And life flows on

comment anonymously here. tell me something. it can be something about you. it can be a secret, a funny story, anything. it can be a question for me. it can be a fact you read under a Snapple bottle cap. there are no limits. go crazy. (& don't worry - I think the journal is set to log IP addresses, but I'm shit with computers and have no idea what I would do with one of those once it was logged. you're totally anonymous.) i'm going to keep this post topped - feel free to stop by anytime.

I think I've pretty much relocated to my latest writing journal, dayoncedawned .  I don't really have what it takes to livejournal properly anymore, but I'd love to see any of you over there if you'd care to join me.

Leonard Cohen... to me, he is the bodhisattva who stuck around for the sake of us poor fuckers who need to hear his voice & his words & his mind. He had not played in this country in 15 years but someone shone down & decided that I needed a ticket to the one who gave me faith in poetry.



What to say? When I was about 15, my dad sat me down & had me listen to the "Best Of" CD. Famous Blue Raincoat mesmerized me & we have had many debates over the last line. In such a concert, even he admitted it was perfect... a year or two ago my mum gave me "Songs of Leonard Cohen" on vinyl & I just shut myself in my room for hours, flipped it and flipped it. Between the two of us, I'm suprprised the thing still plays.

You told me again you preferred handsome men,
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said: "Well, never mind,
we are ugly, but we have the music."

Don't think it went unnoticed at the end, Leonard... Leonard, you called her Darling. Leonard, I think what I wanted most from life was to hear you sing that song. Leonard, life goes on for the both of us.

I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice

It was announced a bit later that he would be touring - he'll be in Boston in May but I don't know that I'll even try for a ticket. Once was almost too holy for me to take. All I can say is thank you. I don't even know who I'm thanking. Someday I wish to reach such calm enlightenment. For now, to just identify is enough.

"Icarus #10"

Such villain as always you'd been (and he never),
seething rodent of too many tongues as you burrow
10 feet deep down into thin air and fly
to lower depths.
I saw this dirt, this earth,
(this tragic charade, you demon you)
this planet that is fired through with holes / & one of them is you.
Who thought that I'd see so many leaves that gnarl until there is
nothing left but the shredded wings of the ageless:
Come, let us riot together.

We have bluejeans & clay like mud
& late nights on the beach with deity inside us
before we are woke up by Napoleon or someone similar.
We submerge into do-it-yourself honor
and crushed wax that clings to fingernails while Priam the King

(he sits with the gloss of a magazine cover and murmurs:
Bless The Child,
bless the child)

the King breaks dishes on a kitchen floor with
grace / charm / poise
but me, I am Icarus
if I'll be anyone at all
for I am made of (wrists & knuckles & porcelain & whatever else)
of crumbling grains like floorboard sepia
and dragonflies that won't land in dung-beetles' graveyards -
such a wealth of demons.
(Come - let us discorporate - !)


***

"Round Like A Mirror"

What will it be?
Shall we sail down
from the stone and the brick
with your bruises on the broken glass
of a long-sought summer?

Your reflection is on my eyes
when I take the smaller half
of your dominion
when I run for closet dark
to empty your satisfaction
when you run a nail
from spine to wrist.

And I crumple to oblivion,
crease like your human lips,
your trees in my mud
casting pity to those who follow:
such a little girl
clothed all in fire
looking for her lashes
in the windshield.

Come on, then.
Here is my spell-struck hand.
Thou shalt lead
and I guess I'll have to follow.

***

"Icarus #17"

But what was the sun
but a lightbulb -
& who was Icarus
but a moth?

