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Nov. 27th, 2024 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenYet more answers!
asakiyume asked: if you yourself were to invent a weird museum, what are some ideas that cross your mind?
I am very interested in--and fond of--ephemera. I like old ticket stubs and postcards and letters. But most of all I like emphemeral ephemera, things that last less time than any of those things. I would like a Museum of Lists. Did the Apollo 11 astronauts make to-do lists in space? Did Napoleon have anything on his before "TAKE VIENNA"? Was there a daily checklist at Checkpoint Charlie? Were there prisoner lists at Ahmednagar Fort when Nehru was there?
...etc. I feel in all seriousness a museum of to-do lists, shopping lists, checklists, could have plenty to teach us about history, and maybe life, too; I don't know much about how they make shopping lists in Svalbard or the Amazon, but I do know they make them. There seems something very human about the whole concept.
china_shop asked: what would your ideal living-room harem look like? Is your living room big enough to encompass it?
Andchestnut_pod asked: in what primary ways are organizing a living-room harem and a notable speculative fiction collection the same, and in which ways are they most different?
I think I will answer these both at once! china, my living room is very large by north London standards, which means miniscule by anyone else's. It contains an L-shaped grey Ikea sofa, a matching armchair and ottoman, four large bookcases, four portable and two large medical grade oxygen canisters, a corner table with three red hurricane lamps, and a table next to the balcony door with a bunch of flowers that a girl I went on a date with last week gave me. If I had brought that girl home with me, it would have been ok, but more than one would have been troublesome. You could have rearranged the furniture I suppose.
Unfortunately, I love sex but not more than those three hurricane lampes and the books and space for flowers.
So I suspect I am stuck. There is an American girl who I hang out with occasionally, who looked around the living room the other night and made me realise I hadn't seen it through someone else's eyes in quite a while. That's the drawback of a living room harem. Scrutiny of your decorating choices. And your books.
chestnut_pod, I am going to be a bit of a wanker and give you a brief excerpt from a story that has not yet seen the light of day.
Nanni bustles forwards with enthusiastic warmth. Half-past ninety and in space for the first time, Eden thinks with pleasure, and taking it all in her small but determined stride.
“So you are Eden’s darogha,” Nanni says to Quarren, then clicks her tongue in annoyance when nobody knows what that word means. “A zenana must be run by a woman, yes?” she says impatiently, waving her hands around. “For an emperor’s zenana, with a thousand women, that woman is a darogha. An empire’s administrator.”
“Oh,” Quarren says, obviously flattened by this, and by Eden’s entire family. “I see. It’s good to meet you.”
“You too, beti,” Nanni says, kissing her on the cheek.
"Zenana" usually means the women's half of a traditional Muslim household, where women may live in seclusion from men. But here, you could translate it as "harem" - the emperor in question is the Mughal emperor Akbar, and the women of his court, his concubines and wives and courtesans, would have lived together in essentially a little walled town of their own within the capital. What I find fascinating about this is just what Nanni is noting here - an emperor's darogha, the woman who was the administrator of the zenana (which was, as above, the emperor's harem), was one of the most powerful women in Akbar's court and possibly in the empire. These would have been high-born women, because they would need to be literate and numerate and able to meet many people on their own terms, but they weren't royalty, and they weren't separate. They were doing this out of the emperor's zenana, out of his harem; they lived among the other women and were part of that community. And yet: by modern standards, they might be CEO of a large organisation or permanent secretary to a government department. They held very significant civil administrative power, complete with spreadsheets and staff and complex finances and strategy.
So there are lots of ways in which organising a harem and putting together a notable short story collection are different, but one way in which they're the same is how sometimes women's traditions of scholarship, art and service of others are unseen, so it feels like you do a thing that hasn't often been done by people like you, and sometimes you're right about that, but sometimes it's just that no one ever told you about it.
asakiyume asked: if you yourself were to invent a weird museum, what are some ideas that cross your mind?I am very interested in--and fond of--ephemera. I like old ticket stubs and postcards and letters. But most of all I like emphemeral ephemera, things that last less time than any of those things. I would like a Museum of Lists. Did the Apollo 11 astronauts make to-do lists in space? Did Napoleon have anything on his before "TAKE VIENNA"? Was there a daily checklist at Checkpoint Charlie? Were there prisoner lists at Ahmednagar Fort when Nehru was there?
