16 June 2007

Ah, see, you have articulated EXACTLY the conundrum myself and my girlfriends are in. The drought is so bad we give it a new nickname each week - this week it was the Rage. Last week it was the Tiger.

The problem with me and the Rage is that the isolation of study amplifies the Rage until I start giving out TOTALLY inappropriate signals and suddenly, as happened last night when out dancing, young men of the drunken persuasion grab me from behind and kiss my neck in a way that WOULD have been sexy if he had been tall, dark and sober (not young, blond and very bendy due to drink) and I had not had a totally sweaty neck! :)

Now, this attempt at being a deliberate strumpet, did this end for you in the harrowing knowledge that you had lost the ability to 'close the deal' as it were? That moment where you can drop the coy, slow-mo, black and white 'run' away from them and just let them catch you. But as they reach out you think 'eeeewwwwww' and just walk away because you suddenly remembered that you like sleeping starfish style in your own bed?

I have COMPLETELY lost the killer instinct to close the deal. Lost, lost forever. From now until eternity I shall be a spinster of the parish. I hate cats though, so I will have penguins.

Unless, of course, I find that elusive, take charge man who simply tells me that he thinks I am brilliant and he rather fancies taking a crack at me and would dinner with compulsory snogging be fine tomorrow?

And he is not, like the current take charge man in my life, in possession of a female long-term partner that is out of the country.

*gloom*

For myself and my fellow singles, going out has become something of a blood sport ... and it is not ours that we spill.

We don't drink, we always have a smile on our face, we are not fashion victims and we enjoy a good conversation.

So your average Australian male, beer in hand approaches us and we see the slow strangling of our social life coming into view.

We see our unimpressed grimaces, we hear our whiplash replies, we see our total boredom with inane conversation and we watch them retreat in relief from what becomes for them an uphill struggle against wordplay, nimble minds and robust senses of humour.

No matter how frustrated we get, how much we yearn to be thought about, how much we wish to have a companion that we love, we cannot stomach suppressing our true selves in a bizarre attempt to compete in a limited marketplace.

What I find disappointing is the men who assume that they are looking for women who reflect best on them by being weak. How does that make them more masculine? Surely an intelligent, lively and charming woman who decides to spend time with you is a better reflection on your masculinity than a silly woman? I must be alone in thinking this!

And I think this is why I am in the same boat as you with that strange paradox of looking for someone stronger than us, yet not envisaging how that will happen with us being as strong as we are.

I find that my greatest frustration is that I am willing, in fact almost desperate, to give selflessly of my intelligence, my passion, my care, my company, and I cannot find anyone to take it for FREE because it is just not valuable to anyone!

It is my looks, my *cough* bed and my value as a Perth-girlfriend (this is quite a specific value in our small town - who my connections are and how much I am fancied by the male friends of the male in possession of me) that are more important.

It was brought home last night as my two girlfriends and I went out to our usual place o'dancing. We were on fire last night - all of us frustrated as hell and quite willing to jump the first fanciable guy that came within arms distance.

Giving out those kind of signals we actually prompted an embarrassing run of clumsy pickups that sunk dreadfully the moment we opened our mouths. Literally. The moment we did anything other than just letting them paw us.

Despite the tiny pool of available talent, we managed between us to attract, then repel almost all the game ones.

Come three thirty we were standing, a little stunned, sober and upright in the middle of the dancefloor, a ring of bewildered boys and men around us wondering if we had softened since they last tried it on with us. Some real male friends came to talk to us and one of their friends openly walked up to them in front of us and congratulated them on being able to 'handle these lovely ladies'.

Women as pretty objects that are there to adorn your arm, you party and your sexual prowess *shudder* awful situation. But last night I also witnessed the flip side of the coin - which ties in with your point about the loss of manliness.

A man came up to us to compliment us and because he did a lightning attack - in and out without imposing any expectations of drinks etc - we were happy to accept it gracefully. But he felt he had to preface the compliment with the assurance he just wanted to compliment, not to pick up. We assured him that we took it in the spirit in which it was intended, but it was a sad reflection on the manner in which compliments are taken in such contexts.

Men cannot really give compliments without being suspected of ulterior motives and it poisons the entire exchange. Women learn to be suspicious of cads and armour themselves with language and we end up being too challenging for strangers without self-esteem or a quick wit. It is a dreadful spiral.

As for Other Women, the curse of Perth is that the men here really are spoilt, and the women here are brought up to pander and flirt and stroke egos. It is a horrible thing to observe up close as you see picture perfect girls walking in awe of the godlike beings called boys, and you see the disgust those arrogant boys get on their faces when you refuse to just keep your pretty mouth shut.

