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Tired feet now
Jul. 18th, 2025 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queen_ypolitaFrom there I travelled by a different tram to the city centre, followed by lunch, some browsing in shops and aimless walking. It took me a while to understand parts of the Binnenhof were harder to navigate than usual with the amount of building work going on. Mauritshuis houses the old masters, including the Girl with a Pearl Earring. Almost everything in the shop featured it, too. Disappointly, there was no temp exhibition, so I didn't feel I got very much out of Mauritshaus. But by then my feet were also rather tired, so I'm not sure how much I'd have given to an exhibition if there was one.
In the Netherlands
Jul. 17th, 2025 08:34 pmqueen_ypolitaAfter checking into my hotel I took a tram down to Schenevening to walk on the beach front for a while, before taking the tram back to the city centre. Tomorrow, my plan is to look at art.
UPDATE: Tempestuous Tours + news
Jul. 16th, 2025 05:33 pmduskpetersonBLOG FICTION
Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket. ¶ Latest installments:
- The Royal Sanctuary: Historical background.
- The Royal Sanctuary: Jackalfire Grove.
- The Royal Sanctuary: The corridor.
- The Royal Sanctuary: The altar.
NEWS
About a millisecond before I was about to release my next ebook, a medical crisis occurred in my family (though not to me or my companion). It's the sort of crisis that involves dozens of members of a support team, professional and nonprofessional. I'm one of the two people coordinating all that. I'll continue posting blog fiction here whenever I can, but expect my presence here to be light for a while.
Wednesday reading
Jul. 16th, 2025 05:45 pmqueen_ypolitaAristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which was a sweet quick read, although towards the end it seemed to resolve repression and denial very easily.
Silchester Revealed: The Iron Age and Roman Town of Calleva by Professor Michael Fulford, which I bought when the museum was doing the lecture series in the spring and which covered the same current understanding of the town development based on the excavations since the 1970s in a slightly different format from the lectures.
A Heart So White (Corazón tan blanco) by Javier Marías in Margaret Jull Costa's English translation, about family secrets and secrets in relationships.
Currently reading
A Dangerous Kingdom of Love by Neil Blackmore, Seeing (Ensaio sobre a Lucidez) by José Saramago, in Margaret Jull Costa's English translation, and Crypt by Alice Roberts.
Reading next
No idea.
FIC: The Royal Sanctuary: The altar (Tempestuous Tours)
Jul. 10th, 2025 03:39 pmduskpetersonThere is much to look at in the sanctuary, but let us start with the altar. It recreates the altar where drugged captives were once placed before undergoing the Rite of Death, which represented their entry into a Living Death. It was at this stage that new slaves had iron masks locked securely onto their heads, which could not be removed except in the unlikely event that they survived long enough to be freed.
Here on the altar, if you wish, you may place a piece of the jackalfire tree, representing your wish that the evils of the past may be transformed by all of us in the present, bringing about rebirth.
[Translator's note: Yet again, Death Mask is the place to learn more about such matters.]
