{"id":20128,"date":"2013-05-19T22:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T04:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=20128"},"modified":"2016-05-09T15:26:02","modified_gmt":"2016-05-09T21:26:02","slug":"root-and-branch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=20128","title":{"rendered":"Root and Branch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beltane \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Early Growth Moon<\/p>\n

Water and heat. \u00a0Sun and soil. \u00a0Roots, stalks and leaves. \u00a0There you have it. \u00a0And we’ve got \"\"<\/a>it this week. \u00a0Rain, rain, rain. \u00a0Then some heat. \u00a0Seeds germinating, bursting up, ready to transubstantiate. \u00a0All for the great cycle of life, churning, moving, flowing, surging. \u00a0I can feel it, smell it at this time of year. \u00a0And I love it.<\/p>\n

Just finished Dan Brown’s Inferno. \u00a0If you read the NYT review, you will discover that Dan has a mundane talent for words. \u00a0And that’s true. \u00a0The reviews I read didn’t add, but they should, that he throws in potted art history and architectural criticism, not to mention some odd rant on transhumanism. \u00a0Yet, did you notice, I finished it. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Well, reading like a writer, this guy knows how to plot. \u00a0He can make you wonder what’s coming next.<\/p>\n

He pulls off one big twist in this novel and it’s a dandy, but it feels very contrived even though he sucked me in completely with it. \u00a0That’s sort of the thing he’s got going, you can see the holes in his works, where I wondered were the editors who could have easily fixed much of this, but you pass them by to find out what happens next. \u00a0That’s story telling and it’s the true game which every writer plays.<\/p>\n

(Lucifer, trapped in the 9th circle. Canto 34, lines 20\u201321 \u00a0Gustave Dore)<\/p>\n

Hey, listen! \u00a0Have I got something to tell you. \u00a0Clumsy sentences, wooden metaphors, filler pages, yes, they matter, but in the end not as much if you keep me interested.<\/p>\n

coda next morning: \u00a0I will buy and read your book if you can entertain me. \u00a0Whether I remember it or learn from it and, most important, whether I will return to it, however, depends on those skills Dan Brown seems to shunt aside as unnecessary. \u00a0No, I won’t be re-reading any of his work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beltane \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Early Growth Moon Water and heat. \u00a0Sun and soil. \u00a0Roots, stalks and leaves. \u00a0There you have it. \u00a0And we’ve … Continue reading Root and Branch<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,184,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-garden","category-literature","category-weather-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20128"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39218,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20128\/revisions\/39218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}