#leave it to Ceilidh to have terrible timing

[thewolfisawake]

While she’d rather be in the balcony, distant and less jostled, Ceilidh reminded herself of her diligence as an observer to the spectacle of today. So she joined her father in the corner of the crowd, where everyone was visible to her. While it was expected that they’d observe the parties involved and their king, Ceilidh decided to keep up with demeanor of the gentry and some wanderers that seemed...unusual to the gatherings here.

To most there was an aura of excitement that bordered feverish. Rampant buzzing and clamoring to adjust their positioning. But for the scribe, it only made her a patch of tranquility amongst the impatient furor. No, tranquility wasn’t quite the word. Stillness might’ve been more correct for the lady. Like the eye of a storm or the waters untouched by gales.

“What do you think of His Majesty’s decision?” if not for being next to her, the words would be lost amongst crowd. Being the perfect draw of her gaze, Ceilidh turned away as she eyed her father. Continuing his tone, she replied, “It is in line with his decisions within the cycles he has been in power.”

“Ceilidh.”

She didn’t immediately answer as the doors to the throne room opened, the guest of the hour arrived. At least he was in good spirits. Her eyes followed his trail, the embers within simmering as she said, “I believe it is a decision he will live to regret if he is resolute in its direction today. What of it, father? Are you satisfied?”

“What satisfaction would one draw as the archivist for the first infraction within King Camhlaidh’s reign?” he questioned, “One must wonder if this is the first of many displays of power he will invoke and myself to record. Or rather, that task may well fall onto you. I pity such a thing though.”

Ceilidh raised a brow, “Why? I would be doing my duty.”

“You sound like His Majesty.”

The simple yet clear tone of King Camhlaidh hushed their conversation. Summoning her pad, she ensured the terms of punishment were transcribed. Partially because, as her father spoke, it was an important affair for a recorder. Partially to help seal any chance for reneging. Ceilidh finished penning and dismissed her utensils as the whip cut through the air. Rippling through its body came the crack. And in its wake was a mercurial gash. Shimmers soared before gracelessly splattering across the floor.

The sharp crack and frenzied buzzing allowed her cover to ask, “Why would you compare me to him?”

“Is the comparison not a compliment?”

“Dependent on the speaker. So, speaker, was this meant to be an insult?” This was the pain of dealing with her father. She could question all day and he would dance around his thoughts while probing for hers. Unfortunately, it wasn’t her strong suit. But she needed him to believe she was open--pliant--with his thoughts. Yet this was tiring.

“It is only an insult if you find fault with the other.”

“All beings have fault,” Ceilidh remarked, reclining against the wall. She ignored the ‘tsk’ directed at her lack of decorum. Instead, her father stepped forward, his features ahead of her, “Is that so? What by the land’s grace be the trouble with our exalted?”

Her eyes sauntered towards the throne where the subject in question resided. She focused on his demeanor to overlook the writhing at the center, “If I had to sum it to the simplest idea: he is an oblivious contradiction.”

The proponent for ties beyond the court itself yet refused to see their visitors as no more than outsiders. A man able to view all as adversaries except the one reflected back at him. A wanderer willfully anchoring himself to this place. An introvert doing the most extroverted of jobs. But above all of those, by ignorance or arrogance, does King Camhlaidh act as though he is not a fae.

Her gaze darkened, watching those minute but present tells, “But enough of that, dear father, lest you wish for us both to end up on the receiving end for such flagrant bad mouthing.”

She didn’t need to see his face to know he blanched.

[mannazandwyrd]

I found something interesting night before last:

What is Aceilon, the possible lost name of Loki, doing in a 14th century Middle Welsh manuscript of a 6th-ish century praise poem? What’s my dang pendulum-dowsing UPG that I attempted linguistic analysis of doing in actual ink on vellum?

