May 17
He must have fallen asleep while he was reading, because the book was on the bed next to him and the light was still on. Or else he hadn't wanted to wake me up, which was really sweet of him.
The blankets were pushed down, so I stretched out my wing to keep him warm, and rubbed against his cheek then dozed for a little bit until he finally woke up. Then I rolled all the way on top of him and kissed him on the nose.
We ate breakfast at Nina's—I'm beginning to wonder if he knows how to cook. He has a stove, but nobody ever seems to use it. So I asked him, and he said that he knew how to cook but that there wasn't any food in the refrigerator, but if I didn't like Nina's we could go somewhere else next time, or he could get some food and we could make breakfast in the kitchen.
I thought that would be fun, so he promised we'd do that on Thursday. Although I had to admit I'd kind of miss Nina's, too; the waitress is really nice.
We went back to his house after breakfast and I told him that I was going to go for a trot around the neighborhood, and said he could come along if he wanted to, but he didn't.
I'd gotten about a block from his house, when it occurred to me that I could trot around at the nature center and that would be really nice. So even though I didn't have my flight clothes, I took off, keeping below the trees, and flew over there. The ridge trail was easy to spot, so I landed on it and then trotted off to the east.
That was really nice—a lot nicer than the roads. The dirt was a lot softer on my hooves, and I didn't have to watch out for cars, which sometimes go without seeing people or ponies on the sidewalks. And there were a lot more animals I saw, too: there was a small herd of deer grazing, and when I got close I saw their heads come up and they were sniffing at the air trying to figure out what I was.
I didn't want to bother them, but I guess it didn't matter what I wanted, because even though I slowed down, when I got too close they all ran off, their white tails flicking in the air.
Since they were galloping, I thought I might as well, too, so I raced down the trail all the way until it went into the woods and joined up with the other trails, then did the loop a second time, cantering along the ridge, and galloping along the base. That pretty much tired me out, so when I was back around to the place where I'd landed, I took off again and flew low back to campus.
It took a while to get all the lather off my coat, and by the time I was done with my shower, I was hungry again. Luckily, it was close enough to lunch time.
I got there before any of my friends, so I took my tray and set it down on the table where Leon and Cedric and Trevor liked to sit.
I had my back to the door and they must have seen me before they got their food, because I didn't wind up making a mess. Cedric came up behind me and poked me in the back—he can move really quietly for as big as he is—and I popped out my wings reflexively and twisted up and around out of my chair.
Leon was laughing his head off and Cedric said that the SG was sack-proof. Then he told me he was sorry for surprising me like that and I crossed my forelegs and glared at him and wouldn't accept his apology until he gave me a hug.
After that they went and got their food and I just sat there feeling kind of embarrassed by my reaction—but they'd surprised me. I should have heard them coming. I was paying too much attention to my salad, even though it wasn't going to go anywhere.
He said that he was sorry again when he sat down, and he set a familiar-looking vase of flowers on the table. I asked him if he had gotten that off the dessert table, and he said so what if he had. It was the thought that counted.
And they did look pretty in the center of the table. Even if they were fake.
Trevor told him that he was never going to win over a girl with fake flowers and that he ought to learn poetry, and Leon said he didn't know any poetry but he did know some limericks. Trevor said that counted as poetry, and we'd just read limericks in class last week. So Leon started saying that there was once a man from Nantucket, and Cedric held his hand over his mouth and said that he could not finish that limerick. He said it wasn't for pony ears.
I said that I didn't mind, but Cedric said that he minded and that was what mattered. It was kind of an odd thing for him to say.
So I said that maybe I'd ask Conrad, because he was really smart and knew all the poems, and Trevor just started laughing and said that he would probably recite it in class if someone asked.
Cedric said that from what he'd heard, Conrad was about a hundred years old, and Trevor said he couldn't be more than seventy, and had more wit than both of them put together.
Leon claimed that Cedric dragged down the average, and then by way of apology he took a flower out of the vase and handed it to Cedric.
Then after lunch was over, Cedric got up first and when he was walking out of the dining hall Leon whispered the rest of the limerick in my ear and I told him that I'd dated a stallion who could do that.
