燕

As grey-eyed Athena was sprung from Zeus's headache, so I have headaches for my grey eyes.

And with them complete paralysis of the Right side of my body. Apparently it's a mutation; I'm not up on the research of a cure, and the pharmacy medicines I've tried are ineffective.

When I close my eyes during a migraine I see things-- a sunburst that turns into a neon star, computer-generated people making creepy gestures, a centaur walking away, elevation lines like a map. I have no idea how my mind comes up with these things; my mind does not work properly during a migraine.

I endure it because I have to, there is no choice in the matter. I slept for two days, aside from throwing up and using the bathroom, and my roommate took care of me (which I am deeply ashamed of). It is only today that I feel somewhat better-- but only somewhat.

But. Gods, during a migraine I truly appreciate the miracle of this freckled skin, these unbroken bones, my hair that sparks twenty colors in the sunlight. I appreciate my skills, humble though they may be, because I lose them all. I appreciate my memory because it disappears; I appreciate this computer as a miracle of technology; I contemplate stories and words because they mean so much and I can't speak a single coherent sentence during a migraine.

Human lives are so fragile. My own brain does this to me, and always I am afraid-- what if it lasts forever? What will I do?

I don't know.

I was at Sensei's house one time, and his son, and some of his son's friends, were studying in the kitchen. Sensei asked my then-roommate and I if we would come downstairs so that the kids could try their English on us; we agreed. We went downstairs and answered their questions in our best slow, clear English-teacher voices. I don't remember most of them save the last; they asked us, "what is your favorite place in Kyoto?"

My flatmate said Kiyomizudera, a beautiful temple perched on the mountains to the east of the city. It's the obvious choice, of course: the buildings and grounds are beautiful, there's a view of the city, the temples and relics are old and significant, they illuminate the cherry blossoms in the spring and the maple trees in the autumn, there is a perpetually-flowing spring of pure water you can drink right out of the ground. The road up the mountain is through a charming old district; the shops have been catering to tourists for hundreds of years. The great stage of Kiyomizudera is a miracle of engineering, built without a single nail. It floats among the trees, and catches a refreshing breeze even in the stickiest Kyoto summer. There are fun festivals there; it even boasts credible wisteria which grow on trellises and shade benches where pilgrims can rest. There are charming eateries tucked among the groves of trees beneath the temple. Maiko and geisha regularly come to visit in full regalia, since it is the patron temple of one of Kyoto's "flower towns."

Everyone nodded when my roommate gave her answer; clearly Kiyomizudera is one of the most wonderful places in Kyoto.

Then it was my turn, and I had to think. What place in Kyoto could compare to Kiyomizudera's virtues?

"This house," I said.

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I have no skill at art whatsoever, but I doodle for fun, and thought I might as well put up a few of my slightly-more-credible scribbles. Behind a cut to protect your eyes. Primary mediums are pencil (my favorite cheap-ass Bic mechanicals) and colored pencils.

( Pencil Detritus )

A random person on Facebook wrote some sort of happy update about her joy in arranging her wedding. I read it and shrugged. How strange, I thought to myself. I didn't understand.

I didn't understand.

I . . . can think of no time when I have loved and it has brought me pure and absolute joy. Every time I have thought, I love you, it has always been tinged with a knowledge of loss, of the ephemeral. I love you, and we will part. I love you, and this moment will pass. I love you, and soon you will go, soon I will go.

Love may last, but happiness does not.

So.

The problem with all of these competing Internet services is that they tend to divert you for the shear ease of usage. Actually writing an LJ entry actually takes some devotion, some thought . . . not much, but even so. And so people don't, because it's easier to put a shorter entry elsewhere, and so there's less reason to come to LJ in the first place, which means you end up not updating as much and . . . vicious circle.

But the fact remains that, while other services might be more convenient, LJ still reigns when it comes to having coherent and meaningful and in-depth conversations with people . . . when there are posts to comment on, that is. And when people actually comment. Granted I'm no model as far as that's concerned.

The thing that's been eating up large amounts of my spare time these days is Tumblr; mine is over here, if you're curious. I occasionally write brief pieces inspired by the pictures that I post. Not often, but occasionally.

LJ, however, remains the most convenient place for posting writing, especially as so much of mine is not in a finished form that might qualify it for a place like AO3. Et alors!

