#i am but a slave to my fickle mind prison
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Hello Pilf, I was hoping for some insight, if you don't mind. I am about 3/4s of the way through the Count of Monte Cristo and it's been losing me a little. Having read 80+ chapters though, I really want to see it through. I am struggling with the way the women are written. Monte Cristo was going on - again! - about the inconstancy of women ("woman is fickle" etc.) and I had to slam the book shut and walk away in a temper.
I feel like my issue is that I am coming at it with very modern sensibilities - I am conscious that things were very different at the time so I pursed my lips through the stint in Italy where the story of a girl who gets kidnapped and raped by bandits results in her being killed as a mercy while the idea of banditry continued to be held up as some kind of romantic ideal. I also accepted the the general assumptions about a woman's place in her family and in the world, on whether she should be able to be literate and what agency she has or doesn't have as a given.
But it seems that my sticking point is Mercedes. Monte Cristo is furious for her for not staying loyal to him. I am familar with the story, so I gather that her narrative isn't meant to get any happier - she doesn't die a horrible death and other characters get much worse but she is left to be unhappy and guilty and alone. The story frames it as though the fact that she married someone else was a great betrayal. He was sent to prison for life! They couldn't correspond (I presume)! And her aforementioned place in society mentioned that she couldn't do much to support herself! What did he think she should have done? Was she supposed to have not given up and instead tried to get him pardoned and released? Was she supposed to have stayed single (a peasant girl with no relations) and waited for him or just died like his father.
I do get why he is angry with her - she married the guy who framed him and it can't have been all that long after he went to prison in the long run. Was it that she was supposed to trust in god because he was innocent and that go would see him freed in the end? I don't know it all seems spectacularly unreasonable.
I don't like his relationship with Haydee any better - the way he owns her and she loves him for it (even if technically she is free as soon as she gets to France). She has never spent time with another man apart from Monte Cristo when she first converses with Albert de Morcerf. He's a father figure to her and also a love interest. It's not like I haven't enjoyed fictional romance involving large age gaps before, but they were always written by women. She feels like she is a very pretty, exotic object. I just find it all kind of horrorfying.
Then, to move away from women for a second, there is Ali who worships Monte Cristo and is his willing slave. I can't make heads or tails out of what take Dumas has on slavery. It's technically illegal but everyone seems to enjoy the idea of it very much. I like Ali's character - how skilled he is - but I don't like how little power he has.
None of this seems to be written with any sympathy for what it is like to not have any agency over your life. Even though that is exactly what happened to Edmond in the first half of the book. I think I might be missing a lot of subtext - it would help if I understood Dumas and the context of his world better.
I haven't had much luck in finding anything written about this - essays or articles. Can you recommend anything?
I’m posting this in hopes that more Dumas-focused bloggers will chime in! and posting my bit under a cut bc this will be a Long post
Honestly, I share your general discomfort with how Dumas handles a lot of women in his stories. I don’t know of anything that’s ever made me more comfortable with how characters like Mercedes or Haydee or even Milady are written, so I really can’t offer any assistance in that sense. I find it quite hard to take, myself--the point where Athos gives his version of his marriage and its ending was the point where I had to put down Three Musketeers (and yet some of the women in CoMC are just wonderful? Eugenie is a delight who manages to escape the tire fire of her family history, and I think Valentine is fantastic. And yet there’s all the issues you pointed out, and they don’t so much cancel out as just hang out uneasily together for me?) .
But I can give some context anyway!
- Dumas, unlike Hugo, really was getting paid by the installment, and writing on the fly a lot , and IMO it shows--his stories sometimes have the same problems that other serialized media , like TV or comics, have run into, where a chunk of story makes an exciting or tense installment but doesn’t really fit into a larger message or arc? so we get stuff like the whole drug trip episode, or the bandit story that is...like that. How does the bandit story support the larger point of the novel? NO idea (though I am very open to defenses of it!) .
-Dumas’ own family history of course made slavery relevant to him personally. I’ve heard speculation that things like Haydee’s story might represent efforts for him to deal with that in various ways? I’ve not seen any in depth articles on it though!
-regarding CoMC specifically, Dumas’ own father was a prisoner in Italy for two years, and while it was,of course for political reasons--France and Naples were at war-- there was open speculation that those political reasons were not as simple as they seemed--that in fact Gen. Dumas had been set up and was left to be forgotten on purpose because of the dislike Napoleon had for him personally. it seems to be generally agreed that this is a big part of what Alex Dumas ws thinking of in Edmond’s unfair imprisonment.
So--yeah, that’s all I can think of to say for this! Sincerely hope some more intensely Dumas/CoMC -focused people will have more to say!
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Ars Moriendi
For Terrifying Tolkien Week 2019 | Prompt: to reek; to fester in the dark
Big ups to @admirable-mairon for the inspiration! | read on ao3
It is noontime, and the hasty midday meal has hardly begun when a murmur ripples through the normally silent ranks. She ignores it, at first. If nothing else, she has learned that it does not do to get involved. She keeps her head down and focuses on the rhythm of her own movements—the scoop of a spoon into her mash, the lift of her hand to her mouth, the methodical chewing of tasteless mush she forces herself to swallow. It is not a particularly appetizing meal, but it is nourishing, and for that, she is grateful. The days are long in Angband, and she knows better than to let her strength diminish. Weakness here is tantamount to death.
