Too Much Water

Julia says the donkey house is full of sewage. I think it's just rainwater and silt, but I can't be sure. Either way our drainage system isn't coping with what's being thrown at it right now.

I wish I understood drainage systems. I also wish I knew quite what ours consisted of. Do we have soakaways? I think we do. Are the septic tank and the drains interconnected? No idea.

I went online, One of the sites I visited said, "There is one thing certain about a septic tank soakaway- IT IS DOOMED TO FAIL,"

Shit.

Is the bogginess of the lower field a symptom of septic tank failure? Could well be.

But at least the area of worst flooding is at a distance from the house.

Kirstie arrived late this morning; she said she was having to negotiate huge puddles. Anya says, cheerfully, that there's snow on the way. 

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh was a king of Sumer. There are indications that he may have been a real person. His epic is preserved in a Babylonian version that is approximately (very approximately) 500 years younger than Sumerian texts like The Descent of Inanna.

They call it the first epic. I think it's the first novel.

It's a bildungsroman. Cocky young man has adventures, suffers loss, goes on an existential quest and comes to a muted, less exalted view of his place in the scheme of things. It's not unlike Great Expectations.

The most intriguing character is Enkidu- the wild man- first in a long, long line of noble savages and unspoiled innocents. He acts as Gilgamesh's conscience and side-kick.  Gilgamesh sees nothing wrong in exercising his "droit de seigneur" over the young brides of Uruk, but Enkidu's sense of natural justice is outraged.

I wasn't bored.

The text is missing huge chunks- where clay tablets have been broken and abraded- but there's enough of it (about 80% of the presumed whole) for the story to be clear. The good news is that new bits of it are continually turning up.

Black Star

You don't have to be the sex on your birth certificate or the nationality on your passport or the person you were last week.

That's the legacy of David Bowie. He also wrote some bitching toonz.

He was a portent. He belongs with Byron and Wilde- artists whose most enduring creation is a persona.

Because of him we're all shapeshifters now. He has impressed us with the knowledge of our own fluidity.

He ran through many lifetimes in the time it takes most of us to manage one. In the end, with his body breaking down, he danced and sang his own dying. He'd done it before. Into the wardrobe goes one twitching marionette, then- brief pause- out pops another.

Thank you for amazing us, David. Don't be a stranger.

Come back soon.