I really hope this doesn't come out sounding insulting or belittling or whatever. I never read any of his books, or anything. Just saw his name, mentioned by interesting people in passing, and usually accompanied by some little doodle of genius writing. So to me he was like a bit of inspired local color in a science fiction or a fantasy, which just makes you believe in the world, and that it's a little more beautiful and deep than the one you normally inhabit. On the edges of your vision, but making the world vaster and more lovely by implication.
It's weird how the geography of my memory does not go with this map. I lived basically right where that restaurant is. I must have walked by it, probably even ate there, if it's more than two years old. (It's not the place with all the pictures of some revolutionary-looking dude wearing amazingly long and skinny pants, is it?) But I'm looking at this map, and I swear to God I remember there being another avenue between fourth and Greenwood cemetery. It makes me feel like I'm going insane.
I do not recommend any Mexican restaurants in Tokyo.
I always thought of this as the difference between magic realism and fantasy; there isn't that tension in magical realism, it seemed to me. Magical things happen and there is no attempt to understand or explain it, and it's not useful, couldn't possibly be expressed in a number. Whereas in fantasy there can be Academies of Magic where people study and can understand, to some degree, how it works, and how to use it.
This is just my superficial idea formed by reading a little bit of magical realism and a little bit of fantasy.
Charlie Stross's comment about going to the moon, which I really liked, reminded me of something Thomas Carlyle said. Of course I don't agree with everything he thought (like slavery being awesome), but somewhere in Sartor Resartus he said it doesn't stop being a miracle just because we understand how it works. I like to think so too.
I forgot to say thanks for the Aural Times. Fantastic stuff.
Xopher;
The pic site makes it sound like "these people are geeks, let's go beat them up" was the general sentiment.
In my experience, "let's dress up like zombies" is not that much less geeky than "let's dress up like knights." ("Let's dress up like pirates", on the other hand, seems to go in and out of style, and isn't that geeky at all.) Nor have I ever met a single person who dresses up like a knight who would be less than thrilled to be inexplicably "attacked" by a person dressed up like a zombie.
People get beat up by assholes, it's true, and if you've had that experience you might be extra worried about it happening again, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming to me that in this case, everyone was having a great time. I'm going to go out on a limb for the imagination and compassion of humanity, and guess that even if someone had a rattan sword, they wouldn't have broken anyone's skull.
Those mountains look impossible, don't they? Like that one all by itself in the middle of the second one. Amazing.
I'm with Colin Roald. How many of you have actually been to Sweet Cherry, or the 3rd avenue area in general? Leonora Rose, you say it was "a strip club in a bad neighbourhood that is known for serious drug dealing, and dancers who've been raped or coerced into having sex to keep their job." But that wasn't "known" until three weeks later. Right? Someone who worked there got murdered, possibly as a result of working there. But that didn't happen until long after they went. So how could they know? It's obvious that it's not a nice neighborhood, but not necessarily obvious that it's a deadly one. Some people make it sound like Afghanistan or something, but it's just a neighborhood in Brooklyn. Like I said, I was probably stupid to go wandering there alone late at night, but I really don't think (even now, knowing someone who worked there was killed) it's necessarily deadly. There are plenty of people with families who live in that area, and in fact, Sunset Park proper is one of the nicest places I've been in NYC.
It's really weird to see someone branded as capital-letters stupid just for visiting a place where you used to live. If you've actually been there, like Teresa, and hold this opinion, then that's fine. But if you're just imagining some 70s-movie-New-York hellpit, then I think it's a little silly to criticize so strongly--on this point only, of course. In other words, I agree that they were slumming and that slumming is gross. But I don't agree that they were insanely reckless to do so.
Maybe you've all been there, and I don't know what I'm talking about. Wouldn't be the first time.
I haven't really read much of this comment thread, as I'm on Internet cafe time, but I thought I'd share my thoughts. I lived for a year in the sort of netherworld between Park Slope & Sunset Park, on 4th Ave. I like walking around, so I often walked around 3rd Avenue, where in addition to the "24-hour video stores" there was a really good fruit & vegetable store, and a huge post office with a tiny, tiny customer area and no good stamps. I could never tell if that big scary building with the chainlink nets projecting out from the second floor (to stop people climbing up? or to catch people jumping down?) was a jail or not. Anyway, I never felt the least bit scared or threatened there, which is probably proof of my naivete. And I once stepped into one of the porn shops, just to see, and I feel like I might've written such a post about it as Jessica did about the strip club--I mean, I knew it was sleazy, obviously, but how sleazy I did not really realize until I saw for myself.
This is not an apologia for slumming, which I've always felt was disgusting. (It amazes me how some people can afford a nicer place but live in a terrifying hellhole to be "hip", or to freak their parents out, or whatever it is.) Just offering myself as an example of how completely stupid people can be. Did 3rd Ave really only get that way after the "cleanup" of Times Square?
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 7 |
| 2005 | 2 |
Total: 9 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by JdB:
Show all comments by JdB.