He just shook his head and said that blue girls were crazy and walked off to catch up to Cedric.
Conrad introduced us to T. S. Eliot today. He said that he was legally obligated to do so, because Mister Eliot had been such an important poet. Then he said that he’d start out with a poem about naming cats. He told us that T. S. Eliot knew a thing or two about cats; he’d even written a book which was sort of the basis for the Broadway Play Cats. That sorta made my ears perk up, ‘cause it was the kind of thing Gusty would like to know about.
It was kind of funny how after the poem was done, the class focused more on names than the actual poem. Most people have three or more names, which felt like a lot. Ponies usually only have two, or sometimes three. I guess maybe a unicorn’s House sometimes counts as a name, too.
Some people in class knew the meaning of their name, and others of them didn’t. Trevor said that he was named after his father, and he didn’t know what it meant. I said that I suppose when my Mom named me that was my everyday name, but then when I got my cutie mark, I also took a new name. And then everyone wanted to know what it was, and I said Moonglow, ‘cause I was born at night.
He had us read a poem about a Hippopotamus next, which was kind of weird. When we were first reading through it, I could tell it was making fun of the church, but I wasn’t sure how. And the class couldn’t reach an agreement, either. That’s one thing I really like about poems, how the author can paint a word-picture and then everyone else sees what they want in it.
We finished with a really short poem called Morning at the Window, which made me think of the noises of the campus in the morning. It started off pretty quiet but then you’d start to hear cars driving down the street and people coming in and out of the dorm. And some of the students who had spent time in big human cities thought it was still pretty accurate.
After we left class, I asked Trevor if he thought that Cedric might like the poem, and he thought he would, so I said maybe I’d read it at lunch next Thursday.
I had time before dinner to start organizing my notes for my essay, and then just a little bit of time left to start reading 2 Kings. I thought at first that Elisha was going to be a good man, but then he had bears maul boys who made fun of him for being bald, so I wasn’t sure any more.
I hadn't really noticed that lunch was leftovers, but it had been, and they had a nice dinner for us. It was French, Peggy said.
There was an egg pie called a quiche that was very good. They had two kinds, one that was vegetarian and one that had bacon in it. I took the vegetarian one but tried a small bite of Peggy's that had bacon and that was good, too. And I also had some fancy sliced potatoes that were pretty good, and all the rest of the special food was meat and long loaves of bread called baguettes. We took a whole one for the table and broke it apart and shared it, and that was nice.
I did a little bit of homework after dinner and then Peggy and I went down to Christine's room to watch the movie, and Peggy sat with me on the papasan.
I really liked the movie. The style was simple compared to all the other movies I'd seen, but it was beautiful. A lot of it really felt like Equestria, or maybe Equestria as it would be in a few years. And right at the end, I started to cry when Sheeta told Muska that the throne room was a tomb for them and I thought how brave she and Pazu were to stand up to him, and I thought that they'd died when they spoke the spell of destruction and the city began to collapse. But in the end it was okay; the tree saved them, and the simulacrum kept tending to the garden.
And maybe I was crying a little bit too because I couldn't spend as much time in the sky as I was used to, and I couldn't take my friends up there with me. They couldn't see what I saw, just drifting around on a cloud.
Still, I suppose it's better to have friends down on the ground than to be all alone up in the sky.
"I can totally cook! Last time I tried, I didn't burn the salad!"
"Still better then Cedric, he cannot make the difference beetween real dessert and plastic imitations!"
I still think Castle in the sky was a bit boring as an introduction to Miyazaki, Nausicaä or Porco Rosso would've been more fun and both feature cool flying scenes that would've appealed to her.
These thoughts require hugs! Lots of hugs!
Porco rosso requires a bit of historical knowledge. What may be something the deeply touches Silver Glow could be Kiki's Delivery Service. It's less "deep" than Porco Rosso (one of my favorite movies ever) but it touches something she could probably understand quite well.
Sound like the teacher would have skipped Mr. Eliot if he had the option. I wonder if they'll touch on some of his other works. I wonder how Silver would interpret The Hollow Men or The Wasteland (might be a bit long though).
