The toymaker said to the widow spider, “Why is it you no longer weep for your husbands, so long dead?”
And the spider looked at length out the window, but did not answer. The sleet did the talking, little pebbles of ice dancing along sidewalks. To fall and bounce and bound away. To melt. Such is a love lost.
Then the widow spider looked back at the toymaker. “And you,” said she. “Why is it you build such soldiers and marionettes? Yet you never give them voices.”
“There is a keen sort of tragedy in silence,” the toymaker explained. He said this as if it somehow justified everything.
“Ah,” said the spider.
And the two friends lapsed into a hushed stillness, sitting in a room, looking thoughtful, as the storm bruised the flower petals outside.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Addict
How many hours a day do I sleep? Dreams I forget when I wake.
How many hours a day do I work? Money - you give and you take.
How many hours a day do I eat? Enough to survive and then some.
But if this were all that my life was I swear I'd die of utter boredom.
So why am I such a robot, then? Ears hooked up by wires to machines,
with my eyes staring blankly ahead of me at a lit rectangular screen.
Fingers clacking at keys. Absorbed, consumed... quite numb.
Where did I go wrong in my life, I wonder, if this is the thing I've become?
How many hours a day do I work? Money - you give and you take.
How many hours a day do I eat? Enough to survive and then some.
But if this were all that my life was I swear I'd die of utter boredom.
So why am I such a robot, then? Ears hooked up by wires to machines,
with my eyes staring blankly ahead of me at a lit rectangular screen.
Fingers clacking at keys. Absorbed, consumed... quite numb.
Where did I go wrong in my life, I wonder, if this is the thing I've become?
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Found
When it comes to the stories that break your heart, rock your world, open your eyes—these stories, the best stories, are never told. Never made up. They are found.
There are made up stories. There are stories we write and tell. But every once in a while you’ll come across a story and you’ll read it, or watch it in the movie theater or on TV, and you’ll know. It will be too familiar, too right, and once you experience it you won’t be able to imagine that the world ever existed without this story in it. These characters, the things that happen to them, the moments you will never be able to forget—they all fit too well, they all ring too true. It’s like they’ve always been, and you just happened to be the lucky one who found them.
Writing is an art and it’s something you work hard at. You slave some days. It’s not all waterfalls of words rushing onto a page. And by saying this, that a story is found not created, some might think I am disrespecting this process. But I'm not. It’s hard. It takes guts and discipline and a sharp mind and a special talent and a magical something-else that I don’t quite have the word to express. It takes curiosity, passion, a special kind of madness, the ability to push yourself, to stay on task, to reach the goal. You write. You rewrite. You revise. You remove. You add. You change a word. You change it back. This can go on ten, twenty, a hundred times. I do not mean to belittle this in the least.
But even after all of that, at the end of the day when you have the finished product sitting there—it doesn’t ever really seem finished, does it? And that goes back to what I’m saying—nay, insisting. Because you stumbled upon it, somewhere inside you. Call it your psyche. Your link into the collective unconscious. Whatever it is, you’ve found something, and it’s there, and all of this work—it’s like you’re an archaeologist brushing away dirt. There’s a skeleton down there somewhere, and you’re bringing it out of whatever it was that has hidden it away and back into the light of day for all to see. Sometimes you don’t get the whole thing dislodged. Maybe it’s just enough to recognize the shape of what’s beneath. So even when the book is published and sitting on a shelf, or when the show is on air, or when the movie’s shot and released, it might not be the whole picture. But you’ve found enough of whatever it was that we recognize it and identify with it, and we let part of ourselves fill in the gaps, brush away the rest. We get to find it along with you.
Does this make any sense? Not necessarily. I’m rambling, and I’ve just finished watching the LOST finale and it would take a whole other blog post to react to that ending.
But do you know what I mean? You have to know the feeling. Because you’ve found something too, I just know it. A story, a world, people. They may not be real the way you and I are real, but somehow they’re even more real than we are if that makes any sense. You know them. Somehow you’ve always known.
Somehow I’ve always known.
There are made up stories. There are stories we write and tell. But every once in a while you’ll come across a story and you’ll read it, or watch it in the movie theater or on TV, and you’ll know. It will be too familiar, too right, and once you experience it you won’t be able to imagine that the world ever existed without this story in it. These characters, the things that happen to them, the moments you will never be able to forget—they all fit too well, they all ring too true. It’s like they’ve always been, and you just happened to be the lucky one who found them.
