dear not so secret lover

tea and scones of course sound lovely. alas, I am unable to make it until next tuesday. perhaps not so secret lover can maintain her half hidden identity till then?


in the meantime watch this sweet and sappy video and think of me.

routine deceit (this is a test)

You love me. I love her. She loves him. He loves her.

You love him. I love you. She loves me. He loves you.

You love her. I love him. He loves her. She loves you.

You love her. I love her. She loves me. She loves you.

You love her. I love you. He loves her. She loves him.

(if you say the word enough times, it stops making any sense). cue maniacal laughter.




you never gave one goddamn what i ever said.

no shit

the past is still on CD. some might say I'm not.

you will bring captain solo and the wookiee to me.

ther ruh myn

Like a music plucked out of thin air, she said.

Airy, she said. She meant ephemeral, I believe.

Cold but not cold, simple but not simple. The women spoke and yet in a way did not speak, and yet found voices that were not voices. Not a word nor a movement out of place. Not a wasted second nor vision. The oral tradition that was untraditional.

This is the sound of the future.

This was pure - pure perfect storytelling.

speech

sine

test tubes and other apparatus

man i love this guy. i want to be just like him.

bunch of gushing phrases about beeker follows here.

once upon a time

he did something bad. he knew it was bad. he felt it was bad. but it felt so good doing it anyway. after he did it, whenever he went into the shower he scratched himself really hard, he clawed his back and until it was red and bloody. when his girlfriend was in the shower with him he wouldn't tear so hard but she would still see the marks, and she would ask him in a shocked voice why he was doing this. "Did I? Oops." he would say.

later she found out. later he explained. there was stony silence.



don't ask to see my back please.

girl . boy.

they were getting married in the city registry, the one with the drab civil service chipboard walls and the pale peeling blue paint. the one with the tired floral arch with cardboard hearts and the word "Love" and whatever letters remaining of the original sentence above the desk.

he wore a black shirt and black trousers, a belt with a shiny buckle and leather shoes. he looked like he was on his first holiday job as a salesman at the neighbourhood mall. she wore a huge checkered maternity dress and looked even younger than that.

they took a number. they sat. they walked up to the counter when their number was called. they sat again. they answered questions. they said yes.


the baby-faced bride with the tribal tattoo crawling out the top of her maternity dress and up her neck. she pushed his head with a finger, playfully, with the hand that had the scorpion wrapped around the back. she smiled and smiled and smiled.

have you ever destroyed something beautiful?

what would it feel like if you burned down an acre of forest, if you killed a bird that landed in your lap, if your name was jon brandsson.

what is it like, to know that the last of the species is lying in your hands, and you killed it? what is it like, to know that you did irreparable damage? that you are the unsaved, uncorrectable, unredeemable?

i burned down a house with people in it, i chopped down the eight hundred year old oak, i took the painting and i ripped it to shreds. you only have one life and one chance, and i burned it all with the precious thing i held in my hands, crystal pieces shattering, the fact that i cut myself is no mitigation.

what does it feel like? it feels like a giant hole in my heart is yawning with weight.

for emma

my life has too many emmas. Emma Woodhouse, whom i met through Jane in my seventeenth year. She inhabited my holidays, i spent too much time reading about her before term began. It was terrible. She made me love those awful drawing room novels and endless tea and dinner parties so fashionable in the late Romantic era.

three emmas who studied english in london. most importantly Emma Charlton, whose name was a homonym for the street i lived on (spelling was different by just one letter), whose wit was as sharp as a guillotine, whose mind was so brilliant it made me weak at the knees, who asked me if i had read Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd (I hadn't. You must, she said, if you are concerned with the detective genre), who asked me, don't you think the genre having reached its end in this book, is fully symptomatic and in fact predictive of the social context in which it was written? i hadn't read that book either, nor knew the context. i was speechless. i wanted to cry in awe.

(ok i confess i can't remember what question she asked me. it was so far ahead of me i couldn't even retain it in my memory. some other time at a play i saw her, waved and smiled. she looked like she wanted to be somewhere else, gave me half a smile and avoided me).

another emma. Emma Yong: my "nemesis". the story is too ridiculous to be tragic, too sad to be funny. i feel it in the pit of my embarassment - boy, that's stupid. But i feel it all the same. i loathe you, but you don't even know me.

at this point i will stop listing the ems and emmas before it gets out of hand.

so, Greeners. did you know my favourite colour is green? In Girl, Dominque Swain is in love with the lead singer of a band called The Colour Green. funny.

so.....

when the sandstorms settle after the season is over much of the land is parched and bruised from the unpredictable interruptions. the herder asked the young apprentice to stay on and help him tend the goats on the allotment near the city in the mountains. the young apprentice said no, i want to see the world wide under this sheltering sky. the herder was angry and told the young apprentice there was no happiness to be found that way.

the young herder became a traveller and journeyed on the walking paths to the sea which ran blue and clear in the bays, and to the forgotten corners where dates grow in sweet plenty. she ended up in the many gated city, itself a gate to the enormous dunes of the desert.

what is a camel? a camel is a pretty thing and an ugly thing at the same time. while taking a long sip of cool water from the fountain near the east gate she met the caravan master with the devious smile and old eyes. a camel is an ugly animal to most, he said, and bad tempered, but so beautiful inside. when we travel, camels drink first, he said, hoisting buckets over to each of the animals he was with, for we are nothing without them. Have you been to the place where the dates grow in plenty? he asked. she nodded. we would never taste those dates if not for the camels that carry them - i personally would never be able to walk and carry any dates, he smirked.

