heh. wanted to write this down for a while, never had the patience. just gonna c&p it from a convo w/ katya on AIM:
D: and dude, my mind goes to sex for almost EVERYTHING enigma does.
K: *nod* yeah
D: the first CD?
K: or.. talls cliffs looking over the sea
D: one HUGE sex-centered cinematic experience for me. oddly enough, it was also really spiritual, almost.
K: just... something about nature, really
K: tantric. *grins*
K: (kamasutrakamasutrakamasutra) all about spirituality, baby. heheh.
K: maybe the only way i can achieve orgasm is through tantric sex. *muse*
K: ok.. listening to cross of changes now
D: *LOL* actually it was... i dunno, odd.
D: cool, though.
D: it was christianity-based.
D: but ... a LOT of sex.
K: methinks iwant to start having your dreams
D: it wasn't a dream!
K: cool.. and gooooooood because its just so bad.
D: it was like a daydream.
K: like.. fucking an angel!
K: ok not quite. *muse*
D: *LOL* it WAS sorta fucking-an-angel-idea'd
K: really?
K: *laugh*]
K: pinned ya!!!
D: well, i wasn't in it.
D: i was just watching, like a movie.
K: really? shame.
K: voyeur!
D: basically - well. first you have that introduction
D: and then this panorama unfolds
D: like this monastery hiiiigh on a mountain
D: the lighting's all golden/red and artistic
D: and it's like, dawn
D: WAY high on a mtn - nothing but clouds beneath
K: you know.. there is this kickass monastery i would love to go visit.. if i weren't so afraid of heights.
K: oh lightning!
D: and you have all the monks kinda filing into morning prayers or something
K: i love lightning. i wish i had your visual.s
D: no - foggish clouds, like the ones under the golden gate bridge
D: and all lit up golden and red
D: and all these dark-cloaked monks going to the chapel
K: chanting/
K: ?
D: yup. that's the chanting.
K: medieval christianity is a league of its own
D: and you know how there's like - one guy chanting
D: and all these people answering?
D: that's like lead monk leading the monks in it
K: man this is gonna make me want to read some badass medieval erotica. *laugh*
D: but then that woman speaking?
D: heh.
D: so...all the monks were at the chapel except for one - the protagonist - who's in his room
D: and he's, er, jerking off in front of a virgin mary statue.
D: (but it was all weirdly RELIGIOUS! like - religious rapture, only... physical?)
D: brb - i'll tell you the rest later.
K: jerking off is SUCH an inelegant, and not altogether sexy, way of saying it.
D: masturbating!?
D: stroking off?
K: ack! i hate that word!
D: touching himself!
D: *LMAO*
K: no! there must be a better way.. *muse*
K: i guess touching is the closest.. *muse*
D: self-pleasure?
D: *LMAO*
K: to the virgin mary though!?!?!?!?
D: YES.
D: it was fucked up
K: pleasuring thyself.
D: *dies*
D: but - okay
D: then, after that.
K: thats just.. damon... you had your noggin checked recently?
D: you know how there's 3 songs in one in that first track?
D: the first is sadeness
D: the second is principles of lust
K: needs some serious examination. i reckon you got some messages going through these dreams. *laugh*
D: then sadeness again?
K: *nod*
D: IT'S NOT A DREAM!! it was like a vision! like imagination. daydreaming, almost, only i wasn't in it.
K: vision is worse!
D: and - okay. so the second song, he sneaks out of the monastery
D: goes to a whorehouse
K: i mean.. what if you were prophetic and these all really MEANT things!!!
D: ensue massive debauchery
K: although dude, maybe you should write a book about this.i think i'd buy it, with your writing style. *smirk*
D: *dies* maybe i'll write it for nano this year.
D: i actually thought about nanoing it out
D: but i was too embarrassed
D: it is ALL
D: ABOUT
D: SEX, man
K: do it@
K: i'd so read it@
D: the WHOLE PLOT IS SEX
D: SEX SEX SEX AND MORE SEX
K: god. i can't do exclamations!!
K: so what?
K: you know.. writing about sex is HARD
D: *LOL* well - and kind of a fall from grace/redemption story beneath it.
D: NO SHIT
D: i feel stupid
K: to make it.. steamy and hot but not crass.
K: hee. thats why roleplays are good. *grins*
K: but in truth, as soon as you start getting explicit - he puts his cock here, and there and.. yeah. just the word cock its like.. ARGH!
K: and then.. if you use manhood? *laughs* sounds sooooooo silly.
K: hmm. sex is usually safe.. mebbe.
K: "the heat of his sex"
K: actually sounds silly too. *frowns*
K: ok.. don't get into specifics.
K: just talk about the positions. hahaha
K: i think you'd do a great job though.
D: no. cock is the only acceptable word.
but *LMAO* duuuude.
D: okay - want me to tell you the rest, or just save it for the never-to-be-written nano?
K: no tell me!
K: (and you should do it)
K: or just.. write it. give it to me and i'll give my opinion
K: can be a secret pet project of yours.
K: if it gets me hot and bothered, extra brownie points for success!! *grins*
D: *would be so entirely too embarrassed*
D: and okay
D: so.
K: why?? *blinks*
D: when the next sadeness comes in
K: *laugh* actually i probably would in the same situation.
D: the third part of the song?
D: it's like - orgy over
K: unless i came up with a really good plot.
K: *nod*
D: and he's like - still feeling unsatisfied? well - not physically, but like, empty, not whole.
K: emotionally. *muse*
K: unsatiated.
D: spiritually.
so, callas went away starts, and he goes wandering down the mountain.
K: *loves that word*
D: and hence all that nature sound - birds and water and stuff
K: *nod*
K: *laugh* i almost want to play this out in a scene. would be so cool!
D: he goes wandering, and like, passes the gates of the convent.
K: oh dear. poor nuns.
K: *grins*
D: and sees one of the nuns?
D: and it's like - still point of the turning world.
D: the WHOLE song, is just him like, STARING, slow-mo
K: wow.
K: maybe you should make this a short film. *giggles*
D: fortunately it's not that long a song.
it'd seriously work better as film, heh.
D: as story it'd be too overwrought.
K: the concept, however, could be... fun.
D: and like - well, not just staring, but like. he stares at her, she notices him, she stares at him, they kinda meet at the gate
D: oh yeah, and it's like - night by now
D: pouring rain, but not cold?
D: warmly drenching
K: like thousands of moist kisses. *giggles*
K: hahah
D: and then, of course, the kiss through the wrought-iron gate.
K: *nod*
K: CASANOVA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
K: we have FOUND our man!
K: isn't casanova reputed to have been given a.. headjob actually.. by a nun through an iron gate?
D: fade to black. mea culpa. it opens on like - them, in the woods behind the convent, BUCK NAKED, obviously having fucked all night. it's pitch black, the hours before dawn.
D: and like - they can hear the drums. and it's like OH SHIT, THE MONKS ARE COMING FOR US
K: (i love you rocks... *sighs happily*)
D: (apparently they very martial monks)
K: *laugh*
D: and then when the backbeat comes in?
D: they jump up and start, like, running away through the forest
D: and then it's this interspersed scene
D: in the present, they're hauling ass for leather
D: but in flashbacks, it's like - really hot sex.
K: does their skin get scratched and bloody from trees and shrubs, and leaves in their hair and dirt on their bodies?
K: wow... intense vision there, Damon.
D: well, they kinda dress first, but all messily. and then they get holes torn in clothes and get all bloodied, yeah.
K: flashbacks and everything.
D: it was INTENSE. it's not even half done yet *LOL*
D: so - like this interspersement of the present frantic ESCAPE
D: and the past frantic FUCKING
K: *laugh*
K: its all about escape, really.
D: (the girl panting throughout is like... the same for both)
D: and then, of course, they get caught at the end.
D: the girl gets dragged off, and i don't know what happens to her. the guy's is the protagonist.
D: in the Voice and the Snake
D: it's basically his trial?
K: *nod*
D: but it's really creepy and mystical, a lot of smoke-effects, hooded figures with no faces, condemning him.
D: and then knocking on forbidden doors
K: *nod* very ritualistic.
D: you know how there's that "knocking" sound? the pounding?
D: well - in my version, that was hammering. they nailed him to a cross!!!
K: ack.. i don't know the inbetween songs that well.
K: cross! ouch!
K: ok. religious symbols.. yay!
K: that has to be a fav. :P
D: and you know how there's like - a guy (i think it's the main enigma guy) going "mother" or something throughout? apparently that was him kinda - calling out to the virgin mary?
D: sorta like a reflection of the whole father why have you forsaken me thang?
K: hmm. i need to listen to the album again
D: and then back to the rivers of belief - it's all quiet at the beginning, right?
D: that's cuz he's like, been put up on the crucifix
D: and is kinda dangling there
K: (and how can you not like carly's song!!!!!?!?!?!)
K: hmm. does he escape, or is that it?
D: and it's like this ... delirious dream-sequence, almost, interspersed again: in his mind he's envisioning rain and limpid pools and, heh, fucking his girl
K: you know.. there's something really raw and primal about that vision which really appeals to the senses..
K: like god vs man almost
D: and in reality he's baking under the sun.
D: (which vision?)
K: well.. that.. dream thing
D: and there's all these monks gathered, watching, and he's just up there all bloodied and crack-lipped and ... AWFUL LOOKING, dying?
K: and yet the defiance remains.
D: and then it kinda fades into the low backbeat again, and the monks have drifted off. it's night.
D: and it goes back to the woman speaking again - and yeah! sorta defiance.
K: so man against god, man against restraints, man against control.
D: oh, this is where he remembers screwing the nun-chick.
K: reminds me of the Marquis de Sade
D: (well, Sadeness IS named after him...)
K: but.. not as... umm.. sadistic. *laugh*
D: and then it goes on for a while
K: is it?
D: slower sex this time. kinda dreamy, almost
K: never knew that. *laugh*
D: and then - you know how it SUDDENLY swells into that "take me back to the rivers of belief" part?
D: it's like - i dunno. hard to describe.
K: no!! *pouts* cos i don't know the album that well.
D: you gotta relisten.
D: save this convo, listen, and follow along *LOL*
K: need to listen again and read through your ... yeah. do that.
D: but - yeah, the swelling, it's like - sunrise? sorta?
D: but not. it's BLAZING white light
D: and then the silence
D: "And when the lamb opened the seventh seal, silence covered the sky."
D: --he dies.
D: and then the music again, and everything, and this time it's like - this bird's eye view soaring over this GORGEOUS forest
K: you have.. there are words??
K: and.. thats sorta sad.
K: awesome though. utterly awesome.
D: and gradually spiraling higher and higher? and you see the whole panorama spanned out
K: you should write it down.. to never forget it.
D: and kinda - just - GLORIOUS, man. it was awesome. and then that gradually eventually fades out.
D: it's kinda sad? but more like, WHOA. because it was totally redemption, you know?
K: *nod* yeah.
D: or more that he'd never been wrong in seeking physical love.
K: *laugh* dangerous.
D: it was cool. it was REALLY vivid. heh. i dunno where it came from.
K: you should write it.
K: man.. even the staring bit.. that could be so easily written.. powerfully too.
D: heh. it was seriously cool, "seeing" it. it was just riveting.
D: i gotta post! brb
K: YOU NEED TO WRITE IT.
D: *LMAO* I WILL!
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
heh, so...
pissiness at bri is over. i remembered something totally small and dumb and all my anger just evaporated like so much isopropanol on a hot day. earlier today i bought a pack of orbit gum and i've never bought it before and i was opening it wrong - i was basically trying to tear it open by brute force - and she reached over, so earnest and not at ALL condescending, really trying to help, and was like, "Oh...! Damon, here, like this: you open this flap? And then to close it? You push it in here."
oh man, it was just so sweet. heh. fwp! there went the anger.
also helpful was rereading some old diary rants. though... heh. in the HUNGRY!!! one? i mentioned something like never being able to daydream vividly.
it was true then.
it is SO not true anymore.
so - on the way back from palm springs over thxgiving - did i mention i went to palm springs to hang out with old, old high school friends from san diego, now scattered all over the country, over thxgiving? well, i'm mentioning it now: it was AWESOME. a week of bachelor partying in my best friend's parents' sprawling palm springs almost-mansion. staying up all night, drinking til the room spun and then calling those few friends that didn't make it to the reunion to let them know what they were missing out on, trying to cook our own turkey, running out for breakfast at IHOP's at 7am WITHOUT HAVING SLEPT THE NIGHT BEFORE... watching movies at all hours, driving around, hanging out, just... hanging out, like in the good ol' days - oh man. it was glorious. like being 17 again.
anyway. digression.
on the way back from palm springs, i was physically and mentally exhausted, hung over, and heavily influenced by having watched bits of X-men on TV the night before while guzzling massive quantities of vodka.
annnnd i had a very vivid daydream.
(heh. NC-17 part ahead.)
about fucking famke janssen.
and. omfg. it was SO FUCKING HOT.
so there's me, sitting on the tiny puddlejumper between palm springs and LA before i transferred to the 737 from LA to SF - 40 minutes flight, NOISY AS HELL, and i was sitting on the single-seat aisle on the left of the plane, eyes shut, trying to sleep but unable to recline cuz we were taking off, so my mind was just wandering, and somehow, SOMEHOW, it just touched on famke janssen.