Alcohol *gah* Australians drink to get pissed and it is an ugly sight when you are sober. My favourite moment in a club is the 1.30-2am window when the boys stop having fun and start thinking about who they are going to take home to shag. I call it the witching hour and you see previously picky guys literally tripping into a female lap and just taking what is on offer. Thankfully the urge to just trip them ourselves passes once we contemplate a sober coupling with an incompetent drunk.

As for personal mojo, in the last three years I have started realising that I care not to go out with someone that I do not know well, very well indeed. Preferably for years as a friend or acquaintance.

And this is necessarily narrowing the range men deemed acceptable at an alarming rate. And considering I value my male friends so highly, the thought of ruining a perfect friendship by possible relationship stupidity makes me shudder. I have three male friends with which I have highly developed romantic possibilities and they haven't eventuated for a really good reason, we are great friends.

Yet a stranger does not inspire trust and respect and so does not get the stamp of lust until they tip over into the old friends category and they are effectively out of bounds.

Pathetic really.

I applaud your plans for intellectual stimulation, it is tricky, but rewarding. I am studying full-time this year and the intellectual connections are the most pleasurable and the most problematic, although I suspect you would know this from all the performance you do.

This year I am surrounded by academics who work closely with us as students, PhD students who are trawling the Honours class for partners and classmates with which you spend too much time and with which you share strong intellectual experiences. Such compatibility of thoughts, the power relations inherent in hierarchy and the visceral pleasure of mental stimulation has created a tangled web of lust that ignores almost all social mores once there is alcohol involved.

I am a big one for intellectual crushes, but surrounding yourself with people who share your passions and who speak the same heartfelt language becomes addictive! :)

I bask in elegant and erudite conversations, in flexing intellectual muscles and on Fridays perching in laps of clever holders of doctorates and flirting like mad. But one should not date in the Faculty if you want to avoid rumours of sleeping around for marks so you just have to suppress the feelings and that makes everything that much harder.

*harrowed sigh*

I am holding out for travelling again myself. I am not nearly as affected by my loneliness when I travel, and I am more open to strangers when ALL are strangers and I am assembling my new group of friends.

Only about eight more months and I will be working my way around the world again and I will be able to relax a little bit and allow some lucky man the chance to prove his worth :)

History in the present, presence in History

In studying the historical imagination in fantasy novels and the place of fantasy novels in history, I am particularly interested in a detailed study of how the historical in the reality of the reader is re-imagined in the reality of the text. Each writer must create their fantasy world using elements from our reality, creating the fantastic element of the text by presenting each familiar element in any number of degrees askew from the original, allowing consensual reality to be challenged[1]. In identifying the different realities and ideologies of history and searching for their fantastical echoes in the text, I propose that historical imagination in the text is intrinsically linked to the historical reality of the reader and thus illuminates history in the presence, and has its own unique presence in history.

The strength of Susan Cooper’s novels of The Dark is Rising sequence for young readers is that the historical imagination is so powerfully integrated into the immediate reality of the novels and readers. History is influential both as the book is read, and when it is not; it creates and destroys characters, realities and time borders, reaching into the reality of the novel through people, places, objects and knowledge that can be found in the world of the novels’ reader. The historical imagination of the book connects the reader to the text by a shared past that intervenes actively in the text and ensures the reader will look for history’s touch in their own lives.[2]

The historical imagination of the novel lives in the present reality of the reader in the use of the familiar to illustrate the historical. Within the novel family, peers, mentors and enemies are historical characters in their own right, and objects that populate the reality and the imagination of the reader become historical artefacts. The novel has a presence in history through its use of multiple layers of history, and the travel between them, to conceptualise spheres of influence and historical causality. The different concepts of time within the novel can be linked back to the reality of historical influence, and the manner of time travel illustrates the lessons gleaned from the study of history. The underlying morality and human agency of the novel develops throughout the series and creates evolving frameworks of ideology through which to view the historical elements of the narrative.

Each book in the series requires the young protagonists to connect with the history of Britain as it happens in their own world beyond their sight, as it happens in a parallel time closely intertwined or directly linked to their immediate reality, and as it happened in the past to which they can travel to influence the future. These historical threads create a multi-layered narrative that embraces the new concepts of history that were emerging in the decade that Cooper was writing. The sense of history in the book is so richly evoked because historical time is malleable, and historical causality can be influenced.

