between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Climbed: orange 6A, grey 6A. Attempted blue 6A: failed earlier than previous attempt. Attempted black 6B: interesting, failed. In quick succession, no rests: blue 5, yellow 5, pink 4.

Which I haven't managed since, oh, February or thereabouts. So, blue 5, red 6A, orange 6A, very easy pink thing, fell off yellow 6A due to sore fingers, gave up grey 6A due to sore everything. Nothing clean bar the two easy things... but I am getting better.

Maybe my bloodtest results, which are supposed to come back to me today or tomorrow, will explain why I'm tired so often, though.

Another cold, bright November day. The window is open, and I can smell rosemary - it must be from the Provost's garden, because I can't think where else it could be coming from.

Okay. Time to Greek. And then read the smelly book. But first, closing the window, because the outside world is 5C.

Climbing: improvement visible on last week. Strength returns a little, but slowly. Such is always the way.

My post is live at Tor.com: Why Are Fantasy Films All About The Men?

Other links of interest:

Cultural Imperialism Bingo at the World SF Blog.

The Victimisation of Lara Croft.

Jim Hines on boundaries.

Kameron Hurley on Prometheus and white guy sperm seeding the universe.

Brit Mandelo spotlights James Tiptree/Alice Sheldon at Tor.com.

I came across Aliette de Bodard's SF short story "Scattered Along the River of Heaven" at Clarkesworld, and lo, it is good.

Γυνὴ Β

φέρε τὸν στέφανον: ἐγὼ γὰρ αὖ λέξω πάλιν.
οἶμαι γὰρ ἤδη μεμελετηκέναι καλῶς.
ἐμοὶ γὰρ ὦ γυναῖκες αἱ καθήμεναι— [165]

Πραξάγορα

γυναῖκας αὖ δύστηνε τοὺς ἄνδρας λέγεις;

Γυνὴ Β

δι᾽ Ἐπίγονόν γ᾽ ἐκεῖνον: ἐπιβλέψασα γὰρ
ἐκεῖσε πρὸς γυναῖκας ᾠόμην λέγειν.


Second Woman:
Give back the crown: I'll speak again.
For I think I've taken good thought.
With/for me, O women who have been seated in assembly -

Praxagora:
Women again, wretched one? Aren't you speaking to men?

Second Woman:
Because of that Epigonos! For observing him,
I thought I spoke to women.


Πραξάγορα

ἄπερρε καὶ σὺ καὶ κάθησ᾽ ἐντευθενί:
αὐτὴ γὰρ ὑμῶν γ᾽ ἕνεκά μοι λέξειν δοκῶ [170]
τονδὶ λαβοῦσα. τοῖς θεοῖς μὲν εὔχομαι
τυχεῖν κατορθώσασα τὰ βεβουλευμένα.
ἐμοὶ δ᾽ ἴσον μὲν τῆσδε τῆς χώρας μέτα
ὅσονπερ ὑμῖν: ἄχθομαι δὲ καὶ φέρω
τὰ τῆς πόλεως ἅπαντα βαρέως πράγματα. [175]
ὁρῶ γὰρ αὐτὴν προστάταισι χρωμένην
ἀεὶ πονηροῖς: κἄν τις ἡμέραν μίαν
χρηστὸς γένηται, δέκα πονηρὸς γίγνεται.
ἐπέτρεψας ἑτέρῳ: πλείον᾽ ἔτι δράσει κακά.
χαλεπὸν μὲν οὖν ἄνδρας δυσαρέστους νουθετεῖν, [180]
οἳ τοὺς φιλεῖν μὲν βουλομένους δεδοίκατε,
τοὺς δ᾽ οὐκ ἐθέλοντας ἀντιβολεῖθ᾽ ἑκάστοτε.
ἐκκλησίαισιν ἦν ὅτ᾽ οὐκ ἐχρώμεθα
οὐδὲν τὸ παράπαν: ἀλλὰ τόν γ᾽ Ἀγύρριον
πονηρὸν ἡγούμεσθα: νῦν δὲ χρωμένων [185]
ὁ μὲν λαβὼν ἀργύριον ὑπερεπῄνεσεν,
ὁ δ᾽ οὐ λαβὼν εἶναι θανάτου φήσ᾽ ἀξίους
τοὺς μισθοφορεῖν ζητοῦντας ἐν τἠκκλησίᾳ.