(for those not in the know, she's jean grey in x-men. yeeeah. her. lithe and lean with those mmm mmm ENDLESS legs and that wonderfully ...danish? was she danish? well, north-euro-but-not-too-north face. gaaahh. she's so fine.)
and, i can't even remember what it was. just kinda like an idea that flitted in and out of my mind. and next thing i know i'm like, picturing this, right, picturing HER. then i'm picturing her... NAKED. annnnd i was like, hell, while i'm at it, HEH.
and it got outta hand from there on out.
not gonna go into (too much) detail, but: heh. yeah. those laaaiggs sliding around my ribs and up my back. and the way the shadows fell across her face in the darkness. the way her eyes looked close-up. arching of the neck, her one hand on my jaw, her other on my chest, up against the wall - daayum. it was just amazing how much detail was crammed in there, all vivid-sharp, sharper, in fact, than in real life because - let's face it - when you're getting it on with a gorgeous woman in real life, you don't have the presence of mind to focus on the way she looks close-up, the way those eyes shut and then open, glimmer, the crystal-clear/dark-fuzzy way she was licking her lips.
daydream = COOL.
and the most incredible thing was - it was semiautonomous, the daydream. i mean things happened that surprised me a bit, and that's important in sex (even imaginary sex), to stay surprise-able. but at the same time, i had enough control over the whole daydream to, say, change positions. or kinda just fade out and fade in on a totally different scenario. not to mention, i could kinda pause the action at a point, skip back to an earlier favorite-point, and replay that before going on with the previous one.
it was like directing my own personal softcore porn, man. it KICKED ASS. i was so damn disappointed when the plane suddenly jolted down at LAX. i hadn't gotten to the end yet! there was a stretch left to go and i wasn't done yet! and i tried to pick up the thread again, later, but somehow i always either fell asleep first, or my mind wandered elsewhere.
i think to daydream, you need to almost be meditating. sitting, not lying down. and in a certain tired/but not ready to sleep state of mind where your imagination takes on a certain coherent clarity.
--oh hell, just look at me trying to turn this LUSTFUL RAMBLE into a philosophical discussion! i can practically hear my id calling: give in, damon! embrace the primitive, grunting lust!
I DAYDREAMED ABOUT FUCKING FAMKE JANSSEN AND IT WAS FUCKING FANTASTIC!
...thank you, and have a good evening.
pissiness at bri is over. i remembered something totally small and dumb and all my anger just evaporated like so much isopropanol on a hot day. earlier today i bought a pack of orbit gum and i've never bought it before and i was opening it wrong - i was basically trying to tear it open by brute force - and she reached over, so earnest and not at ALL condescending, really trying to help, and was like, "Oh...! Damon, here, like this: you open this flap? And then to close it? You push it in here."
oh man, it was just so sweet. heh. fwp! there went the anger.
also helpful was rereading some old diary rants. though... heh. in the HUNGRY!!! one? i mentioned something like never being able to daydream vividly.
it was true then.
it is SO not true anymore.
so - on the way back from palm springs over thxgiving - did i mention i went to palm springs to hang out with old, old high school friends from san diego, now scattered all over the country, over thxgiving? well, i'm mentioning it now: it was AWESOME. a week of bachelor partying in my best friend's parents' sprawling palm springs almost-mansion. staying up all night, drinking til the room spun and then calling those few friends that didn't make it to the reunion to let them know what they were missing out on, trying to cook our own turkey, running out for breakfast at IHOP's at 7am WITHOUT HAVING SLEPT THE NIGHT BEFORE... watching movies at all hours, driving around, hanging out, just... hanging out, like in the good ol' days - oh man. it was glorious. like being 17 again.
anyway. digression.
on the way back from palm springs, i was physically and mentally exhausted, hung over, and heavily influenced by having watched bits of X-men on TV the night before while guzzling massive quantities of vodka.
annnnd i had a very vivid daydream.
(heh. NC-17 part ahead.)
about fucking famke janssen.
and. omfg. it was SO FUCKING HOT.
so there's me, sitting on the tiny puddlejumper between palm springs and LA before i transferred to the 737 from LA to SF - 40 minutes flight, NOISY AS HELL, and i was sitting on the single-seat aisle on the left of the plane, eyes shut, trying to sleep but unable to recline cuz we were taking off, so my mind was just wandering, and somehow, SOMEHOW, it just touched on famke janssen.
(for those not in the know, she's jean grey in x-men. yeeeah. her. lithe and lean with those mmm mmm ENDLESS legs and that wonderfully ...danish? was she danish? well, north-euro-but-not-too-north face. gaaahh. she's so fine.)
and, i can't even remember what it was. just kinda like an idea that flitted in and out of my mind. and next thing i know i'm like, picturing this, right, picturing HER. then i'm picturing her... NAKED. annnnd i was like, hell, while i'm at it, HEH.
and it got outta hand from there on out.
not gonna go into (too much) detail, but: heh. yeah. those laaaiggs sliding around my ribs and up my back. and the way the shadows fell across her face in the darkness. the way her eyes looked close-up. arching of the neck, her one hand on my jaw, her other on my chest, up against the wall - daayum. it was just amazing how much detail was crammed in there, all vivid-sharp, sharper, in fact, than in real life because - let's face it - when you're getting it on with a gorgeous woman in real life, you don't have the presence of mind to focus on the way she looks close-up, the way those eyes shut and then open, glimmer, the crystal-clear/dark-fuzzy way she was licking her lips.
daydream = COOL.
and the most incredible thing was - it was semiautonomous, the daydream. i mean things happened that surprised me a bit, and that's important in sex (even imaginary sex), to stay surprise-able. but at the same time, i had enough control over the whole daydream to, say, change positions. or kinda just fade out and fade in on a totally different scenario. not to mention, i could kinda pause the action at a point, skip back to an earlier favorite-point, and replay that before going on with the previous one.
it was like directing my own personal softcore porn, man. it KICKED ASS. i was so damn disappointed when the plane suddenly jolted down at LAX. i hadn't gotten to the end yet! there was a stretch left to go and i wasn't done yet! and i tried to pick up the thread again, later, but somehow i always either fell asleep first, or my mind wandered elsewhere.
i think to daydream, you need to almost be meditating. sitting, not lying down. and in a certain tired/but not ready to sleep state of mind where your imagination takes on a certain coherent clarity.
--oh hell, just look at me trying to turn this LUSTFUL RAMBLE into a philosophical discussion! i can practically hear my id calling: give in, damon! embrace the primitive, grunting lust!
I DAYDREAMED ABOUT FUCKING FAMKE JANSSEN AND IT WAS FUCKING FANTASTIC!
...thank you, and have a good evening.
so it occurs to me that my diary had its 2nd anniversary two days ago. 2 years writing on this thing. it's september again, and i think the skies here are always that shade of blue in september: amazing, depthless, hard enough to hurt. heh. heartbreaking beauty. something like that.
i meant to write more, but i'm braindead. i'll just leave this at that. been listening to a lotta music though. strange thoughts in mind. this came up earlier and i'm just gonna c&p instead of like. redoing it.
this is what i kinda thought about listening to theatre of tragedy's Machine (vnv nation remix):
(begin c&p)
okay. well. like, inside this huge...plant/factory thing.
and like - shiny steel. but not smooth. ridged and cut into these grooves and protrusions. all these tubes made out of steel like that, and wires in those bendable - gah, what are they called - those bendable steel things? with all the rings? like, lamps have that a lot. the kind that you can bend around. anyway - wires in those, twisting around these steel tubes/pipes, which are kinda square and etched and at right angles to each other, everywhere
sometimes there are these windows in the steel tubes: inside, glowing green/blue stuff. and flickering rings of that green/blue light kinda skim over the tubes here and there like nerve impulses.
and this whole set-up kinda centers around this central core of blue-green stuff in a big clear container, like a torus, the machine they use to contain superheated plasma in a magnetic field with.
just general impressions. but that whole thing? is like - somehow the physical place where people's consciousnesses are stored. people don't exist physically anymore - they exist inside those pipes, just consciousnesses stripped of body.
the ultimate freedom and the ultimate prison. if you can think it up, it IS - because you're nothing but thought. go anywhere, be anything. at the same time, you don't really go anywhere, and you're nothing at all.
gah, okay, that was a morbid thought.
(end c&p)
i meant to write more, but i'm braindead. i'll just leave this at that. been listening to a lotta music though. strange thoughts in mind. this came up earlier and i'm just gonna c&p instead of like. redoing it.
this is what i kinda thought about listening to theatre of tragedy's Machine (vnv nation remix):
(begin c&p)
okay. well. like, inside this huge...plant/factory thing.
and like - shiny steel. but not smooth. ridged and cut into these grooves and protrusions. all these tubes made out of steel like that, and wires in those bendable - gah, what are they called - those bendable steel things? with all the rings? like, lamps have that a lot. the kind that you can bend around. anyway - wires in those, twisting around these steel tubes/pipes, which are kinda square and etched and at right angles to each other, everywhere
sometimes there are these windows in the steel tubes: inside, glowing green/blue stuff. and flickering rings of that green/blue light kinda skim over the tubes here and there like nerve impulses.
and this whole set-up kinda centers around this central core of blue-green stuff in a big clear container, like a torus, the machine they use to contain superheated plasma in a magnetic field with.
just general impressions. but that whole thing? is like - somehow the physical place where people's consciousnesses are stored. people don't exist physically anymore - they exist inside those pipes, just consciousnesses stripped of body.
the ultimate freedom and the ultimate prison. if you can think it up, it IS - because you're nothing but thought. go anywhere, be anything. at the same time, you don't really go anywhere, and you're nothing at all.
gah, okay, that was a morbid thought.
(end c&p)
scene (background music, aria - "ave maria"): trans-siberian railway. camera close to train tracks, ground level. steel rail and wood crosslay beneath, long as a dragon sprawled across all of the cold the dark the harsh tundras. heavy blizzard. night. everything's black except for snow falling to bury the world. horizon is a faint gleam.
train blasts by, sending up twin fans of snow, trailing a white mist, shaking snow off the branches of a dead tree crooked over the past.
camera rises, phantomlike; POV follows train. chases, levels, pans sideways, strafing along as though on coasters, keeping pace. sense of speed given by obscure shadows whipping by, blurred, in darkness. camera zooms in on dim lights within. protagonist: young revolutionary, fur cap, thick winter jacket, several day's beard growth on an intense, sharpedged face, gently swaying in the rhythm of the train, haggard eyes staring unseeing out. cradled in his arms, half on his lap, protagonist's woman, deathly pale and mortally wounded.
camera starts to lose pace. train passes by, at first imperceptibly faster, then accelerating relative to camera until it blurs. camera rises above tracks and pans out to reveal snow-choked landscape through which tracks carve a distinct curving twin black path, racing on to and past the horizon. on it, red tailight of the train, growing small.
wtf is it about trains? somehow they're so evocative. i was discussing this with liz. we decided it was something about the rhythm of the wheels over the tracks, muted but everpresent; the inevitability of the tracks laid down firm; the enclosure of the cars and the closed windows, yet still allowing that final brief aching contact in the way planes never will; the out-of-your-control motion, where the train might (will) start moving any minute, and there's not a thing you can do about it.
there's only so far you can follow on the platform, only so fast you can run. there's only so much time you have before the train becomes a red dot, becomes nothing. but the tracks linger on and on, in memoriam.
scene (background music, bliss - "kissing"): one of those tastefully-shot tender-lovemaking scenes. golden indirect luminescent lighting, indistinct glimpses: thighs intertwined, abdomens pressed movingly together, lips on underside of jaw, divine-rapturous face, closed eyes, parted lips; white sheets artfully rumpled. scene seguing into next--
long shot down train platform, grey concrete walk with glass overhang, once clear, now dulled and almost opaque with age and exposure. late afternoon, heavily overcast, sky a cast of silver-grey. gentle rain falling like mist. train tracks stretching across barren late-autumn plain, all the crops harvested, all the fields fallow. bare trees line the path of the tracks. protagonist on platform in thick dark overcoat, gloves and scarf, head bare.
overhead speakers announce times and trains in indistinct foreign language. train, black train engine w/ dark cars, is beginning to pull away. cut to window: we recognize the woman from previous scene, prim now in careful makeup and 1940s traveling attire, upper class. looking out, sorrow creases her brow. dimly reflected, protagonist's desolate face.
train begins to move faster. rhythm of the tracks. camera stays with woman in the window. emotions build and are bitten back on her face. reflected, protagonist growing smaller, face pulling out to a head-and-body shot to a full-figure shot, indistinct in the window.
like a man in a dream, he takes a few steps after the train. woman in window presses gloved knuckles to mouth. protagonist slowly raises a hand in farewell. the woman presses her palm flat against the window; tears spill over as image of man in window blurs and grows too small to see.
camera pans out. flat grey horizon under flat grey sky. steam train rolling away.
i have no fucking clue why my train scenes are all so desolate. it seems to fit though. hmm.
gah!
train blasts by, sending up twin fans of snow, trailing a white mist, shaking snow off the branches of a dead tree crooked over the past.
camera rises, phantomlike; POV follows train. chases, levels, pans sideways, strafing along as though on coasters, keeping pace. sense of speed given by obscure shadows whipping by, blurred, in darkness. camera zooms in on dim lights within. protagonist: young revolutionary, fur cap, thick winter jacket, several day's beard growth on an intense, sharpedged face, gently swaying in the rhythm of the train, haggard eyes staring unseeing out. cradled in his arms, half on his lap, protagonist's woman, deathly pale and mortally wounded.
camera starts to lose pace. train passes by, at first imperceptibly faster, then accelerating relative to camera until it blurs. camera rises above tracks and pans out to reveal snow-choked landscape through which tracks carve a distinct curving twin black path, racing on to and past the horizon. on it, red tailight of the train, growing small.
wtf is it about trains? somehow they're so evocative. i was discussing this with liz. we decided it was something about the rhythm of the wheels over the tracks, muted but everpresent; the inevitability of the tracks laid down firm; the enclosure of the cars and the closed windows, yet still allowing that final brief aching contact in the way planes never will; the out-of-your-control motion, where the train might (will) start moving any minute, and there's not a thing you can do about it.
there's only so far you can follow on the platform, only so fast you can run. there's only so much time you have before the train becomes a red dot, becomes nothing. but the tracks linger on and on, in memoriam.