In the sequence, the most prominent power of the Old Ones used by both the Light and the Dark is the manipulation of time. Throughout the books time is escaped, frozen, stolen, melded, observed and banished by the Old Ones of both sides. Within the narrative these manipulations of Time allow the history of the struggle, the weapons and the people of both Light and Dark to exist in loops of Time that result in each skirmish, object or choice resonating powerfully within the narrative. This creates a sense of living history, a sense of the interconnectivity of the elements of history, the lasting effect of the choices that create history[3]. Merriman assures Will towards the end of the series that ‘we will strive … across the centuries, through the waves of time, touching and parting, parting and touching in the pool that whirls forever.’

These loops of history, which create a less linear and more malleable sense of history, parallel the increasing trend in the decade in which the books were written of the challenging of linear, great man historical theory. With the move in the Sixties and Seventies to look for the alternative histories of women and minorities, to look into the spaces left by records and sources and extrapolate the missing and lesser-recorded histories, a more malleable concept of time is entirely appropriate.[4] To the readers of Cooper’s books the turning points of history can rest in the everyday smithy, the local tales of a fishing village, the petty politics of farmers and the right judgement of a single every-man[5].

The movement of characters and objects between the layers of history in the narrative create a feeling that historical causality can be influenced by participants and foci. The loop of cause and effect that holds Will and the Walker, the displacement of Bran in Time, the gypsy caravan’s parallel states and the Battle on Mount Badon happening in one place but in all Times, create a sense of history that tightens the links between the past and the present. Within the narrative history is recorded, studied, revised and created on many levels and implies an ever evolving history.

Characters that exist in multiple times and move between times in the narrative create in the books a history that is literally changing on two levels, changing in its present and changing in its past or future. Will is the crisis that allows Hawkins to be remade as the Walker, but the Walker starts Will on the quest that will lead him inevitably to Hawkins. The history in the narrative becomes so strongly circular from this point onwards that with Bran; born in the past, raised in the future and key to saving the world in both times, the internal logic of the circular narrative history is fully realised. The narrative places history as an evolution that is so strongly linked that a participant can change both past, present and future with their actions[6], and Merriman’s first lesson to Will is that ‘all times co-exist, and the future can sometimes affect the past, even though the past is the road that leads to the future.’

The ability of individual characters to be any combination of past historical influences, contemporary historical revisionists and means of historical re-interpretation in the future is a powerful image of a historian re-reading history, of facts being reinterpreted and historical theory challenged[7]. Cooper allows her history to be flexible enough that the same person, for example in Merriman’s dealings with Hawkins, can make a decision that influences his life, live the price of that decision and plan his future around the good and evil of the decision’s legacy. The books create a history that is open to re-evaluation of the past, the present and the future of the recorded historical facts.

Cooper enables travel between layers and time by utilising encoded rituals, places, objects, concepts and people who are distinct players in historical and folk traditions of the British Isles[8]. These links between the many historical realities create the rules of engagement between the time layers travelled and the travellers, and often follows the old folk rules of magic and marvel[9]. The power and status of the encoded objects hold meaning in the novel and allow the text to be linked to the reality of the reader by making the familiar historical.

The encoded objects in the series are traditional objects of power; grails, swords, horns, books, totems, musical instruments and shields, which were culturally powerful in the times of their creation. In their own time and texts these objects are recorded because they held power in their own right; signs of wealth, protection, knowledge, music and magic. In our time they hold historical significance because they have come to us preserved through the intervening generations, preserved in both text and reality. Thus the encoded objects in the narrative function as they do in the reality of the readers, signifying the ability of certain objects with specific cultural power to remain historically relevant no matter what time they are in[10].

The rituals throughout the series hold the layers of history in a cohesive whole as the rule of time begins to become more malleable in the narrative. As the series progresses the ritualistic observances develop a complexity that begins to bridge layers of time confidently within the narrative. The rituals move from the isolated and small rituals of Christmas and Twelfth Night, through the more localised yet intense Greenwitch, to the formal rituals of Initiation and Quest in the last two books. The Christmas and Twelfth Night rituals allow Will to travel for brief periods through time, while the Greenwitch haunts the reality of Jane, as well as the Old Ones, with a powerful historical presence. The Initiation of Bran and Will within the Welsh mountains and the Quest[11] through the Lost Land bring together even more numerous layers of time and strands of history to further strengthen the narrative’s commitment to the connectivity of time.

Along with rituals, some of the fantastical characters within the books are present both literally and literarily in the lives of the readers of the series. Christmas, Bonfire Night, Halloween and the many localised and similar rituals still alive in every culture are joined by Arthur, Merlin, Herne the Hunter, the Wild Hunt, Tethys, the milgwn, the afanc, the Mari Llwyd, as well as the Smith, the Lady and the Rider[12]. Within every culture there are Kings and Magicians, ambivalent Hunters and Rulers of the Waves, malignant and zombie creatures and familiar folk characters. Cooper’s narrative is alive with familiar traces of history, but in assigning them characters, motivation and plotlines she allows each discreet historical trope to exist in multiple layers of time[13], the familiar populates the narrative while the narrative populates the familiar.