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"I thought you might be one of those people. You know. Proselyte-ing-y ones."

She shook her head. "I have two religions, one for my head and one for my heart. Science--" she tapped her temple, "--and poetry." She laid her hand on her breast. "Neither has any particular need to evangelize."

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'Do you want your receipt?'

'You may keep it. Consider it a gift from my heart to yours. I don't know what it says about my heart, that it produces cheap paper and pumps blue ink, or that it considers such things suitable gifts, but nonetheless I hope you'll accept it.'

Rose: your heart does not produce cheap paper and pump blue ink. believe me--i've checked. would you like to see the blueprints?

Me: The blueprints might be handy. Usually my heart produces smooth lined paper and pumps aetheric graphite, so this change is a bit alarming. Of course, it's SUPPOSED to produce vellum and pump egg tempera and gold leaf, but it's never worked quite right from the beginning, so . . .

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I played a random priest in a game set in 1666 London, and he was great fun. Father James Savant: High Anglican/crypto-Catholic, power-hungry and utterly ruthless, but absolutely convinced that he was doing God's work, with a taste for the finer things in life (mainly fine art, but his absolutely simple cassock is blacker than black, and his crucifix is ornate silver, and his Bible's cover is inscribed gold and jems, and his shoes are heinously expensive . . . you get the idea).

I came home from the game absolutely wanting to write stories about him, and despite the late hour sat down to hammer one out . . . only to find that the voices were ending up all wrong, too amusingly lighthearted, and I was actually writing a scene from a fanfic. So after an attempt at repair I sighed, gave up, changed the names, and now it's an XMFC AU snippet and that's it (there's precedent! Marvel 1602 by Neil bloody Gaiman, because he gets to do all the most fun stuff).

Right.

( the Consolation of Philosophy )

. . . let us pray the merciful gods I write no more, at least of this.

I woke up to a blue sky this morning, and sat for a while in a short-lived pool of golden light. The night before I had wondered, briefly, just what it was that I was going to get up for, today. The hours stretched before me without plan or design.

You knew, once, I reminded myself. How to be lonely. How to be alone.

About time you learned again.

I had a lovely spicy paella for lunch, and then a square of mingled dark and light chocolate, and then a cup of Earl Grey, and the flavors blended one into the next with utter perfection. I listened to 'Here and Heaven' on repeat.

Joy in small pleasures, in things done solely to please yourself.



I contemplated whether or not to go to the gym-- the gym to which I've been ten thousand times, always the same route (however pleasant), always the same boring gym. Then thought of the nature trail I'd passed so many times, but never explored.

Late November, I thought, it won't exactly be at its best.

But surely every season has its own charms-- I knew that, too, once. My exercise clothes are getting worn, but these days everything I own is becoming endowed with private significance. The jogging trousers I bought in Japan for sports day. The socks from Uniqlo, too expensive for me these days but worth it. The t-shirt that my father brought back for me from his trip to Memphis. The sneakers, a second-hand gift from a friend. The black hoodie bought at a charity shop that somehow kept me warm through last year's biting Scottish autumn. The over-long scarf my friend knitted me from Japanese wool, in its wonderful muted fall colors.

I jogged out past the school fields. There was some sort of sporting event on, and I envied the schoolkids their colors and their easy smiles. Their tendency to take up the entire sidewalk was less endearing. Before I had fully passed them it was starting to rain, and the wind had gotten stronger-- there's Scotland for you, and the perversity of the weather gods; it's a lovely day until I make it out the door.

The nature trail was all over with mud, but not so much as to divert me. The trees were bare, and what leaves still clung stubbornly to the branches were bright yellow against the grey bark. But the holly throughout the wood was green and lush, as were the climbing vines, not yet stripped of color.