Praxagora:
You, go away, and henceforth sit in assembly:
taking this [crown], on your account I myself will speak.
I pray to the gods, standing upright,
to hit the mark with the things which have been resolved upon. [which I resolved on]
To me equally as great [the things] of this land among you
[This land is just as greatly valued by me as it is by you]
I'm grieved and I bear heavily
all the matters of the city.
For I see that she's subject herself to worthless front-rank men
always: and if someone one day
were to be born good, ten would be born evil.
You rely upon another: he'll accomplish worse evils yet.
So it's hard to advise men who're hard to appease:
you've feared those who want to love [you],
while those who don't want to love you, you supplicate every time.
There was a time when we didn't hold assemblies,
not one at all: but we believed
Agurrios evil: now with them using [since they're furnished up? established?]
the one who takes silver praises [himself?] above measure,
while the one who doesn't, he says worthy of death are
those who seek to receive wages in the assembly.


Γυνὴ Α

νὴ τὴν Ἀφροδίτην εὖ γε ταυταγὶ λέγεις.

Πραξάγορα

τάλαιν᾽ Ἀφροδίτην ὤμοσας; χαρίεντά γ᾽ ἂν [190]
ἔδρασας, εἰ τοῦτ᾽ εἶπας ἐν τἠκκλησίᾳ.

Γυνὴ Α

ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἂν εἶπον.

Πραξάγορα
μηδ᾽ ἐθίζου νῦν λέγειν.
τὸ συμμαχικὸν αὖ τοῦθ᾽, ὅτ᾽ ἐσκοπούμεθα,
εἰ μὴ γένοιτ᾽, ἀπολεῖν ἔφασκον τὴν πόλιν:
ὅτε δὴ δ᾽ ἐγένετ᾽, ἤχθοντο, τῶν δὲ ῥητόρων [195]
ὁ τοῦτ᾽ ἀναπείσας εὐθὺς ἀποδρὰς ᾤχετο.
ναῦς δεῖ καθέλκειν: τῷ πένητι μὲν δοκεῖ,
τοῖς πλουσίοις δὲ καὶ γεωργοῖς οὐ δοκεῖ.
Κορινθίοις ἄχθεσθε, κἀκεῖνοί γέ σοι:


First Woman:
Yes by Aphrodite, you say this well indeed.

Praxagora:
Wretched woman, you swore by Aphrodite? Clever if
you did that, if you said that in the assembly!

First Woman:
But I wouldn't say it!

Praxagora:
Don't be accustomed to saying it.
This alliance afresh, when we considered it,
they said if it didn't happen, it'd ruin the city:
and then when it did, they were hated, and the orator
who persuaded us about it straightaway fled.
It's necessary to launch a ship? for the labourer it seems good,
for the rich man and the farmers it doesn't seem good.
You were vexed with Corinth, and they indeed with you:
now they're useful, and now you've become a friend.

---

This evening's climbing encompassed four lead climbs and four top-ropes, pushing myself hard. I still feel as though I'm not pushing myself hard enough when it comes to exercise-related things, especially since there was no jujutsu yesterday.

Things to do before Monday:
- Finish funding app stuff
- email supervisor about getting some feedback
- modern Greek homework (composition) (oral comprehension)
- climbing Friday
- karate Saturday
- progress on second paper for presentation

Today, my supervisor gave me a book. Gave, not loaned!

The way to my heart, she has it.

(The book, by the way, is Robert Garland's Eye of the Beholder, about disease and deformity in ancient Greece. I've read the earlier edition - it's pretty cool, albeit a touch full of unthinking ablism.)