A shadow falls over her, and she looks up at last. An orc she does not recognize stands over her, and she flinches, averting her gaze to the ground. They are nasty, fickle things, these orcs, quick to anger, slow to forgive. “Are you the one called Indil?” the orc asks, and Indil nods her head without looking up. “Come with me,” the orc says, and Indil’s blood runs cold.
Her mind races, but she calmly sets down her bowl and stands. She keeps her face neutral—another trick she has learned—and she follows the orc as he turns and leads her away. She tries to think of what she has done, tries to suss out what she possibly could have done wrong. The fact that her mind is blank is no comfort at all.
Still, nothing here is ever helped by panic, so she does her best to calm her mind and follows the orc that leads her. To her surprise, they are headed for the fortress. A fresh wave of fear engulfs her. She is a field slave. She lives with the others of her kind in the barracks near the fields. She hasn’t set foot in the fortress since—
—the stink of blood in her nostrils, the drip of it down her face, the sweat that plasters her ragged, matted hair to her bruised and mottled skin—
She swallows the gasp that rises in her throat and pushes the memory away. All prisoners begin their tenure here in the dungeons, but not all make it out. She was one of the unlucky souls who did, and she has put forth every effort not to give them reason to send her back. Her mind races anew, desperately searching for the thing she has done wrong and quietly, uselessly looking for a way to escape. There is none, of course. This is Angband.
The orc who leads her is silent, utterly indifferent. She longs to ask him where she is going and why, but she does not dare. Prisoners do not enjoy the luxury of questions. So instead she worries, and she follows.
They pass into the fortress, and a shudder runs through her. It is cold and dark and damp here, and she cannot bear the feel of the stones under her feet. They are too much like the ones she slept and cried and bled on all those years before. They pass slaves that do not look at her; these have learned their lessons, same as she. The orcs and fiends and maiar have no such qualms, and she shivers under their hungry gaze. Still, the orc that leads her must have some level of protection, for no one stops or hassles them on their way.
On they go through twisting, labyrinthine corridors and down narrow, spiraling stairs. They are headed down toward the dungeons, to the underground heart of the fortress. Indil’s terror is a palpable thing, shaking her limbs and raising the hair on the back of her neck. She grits her teeth against it and balls her hands into fists, determined not to break. She walks on, forcing her feet to carry her close in the orc’s wake. They are close to the breaking pits now. She can smell them—the sweat, the blood, the piss and the fear made all the worse for their familiarity. Her heart is hammering in her chest, so loud she is sure the orc can hear it. Not again, her mind is screaming. Not again, not again, not again.
They turn down a corridor, and the stink and the clamor of the pits die away. A cold wave of relief rolls over her, and she scolds herself for it. She is on the dungeon level. She is anything but safe.
They come to a door that is closed, but not pulled tight. The orc knocks three times in quick succession and enters, and Indil follows behind. The room she enters could have been any ordinary study. Bookshelves line one wall, overflowing with tomes and manuscripts and scrolls. There is a neat stack of freshly cut parchment on one shelf, a handful of expertly sharpened quills, and several squat jars of ink in various colors. Most striking is the desk, a beautiful, gleaming thing of dark lacquered wood. The legs are intricately carved to look like scales, and the feet are long, sharp talons.
Sitting at the desk is a creature she has seen fleetingly handful of times, most recently in her nightmares. She stares at the back of his head, eyes tracing the plait of the fiery red hair. He is writing, head bent over the parchment before him, and he does not stop when they enter. He continues to write, acting for all the world as though he has not heard them come in.
After a moment, the orc clears his throat. “My lord,” he says.
The quill scratches steadily across the parchment. The orc knows better than to speak again. Finally, the quill is laid aside, and he begins to shuffle the papers into order. “This is the one?” he asks, neatening the stack and setting it aside.
“Yes, my lord,” the orc says.
The creature at the desk stands up and turns, and she shudders involuntarily. She is never prepared for the lieutenant’s beauty, and she is startled by it again now, standing before him. The translucent cream of his skin, the spray of freckles across the chiseled angles of his face. He dresses well and moves with easy, assured grace, crossing the distance between them. “You may go,” the lieutenant says, dismissing the orc with a nod. The soldier turns to go, and Indil is alone.
Mairon looks her over. She keeps her eyes carefully on the ground, her head bowed. There is a moment of silence between them that makes her skin crawl, though she tries not to let him see her unease. After a while, he says, “You are the one called Indil.”
“Yes,” she says.
He nods. “You know who I am,” he says, and she nods. “You may call me ‘my lord’.” The gentleness of his tone belies the command in his words.
“Yes, my lord,” she says.
“Look at me, Indil.”
She raises her head and meets his gaze. There is no malice in it that she can see, and yet it fills her with fear. His eyes feel as though they see through her, to the depths of her soul, and though his expression is neutral, ostensibly friendly, she knows better than to be at ease. She knows the horrors this pretty face belies.