i never noticed camels that much, she said.

perhaps you should, he said. they are everywhere but we never see them.

they spoke a little more but by nightfall he was gone. soon she was tending camels in the city that was teeming with them but which never noticed them. every day she walked past the fountain at the east gate, every day she brushed the camels down carefully and whispered to them to take care on their journeys, and to take care of the caravaners who weren't as talented in the desert. one day while she was giving a stern talking-to to one of the camels for unecessary spitting the caravan master walked into the yard. she stood. he stood.

well, here you are tending camels, how unexpected for you to take my words to heart, he said.

i am a herder, after all, she said. A long pause with the caravaner's long smile.

well, he said, then i don't know what to say.

say, she said, that you want a camel.

vogon poetry

i found this while trawling the net at the beeb's hitchhiker's guide webpages:



Patience
or the lack of the same

What is patience?
I cannot say.
If it were a bird, so be it.

But it is not.

While feeling like a
wrapping of bubble gum,
can be fun,
it usually ain't.

But in the gurgling innards
of my sorrow, I can only feel those innards gurgling.

And life is like that. Most of the time. And when it's not...

Well, so be it.


By V'uarnet

it's a fan's (hm, maybe not a fan, how do you tell) idea of poetry so bad it matches Vogon standards.

in this desert you are king IV

and i am languishing in the dungeon. i have been held here in the room without windows for so long i don't know if it is night or day or weeks or months. my screams and cries echo in the walls of the chamber and the deep pit is where they put me when they have tired of flogging and cutting me. i never know when i am going to be awoken for more slapping and questioning. i never know when the session is going to end. i think that is how they want it.

The questions are the same everytime: who, where, what, how. though it is hardly ever asked why. perhaps they don't care, though maybe i could tell them. that would be one of the few things i could actually tell them. They are preoccupied with who and what, the facts and facts of it all. they think that they can beat the answers out of me, that with every finger digit they rip off and every curdling scream i make they come closer to knowing what they want. Everytime my head is dunked they think i come closer to telling them what they want to know. But i will never tell them. Because i do not know. It gives me great pleasure to know that they cannot get what they want, no matter how many of my teeth they pull out. It makes them mad to see me light up when i think about it, and then they redouble their efforts.

You used to preside over the events when i first came in here. You coolly applied the red hot brand to my skin, listening while i howled with your head inclined ever so gently. A servant gave you a glass of water and a towel to wipe your hands with afterwards. Did it start then, with the sense of satisfaction at seeing your emblem burned into my thigh? I saw you more often than expected, you seemed to drop by the dungeon frequently to inquire about the questioning, and stayed longer than i or the torturers expected. Do you want to know these things too? So many times when i was bound to the wheel you brought your face close to mine, and asked me the same questions they did. I gave you the same answers. You looked away disappointed, and finally you slapped me.

I live in the dungeon but we have not forgotten those who have forgotten us. Every scrap of talk and gossip eventually finds its way down here. I heard you lost interest in your games and jesters, looking on boredly at the ingenious little distractions or large spectacles put up for your entertainment. I heard you looked like a ghost, while sat on the large cushioned throne, looking through the ambassadors and petitioners queuing to say flowery words to you. The scented tea in the porcelain cups which you treasure so much goes cold in your hands, untouched until it is time for another cup to be made. - We the forgotten are hungry to know what the forgetting world outside does.

You began to spend more time in the dungeons, and took to participating in the interrogations, yelling in my ear and making threats, using the whip liberally. The courtiers and corridors talked about how your appetites changed, how the dances changed in tone and the parties became harsh orgies. The halls resonate with how bored you are by the flawless skin and velvety luscious ways of the nubile dancers and prancers who punctuated your evenings. You spent more time questioning me than signing documents, your clean starched robes ever more splattered with the blood from my body from the strokes.

I tell you nothing but you don't stop questioning, demanding. You have taken to it with relish, with the concern for the truth and safety of the kingdom as your foil. My harried shrieks of pain and my cries of mercy will yield no fruit and no secrets, but you continue anyway. But i know you don't care, in fact you are glad i divulge nothing so that you can go on beating me. You are early to get here, you don't leave till late judging by the meals that are now served here in the chamber. I know you would rather be here than upstairs in your throne room. I can feel you thinking of me when the edicts are presented to you for signing at the beginning of every morning and when the countless affairs of state are read to you for consideration. I can sense it when you walk into my dungeon, when you eagerly grasp the whip or other implement and start on me. I can hear it in your breathing, coming in gasps during the pauses between flogging, fast and shallow the more i scream, and the tender way you touch my back and rub the salt into the wounds. You whisper to me, tell me the truth, and this will stop. But that will never happen -you want to break me, but if i break you will not have the pleasure of the breaking any longer.

in this desert you are king and the state is going to pieces while you linger in this dungeon with me. You are tired of your delicious perfect whores and long for something bloodier and darker. We both know no amount of torture will yield any secrets from me, but you are not here to learn any secrets. The black clad torturers have taken a back seat, and you handle the tools with tenderness. The howls of agony that emanate from me last hours until my voice gives out in a dry croak, and every cry and spasm of pain from me only fuels you more. Soon you will be here at all hours of the day, sick of your sunlight filled gardens and billowing sheer curtains and soft pillows, taking in the dark and rat infested room what they can never give you. And i, joined to you in pain, will have achieved what you never believed i would.