Within the narrative time and history are navigated and controlled by tangibly historical objects, actions and legends that are part of everyday life for all readers of the books, although most specifically British readers. While the foci are distinctly British, almost every culture has the equivalent of the long observed ritual impervious to modern disruption, the folktale that lives on in a local area or an ancient object that is used as a key to evoke another time[14]. Cooper turns remnants of history present in our modern times into direct gateways to the time of their creation, taking them out of their isolation in the modern era and turning them into a focus for a gaze back into history[15].

Cooper’s characters are allowed to view and participate in history, result from manipulations of history and fulfil pivotal roles to shape history. The causality of her history is deepened by these layers of power and determinism in the text; human feelings and human and non-human morality are incredibly important in the formation, living and retelling of history within the narrative[16]. Throughout the texts Cooper limits overt moralising, and when she does allow her characters to articulate the reasons the Light and the Dark exist, she deals with some important themes of historical interpretation.

The series develops it sense of morality and historical causality from a simplistic spectrum of black and white absolutes[17] to a more nuanced sense of human and natural laws that create more shades of distinction. This growing sophistication of the internal laws and norms of the series allows the different historical elements to signify more complex concepts[18]. It also echoes the changes in ideologies that surrounded the writing of the book, allowing a more inclusive climate of complex history.

In the first two books the morality of the characters is judged in degrees on a linear relationship between the Dark and the Light. The battles fought and won are in a climate of absolute loss or absolute victory and the rules governing the interaction of the warring elements are conventional. In the first two books the evil nature of the Dark is very clearly encapsulated in anti-social behaviour, lawlessness and an uncomplicated motivation of domination and destruction. The goodness of the Light is evident in co-operation, upright demeanour and pure altruism and goodness. The two poles are absolute, ‘at the centre of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the centre of the Dark is great black pit.’ Cooper herself admits that this is a result of inexperience with characterisation[19], but it helps to show that while she had a vision for the many historical elements that would populate her narrative, their effectiveness in illuminating the whole is more comprehensive when linked to a more complex historical morality.

The third book signals a departure from the simple morality of the first two novels with a rebel Dark Lord and an ambivalent natural Goddess. The Painter of the Dark is a rebel against a force that had seemed monolithic to the characters and the readers until that point, and suggests that adhering to one absolute ideological position does not eliminate divisions within the followers of this ideology. The feeling of splintering is exacerbated when the ambivalence of Tethys and the uncaring rules of the Wild Magic are introduced. The reader becomes aware that the Light and the Dark are not the only true and right ideologies present in the world, but simply two of many ideologies that could be held in a world ruled by overarching universal laws[20].

The interaction between the Light and the Dark, Wild Magic and the ultimate ruler, High Magic, is exemplified when the Light tries to persuade one aspect of the Wild Magic to choose a side. Trying to persuade Tethys to lend him aid, Merriman argues that the Wild Magic can help him despite its ambivalence because it ‘has neither allies nor enemies … if you may not help us, yet it is not right for you to hinder us.’ Tethys counters that because of her ambivalence she is ‘not permitted to help either Light or Dark to gain any advantage’ and thus he must rely on his own merits to gain what he wants. The extremes of the Light and the Dark become less absolute and more faceted when they come in contact with the universal laws. The Light and the Dark become more influenced by immutable governing forces than their own inherent rightness, more reliant on historical forces to lend them power than the inherent ambition of individual Old Ones[21].

The fourth and fifth books further develop the morality of the narrative with a foregrounding of the influence on humans of absolute ideologies. Human feelings and motivations become the battleground of the Light and the Dark, and human weaknesses and strengths are employed as weapons in the more complicated quests of the last two books. Each time Caradog Pritchard is described, Cooper is very clear to say that he is not a creature of the Dark, but his nature brings him closer to the Dark, as John Rowlands nature brings him closer to the Light. Neither man is wholly of the pole that he is inclined towards, but neither is indifferent to the call of the ideology that is closest to their inclinations. The Grey King tells Will that Caradog is ‘a man so wrapped in his own ill-will [he] is a gift to the Dark from the earth’, and Will replies ‘There are such men, of an opposite kind, who unwittingly serve the Light too.’ This focus on human agency in history and ideology in the series could be seen to be a result of the individualisation of historical narratives, the increasing presence of individuals in the grand narratives of history[22].