...etc. I feel in all seriousness a museum of to-do lists, shopping lists, checklists, could have plenty to teach us about history, and maybe life, too; I don't know much about how they make shopping lists in Svalbard or the Amazon, but I do know they make them. There seems something very human about the whole concept.
china_shop asked: what would your ideal living-room harem look like? Is your living room big enough to encompass it?And
chestnut_pod asked: in what primary ways are organizing a living-room harem and a notable speculative fiction collection the same, and in which ways are they most different?I think I will answer these both at once! china, my living room is very large by north London standards, which means miniscule by anyone else's. It contains an L-shaped grey Ikea sofa, a matching armchair and ottoman, four large bookcases, four portable and two large medical grade oxygen canisters, a corner table with three red hurricane lamps, and a table next to the balcony door with a bunch of flowers that a girl I went on a date with last week gave me. If I had brought that girl home with me, it would have been ok, but more than one would have been troublesome. You could have rearranged the furniture I suppose.
Unfortunately, I love sex but not more than those three hurricane lampes and the books and space for flowers.
So I suspect I am stuck. There is an American girl who I hang out with occasionally, who looked around the living room the other night and made me realise I hadn't seen it through someone else's eyes in quite a while. That's the drawback of a living room harem. Scrutiny of your decorating choices. And your books.
chestnut_pod, I am going to be a bit of a wanker and give you a brief excerpt from a story that has not yet seen the light of day.
Nanni bustles forwards with enthusiastic warmth. Half-past ninety and in space for the first time, Eden thinks with pleasure, and taking it all in her small but determined stride.
“So you are Eden’s darogha,” Nanni says to Quarren, then clicks her tongue in annoyance when nobody knows what that word means. “A zenana must be run by a woman, yes?” she says impatiently, waving her hands around. “For an emperor’s zenana, with a thousand women, that woman is a darogha. An empire’s administrator.”
“Oh,” Quarren says, obviously flattened by this, and by Eden’s entire family. “I see. It’s good to meet you.”
“You too, beti,” Nanni says, kissing her on the cheek.
"Zenana" usually means the women's half of a traditional Muslim household, where women may live in seclusion from men. But here, you could translate it as "harem" - the emperor in question is the Mughal emperor Akbar, and the women of his court, his concubines and wives and courtesans, would have lived together in essentially a little walled town of their own within the capital. What I find fascinating about this is just what Nanni is noting here - an emperor's darogha, the woman who was the administrator of the zenana (which was, as above, the emperor's harem), was one of the most powerful women in Akbar's court and possibly in the empire. These would have been high-born women, because they would need to be literate and numerate and able to meet many people on their own terms, but they weren't royalty, and they weren't separate. They were doing this out of the emperor's zenana, out of his harem; they lived among the other women and were part of that community. And yet: by modern standards, they might be CEO of a large organisation or permanent secretary to a government department. They held very significant civil administrative power, complete with spreadsheets and staff and complex finances and strategy.
So there are lots of ways in which organising a harem and putting together a notable short story collection are different, but one way in which they're the same is how sometimes women's traditions of scholarship, art and service of others are unseen, so it feels like you do a thing that hasn't often been done by people like you, and sometimes you're right about that, but sometimes it's just that no one ever told you about it.
no subject
on 2024-11-28 09:55 am (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-28 02:20 pm (UTC)I have a similar reaction to the songbird aviary at the bird rehab center. Most people come to see the hawks and eagles, but they will rehabilitate any bird someone brings in, so sometimes there's like, a song sparrow. We have millions of song sparrows that are all alike to our eyes, but this one was painstakingly nursed back to health and displayed in an aviary and now everyone is admiring it. It has no idea what is going on or why the humans have decided it is The Most Special Song Sparrow!
no subject
on 2024-11-28 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-29 10:14 pm (UTC)And I love your last paragraph in this post. one way in which they're the same is how sometimes women's traditions of scholarship, art and service of others are unseen, so it feels like you do a thing that hasn't often been done by people like you, and sometimes you're right about that, but sometimes it's just that no one ever told you about it. --Nodding. Yes indeed; I can see this.
no subject
on 2024-12-01 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-12-04 01:28 am (UTC)