Practical Thoughts

I've felt for months that my libido was just dead, since I got this hormone stick in my arm. Like there was a wall between me and my desire. I could see it, even touch it sometimes, but it was still separated from me. I have realized now that who I am currently with is a part of that wall. Not the whole of it, but a good bit. With someone else I was my old self again, mostly. As close as I've been in a long time, and it was so fresh. 

There was a time when I didn't care if I got off or not, as long as someone did. Maybe that's sad. I just thought that I couldn't for various reasons, mostly mental, some physical. It's very hard to just let go, when you're this much of a control freak. So when another manages to blow my mind, in a way I didn't think was ever going to be possible for me, I find that I do care more for my needs than I used to. Now I will see where that takes me. 

I won't be content with this frustrated half-celibacy/unfulfilling physical relations for much longer, not knowing what I know now. Fruit of knowledge and all that. I can't ask or make anyone do things they don't want to do or try; I couldn't enjoy that at all. A discussion is coming, just need to decide when. It would interesting if things ended over sexual incompatibility. I just wish it hadn't taken three years and birth control-reduced libido to realize it. 

The Sunny Smile You Can't Deny

I'm reminded

Of someone I loved

He was nothing like you

But he smiled the same way you do

When you look at me

sometimes

I can't bear it. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3PdILZ_1P74

Exhale

It didn't feel bad.

It felt amazing.

They say you shouldn't crave the flesh,
but full lips are hard to resist. A tongue
that won't leave you alone?
It's hard to resist.
Hands that don't mind going
everywhere?
I'll take it.
I'll breathe in whatever you're breathing out
even if I abhor it by the light of day.
I don't mind getting lost
in whatever you're doing to my skin.
It's like being high anyway
isn't it?

When I'm busy doing, or thinking
about what I've done, or what
I'm going to do--
My breath gets a little lighter,
if it doesn't stop altogether.
I don't even realize what I've been holding
until I exhale.

I get a little numb
when I sit down to think about what I'm doing
I know I ought to stop.
Ought to be ashamed,
Be better,
Do what I said I would do...
But for what?

It's become increasingly clear
how I'm made is for sharing
whenever I want, however I want,
with whomever I want.

People say, "Life's too short!"
Too short to refuse a cookie,
too short to refuse a raise
too short to refuse anything at all!
So I dismantled myself, and remade my skin
In order to enjoy--to accept good things.
It seems to some that perhaps I've gone too far.

"Say yes!" they still tell me.
Yes to all of the Good Things in life.
Yes to all kinds of pleasures
Yes to all opportunities...


So why shouldn't I say yes to you?

What the fuck kind of name is Edward Doorhander

1. Write every day. Except on days when you don’t feel like writing that much and you don’t have anything interesting to say.

I write email every day but I have a blog at work now and it is so fun and terrifying, because I really want to write more, just not about those workthings. I want to write about Sobek and Zosime and Louise and Edward Doorhander. What the fuck kind of name is Edward Doorhander? It came to me in a dream, so I can never change it now. I know what he looks like, what he eats, how much he likes freckles and biscuits.

26. Y is an indecisive letter; using it implies indecision.

I am perilously close to a discovery, but actively feel it could be detrimental to my whole being--that is to say, the idea which has occurred is wholly and completely anathematically abhorrent. Anathematically isn't a word, but I think you have gotten the point, hopefully.  See what I mean.

8. Always describe the smell of your protagonist's hands

I suppose her hands smell a bit like the earth, and a bit like the sea. Maybe a little like chamomile and lavender, from hand lotion. It's a homey smell, for a homey sort of person. You don't get to live nearly three thousand years without learning to make yourself comfortable in a hurry, or being a comfortable sort of person when the situation calls for it. 

http://tom.mcallister.ws/?p=868

Cernunnos

Beyond caring, I had curled up inside my own head, away from my flayed back where feathers once softly lay, away from my nails nipped to the quick, away from my tortured guilt over Dom's preventable death. The clanging noise around me could not bring up from that place until it nearly touched me. Calhoun freed me with a frantic sawing and I fell to the ground in relief. My shoulders sang to me and I numbly rubbed them with bloodied hands. Cal kneeled down and offered me a bottle of water. A pocket of calm in the middle of a battle. It wasn't enough, but it would have to do.

"You came."