I've heard rumors of the dreaded 25 things meme, which apparently spread around facebook like the plague. I swore I would never partake in such nonsense. And then umbreons tagged me on here, and so I'm going to join the party... Ah, God, I'm such a pushover. :)

o1. i begin college in 200 days, 18 hours, 11 minutes and 29 seconds... & don't worry, I used an online counter - I'm not quite that obsessive.

o2. one of my ears has two piercings, and the other only has one... I did the second piercing myself, when I was fourteen, but never did the other side. This makes me feel quite lopsided. I might have to do something about that someday.

o3. you can call it "Tolkien-based slash fanfiction" all you want... it's gay elf porn. And I loved reading such things when I was about 13. To all the talented perverts who write it (and you know who you are...), I sincerely thank you. Innocence is overrated.

o4. when I hate my life, I shut my eyes and listen to recordings of Country Joe & the Fish at Woodstock.

o5. i do not have a fandom at the moment. It makes me feel like a hobo. I live in the cardboard box of original fiction & writer's block. It's rather lonely.

o6. the first poster I ever owned was the Beatles. I would kiss them goodnight when I was a kid. I miss those days.

o7. the worst concert I have ever seen was the Monkees. No competition... it still sticks in my mind as one of the most godawful things I've ever seen. But, like Ultrabunny, also pretty damn funny.

o8. i sincerely don't know what color my eyes are. people ask me this all the time, because no one else can tell, either. Some sort of green or blue or grey (or yellow?)... I might get bright purple contacts just to spare all the confusion.

o9. i have been Wiccan since I was 12. Back then, I was very religious, prayed twice a day and was always decorating my altar. A couple years ago, some shit got in the way of my being able to practice, and even though I still call myself a wicca, I haven't been exactly pious lately.

1o. i don't know where I would be without Syd Barrett. He's really gotten me through. We speak a similar language, or something.

11. i have never texted anyone in my life, not even when people text me. I also refuse to get a facebook, no matter how many people try to convince me that I should.

12. i have a horrible phobia of bananas. This is probably genetic, because my grandmother was the same. Hmmmm.

13. i always wanted to live to 28. That's always been the goal. When I turned 18, I was scared for a little bit, but then I realized how far I've come since I was 8. Ten years is plenty of time. I was never meant to get old.

14. i got two more college acceptance letters today. Out of three schools I've heard back from, all three were acceptances, and two offered rather charming scholarships. I am delighted.

15. i am considering going vegan. Not for the animals - I'm already vegetarian, and I think that's enough. But life has gotten so monotonous that I might like to break the endless drone by constantly checking nutrition labels for obscure animal products.

16. if I finish college, my dream isn't to travel the world (though I wouldn't mind that)... really I just want to go to Orkney for a while and make ice-cream.

17. the only expensive clothing I usually buy are bras.

18. until I was 14, the only CDs I owned were by the Beatles.

19. i once went through my entire iTunes and deleted the "genre" for every song... I probably have almost two thousand songs, but I couldn't stand the labels. They're never accurate, they can never sum up the music, and so they shall not be.

2o. i am strangely good at remembering things I shouldn't, but can never keep up with anything relevant.

21. eventually, I intend to end up living in a hippie commune somewhere - growing our own food and whatever, just being free... I can't say I'm big on modern life, though of course I've never known anything else.

22. i first read The Lord of the Rings when I was, I dunno, maybe 8. I sometimes wonder how life would have gone if I hadn't. I have come to no conclusions.

23. some days I think I like James Taylor more than his music. I would like to meet him someday, just to prove that he exists.

25. i dislike the number twenty-four. I am not sure why.

As usual, you're tagged if you want to be. And just so you know, I'm giving up on my short-lived dream of having a writing journal (I have too many journals - it's like MPD, I swear...) So you'll most likely be seeing old writings off there re-posted in the near future.

I was going through the mail. $32 paycheck! Holy shit, I'm rich! Oh, and a brochure from Marlboro college... wait. No. Make that an acceptance letter from Marlboro college, and a $10,000-per-year scholarship. Holy. Shit.

