July 1: "random, wicked lambs"

July 1, and the forecast for pleasant weather continues. Extra lucky for me because this stucco apartment building is being painted, and the painters have covered the windows in plastic so they can spray paint--could be a sauna.

I'm trying to decide what to do today.
I'd like to stay home and carve lino, but I fear the house painting will be disruptive--all the doors and windows must be shut.
Probably I'd better to go volunteer at the thrift store.

I'm relieved the building is being painted.
The landlord had sold it this spring to another, not a corporation--but I'd worried it might be torn down to build $$$condos.
The new owner is tending to it, however, as if he meant what he told me--that he'll keep it as is.

I love this place, especially in summer when I can sit on the shady north side.
Girlettes kept me company outside yesterday as I read The Sword in the Stone (the first part of The Once and Future King) when Arthur is a nobody orphan boy called Wart.
They're holding the Blackwing pencil I sketched the Pearl Cotton with.

I'll draw the spool again, then attempt a 2-color lino print (the thread is pink). Easiest to practice on something without a face--I won't mind if it's a failure like I'd mind with a bear.
___________________

The Sword in the Stone is a children's book with lots of Easter eggs for adults that I'd missed on first reading.
A spell Merlyn casts in Latin [he throws in bits of French], for instance, is not magical but a point of Latin grammar.
Though in its time I guess that joke wouldn't have been for adults. The children of the era in which TH White wrote it--the 1930's--would recognize schoolbook Latin.  

Deus-sanctum, est-ne oratio Latinas?
Etiam, oui, quare?
Quia substantivo et adjectivum concordat in generi, numerum et casus."

"Holy God, is it a Latin prayer? 
Yes, yes, why? 
Because the noun and the adjective agree in gender, number and case."

Then there're lots of delightful turns of phrase, like when the nurse calls Wart "my own random, wicked lamb".
I will borrow that--it totally suits some of the girlettes.

And there are bits and pieces of philosophy---usually written with a light hand. But sometimes Merlyn gives an explicit teaching, such as when Wart asks him to come along on a magical outing.
Merlyn says yes, but just the first time:

"Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance."

That's what I was saying, working in a school.
T. H. White worked as a teacher in a boys' school and had radical ideas, such as not hitting the students.
__________________

I do love this apartment, but sometimes I'm lonely here alone--each apartment has its own entrance, so I rarely even see the other tenants.
Something to ponder for the future...
But it's not lonely this summer--the Marz is here! She's in-between here and there, this and that. Something of a random, wicked lamb herself...
Below, in her Mr. Spock t-shirt, holding her draft of a novel (handwritten). Her summer plan is to complete a rewrite.

 

Oh, good--Julia just now texted that she is free to meet-n-mend this morning, so I'm heading off to sew with her at a coffee shop.