Writing is an art and it’s something you work hard at. You slave some days. It’s not all waterfalls of words rushing onto a page. And by saying this, that a story is found not created, some might think I am disrespecting this process. But I'm not. It’s hard. It takes guts and discipline and a sharp mind and a special talent and a magical something-else that I don’t quite have the word to express. It takes curiosity, passion, a special kind of madness, the ability to push yourself, to stay on task, to reach the goal. You write. You rewrite. You revise. You remove. You add. You change a word. You change it back. This can go on ten, twenty, a hundred times. I do not mean to belittle this in the least.
But even after all of that, at the end of the day when you have the finished product sitting there—it doesn’t ever really seem finished, does it? And that goes back to what I’m saying—nay, insisting. Because you stumbled upon it, somewhere inside you. Call it your psyche. Your link into the collective unconscious. Whatever it is, you’ve found something, and it’s there, and all of this work—it’s like you’re an archaeologist brushing away dirt. There’s a skeleton down there somewhere, and you’re bringing it out of whatever it was that has hidden it away and back into the light of day for all to see. Sometimes you don’t get the whole thing dislodged. Maybe it’s just enough to recognize the shape of what’s beneath. So even when the book is published and sitting on a shelf, or when the show is on air, or when the movie’s shot and released, it might not be the whole picture. But you’ve found enough of whatever it was that we recognize it and identify with it, and we let part of ourselves fill in the gaps, brush away the rest. We get to find it along with you.
Does this make any sense? Not necessarily. I’m rambling, and I’ve just finished watching the LOST finale and it would take a whole other blog post to react to that ending.
But do you know what I mean? You have to know the feeling. Because you’ve found something too, I just know it. A story, a world, people. They may not be real the way you and I are real, but somehow they’re even more real than we are if that makes any sense. You know them. Somehow you’ve always known.
Somehow I’ve always known.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Smear
I want to smear
colors
I want it here -
blatant
All of it here
where it's
sure to be seen
Drawing won't do
Thin lines
spiky and frail -
they fail,
don't match the image
I feel in my hands
When you feel the vision
it's much clearer than sight
Then you know it's right
Then you know it's right
So let me just smear
dab and dollop
right here
This is it - are we clear?
This is something
It's itching
and tugging
It's something
I'm going to chase it
Try not to harm it
As I leap up and grab it
and pin it
press and preserve it
on this very page.
colors
I want it here -
blatant
All of it here
where it's
sure to be seen
Drawing won't do
Thin lines
spiky and frail -
they fail,
don't match the image
I feel in my hands
When you feel the vision
it's much clearer than sight
Then you know it's right
Then you know it's right
So let me just smear
dab and dollop
right here
This is it - are we clear?
This is something
It's itching
and tugging
It's something
I'm going to chase it
Try not to harm it
As I leap up and grab it
and pin it
press and preserve it
on this very page.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Why We Shall Always Have Fairy Godmothers
by Grace Dow
Do you think we ever truly escape
the castles of our youth,
those brambles rooted down
deep in our thoughts,
those monsters lurking
so close at hand in shadows?
We grow up, but we don’t grow out.
We don’t outgrow
the fears.
They may take a different name,
but they whisper just as convincingly
from the darkness
in our minds.
Doubts sharp
and barbed
as thorns pierce
something far more tender
than skin—
they steal away
something more precious still
than blood.
We need, as much as ever,
hope,
and a voice to guide:
so whisper, please,
your wisdom.
We need some guess
as to how to reach our happy
END
Do you think we ever truly escape
the castles of our youth,
those brambles rooted down
deep in our thoughts,
those monsters lurking
so close at hand in shadows?
We grow up, but we don’t grow out.
We don’t outgrow
the fears.
They may take a different name,
but they whisper just as convincingly
from the darkness
in our minds.
Doubts sharp
and barbed
as thorns pierce
something far more tender
than skin—
they steal away
something more precious still
than blood.
We need, as much as ever,
hope,
and a voice to guide:
so whisper, please,
your wisdom.
We need some guess
as to how to reach our happy
END
Saturday, April 24, 2010
When in London
I'm writing this on my iPod, using the hotel's free wi-fi, which I'll use as my excuse both for its brevity and its errors. London. I haven't learned a thing. Last time I was here, I was also one of three 'foreign correspondents' for the school paper, and my final piece (dubbed by the faculty advisor as one of the best editorials this paper had ever seen - and yes, I'm one of those jackasses who remembers praise like that) was about my expectations on coming to London, what I found when I got here, and what I took home with me. The idea was that I had all these big expectations and hopes that never quite panned out. But - I had these awesome experiences that I never could have anticipated as well. And what I took home? This hunger to know my world better, its localities as well as its exotic foreign places. I quoted Chesterron on the idea that the purpose of travel is to eventually see your home country with new eyes. And it kind of worked.
Kind of.