scene (background music, bliss - "kissing"): one of those tastefully-shot tender-lovemaking scenes. golden indirect luminescent lighting, indistinct glimpses: thighs intertwined, abdomens pressed movingly together, lips on underside of jaw, divine-rapturous face, closed eyes, parted lips; white sheets artfully rumpled. scene seguing into next--
long shot down train platform, grey concrete walk with glass overhang, once clear, now dulled and almost opaque with age and exposure. late afternoon, heavily overcast, sky a cast of silver-grey. gentle rain falling like mist. train tracks stretching across barren late-autumn plain, all the crops harvested, all the fields fallow. bare trees line the path of the tracks. protagonist on platform in thick dark overcoat, gloves and scarf, head bare.
overhead speakers announce times and trains in indistinct foreign language. train, black train engine w/ dark cars, is beginning to pull away. cut to window: we recognize the woman from previous scene, prim now in careful makeup and 1940s traveling attire, upper class. looking out, sorrow creases her brow. dimly reflected, protagonist's desolate face.
train begins to move faster. rhythm of the tracks. camera stays with woman in the window. emotions build and are bitten back on her face. reflected, protagonist growing smaller, face pulling out to a head-and-body shot to a full-figure shot, indistinct in the window.
like a man in a dream, he takes a few steps after the train. woman in window presses gloved knuckles to mouth. protagonist slowly raises a hand in farewell. the woman presses her palm flat against the window; tears spill over as image of man in window blurs and grows too small to see.
camera pans out. flat grey horizon under flat grey sky. steam train rolling away.
i have no fucking clue why my train scenes are all so desolate. it seems to fit though. hmm.
gah!
i wanna live in prehistoric africa. long before colonialism; not too long after the dawn of man. i wanna be lean and dark and sure of foot. i want to walk on two legs and know that my ancestors were the first ever to do so.
i'll live in a tribe, i think. hunter-gatherers. i'd like to know what it is to move among the savanna grasses in the light of the wavering red dawn's sun. i want to sharpen my spear while i watch the antelope leap in the mist over the many and myriad branches of the river they'll call the Nile one day. i want to watch the lions glide among the grass as golden as their pelt with the sort of wary respect one gives to the true king of beasts.
i don't think i'd want to be the chieftain, or anything like that. i'd like to be just a young hunter, in the first or second summer of my adulthood. i'll shout and yell to flush the prey from the rocks and brush, and then i'll run and leap with them, as swift as they are with my weapons of stone and wood. and when i've singled out the one i'll call mine, i'll fell it with one unerring, steady throw of my spear that'll spill hot blood on the hot earth and kill it before its head hits the ground.
later in the night i'll skin my kills beneath a boabob tree while the sun sinks into the flat horizon of the west. all around me there'll be nothing but Plains; nothing but a sea of grass as endless as the sky. i'll know no true sea, no body of water larger than the watering holes so precious in the dry season. the water i know will be rain from the heavens, blood from the kill and sweat from my body.
the tribe will be led by a man old enough to be my father, but still in his prime. his wife is the head gatherer; his daughters some of the finest weavers in the tribe. his sons are my brothers-in-arms, the hunters whom i trust to guard my back when we stray close to the lions and the leopards. i'll have a wife of my own, too, whose eyes are dark and whose hands are deft. i wear the skins she binds into clothes for me with pride. our daughter, if she lives long enough, will grow up to be much like her, but for now she is young, an infant, small enough for me to hold in one hand.
she was born in the late spring, in the wet season, which is when all the babies are born. that's when the herds return to the northern plains again, and we follow. it's when the thunderheads amass in the morning and darken the sky; when the thunder rustles the grass and the wind tiptoes along the dried river-banks. then in the afternoon the rain would come, veils trailing from the moving clouds, and the watering holes would fill and for just a while, the plains will be green.
the dry season is the harsh season. that's when most of our very old and very sick die. we'll miss their company, the laughter of the young ones and the tales of the old ones, but that's the way things are on the savanna. when they cannot rise to follow the herd in the morning, we leave them behind as we must, and the jackals and the hyenas will be the end of their lives as they were the end of so many antelopes'. someday, if i'm lucky to live so long, i'll die in the same way. or, perhaps a little more likely, i'll meet my fate on the claws of a lion whose path i've crossed one time too many, or a she-leopard whose cubs i've strayed too close to.
i think before then, though, there'll be a night when the wind is cool over the grass and i'll stand outside my tent, awake, while my wife and child and tribe sleep. the earth will be dark and so flat that i couldn't ever imagine a mountain the size of those rising far to the east, where the continent called India is smashing into the one called Asia. the stars and the milky way will be bright beyond what i can imagine here, today, living in the heart of civilization; they'll be bright as they'll never be again, setting the heavens ablaze with a blue-black light around each pinpoint of fire, and i'll look and look and look.
and maybe, just for a moment, i'll understand something. something will click in me, and just for one single instant the sky will wheel and unlock, crack open like an egg, and i'll know the reason for the seasons' turning; the integration of the area under the curve; the secrets of the human heart; the tracery of the body's blood and the distance of the stars. it'll be like hearing for the first time a line in a song that'll become your favorite line in your favorite song, only multiplied a thousand million times, and long after the instant has passed i'll stand rooted to my place, staring up at the moonless sky, transfixed. afterwards, i'll spend all my life trying to grasp it again and in the end, be unable to articulate it as anything but divine and thus - reaching for something i'll never again touch - give birth to the world's first religion.
i'll live in a tribe, i think. hunter-gatherers. i'd like to know what it is to move among the savanna grasses in the light of the wavering red dawn's sun. i want to sharpen my spear while i watch the antelope leap in the mist over the many and myriad branches of the river they'll call the Nile one day. i want to watch the lions glide among the grass as golden as their pelt with the sort of wary respect one gives to the true king of beasts.
i don't think i'd want to be the chieftain, or anything like that. i'd like to be just a young hunter, in the first or second summer of my adulthood. i'll shout and yell to flush the prey from the rocks and brush, and then i'll run and leap with them, as swift as they are with my weapons of stone and wood. and when i've singled out the one i'll call mine, i'll fell it with one unerring, steady throw of my spear that'll spill hot blood on the hot earth and kill it before its head hits the ground.
later in the night i'll skin my kills beneath a boabob tree while the sun sinks into the flat horizon of the west. all around me there'll be nothing but Plains; nothing but a sea of grass as endless as the sky. i'll know no true sea, no body of water larger than the watering holes so precious in the dry season. the water i know will be rain from the heavens, blood from the kill and sweat from my body.
the tribe will be led by a man old enough to be my father, but still in his prime. his wife is the head gatherer; his daughters some of the finest weavers in the tribe. his sons are my brothers-in-arms, the hunters whom i trust to guard my back when we stray close to the lions and the leopards. i'll have a wife of my own, too, whose eyes are dark and whose hands are deft. i wear the skins she binds into clothes for me with pride. our daughter, if she lives long enough, will grow up to be much like her, but for now she is young, an infant, small enough for me to hold in one hand.
she was born in the late spring, in the wet season, which is when all the babies are born. that's when the herds return to the northern plains again, and we follow. it's when the thunderheads amass in the morning and darken the sky; when the thunder rustles the grass and the wind tiptoes along the dried river-banks. then in the afternoon the rain would come, veils trailing from the moving clouds, and the watering holes would fill and for just a while, the plains will be green.
the dry season is the harsh season. that's when most of our very old and very sick die. we'll miss their company, the laughter of the young ones and the tales of the old ones, but that's the way things are on the savanna. when they cannot rise to follow the herd in the morning, we leave them behind as we must, and the jackals and the hyenas will be the end of their lives as they were the end of so many antelopes'. someday, if i'm lucky to live so long, i'll die in the same way. or, perhaps a little more likely, i'll meet my fate on the claws of a lion whose path i've crossed one time too many, or a she-leopard whose cubs i've strayed too close to.
i think before then, though, there'll be a night when the wind is cool over the grass and i'll stand outside my tent, awake, while my wife and child and tribe sleep. the earth will be dark and so flat that i couldn't ever imagine a mountain the size of those rising far to the east, where the continent called India is smashing into the one called Asia. the stars and the milky way will be bright beyond what i can imagine here, today, living in the heart of civilization; they'll be bright as they'll never be again, setting the heavens ablaze with a blue-black light around each pinpoint of fire, and i'll look and look and look.
and maybe, just for a moment, i'll understand something. something will click in me, and just for one single instant the sky will wheel and unlock, crack open like an egg, and i'll know the reason for the seasons' turning; the integration of the area under the curve; the secrets of the human heart; the tracery of the body's blood and the distance of the stars. it'll be like hearing for the first time a line in a song that'll become your favorite line in your favorite song, only multiplied a thousand million times, and long after the instant has passed i'll stand rooted to my place, staring up at the moonless sky, transfixed. afterwards, i'll spend all my life trying to grasp it again and in the end, be unable to articulate it as anything but divine and thus - reaching for something i'll never again touch - give birth to the world's first religion.
is it strange to love a girl who's been dead for a hundred years? maybe - probably - it's not even love. just some sorta fanciful attraction, a fantasy of a lyrical and poetic sort of love cooked up by the otherwise staid doctor-to-be in the creativity-stripped hospitals. maybe. but i do think i could love her. it's not anything i can explain, and everything about her poetry and her letters.
there's something so sheltered and imaginative about her. her letters are so polite. editors trashed her poetry as unconventional ...i'm losing my train of thought. it goes everywhere at once; there's so much i can say about this.
I know where Wells grow -
Droughtless Wells -
I think a little Well - like Mine -
Dearer to understand -
i saw this handwritten manuscript once. well, a copy, obviously. not terribly neat, but a fine hand. delicate. unbelievable - she'd created her own language. these curlicues and strange little signs, plus signs, it looked like. dots and slashes. walt whitman swaggers and boasts that he's something new, something previously untried and undone, freedom at its best! and then there's a girl in her attic who's rarely left her house, who knows the true meaning of freedom in a better, quieter, more personal way.
Of nearness to her sundered Things
The Soul has special times -
When Dimness - looks the Oddity -
Distinctness - easy seems -
she's just so polite. that's what gets me the most. she seems shy and quiet, so like a bird. self-deprecating in her letters to others. she referred to herself being a little ill, and i thought my heart would cave in from...tenderness? pity? a desire to shelter and protect?
i just can't believe the editors wrote her back telling her her poetry was crap. i can't think how must've made her feel, this girl locked away in her attic all her life, looking out at a world she didn't quite fit into, but understood better than most, writing about snakes and birds and death and waiting, and never quite about love. or am i wrong about that?
I shall forget the drop of Anguish
That scalds me now -
god! i just saw a page that lists facts supporting that she was a lesbian. jesus christ. what the hell is wrong with the world, that a woman who never really sought male company is immediately suspected a lesbian? the worst is how these people that write these things think of themselves as progressive and liberal, all the while furthering the old patriarchical supposition that a woman is made to breed with a man, and any woman who chooses another path is, of course, a lesbian. can't you people just leave her alone?
god, dammit!
....fume.
Now I lay thee down to Sleep -
I pray the Lord thy Dust to keep -
And if thou live before thou wake -
I pray the Lord thy Soul to make -
there's something slanted about her poetry, and i don't mean unnatural, dirty, wrong, whatever. i just mean - slanted. you have to think curved to get at the meaning, or get close to the meaning, as the case may be. you have to skew your perceptions a bit, even if you don't want you. just reading it, a line, any line, makes you think a little slanted.
what a quaint woman she must've been! and so polite, heh. i just can't get over that. there's something so fragile about her, as though she kept herself and most her poems locked away lest a stray breeze blew them all apart. i think i could've liked her, really loved her. i like to think i could've brought her out of her shell, but then again, maybe that would've just realigned her perceptions with the status quo. and then all her poetry would be lost.
I saw no Way -
The Heavens were stitched -
I felt the Columns close -
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres -
I touched the Universe -
i can't believe i'm writing this at 3:30am...
*****
It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.
It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain,—
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.
It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil
On stump and stack and stem,—
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.
It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen,—
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.
*****
And though thy sins be as scarlet,
They shall be white as snow;
Though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool.
Isaiah 1:18
*****
her name, in case it's not yet evident, is emily dickinson.
there's something so sheltered and imaginative about her. her letters are so polite. editors trashed her poetry as unconventional ...i'm losing my train of thought. it goes everywhere at once; there's so much i can say about this.
I know where Wells grow -
Droughtless Wells -
I think a little Well - like Mine -
Dearer to understand -
i saw this handwritten manuscript once. well, a copy, obviously. not terribly neat, but a fine hand. delicate. unbelievable - she'd created her own language. these curlicues and strange little signs, plus signs, it looked like. dots and slashes. walt whitman swaggers and boasts that he's something new, something previously untried and undone, freedom at its best! and then there's a girl in her attic who's rarely left her house, who knows the true meaning of freedom in a better, quieter, more personal way.
Of nearness to her sundered Things
The Soul has special times -
When Dimness - looks the Oddity -
Distinctness - easy seems -
she's just so polite. that's what gets me the most. she seems shy and quiet, so like a bird. self-deprecating in her letters to others. she referred to herself being a little ill, and i thought my heart would cave in from...tenderness? pity? a desire to shelter and protect?
i just can't believe the editors wrote her back telling her her poetry was crap. i can't think how must've made her feel, this girl locked away in her attic all her life, looking out at a world she didn't quite fit into, but understood better than most, writing about snakes and birds and death and waiting, and never quite about love. or am i wrong about that?
I shall forget the drop of Anguish
That scalds me now -
god! i just saw a page that lists facts supporting that she was a lesbian. jesus christ. what the hell is wrong with the world, that a woman who never really sought male company is immediately suspected a lesbian? the worst is how these people that write these things think of themselves as progressive and liberal, all the while furthering the old patriarchical supposition that a woman is made to breed with a man, and any woman who chooses another path is, of course, a lesbian. can't you people just leave her alone?
god, dammit!
....fume.
