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Warthog of Zenith
Jul. 26th, 2017 10:32 amMy computer is in the shop, having the track pad and battery replaced. So I've been trying (again) to learn to use my iPad better. This is a recurring, yet unfulfilled, resolution. The Sparrowhawk uses his for everything, including much of his work, but I'm not that nimble. I finally got it charged up, reminded myself how to navigate various things, and found my Dreamwidth password, which I hadn't needed to remember on my laptop because it remembered it for me. Ta da.
I haven't said enough about Readercon and my visit with Moonmoth and the Nonesuch. We saw "Spider-Man" and binge-watched the first season of "American Gods." As always, I'm not sure how I feel about Neil Gaiman. The tinge of horror in his work, and the effort expended on finding ingenious and grotesque ways to damage people, disturb me. Though I know that's exactly why a lot of people love him. The story is involving, for sure, so I kept watching, but there were a lot of scenes I felt were over the top and cringe-inducing. I have a theory that maybe Gaiman does this so he can get away with slipping in some heart-warming episodes without being dismissed as sentimental. I'll always see Odin as Ian McShane from now on!
Moonmoth came up with a fun writing exercise. She programmed her phone to sound a bell at random intervals over half an hour or so, and every time the bell rang, we had to write a line of poetry. This is what I came up with. There were 12 bells--hence the title. Though, as it turned out, the bell sounded more than 12 times, so there are more than 12 lines. We were sitting on the porch, where we'd watched for the aurora as the stars pricked through a light overcast, and I'd been thinking about Thoreau and his saying that "time is but the stream I go a-fishing in." So that's where it started, and then the metaphors just kind of danced around at their own sweet will. Bits of our intervening conversation wove their way into it. Not a finished product, to be sure, but I liked it.
Twelve Bells
Stones rise through water as the water clears.
Stars burn through wisps of cloud as night's gaze darkens.
Shadows grow as day withdraws, until they die with its passing
Like trophies burned on the pyre of sunset.
Where's my memory? Is it stone or shadow?
A strange mathematics adding unlike substances subtracts the day and multiplies the night.
The sun combs darkness from the trees with its fingers of wind
As my sighs sift shadows, mining flecks of fossil light.
Memory stretches longest just before it burns.
In the dark that comes after, oh stars, pierce me with your cold light after light,
Still my trembling, till jewels and sand and rough rock shine in your gaze
Like pebbles in the river, passing into night.
What's heavier than a shadow, sinking of its own weight, kissing my empty hand farewell with its rough going?
Days turn to shadow, memory to stone.
Raise me like Stonehenge, groaning, from the earth.
Make these stones light, make the bluestones shine like rain,
Shadows springing back to life, blue with morning light.
I haven't said enough about Readercon and my visit with Moonmoth and the Nonesuch. We saw "Spider-Man" and binge-watched the first season of "American Gods." As always, I'm not sure how I feel about Neil Gaiman. The tinge of horror in his work, and the effort expended on finding ingenious and grotesque ways to damage people, disturb me. Though I know that's exactly why a lot of people love him. The story is involving, for sure, so I kept watching, but there were a lot of scenes I felt were over the top and cringe-inducing. I have a theory that maybe Gaiman does this so he can get away with slipping in some heart-warming episodes without being dismissed as sentimental. I'll always see Odin as Ian McShane from now on!
Moonmoth came up with a fun writing exercise. She programmed her phone to sound a bell at random intervals over half an hour or so, and every time the bell rang, we had to write a line of poetry. This is what I came up with. There were 12 bells--hence the title. Though, as it turned out, the bell sounded more than 12 times, so there are more than 12 lines. We were sitting on the porch, where we'd watched for the aurora as the stars pricked through a light overcast, and I'd been thinking about Thoreau and his saying that "time is but the stream I go a-fishing in." So that's where it started, and then the metaphors just kind of danced around at their own sweet will. Bits of our intervening conversation wove their way into it. Not a finished product, to be sure, but I liked it.
Twelve Bells
Stones rise through water as the water clears.
Stars burn through wisps of cloud as night's gaze darkens.
Shadows grow as day withdraws, until they die with its passing
Like trophies burned on the pyre of sunset.
Where's my memory? Is it stone or shadow?
A strange mathematics adding unlike substances subtracts the day and multiplies the night.
The sun combs darkness from the trees with its fingers of wind
As my sighs sift shadows, mining flecks of fossil light.
Memory stretches longest just before it burns.
In the dark that comes after, oh stars, pierce me with your cold light after light,
Still my trembling, till jewels and sand and rough rock shine in your gaze
Like pebbles in the river, passing into night.
What's heavier than a shadow, sinking of its own weight, kissing my empty hand farewell with its rough going?
Days turn to shadow, memory to stone.
Raise me like Stonehenge, groaning, from the earth.
Make these stones light, make the bluestones shine like rain,
Shadows springing back to life, blue with morning light.