“You studied under Estë,” he says, and she is momentarily nonplussed.
“Yes, my lord,” she says. He is silent, watching her, and she gets the feeling he is waiting for something more. “And Yavanna,” she adds, hoping this is right.
“You studied herbalism,” he says, “and the healing arts.”
“I did, my lord.”
“And were you a good practitioner?”
She is not entirely sure how to answer. “I did my best, my lord,” she says.
“Tell me,” he says, crossing his arms and cocking his head to the side. “What would you recommend for a headache?”
She considers the question for a moment, turning it this way and that in her mind, looking for the trap. Time is working against her; the lieutenant is not known for his patience. “Willow bark,” she says at last, clasping her trembling hands before her.
He nods. “And say I had no willow tree at my disposal?”
She blinks. “Feverfew,” she says.
“And if I have none of that?”
She thinks for a moment, toggling through the various pain remedies she knows, and then, before she can stop herself, she hears herself say, “For a headache, my lord, I would recommend you let it take its course.”
He tilts his head, and for a moment, she is afraid she has been too hasty. “Why?” he asks.
“Because the other remedies I know have risks that outweigh the benefits,” she says, “and a headache is hardly life-threatening.”
He smiles, then, and it is not as reassuring as it ought to be. A shiver creeps over her skin, and she fights to keep herself still. He turns, rummages in a drawer of the desk, and turns back to her. “What are these?” he asks, holding out his hand.
There is a collection of plant matter in his hands. She studies the flowers and leaves and roots, comparing them to a mental catalogue that has grown weaker with years of disuse. “Yarrow,” she says, pointing to a flower with a yellow center and delicate white flowers. “Aloe,” she says, pointing next to the spiky green tissue. “Burdock,” she says eyeing the purple flowers haloed by spikes. “Valerian,” she says of the pale purple sprig of tiny of flowers. “The rest,” she says, “I do not know.”
“Well, then,” he says, turning and replacing the detritus in the desk drawer. “It’s a start.” He turns back to her. “Are you squeamish, Indil?”
“Not particularly,” she says, forgetting herself.
“You will not faint at the sight of blood?”
“I haven’t in the past, my lord.”
“And now?”
She feels as though they’re having two different conversations, and the uncertainty is gnawing at her, making her head spin. “I don’t think so, my lord.”
“What I need,” the lieutenant says, “is an assistant. Someone with knowledge of herbs and the medicinal arts who can assist me in my research. Someone who will not flinch at the sight of blood or of broken bones. I need someone who can follow directions and learn the skills I require you to master. Do you think you can do that, Indil?” She is silent, frozen, torn between the dangers of answering and staying silent, of lying and of telling the truth. “I will not force you,” he says, his voice soft and honeyed, like the trap of a carnivorous plant. “If you do not think you are up to the task, then say the word. I will have you returned to your post.”
She is tempted, then. Every fiber of her being screams that this is dangerous ground, that there is a trap here, that nothing he says can be trusted. She wants desperately to get away, to never look at his beautiful, terrible face again. She longs to refuse him, to flee back to the toil of the fields, but she is afraid. There is danger in refusal, in displeasure; she has learned this lesson well and does not want to learn it again.
“I will do it,” she says, hoping fervently she will not come to regret the choice, hollow though it may have been.
He nods, and she knows that now, for better or for worse, her fate is sealed.
“Very good,” he says, and pushes past her toward the door. “Come with me.”
#my writing#angband#sauron#ttw2019#i didn't intend to start another multi chapter fic but here we are#this one ought to be shorter though
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Stardust Alternative Ending
Once Yvaine, the beautiful star, and her traveling companion return to his town he leaves her to find the woman he loves. The star waits, forced to by the Night Sky Law that says she must return the topaz that knocked her from the sky to it’s rightful owner.
In the field nearby, at the market, Una is working at Madame Semele’s stall. She is tidying up when she notices something and begins to smile.
“You insolent child, why do you smile? Maybe scrubbing the floors will make that horrid expression vanish from your face,” the witch hisses at Una.
“I am not insolent,” Una said softly in return, “I am just nearly free and it brightens my spirts.” As she says this, she holds up the silver chain that binds her. It glints in the sunlight, as it always has, but it’s noticeably thinner. It’s almost as if it’s disappearing the more time passes, becoming translucent in a smoke-like manner.
“What have you done?” The witch’s words are not surprised though, if anything there is a tone of loneliness that is woven into each letter. A tone that Una very easily picks up on.
“I have done nothing but what I was told. I was bound to you, as your slave, until the day the moon lost her daughter but only if it occurred during a week when two Monday’s came together. That time has come.” Una says this, not at all caring that the old witch would be alone without her. It is what she deserves. Once the chain completely fades, Una demands payment from the witch before leaving to go find her son.
Yvaine’s companion returns to her with news that his love is to marry a different man, one with the name Monday. She is about to comment on this when a woman interrupts them. She says that her name is Lady Una, only daughter of the Eighty-First Lord of Stormhold, and the mother to Yvaine’s companion, Tristran.