---

Two Greek classes today, ancient and modern. I foresee much confuzzlement on Mondays from now until March. Also some watching of Greek TV on Youtube: I need to get my ear in. Quickly.

---

Falling off walls: a good thing in life. Sent: two estimated 5s and a 6A, made another step higher on last time's estimated 6B, and threw myself at about three hard things that gave me little satisfaction - one is really dynamic, and I think it's either a hard 6A or a middling-low 6B: lots of hop-and-reach, and one move that may be a true dyno. Fun was had.

---

Also a good thing: Joanna Russ's The Country You Have Never Seen. britmandelo, I may have to make squeeful noises in your direction for the recommendation, when I've read more than three pages of it. I hope you'll forgive me when that happens.

Tonight: running (2.5 miles in 29:30, in intervals), climbing, being social with people of whom I am exceedingly fond.

Apparently life goes better when I socialise. Even if being social turns out to be expensive, the difference it makes to my mood is quite extraordinary.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to take a black belt grading for Shotokan. It's been delayed, and I haven't trained in four weeks? I'm not really looking forward to this right now, but hey, the worst that happens is I make a fool of myself in public. Yay.

...Hopefully this will actually crosspost to LJ. One must always hope. Always and forever.

Running tonight: 2 miles in 20:20, which is pretty close to a personal best for the last two years. (If I were desirous of precision, I'd check my "running" tag on here and be more specific, but I haven't managed 2 miles in under 20:00 since 2008 at least.) 2.5 miles in 27:40.

Jujutsu tonight was stick drills and forty minutes of Intro to Knife-Fighting. I now know - theoretically - how to avoid being stabbed.

In practice - well, it's a good thing we were using rubber knives, is all I can say. That shit is hard. Hack, trap, slap, slice, with a mad German (okay, so he's not mad, but he's entirely too gleeful when talking about slicing people open) telling us Three seconds! You want the fight to be over in three seconds!

Bruised now.

Apparently there's a multi-discipline martial arts club up by Magennis Place, so I might have to look into that if Kali-influenced weapon work goes away during term time. I like the stick drill lots. It has a peculiar brutal elegance, like nothing else I've ever done. But it's definitely designed more for slashing weapons - like machetes, or scimitars - than stabbing ones.

I still hate groundwork, passionately. Years of Shotokan-trained instinct screams at me that being that close in, being down, is just like being dead. Except more painful.

That's a feeling that it's hard to argue with. I still want to fight with basic oi-zuki & gyaku-zuki combinations, with a front snap kick to the knee or a side snap kick to the belly for variety: hit fast and hard, and get the hell out of range.

This is not a very effective strategy for fighting people who are faster and better able to get inside your guard. Alas, I keep having to remind myself that I'm not really allowed to kidney-punch people who get inside my guard and go straight for the grapple in sparring: back when I trained in karate, our sensei emphasised maintaining the sphere of personal space, being able to break contact and use distance as defence, over takedowns and Massive Damage.

Shotokan. Beautiful and elegant, but not that much use if someone's really trying to hurt you Real Bad For Serious in a spot where you can't duck back and run away.

Anyway.

I climbed yesterday. I'm a fairly irregular climber these days, and consequently back to being terrible at sending 6As, and without the stamina to lead for very long. Saturday, I colonised the empty Common Room with a friend to watch The Lion in Winter for the first time. The film is carried entirely on dialogue and the actors' performances - and man, Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton were pretty when they were young - and the contrast between the intense intelligence of The Lion in Winter and the last few more recent films I've seen - Captain America, HP7.2, The Mummy - is shocking.

In case you're wondering, I loved The Lion in Winter. More! Now!

("Hush, dear. Mummy's fighting.")

Gym tonight. Ran 2 miles in 20:30 minutes, which may be a personal best, or very nearly: a continuous run of 1.75 miles is actually a personal best of the last year and change.

Also, I climbed and bought birthday presents for the parent. This counts as work, Y/N?

This morning I wrote a three-hour exam in one and one-half hours. I suppose this is either a good thing or a bad one, but for the life of me, I couldn't tell you which.