Now I lay thee down to Sleep -
I pray the Lord thy Dust to keep -
And if thou live before thou wake -
I pray the Lord thy Soul to make -
there's something slanted about her poetry, and i don't mean unnatural, dirty, wrong, whatever. i just mean - slanted. you have to think curved to get at the meaning, or get close to the meaning, as the case may be. you have to skew your perceptions a bit, even if you don't want you. just reading it, a line, any line, makes you think a little slanted.
what a quaint woman she must've been! and so polite, heh. i just can't get over that. there's something so fragile about her, as though she kept herself and most her poems locked away lest a stray breeze blew them all apart. i think i could've liked her, really loved her. i like to think i could've brought her out of her shell, but then again, maybe that would've just realigned her perceptions with the status quo. and then all her poetry would be lost.
I saw no Way -
The Heavens were stitched -
I felt the Columns close -
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres -
I touched the Universe -
i can't believe i'm writing this at 3:30am...
*****
It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.
It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain,—
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.
It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil
On stump and stack and stem,—
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.
It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen,—
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.
*****
And though thy sins be as scarlet,
They shall be white as snow;
Though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool.
Isaiah 1:18
*****
her name, in case it's not yet evident, is emily dickinson.
There's a meadow somewhere...
It's nested high in the mountains, and the grass grows as long as a pretty girl's hair. It's long enough to catch the wind, which is moisture-touched and warm, because it's late Spring (which is the most hopeful time of the year), and it's long enough to bow and ripple in that wind. And at the edges of the meadow, trees - evergreens - stand sentinel against the sky, which is littered with stars, more stars than you could count in a lifetime.
The grass is red. A deep, ruddy red, not the red grass turns when it has been bled on, but the red grass can be in your dreams. The sky above is a deep, deep, deep purple, a royal color lightening to lilac at the horizons. During the day, it'll brighten to the most royal hue of purple never to grace a king's robes.
Only it does grace a king's robes...in this world, which exists only in my head, and shows itself in glimpses and snatches in my writing and my ramblings and my dreams.
The King's name is unknown to mere mortals like us, but I've always associated him with Oberon. And his land, of course, would be called Avalon - and it's an Avalon far larger than a mere island.
The King lives in a shining castle in the proud imperial city. The streets are filled with merchants and peddlers, sailors from the wide ocean. The imperial guard is decked in shining silver splendour, bearing graceful, deadly swords and spears. The knights on their steeds pace through the cobblestone streets and ride off to save maidens at the far reaches of the kingdom.
Over it all the imperial palace towers: the castle, all spires and graceful arches, buttresses that literally fly. It's built not by physics but by magic, a gleaming jewel crafted of blue and gold and silver and white. The castle - the city - the world - is both fantasy-medieval and supermodern; medieval in the style, but clean-edged, sleek, futuristic in the taste.
The nobles hold court in the great hall, seated at both sides, while the King and Queen sit upon their thrones at the far end of the room, resplendent on a raised dais, the sunlight cascading through a window at their back, falling upon their shoulders. Commoners - which in the Imperial City is to say, sailors, for with magic, there is no need for anything else - come to petition before the High Lords of Avalon in open court, and in closed court, the nobles stand to argue eloquently, to compliment and snipe. They're decked in their finest robes, and they are beautiful, elfin, high cheekbones and exotic features that tilt and slant. Their hair comes in every color of the rainbow but purple streaked onto a white purer than snow; their eyes, in every color but green.
Those are the colors reserved for Oberon and his Queen, because those are, and have always been, royal colors. And Oberon's eyes are a light green, like frost on grass, but Titania's are the color of emeralds - not the paltry emeralds found on earth, but larger ones, more perfect emeralds that glitter and glow and hold the sun in their bellies.
There is a third class in this world: the warriors. The knights, who are not as conservative (to put it nicely) and droll (to put it not-so-nicely) as most the nobles, but not as uncouth as the sailors. They are the ones who wield the shining blades out to the outlands to conquer the dragons and slay the sea-serpents. Every so often, a young would-be knight comes of age, and the Queen sends him (or her; my world is democratic) forth on a quest to claim a place in the world.
The quest always takes a year, and takes the future knights into every corner of the world. And there are a lot of corners.
There's a railroad, for example - a bullet train, actually, that arcs out of the city on its slender-columned, raised tracks that soar well over a mile above the ground. It travels faster than any known plane, and it streaks roughly southward, across the great flatlands with their dark rich soil and their golden crops under the surreal purple sky. There are farmers here, far from the grace and decadence both of the city: tanned strong-limbed men and women with cowboy squints and a slow drawl to their fluid elfin tongue. They're simple folk; they grow corn and cotton and all those crops, and under the harvest moon they dance. The girls marry young and the boys grow up young here; they die young, too, and die beautiful.
The train speeds on: further past, the land wrinkles up into a sudden, rocky mountain range. Then the lands dry out; flatlands become scrublands, which gradually thins into a wide silent desert, all pristine sand dunes amber-gold, shifting slowly like an ocean almost-frozen. Only it's hot, so very hot, and no one can survive long here.
Past those, the sand hardens and cracks; it's a desolate place, but beautiful too in its own savage way. Eventually the cracks become ravines, and the ravines become great stone canyons, where natural monoliths stand motionless as the wild dry wind howls past. Tumbleweeds roll; the canyon is five miles deep, and the sky is almost a dream above.
Then the wind begins to take the flavor of moisture again. It's nearing the sea, that is to say the Ocean, which is the only sea, and the sea that rings the entire, vast (and only) continent of this world. To the south the sea is angry and grey; temperatures are dropping again. It's cold at the southern edge of the continent. It rains often, but it hails often as well. The sun sets slanted and distant, and the dusk is long, the night longer still.
There's a great city at the edge of the world, at the terminus of the train's run. It's a grim city, dark and seedy. The building are modern, but scarred by acid rain and twisted - literally - they corkscrew into the sky, and inside millions of people move like bees in a hive, silhouetted by the lights within. The alleyways are littered with refuse and yesterday's newspapers. The walls are concrete. They weep when it rains. The city races right to the edge of the sea and then crumbles messily off, perching at the very edge of the cliff while great sewers open to vomit the sludge of the city into the sea. You never see the sun here, and steel is always rusted, but impregnable.
The Queen's jealous sister, rules this city. She is beautiful; she is as beautiful as Titania, but her heart is cold, and her hair is raven-black shot through with ...mmm, I don't know. Some livid color, born of envy and a deep-seated, hidden pain.
She makes me sad. She makes me want to comfort her, but coming that close to her will only end in a beheading.
Every year, at Winter Solstice, she sends her sister a gift: something lifeless and exquisite. Bone, crystal, steel. It goes north along the train tracks, and every year it's some sort of plot to kill the Queen, but at the last minute a messenger arrives, and warns her of the danger...because, you see, she loves her sister. She just can't forgive her.
North of the Imperial City, and west, there is nothing but ocean. The Imperial City is the center of the world, but it sits at the northern edge of the continent, which cuts away south-west from there. The ocean there is milder, broad and greyish blue. The docks are crowded with husky sailors, foul-mouthed and hearty; they load cargo onto their ships, though where they ship them I do not know. There's a colonial feel here, even though the City itself is medieval, and the plains to the south are 1800s. The ships are graceful clippers and majestic schooners; there are a few lumbering galleons, and from their masts stream snapping banners and billowing sails.
It smells like fish here.
The northwestern coast is rocky, but the weather is mild. Fog comes in here. Somewhere there's a city that's the distant dream of San Francisco: always shrouded in fog, always indistinct, always beautiful, always shining. To look too long would be heartbreak.
South of there, along the western coast, there is a great redwood forest. Or it looks like redwoods - but they are large, so large, that a man (an elf) is like an ant beside one of these giants. The first branches loom high, high above the earth; the needles are deep green. The air is tranquil and holy and wistful with the salt air; the ground is springy with the root structure of these great trees.
Inland from there, the forest becomes a rainforest. The thunder rolls low, and warm rain falls like a salve, drenching everything. Ever dripping, ever a deep, rich green that even our jungles can't match, the canopies stretch one over another. The earth is rich here, rich and wet. Everything is rich here. Green and brown, and the occasional splash of color - spotted cats the size of elephants that slink through the green shadows and scream in the night. Here and there, a sudden burst of red: flowers, erotic opening lush things.
It's sweltering; the mosquitos could eat me alive. Literally. Insects here grow as large as dogs; sometimes, a giant beetle, large as a cow, ticks slowly through. It's a wet land, disconcerting, throbbing and alive.
Farther east, the rainforest becomes fields, and we cross the path of the train again. East of there, fields becomes grasslands, prairies in deep red, and past that, the grasses turn sere and golden, and it's a savanna. Wide-spreading trees with wide-spreading roots sheltering maned beasts that roar louder than thunder, but they're black, and their manes are golden. There are spotted cats here too, and the things they hunt: the graceful timid creatures besides that eat the grasses and flee from the predators which stalk, and mate, and roar their pride to the stars.
The stars: there are more than you can imagine here. Brighter, too, millions of them, scattered across the velvet sky. There's a band of the galaxy visible, just like on earth, but it would put our milky way to shame with its ethereal beauty.
There are two moons hanging in the sky. Large, large moons, both full tonight, full over the broad savannas, and if only earth's moon was even half as beautiful...
Sometimes the rain comes to the savannas, though. The dry season ends and the sere heat ends and the wet season comes and storm clouds gather, piling high into the sky, brilliantly red at sundown, lividly bruise-purple at their bellies. They move over the savanna and lightning trades between the thunderheads.
Thunder booms out across the savanna. The animals raise their heads and listen.
Then rain falls like a heavy curtain, blurring the world. Not the cold lashing rain of the southern edge of the continent. Not the warm drenching rain of the rainforests in the west. This is a powerful sort of rain, but without bitterness: a masculine force of nature, but inherently good. Animals move like grey shadows through the rain. This is the only time of the year the grasses are green instead of red, and the tree-trunks are dark, and the tree-blossoms bloom fragile and pink. The long-dried gullies and ponds fill again with the rain. The monsoon sweeps through like a tidal wave. Life returns. Life survives.
And, north of the savanna - for here, the continent juts northward - temperatures begin to drop again. The grasslands return, but only for a while. In the distance, purple shadows of vast mountain ranges, nothing like the mountains of the rest of the continent, loom up. Trees gather at the edge of the grasslands, and spread in a thick carpet up the feet of the mountain like lichen on a rock, but the mountain is too high. The treeline ends at the mountains' waistline; barechested, the rocky giants rear into the sky.
Not far above the treeline, the clouds gather thick. These are storm clouds; tempest clouds. They roll in off the frozen polar sea, full of fury and ice. They growl and snarl, writhing about the mountains. They are slate-grey, lead-grey, heavy as lead, and when winter comes they spit snow in great white torrents, blanketing the forest and the highlands.
The peaks of the mountains are too high for the snow to melt and the ice to run to water. Though a river tumbles out of the mountains' breast, a river in which river nymphs bathe, a river by which the Prince has once lost his heart to a slip of air - though there is a river, it does not come from the highest reaches, which are perpetually frozen. There's another screen of clouds, miles above the first that stretches in from the ocean; this one is miles thick itself, and the only way through it is to climb the mountains, clinging like burrs on the side of a great white tiger.
The highest peaks rise even above these highest clouds. Up there, the air is thin and intoxicating. It is silent there, truly silent, silent as it can never be anywhere else in the world. It's silent and the clouds below mask all traces of the world below. It's beautiful beyond speech, but it's a lonely world, a cold world; to be at the top is to be the only man left on this world, and when the sun sets, the barren peak about you, sheathed in ice, is also drenched with the blood of every man, woman and child that has ever died in all of history's black annals.
At the very highest peak, a great monolith stands in tribute to every knight to have ever fallen in battle. Names are carved into the black granite, and in the grooves, liquid gold burns pure and true, vehement negation to the loneliness, the silence, the loss of the world's highest end. Warriors come here to honor their lovers, their brothers, their teachers, their fallen. And there's hope for every loss in this world, and beauty for every sorrow.
This is the world that exists only in my mind. This is the world that has existed in me before adulthood, before games, before roleplay. This is the world, I sometimes think, that has existed before books, before schooling. Maybe before the world I live in really existed for me. This is the world that spreads in my head - or, in reality, only the smallest slice of it. There is so much more to tell, and in the end, everything I ever say, everything I ever dream, has its root in this world.
It's nested high in the mountains, and the grass grows as long as a pretty girl's hair. It's long enough to catch the wind, which is moisture-touched and warm, because it's late Spring (which is the most hopeful time of the year), and it's long enough to bow and ripple in that wind. And at the edges of the meadow, trees - evergreens - stand sentinel against the sky, which is littered with stars, more stars than you could count in a lifetime.
The grass is red. A deep, ruddy red, not the red grass turns when it has been bled on, but the red grass can be in your dreams. The sky above is a deep, deep, deep purple, a royal color lightening to lilac at the horizons. During the day, it'll brighten to the most royal hue of purple never to grace a king's robes.
Only it does grace a king's robes...in this world, which exists only in my head, and shows itself in glimpses and snatches in my writing and my ramblings and my dreams.
The King's name is unknown to mere mortals like us, but I've always associated him with Oberon. And his land, of course, would be called Avalon - and it's an Avalon far larger than a mere island.
The King lives in a shining castle in the proud imperial city. The streets are filled with merchants and peddlers, sailors from the wide ocean. The imperial guard is decked in shining silver splendour, bearing graceful, deadly swords and spears. The knights on their steeds pace through the cobblestone streets and ride off to save maidens at the far reaches of the kingdom.
Over it all the imperial palace towers: the castle, all spires and graceful arches, buttresses that literally fly. It's built not by physics but by magic, a gleaming jewel crafted of blue and gold and silver and white. The castle - the city - the world - is both fantasy-medieval and supermodern; medieval in the style, but clean-edged, sleek, futuristic in the taste.
The nobles hold court in the great hall, seated at both sides, while the King and Queen sit upon their thrones at the far end of the room, resplendent on a raised dais, the sunlight cascading through a window at their back, falling upon their shoulders. Commoners - which in the Imperial City is to say, sailors, for with magic, there is no need for anything else - come to petition before the High Lords of Avalon in open court, and in closed court, the nobles stand to argue eloquently, to compliment and snipe. They're decked in their finest robes, and they are beautiful, elfin, high cheekbones and exotic features that tilt and slant. Their hair comes in every color of the rainbow but purple streaked onto a white purer than snow; their eyes, in every color but green.