The development of the morality and historical ideologies of the series mirror the changes in the interpretation of history in Cooper’s lifetime. Her books start out as linear histories of battles with polarised opponents, gradually introduce problematic concepts of ambivalent forces and the internal ideological struggles and finally embraces the role of individuals in the formation of history[23]. By moving her narrative and its many historical elements through changes in historical interpretation, Cooper’s readers experience a reinterpretation of historical causality and ideology[24].

Cooper also articulates some inspirational concepts on how the individual can be a positive influence on history; after an encounter with a racist Mr Stanton tells his children that ‘you can’t convince them and you can’t kill ‘em. You can only do your best in the opposite direction’ and at the end of the series Merriman reminds those going back into the world that ‘the evil that is inside men is at last a matter for men to control’, now beyond the abstract powers of the Light and the Dark to influence. By putting the power to set the morality of the world in the hands of humans, not absolute ideologies, Cooper is ending the series on a note of hope and noble intentions, intertwined with the historical lessons from the other elements of the text[25].

Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series is a deeply historical text, using extensive manipulation of catalogues of historical characters and times to create ideologies that reflect the historical reality of the reader’s consensual reality. Within the narrative history is the present, never separated by more than a loop of time that can be traversed by any number of encoded objects or actions. The narrative as experienced by the reader is present in history through its use of familiar historical elements, leaving the reality of the reader coloured by the passage of the narrative. Although not outrageously challenging, the text does credibly present a sense of history that allows the reader to approach their own historical reality from a different perspective[26].

Bibilography

Goodrich, P., ‘Magical Medievalism and the Fairy Tale in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence’, Lion and the Unicorn, 12:2, 1988: Dec, p. 165-177.

Price, D.W. (ed), History Made, History Imagined: Contemporary Literature, Poiesis, and the Past, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Roberts, G. (ed), The History and Narrative Reader, London, Routledge, 2001.

Scott, C., ‘High and Wild Magic, the Moral Universe, and the Electronic Superhighway: Reflections of Change in Susan Cooper’s Fantasy Literature’ in S.L Beckett (ed.) Reflections of Change: Children’s Literature since 1945, Westport, Greenwood Press, 1997, p. 91-96.

Spivack, C., ‘Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising”’ in B T Lupack (ed.), Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 139-160.

Swartz, P.C., ‘The Waking of the Sleepers: Legendary Aspects of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Series, A [Re]Examination’ in D Bice (ed.), Elsewhere: Selected Essays from the “20^th Century Fantasy Literature: From Beatrix to Harry” International Literary Conference, Maryland, University Press of America Inc, 2003, p. 95-110.

Thompson, R.H., ‘Interview with Susan Cooper’ in B T Lupack (ed.), Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 161-170.

---

[1] Price argues that historical fictional narratives ‘employ the poetic imagination as a means of questioning history, which, in turn, produces a counter memory or counter narrative to the popular and uncritically accepted referent that we take to be the historical past.’ Price, D.W. (ed), History Made, History Imagined: Contemporary Literature, Poiesis, and the Past, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1999, p. 3.

[2] Swartz notes that Cooper believes that ‘the books themselves are not based on the Arthur legends but rather that the legends enter the stories as they are needed’, Cooper uses history as an active character in the narrative. Swartz, P.C., ‘The Waking of the Sleepers: Legendary Aspects of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Series, A [Re]Examination’ in D Bice (ed.), Elsewhere: Selected Essays from the “20^th Century Fantasy Literature: From Beatrix to Harry” International Literary Conference, Maryland, University Press of America Inc, 2003, p. 97.

[3] The series is a narrative of time manipulated by humans, giving them an agency over history that parallels Roberts’ proposal that ‘History [as explained by Vico] … because it is made by humans, can be known; and this knowledge is transmitted through the construction of narratives of the memory of the past.’ Roberts, G. (ed), The History and Narrative Reader, London, Routledge, 2001, p. 36.

[4] This study of streams of specific history by a group usually not recorded follows Nietzsche’s theory that ‘critical history is a form of revisionist history, a means by which a people can forge it’s own identity and liberate itself from characterisation that appear in dominant forms of historical presentation.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 3.

[5] Such power in the hands of those not usually so visible in historical narrative is an ‘existentialist standpoint in which everyday perceptions and experiences of historical reality is a crucial informant of the theorization of narrative.’ Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 8.

[6] This idea of influencing times that are not the present allows historical fictional narratives to ‘intend for their poietic histories to cause us to rethink the past and reconsider what we might plan for our future.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 4.

