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Congratulations ladyhwin! Your second story gave me goosebumps every time I read it... It was absolutely beautiful. |
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Awww... thanks chelydra!! What a nice surprise to come home from school to... I'm honored! Though... I really did think that if I won, it would have been from my first story... it was the better of the two in my opinion... |
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Something about the winning story seemed awfully familiar, and eventually I realized that just an hour or two earlier I had opened at random a book about Japan's troubles, and had seen a description of Japan's approach to art, music, drama, technology, war and everything else that follows exactly the pattern of Erisa's piano recital (the first part of it) —— and the author then says he really wishes Japan could approach things just like Erisa approaches things at the end of the story. Nuts, after 20 minutes search I can't find the page I saw... anyway, the author is Alex Kerr and his fine book is called "Dogs and Demons, the Fall of Modern Japan"... the idea is that everything Japan does magnificently (almost everything they put their minds to) eventually goes haywire, because the tradition is to keep accelerating and pouring in more and more energy until finally there can be no end but catastrophe and collapse. I wish I could find that page, because it really was uncanny how well it fit... Anyway, I guess that's it for me. Many thanks to y'all — you did great — and may Ladyhwin's glorious return herald a new golden age for ThinkWrite... |
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well, okay... the only one that MIGHT be coming still is a third from ladyhwin, but that won't affect the winner. |
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A minute before midnight GMT... seems as good as any time to wrap things up here, since there don't seem to be a lot of pleading wheedling messages asking for another hour to finish the masterpiece begun a week ago... If I were more wide-awake I would lovely, maybe even perceptive, things to say about all the contributions... some have been growing on me since first read... marg and Qsilv as always are welcome presences... marg would get the prize (as usual) for skating on thin ice without ever quite falling in (despite her best efforts) — and that's just for her comments; she also gets something (I'm not sure what) for her little contributions, which I liked a lot... Q's elegant arc lends class and grace to the look of ThinkWrite 99, and "heralding the breakdown" is a phrase that sounds like it's lifted from some classic poem or speech, which suggests that what it IS lifted from (when I quote it I mean)(not quite as unforgettably and viscerally bizarre as "slouching towards Babylon" but going in that generally direction)... |
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