“Thus Tristran is rightfully the last male heir of Stormhold and must reign on the throne as such,” she finishes.
Tristran is completely dumbfounded. However, there is a part of him that always knew things were not as they seem. So much of his life began to make sense in ways that it never had before. Almost immediately after this knowledge enters his mind, Tristan embraces Lady Una as if he has been waiting all of his life to meet her. She is smiling and returning his embrace, while Yvaine looks on.
Lady Una pushes Tristran away, just enough to see his face, and says “There is just one thing. You must ask the star to return your Grandfathers topaz pendant, which we call the Power of the Stormhold. It will pass the legacy of the throne to you.”
Unsure, Tristran asks “Yvaine, would you please give me the topaz pendant that you have in your possession? It appears the person you were looking to return it to was with you all along.”
Yvaine, barely keeping up with the information that is flying around the three of them, reaches for the topaz and hands it to him without saying one word.
Lady Una speaks instead, “Tristran, you must return to Stormhold with me immediately. There is much to learn if you wish to be a better ruler than my brothers or father ever were.”
Tristran has other things on his mind, however.
He walks up to Yvaine and, with more passion he’s ever heard himself have, he says “Yvaine, my star, would you come tor Stormhold with me? Will you be my queen? Through this tireless joinery I have grown so fond of you. It was not until speaking with Victoria but a moment ago that I realized this was just case, that it was you who had my heart and not her.”
Yvaine smiled, though the sight of it made Tristran’s heart flutter, her smile was not for the reasons he wished.
“You have mistaken my emotions. Did you forget that you chained me? Took me as your prisoner to give to a woman who did not appear to love you? I made it clear to you that I had a duty to return the topaz to whomever it belonged to, as were my mothers law. That was the only reason I continued on this joinery once you freed me. I am sorry that you want for something more than I can give.” She pauses before almost whispering, “Though I am stuck on the ground of Faeire, unable to return to my spot in the sky, it will be on my terms.”
She walked away, unconcerned that his extremely fickle heart was broken by her honest words, when Lady Una caught up to her and said she had something to give her.
“I am deeply sorry for the way my son treated you, Yvaine. I know what it is like to be chained and I did not wish that upon you. It was my fathers fault you fell from the sky and my son’s fault you were imprisoned, I figured the least I could do is help you return home…” As she says this, Lady Una pulls the payment she received from the witch, a Babylon candle.
Yvaine took the candle, thanking the woman for her kind words, and went to find a flame to light her way home.
She is back in the sky now, Yvaine the star. She is with her mother and sisters, and their lights shine down on both the human world and that of Faerie. Their slow dance of the infinite stars. She is free of any bonds — be it chains, time or the worlds below her. This is where she belongs, and she could never imagine choosing anything otherwise. Not a castle, not a kingdom nor even a man.
I wrote this almost-fan fiction for a class assignment. If you’ve read (or watched the movie) Stardust by Neil Gaiman then you may be confused by this ending and if you haven’t then you may be confused in general. Basically, I really didn’t like how the book ended so I decided to write a short but sweet alternate ending.
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: sonnet,
"You think more than feel, and dote
Upon your own shallow extremes
As if they were an ailing child
—Slowly, as the eyes roll back
Dissolving the periphery of self
Into a median of the self."
as though by this old anniversary some
crucial song was to be so removed,
left for dead; to fatten the flies. The shadow gave me all of what
made him him. He asked nothing of me—only that I do
his good work well; explicitly yet echoed in
the chasm of sweet, unsated thought, unsated, bitter,
but no matter, now—
was enough. It opened ends. He chimed in a black breath of
night and death, droning his own random sleep in
blessings. He told me I was to take his
work somewhere; didn’t tell me how it would go down. Of course, you
bastard, said that shadow; of course you are the one to
yammer on about my Moneta and the muse she
brings to me. Her cursed tears couldn’t
speak enough—for Saturn—to break his exile. He said, explicitly,
that I needed to stop believing my own strictures
of sought structure, though Moneta
clutched hard her heart not
there. On he flared. And on, and on. He flared
. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .
Little youth leave me barren
Undressed and understood in my nakedness
—As presumed life, seen in the tempers
Of my ribcage, and the small hairs
On my chest. Taste this suffering in the sweat
And deny deny deny. Tell me you get it
In a concentrated part, as concentrated
As atoms into flesh. Tell me you feel this:
The touch of my hand against your skin
Hanging like a veil over the tedium
—Of the work of your bones, the tedious
Circulation of blood, the perpetual creations
That, like all things, have become
—What they distribute, and become
Fallow: in yur brain the VOID
Plays out, and becomes something
—But something curiously deficient:
YET: I will consider the movement of day.
For the day and the night drop equally from the WORLD.
For time has made all the light & darkness a rending.
This rending considers the day as hindrance
And the night as relief.
She does not live within this sense of things,
She does not live the concept. For, the concept
Is strange enough to rend it from itself
—As the day from night: it is quite
Complicated thus flawed.
For the flaws of things are only such
If the thing is complicated. The night
—And day are complicated. They are
A division. They are an idea made
Two things two different things,
Two things that are so precious, so very flawed
—And precious.