[7] Scott proposed that ‘the structural complexity of Cooper’s manylayered world, with it’s amalgam of legend created from the dissolution of time and space boundaries, is repeated at many levels, including the creation of a contemporary moral and social philosophy’ that allows for historical revisionism. Scott, C., ‘High and Wild Magic, the Moral Universe, and the Electronic Superhighway: Reflections of Change in Susan Cooper’s Fantasy Literature’ in S.L Beckett (ed.) Reflections of Change: Children’s Literature since 1945, Westport, Greenwood Press, 1997, p. 92-92.

[8] Goodrich classes these as ‘specific borrowings’ from medieval history. Goodrich, P., ‘Magical Medievalism and the Fairy Tale in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence’, Lion and the Unicorn, 12:2, 1988: Dec, p. 166.

[9] These encoded actions and objects are legitimate historical elements as Price argues that ‘all histories grow out of mythic structures that make it possible for us to narrate our experience.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 4.

[10] Drout notes that Cooper’s Anglo-Saxon sources carry ‘coded meanings at a level that is not immediately apparent but that nevertheless operates to exercise ideological control of the text.’ Cited in Spivack, C., ‘Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising”’ in B T Lupack (ed.), Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 141.

[11] The quest motif being a ‘structural parallel’ with medieval ideas. Goodrich, ‘Magical Medievalism and the Fairy Tale’, Lion and the Unicorn p. 167.

[12] Goodrich describes these characters as ‘heroic figures … contemporary adaptations of legendary heroes’ Goodrich, ‘Magical Medievalism and the Fairy Tale’, Lion and the Unicorn, p. 167.

[13] In relation to these folk characters Cooper asserts that ‘it is never possible to say, this character is precisely this … because nothing is precise in myth.’ Thompson, R.H., ‘Interview with Susan Cooper’ in B T Lupack (ed.), Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 165. This allows her to use ‘blurring of identity’ in the series, creating characters that are more universal. Swartz ‘The Waking of the Sleepers’ in Bice Elsewhere: Selected Essays from the “20^th Century Fantasy Literature, p. 97.

[14] A concept of universal elements of the fantastic in history is argued by Price that ‘all cultural institutions – grow out of the metaphoric structuration effected by imaginative universals that in and of themselves are fables.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 37.

[15] Price supposes that ‘a recreation of the past, therefore, would be the projection of the future in the past.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 3.

[16] Swartz believes that Cooper’s view on the influence of humans on history is illustrated in the series by the ‘necessity of mortals even to the powers of the High Magic … [for example] without mortals the Greenwitch would not exist.’ Swartz ‘The Waking of the Sleepers’ in Bice Elsewhere: Selected Essays from the “20^th Century Fantasy Literature, p. 98-99.

[17] The episodic nature of the first book is similar to Furet’s ‘problem oriented history’ cited in Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 12.

[18] Evans in Children’s Novels and Welsh Mythology: Multiple Voices in Susan Cooper and Alan Garner charted the change of narrative voice from ‘the voice of the implied author’ to the ‘close observer’ to ‘high language’. Cited in Spivack, ‘Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising”’ in Lupack Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, p. 140-141.

[19] Thompson, ‘Interview with Susan Cooper’ in Lupack, Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, p. 168.

[20] The move to a more structured sense of the opposing poles illustrates Burke’s theory that history deals ‘not only with the sequence of events and the conscious actions of the actors in these events. But also with structures’ as cited in Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 12.

[21] This theme can be paralleled with Kiser’s ‘large-scale structuralist history in which human agency is only a secondary feature.’ Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 13.

[22] As supported by Olafson and Lemon who argue ‘that central to the discipline of history is the narration of human conduct.’ Cited in Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 11.

[23] The 1960’s saw a debate in which Gallie proposed that ‘fundamental to historical understanding … is the capacity to follow a sequence of experiences, actions and contingencies across time’, which implies a change in the study of history from the episodic nature of events to a more human-action driven understanding. Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 3.

[24] The readers can apply reinterpretation to their reality as the historical narrative has encouraged ‘the focus on the formation of values, both in the actualities of the past and in the construction of the narrative about the past.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 4.

[25] Scott notes that in the series ‘the relativity of human perception and the power of human emotion provide the energy that drives her world … the power of human perception … [breaks] through the wall that divides the worlds [of the Old Ones and mortals].’ Scott, ‘High and Wild Magic, the Moral Universe, and the Electronic Superhighway’ in Beckett Reflections of Change p. 93.

[26] Allowing the reader to ‘reconfigure the past through narrative structures that cast light and shadows in new directions and bring before our eyes new ways of conceiving the past.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 5.