Those are the colors reserved for Oberon and his Queen, because those are, and have always been, royal colors. And Oberon's eyes are a light green, like frost on grass, but Titania's are the color of emeralds - not the paltry emeralds found on earth, but larger ones, more perfect emeralds that glitter and glow and hold the sun in their bellies.
There is a third class in this world: the warriors. The knights, who are not as conservative (to put it nicely) and droll (to put it not-so-nicely) as most the nobles, but not as uncouth as the sailors. They are the ones who wield the shining blades out to the outlands to conquer the dragons and slay the sea-serpents. Every so often, a young would-be knight comes of age, and the Queen sends him (or her; my world is democratic) forth on a quest to claim a place in the world.
The quest always takes a year, and takes the future knights into every corner of the world. And there are a lot of corners.
There's a railroad, for example - a bullet train, actually, that arcs out of the city on its slender-columned, raised tracks that soar well over a mile above the ground. It travels faster than any known plane, and it streaks roughly southward, across the great flatlands with their dark rich soil and their golden crops under the surreal purple sky. There are farmers here, far from the grace and decadence both of the city: tanned strong-limbed men and women with cowboy squints and a slow drawl to their fluid elfin tongue. They're simple folk; they grow corn and cotton and all those crops, and under the harvest moon they dance. The girls marry young and the boys grow up young here; they die young, too, and die beautiful.
The train speeds on: further past, the land wrinkles up into a sudden, rocky mountain range. Then the lands dry out; flatlands become scrublands, which gradually thins into a wide silent desert, all pristine sand dunes amber-gold, shifting slowly like an ocean almost-frozen. Only it's hot, so very hot, and no one can survive long here.
Past those, the sand hardens and cracks; it's a desolate place, but beautiful too in its own savage way. Eventually the cracks become ravines, and the ravines become great stone canyons, where natural monoliths stand motionless as the wild dry wind howls past. Tumbleweeds roll; the canyon is five miles deep, and the sky is almost a dream above.
Then the wind begins to take the flavor of moisture again. It's nearing the sea, that is to say the Ocean, which is the only sea, and the sea that rings the entire, vast (and only) continent of this world. To the south the sea is angry and grey; temperatures are dropping again. It's cold at the southern edge of the continent. It rains often, but it hails often as well. The sun sets slanted and distant, and the dusk is long, the night longer still.
There's a great city at the edge of the world, at the terminus of the train's run. It's a grim city, dark and seedy. The building are modern, but scarred by acid rain and twisted - literally - they corkscrew into the sky, and inside millions of people move like bees in a hive, silhouetted by the lights within. The alleyways are littered with refuse and yesterday's newspapers. The walls are concrete. They weep when it rains. The city races right to the edge of the sea and then crumbles messily off, perching at the very edge of the cliff while great sewers open to vomit the sludge of the city into the sea. You never see the sun here, and steel is always rusted, but impregnable.
The Queen's jealous sister, rules this city. She is beautiful; she is as beautiful as Titania, but her heart is cold, and her hair is raven-black shot through with ...mmm, I don't know. Some livid color, born of envy and a deep-seated, hidden pain.
She makes me sad. She makes me want to comfort her, but coming that close to her will only end in a beheading.
Every year, at Winter Solstice, she sends her sister a gift: something lifeless and exquisite. Bone, crystal, steel. It goes north along the train tracks, and every year it's some sort of plot to kill the Queen, but at the last minute a messenger arrives, and warns her of the danger...because, you see, she loves her sister. She just can't forgive her.
North of the Imperial City, and west, there is nothing but ocean. The Imperial City is the center of the world, but it sits at the northern edge of the continent, which cuts away south-west from there. The ocean there is milder, broad and greyish blue. The docks are crowded with husky sailors, foul-mouthed and hearty; they load cargo onto their ships, though where they ship them I do not know. There's a colonial feel here, even though the City itself is medieval, and the plains to the south are 1800s. The ships are graceful clippers and majestic schooners; there are a few lumbering galleons, and from their masts stream snapping banners and billowing sails.
It smells like fish here.
The northwestern coast is rocky, but the weather is mild. Fog comes in here. Somewhere there's a city that's the distant dream of San Francisco: always shrouded in fog, always indistinct, always beautiful, always shining. To look too long would be heartbreak.
South of there, along the western coast, there is a great redwood forest. Or it looks like redwoods - but they are large, so large, that a man (an elf) is like an ant beside one of these giants. The first branches loom high, high above the earth; the needles are deep green. The air is tranquil and holy and wistful with the salt air; the ground is springy with the root structure of these great trees.
Inland from there, the forest becomes a rainforest. The thunder rolls low, and warm rain falls like a salve, drenching everything. Ever dripping, ever a deep, rich green that even our jungles can't match, the canopies stretch one over another. The earth is rich here, rich and wet. Everything is rich here. Green and brown, and the occasional splash of color - spotted cats the size of elephants that slink through the green shadows and scream in the night. Here and there, a sudden burst of red: flowers, erotic opening lush things.
It's sweltering; the mosquitos could eat me alive. Literally. Insects here grow as large as dogs; sometimes, a giant beetle, large as a cow, ticks slowly through. It's a wet land, disconcerting, throbbing and alive.
Farther east, the rainforest becomes fields, and we cross the path of the train again. East of there, fields becomes grasslands, prairies in deep red, and past that, the grasses turn sere and golden, and it's a savanna. Wide-spreading trees with wide-spreading roots sheltering maned beasts that roar louder than thunder, but they're black, and their manes are golden. There are spotted cats here too, and the things they hunt: the graceful timid creatures besides that eat the grasses and flee from the predators which stalk, and mate, and roar their pride to the stars.
The stars: there are more than you can imagine here. Brighter, too, millions of them, scattered across the velvet sky. There's a band of the galaxy visible, just like on earth, but it would put our milky way to shame with its ethereal beauty.
There are two moons hanging in the sky. Large, large moons, both full tonight, full over the broad savannas, and if only earth's moon was even half as beautiful...
Sometimes the rain comes to the savannas, though. The dry season ends and the sere heat ends and the wet season comes and storm clouds gather, piling high into the sky, brilliantly red at sundown, lividly bruise-purple at their bellies. They move over the savanna and lightning trades between the thunderheads.
Thunder booms out across the savanna. The animals raise their heads and listen.
Then rain falls like a heavy curtain, blurring the world. Not the cold lashing rain of the southern edge of the continent. Not the warm drenching rain of the rainforests in the west. This is a powerful sort of rain, but without bitterness: a masculine force of nature, but inherently good. Animals move like grey shadows through the rain. This is the only time of the year the grasses are green instead of red, and the tree-trunks are dark, and the tree-blossoms bloom fragile and pink. The long-dried gullies and ponds fill again with the rain. The monsoon sweeps through like a tidal wave. Life returns. Life survives.
And, north of the savanna - for here, the continent juts northward - temperatures begin to drop again. The grasslands return, but only for a while. In the distance, purple shadows of vast mountain ranges, nothing like the mountains of the rest of the continent, loom up. Trees gather at the edge of the grasslands, and spread in a thick carpet up the feet of the mountain like lichen on a rock, but the mountain is too high. The treeline ends at the mountains' waistline; barechested, the rocky giants rear into the sky.
Not far above the treeline, the clouds gather thick. These are storm clouds; tempest clouds. They roll in off the frozen polar sea, full of fury and ice. They growl and snarl, writhing about the mountains. They are slate-grey, lead-grey, heavy as lead, and when winter comes they spit snow in great white torrents, blanketing the forest and the highlands.
The peaks of the mountains are too high for the snow to melt and the ice to run to water. Though a river tumbles out of the mountains' breast, a river in which river nymphs bathe, a river by which the Prince has once lost his heart to a slip of air - though there is a river, it does not come from the highest reaches, which are perpetually frozen. There's another screen of clouds, miles above the first that stretches in from the ocean; this one is miles thick itself, and the only way through it is to climb the mountains, clinging like burrs on the side of a great white tiger.
The highest peaks rise even above these highest clouds. Up there, the air is thin and intoxicating. It is silent there, truly silent, silent as it can never be anywhere else in the world. It's silent and the clouds below mask all traces of the world below. It's beautiful beyond speech, but it's a lonely world, a cold world; to be at the top is to be the only man left on this world, and when the sun sets, the barren peak about you, sheathed in ice, is also drenched with the blood of every man, woman and child that has ever died in all of history's black annals.
At the very highest peak, a great monolith stands in tribute to every knight to have ever fallen in battle. Names are carved into the black granite, and in the grooves, liquid gold burns pure and true, vehement negation to the loneliness, the silence, the loss of the world's highest end. Warriors come here to honor their lovers, their brothers, their teachers, their fallen. And there's hope for every loss in this world, and beauty for every sorrow.
This is the world that exists only in my mind. This is the world that has existed in me before adulthood, before games, before roleplay. This is the world, I sometimes think, that has existed before books, before schooling. Maybe before the world I live in really existed for me. This is the world that spreads in my head - or, in reality, only the smallest slice of it. There is so much more to tell, and in the end, everything I ever say, everything I ever dream, has its root in this world.
In case you're wondering why the time of this entry is "Goddammit", it is because it is currently 3:36:21, and I need to be up in about three hours, preferably less.
I have a habit of doing this. Did you realize? If you haven't yet, realize it now. I. Have. A BAD habit. Of staying up very late.
You know that little gold dragon on my page? It's fucking not appearing. Stupid geocities. Idiots. To see it, you need to load another page on this site (like, say, the old-entries page) and then back-button. It'll appear then. It's quite dumb that way. I'm sure Geocities can be circumvented with a little clever programming, but I'm too lazy to try and anyway programming is not by far my forte.
Remember that weirdass dream about stuck jaws and crunching teeth? I had it again. Twice, actually, in the last month. Yeah, it's been more than a month since I've written and I had the fucking dream twice. What does it mean? It's freaking me out. It's a very disturbing dream, trust me.
Hmm, there was something I wanted to say but I can't remember what.
At the top of my screen, there is an ad banner showing some guy's ass in briefs next to the slogan "viagra for the digital age". Do I even want to know?
No. I do not.
My ex-girlfriend's coming to town soon. I don't know what to do about her. Ex's are tough, especially when you parted amicably with a promise to "see how things are" in 6 years, at the end of your residency. Well, my residency ain't over, and technically, neither is our relationship. It's on hold. But I'm with someone else now, as you probably know, and that just...
...sucks.
Whatever. We'll see what happens. I'm responsible, I'm an adult, I can handle this. Friends. Just friends. Stuff like that.
I meant to write something tonight. I really did. I can't for the life of me remember what.
I think it's the ass at the top of my screen. It's very unnerving. I'm gonna scroll it up off my screen. There. Much better.
I have a cat balanced atop my head. I'm not kidding. Spaz. The girl. She's on my head.
Oh, God, I'm gonna be so fucking tired tomorrow. Later today. Whatever.
This song I'm listening to, Vertical Horizon's Best I Ever Had, it's reminding me of what I wanted to talk about, or maybe it's the one that made me wanna write in the first place. It's something I want. I can't remember. Jesus, this is annoying. Not just something. It's not a thing. It's like...something more abstract, you know? Love, probably, it probably has something to do with some other bizarre tragic love scenario my overtired brain has cooked up.
A few nights ago they said you might be able to see the Northern Lights in California. I forgot why, but I went out that night and looked, and I didn't see them. Someday I'll go see the Northern Lights, though.
Oh! I remember. It's not that song. It's this song. Uncle Kracker, "Follow Me"--download it if you don't have it and listen to it MORE THAN ONCE. The first time, you'll be like, "eh". After that, you'll be hopelessly hooked.
It's about having an affair. In a kinda lighthearted, upbeat way. Or something? No, that's not right...
Well, listen:
All you know is when I'm with you, I make you free
And swim through your veins like a fish in the sea.
Best line in the song. But it needs the rest to make sense. So download it. Or let me know, and I'll send you a copy.
But that's not the point, see. The point is, I think I wanna have an affair with a married woman, maybe five years older than I am. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. It's past 3am; Damon's on his weird Id-rant again. But I'm serious. I think that would be nice. You know, storybook-style.
Woman's a little older than the man, married but unhappily to some rich dude. Maybe there used to be magic there in her marriage, but not anymore. And then I come in. Maybe I'm the lawnmower or something like that, who knows how we meet, but it happens, you know? Making love in the summertime with the windows wide open and the white curtains billowing. White sheets. White walls, high white ceiling. Early evening outside, the sky's that shade of blue it turns before it turns black. Stars are coming out. Crickets. Pool's reflecting light up in dappled shades to the ceiling.
The affair'd last all summer, see. You get the torrid bits on the hot nights when the hubby's away on business or something. All over the house. By the fireplace. In the kitchen. On the desk in the study and on the couch in the den. On the goddamn porch, upside down from the chandelier and all sorts of craziness like that. And you get the secret giggling trysts in the hedgerows. And of course the white-sheets thang. But then end of summer, husband finds out, begs wife to go back to him, promises he'll be a good husband this time, stuff like that...
She falls in love with him again...they fall in love with each other, rekindled flame and stuff like that.
And I'm outta luck.
I wonder why my little scenarios always end with me and my broken heart. Maybe I haven't had my heart broken yet so I'm determined to see what it feels like. You know, morbid curiosity. More likely it's because it's 4am.
And since it's 4am, I'm going to bed. Next diary entry will be more interesting, hopefully. Heh.
Chill.
I have a habit of doing this. Did you realize? If you haven't yet, realize it now. I. Have. A BAD habit. Of staying up very late.
You know that little gold dragon on my page? It's fucking not appearing. Stupid geocities. Idiots. To see it, you need to load another page on this site (like, say, the old-entries page) and then back-button. It'll appear then. It's quite dumb that way. I'm sure Geocities can be circumvented with a little clever programming, but I'm too lazy to try and anyway programming is not by far my forte.
