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greenstormFirst:
Desires
Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old
and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --
this is what desires resemble that have passed
without fulfillment; with none of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a bright morning.
C.P. Cavafy
Okay, that's out of the way. Now I need to say something that comes up every once in awhile.
A lot of my angstier or more introspective stuff shows up in here. A lot of my happier stuff shows up in twitter or just doesn't get recorded in writing; instead it's reflected off the faces of my friends and bounced back from the mountains and the raindrops on leaves in my garden. Some of this is that happiness is a more immediate feeling for me now that I'm learning to finally experience it without guilt or pain; some of it is that a lot of my happiness revolves around people, many of whom are lovers, and I worry that those people tally up name-drops in these posts and judge themselves by that number.
That worry isn't unfounded; at some time or another most of the people who care about me have made comments to that effect.
As a fantastic example of how that changes what I write, I want you to know that I sat down totally buoyant just now and the above is what came out. If I hadn't been so concerned about padding the edges, if I ignored all readers as I always intended to in this journal, this is how the post would read:
It's raining. It takes ~0.5mm of rain to wet a tree's leaves; thereafter the water will begin hitting the ground, or trickling down the main trunk, or trickling out to fall at the dripline depending on whether the tree is deciduous or not and thus on its branching structure.
Underneath the cherry trees the ground isn't wet yet; the tilia also have dry spots beneath. This rain is a fake-out, something you realise if you go walking without an umbrella because it steadfastly refuses to get you even really damp. The air is warm, not hot, and its freight of moisture carries pools of vivid scent. June is rose month, and walking in my neighborhood I can recognise roses I've owned by their scents.
I was made to love things and that's what I do; whatever free will I may have doesn't extend to ceasing at care, wonder, or desire and it never has.
Right now, further, I'm a hormone soup of spring, heavy crush, and exercise taper with my bike in the shop. I feel like a cloud of fireflies; something big enough might be able to get all their attention, but most of the time I'm scattered and glowing. I'm incoherent (see!) and I sing as I walk down the street.
And, finally, I'm old enough to differentiate these two things. I remember feeling like this when I was, what, nineteen and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
khamura came to visit me for the first time from Germany; he got to my and Kynnin's place and I promptly dumped half a can of iced-tea powder down my pants because I was so unable to concentrate. We had stayed up late crafting roleplay scenes so many nights before that and then suddenly there he was, embodied. I remember the first time I kissed him. I remember when I was fourteen and Kynnin and I compared glasses in the hallway at school, when we talked for the first time, and I asked for his number. I think that first phone call was eight hours long and I had to avoid mom pretty substantially to make that happen. I don't remember the first time I kissed Kynnin, but I do remember lying with my head in his lap while Ennio Morricone's The Mission Soundtrack played, and crying because it's the first time I had felt emotionally connected to another human being and it was like the heavens opening and taking me up into them. I remember turning the light on so I could look at Juggler's body the first time I saw him naked, I remember him lying on the bed and drinking him in with my eyes. I remember CrazyChris lying on wreck beach next to me, and holding Bob's hand on the bus, and that Angus' dimples one night on a 20 bus that we both happened to be on, and Michael's hand on my tattoo, and it seems sometimes like all I am is a snowglobe of memories of such precious beginning moments that the storm of them could shatter me.
Beginnings are precious. Stand-alone events, too, are precious: people that you see once or for a time and then that float away. I have my share of those, though as I learn to cling less I find that more and more people come back, circulating in their own rhythms in and out of my world.
I'm making something right now; a beginning or a stand-alone event, there's no knowing without moving forward into the future. And, like any lightning strike or glance directly into the sun, it's too bright yet to know which or what it is. But to hold the metaphor, it illuminates everything around it and my life is bathed in ambient glow and warm edges right now.
I'm not using the intensity of that brightness to try to gauge a meaning from it.
I'm going to stop on that front right now; looking into that light is too much for my eyes sometimes. My life is full of highlights that even in an abbreviated list are pretty damn shiny:
-Citizenship looks like it's actually going through this month. I'll be able to vote for Gregor Robertson!
-My friends are amazing and wonderful; both in person and in the responses to that last post
-My garden is fucking awesome
-Michael met my family (2/3 of the brothers; the crazy ones) and he still likes me
-My babiest brother is doing kind of rough, but I've given him a key to my house so if he needs somewhere to go he can; it's about time for my family to inconvenience me if it can at all help them
-I'm enjoying work much more because all the pleasant bits are coming back
-Bike commuting needs no explanation
-School is fun and ALMOST OVER for the year
-All the hours I'm putting in means I'm not constantly feeling like the budget police will come sell me into slavery
-Rats
-I really can cook well
-My home is awesome and I might try (ridiculously) to keep it
-Queen's Wembley '86 album deserves its own point because it's really rocking my world
....etc, etc.
But more than all that I still feel like a real person, like an individual making my way through the world and shaping it to suit me as it shapes me to suit it, and I fit myself uniquely well. I like this feeling. I want to continue it, whatever particulars that leads to.
Thus ends a totally incoherent post.
Desires
Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old
and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --
this is what desires resemble that have passed
without fulfillment; with none of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a bright morning.
C.P. Cavafy
Okay, that's out of the way. Now I need to say something that comes up every once in awhile.
