From the light of a different sun

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Re: From the light of a different sun

Post by sauvin » Wed Oct 18, 2017 9:06 am

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Re: From the light of a different sun

Post by sauvin » Mon Oct 23, 2017 4:24 am

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The girl on the wet, cold, hard ceramic floor is Chloe Grace Moretz' Carrie (2013). This is a screen capture taken just moments after she ran out of the shower out of her mind with terror because she was bleeding in a place she never expected to bleed. All the stuff in red are the things the other girls had pelted her with, mostly "feminine hygiene" products.

This scene's relevance to LTROI/LMI is a rant I don't have the focus for at the moment. Let's just say that Carrie White is learning everything she needs to know about human nature, and she's learning it in school.
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Re: From the light of a different sun

Post by sauvin » Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:04 am

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Re: From the light of a different sun

Post by sauvin » Mon Oct 30, 2017 10:17 am

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You have your Eli; I have mine. Mine comes mostly from the LTROI movie, meaning that (among other things) Eli is for me a girl, and being more than vaguely influenced by Abby isn't helping. Maybe yours comes more from the novel that I remember reading but don't remember well. Furthermore, your Eli fits into your worldview, even if not entirely comfortably, because there's really no other way she can fit in because of the way you were raised, and because of what your life's experiences have taught you. The same is true of me, although I can't honestly say the girl fits into my worldview with anything that even remotely resembles comfort, unless you like your comforts dark and cold.

One thing seems rather apparent after all these years of discussing her and her situation: the girl has more facets than she does observers.

This is one hamhanded rendition of my Eli. The girl in the photo on which this image is based appears to be nine or ten years old, maybe eleven. This is partly because my Eli exists in my head (and my life) more as a metaphor than as a character in a story, and the incomplete body of knowledge I've accumulated over the decades suggests that the liminality we've pondered in the past around some of the facets we perceive can and often does occur over a surprisingly large range of ages, from as young as eight to as old as fourteen or so. What's especially not helpful when considering a very long-lived creature frozen in an eliform stasis is that this range seems to have moved downwards over the centuries, but it's not necessarily true that the creature would have moved with it.

---

She can pop into your life at just about any time of the night, in just about any place. Maybe you're in the back yard busily throwing a nasty beatdown on a misbehaving oak tree with an aluminum bat, or maybe you're sitting on a park bench playing Warcraft. Whatever you're doing, you're doing it alone - and twelve year old boys don't particularly care for being alone.

Maybe, when you first meet, she'll ask what you're doing. Maybe not. Maybe she'll be icily reserved, explaining with apparent hauteur that she can't be your friend, or maybe she'll give a small flirt and a giggle but otherwise say nothing before turning away. You have no way of knowing it yet, but the very fact that you survived is a promising sign, and if she flatly tells you she can't be your friend right out of the blue (well, black), it's because she's considered the possibility. A giggle would mean the same.

She's everywhere there's a lonely twelve year old boy. This means she could drop in on you while you're out ice fishing on a pond near the North Sea, or she might float by while you're bobbing up and down on your back near a beach on the Iberian Peninsula, or she might come sit on a branch near you while you're dropping coconuts from a tree for a while.

She might be six, sixteen or sixty as far as your eyes can see, and she might show up in a sari, a kimono, a hajib or just a thin smear of body paint. Unless she's palling around with somebody relatively assiduous in her care that year, she's as apt to show up at your North Sea fishing hole skyclad as she is in a snowsuit, but it doesn't mean she can't read a few magazines and camouflage herself effectively when she's hunting on particularly dangerous grounds. A girl who's all dolled up in fancy dress and bling and makeup and perfume, isn't necessarily not Eli.

When she first says "hello", "servus", "salut" or "dobry dien", she, too, will be alone. If she's six or sixteen, that'll be your first clue as to who she is - girls don't much care for being alone, either, especially not in the dark away from home.

Maybe she's done this thousands of times without ever returning for a second visit, and maybe a few hundred of those times saw her walking away no longer hungry, but she's sizing you up. Maybe she knows what she's looking for, maybe she doesn't, and maybe she doesn't even know that she is looking for something beyond a porter or a couple of pints.

