Monday, April 6, 2009
["Convinced myself, I seek not to convince" (Poe).]
There's a certain serenity in the futile. If there is truth, and goodness, light, and right, then the dark can be distinguished and extinguished. If, however, truth is illusory, an arbitrary construct that is in contiual conversation with itself, then darkness and light, too, begin to fade. There is an omnipresence of possibility, a continual set of decisions being made that, it is true, arise from a set of predefined terms, but these terms are within themselves meaningless and subject to change. These decisions, then, also have the potential to be redefined, axioms shifted, morals adjusted; there is nothing inherently light about lightness, nothing inherently good about goodness, nothing that makes a tree a "tree..." and therefore, if truth is unattainable, it can be conveniently reshaped, fashioned to suit the teller; the hive can swarm with possibility and breathe.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
fictional, what?
so I fall in love with "fictional" characters...is there any other kind?
top twenty five, from literature:
25. Hamlet (Hamlet)
24. Estragon (Waiting for Godot)
23. Prospero (The Tempest)
22. Benedict (Much Ado About Nothing)
21. Beren (The Simarillion)
20. Henry DeTamble (The Time Traveler's Wife)
19. Ishmael (Ishmael)
18. Jubal Harshaw (The Cat Who Walks through Walls, Time Enough for Love, etc.)
17. Edmund Bertram (Mansfield Park)
16. Zebadiah Carter (The Number of the Beast)
15. Captain Frederick Wentworth (Persuasion)
14. Jake Stonebender (Callahan series)
13. Athos (Fugitive Pieces)
12. Morrie Schwartz (Tuesdays With Morrie)
11. James Qwilleran (The Cat Who...)
10. Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter series)
9. Frodo Baggins (LOTR)
8. Richard Colin Ames Campbell (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls)
7. Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes -- yes, I know he's a stuffed tiger.)
6. Remus Lupin (Harry Potter series)
5. Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)
4. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)
3. George Knightley (Emma)
2. Faramir (LOTR)
and tied for 1. Aragorn & Gandalf (LOTR)
top twenty five, from literature:
25. Hamlet (Hamlet)
24. Estragon (Waiting for Godot)
23. Prospero (The Tempest)
22. Benedict (Much Ado About Nothing)
21. Beren (The Simarillion)
20. Henry DeTamble (The Time Traveler's Wife)
19. Ishmael (Ishmael)
18. Jubal Harshaw (The Cat Who Walks through Walls, Time Enough for Love, etc.)
17. Edmund Bertram (Mansfield Park)
16. Zebadiah Carter (The Number of the Beast)
15. Captain Frederick Wentworth (Persuasion)
14. Jake Stonebender (Callahan series)
13. Athos (Fugitive Pieces)
12. Morrie Schwartz (Tuesdays With Morrie)
11. James Qwilleran (The Cat Who...)
10. Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter series)
9. Frodo Baggins (LOTR)
8. Richard Colin Ames Campbell (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls)
7. Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes -- yes, I know he's a stuffed tiger.)
6. Remus Lupin (Harry Potter series)
5. Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)
4. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)
3. George Knightley (Emma)
2. Faramir (LOTR)
and tied for 1. Aragorn & Gandalf (LOTR)
Breach and Orison: 1. Terror of Beginnings (Robert Hass)
What are the habits of paradise?
It likes the light. It likes a few pines
on a mass of eroded rock in summer.
You can't tell up there if rock and air
are the beginning or the end.
—All it is sunlight on granite.
Pines casting shadows in the early sun.
Wind in the pines like the faint rocking
of a crucifix dangling
from a rearview mirror at a stopsign.
It likes the light. It likes a few pines
on a mass of eroded rock in summer.
You can't tell up there if rock and air
are the beginning or the end.
What would you do if you were me? she said.
If I were you-you, or if I were you-me?
If you were me-me.
If I were you-you, he said, I'd do exactly what you're doing.
—All it is sunlight on granite.
Pines casting shadows in the early sun.
Wind in the pines like the faint rocking
of a crucifix dangling
from a rearview mirror at a stopsign.
"Mythopoeia" - J.R.R. Tolkien
To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless,
even though "breathed through silver."
PHILOMYTHUS TO MISOMYTHUS
At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'erwitten without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
and endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain's contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees and not `trees', until so named and seen -
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh,
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,
and looking backward they beheld the Elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.
The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
Yes! `wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem ?
All wishes are not idle, not in vain
fulfilment we devise - for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.
Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
through small and bare, upon a clumsy loom
weave rissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.
Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.
Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things nor found within record time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organised delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have turned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.
I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.
I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends -
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.
In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day-illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet may free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden not gardener, children not their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not been dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.
even though "breathed through silver."
