I don't get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls
Brought me here.
And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it every day.
And I know
That I am
I am
I am the luckiest.
What if I'd been born fifty years before you
In a house on the street where you lived?
Maybe I'd be outside as you passed on your bike
Would I know?
And in a white sea of eyes
I see one pair that I recognize.
And I know
That I am
I am
I am the luckiest.
I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.
Next door there's this old man who lived to his nineties
And one day passed away in his sleep
And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days
And passed away.
I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know
We belong
That I know
That I am
I am
I am the luckiest.
I'm tired. I'm tired of being afraid I'm going to turn into a crazy person. I'm tired of being afraid that I already am. I'm tired of having a chip on my shoulder, and being insecure, and being lonely, and feeling left out, and feeling like I don't do anything that matters. I'm tired of listening to people TELL me that what I do doesn't matter, I'm tired of my loved ones letting me believe that, I'm tired of telling myself that I'm going to get my life together and thinking that I'll know when I do by how my life looks how my mom says it should. I'm tired of not being proud of myself, and not wanting to look at myself, and getting sick of my own company.
I don't know how to fix anything. I don't know how to make myself better, or how to start believing that I don't need to get better, or how to know if I do. I don't want to be lonely but I don't want to have to act like the fucking cool kids to make friends. I don't want to be left out, but if I have to tell you to include me it ruins it. I don't want to be insecure and I don't want to be humorless or act like a crazy intolerable fucking girl, but I can't take it when you joke about me being demanding when I'm so fucking scared that I'm being demanding. I don't want to call you and I don't pick up the phone when you call because I don't think you want to talk to me. And then you don't call, for months, and I feel like it's my fault.
I'm tired of not being good enough, not ever, no matter what I do. I'm tired of feeling like I'm the same fuck-up I've always been except
worse now because I don't have an excuse anymore. I'm tired of feeling like I've wasted all of these years because I can't justify them to you in a way you give a shit about. I'm tired of avoiding your calls during the day because I know you'll nag me about all the things I need to do, and avoiding your calls at night because you get emotional when you're drunk and I don't know how to handle that. It makes me headshy and I never know if your next words are going to be "you're my puppy and I love you" or "you're a cold, aggressive monster."
I'm tired of being jealous, and being ashamed of being jealous, and trying to swallow my jealousy, and trying to logic myself out of it, and trying to ignore it. I'm tired of feeling like a stupid, crazy girlfriend and not being able to stop. I'm tired of second- and third-guessing every goddamn thing I say because none of it's rational the way I want to be, none of it's reasonable the way I want to be, none of it's serene and beautiful and wise the way I want to be. It's all just fucking bile and whimpering confusion and I hate it. I wish there was more than that inside me. I'm not sure anymore that there is.
I don't know how I can expect to satisfy my mom when I haven't been satisfied with anything I am since I was thirteen years old. I thought getting older would be easier - I'd get nice and fucking complacent, worry about taxes and bills, and not cry myself to sleep like a teenager. Instead I'm more insecure than I've ever been, and every day I see myself turning into someone I can't stand and trying to step on every impulse and feeling that pops up in an effort to stop that process is only making it worse.
I wish all of this didn't feel like worthless, whiny first-world-problems bullshit.
Labels: Apologies, Brendon, Brian, Introspection, Katrina, Lies, Love, Rants, Stress
I was making a comment on your post, B, but then I started thinking and it got lengthy, and I discovered I had a lot more to say, more of an actual answer than a comment. So here it is.
I dreamed a long time ago, the first time I saw him in my dreams, of walking through halls, looking through windows, and of wearing masks to show him and make him smile. Masks and faces, disguises, costumes are a recurring theme between us--we're both storytellers, both dreamers, and both frequently yearn to be freed from the limitations of the form we occupy. Both aching for magic, for wings, for a sword or a spark, a
deus ex machina, a spanner in the works to force a change in our lives like the ones in our dreams.
