tsubame: (wings)
Thursday, August 2nd, 2012 05:05 pm
11 June 2012

Last night I dreamed of two people, hunters of the undead, a man and a woman . . . )

To Love Life, by Ellen Bass

The thing is
to love life
to love it even when you have no
stomach for it, when everything you've held
dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands
and your throat is filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you so heavily
it's like heat, tropical, moist
thickening the air so it's heavy like water
more fit for gills than lungs.
When grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief.
How long can a body withstand this? you think,
and yet you hold life like a face between your palms,
a plain face, with no charming smile
or twinkle in her eye,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you again.

Walking in London, 14 May 2012

I feel, often, a piercing loneliness, and wish that I had someone with whom to share my travels. But there is a virtue in traveling by oneself, that being mainly that there is no one you need satisfy except yourself.

The Tuesday a week past, I set out to walk. )
tsubame: (rifle)
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 05:41 pm
Lisa: Well aren't you just a precious little snowflake....

Me: I am not A precious little snowflake, I am THE precious little snowflake. I resent all insinuations that there might be other snowflakes out there that are also precious! I even resent the idea that there might be other snowflakes!

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When one does not know what it is, then it is something; but when one knows what it is, then it is nothing. What is it? )

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I Imagine The Gods, by Jack Gilbert )
tsubame: (wings)
Sunday, October 16th, 2011 02:14 pm
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 )
tsubame: (aqua)
Sunday, June 26th, 2011 10:58 pm
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 )
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
tsubame: (wings)
Friday, June 10th, 2011 02:45 pm
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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I was discussing the concept of “good” vampires with Lázár. The group encountered a family of vampires who were living a life in which they didn’t harm humans-- instead they sponsored a blood bank and lived fairly normal lives. That they were killed meant that all the other vampires would see little point in being “good,” since they would be targets anyway.

His answer surprised me: “If they were just doing it to avoid getting iced, they still f--ing deserve to get iced.”


What he meant was that the vampires would only be behaving themselves to avoid the chance of being killed. If that threat was removed, they would go back to less wholesome habits. And there was no guarantee that the threat would always be there. External motivation wouldn’t be enough; the behavior cannot be trusted without internal motivation.

Tokugawa is still at the front of my head, since her game ended only recently, and she spoke up: “The threat is like a poised hammer; you worry what might happen if the hammer is removed. Bring the hammer down a few times. After that it will not matter if the hammer is actually there or not; it will remain always in their minds.”

What she meant was that if there are a few demonstrative punishments, people will fear the punishment and remember it, and behave themselves to avoid it. Once that is in effect you will no longer have to punish people.

. . . they both scare me.

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Variations on the Word Sleep, by Margaret Atwood )
tsubame: (reading)
Sunday, May 8th, 2011 06:03 pm
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Taken in Brugges during my first afternoon walking around there. I found a great deal of gorgeously blooming wisteria on my travels-- I never knew it smelled so nice. Sensei spent some time trying to get me to say “藤” and “藤壷” correctly. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard, but I had a terrible time . . .

Transcripts of my writings from my recent trip to Ghent, Brugges, and Leiden.

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26 April 2011 )

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27 April 2011 )

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28 April 2011 )

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30 April 2011 )

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Sonnet XXX, by William Shakespeare (painted on a wall in Leiden) )

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“But now we are all, in all places, strangers and pilgrims, travelers and sojourners . . .”

~Robert Cushman, Pilgrim Leader, 1622

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Poem 23, by e e cummings (painted on a wall in Leiden) )
tsubame: (foot-mouth)
Thursday, March 31st, 2011 11:10 pm
I have FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY finished chapter 3 of Demon Hunter! We’re not going to talk about how long I’ve been working on it.

Demon Hunter: Previous Installments
Chapter One: Departure
Chapter Two: The Long Road
Chapter Three: Learning Experience (part 1: Gold)

Chapter Three: Learning Experience (part 2: Soap) )

Sidestories
Haunted

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One of my previous roommate's cats, Shunki, as an adolescent, having a stretch on my futon. An absolutely gorgeous cat, and well aware of it. Like my Jackl she was also a rescue-- my friend fished her and her littermates out of a box in a river in Tokyo. All went to good homes and have grown up to be wonderful pets. Shunki and her brother Ensei are now living happily in the United States, where they are referred to fondly by my previous roommate as "her Stupids."

