h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Wisps of tea from the land of the lotus eyes - A2388378
Author: dancingBuddha - U238893

Some glimpses of a terminally tangential trip to Sri Lanka i made recently; on experiences (or the lack thereof) of fear

Thank you for posting this dancingBuddha. It was such an excellent lunchtime read - just the break I needed. I love this sort of piece and yours is full of atmosphere and leaves something to think about too.

Dancing is for doing, not viewing.

Back to work now , thanks again. This is gem in my opinion.
Waz

PS love that title.

That is a good piece of writing. And an excellent title.

Just one nit pick...

'It is of the timeless that I wish to speak.

I attended a dance performance with my fellow travellers; they wished to carry away memories of the land they had visited, and I just tagged along, not wishing to dissent. The evening, however, soon proved unexpectedly interesting.'

There's a whole lot of wishing going on there and it reads like unconscious rather than deliberate repetition. I think you could also stand to cut the last sentence (and close up the gap with the paragraph following?). It's 'telling' too much and the point is made very well and more subtly in the narrative. The following paragraph (starting 'Sri Lankan dance is much like...') is perhaps a touch too long, or perhaps it is that it is not as fluid as the surrounding text. I think it could do with a light fillet. OK, so that turned into more than one nit pick. sorry.

I especially like the layered contrasts, the nicely controlled use of long sentences, the sustained awareness that we are looking through someone else's (your) eyes and the brief touches of textural detail. Travel writing so often falls into the trap of over describing and this doesn't. Pictures in words are so much more effectively painted with spare vivid details.

Thanks for a good read.
N

Nadia,

Actually this is a virginal piece - i wrote it for myself, and not it to put it up here, or indeed anywhere. So i didn't subject to any kind of analysis, hence the flaws you noticed.

Actually the "wish fetish" was something i noticed only after you pointed it out. I guess it could be fixed using synonymous phrases (and i will, too).

Regarding the not-so-fluid para on Sri-Lankan dances: it reads like an intellectual description because it IS one - i wanted to give just that little bit of background that would help the reader build suitable imagery, which was so crucial to what what comes next. I really don't know where else in the text i could have taken this digression, so it's here. That's also part of the reason the "evening proved..." sentence is there - i thought it helped provide continuity. But i think it could safely be removed without really affecting the story; but my basic motivation in putting it there was to tell the reader that i wasn't really looking forward to the evening.

Thanks for your compliments - i put this post up only this evening, and i've received two favourable reviews already!

But i'm not sure i really deserve "excellent travel writing" tag, or even want it. From my perspective, this was just a personal experience worthy of expression, and so i did... Perhaps it might have turned out very differently if i was writing it as a travel piece

-- db

Whether you intended it to be or not this is a good piece of travel wtiting. I actually dislike most travel wtiting, too much attenton to the travel bit and not enough to the writing bit. I do think you've captured a sense of place and that alone qualifies this as 'travel writing'. Beyond that the level of observation, attention to detail and the flair with which it is described, is all good and you've got something to say here besides 'this is where I went and this is what I saw'. I think that if you had consciously written it as a piece of 'travel writng' it probably wouldn't have turned out as well. Like your dancers it is the unselfconscious expression that is so captivating.

As for the paragraph giving background info, I agree that is the right place for it (really the only place for it) but it is the only section that reads as being self consciously informative. I don't think you should cut it because it is doing its job, but some minor tweaking of the language would help to make it sit smoothly with the rest of the piece.

N

Hmmm... what makes you so sure i have something else to say besides "there went, that saw"?

*I* know that that which made me see these events as i did is buried deep within me, and in this piece is only glimpsed subliminally, out of the corner of one's eyes, as it were. And even then you would have had to have possessed a similar mountaintop perspective to even suspect the existence of these glimpses. My compadres did not even register anything more than the colours and the acrobatic flourishes... one of them, my manager (who had accused me of not putting enough of the real world into my analyses and conversations) was quite surprised when i told him of all this (much to his chagrin, especially in light of his reprimand ). I'm not passing value judgements here, but i cannot begin to convey to someone who does not understand already, what it felt like to see those ants scurrying about in the fire pit on a gentle amber evening, the heat of the coals scorching my face, and yet drawing me inward. I cannot express why the scene should have mattered, and one who would give nary a second thought to inconsequential ants would completely be missing the point. I cannot even tell you what made me pick up a piece of the coal and hold it in my hand till it began to burn, and why i crouched beside the pit motionless for almost five minutes staring at the ants, till one of my companions came back for me, hankering to go the the next "spot"...

No nadia, my friend, (if i may call you that) i really haven't said what i want to say... perhaps i could venture to state that what i HAVE said has been molded by what i haven't, but that is all...