The irony here, the beautiful irony of the way we relate is that it flies directly in the face of the way a lot of people think about "relationships." You could say, and we do, with some hilarity, that we started off with a broken promise, and that's true. It's also true that we both spend a great deal of time wearing masks, speaking to each other through faces and people that, in many cases, bring us into direct
conflict. Our characters frequently fight, sometimes physically, and with the catalyst of their respective foibles (Anfini's curiosity, Procell's neuroses, Rivaine's innocence) do things to each other that are, in civilized society, considered quite
horrible.
There are a lot of reasons why our relationship is odd, and I love it. The way I think of it is that we spend... all of our time, really, telling each other stories. Telling each other
things, in general, sharing information, trading media, showing each other stories, in pictures, in writing, in movement. It's all stories, and we're
in all of them. I want you all to read the short story by Kurt Vonnegut called
"Who Am I This Time?". It's exactly what I'm talking about. We wear faces for each other, not to hide from each other, always in total consciousness of who we really are, but evolving that concept of who we are by wearing faces that allow us to feed off of each other, to change, to wield magic, to fly. Together. Becoming greater, reaching new heights... I defend him with my sword, with my fire-breath. He lifts me and saves me with his wings.
Judged: Good
QOR: 15% evil, 85% good.
Labels: Anfini, Brendon, Dreams, Lies, Love, Procell
Once there was a land where the sun rose in the west and baked the dry ocean into a cake before noon, and in the small shadows dark things grew. In that land lived a girl. She was a pretty girl, after a fashion, and a good girl, in a way. She had only one fault: she trusted everyone.
Now this girl, whose name was Hope, had two things in the world that she loved very much. One was a friend, a kind and caring girl to whom Hope told everything. The friend's name was Veo. Hope's other's love was a secret love. She secretly adored a boy named Robo who went to her school. He was tall and strong, with a big smile and bright white teeth that sparkled when he spoke. He always wore a gold ring on his littlest finger, and was always very polite to her.
Hope, who was quite shy, finally worked up the courage to ask Robo what he thought of her. Veo went, and as the sun neared noon she came back.
"He likes you," said Veo, "But I don't like him."
Hope didn't notice the second part of what Veo had said, as she never noticed anything bad anyone said about Robo.
"He likes me?"
"That's what he said. He said he wishes you to give him a white rose."
Hope was overjoyed and quite a bit surprised. The white rose, a symbol of a girl's maidenhood, could only be given to one person. She immediately went and found a white rose in the city garden. She picked it and carried it with her to where Robo was talking with his friends. Hope looked shyly up at Robo as she handed it to him, and the thorn of the rose pricked her finger. She was so entranced, she didn't notice the blood running down the stem. He smiled down at her and took the rose in one hand and her arm in the other.
As the sun slid down the sky, Hope heard of a dance to be held in the garden. She was very excited, and asked Veo to help her with a dress. The one she chose was silver and glittering like the stars. Hope noticed that Veo was in a bad mood about something, but was too happy to ask.
They arrived at the party, and Robo took her arm in his firm grip. He looked dashingly handsome, and his gold ring flickered as they danced.
The sun was rapidly setting when another boy asked Hope for just one dance. She, radiantly happy, would have accepted, for the boy was a quiet, serious, but gentle fellow she slightly knew, Veo's older brother Sé. But Robo stepped in front of her and challenged the fellow, chasing him away. Hope smiled. Though pitying the other man, she was pleased that Robo loved her enough to fight any who even looked at her.
Hope was standing in the last light of the moon, getting a little tired, when Robo said he would get her a drink. She gratefully accepted and went over to talk to Veo, who was leaning against the wall. Robo poured a glass of sparkling, evening-colored punch from the bottle on the table. As he bowed gallantly, handing it to Hope, Veo thought she saw with her sharp eyes something more than bubbles flashing in the depths, but she wasn't sure.
Hope happily drank and danced some more with Robo. But the party was winding down, and she was very sleepy. Robo carried her to a chair outside under the moon. She looked up into his kind eyes and he said, "I'll take care of you."