But when I planned this trip it was because the unrealistic fantasy had taken root in my brain again. I had this image of seeing Amanda play, of getting to meet Beth at the merch table, of getting Neil Gaimam's autograph (or even, honestly, to just be in a room that small with him at the same place and time. I thought I would be brave and go out to pubs and meet cute locals. None of this happened the way I hoped, because I am the person that I am and this world is the place thar it is.
First, the volcano. But that didn't defeat me.
Next, the news that Beth wasn't coming on this tour. Disappointing, but I'll live.
Then the news that Neil Gaiman is in town, but went to last night's show and has other plans this evening.
Then the show, which was fantastic and well worth the trip. But - afterward, as I'm waiting for autograph time it's announced that AFP has the flu and won't be signing tonight. So this little child's tamborine I bought to get Neil Gaiman, AFP, and Jason Wwbley to sign as a joke/unique memento ended up unsigned. I could have gotten Jason's signature, but it would have seemed so sad without the others as well. I'm treating it like a coin tossed in the Trevi fountain - a sign that I will go to another AFP/Evelyn Evelyn show sometime before I die.
And as for bravery? I'm too tired. I cling too much to comfort and safety. But even if I wasn't sitting in my hotel room typing this, even if I was at the pub pn the corner instead, I wouldn't meet the people I imagine myself meeting, wouldn't have those (fictional) conversations or become this better, happier person in one weekend. It's been nearly 4 years to the day since I wrote that article, and here I am, still learning the same lesson.
Two good things have come out of this:
One. I no longer feel this desperate urge to live in England, which is good for financial and citizenship reasons.
Two. I remembered - vaguely, and in the midst of an AFP performance - what it was like to create something and have it be a Big Fucking Deal, have it be passion and obsession and the kind of happy-crazy-electric-spot on discovery - that's right, DICOVERY, because the art you've created seems too much like it has always been there and you just found it, just wrote down the chords or typed out the dialogue, or like you heard that breathtaking description like a VoiceOver in your brain. Not creation, discovery.
I want that again. Don't know if I'll ever get it back, but I want it.
So that was it, the big epiphany. That was, I suspect, what this weeken was all about. The hard part will be getting on with my life on Monday.
It's easy to be swept up in adventure, because all you do, really, is react. Even the bravest actions in stories are usually reactions to a villain's tyranny. It's harder to just live.
But live I shall.
Kind of.
But when I planned this trip it was because the unrealistic fantasy had taken root in my brain again. I had this image of seeing Amanda play, of getting to meet Beth at the merch table, of getting Neil Gaimam's autograph (or even, honestly, to just be in a room that small with him at the same place and time. I thought I would be brave and go out to pubs and meet cute locals. None of this happened the way I hoped, because I am the person that I am and this world is the place thar it is.
First, the volcano. But that didn't defeat me.
Next, the news that Beth wasn't coming on this tour. Disappointing, but I'll live.
Then the news that Neil Gaiman is in town, but went to last night's show and has other plans this evening.
Then the show, which was fantastic and well worth the trip. But - afterward, as I'm waiting for autograph time it's announced that AFP has the flu and won't be signing tonight. So this little child's tamborine I bought to get Neil Gaiman, AFP, and Jason Wwbley to sign as a joke/unique memento ended up unsigned. I could have gotten Jason's signature, but it would have seemed so sad without the others as well. I'm treating it like a coin tossed in the Trevi fountain - a sign that I will go to another AFP/Evelyn Evelyn show sometime before I die.
And as for bravery? I'm too tired. I cling too much to comfort and safety. But even if I wasn't sitting in my hotel room typing this, even if I was at the pub pn the corner instead, I wouldn't meet the people I imagine myself meeting, wouldn't have those (fictional) conversations or become this better, happier person in one weekend. It's been nearly 4 years to the day since I wrote that article, and here I am, still learning the same lesson.
Two good things have come out of this:
One. I no longer feel this desperate urge to live in England, which is good for financial and citizenship reasons.
Two. I remembered - vaguely, and in the midst of an AFP performance - what it was like to create something and have it be a Big Fucking Deal, have it be passion and obsession and the kind of happy-crazy-electric-spot on discovery - that's right, DICOVERY, because the art you've created seems too much like it has always been there and you just found it, just wrote down the chords or typed out the dialogue, or like you heard that breathtaking description like a VoiceOver in your brain. Not creation, discovery.
I want that again. Don't know if I'll ever get it back, but I want it.
So that was it, the big epiphany. That was, I suspect, what this weeken was all about. The hard part will be getting on with my life on Monday.
It's easy to be swept up in adventure, because all you do, really, is react. Even the bravest actions in stories are usually reactions to a villain's tyranny. It's harder to just live.