I'm glad that Silver's first introduction to Miyazaki was so positive. It seems like Peggy and Christine knew what they were doing when they picked which film to watch, as I imagine that some of his works may have upset/unnerved her. Princess Mononoke or Howl's Moving Castle can be particularly jarring for the unwary.
Hah! I never read "The Naming of Cats" before, but I do remember the same idea being referenced in Logan's Run... not a direct quote, I don't think, but it's been ages since I saw it.
Dammit Cedric, what'd you give a horse fake flowers for? Do you give plastic chocolate to a human?
Oh, Cedric is so innocent.
Aaaaaaaand now he's less so.
The sentence is kind of ambiguous (but since she goes by Silver Glow everywhere, I'm guessing Moonglow is her birth name).
(Also, Moon Glow sounds like Twilight Sparkle's, Sunset Shimmer's and Starlight Glimmer's lost sibling. )
You know, I don't think I've ever heard the whole limerick...
Does anyone else not know the rest of it?
That is... An interesting selection for Eliot, Conrad.
7397244 I didn't before today. I know many limericks are dirty, but I wasn't previously aware that one is.
I would have suggested she watch Ponyo, since she's made numerous mentions of the sea and sailor ponies.
7397138 Laputa is still my favorite Miyazaki, perhaps because it was my first exposure to Miyazaki, sitting at a college house party with a lap full of translated script. There's something mysterious and ineffable about it. It's a children's journey through a world half tragic ruin, half hope for the future, and it is honestly agnostic as to which has the truth of it. The movie is a record of the death of Miyazaki's New Leftist faith, and you can see that pain in the corners, especially in the backgrounds of Pazu's dying mining hometown.
7397203 He went for the stuff which isn't contraversial, and doesn't require a postgraduate seminar in Dante and 19th Century continental multilingual poetic traditions to make sense of. Hell, I still don't really understand the Wasteland , not after reading it numerous times with the aid of online glosses. And the Lovesong is facile and cynical, and the Quartets and "Ash Wednesday" are too religious for academic comfort. I personally prefer the Quartets...
7397244
It's used in many variations, but the classic "dirty" version is (spoilered for NSFW):
There was an old man from Nantucket/Whose cock was so long he could suck it./He said with a grin/As he wiped off his chin,/"If my ear was a cunt I could fuck it"
I'm curious how Silver Glow fits her better than Moon Glow?
Oh no Aric, your friendly filly fuckbuddy just turned into an actual girlfriend! Next she'll be nagging you to get your hair cut and dress better!
7395093
Wow, Studio Ghibli adapted that? I've read most of DWJ's novels, but never seen any Ghibli films. I probably should at some point.
"I'm sorry honey, but after today's wild storm I'm too beat for hankey pankey. Will you be okay?"
"Yup! I got this covered."
"You wha-?" "I'm not sure whether to be awed, aroused, or horrified..."
"Mmmmphhh!"
7397485
Y'know how they say every cloud has a silver lining? She might be named after the silvery glow that clouds can get when lit - she's big into weather after all. Moonglow does sound less appropriate for a talent in weather (unless it's a talent in nocturnal weather, but Silver's never expressed that kind of thing).
Hippopotamus
made
7397179 Porco can only be really understood and appreciated with the historic background.
But even without it, Marco could've fougth any war, not even a real one, the movie in itself still has a undeniabe quality.
Kiki could've talked to her, the struggle to find your own path could remind her of ponies looking for their cutie marks, and the idea of moving away when you are older to experience new thing is very familiar to her.
7397665 The result is a bit strange, condensing the novel into a movie made a few thing confusing, particulary near the ending. Visually speaking, it is a masterpiece. One of Ghibili's best. The castle in itself is a real prowess in term of animation.
And it is a film I enjoy watching again from time to time.
7397455 While I did enjoy it in some way, it is the one Ghibili film that bored me (Tales of Earthsea aside, but that one is an exception). I did not find it engaging, we had a lame villain by Myazaki's standards and the scenery wasn't the most awe-inducing.
