tags: maps
2000
September
- 2000 Sep 19
- Geography of My Dreams
Dreams:
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2002
January
- 2002 Jan 16
- Snowfall
Everything is a map to me. Snow makes me feel like I’ve been transported to another world.
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2006
April
- 2006 Apr 7
- rabbit holes (a tale that's been told over and over)
I finished rereading Memory, Thorn, and Sorrow by Tad Williams, which has been (like many other fantasy novels such as The Sword of Shannara and The Wheel of Time series) compared much to The Lord of the Rings. While there exists much older literature that could considered fantasy (for example, The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser written in the 16th century), I believe that it was Tolkien that allowed booksellers to actually have an entire marketing category devoted to such stuff.
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May
- 2006 May 16
- drive-by blogging: trains in literary naturalism and in weird fiction
Odd that parts of The Octopus by Frank Norris (sighted on makeweight) makes me think immediately of The Iron Council by China Miéville, although I suppose this is not surprising considering Miéville’s political sympathies and literary background.
· Read more… - 2006 May 16
- the metropole-province axis
Another concept that definitely informed my conception of the imaginary city of Cantral Araban is the metropole-province axis, which is basically the dialectic between the central city of a region and the surrounding countryside. This dialectic is especially characteristic of ex-colonies. I learned about this paradigm from Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson, which was one of the required texts in the Southeast Asian Studies survey class I took as an undergrad, and analyzing Manila through this particular lens was very enlightening.
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2009
May
- 2009 May 10
- the subjunctive mood
The month of May always, always makes me think of possibility. It is, I suppose, merely a function of the lengthening of days. The sunset continues to inch further and further north, and closer and closer to 8 pm, while the earliest rays of dawn encroach upon my dreams earlier and earlier.
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