Picture if You Will

I'm having some trouble getting pictures online. The web hosting service I've used for over twenty years now is starting to seem a bit worse for wear. Everything I uploaded before Saturday seems to work fine but, starting Saturday, everything I've uploaded, while appearing to be on the server, will not load in a browser, despite reloading and re-uploading. I suppose there might be better, cheaper services than the one I've paid 18 dollars a month for for all these years. But I have no idea how to move my massive backlog of files, or if another service truly would be better.

I started out using Yahoo small business which then got sold or rebranded to Aabaco which was then sold to Verizon and was then recently sold to something called Turbify. Turbify seems to be the least reliable. I can't even use an FTP programme. When I am able to upload anything properly, I have to do it one file at a time on the Turbify web site.

So I finally had to use the image hosting on my blog sites. I mirror this blog on three sites--Dreamwidth, Live Journal, and Blogger. Live Journal lets me upload full sized photos, I suppose because I have a paid account, and Blogger lets me do it for free, but no joy on Dreamwidth. Ugh, here's something else that's going to gobble up my time, I guess.

Well, here's a sonnet about pirates:

Twitter Sonnet #1673

They left before the sun could stuff the bay.
The morning air awash in rum and sweat.
Abreast, the dozen ships were well away.
A stack of coin at port comprised the bet.
Instructions late at sea were last obtained.
Alone across the placid sea she drew.
Repast denied for months, the men complain.
The lure of corn diverts the hungry crew.
At last ashore, the captain's horde advanced.
With child dreams of Drake's doubloons they armed.
And over hunger, fear, and rotten luck they glance.
But gaze ahead at spoils past the farm.
At morning light, the pirates slashed it down.
Despotic fingers felled the mighty town.

The Blue and Copper Knight

A young man sets off on a quest to get his head cut off in 2021's The Green Knight. It's based on the 14th century poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a poem I really like, so I was excited for this film. Sadly, I very much doubt the filmmakers actually read more than the Wikipedia synopsis because their work bears little resemblance to the source material. Instead, it's an embarrassingly ill-conceived feminist deconstruction of some version of the poem that exists in the filmmakers' imagination featuring that now infamous copper and blue colour correction cinematography.

Except when it's yellow, which the cinematographer seems to have confused for green, a colour you'd think would turn up more often in this film.

Especially since Alicia Vikander, who plays the temptress in the castle, has a long, boring speech about how green symbolises nature taking over things. Of all things I might have imagined the Lady temptress to be, a windbag wasn't one of them. But from the way Gawain listens enthralled, I think she's meant to come off as profound rather than like a half-assed term paper.

Gawain is played by Dev Patel and, in this day and age, we can't expect any explanation for the fact that he and his mother are of Indian decent. But he does look pretty knightly, I must say, and his performance is good. Too bad he's not actually playing a knight because, unlike in the poem, this Gawain hasn't been knighted yet and his quest to meet the Green Knight's challenge is a task he needs to fulfill on the path to knighthood. This version of Gawain pays regular visits to a brothel, because that's the only way these filmmakers can consider it a movie for adults I guess. His favourite prostitute is Essel, also played by Alicia Vikander, a casting choice that doesn't seem to say much except that Vikander's face is the symbol of Gawain's failure to maintain his chastity. Guinevere is played by the markedly less attractive Kate Dickie and there is the not-subtle argument at play that pagans are better because they're sexier and healthier.

Not that Arthur (Sean Harris) or Guinevere are ever called Arthur or Guinevere. The only thing that suggests the Arthurian characters maintain their identities is a brief reference to the sword in the stone.

Erin Kellyman makes an appearance as the ghost of Saint Winifred who asks Gawain to dive to the bottom of a lake in the middle of the night to retrieve her skull. When he asks what she'd give him in exchange, she replies in a righteous tone with a question, "Why would you ever ask me that?" Oh, they'd have skewered the original poem good if the original poem had included a scene remotely resembling this!

The poem is about a test of a knight's integrity and could be interpreted as either a mockery of chivalry or a celebration of it. The film, which adds in a talking fox, a scene where Gawain trips on mushrooms to have visions of giant naked women striding solemnly through the mists, has nothing particular to say except that it thinks women are better than men and nature is better than Christianity (no mention is made of Winifred wanting to be a nun). This shallow set of motives is delivered with overly mannered editing and a score almost invariably at odds with what's being depicted. It would be nice to see someone make a proper movie from the great poem.

Thank Your Local Goblin Grocer

This was an auspicious day to let the juices of goblin fruit run down your chin. To-day was Christina Rossetti's birthday so I decided to read her most famous poem, 1862's Goblin Market, again. Written by a woman whose piety compelled her to reject a fiance because he converted to Catholicism, Goblin Market is nonetheless best known for being intensely, weirdly sexual. In the years since I first read the poem, my exposure to 19th century poetry has broadened considerably and having also read Tennyson and Keats and Arnold I find the poem even more extraordinarily sexual.

Clearer than water flowed that juice;
She never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She sucked and sucked and sucked the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
She sucked until her lips were sore;

The story of two sisters who encounter goblin men selling fruit it describes how one, Laura, gives into temptation and rapturously devours their wares while the other sister, Lizzie, abstains.

When armchair art critics were recently jeering at Pre-Raphaelite paintings as being examples of the dreaded "Male Gaze", obviously Christina Rossetti was left out despite the fact that her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was one of those painters and Goblin Market certainly fit in with the philosophy behind Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics. Arguably the conclusion of the poem is a celebration of lesbian love though whether this was Christina Rossetti's intention isn't clear. Some might say it's obvious but, then, people have been arguing for centuries over whether Milton was of the Devil's party or not.

What if Rossetti really didn't mean anything sexual or to allude to lesbianism?

She cried 'Laura,' up the garden,
'Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me:
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men.'

How should we interpret the necessity of Lizzie's exposure to goblin men in order to attract Laura? Maybe the metaphor isn't so simple after all. It's hard not to see Laura licking Lizzie as anything but sexual but the fantasy context and attending detail adds a piquancy one can't find in the average lesbian porn. It's effective on a more general psychological level in its narrative of teasing and self-denial. The sensual details are terrific, too, from the bizarre, animalistic forms of the goblins to the litany of fruits. However you look at it, it's a wonderful read.

Twitter Sonnet #1304

In boxes flattened screens appear to glow.
Connected tubes present the life to eyes.
A normal stage deserved a seasoned show.
Contestants quickly eat a thousand pies.
A turtle ran from east to north and west.
The timing turned a Shell to Mobil gas.
The lead determines twelve were running best.
A hundred cars were stuck between the pass.
An awkward paint would clash with ev'ry wall.
The cursor chose a phone beside the beat.
Behold as millions crushed the blackened mall.
A final day revealed a field of peat.
The market stays in goblin lights to-day.
The choicest fruit in weirdest ways decayed.