quivering through sun-drunken delight

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Dandelions: thick as goblin arrows in the sky

This entry goes out to all the weed-haters of the world. Ignore the dubious photoshopping around the fringes; or, for fun (or not), spot where the car used to be (dratted things always getting in the way). For best viewing effect, click through, imagine you live in a castle twenty meters this side of the road, pan across field slowly from left to right while noting differential composition of flower heads and clocks, play music of horns, strings, and male chorus tinged with dread and heroism in the dark, and read passage in the voice of Ian McKellen.

* * * * *


A horde of dandelions approaches. Command?
...they are coming.


They have taken the bridge and the second hall. We have barred the gates but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes, drums... drums in the deep. We cannot get out. A shadow lurks in the dark. We can not get out... they are coming.

* * * * *


Naturally when researching this entry I also came across the equivalent passage from the book, which perhaps you can try to play with an Ian McKellen synthesiser in your head, if you can figure out what those diacritcal marks mean.
We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They have taken the Bridge and second hall. Frár and Lóni and Náli fell there... went five days ago... the pool is up to the wall at Westgate. The Watcher in the Water took Óin. We cannot get out. The end comes... drums, drums in the deep... they are coming.

* * * * *


I remember one time that I looked down and saw a dandelion in the grass. It was dead, and it looked awful, an organic crater in the ground. I thought: here's an absolutely useless plant. It gets everywhere, doesn't do anything, looks wretched, leaves a mess behind. But they always keep coming back. And I wondered: what's it for? How did it get here? And I knew the answer: a dandelion is a machine for making dandelions. That's enough.

2 Comments:

At 4:12 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And if they didn't die (the dandelions) we would be up to our chins in white fluff!

Was the picture a stiched composite?

 
At 6:38 PM, Blogger BKF said...

Yeah. Four pictures in the field and a few more to provide background elements. I goofed on the latter -- I didn't realise I needed them until later, at which time the light levels were rather different. So it's really obvious at 100% zoom where those elements were pasted in. Some I could fix a little, like the road -- if you look closely the branches on the pavement in the left half are the same colour as the pavement, an artifact of the fix -- and as for the mess in the lower left, well, at a certain stage one has to think that too much effort is going in to what is roughly a two-line joke... but we'll call it practice. This actually is the second composite I've tried to make, but the first was a little underwhelming, so I've been sitting on it while trying to decide what to do.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home