Some time later Hope woke up very bewildered. The world seemed distorted, and everything around her too loud and too big. She thought she must be sick, and then she remembered Robo's careful help, and heard his voice saying again, "I'll take care of you. I've got you, you're safe now." Comforted, she went back to sleep.
Veo went to school and wondered where Hope could be. She remembered her friend leaving with Robo, so she went to ask him if she'd gotten home all right.
Robo said he hadn't seen Hope since after the party, when she had fallen asleep, but he said he had made sure she got back to where she was safe. Just as Veo was leaving, she noticed Robo's new ring. It was gold like his old one had been, but it had a thread of silver running around it.
"Oh, it's not new," he said. "I just modified the old one."
"It's very nice," said Veo.
Hope didn't come back to school for some time. The moon set and the stars shone, but Hope didn't return. Veo went to talk to Robo again, but he didn't know anything more, and was upset that she continued to question him. He frowned at her and looked put-upon, and rubbed his silvered ring with agitation until she went away.
Veo sat alone, thinking. No one seemed to be worried that Hope wasn't in school. Veo was worried, but didn't quite know what to do, so she went to talk to her brother Sé.
As the dark began to lighten again, Sé and Veo went back to Robo. Now openly suspicious, Veo raged at him, but he only looked helpless and offended. Sé, in a tone of quiet menace, tried to reason with the fellow, but still he told them nothing. Finally Veo lost her temper and slapped Robo hard. His eyes darkened with wrath and he turned on her, raising his left hand and striking her back. His ring scratched her face, and then it caught on her pointed nose and fell off his finger, marked with a streak of her blood.
Robo lunged for it, but before he could recover the ring it made a musical sound and began to fray like rope, threads of silver and gold unraveling. As they spooled free they grew and grew, and to Veo's amazement, each thread in twenty-five of them stretched out into a very confused-looking girl in shining party clothes. Last of all, Hope stood before her friend.
"What happened?" she asked.
"He put a spell on you," said Sé, his voice trembling with indignation. He flew at the larger, younger boy, but Robo threw him off easily. Hope then turned to meet the eyes of her former object of affection, devastated.
"How could you? I trusted you!" She tore the white rose out of his hand, and the thorns raked his palm, scattering his blood on the floor. He looked angrily at her, but before he could retaliate, his hand went pale as the blood ran forth, and then it went cold and hard. In a slow metamorphosis up his arm, his entire body grew still, and his envied pale skin turned to alabaster, his deceptive blue eyes the last to freeze into opaque, clouded marbles.
Wearied, betrayed, Hope began to cry, and Sé took her into his arms. She looked at him through her tears, and he seemed as beautiful as any man she had ever seen. Needing someone to lean on, she offered him the rose still in her hand. He smiled gently at her, took it, and cast it aside. "You don't have to give me that," he whispered as he led her away. "That's not what I'm here for."
Veo smiled after them, and the other freed girls looked at her. Veo's smile grew knife edges as she reached out and tapped the statue lightly. It teetered, toppled, and crumbled as it struck the floor, and the other girls embraced her and scattered into the early morning light.
Labels: Lies, Love, Magic
Once upon a time there was a land where the sun rose in the west and baked the dry ocean into a cake before noon, and in the small shadows dark things grew. In that land there lived a girl. She lived on a street where it was always night, and she was brightly beautiful, as if all the light denied her neighborhood was gifted to her. Her hair was golden as the sun and her skin flushed like dawn, and her eyes were clear blue. In spite of her incongruity, she loved her gloomy home, and was happy there.
One evening, however, which is the same as saying one morning, or one noon, there was an exciting new thing on her street: streetlights. They were round, glowing balls of glass that reminded the girl of what she saw in the mirror, and the girl, whose name was Noir, watched them with great interest.