To figure that out I needed to dig a tiny bit. This is Yspeil Taliesin, leaves 62-63 or poem XXXVII in Llyfr Taliesin, which you can view digitally at the National Library of Wales’ website (link below). It’s one of several praise poems to Urien of Rheged, part of the earliest group of works in the collection, based on historical and linguistic evidence - scholars seem to think they were composed in Old Welsh or Common Brittonic and transmitted orally for awhile before scribes began copying and recopying it, with updates to language and accumulated transcription errors prior to the version that survived. It may have been composed by a historical poet Taliesin (who was later mythologized) or by a court bard using Taliesin as a persona. Lewis and Williams (2019) call this poem “a difficult text”, and note in their book introduction that allusions to mythology, historical events, and places can be very difficult for modern translators because so much early medieval information has been lost.

Here’s a terrible translation using Google Translate set to modern Welsh-to-English to help us pull the right part of the poem. Green highlights are untranslatable words.

By the time of Evans (1910), despite the wonky OCR in the first pic and my viewing it as a single word, Aceilon is being transcribed with a space in it, as ‘Ac eilon’ (ac meaning with). It was likely also treated this way for the public domain translation by Skene (1858) that’s available on the web. It isn’t considered up to scholarly standards, but here’s the same section:

Here is the same passage cited by Stookes (1954):

Here’s the same bit in Lewis & Williams’ (2019) translation:

I’ve not got my grubby paws on the recommended line-by-line analysis by Haycock (2007) yet, which may yield more insight. But it looks as though translators, not seeing Aceilon as a familiar word, divided it then pulled in the bard/poet/musician meaning, which traces to that proto-Indo-European root word that also survives in Gaelic ‘ceilidh’. There’s a lot of diversity in the translations, so it’s likely still being debated.

It might be that, if it’s indeed a single word here, Aceilon was being used as an allusion to a mythical court poet (Loki and Bragi both possibly being bards in Odin’s court).

References:

J. G. Evans (1910) text of the Book of Taliesin

National Library of Wales’s digital images of Peniarth MS 2 (Llyfr Taliesin)

W.F. Skene (1858) translation via Ancient Texts

S. Stookes ‘Before the Conquest’ Music & Letters, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1954), pp. 287-293

Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams (2019). The Book of Taliesin: Poems of Warfare and Praise in an Enchanted Britain. London: Penguin Classics - available on Kindle.

Wikipedia’s “Book of Taliesin” article

[october-rosehip]

Waiting In Orzammar

Alistair stretched, enjoying the feel of it. Several snaps and pops erupted from his joints. The corridor was deserted, probably because of the time of night. He wished he knew where the dwarf warriors practiced, and if he might be welcome. He and Ceilidh had been well received except for the being-attacked-by-both-factions part, so he could probably ask someone about that, tomorrow.

He wore his studded leather backup armor so that he wouldn't send the clanking of his plate echoing through the slumbering halls. Need to find excuses to wear it anyway, or I'll be too out of shape to be any help when Ceilidh gets back. If she...

Alistair cleared his mind and flew into a tricky offensive bit that should smash an opponent to bits. An imaginary hurlock alpha took form before him in the empty hall. It dodged, and mocked him with that creepy grunting laughter. He sliced at it, scoring a hit to the chest. It bellowed out an intimidating challenge, which Alistair matched in kind. It bore a two handed sword, scarred with shiny, black patches of taint. It swept out at him, and he dodged, bashing the foe in the head, stunning it for a moment.

That would be an excellent time for a certain assassin to stab it in the kidneys or something, too bad he's too busy watching Ceilidh's ass, in all senses, to be of much use to me most of the time. Wait, this is my imagination. Zev's here if I say he is. The imaginary elf called out a mocking laugh that inevitably failed to rouse the confused, imaginary darkspawn, and stabbed it in the kidneys, three times, with both blades. Even in my brain he's a showoff. Alistair snarled and bowled into the offending alpha, sending it skidding to the floor. It almost knocked Zevran down in the process. An arrow flew across the corridor to pin the enemy to the floor. Alistair figured that for the end of the Alpha, but they never outnumbered the darkspawn.

Genlocks appeared in his mind. Four of them. They swarmed Zevran, angry at the amount of damage he'd done to their leader, even though the killing blow had been Leliana's. Alistair fell upon them with a fury. He swung and smashed with what would look like clumsy guesswork to the untrained eye. Some styles may be less pretty than others, but they got the job done. The small darkspawn fell to the combined assault of arrows, daggers, sword, and shield.