The kanji for Shunki's name is "春姫", which translates to "spring princess." Rarely have name and personality suited each other so well in anyone.

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5 Reasons Humanity is Terrible at Democracy

Deeply interesting and informative reading. Terribly depressing, though.

Bioware Tells Straight Men to "Get Over" Being Hit on By Gay Men in "Dragon Age 2"

Good for them. An intelligent and reasoned response to a complaint probably wasn't either.

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A Color of the Sky, by Tony Hoagland )
tsubame: (yue)
Friday, March 18th, 2011 05:47 pm
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I was in Tibet in the summer of 2007, and it was . . . possibly the most amazing trip I have ever been on. Everything was astounding-- the landscape, the people, the culture-- everything except the food. See that white peak below the prayer flags, briefly emerging from the clouds? That's Chomolungma . . . more commonly known as Mt. Everest.

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L'An Trentiesme De Mon Eage, by Archibald MacLeish

And I have come upon this place
By lost ways, by a nod, by words,
By faces, by an old man's face
At Morlaix lifted to the birds,

By hands upon the tablecloth
At Aldebori's, by the thin
Child's hands that opened to the moth
And let the flutter of the moonlight in,

By hands, by voices, by the voice
Of Mrs. Whitman on the stair,
By Margaret's "If we had the choice
To choose or not - "through her thick hair,

By voices, by the creak and fall
Of footsteps on the upper floor,
By silence waiting in the hall
Between the doorbell and the door,

By words, by voices, a lost way - ,
And here above the chimney stack
The unknown constellations sway -
And by what way shall I go back?
tsubame: (combini)
Friday, February 25th, 2011 01:01 am
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My parents and I took the train up to Takayama from Kyoto. It was a spectacular journey through green mountains and sudden gorges carved by white-water rivers. Takayama itself was also gorgeous, even though it poured rain for just about the entire time we were there.

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I've changed my LJ theme, because I needed a bit of sun to get me through the rest of this bleak season. It should be noted that I dislike daisies. There are flowers that I like, though I find that my preferences are very influenced by scent: lillies of the valley, roses, sweet daphne, hyacinths (which I do not like the look of, but they smell delightful). Plum and cherry blossoms (I prefer the former, but if it's dessert time sakura all the way). Morning glories (though they have no scent at all). I have a fondness for snowdrops because they come up first, and crocuses for coming up after to say that spring's really arrived.

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A haiku cannot
be ordered, it must spring forth
spontaneously.
tsubame: (reading)
Sunday, January 16th, 2011 04:31 pm
Continuing on yesterday's theme . . .

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This is one of the meals that I ate at the Copain Copine, my very favorite Korean restaurant in Tokyo. It's near Tokyo Station on the outskirts of Ginza, tucked under the railway tracks with a bunch of other really cool little restaurants and cafes. Except I never went to any of the others because I would always go back there after the first time. Made it a point to eat there every time I was in Tokyo. The wait staff were very friendly and kind, the host was really pritty, and the decour was homey and yet lovely. Oh, and the food was awesome, too.

And, while I'm at it . . .

The First Dream, by Billy Collins )
tsubame: (yue)
Monday, November 8th, 2010 06:36 pm
The mountain dreams of Autumn
The trees dream of Fire
the sky dreams of Earth.

~Joseph Woodsworth
Saturday, August 7th, 2010 07:45 am
Megaupload link to Within Temptation's "a Final Dream," as quoted in the previous post.

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Even Through the Summer Storm, by Carol Clark Williams

wild geese imagine the moon and
row toward it, writing
lines of poetry.

Against the gothic clouds they sketch
sestinas, every stanza
beginning with the letter "v".

They search the lightning-punctuated sky
for words that rhyme with
"flight" and "night".

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. . . yeah, I wrote more Kingdom Hearts fic. Even more plotless and pointless this time! I blame [livejournal.com profile] majochan, because I think the initial prom-shenanagins idea was hers. She's the one with the truly brilliant ideas about it, too. Had me in stitches.

FIC.

Title: Dance Lessons
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts

What are we gonna do at prom? )

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I wanna be a member of the Grown-Up Party! With maybe a little humor thrown in, since I don't want to be a part of an organization that lacks a sense of humor.

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The problem with many computers has its roots in a problem with humans-- we don't like to think. We're lazy, and if we can help it we'll take the easy way out. This is why Apple and Windows are more successful then, say, Linux-- they make things easier for people. If something seems to hard, we give up on it fairly easily.

