"There's Lots of Darks Out Tonight"

I could NOT be angrier with Blogger right now.  I opened this window to create the post, and minutes later the site went offline.  When I hit the "tough luck" screen, there was a link to the Status page - which gave me the day-old news that the site would be going down at 5:00 PST today (because, after all, who the heck uses the INTERNET at 8:00 EST? or, for that matter, at the end of the workday in Cali ... ?).  NO NOTICE ON MY DASHBOARD.  NO NOTICE ON THE COMPOSITION PAGE.  Which, you know, was WORKING when I opened it.

I guess we are supposed to be constantly checking the obscure little posts on Blogger's Status page.  Gah.

So anyway.  This is an incredibly crappy, unsatisfying reconstruction of what was a pithy and lovely post about two hours ago.  *Seethe*


My older niece said this when she was two or so, in the car at night, after a long flight, on the way to grandma and granddaddy's house.  It's a way of looking at the night any writer could envy; seeing the dark, and being able to describe it.  Instead of the perfectly serviceable "it's dark" - she instead saw forms, she saw the multiplicity of night, she saw depths and expressed them (without the easy expedient of, for instance, "depths").  Her observation underscores the power of seeing things - *SEEING* them - without rules, but with the simplicity of clarity and honesty.  There is no arguing:  she was right.

Her approach to words was learning, then - but learning, as we know, has always been play.  ...  Or play is learning.

I use language with an enormous sense of play.  It is one of my favorite things, to get people to laugh.  Not class-clown laugh - but surprise laugh.  I use words with the same unexpected play as my niece (still does, over a decade later), and delight when they delight someone else as much as they do me.

I am fortunate, in having friends who are willing to indulge in delight - and in words.



In writing Clovis, I refused ploy in favor of play.  Histfic of my period tend for some reason to be little associated with wit - though Victorian, or Elizabethan, or other periods may indulge.  Yet humor is human; there's no authenticity in writing funless Forsooth-ery - nor in planting Weighty Declamation throughout your dialogue.  It's not fair to preclude cleverness, least of all for someone who must have been intelligent.

Blah.  I am so mad at Blogger.  I've completely lost the very good original ending of this post.  I will have to come back and edit this if it is to be saved.  But I am mad enough I insist on being stupid enough to post this shameful, crappy post.  Just to spite BLOGGER.  Which has cruelly betrayed my niece's brilliance.

*Insert outrageous swearing here*