10 September 2010

From the Memorial Booklet:

Celina first came into my life during my last summer in London, when I became a devoted reader of her blog. I enjoyed the sharpness of her observation and the emotional dexterity of her writing. When Celina entered my life in person we soon discovered that we never ran out of things to say, just the time to say it in. She was elegant and alive, her eyes were always open and her wit ready to do battle with new ideas. The last gift Celina gave to me was her generosity - she cooked me lunch on a Saturday, we talked and laughed for four hours and she wrote out for me the recipe for the dish I loved. I wish to thank her family and her other friends for sharing this wonderful woman with me, because even a short friendship taken away too soon was worth every minute.

6 September 2010

Carol

I can still see the sunlight on the geraniums in the roof garden outside my window the day in London that I found your blog. For some reason I even remember walking down the wood-panelled hallway to my workmate Laura to laugh about the first post I read of yours that was so great it made me keep reading. It was the post about alerting the authorities to the drugs in the luggage of an ex-boyfriend? Anyway, I loved it and stayed to read. And a few days later I started reading Slinky Cat and the rest is cross-continential, blog-related friendship history.

As I drove away from Celina's house four weeks ago I was smiling, because I knew that I would go to Singapore next year with her and meet you finally. And after that, whenever we got our husbands delivered and had kids, or our nephews and nieces went travelling, they would be made to be friends because we were all friends. It seemed inevitable that such a great friendship would be felt into the next generation.

When Celina and I finally got our act together to meet (and that took a criminal three years) I immediately felt the loss of the years I was 'too busy' to meet someone in my own city. She was like her writing and beyond it - funny and fast and able to leap ahead with new ideas and new jokes. When we went to breakfast the second time we talked so much we lost about 30 minutes - Celina had to go at noon, we said goodbye, found another topic of conversation and suddenly it was 12.30! As we finally parted by means of simply stopping a full conversation in mid-flow, I knew that not being able to stop talking was the sign of a good friendship to come.

Then I had Celina to my parent's house for breakfast because I love to cook for my friends, and I wanted her to see the house I grew up in. As I get older I appreciate meeting my friend's families and seeing their childhood homes as it gives me a shape to their stories of growing up. Celina let me take her on the tour of the house to look at the photos of my brothers and sister, the view from my window and hear the stories of my family. She ate my famous mini-quiches and declared that it was a triumph of a breakfast. The funny thing was that we only half discussed all our topics of interest because we had only a few hours - we never really finished our conversations fully because of time restrictions - and we promised we would have more time next time to discuss everything in full.

And in order to fulfill this promise Celina cooked me lunch four weeks ago at her house and it was a wonderful day. She cooked soup and vegetables and pork belly that made me a little teary it was so good. We talked for hours and finally got to finish all our conversations. We talked at the top of our voices, laughed until we snorted and we very rude about a whole lot of people who should have known better than to mess with us. We discussed our various hapless men in full, looking at them from all angles and amused each other with cutting remarks. We discussed where Celina would go after she finished her degree and we discussed how hard it is to work doing what you love but getting paid a pittance for it. I was looking forward to seeing her in Singapore and going to see her wherever in Australia she decided to practice as a vet. Celina showed me a photo of you and Miss J that she had in her room and we inspected her bookcase and she lent me two books to read.

She finally had to kick me out so she could study, but I left with books, the recipe for pork belly and the glow of many conversations delighted in and plans made. I went home and spent almost two weeks telling all my friends about the feast Celina cooked me. That lunch was so lovely I got out my pen and paper and wrote to thank her for her generosity and time. When Tim sent me a message on Facebook that she was gone and I rang him in response, I was so shocked that I hadn't truly reacted until he mentioned my letter. I had only thought about the letter that morning as I tried to calculate if Celina's family had gone home yet so she would be free to catch up and chat about the visit. I was missing her. I asked Tim if my letter had been opened and he said yes - and I started crying. I had finally realised what had happened and I was pathetically grateful that I had thanked Celina for her wonderful gift of her time, cooking and conversation. At least she knew a little bit of how much I appreciated her place in my life.

Quite apart from what a pleasure she was in person (and I always felt as if meeting up with Celina for food was an event and I would get a bit excited about how much fun we would have), it was what she had DONE that made me so thrilled to know her. Whenever I told any of my other friends about her, I would say she was the Corporate Lawyer from Singapore who had Saved to come to Perth to be A Vet (and I met her through Her Blog). Celina had done things, hard things, long years of study and work so she could take the steps she needed to towards her goals. She had character and she was a character because she worked hard and she cared about things other than money and the trappings of success. And it made her someone with whom you knew you could take flights of fancy because she was a dreamer as well.