So computers do things for us so that we won't hit that threshold. Which works . . . up to a point. Problems arise when the computer assumes it knows what you're trying to do and starts doing it for you-- but gets it wrong. The subtleties of human purpose in using programs are often lost on the programs themselves, which in trying to help too much end up hindering or even preventing. Ironically, for most of these programs there's no easy way to tell them to stop doing it. No easy way to reassure them that you know what you're doing, however strange that might seem, and you don't need the computer's help to do it.

Which of course leads to the comical situation of me shaking my fist at the computer screen and yelling, "stop assuming you're smarter than me!" I bought my camera for the express reason that, while I can definitely use the help in setting up my shots most of the time, not to mention the convenience of having the balance adjusted for me, I want to be able to tell it to stop and leave me alone, that I can take shots that its tiny computer brain can't conceive the purpose or propriety of.

I just wish I could do that with Word 2007. Maybe if the damn thing was in English rather than Japanese I might have a chance of figuring it out . . .

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There was a full glass coffee pot mostly submerged in a sink-full of water at work today. A moment's thought gave me the answer to why it was there. Still, I spent a minute smiling at the serene ridiculousness of the image, and thought to myself happily, "the world is stranger and more wonderful than I was previously aware."

I love those moments, I really do.

Recently my father sent me a postcard from where he was attending a seminar on radio telescopes in North Carolina. The card read, "I thought you would find this particular postcard funny."

The postcard is a before-and-after sort. The top shows the radio telescope standing proud and lovely, a lacework flower-cup of whitewashed girders. The second picture is from the next day, and shows a pile of white wreckage where once the telescope stood.

It did, indeed, make me laugh. One day-- beautiful functioning high-tech scientific instrument! The next day-- pile of twisted rubble! Aaaah, I can't believe it just collapsed like that-- like a fflan in a cupboard, to quote Eddie Izzard. Just imagine, some poor dude left work, locked the door behind him, everything was fine. He drives up the next morning, and wham! I bet he totally BSODed. Or maybe just sighed and drove off to find the nearest bar.

I'm still laughing about it, yeah. Apparently my father knows me quite well, including my odd sense of humor.

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I don't know what it says about me, but pictures like this one, of the First Family visiting a National Park, make me really really happy. That strange feeling of pride and hope-- I don't know where it comes from, but it's all the more welcome given my generally somewhat depressing news-reading hobby.

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An article written by a hibakusha on her experience in Hiroshima. I am adamantly anti-nuclear weapons, under any and all circumstances. I further believe that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were absolutely wrong and should be a source of national shame to the U.S.A., instead of an oft-ignored, bare paragraph in history textbooks. Considering that WWII is America's last "just" war (or possibly our only one, though I'm reluctant to even go that far), my opinions on the matter are hardly what one would call widespread.
Friday, March 23rd, 2007 09:29 pm
The following have made me laugh in recent days:

This page from the webcomic Friendly Hostility. Specifically panels 2 and 3. "Sweet Neietzche, what the hell?!" I DIE.

Maura-san's livejournal. She regularly astounds me with her laconic and utterly original wit. Usually I'm left blinking in bemused, amused astonishment.

This page from the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court. Specifically the last panel. One finds such interesting things by reading Neil Gaiman's livejournal, really.

Skippy's List. A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Calvin & Hobbes. It doesn't matter that I've read every single strip at least ten times. They're still funny.

This page from the webcomic Questionable Content. Actually QC makes me laugh on a regular basis. The punchlines tend towards awesome. They're killer, really. It hits all the bases; it even has robots! With existential crisises! This strip, though, is my all time favorite. It is made of SOLID GOLD PLUTONIUM SLEDGEHAMMERS NAMED SVEN. That's how hard it kicks your ass.

Kanshou and Bakuya in the Demon Hunter AU, as per my icon. It's [livejournal.com profile] majochan's fault, really, since it was her idea to have the swords literally talk in the first place. Now they won't shut up. Why is it that when I write inanimate objects or pets they always end up having as much or more personality than their supposed owners do?

This is possibly the sweetest poem ever:

roses are #FF0000
violets are #0000FF
all my base
are belong to you

Where do I find these things, anyway?
Friday, March 16th, 2007 03:21 pm
Why the heck did they let him speak, that's what I'd like to know . . . it was just dumb . . .

In honor of the ides of March! Which was in fact yesterday, but it's still the 15th in my native time zone, so this counts. A poem!

