Vision Quests
Sep. 8th, 2025 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraThe real-life Daria texted yesterday: You are Grazia and _______ is Flavia?
And you’re Daria, and ____ is Mimi, I texted back. First chapter’s finished and I’m halfway through the second.
Daria: OMG! Send it! I’m sorry I haven’t written, I was sure I had answered your last message, giving you my blessing, as long as Daria is beautiful and brilliant!
In real life, as on the page, Daria is beautiful & brilliant.
###
The real-life Daria is in Switzerland. This was an adventure that Brian, Daria, & the real-life Flavia were all going to go on together; after Brian died, Flavia backed out. So, Daria conscripted her friend Carlos.
On our tromp around the Ukrainian summer camp, Daria had told me all about her friend Carlos. He's an artist; every other word out of his mouth was how much he didn't want to sleep with her.
"You do realize that's a strategy to get you to make the first moves, right?" I said.
"Oh, no, no, no, no. Nothing like that. It removes the pressure, you know? We're friends."
###
Daria: On the 4th I arrived in Paris with Carlos. We were going to walk around a mountain in Switzerland called the Bernina. Brian planned it and I wanted to still do it. But a couple of days later, at the base of a snowy peak, after a couple of days in his company and sleeping in the same room, I decided I couldn’t go through with it with him. He was too controlling. My tolerance for that has gone way down. I am alone now, at a lovely hotel in Maloja Pass, and will cross into Italy tomorrow. 9 miles.
Me: I am so IMPRESSED that you have continued on with the adventure.
Daria: Brian would have been so proud of me for doing this alone. I cry a bunch of times every day and my contact lenses get all dirty. Can’t cry tomorrow! 😬
Vision quest alert!
She sent me many heartstoppingly beautiful photos with the note, Mahler and Nietzsche loved walking around here.
Other than that, I played around with the Work in Progress & watched Black Chicken interacting with her new posse.
We've been keeping the coop door open, but the two adolescent chickens don't seem to want to leave.
And the two chicks are so young that they need to be segregated:
Black Chicken leaves the coop, but she doesn't range far!
She is quite obviously thrilled at the prospect of being Boss of her very own crew & can hardly wait to establish a pecking order.
###
In WiP news: For simplicity in continuity, I've transposed all Brian's & my tromps through the decaying landscapes of Brooklyn into tromps through the decaying landscapes of Kingston. The problem with this is that I don't actually know the decaying landscapes of Kingston, and may need to take a research jaunt later this week.
I'm a bit ambivalent here: Readers don't actually tend to read landscape descriptions. Landscape descriptions are the part of the book most readers skip.
But the whole "economic geography" motif is so essential to this particular story, that I feel I have to give it attention.
And you’re Daria, and ____ is Mimi, I texted back. First chapter’s finished and I’m halfway through the second.
Daria: OMG! Send it! I’m sorry I haven’t written, I was sure I had answered your last message, giving you my blessing, as long as Daria is beautiful and brilliant!
In real life, as on the page, Daria is beautiful & brilliant.
###
The real-life Daria is in Switzerland. This was an adventure that Brian, Daria, & the real-life Flavia were all going to go on together; after Brian died, Flavia backed out. So, Daria conscripted her friend Carlos.
On our tromp around the Ukrainian summer camp, Daria had told me all about her friend Carlos. He's an artist; every other word out of his mouth was how much he didn't want to sleep with her.
"You do realize that's a strategy to get you to make the first moves, right?" I said.
"Oh, no, no, no, no. Nothing like that. It removes the pressure, you know? We're friends."
###
Daria: On the 4th I arrived in Paris with Carlos. We were going to walk around a mountain in Switzerland called the Bernina. Brian planned it and I wanted to still do it. But a couple of days later, at the base of a snowy peak, after a couple of days in his company and sleeping in the same room, I decided I couldn’t go through with it with him. He was too controlling. My tolerance for that has gone way down. I am alone now, at a lovely hotel in Maloja Pass, and will cross into Italy tomorrow. 9 miles.
Me: I am so IMPRESSED that you have continued on with the adventure.
Daria: Brian would have been so proud of me for doing this alone. I cry a bunch of times every day and my contact lenses get all dirty. Can’t cry tomorrow! 😬
Vision quest alert!
She sent me many heartstoppingly beautiful photos with the note, Mahler and Nietzsche loved walking around here.
Other than that, I played around with the Work in Progress & watched Black Chicken interacting with her new posse.
We've been keeping the coop door open, but the two adolescent chickens don't seem to want to leave.
And the two chicks are so young that they need to be segregated:
Black Chicken leaves the coop, but she doesn't range far!
She is quite obviously thrilled at the prospect of being Boss of her very own crew & can hardly wait to establish a pecking order.
###
In WiP news: For simplicity in continuity, I've transposed all Brian's & my tromps through the decaying landscapes of Brooklyn into tromps through the decaying landscapes of Kingston. The problem with this is that I don't actually know the decaying landscapes of Kingston, and may need to take a research jaunt later this week.
I'm a bit ambivalent here: Readers don't actually tend to read landscape descriptions. Landscape descriptions are the part of the book most readers skip.
But the whole "economic geography" motif is so essential to this particular story, that I feel I have to give it attention.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 03:16 pm (UTC)I love landscape descriptions. It's important for me that the landscape (or cityscape) is one of the characters in the book. But I'm probably more landscape-orientated than most readers. Perils of growing up in Thomas Hardy country.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 03:24 pm (UTC)But honestly, I do think most readers skim right over them.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 08:21 pm (UTC)Or they read Tolkien and weep because they don't know what he's describing. He's very much 'mountains- IYKYK' and a plains person is totally lost.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-09 02:07 pm (UTC)I do like landscape descriptions. It's nice to feel where the characters are at, not that you're just observing them in some bright white room. I think there's a skill to weaving that into the plot in a natural way and not having it slow things down like, "and now we're gonna talk about the scenery for several paragraphs." Like, having the characters interact naturally with the world around them, kinda thing. "He gazed across the clear blue sky at the buzzards circling overhead and said, 'blah blah blah'..."
no subject
Date: 2025-09-09 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-10 09:03 pm (UTC)I watched a Youtube thing by Alain de Botton about Nietzsche back when I was working in the jail, and yeah, he did love those mountains!
People may skip landscape descriptions, but if they know a place, they're avid for a detail that a writer has noticed--so go for it! Take a research trip.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-11 01:41 pm (UTC)