I cannot adequately thank you for being the woman through whom I met Celina. Thank you. She made an impact on my life from the first meeting. The second last time I saw her we went to a bookshop after our breakfast and I bought a biography of my favourite poet, Emily Dickinson. I have enjoyed the book immensely, but today sat down and wrote in the front of the book:

Bought in the company of Celina Chau 18 July 2010. Celina died in a car accident on Friday 3 September 2010.

I have added a verse from Emily to that inscription as well, but it is one of Emily's other poems that I would like to write now. When I first read it I was a stranger to great grief, and I merely admired its clever imagery. But now that I am gathering my thoughts of a short but important friendship to allow me to grieve, I appreciate the dichotomy at the heart of thinking of those who are not around, for as Shakespeare, you and I know - as we love, we lose ...

If recollecting were forgetting,

Then I remember not,

And if forgetting, recollecting,

How near I had forgot,

And if to miss, were merry,

And to mourn, were gay,

How very blithe the fingers

That gathered this, today!

18 August 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Wednesday 18 August 18 2004

FrightFest fare 

It seems that M and Max aren’t too interested in the offerings of FrightFest 2004. All I got was a pair of wrinkled noses when I uttered the words ‘Horror’, ‘Psychological Thriller’ and ‘Suspense’. 

Instead, I was told: 

Max: “Why don’t you ask THEM” 

Me: (puzzled) “Who?” 

Max: “You know,” (gesturing to the computer with casual, practiced, mock distaste) “your fans.” 

-The blog has a history of being somewhat of a persona non gratis in the household because it makes me sit at a screen for hours on end holding up my end of a conversation with half-muttered and occasionally inappropriate ‘uh huh’s. - 

Me: “Ummm, that’s a little weird. Interesting, though.” 

Max: “You could run a competition ... Win A Date With ...” 

Me: (interjecting) “ ... ahhhhh yeeeees, I see your point but I don’t really think that people are going to enter a competition to sit next to me at a cinema.” 

M: (seemingly from nowhere) “You never know.” 

Sweet. I suppose that’s why he’s my husband – he actually thinks going to the movies with me is like a prize. Unless, of course, it’s a horror flick, in which case wrestling with some Linux flavour named after a hat is a damn sight more interesting. I suspect, therefore, that I'll be going alone.

18 August 2003

From the email:
The coach trip out to Oxford was a just what the doctor ordered. I got to see rolling hedge-bound fields, thickly forested valleys and the cutest little ivy covered cottages. I fell asleep so I missed the entrance to Oxford and at first the outer suburbs looked disappointingly like Morden. Then we turned a corner and were on a High Street lined with the most divine old buildings I have seen yet in my three weeks in Britain. I am seriously excited about tomorrow. I predict a rather stunned Max trying to prevent herself from photographing every College in the town!

The town is quite handsome and is full to bursting of young people. I had dinner in a lovely gourmet pizza restaurant and was watching the diners with interest. There were two men in dogcollars with large family groups and I was a bit puzzled until it clicked that they were probably lecturers. As one group was leaving the waitress was chatting to them about some of the lecturers she had. At that moment I began to really miss Uni while simultaneously wishing that I had lived in a University town. What fun!

I am off to bed to prepare myself to roam the Colleges tomorrow.

4 August 2005

From the friends, Th'inkwell:


Wednesday 4 August 2004


A good day gets better 


It's difficult to have one overriding perception of London. There are beautiful areas, ugly areas, prosperous and frightening areas, places where even the sky seems to be made of ugly 60's concrete...and places like this: 

This area is literally a 10 minute meander or a 5 minute walk from my front door. I live 20 minutes from the heart of London. The contrast couldn't be greater and I have to admit I come here often to recharge. 

It's easy to forget that you're in the middle of a city. Easy to forget you're in the middle of this century in fact in such a timeless setting. I find my mind freely wandering to all kinds of places and my neck muscles unknotting as I step over tree roots and scare ducks into waddling away from me in that silly way they do. Geese fly overhead in strict V formations and swans glide across the lake with seeming effortlessness, sharing it rather disdainfully with wobbling boats and dipping oars. The people that come to the lake are calm and quiet - they even smile at you when you walk past. Children seem to be mesmerised by this place and don't shriek overly loudly. The lake is one of the reasons I really do love where I live. 

Today was so beautiful that I made M, Max and our visiting Aussie Lee promise to be home at a reasonable time so that dinner could be a picnic on the lake. 

We ate wonderful food, exchanged gossip over wine and wandered around the lake until the sky turned violet and a refreshing breeze came over the fields to tell us it was time to go home. 


I told you I was having a good day.