There was always an emissary. Alistair pictured one now, and shook himself out of it. He would not cast Holy Smite in an empty hallway surrounded by imaginary friends for practice, of all things. Did I just think of it as casting? Yes. Casting. And it is. Screw you, Revered mother. Um, not literally.

The whole process had only taken about fifteen minutes, but Alistair performed some slow stretching exercises to cool down with, anyway. He hadn't held back, and he was puffing, a little.

His mind refused to slow. There would not be enough valerian in the world to put him to sleep tonight, at this rate.

Alistair wandered. He didn't try to aim himself for any particular location, but wasn't terribly surprised when he passed the empty merchant stalls, several branching corridors to residential parts of town, the formal gateway leading to the Diamond Quarter, and the end of any attempts to pave and beautify to find himself at the entrance to the deep roads.

The dwarf guards sent him an appraising stare or two, but didn't otherwise react. Alistair supposed they wouldn't, unless he actually tried to go in. Maybe they wouldn't do anything even then, given that he was a Grey Warden.

Staring at the passage won't make anyone come out of it any faster, Alistair thought. Oh well. Gonna do it, anyway. He moved over to a nook to his right where he wouldn't be obvious, and-

“Alistair.”

-about jumped out of his skin. Looking down, he saw Zevran, sitting on the ground in the very nook he'd been heading for, himself. The elf rested his wrists across his raised knees, his back comfortably wedged up against the stone. As usual when this happened, Alistair could not fathom how he hadn't seen the rogue. This time, he was inches away.

“Don't you ever take a break from being sneaky?” he asked.

Zevran looked a bit sheepish, of all things, as he slid over, making room in the nook. “Apparently not. I did not even know I was doing it until you nearly sat upon me. If I had, I would have alerted you long before. My apologies.”

“No sleep for you, either, huh?” Alistair sat down, leaving a gap between them.

“Not to speak of for this entire week.” The elf kept staring straight ahead, towards the deep roads entrance.

He had lost some of his polish, Alistair thought. His hair looked a little dried out, and his eyes were swollen. Then again, Alistair wasn't sure how great he looked, himself. The lack of sun was getting to him as much as the lack of sex was apparently getting to Zev. As soon as Alistair thought this, however, he discarded the thought as uncharitable.

“How extensive are the Deep Roads, do you know?” asked Zevran, interrupting Alistair's scrutiny.

“A little larger than Ferelden.”

“Cazzo!”

“I agree, whatever that is. They shouldn't have to go everywhere, though. Oghren seemed to think he knew where he was going.” Alistair also stared into the Deep Roads. It seemed easier to talk to people sometimes when you weren't looking at them. As a result, he couldn't say what tipped him off that the long pause after he said this was Zevran not saying something. “What?”

“Nevermind, Alistair. I was about to say something unkind at the man's expense, but it was also untrue. I think that as unhappy as we are, Ceilidh chose well.”

“I hope you're right.”

“I usually am.”

Alistair looked back over to see a shadow of the elf's usual, maddening grin aimed in his direction. He couldn't stop a small chuckle, and punched his companion's shoulder lightly. “You're an ass, Zev.”

Zevran's eyes widened for a fraction of a second and his grin softened a touch. His tone shaded toward his usual joviality as he asked “Oh, you want to hit something, do you?”

“More than I can say,” Alistair replied, vehemently.

“Excellent! Let us go, then!” Zevran always moved in such uncanny ways. His legs simply unbent and he was standing. He reached a hand down to Alistair, who took it as he stood, mystified.

“You don't intend to follow them, do you? We'd never find them in a million years, and we're not prepared...”

Zevran's laugh echoed across the chamber, gathering strange looks from the guards. “No, my friend, even if we did find them, Ceilidh would flay me alive, have Wynne heal me, and do it again, probably while Wynne watched. Nobody needs that.”

“Then where?”

“To hit something, of course.”

“You're hopeless, but I'm in.”

[kfan]

The May 2018 Version of Kevin Fanning

[previously]

kfan on on Style, Beauty & NYC

This month's interview is from this Galore Mag interview with social media superstar Ceilidh Joy aka lilmixedhunny

What is your full name?

Kevin Lee Fanning

Where are you from?