It was not long before a careless bird, one of the thousands of shade-dust-colored crows who chacked and chattered in the trees on her street, dropped a heavy seed on one of the glass globes, cracking it. Instantly the shadows scuttled from under trees and stairs to cluster around the broken streetlight as the fire flickered and died. Noir laughed at the sudden change, and watched through a fissure in her garden wall to see what would happen.
Soon she saw a faint stirring around in the shadows near the light-pole, and heard a soft clink as the glass globe was moved. She looked harder, but could see very little. Then suddenly the light blazed forth again, pouring like molten gold between a pair of black-silhouetted hands. As her eyes adjusted to the glare, Noir gasped, for holding the globe between his splayed fingers, and gazing in wonderment into its blinding depths, was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
His hair was dark and his skin streaked with soot, but her eyes were dazzled with motes of light that caught in his hair like flaming moths, and as he stared, transfixed, at the beauty of the light-globe that he never grew weary of, she stared at him in the same way. Then he disappeared once more into the night and was gone.
Noir, haunted by her brief glimspe, was frantic to see him again, to prove that his beauty had not been merely the product of her hazed eyes. Whenever a friend mentioned in passing that the streetlight near her house had gotten cracked, and usually went on to complain about this "new technology" and how it was no good, Noir then contrived to stay the night with that friend, and was wakeful until deep in the cold hours, when the streetlight-changer climbed the pole to repair the damage.
Every time she saw him, Noir thought him more handsome. His countenance was grim and forbidding, but in the intense gleaming of the streetlights his eyes shone, and she knew he loved his work. And little by little, Noir came to love him.
Noir's mother soon became suspicious of her daughter's frequent nights out, and queried her friends to hear the reasons. When she heard of her daughter's affection for the streetlight-changer, one of the "night people," who lived outside the walls in the shadows, who had dark hair and big hands, who sang such strange songs late at night so the decent people couldn't sleep, she flew into a rage and confined Noir to the house, and locked the gate in the large wall that surrounded it.
Noir became increasingly depressed. She paced the small garden, and beat her fists upon the cold stones. Her only view of the outside was through the tiny crack in the wall.
One night, as she paced desperately, she was struck by an inspiration. Finding a good round stone, she stretched and threw it with all of her strength over the wall, hitting the glass globe nearest her with a musical crack, and dousing the light within. She danced with triumph, and clung to the wall to see the shadowy man when he came.
And come he did, and Noir knew she never need be lonely again. The next day, she threw another stone and cracked the globe again, and the next, and the next. And every night the streetlight-changer came to bring the light back.
As she stood in the darkness some days (which is the same as saying nights) later, waiting for the man to arrive, she heard a rustling on the other side of the wall. There was a click, as of marbles one against the other, and a rock was pushed through the crack into her hands.
Before she could be surprised, a soft, gravelly voice murmured, "Yours?" She whispered, "Yes," only to find other stones--some ten or twenty--pushed though after it.
"And these? And these?"
"Yes, I threw them. Who are you?"
"Please don't throw them at the light anymore. I don't mind changing it, but my master will think my work is no good if it's always having to be fixed."
With that, Noir knew her paramour was there, over the wall, and she gasped, "But I had to see you! I saw you once, a while ago, and I couldn't stand not seeing you again! And my mother won't let me out of the garden."
There was a silence, and then the soot-filled voice whispered again. "Who are you, Lady?"
"I live here. My name is Noir."
Another silence, and then an awed whisper. "The Midnight Sun... I knew I saw something shining through the crack... I never would have found it otherwise. I'm honored to meet you, Lady. They talk of you, they do, down on the street, out in the shadows. My name is Lucifer."
"Lucifer, light the light there, so I may see you one last time, if I'm never to break the globe again."
There was no answer, but in a moment she saw his lanky shadow climbing the pole and clinging at the top like a cat. When the blinding light flashed out, he looked down at her over the wall, and she gazed up at him. He watched as tears like pearls rolled down her cheeks, and they were the only thing that distinguished her from the other bright globe between his hands. After a moment, he climbed down again.