PHILOMYTHUS TO MISOMYTHUS
You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are `trees', and growing is `to grow');
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star's a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, Inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.
At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'erwitten without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
and endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain's contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees and not `trees', until so named and seen -
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh,
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,
and looking backward they beheld the Elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.
He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath the ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
Yes! `wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem ?
All wishes are not idle, not in vain
fulfilment we devise - for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.
Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
through small and bare, upon a clumsy loom
weave rissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.
Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.
Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things nor found within record time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organised delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have turned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.
I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.
I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends -
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.
In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day-illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet may free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden not gardener, children not their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not been dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.
concerning hobbits
Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights, we shouldn't even be here, but we are.
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened?
But in the end, it's only a passing thing, the shadow, and even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you; that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we fighting for, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.
Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights, we shouldn't even be here, but we are.
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened?
But in the end, it's only a passing thing, the shadow, and even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you; that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we fighting for, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.
ye olde favourite quotes
"Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win."
"All men are created unequal."
"The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."
"Never underestimate the power of denial."
"There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you."
"Some moments are so huge you notice only the little things."
"All men are created unequal."
"The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."
"Never underestimate the power of denial."
"There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you."
"Some moments are so huge you notice only the little things."
"Once in awhile, people will even take your breath away..."
"...And since you know how terrific you all are, you have no doubt in your mind that before long, either I will realize that, or I'm so much of a jerk you wouldn't want me around anyway. So we have no problem."
"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him,
then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."
then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."
Naomi - baby brown (neck rolls my butt hole) says:
I like the wilted rose so much more than the erect one
Renita Fantastic says:
as do I, the "erect one" is obnoxious
Renita Fantastic says:
its like, IM A FLOWER HERE I AM
Renita Fantastic says:
and the wilted one is like.."Oh.."
I like the wilted rose so much more than the erect one
Renita Fantastic says:
as do I, the "erect one" is obnoxious
Renita Fantastic says:
its like, IM A FLOWER HERE I AM
Renita Fantastic says:
and the wilted one is like.."Oh.."
Renita Fantastic says: show me a man who punches babies and stomps on kittens and i'll show you my husband
bright copper kettles (or, mine favourite words)
Abuse
Acuity
Alabaster
Altar
Amaze
Antipathy
Antithesis
Apathy
Apostle
Aqueous
Aquiline
Arraign
Asexual
Askance
Aspire
Asymmetrical
Avail
Azure
Bard
Billow
Blame
Blather
Bliss
Blister
Blithely
Brash
Brethren
Buoyant
Bustle
Cajun
Callous
Camaraderie
Cataclysmic
Cease
Chagrin
Charisma
Chasm
Churlish
Cloister
Cluster
Compulsion
Concierge
Console
Consort
Contrast
Contusion
Crumple
Cyanide
Cyst
Dawn
Depth
Desire
Dichotomy
Disenfranchised
Dryad
Eccentric
Efface
Elate
Embalm
Engulf
Entertain
Epic
Epiphany
Epitome
Esoteric
Ethereal
Evince
Evoke
Excellent
Exorbitant
Exploitation
Expose
Expulsion
Exquisite
Fade
Fairy/Faery
Fate
Fester
Fissure
Flame
Foreign
Fragment
Froth
Frugal
Gleam
Glean
Hallowed
Haply
Happenstance
Harangue
Hubris
Horror
Hysterectomy
Illumine
Illusion
Impeach
Importuning
Incline
Inebriated
Innuendo
Irony
Kaleidoscope
Knave
Liable
Lilt
Limpid
Livid
Lucid
Lustre
Matador
Masquerade
Meander
Metaphysical
Myriad
Narcissist
Nonchalant
Nymph
Obscure
Obsolete
Omniscient
Pallid
Pallor
Pandaemonium
Parabolic
Penance
Pendulum
Pensive
Perdition
Persona
Pestilence
Phantom
Phaeton
Phosphorescent
Piecemeal
Pincer
Platinum
Poignant
Pristine
Prodigious
Prophetic
Prudence
Puerile
Pulse
Punitive
Quiver
Raiment
Rapture
Refine
Refrain
Render
Repentance
Repine
Repress
Reprimand
Restitution
Revise
Rigmarole
Romance
Rustles
Savour
Scintillating
Searing
Sensibilities
Sentient
Sibilant
Slovenly
Squalor
Squeamish
Star
Statuesque
Strategic
Strive
Sultry
Sumptuous
Sunder
Sybaritic
Sylph
Symbol
Symmetry
Synecdoche
System
Tempestuous
Torrid
Verdant
Verdure
Virulent
Whimper
Willowy
Wily
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