Say one wrong thing, do one wrong thing, and she'll pop out of your life before she's even properly started popping in. If she shows up as a skyclad twentysomething when you're maybe just a bit older than twelve, maybe you'll pass that first test, and maybe you won't, because if you don't look into her eyes, if you're too busy looking at something else, she'll know that you're as much a slave to your own beast as she is to hers, a beast that loves hot blood, and she's not looking for a beast buddy. Likewise, if you're seriously over twelve, and she shows up looking like she's six but you're still too busy looking at something else to notice what colour her eyes are, she'll know, and then she'll just be gone. If she shows up as a sixtysomething babe (and yes, I promise, clicking around on Google images can yield up some really sweet-lookin' sixtysomethings), and you react to her with that particular species of disgust younger folk often hold for older, she's gone.

What she's looking for is a promise, or maybe even just a sign, that you can accept that she has... um... "flaws". You don't have to share them, and you don't necessarily even have to be able to understand them, but you do have to be able to live with them. If she says she can't be your friend, it's not because you're too weird or repulsive or something, it's because she's afraid you'll think she is.

It doesn't matter if you're only nine yourself, and she's apparently sixty-nine. When the truth comes out, as it eventually must if she sticks around long enough, the smooth, unfinished contours of her single-digit years won't lie by much more than a riven face and a long, cascading waterfall of snow white hair when you discover she's been around since before... well... basically forever.

But if you're that rare, lucky kind of guy who can look into her eyes, you'll know who she is. At some level, you'll know what she is. They'll be complicated, laden with knowledge and experience of whole lifetimes, and they'll sparkle with a hidden amusement most of the time, but you'll see grief in those eyes no matter when or how you look, an unnameable sorrow. You'll see a grim, cold resolve dancing cheek to cheek with a soft, warm glow in those eyes. You'll get lost in those eyes.

She'll move with a calm, easy grace. She could be dressed like cheap preteen purebred Alabama trailer trash slinking around the dark alleys of Baltimore or Marseilles and be no more concerned for her physical safety than if she were a Marine ambling around a high ticket golf club; no lion, tigre or bear is going to disturb her if she decides to take a polar dip in the remotest of forests, and the nastiest of cities are her supermarkets. You might expect that kind of confidence if she looks sixty, but you'll find it refreshing (and maybe just a little odd) if she's sixteen, and it'll broadside you if she's six.

If you're that rare, lucky kind of guy, you won't need anybody to tell you it doesn't matter what colour her skin is, what shape her body is or how old (or young) she looks. These won't be the things you see.

You'll see her.
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Re: From the light of a different sun

Post by JToede » Tue Oct 31, 2017 3:43 am

sauvin wrote: Eli fits into your worldview... This is partly because my Eli exists in my head (and my life) more as a metaphor than as a character in a story...
We all have our own personal view of things, people, places or events. When I am reading, especially if the book really grabs me, I see the characters, the atmosphere, time of day, the places, etc. Then, a movie is made from the book and it sucks, it just doesn't live up to what I picture in my mind. Eli, in this case, varies for each of us. She is the same person, but, she could be completely the polar opposite at the same time. But who is to say who is right and who is wrong? Or is there a definite right or wrong answer? There is nothing wrong with that. Oh well, I think I'm going off into the woods with this train of thoughts. Good night y'all.
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Re: From the light of a different sun

Post by sauvin » Tue Oct 31, 2017 4:46 am

JToede wrote:We all have our own personal view of things, people, places or events. When I am reading, especially if the book really grabs me, I see the characters, the atmosphere, time of day, the places, etc. Then, a movie is made from the book and it sucks, it just doesn't live up to what I picture in my mind. Eli, in this case, varies for each of us. She is the same person, but, she could be completely the polar opposite at the same time. But who is to say who is right and who is wrong? Or is there a definite right or wrong answer? There is nothing wrong with that. Oh well, I think I'm going off into the woods with this train of thoughts. Good night y'all.
Welcome to the deep end of the swimming pool. We're ALL dog-paddling in it. :lol:
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Re: From the light of a different sun

Post by dongregg » Tue Oct 31, 2017 5:17 pm

Sauvin. A brilliant presentation of our many Elis.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Re: From the light of a different sun

Post by sauvin » Sun Nov 05, 2017 10:46 pm

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Re: From the light of a different sun

Post by dongregg » Sun Nov 05, 2017 10:50 pm

The best yet! :lol:
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Re: From the light of a different sun

Post by PeteMork » Mon Nov 06, 2017 1:58 am

Yep! Love it! Insider humor can't be beat. :D
We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain. (Roberto Bolaño)

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