Soon she heard his rasping voice at the crack. "You needn't break the light again. I will come to you, after my work is done, every night if you wish it."
"Oh, I do!"
"Then I shall see you again, my Lady. You know--" there was a scuffling, as if he had turned away, then turned back. "You are everything they said you were. You remind me of something I saw once."
"What was it?"
The faintest of whispers: "
....the sun..." Then, as he collected himself, he continued. "I wish--pray, Lady, if I ask it, will you take one of those tears off your face, for there's no need for them anymore, and pass it out to me, so when I go home in the dark I'll have it to look at and remember you, and light the dark hours."
She did so, passing the soft, crystalline thing through to him, and she saw it glint among his long fingers.
"Farewell for tonight, Lady. No more stones." And he was gone.
But his word was good. He returned to the wall every night thereafter, and in time they grew to love each other well. But chance again conspired against them.
Noir's mother, waking one night to the mouse-foot scratching of whispers, discovered them there, and was transported by wrath. She chased Lucifer from the wall and, in desperation, closed her daughter's eyes and ears with a word, and told them not to open again. So Noir was blind and deaf.
"You are my light," her mother spat before Noir's hearing completely faded, "I created you, for me, to light this corner of this filthy place. Keep your blue eyes to yourself, shine them only for me, and look no more on outside lights, listen no more to dirty shadowed whispers--they die so soon."
Noir was stricken. She wept for days, and paced by the wall, but if Lucifer returned, she could no longer see or hear him. The light of the streetlight-globe shone over the wall, bright red through her closed eyelids, as if mocking her.
Finally, one night, or one day, she was so delirious with grief that she decided to break her word, and the streetlight, one last time. "He
must come! He
must!" She searched for a stone, found it, and threw it, but she couldn't see what she was throwing at, and she missed badly.
For hours she threw stones, but she couldn't hit the globe. Soon she collapsed in bitter tears, and then, with a despairing cry, she tore the tears from her cheeks and threw them at the light. They struck it like chimes, and their flame and the streetlight's clashed, and the globe
shattered, exploding in a nova of light and razor-edged shards. And then she heard a sound that pierced her heart even through her closed ears: a cry of pain in Lucifer's voice.
He had climbed the pole, it seemed, to see if he could look upon her and see why she didn't speak to him anymore. As the globe broke, it drove crystal pieces into him and threw him backward off the pole, up against the wall and onto the ground by the crack.
With a wail of anguish, Noir threw herself to the ground and spoke frantically through the fissure. "Are you all right? Lucifer, please be all right!"
But she still couldn't hear or see him, and so she wept again, afraid that she had killed her love. Then his thin fingers wedged through the fissure and touched her face, and she kissed them as he lifted the tears from her cheeks. They shone on his fingertips as he pulled them back through the wall, and though she couldn't see him do it, he pressed his fingers to his lips, wishing her a tender farewell.
As he did so a few of the tears slipped between his lips and into his mouth, and he felt them burn his throat as he swallowed. Then he felt dizzy, and Noir, on the other side of the wall, trembled as something seemed to pull at her heart.
Unsure what was happening to him, Lucifer whispered her name, and as he did so she felt herself tearing apart, knowing her heart was breaking. But then it seemed as if her entire body was shredding with it, coming apart in beaded threads of sunlight. She gasped as she felt her fingers fragmenting, like burning petals in the wind, the sparks flying through the crack and into Lucifer's eyes and mouth. Her hair flew and began to come apart with the rest of her, and for a fleeting moment she could see again as her eyelids, and then her eyes turned to star-bright grains and flew through the wall with the rest, until there was nothing more of her, and Lucifer lay gasping on the ground, trying to decide whether to live or die.
In later years, all of Lucifer's friends, the shadow-people, came to look on him as a kind of prophet, for having lived through the explosion, yes, but also for his soft voice, his innocent wisdom that seemed to come
through him, and for the way, sometimes, when he looked at you in the right way, his right eye glowed like the sun.
Labels: Lies, Love, Magic
