
YOU ARE RIDICULOUS AND I LOVE YOU
Date: 2011-03-11 09:06 pm (UTC)*dead, forever and ever, at your
predictabilityskill at creating this excellent little sketch!AND PREDICTABILITY.*
(I am seriously loling at my desk coworkers be damned.)
Re: YOU ARE RIDICULOUS AND I LOVE YOU
Date: 2011-03-11 09:11 pm (UTC)IF THERE IS SOMEONE NEEDED TO WRITE RIDICULOUS IMAGERY ABOUT TREES AND/OR KNITTING WITH SOME IMPLAUSIBILITY THROWN IN, I AM THERE, YO
I expect you to keep an eye out for sibilantly hissing knitted walls while you're in London, please. *solemn*
(So am Iiiiiii. Consider it a parting gift!)
Re: YOU ARE RIDICULOUS AND I LOVE YOU
Date: 2011-03-11 09:14 pm (UTC)I will take pictures on my iPod if I see any! FOR YOU.
(THANK YOU, I'LL TREASURE IT. *still cracking up!*)
Re: YOU ARE RIDICULOUS AND I LOVE YOU
Date: 2011-03-11 09:18 pm (UTC)THEY COULD HAVE BEEN TEA BUSHES
...THAT'S ABOUT THE ONLY WAY I CAN THINK OF, THOUGH
I appreciate your diligence. *solemn*
(I still think Amy should write her own totally different version, but.)
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Date: 2011-03-11 09:20 pm (UTC)Re: YOU ARE RIDICULOUS AND I LOVE YOU
Date: 2011-03-11 09:23 pm (UTC)You're welcome. *equally solemn*
(Yes I agree! Sibilant knitted greenery drabbles for EVERYONE.)
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Date: 2011-03-11 09:24 pm (UTC)Re: YOU ARE RIDICULOUS AND I LOVE YOU
Date: 2011-03-11 09:29 pm (UTC)(Indeeeeeed. What would yours be? Knitted-greenery siblings squabbling over the last
browniebit of Miracle-Gro?)Re: YOU ARE RIDICULOUS AND I LOVE YOU
Date: 2011-03-11 09:37 pm (UTC)(Probably! Knitted-greenery siblings who are cranky about having to learn the family trade but manage to pull together with bickering and TEAMWORK.)
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Date: 2011-03-11 09:37 pm (UTC)Theater is just always good and you get to see theater with Amy. I'm so jealous. Someday I will go to Europe again, in the meantime, there is theater here, not on the awesome scale of New York but it exists.
Re: YOU ARE RIDICULOUS AND I LOVE YOU
Date: 2011-03-11 09:57 pm (UTC)(Ahahaha yes. I vote do it! *helping as always*)
Handily, work is over right as I'm running low on tree-related icons. (Not out yet, though. Um.) HAVE A LOVELY EVENING SAFE TRAVELS BYE!
Re: I hate you. Also, do not even ASK what the economy here is, I have NO IDEA.
Date: 2011-03-12 01:20 am (UTC)Gen, you GENIUS.
(Godammit, now I actually have to write some too! Possibly on the train, though. Not that that does Becca any good, my handwriting is illegible.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!)
Re: I hate you. Also, do not even ASK what the economy here is, I have NO IDEA.
Date: 2011-03-12 01:50 am (UTC)YOU'RE WELCOME. I don't even know, man.
(>:DDD EVERYONE WILL WRITE KNITTED TREES!!!! AHAHAHAHA!!!!!)
Re: I hate you. Also, do not even ASK what the economy here is, I have NO IDEA.
Date: 2011-03-12 02:35 am (UTC)"I hate Cardin!"
Two weeks later, her luggage was down to shedding only about fifteen ants any time it was disturbed, and her bus was just entering Manhattan. She shook a beetle out of her hat and pressed her nose to the glass, admiring the flawlessly straight (and urgently vertical) lines of the buildings.
She heard a squelch as her seatmate released the man across the aisle, who slumped, lifeless, back into his seat. A moment later the girl had her cell phone out: "Naamah, it's me. About an hour away, hellish traffic. Yeah -- yeah, gas prices must have went up, usually traffic in this part of Manhattan's way worse than hell. Toss a baby in the oven for me, would you?"
Chrysanthemum looked thoughtfully back at the the astronomic nightfall. She could see a few gang wars for love and success flaring up down the street, and her seatmate was beginning to disagree loudly with her conversation partner's choice of semen preparation, but all around her were buildings made of solid, insulated, reinforced materials, held together with things like nails and cement and straight lines.
No one was knitting a fucking plant.
It was a start.
(Later, she spent a year in Boston, but left in disgust when she realized that every building project there took even longer than knitting a tunnel from seedlings.)
Re: I hate you. Also, do not even ASK what the economy here is, I have NO IDEA.
Date: 2011-03-12 04:11 am (UTC)You are my VERY FAVORITE.
(Time for a crossover in which she meets Kale?)
Re: I hate you. Also, do not even ASK what the economy here is, I have NO IDEA.
Date: 2011-03-13 11:14 am (UTC)A refugee from tree-knitting! This is perfection.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 08:22 pm (UTC)It is not actually, literally greenery.
It is, instead, a clan of grass snakes, specifically bred for patience. (Because you don't want your knitting just wandering off.)
Re: I hate you. Also, do not even ASK what the economy here is, I have NO IDEA.
Date: 2011-03-13 08:24 pm (UTC)(I can trace remnants of MANY BUS JOURNEYS in here!)