They were one of the most difficult schools that I applied to, and I wasn't supposed to hear from them for months. My mother was wandering around the house muttering under her breath: "Forty thousand dollars... forty thousand dollars..." I was a little worried for her sanity, actually, though who am I to talk? I have gone into shock. Do you ever have one of those days, when there is no action in your life but everything happens at once? I won't give you a laundry list, but I just felt like I was sinking... and now I don't know what to feel.

Dear god, life has gotten so confusing. It seems that I now have a future. And I don't even know if I want it or not. But think about it... the world is moving forward. And so am I.

I might delete this journal... every time I post a personal entry, I delete it after a few days. I just feel like no one wants to hear it. I haven't been doing any real writing lately, (except for a couple short little things that go to ourlovely) and so there's none of that to post here either. Thing is, I've met some people on here that I don't want to lose because I actually care about them, even if I don't know them.

I lose people, in life, all sorts of people in all sorts of places. I... misplace them, and then they'll get a call or an email and they don't know what to say. I don't know what I mean by any of this... maybe it's my mediocre journaling skills or just the mindset I'm in. I don't know what to do. I can't even explain.

They are as follows... Wish me luck.

1. graduate high school (!)
2. get a job & hopefully make enough that i don’t have to work all summer (quite a dream, i know...)
3. dye my hair again, because i liked the last color better (at a coloring party, it seems)
4. start writing again, i’ve been awful with that lately... scraps of half-written nothings.
5. stop relying so much on technology (especially computers). that's a big one.
6. read all the fics that i haven’t managed yet because of crazy word-counts... if you've written one, well, forgive me my laziness, i'll do my best.
7. practice the bass... it looks so lonely just sitting there in silence.
8. rainbow gathering... i hear it'll be in new mexico (or arizona? i will have to double-check)... i don’t know who i'll be able to convince to come with me.
9. finish The Tibetan Book of the Dead
10. and then i should probably go to college.

School vacation starts today, and I am turning my computer off... just turning it off. I need a break, I'm going to do crazy shit like write in notebooks and listen to albums and things like that... it'll be the stone age all over again. I'll be back in a week or two, and maybe I'll have gotten over my horrible aversion to staring at all these digital screens for hours each day - they're used so much at school now, and wherever, at this point I can't stand it - and then maybe I'll be willing to throw some more writings into cyberspace. Have a lovely holiday, all of you.

Fandom: Across the Universe
Title: Down Fast
Author: Feta
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. AtU is Julie Taymor, lyrics are their respective owners, etc.
Summary: Post-movie, Sadie-centric, no pairing. Prudence is missing, and Sadie isn’t much better. "The deeper you go, the higher you fly / The higher you fly, the deeper you go / So come on..."
Notes: I should have gotten this to you months ago, I am very sorry. Life kind of got in the way. Well, name me a Beatles reference here and I'll try and think of a prize. Name them all, and you have too much time on your hands. Thank you to Nora (umbreons), who was a lovely beta. This story owes a lot to some odd help I got from others, as well. So let's say I asked you "I need a body of water that a guy could rise out of and ask for the White Cliffs of Dover," or "What do you get when you combine pudding, cat food and the Eiffel Tower?" or something similar, you have my thanks, too.

( the deeper you go, the higher you fly )

The world was a very tired place after the coffeepot broke. During the school trip to see the Tom Stoppard play Rock N Roll a couple days ago, most people fell asleep in the second act – people who were probably more caffeinated than me. And I... cried. Tears streaming down, I swear. But it wasn’t a sad play like that. It was just one that hit me, the way these things do... And so we could be very logical and say I was bound to like it because it tied in somewhat with a story I started writing recently, or because it referenced music I’m into... but let’s not be like that.

Because right now there’s a nice new coffeepot in the kitchen, but there’s also a paperback copy of the play here with me, which I’ve been looking through, and yesterday I just flipped ‘The Madcap Laughs’ album over and over. And I was sixteen again, holding onto his words like I had nothing else, which isn’t so different from some scenes of the play... but I was also me, and I’m still me now, and Tom Stoppard wrote it best anyway...

