And down we go

Today's project was to finish cleaning out Mag's sewing room. It's been almost two years since we moved in, and still having boxes stacked in the room was getting on both of our nerves. Everything was proceeding well, despite finally breaking the belt on the vacuum cleaner (after five years, it owes us nothing more, and it was quickly repaired.) Got the last of the boxes unpacked, and was busy ferrying things up into the attic when it happened.

I slipped.

In all, it was only a fall of about ten feet, and my descent was broken every foot or so by the stairs impacting my butt. (And my back. And my head.)

Fortunately nothing seems to be broken, I'm just sore. Still, it was not a good day.

Old friends

As part of my revisiting with old friends (some would call it rereading the classics,) I have recently started back into Christopher Stasheff’s Warlock series. Something stuck with me from early in the series. The main character meets a beautiful, capable, intelligent woman whom he falls in love with and who loves him back. (I’m paraphrasing because I don’t want to be bothered to dig the quote out.) He then realizes that this woman, whom he thought was so far beyond him, has fallen in love with him because he is able to see past her physical beauty and recognize the person underneath.
I have a friend whom is going through this at the moment. I want to tell this friend that they are being stupid, but I can’t quite bring myself to do that. I could say a lot on that statement, but I think I’ll let it lie for now.

Poetry Corner

Working my way through some old documents I had stored on the computer, I came across several poems that I had saved that I would like to share now.

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

And

The Last Hero
by G.K.Chesterton

The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,
There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away,
And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide,
Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride.
The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars,
With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars,
Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above,
The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love.
Feast in my hall, O foemen, and eat and drink and drain,
You never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain.

The chance of battle changes -- so may all battle be;
I stole my lady bride from them, they stole her back from me.
I rent her from her red-roofed hall, I rode and saw arise,
More lovely than the living flowers the hatred in her eyes.
She never loved me, never bent, never was less divine;
The sunset never loved me, the wind was never mine.
Was it all nothing that she stood imperial in duresse?
Silence itself made softer with the sweeping of her dress.
O you who drain the cup of life, O you who wear the crown,
You never loved a woman's smile as I have loved her frown.

The wind blew out from Bergen to the dawning of the day,
They ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way,
I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers,
As merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers.
How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,
Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

Know you what earth shall lose to-night, what rich uncounted loans,
What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones?
My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease,
Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas.
To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given,
The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven.
The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see,
To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me;
One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet's breath:
You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death.

(Written in 1901)

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Well, the long awaited rain has finally arrived. I'm sitting at the computer, listening to it fall. The job hunt work for today has finished, and I'm desperately trying to come up with some excuse to not do anything else. (Rain affects me that way.) So, let me share one of the Pennsic stories.

We set off at 8:30 Friday Evening, with the intention of driving all night to get to Pennsic. Everybody was too wound up to sleep, so we talked almost the entire way. Along about 2 in the morning, we got a little silly, and decided to finish the camp song from the Capital One commercial ("Burned a villiage to the ground, doh-dah".) Here's what we came up with:

Pickled Herring
(to the tune of Camptown Races)

Sailed my longship ‘cross the sea, doo-dah, doo-dah.
Gonna raid the monastery. Oh de-doo-dah-day.
Gonna sail all day, gonna sail all night.
Give me all your money and goods, or there’ll be a fight.

Burned a village to the ground, doo-dah, doo-dah.
Burned the church and robbed the town. Oh de-doo-dah-day.
Gonna raid all night, gonna raid all day.
Better find some more money, or I won’t go away.

Drank some mead from a great big horn, doo-dah, doo-dah.
Next morning wished I’d never been born. Oh de-doo-dah-day.
Gonna drink all day, gonna drink all night.
Wake me up too ear-e-ly, and there’ll be a fight.

Saw this wench in an English Fife, doo-dah, doo-dah.
Took her home to meet the wife. Oh de-doo-dah-day.
Gonna wench all night, gonna wench all day.
Instead of bliss when I got home, Helga made me pay.