She is that rending that is perfect in the WORLD.
The schematics of yur body
—The creases in your neck that glint
In the light with perspiration
Your interminable breath, the breath
—Of ages. Tell me you see this,
Tell me you see yourself and know
Only yourself, and that all things
Though not a part of you will part in you
As a flower blooms—that is, as
The enclosure opens to reveal
A small and yielding center.
Give me your graces,
Know not the universe
Know only that who you are
—Is how you meant to be,
That is, in the absence of love,
All things, it seems, deride you. You
Weather a shifty gang of blighted fools
By their own protest against a WORLD
That is, from the outset, stricken of what
The fool desires most, and, is left to live
Only in the fickle head, as
—A confusing, inaccurate metaphor. See the dense desires of men
And, know yourself the promise of all men:
Given to the WORLD as a coy meditation
On the parallels of the universe and
Your shoulder, akimbo with your naked thigh
So lost in pose, that any picture
Would do not proper justice to the movement of your naked limbs
—So faint, and yet, there it is: the
Special kite of kinetic pressures
Moving in relative syncopation
—With one another. Grope … please …
Ignite!!!! Pull my hair and let me scream
The glories of my created race
From nothing, save the infinite dream.
And see the seams, see how they are
—Stapled together, as tho one wrong move
Would rend together the particles of life
And leave us walking on our hands
And, leave my hands without yur hands—
—To squeeze hardly in weakness. I am
Without a familiar creature strong enough to hold under my largesse
—Besides the pastoral EARTH that trembles
—Under the weight of my assimilated self.
You say you will sleep and do not close your eyes.
I hold you together with staples, unsure
—Of whether or not the tether will be broken …
Will leave me walking on my hands
And leave the little youth abandoned
This frustrated youth, this innocence
—Twain, then mended, and, yet, not the same
As before. But, do not worry, you, you
Have your own problems, your own mistakes
To rectify, and even fix, even make things
Better than before, if you wish
It does not matter to me: my wisdom
Of you is found in intimacy
And in the spaces of my ribs
And in the eternity of your desperate
Heart, beating between dilemmas …
With each fixing a new choice arises,
And the only lie is this: that
The finely tuned ringing, in your ears
—Is singing, for you to walk away
Walk so far away that even in my dreams
I cannot find you, besides in busted minutes
That in their cloudy confusion slight the signs
And leave you impatient, and leave me
Slightly confused, and leave every concentrated part
—As separate as my nerves from the coital spasm
Running from my dick up through my spine …
To nowhere, to remind one of the dank penalties of a mind
—That is too illustrious in its dreaming
Too infrequently ambitious, too
Obsequious hankering for oneself
To be right, and never wrong
And so: we two are phantasm
Yur a hallucination, a prolepsis
To an argument that never intended
—To be argued, and, thus,
I can never get to the center
Of this pome, and things get undone,
And our ribs become
Construed together—we are beasts,
Trapped within the solitude
Of bizarre desires, and fantasy
That claims all, and denies
Without saying that it shall deny,
Leaving us both in silence
Leaving us both to sit on the side of the bed
Looking at our reflection in the blank TV screen
Waiting both of us to see a different person
In the reflection, and do not.
It is something you would find by the inflections
—Of a throaty vehemence, some animal
Restrained in the night, and howling
From the guts. I look at you and see
Such ambivalent seclusion.
I look at you, and see
A mighty, inescapable reflection
—Of nothing, save what I implant:
Such finely calculated damage,
How horrifying. So slowly over the careful precision
Of time I changed: that scary plan of the clock,
Minute to hour and hour to feckless year:
Our flaky judgment of time is duped into believing
That due to the expanse, that due to the length of it,
That due to the complete absence of effort needed
For one second to usurp the one preceding it
In our WORLD of conflict, well, we believe, such ease
Seems, well, the product of something ingenuous
While it is quite deliberate, pernicious
As those spectral perspectives of ourselves
Which time will drain from who
We were, and now,
And then, we are
Another person—and know the fact of this beyond denial
In dankest obscurity of mind,
That instinctual skepticism of prolonged spiritual comfort
As regards even the cheapest identity…
This is humorous, in a way, as like the idiot
Uniquely aware
Of his idiocy—
—And I know only how to alter
The nature of my limitations
As regards the poem.
It has become something of a grey fabric
Tousled improperly out
The rickety loom
A freakish and bizarre sweater chidden
From the mouth of psychic heddle,
Such is my lorn attempt at ending
The riddle, for all, for once:
And have I little left to say that would not further
Malign the vacant hesitance, of my splintered voice,
—If I were to speak after such a laugh!
It would have been better to be silent
For a time, then follow that
With a stupid phrase or forgettable comment,
Rather than making
By barking laughter, loud and inhuman,
That itself speaks of a primitiveness.
And the dark plus of shame upon shame,
In these sundry notes
These spastic hawhaws
Contend to make
A petty music
—The brittle hitherto of sarcastic life—
But enough of these depressing things:
So long I have had to mull things over
To resist change, to let change come falsely
To make time for my thoughts.
