your randomness of the day

[lirazel]

Y'all, I have so many problems with Catholic theology and the institution of the Catholic church, but monks and nuns are consistently the best (like, seriously, if I was Catholic, I think I would make such a great nun).

Oh, My Hand: Complaints Medieval Monks Scribbled in the Margins of Illuminated Manuscripts

New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.

[You don't need to, really. A dull pencil is the worst.]

I am very cold.

That's a hard page and a weary work to write it.

Let the reader's voice honor the writer's pen.

[which I choose to read as: APPRECIATE ME, DAMMIT. I PUT A LOT OF WORK INTO THIS.

This page has not been written very slowly.

[translation: forgive me my typos. Either that or it's sarcastic]

The parchment is hairy.

[Gross.]

The ink is thin.

Thank God, it will soon be dark.

Oh, my hand.

[I feel you, bro.]

Now I've written the whole thing: for Christ's sake, get me a drink.

St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.

[I will be using that phrase ALL THE TIME.]

While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun I finished by candlelight.

[Frankly, that sounds like poetry.]

Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.

As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.

This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, ‘The hand that wrote it is no more.’

And upupa_epops, if you would like to talk about LM Montgomery in the comments, I would approve of that most heartily.

Comments

[upupa-epops.livejournal.com]

OMG, you too? And I spent years upon years convinced that it was just me, and everyone else was annoyed by Walter!

[pocochina.livejournal.com]

aw, I loved him. In hindsight I wonder how much that was sympathy for the constant BE A FUCKING MAN bullshit he must have been subject to. I haven't read the books in a really long time, certainly not since before I'd have been able to articulate that. But it'd be interesting.

I didn't realize people didn't like him! Maybe I didn't discuss the books with people as a kid?

[upupa-epops.livejournal.com]

In hindsight I wonder how much that was sympathy for the constant BE A FUCKING MAN bullshit he must have been subject to.

But that's exactly why people don't like Walter! Because he was "such a sissy". I just liked him because he was a bookworm, it's an easy way to my heart ;). I was too young to care about him not being "manly" enough ;). From what I talked to people, they mostly loved Jem and looked down on Walter.

[pocochina.livejournal.com]

FOR SHAME.

(I remember really liking Jem, too, but WHAT EVEN.)

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Didn't someone send him a white feather? My heart bled!

But he wrote the only important Canadian poem of the war! So THERE, people who were mean to him!

I really identified with his sensitivity a lot--he loved beauty so much and hated ugliness and I just really connected with that.

[pocochina.livejournal.com]

I really identified with his sensitivity a lot--he loved beauty so much and hated ugliness and I just really connected with that.

I did too. He was this super-serious little introvert; I think I responded to him in a similar way as I did to Emily Starr.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

EXACTLY.