Technically CT but I've lived in Virginia and downstate Illinois and mostly I've lived in Cambridge and I don't want to talk about CT ever.

Brooklyn or Manhattan?

Manhattan! I guess? Brooklyn seems nice too. Idk gang. Whenever I go to NYC I get too stressed out about trying to make plans with people to even enjoy my time there.

Subway or uber?

Subway. And then Lyft.

What music are you into right now?

Janelle Monae, H.E.R., Khruangbin, Hyolyn.

What’s a day in the life of kfan?

Shower, eat, make sure the kids are eating something & aware of where they're supposed to be that day, then walk across the bridge to Boston, write for an hour, than work, then walk back, then make dinner, do the dishes, then watch a show, then go to bed, then read a chapter, then sleep.

What’s your go-to outfit?

Adidas sneakers, Calvin Klein underwear, Uniqlo jeans, Target t-shirt

What are your fave products?

SEE ABOVE. For not clothing things I like: Scrivener for writing, Etymotic for earbuds, Polar for seltzer.

What is your favorite thing to do in the city?

Just leave the house and start walking and wander around and see what I see.

How do you relax?

Watching many many TV shows online.

What’s one long-term goal of yours?

Idk! Do I have long-term goals? Just stay alive and write books and try not to be terrible, I guess.

How has 2018 treated you so far?

OK. Better than an extremely lot of people.

Congratulations on finishing No More Selfies, can you tell me a little about what’s going on with that?

Thank you yes I recently posted the final chapter of No More Selfies, the novel I've been writing serially for the past year and a half. It was a very fun experience and the feedback has been great and I'm very excited to be done with it so I can work on the next book.

Saw you in Ostrich Hammer video, how was that experience?

That was like 10 years ago! It kind of holds up though. It was fun. It was a nice experience. I'm glad I did it and I wish I had more opportunities to act like an idiot on camera.

[amyjanemueller]

Well, here we are...three years after my last blog post and I am going to kick this reunion off with a super basic post featuring a semi-hipster autumnal image. I am just going to say it- I love this season. I love sweaters, fleece, the changing of the leaves, I sure do drink a ton of pumpkin-flavored coffee, and I can’t wait to start watching football. Whatever...it’s basic, maybe annoying...but pretty much defines my love of the traditional while being attracted to progressive, strong values. Example: Just give me a venti pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks while I knock doors to advocate for gun control and climate change. 

I am, as one might predict, totally ready for a change in seasons. I am five weeks out from a Total Hip Replacement (THR), in the thick of the performance season at work ( APT’s 40th anniversary season is incredible- packed with power and heart), and learning to move through life with the journey in mind. I read over some of my previous postings and can’t help but notice the constant work toward a result.

Now, I am in my late thirties, married to an incredible man, working at my dream job, and getting to know an area of Wisconsin I think I love. So it seems time to really settle in. Something I haven’t been able to do for a while. This is life, the long haul, and I am so excited to dig-in, rather than start over. 

Things to expect over the next three years:

*starting a family now that my hips and health seem to be under control. Two years of x-rays, cortisone shots, and surgeries. This has been an unexpected challenge, but the hardest might just be behind us so we can move on and start the process of having some little Muellers- hopefully with Jacob’s curly hair and positive attitude and my vocabulary.

*refinishing our home after a tragic flood turned our lives upside down five months ago...we still leave the house worried something terrible will happen, and I have not gone a day without missing our sweet Ceilidh Elizabeth Catherine...the sweetest lab mix puppy who is always in our hearts.

*reconnecting with family and friends as we continue to settle in. We moved for my job at APT a year ago. Just now, I am starting to feel like we are on the other side of that transition and can focus on reconnecting and being more available for our loved ones.

*Other incidental posts about travel lust, skincare, cycling and yoga goals, and theatre.

Feels good to be back.