It still a great movie, there is good animation, a fantastic soundtrack (both the original and the one made for the english dub latter). I just lost interest during the scene of the robot's attack, then it just went downhill, the scene on the pirate's airship was okay, but a bit too long, it killed the pace and everything in Laputa itself was all too predictable.
Er... what?
Laputa was more about the human greed leading to misuses of technology, and a bit about pacifism too, both are very recuring themes in Miyazaki's work.
You can still see it in a lot of his more recent films (Porco, somewhat in Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, somewhat in Ponyo and The Wind Rises.)
7397933
Well, the whole struggle with the existing regime (the Italian Fascists), the problems Porco had, the struggles of the workshop and why it was so important for him to stay free need a bit of context. You can appreciate it without them, but you lose a ton of subtext.
7397933 The long version is worthy of a thesis paper with multiple citations, but the short version is that Miyazaki started out as a very radical union official with Maoist tendencies (Horus, Prince of the Sun was the result of a runaway union takeover of Toei Studios, which you can kind of see the results of if you squint hard) who was losing his political faith circa '83-'87, which Miyazaki explicitly states in one of the essays Viz included in the English editions of the manga version of Nausicaa. Elsewhere Miyazaki writes about how he felt that Laputa was a failure, while discussing a trip to the coal regions of Wales which were the model for Pazu's hometown, and about the failed general strike against the Thatcherite dissolution of the nationalized coal mining system.
The manga version of Nausicaa and other Miyazaki books make it a great deal clearer than his movies, but I think it is very clear that he was never a pacifist. Usually anti-war, but a true pacifist? Far too fond of weapons of war, technologies of war for that to be true.
7397993
Have you seen The Wind Rises yet?
aeb85937.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/img_6385-0.jpg
7398019 Honestly? I've only seen one Ghibli movie snice Ponyo, which freaked m3 out in context of the Tonhaku tsunami. I keep saying that I'll get around to the rest of them, but I'm not really in an anime frame of mind. I was big into otakudom back in the day, and then I had a messy divorce with the fandom.
I am looking at a pile of unwatched anime dvds two dozen deep right now. Nothing Ghibli though, those suckers ain't cheap. Probably ought to rent a digital copy of The Wind Rises one of these days, it's technically in my mil-history wheelhouse. I've avoided it so far because it's one of those things where I feel I could mentally lay out the probable script from his prior work - that tightrope act trembling between his Axis tech fetishization and his instinctive anti-Militarist cultural tendencies.
7397993 I wouldn't call it loosing a political faith, more of a desilusion. The 80's were marked by a general feeling of depression, particulary for the people from socialist tendencies. Beetween the rises of Tatcherism, Reaganism and more and the big desilusion about the "socialist" countries from eastern europe.
It did not transpire all that much in the movie, aside from a more depressive tone, but just as with Nausicaä's post apocalyptic world, it was in the air of the time so to speak. Remember at the same time, Takahata made The Grave of the Fireflies, easily the duo's most depressing work.
But still, I can see your point.
Isn't that the definition of pascifism?
As for the fascination for engine of war, he is more fascinated by planes. Something that came largely from his childhood, his father's work as the head of a plane factory.
There is some weapon of mass destruction, but the inspiration forthat theme is the trauma of the atomic bomb, not a fascination on his part.
7398061 He was also in the process of turning into the devil he had been fighting - going from the passionate Marxist union official to the traditional authoritarian studio head as Ghibli turned into a proper studio.
As for pacifism, that is an absolute, idealistic stance. Almost all war pictures and honest war stories are anti-war. War is a catastrophe, a tragedy, and only outright fascists and diabolists are pro-war. I'm sure some people have mischaracterized me inaccurately elsewhere on the Internet as pacifistic because I harbor no illusions about war or the military, but I am certainly no pacifist. And Miyazaki has written stuff about the Eastern Front that indicates that his fetish for aerial weapons of war are not the full extent of his fascination with technology of war. Heck, the town sections of Princess Mononoke is a demonstration of his fascination with 16th century arquibus tech and the manufacture of the same....