Remember that weirdass dream about stuck jaws and crunching teeth? I had it again. Twice, actually, in the last month. Yeah, it's been more than a month since I've written and I had the fucking dream twice. What does it mean? It's freaking me out. It's a very disturbing dream, trust me.
Hmm, there was something I wanted to say but I can't remember what.
At the top of my screen, there is an ad banner showing some guy's ass in briefs next to the slogan "viagra for the digital age". Do I even want to know?
No. I do not.
My ex-girlfriend's coming to town soon. I don't know what to do about her. Ex's are tough, especially when you parted amicably with a promise to "see how things are" in 6 years, at the end of your residency. Well, my residency ain't over, and technically, neither is our relationship. It's on hold. But I'm with someone else now, as you probably know, and that just...
...sucks.
Whatever. We'll see what happens. I'm responsible, I'm an adult, I can handle this. Friends. Just friends. Stuff like that.
I meant to write something tonight. I really did. I can't for the life of me remember what.
I think it's the ass at the top of my screen. It's very unnerving. I'm gonna scroll it up off my screen. There. Much better.
I have a cat balanced atop my head. I'm not kidding. Spaz. The girl. She's on my head.
Oh, God, I'm gonna be so fucking tired tomorrow. Later today. Whatever.
This song I'm listening to, Vertical Horizon's Best I Ever Had, it's reminding me of what I wanted to talk about, or maybe it's the one that made me wanna write in the first place. It's something I want. I can't remember. Jesus, this is annoying. Not just something. It's not a thing. It's like...something more abstract, you know? Love, probably, it probably has something to do with some other bizarre tragic love scenario my overtired brain has cooked up.
A few nights ago they said you might be able to see the Northern Lights in California. I forgot why, but I went out that night and looked, and I didn't see them. Someday I'll go see the Northern Lights, though.
Oh! I remember. It's not that song. It's this song. Uncle Kracker, "Follow Me"--download it if you don't have it and listen to it MORE THAN ONCE. The first time, you'll be like, "eh". After that, you'll be hopelessly hooked.
It's about having an affair. In a kinda lighthearted, upbeat way. Or something? No, that's not right...
Well, listen:
All you know is when I'm with you, I make you free
And swim through your veins like a fish in the sea.
Best line in the song. But it needs the rest to make sense. So download it. Or let me know, and I'll send you a copy.
But that's not the point, see. The point is, I think I wanna have an affair with a married woman, maybe five years older than I am. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. It's past 3am; Damon's on his weird Id-rant again. But I'm serious. I think that would be nice. You know, storybook-style.
Woman's a little older than the man, married but unhappily to some rich dude. Maybe there used to be magic there in her marriage, but not anymore. And then I come in. Maybe I'm the lawnmower or something like that, who knows how we meet, but it happens, you know? Making love in the summertime with the windows wide open and the white curtains billowing. White sheets. White walls, high white ceiling. Early evening outside, the sky's that shade of blue it turns before it turns black. Stars are coming out. Crickets. Pool's reflecting light up in dappled shades to the ceiling.
The affair'd last all summer, see. You get the torrid bits on the hot nights when the hubby's away on business or something. All over the house. By the fireplace. In the kitchen. On the desk in the study and on the couch in the den. On the goddamn porch, upside down from the chandelier and all sorts of craziness like that. And you get the secret giggling trysts in the hedgerows. And of course the white-sheets thang. But then end of summer, husband finds out, begs wife to go back to him, promises he'll be a good husband this time, stuff like that...
She falls in love with him again...they fall in love with each other, rekindled flame and stuff like that.
And I'm outta luck.
I wonder why my little scenarios always end with me and my broken heart. Maybe I haven't had my heart broken yet so I'm determined to see what it feels like. You know, morbid curiosity. More likely it's because it's 4am.
And since it's 4am, I'm going to bed. Next diary entry will be more interesting, hopefully. Heh.
Chill.
It's raining.
It's 35 degrees outside.
It's snowing everywhere above 1200 ft.
I'm listening to my mp3s. It's warm in my room. My chair's comfortable. I'm comfortable. It's a good night to stay up late.
Even if I have to be up in 4 hours, and have yet to sleep.
I had a bizarre dream last night. Actually, this morning. Actually, it was probably noon when I had this dream, but I had yet to rise from bed. At any rate, it was strange. It had to do with me trying to play mp3s, only all I managed to play was a recording of people having sex. Loudly.
No matter which mp3 I tried, it'd be moaning.
A coupla nights ago, I had a dream that my jaw was stuck. I couldn't open it all the way, and I couldn't close it either. It was a very disturbing dream. Finally I crunched it closed, and it felt like I shattered my teeth in the back. There were little pieces of tooth-shrapnel crunching, and there was the feeling of bloodbubbles bursting under the teeth. It was quite disgusting.
I opened my mouth, and half of my teeth fell out. While I was trying to put those back in (no blood this time, oddly), the rest fell out. So I put them all in, like a old man's dentures, and shut my mouth to keep them in. I was just worrying about how I'd go through life without teeth when I woke up.
The scary thing is I swear I've had this dream before--not the teeth falling out bit, but the stuck-jaw bit.
I didn't mean to rant about bad dreams, by the way.
It's really raining hard outside.
It's inspirational, the rain. There's something inherently right about writing when you can hear and see the rain outside. I like the way rain drums on the roof. I like how you can hear it dribbling down the raingutter pipes. I like how it snakes down the windowpane, and how outside everything's gleaming and wet.
I really like how streetlight reflects on the asphalt in the rain. And the way curtains of rain billow in the sky.
I'm a little tired...
I'm listening to a song called Indulge Me by Olive. A friend of mine told me to DL it. It's very...cool. Sensual. I think it could be a little slower, personally, because with the subtle throbbing beat it's got, it's really got the potential for being a chill-out type of song.
By that I mean a song you can stretch back and close your eyes and groove to.
Really, though, this song has that sort of potential. But it's a little too fast, which makes it more the dancing type of song. It has one HELL of a provocative beginning.
It sounds like glints of moonlight off of moving skin. When you see just flashes, hints of the curve of a shoulder, the length of a bare thigh, the dip of the spine at the small of a girl's back. Someone else's hand there, the arm curling around the waist, the fingers splayed over the skin. And slowly rolling movement, so the light shifts and cants and changes. When it's so detached and ghostly in the dark that it's not like you're looking at someone's body anymore; it's like a landscape of skin, or a seascape, always moving.
And shadows, hints of shuddering kisses...
There's a line in it--
Indulge me please/I'll take the breath you breathe
--that's awfully suggestive without really saying anything at all.
The woman who's singing, she has a very clear sort of voice, almost (but not quite) innocent. The song itself is slow and throbbing and...achy. It sounds like sex at first, but then it starts sounding like the sea on a quiet night. Always moonlight, though. Something about the song just whispers about the moon.
I'm starting to yawn...
I think there should be a planet out there that's nothing but liquid. The creatures that live there will be liquid, too. Sentient, capricious, everchanging whirlpool-beings. Currents. Living waves.
And the whole planet will be alive, too. You'd know this because of the way the tides will rise and fall.
What is it about rhythms that's inherently natural to the human mind? We just seem to like rhythms. The tide is calming. The falling rain is soothing. The phases of the moon, the swaying of a swing, the repeating clatter of train wheels over the tracks. The rocking of a cradle, making love. Music. Dance. Breath. Heartbeat.
I want to soar...
I want to have wings like the eagles.
I want to watch a thunderstorm from above. I want to dance in the falling snow without touching the ground. I want to see the desert rushing beneath me from five thousand feet in the air. I want to kiss the moon and ride the wind.
I want to nest at the peak of the tallest mountain. I want to be some aerial eagle/man spirit. I want to have eyes like the eagle, golden and sharp, and tiny feathers in the place of hair. I want to have a piercing cry that shatters the silence like some javelin of freedom.
It's 35 degrees outside.
It's snowing everywhere above 1200 ft.
I'm listening to my mp3s. It's warm in my room. My chair's comfortable. I'm comfortable. It's a good night to stay up late.
Even if I have to be up in 4 hours, and have yet to sleep.
I had a bizarre dream last night. Actually, this morning. Actually, it was probably noon when I had this dream, but I had yet to rise from bed. At any rate, it was strange. It had to do with me trying to play mp3s, only all I managed to play was a recording of people having sex. Loudly.
No matter which mp3 I tried, it'd be moaning.
A coupla nights ago, I had a dream that my jaw was stuck. I couldn't open it all the way, and I couldn't close it either. It was a very disturbing dream. Finally I crunched it closed, and it felt like I shattered my teeth in the back. There were little pieces of tooth-shrapnel crunching, and there was the feeling of bloodbubbles bursting under the teeth. It was quite disgusting.
I opened my mouth, and half of my teeth fell out. While I was trying to put those back in (no blood this time, oddly), the rest fell out. So I put them all in, like a old man's dentures, and shut my mouth to keep them in. I was just worrying about how I'd go through life without teeth when I woke up.
The scary thing is I swear I've had this dream before--not the teeth falling out bit, but the stuck-jaw bit.
I didn't mean to rant about bad dreams, by the way.
It's really raining hard outside.
It's inspirational, the rain. There's something inherently right about writing when you can hear and see the rain outside. I like the way rain drums on the roof. I like how you can hear it dribbling down the raingutter pipes. I like how it snakes down the windowpane, and how outside everything's gleaming and wet.
I really like how streetlight reflects on the asphalt in the rain. And the way curtains of rain billow in the sky.
I'm a little tired...
I'm listening to a song called Indulge Me by Olive. A friend of mine told me to DL it. It's very...cool. Sensual. I think it could be a little slower, personally, because with the subtle throbbing beat it's got, it's really got the potential for being a chill-out type of song.
By that I mean a song you can stretch back and close your eyes and groove to.
Really, though, this song has that sort of potential. But it's a little too fast, which makes it more the dancing type of song. It has one HELL of a provocative beginning.
It sounds like glints of moonlight off of moving skin. When you see just flashes, hints of the curve of a shoulder, the length of a bare thigh, the dip of the spine at the small of a girl's back. Someone else's hand there, the arm curling around the waist, the fingers splayed over the skin. And slowly rolling movement, so the light shifts and cants and changes. When it's so detached and ghostly in the dark that it's not like you're looking at someone's body anymore; it's like a landscape of skin, or a seascape, always moving.
And shadows, hints of shuddering kisses...
There's a line in it--
Indulge me please/I'll take the breath you breathe
--that's awfully suggestive without really saying anything at all.
The woman who's singing, she has a very clear sort of voice, almost (but not quite) innocent. The song itself is slow and throbbing and...achy. It sounds like sex at first, but then it starts sounding like the sea on a quiet night. Always moonlight, though. Something about the song just whispers about the moon.
I'm starting to yawn...
I think there should be a planet out there that's nothing but liquid. The creatures that live there will be liquid, too. Sentient, capricious, everchanging whirlpool-beings. Currents. Living waves.
And the whole planet will be alive, too. You'd know this because of the way the tides will rise and fall.
What is it about rhythms that's inherently natural to the human mind? We just seem to like rhythms. The tide is calming. The falling rain is soothing. The phases of the moon, the swaying of a swing, the repeating clatter of train wheels over the tracks. The rocking of a cradle, making love. Music. Dance. Breath. Heartbeat.
I want to soar...
I want to have wings like the eagles.
I want to watch a thunderstorm from above. I want to dance in the falling snow without touching the ground. I want to see the desert rushing beneath me from five thousand feet in the air. I want to kiss the moon and ride the wind.
I want to nest at the peak of the tallest mountain. I want to be some aerial eagle/man spirit. I want to have eyes like the eagle, golden and sharp, and tiny feathers in the place of hair. I want to have a piercing cry that shatters the silence like some javelin of freedom.
You know, I should stop writing diary entries so late at night. I look back, and it seems like all my nice, thoughtful posts are written during the day, or the evening. And then you have these late-night posts and they're just...id.
(That was, by the way, the obligatory superego intro.)
When I'm drunk, I forgo the superego intro. But then I'm not drunk, except possibility on fatigue. and shit. i'm gonna be buttass tired tomorrow. today. less than 4 hours from now.
Late at night, tiredness is nice, though. You know what I mean. That kinda fatigue that resides low in your long bones, and loosens your muscles. The kinda tired that makes you wanna stretch out and drift off to sleep.
If I could, I'd write this from bed. I'd write it lounging in bed. Sprawling. Hell, I'd write by voice if I could. Talk and watch the letters come out. Except those are usually stupid, those programs. "My name is Damon. I live in San Jose."
Blip... My fame is Dame end. Eye live in Sand Ho Say.
You get the point.
My ear hurts, fuckit. Might be because I've been wearing headphones for way too long. Maybe I should take 'em off, but I'm too lazy to reconnect my subwoofers. Though right now, I could use a good bassline. Something to rumble through my tired bones.
--yawn--
Yesterday I had a thing for brilliant chica mathematicians whispering pi. While they...
I should censor myself, shouldn't I?
Anyway. I'm glad to say that particular fantasy has gone by. Now it's stretching. Stretching's damn sexy. I wonder why I didn't notice this before. I bet if this gets out, 50% of the female population would be afraid to stretch. The other 50% would be stretching every other minute.
Winamp. Has the crappiest equalizer. Things sound a lot better if you just turn the equalizer off.
Speaking of drifting to sleep...and I know I mentioned that long ago, but when it's 3:30am you just have to learn to ride the randomly rolling waves of my thoughts.
Okay, I've just forgotten what I was going to say.
Something about drifting to sleep. About--oh, probably afterglow. About drifting to sleep aching and tired with sweat drying off your skin.
I really. Really. Need to think about untabooed things.
That was a futile attempt from the superego's corner. I'm glad to report the id has crushed the SE entirely. HA! Pathetic SE. Super, indeed.
