I will walk with my hands bound, I will walk with my face blood

[stillsostrange]

Mist & Chill
Words today: 1193
Words total: 3497
Reason for stopping: scene, and probably chapter
Opening lines: Death might not be an end to pain, but it did ease the constant aches of living, all the creaking joints healed fractures and scar tissue that accumulated over a lifetime. Sol had seen more than his share of lifetimes, and he felt them all when he stepped out of the betweens into the warm stickiness of a Texas afternoon.
Closing lines: The waiter returned with the khorake bademjan, and Sol tried to ignore everything but lamb and rice and tart grape-and-tomato sauce. Maybe this time something would be different.
Mean things: Not knowing you'd knocked up your girlfriend when you walked out four years ago. Oops.
Quirks: Sol is a bitter asshole, but I love him. I don't, however, love that he's threatening me with a tauroctony later in the book. I don't care if you have a dog and a snake--leave the poor cows alone.
Research: Farsi, and Persian food. There will be a research trip to a Persian restaurant in Houston very soon.
Tropes sporked: Playboy immortals who settle down into twu luv when they finally meet an immortal girl. Sorry, honey, but she's not going to put up with your shit either. Take your manpain across the street.
Exercise: I blew off the gym like a blowing thing today, but I did assemble an Ikea bookcase. Tomorrow I'll fill it full of reference books.

Now I just need to find an in to Alessande's pov, and this thing will be a fully operation battle notbook.

I also need to figure out what Alessande is writing her doctoral thesis on. Anyone have any suggestions for a Classics topic, focus on ancient history or ancient philosophy? Sadly, I suspect anything involving chthonic rites or deities would be a bit too cutely meta.

Comments

classics topic

[peoppenheimer.livejournal.com]

"I also need to figure out what Alessande is writing her doctoral thesis on. Anyone have any suggestions for a Classics topic, focus on ancient history or ancient philosophy?" If I knew a little more about Alessande, I could probably come up with better suggestions, but here are a few moderately funky topics in ancient philosophy. "The Theology of Aristotle" is a neoplatonist Arabic work attributed to Aristotle. Is Alessande likely to be interested in the origins of Western mystical traditions? If so, then the history of neoplatonism provides a rich field. If you want to go way back, without getting too cute, the use of Homeric and Hesiodic texts for divination might be okay. There's all the stuff in the Pythagorean schools. Want a feminist slant? The second head of the "Pythagorean brotherhood" was Pythagoras's daughter. Let me know more about what Alessande is interested in, and there are lots more where those came from.

Re: classics topic

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Pythagoras's daughter is definitely the winner. That's awesome.

Re: classics topic

[peoppenheimer.livejournal.com]

Glad you like it. When we are dealing with a philosophical school from approximately twenty-six centuries ago, our sources are exiguous and all our hypotheses are controversial. More work for Alessande! And nothing like a good academic controversy to get people in your field talking about (and maybe even reading) your stuff. According to some sources, Pythagoras's wife and all three of their daughters were important thinkers who helped to establish the Pythagorean tradition. I'm not sure how much you need to know about Alessande's research, but in case you want to know more about the sort of thing she's looking into, I mention a couple of places she might be using as jumping-off points (if she has access to the Internet). There are two published entries and one planned entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu) on Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism. (Disclosure: I work for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.) Kate Lindemann, professor emerita of philosophy at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York, has a web site http://www.women-philosophers.com/ about women philosophers; her discussion of the early Pythagoreans is at http://www.women-philosophers.com/Early-Pythagoreans.html. (By the way, her explanation of why she started the site includes her outrageous story of being told that women cannot do philosophy.) Is Alessande contemporary with us? Where is she studying? Is she in a philosophy department?

[lotusice.livejournal.com]

"Sorry, honey, but she's not going to put up with your shit either. Take your manpain across the street."

howls with laughter more