“Is this where we’re all going if we’re lucky? A windy corner by a supermarket, with a plastic bag on the handlebars full of, I don’t know, ready-meals and loo paper... Lumpy faces and thickening bodies in forgettable clothes, going home with the shopping? But we were all beautiful then, blazing with beauty. He played on his pipe and sang to me, and it was like suddenly time didn’t leave things behind but kept them together, and everything there ever was still there...”

It was like... I saw this play as a girl who knows as much as she can about Syd, and much less about Czechoslovakia or communism, so maybe I didn’t get out of it whatever I should have. But all three hours of it went by and weren’t tiresome at all, and what I got was beyond expression. It wasn’t just my mad desire to raid backstage and make off with as many albums as I could – and it wasn’t just because of Syd Barrett – it all came together in such a way, you know? Just, it seemed I was watching myself, in fictional people with whom I have nothing in common by any standards... The play said so much about so many things; I couldn’t sum it up here... but I knew it was me, when he said,

I know. I meant, if he just... jumped up on the wall. See him.

It gets dark early, this time of year. Sort of horror-movie dark.

"Oh, fuck. Is that an axe murderer? You've got to protect me. I don't want to die, I don't want to die..."
"Me neither..."
This went on for a while.
"It might just be a coyote... what color are coyotes? Or is it a wolf? I don't want to die..."
"It's too small to be a wolf. Come on, let's get out of here. Just don't move too quickly."
We made it about halfway across the field, in the dark, scared shitless, before I got a better look.
"Oh. It's a sheep."

So that might or might not have been the highlight of today. But sometimes it's fun to have the crap scared out of you by a medium-sized farm animal. I don't know how it would take me that long to realize it was a sheep... since we were on a sheep farm.

Obama won. What can I say about that? Maybe there's a little more hope for the world. I'm just glad that the first time I got to vote, it was for someone like that... yeah, I think things'll work out.

Just got my passport in the mail... I am now British! It took long enough, but finally I've got dual citizenship – as in, next time I am in England/Scotland, I can totally stay and no one will be able to drag me back here. And it’s bloody brilliant, mate. :p

*wanders off in search of tea and crumpets*

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Not something I’ve ever read straight through, that I can remember, but I keep it on hand. I remember when it first came out, I was about ten, I went and visited it in the store all the time until I finally got my own copy. It was sitting near my computer right now because I use it to get ideas on writings, especially ATU fics. Awesome pictures, tons of great quotes... it’s just amazing.

While we’re on the subject, I think the quote of the day was... I don’t remember said it, but someone today was like, "John Lennon? Was he one of the Beatles?"

You and Syd have yourselves a great gig up there in the sky.

If there is a better way to turn 18 than seeing Dana Fuchs, I can’t think of one. That woman is fucking incredible. I’ve never heard anything like it. I mean, you think she was good in Across the Universe? Picture that live. She’s one of the few people out there who doesn’t have a single song I don’t like. And that voice... I don’t think I have to tell you that the Coldplay concert last month was shit by comparison. I can’t begin to describe it. Holy fuck.

So, yesterday was alright, as birthdays go. I celebrated being old enough to legally call myself in sick to school by... doing just that. And I got to see some friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. Now I can get loads of tattoos and piercings and lottery tickets... oh yeah, and vote. Pretty cool.

That writing course at St Andrews in Scotland that I’ve talked about so much? I got my grade today. And while I’m not a person who is into talking about grades, that I’ve done well there will probably get me into actual college next year... pretty awesome. The grade was for my final project there, a short story which I suppose I might as well share here... I’ve already whined about their policy on adjectives, as well as their approach (apparently “good writing” is about using as few words as possible, and there’s nothing more to it than that). I will say that my story originated as this one, which I wrote about a week before I got there, but is pretty different, considering that it has the same basic plot. So it seems this is the kind of writing that the scholarly people of Scotland enjoy, & don’t ask me why:

( here it is. )