Again gray

[jhetley]

Another morning of gloom and depression, without the actual rain that would waken mushrooms for Wife's scheduled mushroom program out at the nature center.  That one looks like a washout, if you'll forgive the metaphor at cross-purposes...

And, in honor of last night's PBS Nova program on the samurai sword, a bit from my enigmatic smith in POWERS:

    His kitchen knives -- nickel-iron born from a meteor's corpse, to give each blade the flaming magic of steel pulled from heaven to earth, worked and folded and folded again at the forge, carbon infiltrating the grain of the metal from a reducing fire, thoughts and words of making until the steel took shape and meaning from his hammer, a shape and meaning that could kill a god with the soul he'd forged into its heart.  The blades could slice a tomato paper-thin as well, or bone a slaughtered cow, and he only needed to sharpen them once a decade.  He wondered what would happen if he leaned across the table and drove this knife into the body of the demon. 

Comments

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

*perks and sits up pretty*

Ooooos

Seems poeticlly descriptive. But maybe that's the morning gloom mood.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I'd like one of those kitchen knives.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

You might prefer his sword-cane.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Ooohhh... yes, I suspect I would.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

If you need additional references on Japanese swordmaking, please let me know. I recently came across a wonderful book on the swordsmiths of World War II and how they pretty much had to relearn all of the old smithing techniques of their ancestors from scratch.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Well, this guy's not Japanese. In fact, we aren't quite sure _what_ he is. But he talks to steel.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Then I'm going to have to get you this book.

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

*perks* Per chance would you be willing to share the title?

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Absitively positilutely. Let me get it from home.

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

Awesome.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

The book is The Yasukuni Swords: Rare Weapons of Japan 1933-1945 (http://www.amazon.com/Yasukuni-Swords-Weapons-Japan-1933-1945/dp/4770027540) by Tom Kishida (Kodansha International, 2004, ISBN 4-7700-2754-0). (Mr. Hetley, for reference, you might want to check out some of the other books in the "Customers Who Bought This Book Also Bought" listing. As it is, I think that I'm going to have to sell a lot of plants to afford all of the books on swordsmithing I want to get.)

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I wonder too. What does happen when science-magic meets fantasy-magic?

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

He doesn't try the experiment. This time.

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* A question I find myself rolling around in recent times.