All at once, summer collapsed into fall. -Oscar Wilde

[trmcfarlin]

04.21.19 Zhengzhou Women 21k and Camilla’s Birthday

My work was having a Ceilidh party that the girls really wanted to attend. I explained to them that we would only be able to stay from 7-9pm because our train left at 10:35pm.  We had a blast and the girls really wanted to stay but were excited for the weekend away. When we were leaving, a friend of mine said, “Tara, I am really worried about you going there alone with your girls. Will you please check in with me so I know you are okay.” I said, “Don’t worry. We do this all the time. But, I will check in.” She said, “I don’t know why I am worried. I just have a feeling...” I am not sure if she jinxed us or what. But, when we got in the taxi, the traffic was terrible. The girls slept the whole taxi ride. I got them up and hurried to the train. We arrived to the station as the doors were closing. We almost missed the train.  Carly said, “Wow! That was easy! You know exactly where to go!” (They has no idea how freaked I was) We arrived to beautiful blue skies and it was warm.  We took a taxi to our hotel and it was extremely hard to communicate. 

I booked my own hotel for the race because I didn’t want the race director to pay extra for my kids.  We got our stuff unpacked and decided to wander the city.  Carly had fun shooting a rocket. Camilla and I got boba and boba pancakes. We walked to the race hotel and they fed us lunch. 

Then, the race director told us that he had 2 rooms for us. The girls had a room and I had a room. It was a Hilton and much nicer than the one I booked so we accepted.  There was a driver that took us to pack up our stuff and bring it to the Hilton.  Camilla called the hotel, “Super Fancy!” 

Then I called a taxi to take us to Furunzi Hot Spring water park. 

We spent 3 hours there and I got the courage to do the fish spa. 

When we left, I couldn’t get a taxi. No one would come to get us. I even asked the water park to call a taxi and they said I need to take a city bus. We are used to big cities where DiDis go everywhere. The Chinese kept trying to help us by trying to tell us directions to a city bus, but we got so lost. I experienced that horrible fear that my kids weren’t safe. We were in a very vulnerable situation.  We ended up walking in the dark for over an hour trying to find a place that a DiDi would pick us up. I lucked out by getting a DiDi that went out of his way to find me. My battery died as soon as I got in the taxi. This taxi driver asked me to be his friend. I laid in bed with my heart pounding so fast. I told the girls I didn’t want to race. Carly said, “Mom you have to!” If she wouldn’t have said that, I probably would have skipped the race. My alarm went off at 5:20am and I left the girls with breakfast coupons and their iPads. 

It was pouring rain so we all got ponchos. 

Us runners were treated like royalty. 

All the Chinese were snapping pictures of us like crazy. 

I met so many women who were in China for business. 

It was a very well organized race. It was an amazing experience! 

I learned the phrase, “Jia You” because everyone was shouting it at me. It translates to, “Keep Going!” 

This picture was from the finish line.  This Chinese lady was running with her hands out to the side, trying to beat me.  I sped up and crossed the finish line before her.I finished in 1:56. Pretty slow, since my PR is 1:26, but my goal was to get under 2 hours so I can get a 500RMB finisher bonus. I have been injured for so long that it will take me a while to get my speed back. The girls had a blast hanging out in the fancy hotel all morning. I messaged Carly when I was done and she said: 

I walked back to the hotel and a lady actually ran up and put an umbrella on me.  The whole trip was a fun adventure!

[solo1y]

Made-Up Gaeltacht

This was originally published (in modified form) in 2007 in an Irish tourist magazine aimed at young people. I was just told to do something about the Irish language. I have added some links to explain things for non-Irish people. I’ve never been to a Gaeltacht so this was 100% made-up. 

