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Thursday, January 20th, 2005 07:24 pm
Having just managed to break my needle while trying to sew trim on my uniform, I've decided to take a break. And give up on making it to martial arts tonight, because there's no way I'll have this finished in twenty minutes.

I mean, I broke the bloody needle. F-ing crazy.

Bloody is also fairly literal, in this case, since I've stabbed myself multiple times since I've started. Well, it's all for my love of Tang Soo Do.


" . . . assuming any of us can ever make up for anything we've done in the past. Maybe we can't. Maybe we just have to live with it, and get on with it, and do what we have to, never what we want to. It has to be done. I hope he can see that, someday."

Babylon 5 is full of good quotes. My mind moves this one to a slightly different context, to a different speaker, and the resonance changes to one of desperate inevitability. I used that to explore things that have always bothered me, concepts of a life shaped by terrible, uncontrollable forces. To explore what would happen if someone was moved beyond all hope of redemption, all possibility of forgiveness. Where the mind looped back on itself because of the boundaries maintained by itself, consumed in a fire of its own making.

I wanted that, the tearing sadness, the march of an unrelenting doom. Like a Greek tragedy, where men are at the mercy of some force beyond understanding, that is inside themselves, and that herds them without quarter towards their destruction. From it, I wanted to achieve that ideal of catharsis, the pity and awe that comes from watching greatness lost to despair. A star, swallowed by the darkness. A ship, sinking into the black depths, and that last ripple of its passage swallowed into the backs of the waves.

The courage to face that, the beauty of disappearing! The terrible power of it-- a power that is ours, to deny despite everything, to struggle even when we know it's futile, to dare to believe that we can triumph, that we can overcome!

He doesn't have that, too torn, too stained, too mired in the agonies of his own soul. He has borne too much to conceive of it, stood too long staring into the abyss to entertain hope.

But he doesn't need to. Because, better than hope, I gave him possibility.


Domination of Black, by Wallace Stevens

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The color of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry-- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
Friday, January 21st, 2005 05:54 am (UTC)
I mean, I broke the bloody needle. F-ing crazy.

Bloody is also fairly literal, in this case, since I've stabbed myself multiple times since I've started.


And the moral of tonight's story, kids: sometimes, Irena just should not sew. *G*

Domination of Black, by Wallace Stevens

Album name, please, so I can go dig it up for a listen?
Friday, January 21st, 2005 06:20 am (UTC)
Bah. :-P I can sew, it's just that it's so hard to push the needle through the canvas of the uniform that my fingers inevitably end up punctured.

As for album name, if you want to hear that you'll have to read it aloud. Wallace Stevens is an early Modern poet, born 1894 if I remember correctly. Very influential. Has some really awesome poems (not that I've read that many so far). I recommend Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, another one that I like. Ha, I even found you a link! http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html
Friday, January 21st, 2005 07:05 am (UTC)
I'll just eat my words then, shall I? Excuse me while I get my brain out of music, and into poetry. ::dry:: Will click link, and then will rediscover the page of Yeats' poetry I found.
Friday, January 21st, 2005 06:54 am (UTC)
Don't hurt yourself, Thea-san!

What about using a sewing machine of some sort? I had the sam eproblem when I was patching my coat, the thick cloth just made me push harder and then I stab myself...Owie...

Majo
Friday, January 21st, 2005 07:12 am (UTC)
Other problems aside, I'd have to get a sewing machine . . . and learn how to use it . . .
Saturday, January 22nd, 2005 12:24 am (UTC)
I have one! I do! I use it to push the needle through, otherwise I'd never get anywhere . . . so I push with the thimble, but sometimes the needle goes through suddenly, and then, well . . .