I walked through the woods, and began to climb. A feathered pine reminded me of Japan. A stone wall meandered through the woods, another path branching through the gap. Abruptly the sheltering woods fell away into gorse bushes, their darkness leavened by yellow flowers. They seemed low, but still their branches topped my own height. In between, close green grass. I climbed carefully to the crown of the hill, scoured bald by the relentless wind-- the very same trying to push me off the top in abrupt gusts. My scarf flying, my hair whipping and twisting into elf-locks, I watched the clouds rush across the sky, the curtains of pale rain that drew and then parted once more, so rapidly. Birds rose from the abrupt hills around me, dark and rapid and fluttering like leaves as they battled the wind. The long hardy grasses lay flat; small rodent holes and rabbit fewmets scattered amongst the moss. Far away and below, the Firth of Forth was whipped to whitecaps. Between us, the spires of many churches-- I identified the lopsided crook of St. Michael's, the three tall cones of St. Mary's, the strange domes of the abandoned hospital.

I passed a tree strangled by mistletoe on the way back down, and in it perched seven magpies.

Staring at my phone, which persists in not ringing. At my calendar, with its neat grid of empty squares. Skype is open on my computer, with a row of empty contacts. Gmail is open, and with it Gchat, but no one has sent me a message that way in . . . well. A while.

I did honestly believe I was a good friend, once. Now, I wonder. Because if I were a good friend-- if people wanted to talk to me, wanted me around-- they would call, every once in a while. Invite me . . . somewhere, anywhere. To do . . . something, anything.

I look back at my calendar, and realize . . . just about everything on it, I arranged. Concerts I tracked down, TV shows I wanted to see, gym sessions I lined up, lunches I reserved.

People are busy with their own lives, I have told myself, so many times, so firmly. It doesn't mean they don't care. You need to take responsibility for yourself. You need social interaction to keep yourself mentally healthy, so you need to arrange it. That's the way it is.

And normally I do that. But-- gods, lately it just seems like I can't. And failing at that just leads me down an endless, spiraling slide of . . . of . . .

I know. I'm aware of it. I know that I'm depressed. I know that it's understandable to be depressed. I know that looking for a job is difficult. I know that. I know.

Too much knowing. I understand too much and nothing at all. I just want to pull myself out from under this pall-- I want so desperately to feel again the joy I have found in the world-- but I keep failing, and with every failure I just seem to go under deeper. The times when I'm happy seem briefer, and disappear faster. So fast that I forget they ever were.

I'm desperately afraid that I'll forget how it feels to be happy.

I was-- supposed to be better than this, stronger than this. I was supposed to be able to succeed, no matter what.

Another failure.

These days it feels as if people have fled LiveJournal en masse, and I don’t know where they’ve gone. Granted I’ve been missing myself for quite some time-- first because of the endless black hole that was my dissertation, and then it was off to Rome, and then I entered the secondary black hole of job searching. You would think that being unemployed would mean I had a great deal of free time, and you would be right. But it also means that I always feel guilty that I’m not doing enough to find a job, which means that even when I’m procrastinating I don’t write, because writing is Not Looking For a Job.

I also accidentally fell into X-Men: First Class fandom, and seeing as this is the first time I’ve been in an overwhelmingly huge fandom, I always have an endless backlog of stories to catch up on. While this has been helpful in getting me through the trials of the past few months, it has also once again brought to my attention that I am absolutely and completely addicted to reading. I’ve been reading books at what has become my customary pace, but the reading that I do online is vast and near-constant. I read until I can’t bear to focus on the computer screen anymore, and then I pick up the nearest book and I read that for a while. If I have no book I read whatever I can get my hands on-- cereal boxes, junk mail, old newspapers. My friends laugh at my inability to get through this or that TV show, but the truth is that unless it really grabs my attention, I would rather read.

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I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day. “I know you’re nostalgic for the Jersey shore as you used to know it,” I said, “bustling, full of people, full of life. But when we went there when I was a kid, everything was run down, boarded up, with grass growing through the cracks and faded graffiti on the walls. And I remember that Dad used to take me by Hoboken on the train, and he would warn me that it wasn’t safe, I had to stay close to him. When I started going myself when I got older it was the same-- a bit run down, a bit seedy, long past the bustling days of the Lakawana rail line bringing vacationers in and out. I would go to the Hoboken Farm Boy and buy this cheap, scented Chinese soap I liked, I would go by the old comic book shop, eat at the Karma Cafe . . . but now Hoboken’s gentrified, and the Hoboken Farmboy is a cell phone shop, and the comic book shop’s long gone, couldn’t afford the rent, and I can’t afford to eat in the Karma Cafe anymore.