A lot of my angstier or more introspective stuff shows up in here. A lot of my happier stuff shows up in twitter or just doesn't get recorded in writing; instead it's reflected off the faces of my friends and bounced back from the mountains and the raindrops on leaves in my garden. Some of this is that happiness is a more immediate feeling for me now that I'm learning to finally experience it without guilt or pain; some of it is that a lot of my happiness revolves around people, many of whom are lovers, and I worry that those people tally up name-drops in these posts and judge themselves by that number.
That worry isn't unfounded; at some time or another most of the people who care about me have made comments to that effect.
As a fantastic example of how that changes what I write, I want you to know that I sat down totally buoyant just now and the above is what came out. If I hadn't been so concerned about padding the edges, if I ignored all readers as I always intended to in this journal, this is how the post would read:
It's raining. It takes ~0.5mm of rain to wet a tree's leaves; thereafter the water will begin hitting the ground, or trickling down the main trunk, or trickling out to fall at the dripline depending on whether the tree is deciduous or not and thus on its branching structure.
Underneath the cherry trees the ground isn't wet yet; the tilia also have dry spots beneath. This rain is a fake-out, something you realise if you go walking without an umbrella because it steadfastly refuses to get you even really damp. The air is warm, not hot, and its freight of moisture carries pools of vivid scent. June is rose month, and walking in my neighborhood I can recognise roses I've owned by their scents.
I was made to love things and that's what I do; whatever free will I may have doesn't extend to ceasing at care, wonder, or desire and it never has.
Right now, further, I'm a hormone soup of spring, heavy crush, and exercise taper with my bike in the shop. I feel like a cloud of fireflies; something big enough might be able to get all their attention, but most of the time I'm scattered and glowing. I'm incoherent (see!) and I sing as I walk down the street.
And, finally, I'm old enough to differentiate these two things. I remember feeling like this when I was, what, nineteen and
khamura came to visit me for the first time from Germany; he got to my and Kynnin's place and I promptly dumped half a can of iced-tea powder down my pants because I was so unable to concentrate. We had stayed up late crafting roleplay scenes so many nights before that and then suddenly there he was, embodied. I remember the first time I kissed him. I remember when I was fourteen and Kynnin and I compared glasses in the hallway at school, when we talked for the first time, and I asked for his number. I think that first phone call was eight hours long and I had to avoid mom pretty substantially to make that happen. I don't remember the first time I kissed Kynnin, but I do remember lying with my head in his lap while Ennio Morricone's The Mission Soundtrack played, and crying because it's the first time I had felt emotionally connected to another human being and it was like the heavens opening and taking me up into them. I remember turning the light on so I could look at Juggler's body the first time I saw him naked, I remember him lying on the bed and drinking him in with my eyes. I remember CrazyChris lying on wreck beach next to me, and holding Bob's hand on the bus, and that Angus' dimples one night on a 20 bus that we both happened to be on, and Michael's hand on my tattoo, and it seems sometimes like all I am is a snowglobe of memories of such precious beginning moments that the storm of them could shatter me.Beginnings are precious. Stand-alone events, too, are precious: people that you see once or for a time and then that float away. I have my share of those, though as I learn to cling less I find that more and more people come back, circulating in their own rhythms in and out of my world.
I'm making something right now; a beginning or a stand-alone event, there's no knowing without moving forward into the future. And, like any lightning strike or glance directly into the sun, it's too bright yet to know which or what it is. But to hold the metaphor, it illuminates everything around it and my life is bathed in ambient glow and warm edges right now.
I'm not using the intensity of that brightness to try to gauge a meaning from it.
I'm going to stop on that front right now; looking into that light is too much for my eyes sometimes. My life is full of highlights that even in an abbreviated list are pretty damn shiny:
-Citizenship looks like it's actually going through this month. I'll be able to vote for Gregor Robertson!
-My friends are amazing and wonderful; both in person and in the responses to that last post
-My garden is fucking awesome
-Michael met my family (2/3 of the brothers; the crazy ones) and he still likes me
-My babiest brother is doing kind of rough, but I've given him a key to my house so if he needs somewhere to go he can; it's about time for my family to inconvenience me if it can at all help them
-I'm enjoying work much more because all the pleasant bits are coming back
-Bike commuting needs no explanation
-School is fun and ALMOST OVER for the year
-All the hours I'm putting in means I'm not constantly feeling like the budget police will come sell me into slavery
-Rats
-I really can cook well
-My home is awesome and I might try (ridiculously) to keep it
-Queen's Wembley '86 album deserves its own point because it's really rocking my world
....etc, etc.
But more than all that I still feel like a real person, like an individual making my way through the world and shaping it to suit me as it shapes me to suit it, and I fit myself uniquely well. I like this feeling. I want to continue it, whatever particulars that leads to.
Thus ends a totally incoherent post.
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 08:16 pm (UTC)Man, can you believe those first nights of RP happened more than a decade ago now? I sure can't. Time is surreal, sometimes. But my life as a whole has sort of taken a turn for the surreal these past few years.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 08:45 pm (UTC)Me, I'm sorta in-between happinesses. Had it, will have it again, but currently I'm not really able to classify my state of mind. Soldiering on, mostly, while Stuff is Dealt With.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 08:49 am (UTC)