燕

Beware people who post at 2 in the morning when they really ought to be sleeping. Beware people who post unedited, unconnected bits of writing which contain bad attempts at non-specific dialogue writing.

May be edited/removed completely when it's no longer 2 in the morning . . .

I have no idea why Emrys is going north, why he's taking the slowest of all the travel options available to him, or why he's traveling extremely incognito. Yes, of course he's wearing an illusion to hide his real appearance. It doesn't hide the tattoo, though, that can only be concealed through normal, conventional means.

Very sparsely written, and short.

( The long road . . . )

Since coming back from China, I have managed to . . . not get a lot done. My apartment's still a royal mess, nothing's sorted out, and my to-do list is only decreasing by an item or two each day.

Which is not to say that I've done nothing. I've uploaded a heck of a lot of photos of China, for one (good gods, I took 100 pictures of the Yangshou area alone? Blast that indecently gorgeous scenery! I'd better be at least somewhat selective about posting them . . .). I've freaked out hugely over recent developments in Bleach and InuYasha (half of the freaking out for the latter was that it actually HAD developments. Great good gods! I thought nothing was going to happen in that manga ever again, and suddenly Takahashi pulls something like this on me! That just goes to show that you should never give up on this world . . .). I have stumbled a database of excellent ecclectic InuYasha fic, a species so rare that it boggles the mind. I have almost caught up on three weeks worth of neglected internet comics (as soon as I finish NonSequitur I'll be caught up with all my regulars, anyway).

I did manage to go grocery shopping. I bought cheese and milk, whic I've been deeply missing the past three weeks. I bought lettuce and cabbage and green pepper and carrots. I bought a loaf of cheesy bread and a loaf of normal bread. I bought a small bottle of coffee. I bought a bottle of tea because it came with a free thingie attached to it that was related to Gedo Senki. Beneath the concealing wrapping, the thing proved to be a tiny blank book and three cheap colored pencils, which I am far more pleased with than I ought to be. I must drink a lot of tea so I can go back and get the one with the hand towel in it . . .

Muuuuuust seeeee mooooooovieeeeeee . . .

I also bought the bottle of tea because I needed more tea.

Emrys has been astoundingly vocal for the past three weeks, and the trend is continuing unabated. Perhaps I'll put one or two of the resulting snippets up here, but no more than that, because some of the things he's been telling me do not need to be aired in polite company. Too much information, too much information . . .

For some reason, I just feel like posting stuff on livejournal. Possibly because people keep giving me icons, so I feel the need to use them . . .

And I haven't posted any Emrys-stuff in a while. This was actually written some years ago. Italics are Nghia talking, in this case.

( Evil Emrys! Because he's so very, very good at being evil . . . )

So. Some time ago, majochan generously drew a picture for me. More recently, she inked it and colored it, and the result was . . . well. Spectacular seems too small a word, so I'll let the pic speak for itself, shall I?

Beware the Angst. There is much Angst. Oh yea verily.

Anyway, the pose itself is rather allegorical more than anything else, and I'll happily ramble about how it's allegorical if queried. But it seems somehow inappropriate to do that here, when the pic conveys by its very being everything that I could possibly say about it.

Majo is amazing, and I am unworthy of the skill and talent she's lavished on my poor creations. Though Emrys would take exception if he heard me referring to him as such . . .

While studying Japanese today, I asked one of the teachers to explain the difference between うち and いえ to me. They both mean "home," but うち has the additional connotation of belonging. It's opposite, according to the teacher, is "外"-- the same "がい" used in "外国人," "foreigner," and it's well-known abreviation, "がいじん."

Person who does not belong.

It makes me feel deeply lonely.

Although I have to say that there's something awesome about having elementary school kids flip out when you walk past. They were totally going, "OMG, it's a foreigner! She must live somewhere near here! OMG!" And one of them hid behind the other one, and they both managed a respectable "herro!" once they were done flipping out. It was really funny.

Mike Wyzgowski's "Nothing Can Be Explained" (vocal version) from the Bleach soundtrack is perhaps one of the spookiest songs I've ever heard. After Tori's cover of "'97 Bonnie and Clyde," because no song in existance is spookier than that one.