My thoughts are now all I can think of
And what I think of is her
She is the vision of my name
And she does not let me sleep
Her approximation itself plays vigil
In my mind. She lives in this
—Altitude, above my head
And will haunt me until I am
Dead: left to become a ghost
That haunts others. The painful
Peace that I catch on like a fucking nail
I see her face and know no other face.
This cloud, this apparent cloud
Of people on the street
I see in the rapport of young and old,
Of old and old and young and young I see
The figments of the schemes by which they live,
I see the seeming portals
Of little attitudes, through which each human passes
Reaction to reaction, slaving to reach
The numbering platitudes of contentions
—Or gratifications between
Simplicities and complexities
And also at the farthest ends of both
Just once attained, and again a different way—
Depending on the figment to be approached
And yet to me her shadow in it all
Stays more or less the same.
Yeah. Ridden in the phlegmatic glory glory beneath
Each face through to the pallet, the nakedest pallet
Of this cloud of equipages
They all of them contain
The figure of her miracle. She is there
And soon departs, only to be revealed
Again. This time, the spare foundation of her eyes
Is there behind all eyes there are to see
—This happy delusion, held aloft
By the crumbling scuds of recollection
Yeah. I find the imprint of her glance
Traipsing in the active mull the sequence
—Of another’s look, in unfinished residuum find
The delicate planet of her sacrosanct,
Surprising, it is made a stronger memory
By the tragic perpetuity of this broken muscle
This device that grows abnormal growing more and more
Abnormal, by the bawd of feckless years undone
—It stutters with a growing spavination
Under the prison of my crooked ribs
In the sty of these assembled guts
I feel her pretty heat
—And, in the tone
Of her voice, the tone of her voice
Is lost to memory, but something
Was in it: some creeping life
That hovers, like a sentimental
Holiness: sounding like a priest the
Words of heaven in the church
I try to imagine another WORLD
In which I am not plagued by these stilted chains
—Of thought contiguously woven into living, and living
Strung out to senselessness between
Boredom and fatigue. I seem to purposefully
Mangle her power over me into some sorta indefiniteness, as if it were-
-Involved too much in too many parts of my happiness,
And, in terms of if that happiness would be truly happy … well,
The only way I could lift up
The sad heft of it—to be placed on the shelf
Across the room from the other shelf
Where I keep the good things—the only way to lift up
Such a beautiful aberration as this would be to figure it into
Something less than what it was.
And, the decision is made by someone else
Inside my brain, to let go, and deceive
Myself into thinking that my thoughts
Will not again seduce me to regard the circular question
That is the subject of her eyes
She has the darkness of a saint
Her body conforms to the shape of my hand
The sound of her is desperate and cloying
She has fixed her eyes in her mouth
And this language is a breath of her
The peaceful, muttering message of a language
—Is her, and all that is lain
Within her dark, empathic eyes.
These whispers these figurations
Are they not the birth of an answer
Already told, in a deadly human?
Or, are they whispers milling out
The sense, like water round a wheel,
And had not this removal of heat
From bones shown to me the probity
Of my own psyche, I would have said
That I had been starved, my energy
—Beaten out, until all that is
Left, is lifeless and woebegone
But no, what I originally presumed was destructive
—Was, in actuality, a wise chance
Taken, without knowing
The outcome:
And, thus, I live between living
Not really living but in my own sanctified past
That curtails my future into the present
—A past that is vivid and dark, like her eyes
At least from what I can remember
Thought between living. Thought: another life.
Thinking of another life that contends
With this one. The panic of an abyss …
A senseless portal in my chest that leads
To another, trembling life: it is living opening up
Like an abyss … like some thin words of respect:
This is that sober portrait of her name:
You are the whining deep
In the emaciated night-thicket that
By this weary lozenge of stone transposed,
Rheumy with moss I have forgotten
By that one dead thing I have oughted
To honor with these useless words. I go
And build a grave on ruin—awful cataclysm.—
I have refused to bury the herd
Of thoughts on what, and who, and where,
Bury the nettles of my discontent along
With you. They don’t shut up. Nonetheless I too know,
Have dormant in me that wondrous image
While the lozenge of stone remains the one I use.
A tribute too much, should rather have
Made the celebrant clearer, that it was
For what was. For that is the important thing,
Though what is is not remembered; not, that is,
Of your deep. It grew then weakened, as what’s neither
Gay nor sad but fleet as wind and I in the crud
Of my dismal thicket-veins, remember graves.
In want of making more out of destruction.
In want of taking all my thoughts down with a current
Of inevitable dissatisfaction.
Of you Pardis
. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .
What I feel is not quite anything
—It is a dispersal of shadows and light
As they translate through the jaws of the tree
And invade the room, like a trifle dismissed
Only to resurface in the midst
—Of a problem that does not seem to end.
One could witness the tree out there
Thru the pane of a dusty window
As it grows slowly, slowly grows
What I feel is thick in its own evil mask
—What is right, what seems to be right
Slipped into a guise. What is wrong??? A second’s
Thrift of doubt pervades
The guise, the avatar,
With a sense that what is right to it
May just be a farce, perfidiousness, a seeming.