[ if there was a smiley expressing melancholia i would have used it, but there isn't and i haven't ]

-- db

I think more of it has come across than you think, there's certainly a lot there. 'You' are a strong presence in it, it is all fileterd through the narrative voice and the melancholia is there as well as disaffection and distaste. The voice is significantly marginalised - set apart from the rest of the audience and not just because that is the voice that we are hearing.

It certainly says nore than 'I went I saw'. The links between the narrator, the two dancers and the ants are a delicate but continuous thread. Of the dancing I got a sense of something that was real - authentic - once, but that the authenticity wasn't there in the 'tourist' performance...that the watchers had changed the watched. The glimps of what the dance once was is there in different forms in the figures of the two dancers and then most strongly of all in the ants. The struggle and fear, the 'primitive', disaster and fire...these are powerful symbols and the dance was once about that, dance always has been because it is of the body not of the mind and the body's memory is older than the mind's. There's another layer again in the filter that the narrator puts over that. The searching for oneself reflected and not finding or of finding in unexpected places in bits and pieces, out of the way corners but never all at once. There is identification with a culture that is changing and perhaps doesn't want to. An awareness that the same forces that are changing/have changed that culture are at work on the narrator - on the individual - something lost, something forced...

There is more there that I do not have words for and some of my interpretation will be 'wrong' but I can say with absolute certainty that what you have expresses is more than 'I went I saw'. At the least it is I went, I saw, I felt... Perhaps I read those things in it precisely because they are things I understood already and I cannot speak for what you intended to say only for what I saw in it.

N

What makes you think dance is about the body alone? My dance (in a sense i am dancing here) arises wholly from the interface: the far horizon where the mind fades into the body, or perhaps the other way around... The fun is in not knowing whether it is the body or the mind that brings about the dance... is fear a function of the body, or the mind? fact is, i just do not see this dichotomy, although in a sense i can see what you mean by saying that the "body's memory is older than the mind's"; nevertheless i don't think it is wholly correct.

No, there is no identification with the culture, other than the fact that i grew up with familiar symbols from my own culture. But then many of us change and don't want to...

I am really surprised that you have the perceptiveness to see the "finding in bits and pieces..., but never all at once" - but, as you said, you might have known these things already. Which makes me wonder whether you, too, are doing exactly what you describe me to be doing... - finding crumbs of something that was never lost, but neither found...

Wow. This was vividly entrancing, a soulfull experience to behold.

I would say more, but cannot find appropriate words. How I wish I could post music as a reply. It is only in my music that I can find an appropriate response to what this peice made me feel. Thank you.

Well, thank you for your thanks.

This being wordcraft, i'm going to persist with it: how would your music say anything like this?

-- db

I wouldn't even attempt to describe, in any way, what you had written. All I can do is to describe how it made me feel. In that respect:

Think of a freeform blues being played on a muted trumpet similar to that of Miles Davis sort of combined with the seemingly exotic rock chord progression somewhat reminicant of Jane's Addiction's earlier work backed up by a melodic walking bassline that might have been played by Cliff Burton (of Metallica fame, thinking of 'Pulling Teeth' from the album 'Kill 'Em All', or the bassline from the second half of 'Orion' from the album 'Master Of Puppets'). All at a tempo of about 80 beats/min.

If that makes any sense at all. It would have been easier to play it, words just aren't what I do best. Oh, I forgot to say earlier, the ants choked me up a little. I've often found myself doing just that.

Splendid! Now all that remains is to hear it! But i found the Miles Davis / Cliff Burton combination VERY interesting, some one should try this out sometime...

I thought the Davis/Burton combo would be a natural. Rock -n- Roll did evolve from the blues, after all. I was thinkng of Davis's 'Flaminco Sketches' when I wrote that reply, if it makes it any easier to imagine.

Congratulations! Your piece has been picked from the Alternative Writing Workshop (AWW) by our miners and has been accepted by the editors for inclusion in the h2g2 UnderGuide! It will be featured on h2g2's front page in due course and then be displayed on the shelves of the UnderGuide Archives at A2112490 and the official archives at C1233.

More information and a link to what happens next can be found at the <./>underguide</.> HQ. A helpful friendly Gem Polisher will be dropping by your personal space soon to talk to you about the next stage of the process.

Thank you for contributing to the UnderGuide!

Congrats! It's a well writen peice that deserves a wider audience!

perhaps i'm a bit daft, but i couldn't find the link to what i'm supposed to do next. can anyone enlighten me on this thread itself?

db

There is a link on the <./>underguide</.> page to "What happens next" on A1096544 but it's not that clear, it's in the wrong section really, looking at it again.

You don't need to do anything except watch the messages on your homespace for a call from one of the UnderGuide's Gem Polishers. They look for typos, and look at spelling, grammar etc and ask the authors if they want any changes.

great. sublime waiting all the way. i feel vapourous and lightful.

db