It's amazing what music can do. Get a compelling beat going, and next thing you know you're moving to it. Dancing in your chair. My thoughts are so disjointed. I keep writing a sentence or two, thinking it's a topic I want to pursue, but then the topic flies out of my grasp or disintegrates, or...I don't know...I can't seem to hold a straight line of thought.
I am tired; I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears
Sounds like lyrics composed under the influence of a hallucinogen to me. Smirk. Nonetheless, they're my favorite lyrics from this song.
This is was what I was talking about...when I talked about rhythms that pull you into it. Did I say that? Maybe I didn't. I said it now. That's how it is. It pulls you in. You move to it without realizing it. This song has the most compelling beat I've ever heard.
Maybe not ever. Maybe not most compelling, at least.
But it's the most hypnotic.
I mean, shit, I've ranted about it twice already. I haven't even ranted about Garbage once. Or have I? Garbage is my favorite band. Most of you reading this probably know this, because I don't anticipate anyone I don't know reading this.
Now that would be weird.
This is gonna be another of those posts I'm gonna wanna delete, but won't...
Anyone wanna dance? I wanna dance. To this song. Or..no. I wanna lounge somewhere. Arms up along the couch. Legs crossed at the ankles. Crucified by laziness. And watch someone dance for me.
That idea just came into my head, btw.
It's a good one.
Dance that one dance. The veils dance. Seven veils? The one where she drops the veils, one by one, and ends up naked. Does she end up naked? She should. Sandstorms and incense and perfumed oils and bare skin shining in firelight and undulating flesh.
My imagination is overactive...
I should've been born a storybook Gypsy. Baggy pants and open-throated shirts. Unshaven jaws and gold earrings. Bandannas around my head and a glint in my eye. Have a dark-eyed Gypsy girlfriend with beads in her hair and dark, dramatic makeup. And she'll dance for me in the dead of night when all the other Gypsies have gone to sleep. When the fire's guttering low enough that the light it gives is subversive and red, and everything's shadowy and mysterious. She'll dance, and the shadows will pool and flow in the changing hollows of her body. And I'll beat the drum for her, because all the other musicians are asleep. Just the drum. Bare hands on drumskin. Slow hypnotic rhythm. Watch her while she dances. Slow hypnotic dance.
And she'll watch me back. With a razoredged dagger held between her teeth. With a razoredged gleam in her eye.
...dangerous.
(That was, by the way, the obligatory superego intro.)
When I'm drunk, I forgo the superego intro. But then I'm not drunk, except possibility on fatigue. and shit. i'm gonna be buttass tired tomorrow. today. less than 4 hours from now.
Late at night, tiredness is nice, though. You know what I mean. That kinda fatigue that resides low in your long bones, and loosens your muscles. The kinda tired that makes you wanna stretch out and drift off to sleep.
If I could, I'd write this from bed. I'd write it lounging in bed. Sprawling. Hell, I'd write by voice if I could. Talk and watch the letters come out. Except those are usually stupid, those programs. "My name is Damon. I live in San Jose."
Blip... My fame is Dame end. Eye live in Sand Ho Say.
You get the point.
My ear hurts, fuckit. Might be because I've been wearing headphones for way too long. Maybe I should take 'em off, but I'm too lazy to reconnect my subwoofers. Though right now, I could use a good bassline. Something to rumble through my tired bones.
--yawn--
Yesterday I had a thing for brilliant chica mathematicians whispering pi. While they...
I should censor myself, shouldn't I?
Anyway. I'm glad to say that particular fantasy has gone by. Now it's stretching. Stretching's damn sexy. I wonder why I didn't notice this before. I bet if this gets out, 50% of the female population would be afraid to stretch. The other 50% would be stretching every other minute.
Winamp. Has the crappiest equalizer. Things sound a lot better if you just turn the equalizer off.
Speaking of drifting to sleep...and I know I mentioned that long ago, but when it's 3:30am you just have to learn to ride the randomly rolling waves of my thoughts.
Okay, I've just forgotten what I was going to say.
Something about drifting to sleep. About--oh, probably afterglow. About drifting to sleep aching and tired with sweat drying off your skin.
I really. Really. Need to think about untabooed things.
That was a futile attempt from the superego's corner. I'm glad to report the id has crushed the SE entirely. HA! Pathetic SE. Super, indeed.
It's amazing what music can do. Get a compelling beat going, and next thing you know you're moving to it. Dancing in your chair. My thoughts are so disjointed. I keep writing a sentence or two, thinking it's a topic I want to pursue, but then the topic flies out of my grasp or disintegrates, or...I don't know...I can't seem to hold a straight line of thought.
I am tired; I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears
Sounds like lyrics composed under the influence of a hallucinogen to me. Smirk. Nonetheless, they're my favorite lyrics from this song.
This is was what I was talking about...when I talked about rhythms that pull you into it. Did I say that? Maybe I didn't. I said it now. That's how it is. It pulls you in. You move to it without realizing it. This song has the most compelling beat I've ever heard.
Maybe not ever. Maybe not most compelling, at least.
But it's the most hypnotic.
I mean, shit, I've ranted about it twice already. I haven't even ranted about Garbage once. Or have I? Garbage is my favorite band. Most of you reading this probably know this, because I don't anticipate anyone I don't know reading this.
Now that would be weird.
This is gonna be another of those posts I'm gonna wanna delete, but won't...
Anyone wanna dance? I wanna dance. To this song. Or..no. I wanna lounge somewhere. Arms up along the couch. Legs crossed at the ankles. Crucified by laziness. And watch someone dance for me.
That idea just came into my head, btw.
It's a good one.
Dance that one dance. The veils dance. Seven veils? The one where she drops the veils, one by one, and ends up naked. Does she end up naked? She should. Sandstorms and incense and perfumed oils and bare skin shining in firelight and undulating flesh.
My imagination is overactive...
I should've been born a storybook Gypsy. Baggy pants and open-throated shirts. Unshaven jaws and gold earrings. Bandannas around my head and a glint in my eye. Have a dark-eyed Gypsy girlfriend with beads in her hair and dark, dramatic makeup. And she'll dance for me in the dead of night when all the other Gypsies have gone to sleep. When the fire's guttering low enough that the light it gives is subversive and red, and everything's shadowy and mysterious. She'll dance, and the shadows will pool and flow in the changing hollows of her body. And I'll beat the drum for her, because all the other musicians are asleep. Just the drum. Bare hands on drumskin. Slow hypnotic rhythm. Watch her while she dances. Slow hypnotic dance.
And she'll watch me back. With a razoredged dagger held between her teeth. With a razoredged gleam in her eye.
...dangerous.
I lied.
I didn't go to sleep. I downloaded a few mp3s and then came here. Now I'm writing a diary entry. It's 1:57am right now. I should be in bed. I should be asleep. I'm going to wake up in about 4 hours.
I don't wanna sleep.
I don't wanna wake up in 4 hours.
I wanna run away. Pack all the necessary gear into one huge duffel bag--necessary gear being, of course, 3 katanas (we'll pretend for the sake of argument I already have the 2 that are currently en route here), 1 ninja-to, 1 knife, 1 subwoofer and 2 tweeters, 1 laptop computer, about 250 CDs, my skis, my blackbook, a huge bottle of advil, and my cats. And...yeah, that's all I can think of right now.
That's all that matters to me at 2am, apparently.
Oh, and I'd bring my pager along. And my credit cards, bank cards, phone cards, safeway card, blockbuster card, health insurance card. But only because I'd put it behind the rear wheel of my car and back out of the parking space in a very precise, very straight line so as to run over the pager not once, but twice.
I think it'll be quite dead after the first time, but just to be sure, I'll crush it a second time.
The demise of the credit cards will come later.
Then I'll roar down the road with my only possessions thrown into the backseat and my cats wandering around the spacious (yeah right) interior of my car, yowling and puking because they're carsick. I'll stop by Sara's apartment and honk until the lights come on in at least 10 different windows and then I'll jump out of the car and leave the engine running, pound up the stairs and hammer down her door.
She'll be sleepy and beautiful. She say, "What the fuck, Damon?"
And I'll say, "I'm going away, far away, and I'm never coming back. Are you coming with me?"
And she'll say, "This is insane."
And I'll say, "Are you coming with me?"
And she won't say a word. She'll put her hand in mine and we'll leave and we won't even shut the door behind us. Down the stairs and into the car, where we'll share a single steamy wordless conspiratorial kiss over yowling cats and the stick shift and the handbrake and the artful sprawl of little plastic cards on the ground.
I'll back out of the drive, then, all the way backwards until I back into the street. My fender will scrape the asphalt and sparks would fly, and then we'd zoom off. I'd take the 101 north and I'd pop a CD into the stereo and we'd blast tunes all the way to San Francisco, where I'd take my last look at the greatest city in the world.
Then we'd take the 80 east to I-5, and swing south from there. The sun'll come up with us in the middle of the Central Valley, and we'll stop somewhere and rob an Arco gas station, just take the money and three bottles of mountain dew and run, run for the border. By nightfall we'll be crossing into Mexico, no problem. We'll go past Tijuana and then stop at some seedy motel where the owner has a wandering that won't look you straight in yours. We'll get their best room, which isn't much better than a room outta motel-6, and I'd kick off my shoes and she'd slip into something more comfortable while I dug a good Mexican tequila out of the icebox.
"Wanna tell me what all this is about?" she'll ask me.
"No," I'll tell her.
Pour her a shot. Pour me a shot.
Slam it down. Slam the glasses down. Take out my 2 billion and 1 plastic cards, testament to my past life where just about everything I did, everything I bought or rented or sold, was encoded in a compact magnetic bar. Take 'em out and build a house of cards.
Set fire to it.
Watch it burn slow and sickly and purple.
Watch it burn for a minute and then meet her eyes through the curling collapsing frame of the cardhouse. And we'll go to bed. We won't say a word. We'll make a hell lotta noise.
Next morning we'd head north again. Rob all along the border. Rob and run. Rob and run. Leave a trail of crime behind us as long as our 5 o' clock shadows across the desert sand. Get filthy rich. Light a cigar with a rolled-up hundred dollar bill. Drink out of a $2000 Gucci slipper.
Get caught one day, of course. Get caught in some bank holdup somewhere, 'cause the FBI's been on our tails for 16 months now and our luck finally runs out.
Won't go down easy. Pull a gun. Start shooting. Get shot. Get shot down. Get shot dead. Watch it all fade away. Gunsmoke and slanting afternoon sunlight. Blistering desert heat and dust devils dancing with the tumbleweeds. Lover/partner in crime/slick looking goth that'll get off with 10 years, get married and settle down to a respectable life, but won't ever forget her 18 months on the run with me. And that's the last I'll see. And I wouldn't regret a thing.
Not a thing.
And then?
And now, actually?
I realize it's 2:20, and I've got about 3hrs 40min left to sleep.
This was one hell of a weird diary entry. I meant to write about living the idyllic life on the coast of Baja California. Man, goo-goo juice does weird shit to your head.
Time for bed.
I didn't go to sleep. I downloaded a few mp3s and then came here. Now I'm writing a diary entry. It's 1:57am right now. I should be in bed. I should be asleep. I'm going to wake up in about 4 hours.
I don't wanna sleep.
I don't wanna wake up in 4 hours.
I wanna run away. Pack all the necessary gear into one huge duffel bag--necessary gear being, of course, 3 katanas (we'll pretend for the sake of argument I already have the 2 that are currently en route here), 1 ninja-to, 1 knife, 1 subwoofer and 2 tweeters, 1 laptop computer, about 250 CDs, my skis, my blackbook, a huge bottle of advil, and my cats. And...yeah, that's all I can think of right now.
That's all that matters to me at 2am, apparently.
Oh, and I'd bring my pager along. And my credit cards, bank cards, phone cards, safeway card, blockbuster card, health insurance card. But only because I'd put it behind the rear wheel of my car and back out of the parking space in a very precise, very straight line so as to run over the pager not once, but twice.
I think it'll be quite dead after the first time, but just to be sure, I'll crush it a second time.
The demise of the credit cards will come later.
Then I'll roar down the road with my only possessions thrown into the backseat and my cats wandering around the spacious (yeah right) interior of my car, yowling and puking because they're carsick. I'll stop by Sara's apartment and honk until the lights come on in at least 10 different windows and then I'll jump out of the car and leave the engine running, pound up the stairs and hammer down her door.
She'll be sleepy and beautiful. She say, "What the fuck, Damon?"
And I'll say, "I'm going away, far away, and I'm never coming back. Are you coming with me?"
And she'll say, "This is insane."
And I'll say, "Are you coming with me?"
And she won't say a word. She'll put her hand in mine and we'll leave and we won't even shut the door behind us. Down the stairs and into the car, where we'll share a single steamy wordless conspiratorial kiss over yowling cats and the stick shift and the handbrake and the artful sprawl of little plastic cards on the ground.
I'll back out of the drive, then, all the way backwards until I back into the street. My fender will scrape the asphalt and sparks would fly, and then we'd zoom off. I'd take the 101 north and I'd pop a CD into the stereo and we'd blast tunes all the way to San Francisco, where I'd take my last look at the greatest city in the world.
Then we'd take the 80 east to I-5, and swing south from there. The sun'll come up with us in the middle of the Central Valley, and we'll stop somewhere and rob an Arco gas station, just take the money and three bottles of mountain dew and run, run for the border. By nightfall we'll be crossing into Mexico, no problem. We'll go past Tijuana and then stop at some seedy motel where the owner has a wandering that won't look you straight in yours. We'll get their best room, which isn't much better than a room outta motel-6, and I'd kick off my shoes and she'd slip into something more comfortable while I dug a good Mexican tequila out of the icebox.
"Wanna tell me what all this is about?" she'll ask me.
"No," I'll tell her.
Pour her a shot. Pour me a shot.
Slam it down. Slam the glasses down. Take out my 2 billion and 1 plastic cards, testament to my past life where just about everything I did, everything I bought or rented or sold, was encoded in a compact magnetic bar. Take 'em out and build a house of cards.
Set fire to it.
Watch it burn slow and sickly and purple.