Her name was Janice McDonagh. For seven years afterwards, I had resolved to call all my female children "Janice", possibly differentiating them by number, or by the colour of their hair, in the style of the old kings of Ulster. I was sixteen and she was fourteen, and in a scandal that would rock both our respective small towns, we kissed. Properly, too, on the lips, like you're supposed to. And it didn't completely suck. Of more interest to you, however, is the much more salient fact that my first kiss was through the medium of the Irish language. Yes, we were in a Gaeltacht, one of the ever-shrinking goldfish bowls of Irish language and culture, whatever "culture" means in Ireland. Specifically, we were in "An Rinn", just down the road (and to the left, towards the coast) from Dungarvan in Co. Waterford. From my point of view it might as well have been in fucking China. Firstly, this was the first time for most of us bags of hormones to be released from captivity into the wild, presumably to see whether or not we would strive, perish or be eaten by wolves. It went straight to some of their heads. I saw optimistically-placed apples in naively-packed lunch boxes traded for Mars bars, and on one memorable occasion, funny-looking cigarettes. None of this mattered to me - I was free of oppression at last! Finally, I could do whatever the hell I wanted, as long as it was through Irish. As it turned out, what I wanted, chiefly, was to be left alone to tackle the oddly-pitched crossword (it included the solutions "go" and "aimpleasach", which is like putting "cat" and "cthonic" in the one English crossword) that appeared at the back of the newsletter for Colaiste na Rinne. Nevertheless, house rules eventually prevailed that to dances (or ceilidh) I must go, and so on the last night, to a dance I went. Secondly, the Colaiste na Rinne golden rule was that everything - no exceptions - happened solely through Irish, such that overheard snatches of English, or even Spanish (Julio, you loco!), were met with expulsion. While this posed a challenge to all students equally, I took it personally. For one thing, I was not inclined to pay attention in the compulsory Irish classes in my secondary school. For another, even if I did listen carefully to everything I was told; if I did all the homework I was supposed to do; if I read all the novels and poems and short stories they kept hinting I should read; if I did all that, I would still only be in a position to describe and communicate matters of interest to nineteenth-century Irish people. I could accurately debate the merits and demerits of the Act of Union (1801), but be confounded by having to order a pizza. They didn't have pizzas in Ireland back then. Or, as they keep reminding us, potatoes. The towering insult to teenagers across the land would come the term immediately after Janice kissed me, in the form of "Peig": one woman's fight against anything that could possibly be uplifting, or interesting, or happy, or engaging in print form. These were battles that Peig won time and time again, as any reader of the book will tell you. The terrible tragedy of "Peig" is not the grinding poverty; the shocking access barnyard animals had in her house; the suspicious death of her children, the rain-lashed landscape; the emigration of everyone she knew or ever heard of - no! The tragedy is that Peig took these situations that would normally cause sympathy in the hardest heart and made us not care. She turned us into a nation of apathetics. "Youngsters," clamour middle-aged professional liars, "don't care about politics!" At the hustings, I calmly suggest: "Stop throwing 'Peig' at them, then!" My logic being that if students are being trained with ruthless efficiency to be apathetic about dead children, then your chances of getting them to care about administrative reform legislation are very, very slim. In fairness, the government, strangely reluctant to ban the evil volume, seems to be working on an antidote. Relatively recently (about ten years ago), an all-Irish television station called TG4 was established to promote the interests of the Irish language. In a cunning manouevre representing a revolutionary break with tradition, the planners hired young, attractive presenters and showed genuinely interesting programmes and documentaries, all dubbed into Irish (although everything had English subtitles too, because they still wanted people to tune in). Their most famous export is probably Grainne Seoige, who has become a fixture on RTE, after a brief stint on Sky News. I always preferred her sister, Sile Seoige, with whom I had a brief fling in 1999, in my mind. But even the lusty charms of Sile could not ignite my sudden and urgent desire to learn Irish like Janice did. Janice had bright, long red hair, and a pale complexion almost completely obscured by a mass of freckles. I sat counting them with love, and and had to stop because neither of us could remember the Irish for "sixty" (the Irish for sixty is "seasca"). She very much had the traditional "Irish" look that so few actual Irish people have. We began communicating because we were the only two in the whole building who were interested enough in the crossword to bring it to the dance with us. We pointed at clues, giggled, wrote suggestions, not saying much of anything, and then we had to leave. Our houses lay in separate directions. As I was walking back to my house, I heard her running behind me. I turned around, she grabbed my shoulders and kissed me on the lips in front of everyone. I saw that she had tears in her eyes, and then she ran off. Rosebud. If you want a pretty girl to kiss you and then run away, leaving you bitter about relationships in general and redheads in particular, you could do worse than contact http://www.forasnagaeilge.ie/ for information on the Irish language, http://www.anrinn.com/ for information on releasing your bag of hormones into the wild and http://www.tg4.ie/ for information on Irish language programmes.

Thanks to Martina Leahy, who commissioned the piece.