“I remembered once, in Japan, having been to see the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and being mildly surprised at quite how well it had weathered the passage of time since it was first built in the fourteenth century. I was told it hadn’t weathered well at all, and had in fact been burnt to the ground twice in this century.
“So it isn’t the original building?” I had asked my Japanese guide.
“But yes, of course it is,” he insisted, rather surprised at my question.
“But it’s been burnt down?”
“Yes.”
“Twice?”
“Many times.”
“And rebuilt.”
“Of course. It is an important and historic building.”
“With completely new materials.”
“But of course. It was burnt down.”
“So how can it be the same building?”
“It is always the same building.”
I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise. The idea of the building, the intention of it, its design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building. The intention of the original builders is what survived. The wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced when necessary. To be overly concerned with the original materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the living building itself.”
The worst excuse I’ve ever heard for gendering books is that, “What if it confuses my kid? What if they grow up gay or trans because I let them read about too many girl/boy things?”
Your son’s first crush might be the rowdiest boy in a story about boys doing “boy things”. Your daughter might want to be with the gentle seamstress who makes the magic cloak, not be her. Your tomboy might be a boy, and he might identify with the protagonist’s science-loving crush, not her.
Your kid is your kid, and they will be who they are meant to be. Give them all the boy/girl books you want, but you can’t control how they’ll feel about them, or what they’ll take away from the story.
As a parent, you can’t iron the world flat to keep your kid from stumbling, but you can absolutely prepare them for the bumps. If they walk an unexpected path, having read more widely will only ease their way, and get them where they need to be.
“As a parent, you can’t iron the world flat to keep your kid from stumbling, but you can absolutely prepare them for the bumps.“
“Never did like that much,” is a baller and superb way to express your irritation with the way the patriarchy refuses to acknowledge how badass you are.
Word.
Before World War I, she shot a cigarette out of the mouth of the Kaiser of Germany at his request.
After the war started she sent him a letter asking for another chance, as she was afraid her aim might’ve been a little off.
“‘How shall a man judge what to do in such times?’
‘As he ever has judged,’ said Aragorn. ‘Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.” ~ Tolkien
There is not much more that can be added to this. True wisdom needs no amendment.
📷 @nicolasbruno (at Rohan)
Not enough people in this shield wall are wearing helmets ):
“If you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you’re at it? Go ahead. Nothing’s off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It’s easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you’re supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don’t get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That’s a story. Handled properly, it’s more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.”
Go, and you may never return to the magic realm. For even now the great dome of invisibility grows over our world to protect its sanctity for all time. And no one on the outside may enter its boundaries, save for the length of a dream, or a flash of an inspiration. But it will stay, through the years and the centuries and the ages, a part of man for all time. And whenever man needs magic, we will be here.