But live I shall.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Eyjafjallajökull
I am fucking pissed.
It's a cool thing, actually. This volcano. The pictures are fucking terrifying and astounding and gorgeous. It's one of those rare things that happens only every once in a while, and I should be like, "Oooh... big scary volcano exploding. Awesome."
But it messed with London.
You don't fucking mess with London.
You don't get it. London is my home town. More than the town I was born. More than the place I grew up. More than any city I've been to on this planet (and I've visited a fair share). This city, this place, is the one place on God's green earth where I feel like a fucking person with a fucking PURPOSE, and I don't get to go there very often. This was a small thing. Three days. A concert. A chance to soak in a bit of the place I've been missing for so long. Just enough to stop the melancholy that I get when I'm away too long, just to stop it for a short while.
And stupid fucking Eyjafjallajökull had to come along and fuck everything up.
Go to hell, Eyjafjallajökull.
Clouds of ash spreading through the atmosphere. And of course the T-shaped blob would have to settle right over London. The one place I've been looking forward to so very much.
I hate you Eyjafjallajökull. And your mother too.
London.
Tea and biscuits. The parks. The bustle. The Underground! Watching Doctor Who live on the BBC. Strongbow. Pubs. Bloody good Yorkshire pudding. Hamley's toy shop. Harrod's. The Evelyn Evelyn show. Jaffa cakes. Top Shop. Pixie Lott and Take That. The National Gallery. Jazz in the Crypt at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Big Ben. The Globe. Walking along the river. Clifton Gardens. Little Venice. Time Out. Oyster cards. Burrough market. Camden. Notting Hill. The British Museum. A bus ride to Oxford. The train stations. The theatre district. Covent Garden. St. Paul's. The Tate.
The way people speak. The hum of the city. The way there are always people, always at least one person. You're never really alone in a city. The lights, especially the way they shine at night. The pavements. There's an aura to the city. You know without really knowing that you're someplace important, someplace where something is always going on. The stupid signs in the Underground advertising the latest crazy thing (moon cups?). The tabloids. Tesco's and Sainsbury's and Boots.
The way the light falls on the city in early morning. The feeling of layers of thousands of years of history beneath your feet.
I love that city with a love I can't properly describe.
The violent imagery of lightning, ash, and fire colliding above the surface of the volcano is the perfect metaphor for the anger and hatred and frustration spewing out of me and hovering above me even now as we speak.
It's a cool thing, actually. This volcano. The pictures are fucking terrifying and astounding and gorgeous. It's one of those rare things that happens only every once in a while, and I should be like, "Oooh... big scary volcano exploding. Awesome."
But it messed with London.
You don't fucking mess with London.
You don't get it. London is my home town. More than the town I was born. More than the place I grew up. More than any city I've been to on this planet (and I've visited a fair share). This city, this place, is the one place on God's green earth where I feel like a fucking person with a fucking PURPOSE, and I don't get to go there very often. This was a small thing. Three days. A concert. A chance to soak in a bit of the place I've been missing for so long. Just enough to stop the melancholy that I get when I'm away too long, just to stop it for a short while.
And stupid fucking Eyjafjallajökull had to come along and fuck everything up.
Go to hell, Eyjafjallajökull.
Clouds of ash spreading through the atmosphere. And of course the T-shaped blob would have to settle right over London. The one place I've been looking forward to so very much.
I hate you Eyjafjallajökull. And your mother too.
London.
Tea and biscuits. The parks. The bustle. The Underground! Watching Doctor Who live on the BBC. Strongbow. Pubs. Bloody good Yorkshire pudding. Hamley's toy shop. Harrod's. The Evelyn Evelyn show. Jaffa cakes. Top Shop. Pixie Lott and Take That. The National Gallery. Jazz in the Crypt at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Big Ben. The Globe. Walking along the river. Clifton Gardens. Little Venice. Time Out. Oyster cards. Burrough market. Camden. Notting Hill. The British Museum. A bus ride to Oxford. The train stations. The theatre district. Covent Garden. St. Paul's. The Tate.
The way people speak. The hum of the city. The way there are always people, always at least one person. You're never really alone in a city. The lights, especially the way they shine at night. The pavements. There's an aura to the city. You know without really knowing that you're someplace important, someplace where something is always going on. The stupid signs in the Underground advertising the latest crazy thing (moon cups?). The tabloids. Tesco's and Sainsbury's and Boots.
The way the light falls on the city in early morning. The feeling of layers of thousands of years of history beneath your feet.
I love that city with a love I can't properly describe.
The violent imagery of lightning, ash, and fire colliding above the surface of the volcano is the perfect metaphor for the anger and hatred and frustration spewing out of me and hovering above me even now as we speak.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
