jhetley: (Default)
jhetley ([personal profile] jhetley) wrote2007-10-10 09:52 am

Again gray

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. 

[identity profile] quilzas.livejournal.com 2007-10-10 02:03 pm (UTC)(link)
*perks and sits up pretty*

Ooooos

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

[identity profile] wcg.livejournal.com 2007-10-10 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I'd like one of those kitchen knives.

[identity profile] jhetley.livejournal.com 2007-10-10 03:50 pm (UTC)(link)
You might prefer his sword-cane.

[identity profile] wcg.livejournal.com 2007-10-10 03:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooohhh... yes, I suspect I would.

[identity profile] sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com 2007-10-10 04:28 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] jhetley.livejournal.com 2007-10-10 04:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, this guy's not Japanese. In fact, we aren't quite sure _what_ he is. But he talks to steel.

[identity profile] sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com 2007-10-10 04:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Then I'm going to have to get you this book.

[identity profile] quilzas.livejournal.com 2007-10-10 05:54 pm (UTC)(link)
*perks* Per chance would you be willing to share the title?

[identity profile] sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com 2007-10-10 08:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Absitively positilutely. Let me get it from home.

[identity profile] quilzas.livejournal.com 2007-10-10 09:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Awesome.

[identity profile] starcat-jewel.livejournal.com 2007-10-11 12:54 am (UTC)(link)
I wonder too. What does happen when science-magic meets fantasy-magic?

[identity profile] jhetley.livejournal.com 2007-10-11 01:12 am (UTC)(link)
He doesn't try the experiment. This time.

[identity profile] quilzas.livejournal.com 2007-10-11 01:40 am (UTC)(link)
*chuckles* A question I find myself rolling around in recent times.

[identity profile] sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com 2007-10-11 04:00 pm (UTC)(link)
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.)