So, next week, due to midterms and class trips, I have no classes. Whatsoever. And so, I am going to do something right now that might possibly be considered suicidal. Though that might be overly optimistic.

I am taking writing requests.

If you're reading this, you may make one request, and I will produce at least a page of writing (typed) in response. I prefer that these requests be at least somewhat specific, "write a story," does not qualify. "Write a poem" does, but I reserve the right to answer this request with a five-minute crap haiku. And of course I can't write a fanfic for some show I've never heard of or flat-out hate. But maybe you have a character that you particularly like and would like to see more of? Or there's a story or scene from way back when that you want continued? Or you want my thoughts on trees? Or you want me to come up with a story about a canister of magical potato chips?

I do reserve the right to refuse unreasonable requests, of course. "Write a sestina in which every third line begins with a dirty word," for instance. But I trust you all to be reasonable . . .

Well, hopefully one of you likes my writing enough to actually request something.

I was in NYC over the weekend for a JET social, and a movie afterwards.

There may well be no better place in the world for people watching than the City (it's the City to me again, since it's the one I'm closest to). I saw such an astounding diversity of people . . . all colors, shapes, and sizes, no two the same. If you would study people, come to the City and you'll never lack for research material. Weekdays are naturally less interesting than weekends; there aren't that many variations to the business suit nowadays, more's the pity.

I gave the man playing the didjeridoo in the subway a dollar-- one doesn't see didjeridoo-players every day, after all, and I like to suport musicians. He had three of them, and speakers, and CDs that he was selling. Sadly I didn't hear the South American musicians I run into most often in the city. Their breathy, soaring flutes are the music of the city to me, wildness and beauty echoing from the walls of deep concrete canyons.

Possibly the most interesting person I saw in terms of appearance was an albino woman on the late night subway. It took me another look to figure out that she was in fact black-- her features and hair were distinctive. Otherwise it was hard to tell; her skin was white and peach-tinged, her eyes blue-red, and her hair yellow-white and wiry.

( I'll ramble on a bit about Emrys behind the cut, okay? )

I saw Howl's Moving Castle, too, at a ridiculously late hour of night. But I drank a huge cup of milky hazlenut coffee and was fine all the way home. The movie was wonderful, truly gorgeous, and I enjoyed it a great deal. In fact I'm going to see it again this coming weekend, and I'm going to take my little sister. And my brother, too, if I can persuade him to go. Fortunately as of this weekend it's opening in more theatres. So a lot more people will have the opportunity to see it . . . GO, if you get the chance.

It's not exactly like the book, I'll tell you that right now. The basics are the same, but the plot is different, and the characters likewise aren't going to match your internal picture (or the one in the books, really-- Sophie's red-blond in the books and brown-haired in the movie. Deal). Please appreciate it in its own right, though. Diana Wynn Jones did-- she loved the movie.

Without giving any spoilers, the highlights for me . . . the castle. Howl's room (the color!). Howl (who is . . . stunning, quite frankly). Calcifer (I might even prefer his adorable incarnation, because . . . it's so . . . adorable, I can't help it! I even ended up liking his dubbed voice in the end, because Calcifer's very being exudes charm the way a fire exudes heat. Which he also exudes, since he's a fire demon. heh).

Now I'm debating getting the art book when it comes out in July. Not that I'll be able to enjoy it for long, but still . . .

Which Villain Character Are You?

Me, last night: "I'm going to start teleporting out your vertebrae one at a time, starting at the bottom. This is a good idea!"

( Kibbles and bits and bits and bits . . . )

Because three hours of Wallace Stevens is a little much to take, even for me . . . I fall back on random character rambles. I do this all the time . . . it's a chance to explore the characters, and most of it never gets written down. Thankfully, as it's all hideously bad. They're also completely random, from various characters at various times. You can ask me who and when if you're really curious.

( Melodramatic character rambles! PH33R!!!! 1T 0WNZ JU!!!! )

Tiiiiired.

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.