I hate rainy weather.
No, that's not quite true. When it rains in the summer and I don't have to be at work, I love to sit by the window and let the sound of falling rain provide a soothing backdrop for an evening of reading, or to go out into a hard, driving rain and get soaked to the bone. Grey, rainy days like today can, if I'm at leisure, provide a certain relaxing, quiet melancholy that's really quite pleasant once in a while. And there's nothing like snuggling down under the covers and dozing while the rain patters against the window.
But I'm not at leisure. It's morning, and I have to be at work. The rain is making me sleepy, but I can't go back to sleep. We're having a bit of unreasonably cool weather for July, so it's no good to go out and play in it. The extra moisture in the air is causing my hair to tangle and my skin to swell so that none of my clothes seem to fit me quite right. And - as has become usual in the past two months - I'm not working on anything exciting enough to be worth waking up for.
Okay, so far I've had three people complain about my rant about bicycles. Which in and of itself is a little disturbing. These people seem to think that I was insisting that bicycles are entirely useless and stupid. I thought maybe (because I was irritated while I was writing the rant) that I had simply not been coherent enough. But I went back and re-read it, and I think it still says what I was trying to say: That I personally find bicycles terribly uncomfortable to ride for any length of time - which makes biking about as much fun as stubbing my toe - and that I find it somewhat disturbing that the pasttime is so popular. Okay, the tone is pretty grumpy, but that's because I was grumpy when I was writing the entry.
What I don't make clear is why the popularity disturbs me. It's because it puts me in the minority - and unlike most minority opinions, absolutely no one seems willing to believe that my opinion on this subject is just as valid as theirs. Being in the minority doesn't bother me as long as the majority is willing to accept my views. I dislike both seafood and spicy food - but everyone else has foods they don't like, so they shrug and tolerate my pickiness. I prefer cats to dogs, and the only time that bothers me is when people assume I'd prefer a dog if I had space for one. But on the bicycle issue, my opinion is greeted with a disbelieving "How could you possibly not like biking?" attitude. They try to tell me why they like it (with the distinct implication that this is why I should like it) and that annoys me to no end. It's like it's a religion, and that sort of fanatical devotion disturbs me no matter what the devotion is for.
And that's all I'm going to say on the matter.
I stayed up late to finish The Lions of Al-Rassan last night. I remembered from the first time I read the book that there was a duel between the two male characters at the end. I remembered that the description of the fight left doubt as to who won, and that the author played some dirty tricks for a good twenty pages to mislead you about the winner. But for some reason, I also remembered that they had both managed to survive the duel - that one of them had badly crippled the other, but that they both lived. (By the time the duel happens, the characters are actually friends, and both have the reader's sympathies. I cried all the way through the last fifty pages, both times I read the book.) But I had remembered wrong. One of them does kill the other. Why had I remembered them both living? Blind optimism, I suppose. For some reason, that false remembrance made the discovery that much worse when I got to it.
I think that what I like best about the book is that there isn't a bad guy. Everyone is trying to do their absolute best for the people they love. There are people whose ambitions collide; and there are people who, in doing the best they can, only make things worse; and there are people whose ideas of good and bad conflict. But no one is out for destruction simply for the sake of it. No one is evil. Everyone has redeeming features. The abmitious king adores his wife. The religious fanatic is absolutely loyal. The ruthless king did well by his people. I appreciate, occasionally, a world where nothing is black or white, but only the soft greys of a rainy day.
And thus we come full circle.
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