Sailed my longship ‘cross the sea, doo-dah, doo-dah.
(spoken) I hear France is nice this time of year.

Rainy Days And Tuesdays...

Just got off the phone with a good friend. Without going into too much detail on her story, someone whom she counted on in her life turned out to have a hidden agenda. She was devistated, partially because she was the last one to realize what was going on, but mostly because one of the assumptions on which she based her life turned out to be wrong. I've been there, and its always painful.

I'm afraid that I wasn't able to do much to help her. What do you say to someone who's life has just turned upside down, and not in a good way? Still, the conversation made me think.

I've had situations like that in my life. One day, quite suddenly, something happens and everything in your life changes. Those moments of change are rarely comfortable, and often have implications that last for a long time if not permanently. Most are negative, but some have positive implications.

I had an experience at the Pennsic war last month that fits that bill. I've been toying with posting about it, but something keeps holding me back. Partially, I've been trying to hold onto it, and writing about it seems to be too much of an adminition that it is well and truly over, but mostly it was to intense, too personal to really be able to share it.

"Twenty dollars, same as in town", "Shiny, pretty, MINE!", "I'ts a stick, it's a stick, it's a fucking stick!" All of these lines have special meaning, and while I can tell the stories behind them, the full impact is lost.

Flirting at Castle Barducci, baking bread in camp, providing an escort to the ladies in camp while they went shopping, singing until I got hoarse, staying up until the wee hours talking, all were part of the experience. Still, I feel incapable of putting them down on paper. They were too special, too real.

Great one from David Bowie

Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth
You pull on your finger, then another finger, then your cigarette
The wall-to-wall is calling, it lingers, then you forget
Ohhh, you're a rock 'n' roll suicide

You're too old to lose it, too young to choose it
And the clocks waits so patiently on your song
You walk past a cafe but you don't eat when you've lived too long
Oh, no, no, no, you're a rock 'n' roll suciide

Chev brakes are snarling as you stumble across the road
But the day breaks instead so you hurry home
Don't let the sun blast your shadow
Don't let the milk float ride your mind
They're so natural - religiously unkind

Oh no love! you're not alone
You're watching yourself but you're too unfair
You got your head all tangled up but if I could only make you care
Oh no love! you're not alone
No matter what or who you've been
No matter when or where you've seen
All the knives seem to lacerate your brain
I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain
You're not alone

Just turn on with me and you're not alone
Let's turn on with me and you're not alone
Let's turn on and be not alone
Gimme your hands cause you're wonderful
Gimme your hands cause you're wonderful

The Day That I Die

The day that I die shall the sky be clear
And the east sea-wind blow free,
Sweeping along with its rover’s song
To bear my soul to sea.
They will carry me out of the bamboo hut
To the driftwood piled on the lea,
And ye that name me in after years,
This shall ye say of me:

That I followed the road of the restless gull
As free as a vagrant breeze,
That I bared my breast to the wind’s unrest
And the wrath of the driving seas.
That I loved the song of the thrumming spar
And the lift of the plunging prow,
But I could not bide in the seaport towns
And I could not follow the plow.

For ever the wind came out of the east
To beckon me on and on,
The sunset’s lure was my paramour
And I loved each rose-pale dawn.
That I lived to a straight and simple creed
The whole of my worldly span
And white or black or yellow I dealt
Foursquare with my fellow man.

That I drained life’s cup to its blood-red lees
And thrilled my every vein.
But I did not frown when I laid it down
To lift it never again.
That my spirit ever turned my steps
To the naked morning lands
And I came to rest on an unknown isle –
Jade cliffs and silver sands.

And I breathed my last with a simple tribe,
A people savage and free.
And they gave my body unto the fire,
And my soul to the reinless sea.


*****DISCLAIMER********
I am not about to do anything to hasten this day, but PPD (Post-Pennsic) depression has got enough of a hold on me that, for the first time since I started on medication, I am looking forward to it. When all that remains in your life is duty, that can be a powerful hold, but it is a lonely one.