"Of course we did, the birds wouldn't leave without some to follow. Imagine the scene in movies where the bird gets the kid to follow them through the woods. Imagine that with probably every single bird in existence, trying to catch as many people's eyes as possible. We weren't the only ones that came."

"Your sister?"

"She fights on the other side now...Sobek took her while I came to find you," he said, almost questioning.

"She will be safe with him. Come, we have much to do," I said. All of my muscles ached, but they would have to wait. The water helped, at least. We got up to survey the damage the birds had done, and were still doing. Goblins heads their helds, eyes plucked or mangled beyond repair. Cernunnos' mobs had been dispersed and could not reform with such peril above their heads. A few had begun to fire their poison and fire arrows into the air, and had brought down many fair creatures. More had started to dig themselves down into the earth, where it was safe for them. A winged sphinx had arrived out of legend and was tearing about her with great sweeping paws, her terrible gaze naming every kobold before wiping them from this plane. There were creatures on foot too--things that had lived quietly in my town until now. Good to know they had decided to help their resident harpy. It was starting to look like rout but where was Cernunnos? He would not stay to defend his worthless followers--There he was, making his way through--a scythe swipe here and there, wading through and away from the battle instead of into the thick of it.

"Cal, we must catch him!" I took off on foot, not caring if I was followed or not. I heard a horn behind me and glanced back to see a dozen hawks of all shapes peel off from their murder to aid me.

The air rang with my voice. "Cernunnos! Face me!" The beastman stopped his progress and turned slowly, horns rust-red in the dying light. The languor in his eyes infuriated me further. My bones shook, but my inherited rage lent me strength.

"You will answer for the wrongs you have done," I said, my voice carrying across the glade to him. The fighting around us had settled to a dull roar. Nothing and no one else would touch either of us now, this was a fight among chieftains, and would be settled.

"The wrong I have done?" he roared like a bull. "I seek to live and revive the ways of my people. I seek to protect my rightful domains once again, and all of the creatures in it. Even you, foul human bird, fall under my protection. You are the one who must know your errors, and atone." He stood up even taller, so many words giving him more consequence, and continued, "You brought the men from the south, and sold my people away for a fire. You sang their lives away and took them to your halls of death, while I was bound and powerless. You let them all forget me until I was almost nothing. But I did not pass away like my mortal brethren--I did not die, and I did not forget.

"You have killed what is mine, and now I will kill you," I hissed, and flew at him. The hawks circled.  

Lies

I kissed him once, I kissed him twice,
I drove a dagger into the ice
Twist and fall, wish and crawl

I never hated you so much and loved so little.

The Road to Damascus

I.

My mind turned to magic before I could write, and so we relied more on my ability to create than to record. He taught me the sounds of happiness, and I found the joy in all things as he did. Golden days and moon-lit evenings filled my mind to bursting. I made everything I could, and set free the fruits of my mind, if they had a  mind to go--we all reveled in the song and the sweat of our labors. Summer is long, but cannot last forever. Things are made, they ripen, and they die--this is the oldest pattern. There is nothing like the first shiver of fall.

II.
I learned the song for everything else when he left. When my mind was a long way off, the wood and the clearings of stars and grass made themselves known--it is lonely, but clear. It is impossible to know light if you know nothing of darkness. In rage, and then misery, and then mere sorrow, I learned to lose as surely as the trees go to sleep, doused by the wind. When the sun rose once more, I learned that light will always find a way, and that the things I had learned had not left me because the one who taught them had. There would always be a leave-taking, but leave-takings are still beginnings, in their own way.

III.
Belief is strange. The more you think about it, the less it makes sense. I've been many things, but I've never been a scientist to divine the measurements of being; never one to order them in odd ways that others may understand and require--but the patterns are there. They've always been there. Nature orders itself. We are merely here to reflect what is given, in whatever form suits best.

It's important to hold onto the old feelings--the pure names of things, the sounds in your head that no else hears when you experience water on your hands, or sand, or stones; the ideas from the touch of willow leaves pricking your face as you walk through them and the murmurs from the still pond in the woods behind your home. Sometimes, the old woods give the best words. Sometimes, you just need to throw language a bone. String together beautiful things and the world will shift with your sound. 

For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Michael gave me this prompt: "And sometimes ... it almost seemed to him, that he ought to be happy." -Heinrich Von Kleist. I gave Grace O'Malley this prompt: Stained, orange, light, lizard, voracious, soft - use these words or be inspired by them.