7398039
Miyazaki (and Jiro Horikoshi) might be anti-war, but like Anthony Fokker, they love the technology and the peacetime possibilities and advancement it brings.
His discussions with the (rather creepily drawn) German guy during the Magic Mountain scenes are enlightening.
thepinksmoke.com/images/2014windrisesgerman.jpg
Though my favorite Ghibli works are Mononoke Hime, Nausicaa (which would be higher if it didn't only cover the first two volumes of the story), Kiki's Delivery Service and Poppy Hill.
And Grave of the Fireflies, of course.
s31.postimg.org/xf62nw1rv/grave_of_the_fireflies.png
For Poppy Hill, I actually like the main storyline less than the B-plot of post-war students rising up and asserting themselves as the future of the nation.
7398097 Considering how the Ghibili studio worked and still work, it is not very close to the devil you describe.
Not to mention that the head of the studio isn't Miyazaki...
Well,trough his characters in The Wind Rises, Miyazaki's talked a bit about himself at some point; it is not about war or weapon, it is just about making the best planes possible. They just happen to be for war.
I think that the town section in Princess Mononoke is more about showing the migth of men, showing the industrialisation that treathening to take over the nature. The weapons and their manufactury are barely showed, but the people working in it are given a lot of focus, as well as the use of said weapons.
And overall, showing war and it's consequence doesn't make you less of a pacifist. Take Masaki Kobayashi for exemple, all his more remarkable films are full of gore and violence. The guy wasn't less of a pacifist. He even correspond to your definition of a pacifist as someone non-violent.
For non Americans: T.S. = tough shit.
P.J. O'Rourke wrote a collection of essays The Bachelor's Guide to Housekeeping subtitled The Fine Art of Living Like a Pig. If there's no mold on the stuff in the sink, he is in the top half of guy housekeepers. As a bachelor myself, I freely admit if it wasn't for the microwave & fast food restaurants, I'd starve.
Silver, if you have used the toilet in his place & not been grossed out, you are tougher than 90% of Earth girls or someone's girlfriend cleans the bathroom every now & again.
7398912
At least he had the courtesy to set it in an alternate universe instead of overwriting 20+ years of C-canon.
Star Wars is dead and Star Wars remains dead, for Disney has killed it.
I think she'd have enjoyed Steamboy as well. Perhaps another movie night?
7397244 Ditto.
7397463 Ignorance corrected.
I thought at first that Elisha was going to be a good man, but then he had bears maul boys who made fun of him for being bald, so I wasn’t sure any more.
Yep, nobody knows whether they were young boys or the local street-gang equivalent... but it does point out that just because God chooses a guy to be a prophet--doesn't mean that guy is going to always be righteous, or particularly nice.
The clean version:
There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
Then his daughter Nan, ran off with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket!
>>
Which somewhat raises the question of what criteria was being used.
And a little unsettled that I'm no longer surprised that Silver didn't understand The Hippopotamus. I think she will not enjoy reading about WWI.
Which itself raises a question. Silver is a good student, which is presumably one reason why she was chosen for this exchange programme, but then why did she nit study up on earth beyond the mandatory requirements as she has done several times since then?
Is she JUST taking part in an exchange programme, or are she and the others being used as guinnea pigs to see how normal ponies react to the darker parts of human nature/history?
7397138
I once started a fire boiling water. True story.
Maybe . . . but Castle in the Sky is my favorite Miyazaki movie.
7397149
7397179
That's one I still need to watch. It's on my to-do list (and writing about Castle in the Sky and seeing the comments just reminded me of it).
7397203
That was more tongue in cheek than anything (not that SIlver Glow would have gotten it)--you can't really have a general poetry class without covering Eliot. It's like a law or something.
Good question--I haven't read The Hollow Men ever, I don't think, and it's been a while since I've read The Wasteland. FWIW, I'm pretty sure The Wasteland is shorter than The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which Conrad also covered.
I think that was the first Miyazaki movie I ever watched, and I don't think I quite got it. I probably ought to re-watch it.