“I still like Hoboken, but I loved it as it was-- the Jersey shore, too. I’m nostalgic for them as I knew them: abandoned, run down, dreaming of lost glories.”

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( Ghazal, by Dilruba Ahmed )

waking from a dream
of rain falling
to rain, falling

~Alan Spence

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Taken in the courtyard of the inn I stayed in on a trip to the Ise Penninsula. It rained the entire time, but Ise is beautiful in all weather. And there is nothing cozier than coming in from the cold and the wet and crawling under a warm kotatsu.

I love courtyard gardens. Small and perfect.

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Tonight is a night for water. 'La Seine' on endless repeat on my computer. Hot green tea at my elbow, a hot shower to wash away the river pouring from heaven to earth. Standing in the rain, I bought a pouch bearing a sinuous dragon.

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Somewhere, somewhere in the wide world, there must be a person with my name tattooed upon their heart. And that heart beats the triplicate rhythm of my name, a strange staccato, one-two-three one-two-three one-two-three.

The doctor in her white coat, once-upon-a-time, holding her stethoscope to a child’s narrow chest, frowning. “How do you feel?”

That child with shoulders faintly hunched, sitting on the bright impersonal vinyl of the doctor’s bench. Watching the doctor warily with eyes the color of my name. “Fine, I feel fine.”

That child, an adult now, walking this world, the song of my name murmuring through veins and arteries.

We look outwards for the solution to our problems, and it is neither right nor fair-- as if the world was in our debt, somehow, for presuming to exist around us. Such incredible arrogance to think that an unseen hand should have wrought the code of my self upon the person of another.

So, look inside for the answer. Split the skin, the breastbone, the ribs, the flesh, the latticework of blood, the pericardium, and swing the doors wide. Look at my naked heart and tell me what name is written there.

I know what you will find-- a lump of fibrous gristle, unmarked, beating the rhythm of no one’s name.

During last week’s game, we got to the stage where we were making plans. Well, Jonathan was making plans as his character, who Lázár has nicknamed “Ponce.” And as he was making plans, he was looking at me for advice and approval.

Which of course Lázár, my current character, is completely unsuited to give: he’s not a planner or a deep thinker. No; it was simply a holdover from last game, when Jonathan played a character named Niccolo and I played Tokugawa-- who was a planner, a rationalist, a strategist.

And who is not entirely gone from my mind, so I felt her surge of satisfaction/triumph. You see, she said to me, you see what I have made.

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I took a walk down to the bank. There were some climbing roses and they smelled the way roses are meant to. There were trees-- so many-- whispering endlessly. There were houses for sale, and I populated their empty windows with my doubts.


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I learned something, long ago: I cannot ask my family to do anything.

Well, that’s not strictly true. I can ask them for certain things. As long as they’re small, and they cause very little inconvenience, and aren’t too expensive. As long as they don’t require anyone to sacrifice on my behalf.

Nor can I call to complain about anything, and expect to be soothed, comforted, cheered up. Nor can I ever expect to be spoiled or coddled, taken care of. All of these things are my job-- just as it’s my job to be okay, no matter what.

But every once and a while I forget that certain things are not allowed. I make a request, something that ought to be simple.

And then I learn, once again.

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I really shouldn’t try my hand at humor when depressed, it makes me far too cynical:

Blankman: ‎KB is sorry she causes cancer.
Me: Only in lab rats, but EVERYTHING causes cancer in lab rats.
KB: Why must I cause such suffering and despair?
Me: Lab rats are born for suffering and despair. Human souls gotta go somewhere on their next round of incarnation. The karmatic burden would be unmanageable otherwise.

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There’s a one-pound coin that I carry around in my wallet, I call it my lucky pound. Because it shares a birth year with me. And because it’s scratched and worn and dirty, kicked around, all its innocent shine worn away. It’s a coin that has traveled far and seen some hard use.

Kind of like me.

And even so, despite all that, it’s a pound. Legal tender. Not worth quite as much as it once was, to be sure, but still worth something.

I hope that’s like me, too. That’s why it’s my lucky pound.

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( Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car, by Dan Pagis )
here in this carload
i am eve
with abel my son
if you see my other son
cain son of man
tell him that i

~translated from the Hebrew by Stephen Mitchell