asakiyume | question, and what I'm up to

The ninja girl has a question about Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest series. I read some books in the series and enjoyed them, but I have a notoriously bad memory, and I didn't read all of them, so I'm putting the question to you.

The magician character [quick Google search... ], Mendanbar: the ninja girl remembers an occasion where he (or possibly someone else??) creates a duplicate person/doppelgänger of someone, using magic. Does anyone remember such a thing? And if so, can you situate that plot piece? Also, what was the double called?

What I'm up to is I found a way to volunteer my skills (such as they are) for Ukraine. I don't know that it makes much difference at all, except for this: I get to work directly with people in Ukraine, and I feel like having sympathetic strangers step up and be a presence is something-not-nothing. If I was about to die and someone sat down next to me and smiled, that would be better than facing it alone. I do the volunteering in the morning hours, Kyiv time, which is the wee hours, my time, so I'm on a kind of sleep-deprivation high.

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In the chronological book 4, Daystar discovers that former High Wizard Zemenar had created a simulacrum of Mendenbar. It gets destroyed in the castle fight, and Daystar goes on to actually find the real Mendenbar.

There may be another example but that’s what comes to mind.

This is probably what she remembers! Thank you so much!

In the chronological book 4

Which I read first, in its original stand-alone publication, and was really confused by the revised reissue ten years later.

I don't know that it makes much difference at all, except for this: I get to work directly with people in Ukraine, and I feel like having sympathetic strangers step up and be a presence is something-not-nothing.

I think that matters a LOT.

Yeah, I'm feeling more and more like it is too.

Presence is powerful. Wish I could figure out how to supply some.

This is part of why this feels like such dumb luck. If it wasn't for my neighbor saying, "Hey, there's this thing that needs copyeditors"--if she hadn't known someone doing it--I wouldn't be doing anything particular.

More broadly, I feel like our society is one in which it's hard to offer presence. It's hard to be just a friendly face: our society seems to say "You can be friends with friends and everyone else you should ignore. Everyone else you have no connection with"--such that even if you yourself reject that formulation, the people around you are likely operating under it, which makes it hard for them to notice/accept a different pattern. Plus, everything about life today pushes toward isolation and becoming little self-sufficient islands unto ourselves (even without the pandemic this was true, I feel), even though in fact that's impossible (not to mention not desirable).

Yes! And where not self-sufficient, very instrumental and entirely bounded by circumstance, so that the vanishing of the circumstances vanishes the relationship.

Sheeyun and I were talking about this a couple of weeks ago, and I said that I thought it was due in part to a short of village life in our institutions. In village life, literal and metaphorical, you become friends or at least find viable relationship because they're there and so are you, and that's going to continue for some time. Undergraduate life is the last village experience in many US people's lives. Though there are workplace villages [much celebrated in sit-coms].

I think you're so right about relationships being bounded by circumstance. And yeah, you can get some of that village experience in some jobs--but only some. The job has to be stable (not about to evaporate, not subject to 100 percent personnel change over the course of a year<--thinking of some fast-food jobs when I say this) and not so crushingly demanding/competitive that you have no energy or inclination to interact in a friendly way.

'zackly.

Everyone else you have no connection with"--such that even if you yourself reject that formulation, the people around you are likely operating under it, which makes it hard for them to notice/accept a different pattern.

--with the exception being people in need: those people do notice and appreciate presence, which gets back to the thing

minoan_miss is saying. In those cases, people are open ... it's too bad it's desperation or hardship that makes that the case.

If only we USians recognized our fragility more often. Then we might have those opened senses and that gratitude for presence.

I agree with all my heart.

I think also about the US fashion for blaming people for every unpleasant thing that happens to them or besets them, or minimizing those things as unimportant, which is so often delivered verbally that silence and distance can quite reasonably be supposed to be someone blaming you or thinking your agony doesn't matter but being silent about it.

In which case, oh yes, what welcome merciful rain is companioning and explicit sympathy or empathy.

Absolutely

Me too. It's chance and good luck.

Oh, wow, that is excellent! A tip of the hat to you!

It's pure luck, not effort on my part: my neighbor knows I'm a copy editor and knew people involved in this and asked if I'd be interested.

Very worthy and meritorious!

I'm embarrassed... I am not very worthy or meritorious, just lucky that this opportunity came my way. But thanks for the generous words.

my neighbor knows I'm a copy editor and knew people involved in this and asked if I'd be interested.

Sounds very interesting!

It is interesting! It's very rare to have a thing available to do that I actually feel able to do and don't hate (... phone banking falls into the I-hate-it category, for instance).

Yeah, I'd actually rather knock on doors (and have 90% of those doors slammed in my face) than phone-bank.

Me too!

Here is hoping that you can continue to serve and volunteer AND get some sleep. *hugs*

Thank you ((hugs))

I'm doing the volunteering only every other day--so I can catch up on the sleep!

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