IIRC, there were some really weird spirit-things in the movie, and Gillian Anderson did one part in the English dub.
7397218
Huh. Never seen Logan's Run, either. Man, there's a lot of movies I haven't seen.
7397236
"This is the worst snack bouquet ever."
I know. Poor foolish valiant white knight.
Yup; Moonglow's her birth name.
7397283
Conrad doesn't follow the rules. Conrad does what Conrad wants.
7397353
Hmm, that's an interesting choice. And another one which I haven't seen.
7397455
I think that's about a perfect description, and I think that's why I like it so much.
Or, to put it more simply, he went for the stuff that I understand.
7397463
Yup, that's pretty much the version I know.
7397485
It makes more sense in Equestrian *
And buy a nicer truck.
______________________________
*actually, that's a lie.
(Her cutie mark's silver stars in a swirling background, and there's no moon in it at all, which is why she dropped the moon and emphasized the silver.)
7397683
Oddly arousing and terrifying.
7398383
Yeah, we're not going to talk about my kitchen. I've seen worse, but. . . .
I do know some men who are really good housekeepers, but in my experience they're the exception rather than the rule.
7398960
She might--and that's one I've seen, too. I'd have to dredge through the memories, though; it was at least ten years ago, maybe more.
7399117
And one interpretation is that the boys insulted God, and so Elisha basically said, "God, what are you going to do about this?" and bam! Bears.
7399805
Mostly ignorance. She assumed that the classes had covered everything that was important, and thus didn't learn anything more than that. I was the same way when I went to college--I thought I was prepared, but I wasn't at all. I expect the same is true of foreign study in general.
Probably a little bit of both. One of the advantages of an exchange program is you can learn by trial and error what people really need to know. In a way, I feel that it's better like that: even if you go in feeling like you know everything, that delusion goes away pretty fast, and you learn a lot from the struggle to keep up. That's my opinion, anyway.
7397803
Corrections made; thank you!
Castle in the Sky is the perfect Miyazaki movie to show a pegasus. Maybe the perfect movie of any kind to show a pegasus. And I'm with you, it's one of my faves too.
Just one issue with this story. I can't catch up to save my life lol. Good job. Really love what I have read so far
7446354
I'm going to have to re-watch that very soon. I love it so much.
7825603
Well, the good news (for some values of good news) is that there's only a month left to go.
7918157
Me too. It's probably one of my all-time favorite Miyazaki movies. The music is one of the best parts:
7918364
And the throne room speech at the end, before Sheeta says the words of the spell. Man, such a beautiful movie. And definitely a must-see for any pegasus.
The church is like a hippopotamus, only even more so.
8327205
It's true!
Read T.S. Eliot's poem Hippopotamus. I prefer Arthur Guiterman
https://www.best-poems.net/arthur-guiterman/habits-hippopotamus.html
Did you know:
It's harder to find this poem when you can't remember the exact name & are convinced that Ogden Nash wrote it?
8729684
That does make it challenging. I've struggled to find song lyrics like that before as well . . . I don't know who sang it (or think the wrong person did), and I can't remember the actual lyrics.
One such song actually took me three or four years to find despite the power of the internet.
Also, it totally does sound like something Nash would have written. Or maybe that guy that wrote the poems with archy . . . can't remember who that was, now (it's also not Nash, IIRC).
Ooh, I like that one.
This is a peculiar thing... It was GOD that sent down the bears on the boys in answer to a generic curse from the guy... It seems to absolve the main man a bit too easily...
9313305
Well, yeah, fair point. But didn’t Elisha sort of ask for the bears? To my mind, that implies some culpability on Elisha’s part.
Ah, Castle in the Sky is another one of those stories of me being the beneficiary of absurd serendipity. Way, way back I saw a trailer and though I might like to see it some day and then promptly forgot about it for a decade. Then I'm at my aunt's and we all decide to go through her movie collection for something to watch and what do you know? I've also seen Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, which are a bit too rooted in Japanese culture for most Westerners or ponies to fully appreciate them. Especially Noh Face in the former, because that's not a typo and you can Google the "erroneous " word if you don't believe me.