Birthday

[altariel]

Thank you all for the birthday greetings! I had a lovely day. I went to see Peter Pan in the end (no, it didn't win the poll, but I had booked the ticket before RotK had some last minute votes and edged ahead). I thought it had some rough bits, but I did enjoy it, and it's sent me back to the book.

Oh, and despite taking yesterday off, I have somehow managed to inch ahead a day on this week's work, which leaves me free on Friday to go and see Cold Mountain.

Comments

Re: ;-)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Hey, I knew this! I read the book - which I thought was extremely good. But the double whammy of Renee Zellweger and also my suspicion of Kidman and Law's accents has made me delay seeing it.

Re: ;-)

[communicator.livejournal.com]

And reading Cold Mountain today I found a quote from the Tao Te Ching: 'folks would choose to stay home... some might live many happy years hearing the bay of a distant neighbour's dog and yet never venture out from their own fields to (investigate)' (p234) This is a quote from chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching. Here is Ursula Le Guin's translation. The next country might be so close that the people could hear cocks crowing and dogs barking there, but they would grow old and die without having been there.' If you compare the rest of Ruby's thoughts on this page with the Le Guin translation you will see a lot of other similarities.

That chapter of the Tao Te Ching is the inspiration for Ursula Le Guin's book 'Always Coming Home'.

Blimey. Hang on. 'Always coming home' could be an alternative title for 'Cold Mountain', and both are about a person walking home across America in time of war.

Tao is Chinese for 'Way' or 'Journey'. The Odyssey is obviously also about the Journey.

I think Charles Frazier must have been partially influenced by the Le Guin book, and slyly dropped the Tao quote in to tip off the attentive reader.

Re: ;-)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Brilliant - thanks for this. I *must* read her translation of the Tao Te Ching (and 'Always Coming Home', for that matter).

[ex-seasalt15.livejournal.com]

It´s fortunate, then, that here we are going to get the dubbed version. Joy.
"Death must be an awfully big adventure".

[altariel.livejournal.com]

"An Awfully Big Adventure" - another excellent film, with a superb performance from the vastly under-estimated Hugh Grant.