Watch it burn for a minute and then meet her eyes through the curling collapsing frame of the cardhouse. And we'll go to bed. We won't say a word. We'll make a hell lotta noise.
Next morning we'd head north again. Rob all along the border. Rob and run. Rob and run. Leave a trail of crime behind us as long as our 5 o' clock shadows across the desert sand. Get filthy rich. Light a cigar with a rolled-up hundred dollar bill. Drink out of a $2000 Gucci slipper.
Get caught one day, of course. Get caught in some bank holdup somewhere, 'cause the FBI's been on our tails for 16 months now and our luck finally runs out.
Won't go down easy. Pull a gun. Start shooting. Get shot. Get shot down. Get shot dead. Watch it all fade away. Gunsmoke and slanting afternoon sunlight. Blistering desert heat and dust devils dancing with the tumbleweeds. Lover/partner in crime/slick looking goth that'll get off with 10 years, get married and settle down to a respectable life, but won't ever forget her 18 months on the run with me. And that's the last I'll see. And I wouldn't regret a thing.
Not a thing.
And then?
And now, actually?
I realize it's 2:20, and I've got about 3hrs 40min left to sleep.
This was one hell of a weird diary entry. I meant to write about living the idyllic life on the coast of Baja California. Man, goo-goo juice does weird shit to your head.
Time for bed.
Ya know, I think I'd like to live in the 1800s, when the west was still wild. I'd like to be a farmer in Oklahoma. Grow fields of wheat and barley, just like that Sting song, beneath a sky made all the more dazzling blue by all the gold on the ground. Get up with the dawn, work all day, come back and eat dinner by firelight, every night, tumble into bed with my laughing bright-eyed wife, whom I'd love with all my heart.
Except I think some nights when the October moon is full and the wind's blowing across the fields, making the wheat bend, making it bend like waves on the ocean--
I think then, I'd remember some other woman I've loved from afar in my youth. Someone highborn, above the station of a humble farmer. I think I'd remember her and I'd dream of her and when I'd awake I'd go to the window, which is probably a hole in the wall we'd cover up with boards and paper in the winter, and I'd look over my autumn fields and I'd think how much they looked like her hair in the moonlight, because she's a blonde.
And I'd know how her hair looked in the moonlight because I'd known her before for just one night, on some other October night years and years ago before I left to go west, on the edge of her father's plantation in Virginia while the cotton bloomed all around us and fell like snow.
I think that's a good way to spend a lifetime. Or a heartbreaking one, depending on how you see it.
Except I think some nights when the October moon is full and the wind's blowing across the fields, making the wheat bend, making it bend like waves on the ocean--
I think then, I'd remember some other woman I've loved from afar in my youth. Someone highborn, above the station of a humble farmer. I think I'd remember her and I'd dream of her and when I'd awake I'd go to the window, which is probably a hole in the wall we'd cover up with boards and paper in the winter, and I'd look over my autumn fields and I'd think how much they looked like her hair in the moonlight, because she's a blonde.
And I'd know how her hair looked in the moonlight because I'd known her before for just one night, on some other October night years and years ago before I left to go west, on the edge of her father's plantation in Virginia while the cotton bloomed all around us and fell like snow.
I think that's a good way to spend a lifetime. Or a heartbreaking one, depending on how you see it.
I know this girl.
I wanna tell you about her.
I've never seen her with my eyes, or heard her voice, or touched even a hair on her head.
But I know her.
She lives up in my head. I thought her up, I suppose, but that doesn't mean I own her or even understand her. She grew out of a random lustful fantasy. She grew out of a stereotype. Dominatrix, almost. But not quite. Not the kind you see on TV and hear on 1-900 numbers. Cooler. Reserved. Vicious and perfect.
She's got burgundy hair, you see. This dark, dark burgundy, darker than blood, dark as wine. Streaked with crimson highlights. Worn straight, parted in the middle, cut short in the back, falling loose to an inch, two inches, below the chin at the front.
Maybe it falls forward into her eyes sometimes. Like a curtain of beads. I don't know what color her eyes are.
I know her, though.
She's got the body of a cat, a weasel. Sleek. Lithe. She can shoot a fly off a cow's ass from thirty yards away; she can snap the flame off a candle with a whip. She can use her own body like a whip.
She wears leather. Black leather. And when we make love--but we never really do--she's the one in control.
That's how she started out. That was all. A framework, a snapshot, a coin with just one side.
That's not how she stayed.
Lemme tell you about this girl I know...
Here's the weird part. She doesn't fit in with anyone I've really known and loved, you know. She's not someone I'd have a real relationship with. She's too different. She wouldn't fit in my life. In fact, the only thing she's congruent with...
...is everything else I dream about.
So this is what I figured. She's not a stereotype. Maybe she's an archetype. I'm not too sure what that means. But what I do know--she's an embodiment of the random things my brain cooks up when I'm up too late. Worlds with three moons and a dying red sun. Rivers that flow upstream. But it's not as if these things were somehow in her. It's like, she's in them. She's the core, the spirit. She's somehow all the things I'm not, and yet created by something in my own head. A summation, a distillation, of all I imagine. Or the root of all that I imagine.
So which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I wanna show you this girl...
This is something that came to me a little earlier, while I was talking online. And I don't know if I can top the first telling, so I'll just tell it the way it was told, the first time around.
And this is how it goes:
picture some little town in the southwest
arizona, new mexico. somewhere like that.
hot as hell.
dustdevils and tumbleweeds.
i'm driving out of the east. i'm driving straight into the sun.
air conditioning's broken in my car.
and i'm getting sick of my cds, getting sick of the road. i'm sweaty, windblown, there's dust everywhere in my car. i need a shower. i need a bed, actually, because it's late afternoon and i've been driving all day and i'm tired--of the road, of driving, just plain old tired.
i run out of gas
long straight road
mirage makes it seems to split and waver and float above itself, far down the road
the sun's setting the horizon on fire
there's a single little gas station
dirty as the rest of this world
old.
gas pumps are 1970s or so, big huge numbers, unattractive.
the windows are cloudy with dirt.
the storekeeper's unshaven, in a wifebeater and worn jeans, has a cigarette and a nasty attitude
takes my money and gives me a suspicious glare
me, i could care less. i just want some gas and a stinkin' motel-6
there's an overhead fan inside, and some food and drinks. i take a turn, decide i'm better off not eating anything that's got dust on it
flies are buzzing
i go back out
i open the gas door and start pumping gas, but i do it slowly, kinda lethargic, because the sooner i finish the sooner i hafta keep driving. but then it's not like i wanna stay here, either.
gas starts going, really, really slow.
i try to sit on the hood but it's too friggin' hot
so i sit on the back, which is also hot, but not as bad.
and so i'm there. weary and dusty and hot and squinting down the road the way i came, trying to tell myself dammit, i came a long way already, not much further to go, gotta be a motel around here somewhere
and then i notice this flickering on the road. like a sun off a mirror.
and there's been nothing, absolutely nothing, on the road thus far, so this catches my attention
i watch it.
it gets closer. a little bigger. it's the sun gleaming off a windshield.
i have nothing better to do, and anyway i'm getting a little interested. so i keep watching. and it gets closer.
it's one of those big american sportsters from the 60s. mustang, firebird, something before the world decided to make sleek-looking cars. this one's just classic. and it's not one of those museum pieces, not one of those gleaming perfect ones that some middle-aged upper-middle class man has in his driveway to remind him of the youth he never had. this one's real; it's seen use. it's dusty and roadbeaten, dented.
convertible? i don't know. no, actually...or if it is, the top is up.
so i can't see anything except the sunlight flashing off the windshield until it's very close
and then it passes, not tearing down the road, but not going slow either. just cruising.
and there's my burgundy-haired girl inside...
one wrist on the wheel
the other elbow resting out the window, the fingers splayed on the cusp of the door
and i'm squinting to get a better look, and she doesn't see me at first. i don't know if she has music going; maybe she does, but she's too cool to move to it.
she kinda glances over, then
this lazy, unaffected sideglance, like she couldn't care less if she was looking at a tumbleweed.
and her lashes are long, low, swept low because her eyes are narrowed against the searing light--not quite squinting, but almost
it's a glance that inadvertently smoulders. sets fires. and then she's passing, and i don't know if this is my imagination, or if it really happened, but i could swear, just swear, that right before she looked back at the road--still unaffected--her lips (and we all know whose lips they look like...) twitched a little, like they were considering smiling, but didn't deem the cause worthy of it.
and then she's past the gas station and still cruising down that road in her car, and i'm just watching, just staring, until she's a dot on the road, and then gone, flinging up a trail of slow-settling dust behind her.
...I know this girl.
She's not someone you ever forget.
I wanna tell you about her.
I've never seen her with my eyes, or heard her voice, or touched even a hair on her head.
But I know her.
She lives up in my head. I thought her up, I suppose, but that doesn't mean I own her or even understand her. She grew out of a random lustful fantasy. She grew out of a stereotype. Dominatrix, almost. But not quite. Not the kind you see on TV and hear on 1-900 numbers. Cooler. Reserved. Vicious and perfect.
She's got burgundy hair, you see. This dark, dark burgundy, darker than blood, dark as wine. Streaked with crimson highlights. Worn straight, parted in the middle, cut short in the back, falling loose to an inch, two inches, below the chin at the front.
Maybe it falls forward into her eyes sometimes. Like a curtain of beads. I don't know what color her eyes are.
I know her, though.
She's got the body of a cat, a weasel. Sleek. Lithe. She can shoot a fly off a cow's ass from thirty yards away; she can snap the flame off a candle with a whip. She can use her own body like a whip.
She wears leather. Black leather. And when we make love--but we never really do--she's the one in control.
That's how she started out. That was all. A framework, a snapshot, a coin with just one side.
That's not how she stayed.
Lemme tell you about this girl I know...
Here's the weird part. She doesn't fit in with anyone I've really known and loved, you know. She's not someone I'd have a real relationship with. She's too different. She wouldn't fit in my life. In fact, the only thing she's congruent with...
...is everything else I dream about.
So this is what I figured. She's not a stereotype. Maybe she's an archetype. I'm not too sure what that means. But what I do know--she's an embodiment of the random things my brain cooks up when I'm up too late. Worlds with three moons and a dying red sun. Rivers that flow upstream. But it's not as if these things were somehow in her. It's like, she's in them. She's the core, the spirit. She's somehow all the things I'm not, and yet created by something in my own head. A summation, a distillation, of all I imagine. Or the root of all that I imagine.
So which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I wanna show you this girl...
This is something that came to me a little earlier, while I was talking online. And I don't know if I can top the first telling, so I'll just tell it the way it was told, the first time around.
And this is how it goes:
picture some little town in the southwest
arizona, new mexico. somewhere like that.
hot as hell.
dustdevils and tumbleweeds.
i'm driving out of the east. i'm driving straight into the sun.
air conditioning's broken in my car.
and i'm getting sick of my cds, getting sick of the road. i'm sweaty, windblown, there's dust everywhere in my car. i need a shower. i need a bed, actually, because it's late afternoon and i've been driving all day and i'm tired--of the road, of driving, just plain old tired.
i run out of gas
long straight road
mirage makes it seems to split and waver and float above itself, far down the road
the sun's setting the horizon on fire
there's a single little gas station
dirty as the rest of this world
old.
gas pumps are 1970s or so, big huge numbers, unattractive.
the windows are cloudy with dirt.
the storekeeper's unshaven, in a wifebeater and worn jeans, has a cigarette and a nasty attitude
takes my money and gives me a suspicious glare
me, i could care less. i just want some gas and a stinkin' motel-6
there's an overhead fan inside, and some food and drinks. i take a turn, decide i'm better off not eating anything that's got dust on it
flies are buzzing
i go back out
i open the gas door and start pumping gas, but i do it slowly, kinda lethargic, because the sooner i finish the sooner i hafta keep driving. but then it's not like i wanna stay here, either.
gas starts going, really, really slow.
i try to sit on the hood but it's too friggin' hot
so i sit on the back, which is also hot, but not as bad.
and so i'm there. weary and dusty and hot and squinting down the road the way i came, trying to tell myself dammit, i came a long way already, not much further to go, gotta be a motel around here somewhere
and then i notice this flickering on the road. like a sun off a mirror.
and there's been nothing, absolutely nothing, on the road thus far, so this catches my attention
i watch it.
it gets closer. a little bigger. it's the sun gleaming off a windshield.
i have nothing better to do, and anyway i'm getting a little interested. so i keep watching. and it gets closer.
it's one of those big american sportsters from the 60s. mustang, firebird, something before the world decided to make sleek-looking cars. this one's just classic. and it's not one of those museum pieces, not one of those gleaming perfect ones that some middle-aged upper-middle class man has in his driveway to remind him of the youth he never had. this one's real; it's seen use. it's dusty and roadbeaten, dented.
convertible? i don't know. no, actually...or if it is, the top is up.
so i can't see anything except the sunlight flashing off the windshield until it's very close
and then it passes, not tearing down the road, but not going slow either. just cruising.
and there's my burgundy-haired girl inside...
one wrist on the wheel
the other elbow resting out the window, the fingers splayed on the cusp of the door
and i'm squinting to get a better look, and she doesn't see me at first. i don't know if she has music going; maybe she does, but she's too cool to move to it.
she kinda glances over, then
this lazy, unaffected sideglance, like she couldn't care less if she was looking at a tumbleweed.
and her lashes are long, low, swept low because her eyes are narrowed against the searing light--not quite squinting, but almost
it's a glance that inadvertently smoulders. sets fires. and then she's passing, and i don't know if this is my imagination, or if it really happened, but i could swear, just swear, that right before she looked back at the road--still unaffected--her lips (and we all know whose lips they look like...) twitched a little, like they were considering smiling, but didn't deem the cause worthy of it.
and then she's past the gas station and still cruising down that road in her car, and i'm just watching, just staring, until she's a dot on the road, and then gone, flinging up a trail of slow-settling dust behind her.
...I know this girl.
She's not someone you ever forget.
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