On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness, by Arthur Guiterman

The tusks which clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls.

The sword of Charlemagne the Just
Is Ferric Oxide, known as rust.

The grizzly bear, whose potent hug,
Was feared by all, is now a rug.

Great Caesar's bust is on the shelf,
And I don't feel so well myself.
Tags:
Thursday, December 21st, 2006 01:44 pm
Finishing up the year of Shakespeare quotes. I admit to not being much for Romeo and Juliet, but it has some of the most beautiful language of any of Shakespeare's plays . . .

sing to the holly . . . )
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 10:19 am
Have finished a Clash of Kings at long, long last. Next project: the Amulet of Samarkand.

And taking care of business. Time to get those spent calendar pages out of my desk.

Shakespeare Calendar Quotes, Continued )
Thursday, September 14th, 2006 11:34 am
At long last, another China journal and photo post! Man, I'm slow with these, it's only been a month since my trip . . . but then there are a ton of Japan photos I haven't managed to put up, either, so actually I'm doing better with these. Ye gods.

Staying late at school, obsessively re-watching Samurai Champloo, and falling asleep in random weird locations (shoulders and head on futon-rump on floor-legs on sofa, on my back on the "kitchen" floor, curled half on the sofa half under the table, etc. I woke up this morning from the last with both sets of fingers completely numb for lack of blood circulation, as they were rammed up against the wall under my head) doesn't really help in crossing items off my to-do list, of course. Fortunately I've taken to setting my alarm clock as soon as I get home from school.

In any case, China! And while I'm at it, here's the newly revised travel map:



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Bidding farewell to Baidi enveloped in colorful clouds
A thousand li return journey is covered in one day.
As the monkeys cry ceaselessly on both banks
The light boat speeds past ten thousand peaks

~from the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River book; translation of a poem written by Li Bai (Tang Dynasty)

7月22日06年 )

7月23日06年 )

Photojournalism: Three Gorges )
Sunday, September 10th, 2006 11:59 pm
I had a perfect cup of tea today. Simple white stoneware cup on a plain, matching saucer, resting on the indigo tablecloth I brought back from China. The rose tea inside was a perfect golden amber, the second steeping from the teabag and so I already knew that it was excellent tea. The air conditioning was on, colder than I liked, and the chill made the tea all the more welcome. I sat and watched it as I waited for it to cool enough to drink; watched the folding, curving steam rise from the perfectly still surface to dance and eddy in the slight breeze. My life is this, and no more, I thought. My life is the steam that rises from the translucent stillness, this fragile nothing that curls and wavers in the wind.

"God moved over the face of the waters . . ."
Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 10:41 pm
Endlessly looping on YouTube lately for lack of downloading capability . . . )

There are the dreams we have, and the dreams we are not allowed to have.

The dream that I have is not the dream that other people are allowed to have, I know. It takes me far from everything familiar, it throws me wingless into the void of the world, it tosses me beyond the gravitational pull of familiar stars. It is fullfillment, and also denial-- wandering monk-quester without a quest, prodigal without progress, seeker who has nothing to seek. I step forward without looking over my shoulder, so everyone behind me can see my back. I take this dream and make it my being, because this dream is the one I am allowed to have, and have it I will.

There are dreams that I am not allowed to have. The phone ringing, that is one. I can't even remember what it sounds like anymore. Nor can I remember the voices of my memories, the way the t's were crossed, or what it feels like to touch someone.

But those dreams at least I have the luxury of forgetting. That is part of the dream I am allowed to have. Allowed to have it, I chose it, and in choosing chose those dreams that I would forget.

I chose it, all of it, for the dreams that I am not allowed to have. I stepped forward without looking over my shoulder, so that the dreams I could not have would see only my back. So that they would know, as they rejected me, that I rejected them in turn. I chose pride and refused to reach for the dreams I could not have, so that they would never see me reaching. I chose my dream and the comfort of the knowledge that I had never reached.

All of this, I chose. And part of that choosing was knowing that I would not regret my choice, because I would put myself by my own will apart from the dreams I was not allowed to have. Choosing fate in order to be free.

But none of that can stop the wondering, the forgetting, the choosing. None of that can make me forget those dreams that I've forgotten. None of that can take away the desire for the dreams that I am not allowed to have, have chosen not to have, do not desire.
Friday, August 25th, 2006 11:38 am
Found while browsing Babylon 5-related information:

The War Prayer, by Mark Twain.

Very worth reading.