This doubt: neutrality, insistent, trembling:
It keeps me up for nights on end
And has me looking at the tree thru the window:
The simple strings of shadow and trembling light:
To create motion in a hand
—That suddenly clasps yours, tightly.
As if to let go would be to lose you,
And to hang on would keep you where you were
And as who you are, forever, forever
Training my mind to keep you as you are
Straining to see again the image of your face
Thru listlessness, listlessness
There’s something different going on
Right now. My focus is elsewhere.
My focus is on the tree outside
Of the house, rather than you . . . the tree
—Is green and tho green, becomes the sample
Of other colors, other distinct WORLDs
—Of the purple sun. In other words
There can be colors not
—Made of colors. You try and
Tell me, things are not bad
But worse than you had originally thought
And you were happy about this because
At least, it was something important
Enuff, to cause distress.
As you touch my hand your hand
—Seems a remoter thing from mine
Than Mars above in the parallax. I look into
Yur eyes and see a face in
—Each iris, a different face
A different accuser. I have
Two faces, each one abrupt
In the choosing of a reaction. Perhaps . . .
The will to give a heavy hand to gestures
To listen to people speak and hear
Something different, will tell me
What you are trying to do
With your hand. And, your look:
Meditating, and earnest, speaking
Halfheartedly, though, you try and hold back
Yur feelings of ambivalence
There is still much to squeeze
—Or dredge up from the experience: the red flags
The quarreling—and yet, above it all
The parts of hope slowly coming
Together; that is, until mistakes
Grew in the eye too much—so that even
The most insignificant of them could
Not be rectified.
Morbid experiences hold no depth but in
—Whatever name I slap on the darkness,
I presume the name that I slap, to be the real deal. In reality
There is no catharsis no yearning
For a new destination
Only spangled time, a grunt collapsing
And starting again, like starting
A chainsaw. Perhaps, in the bloom
—Of change, time will soon catch
Up, and overtake change, pursuing
A limited paraphrase of time,
A cheap facsimile. And so, I think
—Of the tree outside, seen from the
Window, and of your hand gently
On mine, and I think, most of all
—Of you, as you look at me
And see nothing. So, then,
I ultimately am reminded
Of time, which holds in it
Something meaningless
Something, in the classical nothingness
—Of time:
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✨ POETRY: a duo of unrequited love✨
This night, the sun set with silent resolution
Quietly, like the breath of a thief.
No burst of artistic inspiration. No
Display, no prowess. Just somber grey over the heath.
And thus, with maiden lover's footsteps
I crept from this world to one obscured
From the fickle laughter of Apollo's day
To the hallowed gate from which Nyx lured
Blessed and blistered, rich and poor alike
Her creatures we were to mold and feed to her children
Lain sweetly in the arms of shadowy Erebus
While Hypnos and Thanatos bickered over us, hidden
Here, in the toxic mist of unbidden undergrowth
I found myself nestled in seeping midnight lichen
And as I drifted gently into dewy paralysis
Two shadows faced another, three steps from where I was hiding
It was not long ere I realized, these shadows were known
These figures in Nyx's sacred ebony palace
I knew their faces, their voices; one strong,
Commanding. One lithe and callous.
They'd been here before in nights less auspicious
They'd sat and picked listlessly at the darkened moss
And we'd talked through the veil of gelatinous water
Until the sudden ascension, the disruption, the loss.
But together they'd never been; these two
Gods of luminosity and of soft-hearted twilight
One patient and kind with a bloodied history
One angelic with the voice of a snake bite
I watched as they neared, in this world so unlike
Our own, yet ours all the same
I watched as my heart they held in between
Their wretched hands, throwing insults and blame
And pulling, pulling, pulling until the arteries
Burst, spraying glorious red. Then above me
Hypnos reared, hissed, grabbed my soft flesh
And I awoke where I'd remained. Beneath the aged willow tree.
What did you think when my shadow
Didn't darken the threshold of your open door?
When your music played unheard, water steaming
On the coffee table, floral tea leaves a quiet lure.
I wonder if timid hope smoldered to ashes
As your eyes flicked to the ticking minute hand
If you looked down the desolate hallway. Closed the door.
Maybe you didn't think of me at all. I understand.
I didn't cross his mind; him; our resident God
He who walks through halls bestowing favors
Onto the youth in this world, a world so led astray
Making slaves of young women and men into slavers
So oft the gods are unjust, and thus
He is no exception; carved of molten gold
I know he cannot be a mere man, so unkindly burdened
By that mortality which us simple human souls hold
And I, daughter of Fancy and Obsession
Grandchild of Insanity and Romance, long dead
Sit between lust and a good, kind heart
Creating scenarios and emotions inside my own head
I love neither, nor can I live without you
Neither loves me, yet in the corners of memory, I do exist
Swimming through the molecules within arteries
Obscuring emotions through intoxicating mist
What are we doing? All of us, breaking hearts
Fondling fragility as though it's easy to mend
Taking sacred objects from life's eerie altars
Imagining the laws of reality as easy to bend.
