[For a moment she looks impossibly ancient, impossibly other; and then her face cracks into a pained smile and she's only Iris again; the same woman who fell on her arse skating, who swears while she chops onions, who can't be trusted with any recipe more complicated than roast potatoes - not because she can't cook, but because she can't resist experimenting.]
...By accident. I'm angry, Mira, 'cause I love you and I won't 'ave anyone messing you about again. Telling you what to think. Sometimes I'm scared to talk to you in case I dye you Iris-coloured like knickers in the wash. You remind me so much of me and that's dangerous, when you've been left so little of you.
But that's really 'ow we all do it. Absorbing bits and pieces of what's around us. That's why books: all those bits left for the future by other minds than us. We're all of us made up of a mosaic of everyone before us. Me included: I just got to pick and choose what to make meself out of and Mira? So do you. It's the upside of being abandoned and alone.
Harvey's a reader. Get 'is recommendations and all. 'E's a very different thinker than me, but both of us - all of us - we love you without ulterior motives.
Ursula LeGuin. That's my recommendation. Human writer, late 20th to 21st centuries. She 'ad beautiful ideas and she strung 'em together beautifully, but what she wrote about was people - all the infinite variations of 'ow people work off each other.
[private]
[For a moment she looks impossibly ancient, impossibly other; and then her face cracks into a pained smile and she's only Iris again; the same woman who fell on her arse skating, who swears while she chops onions, who can't be trusted with any recipe more complicated than roast potatoes - not because she can't cook, but because she can't resist experimenting.]
...By accident. I'm angry, Mira, 'cause I love you and I won't 'ave anyone messing you about again. Telling you what to think. Sometimes I'm scared to talk to you in case I dye you Iris-coloured like knickers in the wash. You remind me so much of me and that's dangerous, when you've been left so little of you.
But that's really 'ow we all do it. Absorbing bits and pieces of what's around us. That's why books: all those bits left for the future by other minds than us. We're all of us made up of a mosaic of everyone before us. Me included: I just got to pick and choose what to make meself out of and Mira? So do you. It's the upside of being abandoned and alone.
Harvey's a reader. Get 'is recommendations and all. 'E's a very different thinker than me, but both of us - all of us - we love you without ulterior motives.
Ursula LeGuin. That's my recommendation. Human writer, late 20th to 21st centuries. She 'ad beautiful ideas and she strung 'em together beautifully, but what she wrote about was people - all the infinite variations of 'ow people work off each other.