So I decided thereafter that I'd spend a little while wandering around Dublin city: I tend to stick to my well-known and familiar routes, and I haven't walked up past Christchurch in a while. But since I'd discovered the existence of an interesting public library - Marsh's Library, which has been in continuous operation since the early 1700s - up by Kevin St. garda station, adjacent to St. Patrick's Cathedral. So I headed up that way, going up Aungier St past the Carmelite Priory, and then down along Kevin St towards the cathedral.

The library's housed in a very pleasant Georgian building. You enter through a narrow iron gate, through a small townhouse garden, up some steps to the door. You go up an age-polished staircase and buzz for entry at the giant heavy oaken door to the main room, under a plaque commemorating three hundred years of Keepers of the library. There are two galleries, narrow and lined with stacks filled with massive early printed books. There are also glass cases for the exhibition. It's fantastic. You just want to roll around in the history. But I arrived at ten minutes to lunch. They kindly let me in, but asked me to pull the garden gate shut on my way out.

After this I wandered down past the two cathedrals, ducked up to the Castle to inquire about opening hours for one of the museums there, then went back past Christchurch while the bells were tolling - seventeen times: I counted them - towards the medieval parish of St Audoen's, where a massive post-Emancipation Catholic parish church (home of the Polish mission in Ireland, and where Latin mass is said, I think, once a week) towers over the tiny basilica of medieval St Audoen's. It's rather annoying, you know: Henry Eight nicked all the interesting churches for the Anglicans. I'm not even Catholic anymore, but one does feel a smattering of conflicted puzzling resentment when one realises that all the Catholic monumental churches in Dublin are 19th century constructions - post-Emancipation. Well, obviously! But I did not actually realise this, viscerally, until... well, the last week, as a matter of fact.

St Audoen's is beside the old Cornmarket, where all the old buildings were demolished for new development before I was born. It's also beside the last remnant of Dublin's medieval wall.
Have a linky! There is a belltower with six! bells. And a sepulchre - with no body in it - for Roland FitzEustace, Lord Portlester, once Lord Treasurer of Ireland, way back in the 1400s. (FitzEustace, interestingly enough, is in Irish Mac Ghiolla Easa, McAleese. I wonder if the President's any relation?)

And then I went back home to college, stopping off for an Italian icecream milkshake in Temple Bar on the way. After which I climbed. Nice wall. Pretty wall. Painful wall.

I came home to find that my book order had arrived. I now possess a beguiling, enticing, lovely, bound-to-be-entertaining* copy of North and Hillard's Greek Prose Composition. Joy!

Going flop now. Wake me up if the world ends in the next twenty-four hours, k?

*Sarcasm. But you probably guessed that already.

Second swim of the season today. Well, brief dip is still a more accurate description, though since the sun was high above the horizon at 0830 this morning and the air clear and still, I succeeded in actually thrashing around while submerged. For a very short period of time.

There's something almost holy about a clear bright morning on the shore at high tide, sunlight lancing from the water, the mutter of a quiet sea with its throat full of sand. Water waist-high and freezing, the plunge a shock of cold that steals your breath and squeezes your chest. The experience rather eludes description: the morning near-silent, the sun over the harbour, a man walking a labrador puppy at the lip between sea and sand.

I expect the water temperature ought to reach double digits next month - according to the chart, it still ought to be around about 8 Celsius right now. And in June it should reach a balmy 12 degrees Celsius. I look forward to that exceedingly.

---

Today was surprisingly productive, all in all. Got the DVDs stacked in the living room, did some Greek, went to town, finished my book, climbed. It ought to be interesting to see whether I can sustain as long a day tomorrow: I appear to sorely lack stamina. Perhaps I will take my new notebook down to the beach with Philostratus and actually take notes on the bloke, if it's fair enough again.

My plan to begin my thesis with a discussion of the experience of entrance is annoyed and delayed by requiring yet another ILL - but we shall overcome, indeed we shall.