We're different people around different people
I'm different around you, around him, around them
Which one of me is real? Are any of them real?
From what infinite river do these infinite people stem?
And am I in love, or lust, or infatuation?
Or am I desperate? Desperate for arms…
Arms to hold a fatigued, pallid body
And shield a heart from midnight's indigo harms?
Do I love men or do I love Love? Or Life?
Perhaps I could learn to love him if he only looked
Into my eyes, smiling because he knew
With grasping fingers how easily this façade is unhooked
This thing, this finite youth washing over us
Looks down on us three and pities you, soft-hearted hero
For who has stood against immortality and won?
Fate has thrown a gauntlet between you and Apollo.
And I'll hold out my heart, the heart of a fair, distressed maiden
A prize neither of you may want, but will fight for
And I will starve and my skeletal frame
Will sigh a lipless sigh at that hallowed door
And through the crumbling ashes, those prison bars of bone
Hold a rotting heart, a prize for an unwilling victor
Fight for me, for your honor, and for mine
Take heed now of this oracular predictor
These poems were written by our Fiction and Literature editor Lesley
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So … you know how I said last week that “All Hope Is Not Gone”?
Ta-Dah! Surrrrrprise!
Today we are hitting the yin to the yang, the ping to the pong, and the AC to the DC‘sed [deceased – geddit?].
I present to you : Depressionista™, or a blog post about my depression, this fat fucker who sits on my shoulders and sometimes puts on so much weight, it starts crushing me.
But before I proceed any further, I feel like I should explain the accompanying pictures.
So basically, when Corey Taylor from Slipknot feels achey and wants to stop the ache, he has a tendency to push his fingers into his eyes. I am not making it up – it is in his song .
I, instead ,put my boots on and cross my legs. It doesn’t stop the ache, but makes it somehow more blog-friendly. Listen, it was that or a picture of me looking like a Goth Donald Trump, pouting angrily all the way to the Great Wall of Mexico.
Anyway, let’s start. And let me first make things clear.
Depression is not having a bad day. Depression is not getting into a hump because some idiot in the train tainted your new Dolce & Banana shoes with a Crappacino.
Depression is having your whole reality, your entire physical being and emotional state stained with the most ugly, painful and disgusting paint. It is sticky, heavy, dirty and shows you everything in a different shade : the people around you, your surroundings, and most of all yourself. Color me bad indeed.
Depression is not only a constant feeling of hopelessness; it is a virtual hammer of pain and misery so strong that you end up feeling like you are forever suffocating and drowning within yourself. The inner drowning get so powerful and that you can only see a way out : getting out of that diseased self. YOUR self.
Depression is hell personified. If it had a face, it would look like the bastard child of Donald Trump & Kim Jong Il – constantly talking shit and threatening to kill you. Irritating the fuck out of your mind and exhorting you to push that red button of self-destruction, day in, day out , whether you are buying a coffee or spilling your Crappacino on the Dolce & Banana shoes of the dickhead in front of you.
And you know what the worst is? The worst is when you give into these thoughts. Paradoxically, giving into these evil thoughts gives instant relief. And that my friends, is the true evilness of depression. Once you accept that the only way to end the pain is to end your tenure on Earth, this motherfucking demon seems to take over your brain and issue endorphins and a feeling of peace which is incredibly strong. IT IS AWFUL!
Why do you think that most people who take themselves out are usually reported to be ‘fine’ before they give in? Because they have come to the conclusion which at that time seemed the only way out. And sadly that fatal decision is the only thing that seemed to give them peace at that moment in time. Please understand that people who suffer from depression are going through an immense inner turmoil and the decision is not taken lightly. But the decision taken is taken under the influence of a false sense of peace.
The thing is, depression can rear its ugly head (see above) at any time. Last weekend, I had a blast : I went out to a gig and met the motherfucking drummer from Iron Maiden, Nicko McBrain !
How cool?! and here’s the proof by the way.
But guess what, only three days later, and I am having an inner philosophical meltdown and I am unable to sleep, pestered with thoughts about : backstabbing fake friends; the fickle nature of relationships, the stupidity which is littered in offices, the fact that we are all prisoners in this open prison and that I am a corporate slave, the purpose of my life and why do I bother waking up in the morning if it is just to be a fucking slave to the system?!?
Oh yeah, by the way when I have an episode, I may do the pondering clutching my trusted old friend Skully, and stare blankly at a wall waiting for a response.
These days, I get a click from my Canon 6D.
Anyway, this is certainly a post with a different tone to my others, but I don’t want to be one of these bloggers who only post about the unicorns they had lunch with and the rainbows they farted afterwards. As I mentioned before, I hate fakeness, fakery and fuckery.
Depression is real and if you want to talk … There is a friendly ear (or two) here. [Skully listens too]
PS: My temporary misery relief has come today in Royal Mail packages, I got my new shizzle from Killstar delivered ! Blog post once I manage to put Kim Jong Trump away 😉
xxx
⚡Dressed & Depressed : La Vie En Morose⚡ So ... you know how I said last week that "All Hope Is Not Gone"? Ta-Dah! Surrrrrprise!
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