wordpiles and snippets

[panterdjuret]

It’s not me

One could feel satisfied with this, but I'm not sure I do Not while your voice tells me: "I'm not wrong: it's you."

I wish I could keep you trapped in here, still untrue or at least that I did not love myself less than I love you

The stacked moments, fragments that sticks like glue How could I rid myself of this intruder that is you?

The ocean that is deep black, the vast sky so blue neither has a place for the lie I want to hear from you

This salt wouldn't scorch dead everything that grew if I could place it somewhere else; is there room in you?

Why is it that I can't be neither mouse nor shrew? Choose?  I can't be both: tell me, which one are you?

If I could change you to something within reach – new would I manage to rid myself of this dream that is you?

This is me, in all my bitter faults: this hate I spew trying not to deal with this open wound that is you

Earth to space the world cracked, what to hold on to? I can find nothing but pain awaiting me here with you

What are we if not the pain and scars we accrue? So cut deep and don't hesitate: destroy me along with you

I'm not lamb, my pelt is coarse; I'm not ram nor ewe I'm blunted butcher's knife who can't make a sacrifice of you

I'm miserable scattered against the earth like dew but yet I was doubly so, not knowing about you

Help me – I despise you, but – could I my heart imbue with a love so feather light I would share it all with you

Instead there's anger, this fury, the reckoning which is due my snarl-bared teeth wanting to fight both me and you

[panterdjuret]

lucky

they say there can be no shadow where there is no light to set it free - they have never seen your eyes wide awake at night

they have never heard your words muttered under your breath in anger without hope of salvation as the powers that be are sleeping

aren't they lucky?

it is said there is no smoke without fire but your every breath is smoke: choking - lungs full of burning - without the beauty of embers

they have never carried your secrets the way you do, like a heavy noose like a prong collar around your neck painful and maddening

if we were all so lucky.

"Better a bird in the hand," they say your hands are full of scolding corvidae cawing dreadful warnings that you wear as your crown

they never see the crow grey life you hide inside until you can bear smiling until you can wear it like lipstick easily rubbed off

they smile back at you thinking you must be lucky oblivious to the raven black to the faraway rustling of feathers and smoke

[panterdjuret]

Solstice Stag

Councillor Josephallen was surprised and most alarmed to find himself stretched out on the metal table, and no matter how well he tried to hide it he would flinch each time he instinctively tried to lift his head to see better, only to find his restrained arms keeping his head down against the table surface by the antlers.

One of the Truthseekers - a ragged hyena with most of his fur missing and his ears just holes into his skull - was leaning over the table by the head side, relaxing in a metal chair as he played with the soft fabric of one of Josephallen's coat sleeves.  The second Truthseeker - a rottweiler with smooth fur and a voice permanently rough and broken by screaming - was sitting beside his chest, needlessly pressing him down, making it much more difficult to try to breathe in what would seem to be in a controlled manner.  He wasn't listening to the monologue the second Truthseeker was having.  The words of Truthseekers usually carried no meaning to him.

Then the second Truthseeker said something that seemed to have meaning, and the meaning was immensely sinister.

"And it's said that at winter solstice you shall hunt the solstice stag."

Being a stag, Josephallen reacted to this.  He would have reacted to it even should he not have been currently been restrained outstretched on a metal table.

He asked again, despite his better judgement, despite having tried to reason with them earlier.  "What is the meaning of this, Truthseekers?"

Neither of them reacted to his words.  The words of a Councillor had little meaning to a Truthseeker.  The other went on, the first playing idly with the Councillor's sleeve, listening intently to the other's words.

"And when you have hunted it down, you shall slaughter it, and hold a feast to try to coax out the return of the sun."

The hyena laughed quietly in anticipation and excitement.  Councillor Josephallen understood then that this was much worse than two Truthseekers just having decided to pull a joke on him.  He had found it quite worrying enough with everything else, and he could not put up with more.  Not things like implied murder.  Not while he was being pressed down to a table by a Truthseeker.

"I command you two to release me at once!" he snapped firmly.  "On my authority as one of the Council -"

The second Truthseeker gently caught Josephallen's muzzle between two fingers and his thumb and carried on, cutting him off.  "And the stag may bleat and try to escape the dogs of the hunt, but it shall fall to them."

The first Truthseeker laughed again, grabbing the white sleeve tightly.  "And the dogs shall have their feast."

The second Truthseeker grinned, nodding to him.  "That they shall.  The stag has fallen to us.  We shall finally have our feast."

[panterdjuret]

On the Lady of Steel and the Lord of Iron

The Lord of Iron and The Lady of Steel

The maintenance crew talk a lot about the Lord of Iron and the Lady of Steel, and they are prominent figures in the stories and mythology of the maintenance crew.  

Protectors tend to curse or exclaim; "by the Stewards!", Stewards go; "by the Council!", and the maintenance crew go; "by the Lord of Iron!" or "by the Lady of Steel!" and there is a great difference in which one they use for what.  They seem like guiding spirits and aren't seen like gods.  More like totems for the trains and machinery.

Other frequent sayings are: "May the Lady smile upon you", "May the Lord smile upon your work," and "When one walks with the Lady and the Lord, one is never bored."

The Lady of Steel is primarily associated with a sharp intellect and good perception.  She is described as a dark woman walking around dressed in a dress or shroud of white steam.  Sometimes her hair is described as grey, almost white; sometimes it's described as dark, almost black, but always it is described as very long and flowing behind her as if playing with or being tossed around by the swirling steam around her.  She will sing in the walls, never with words but 'like humming with one's lips pressed together'.  She is said to be harsh but fair, and to be the one to call people to become maintenance crew.  It's also said that nothing will ever happen on a Train that she doesn't know about. It's common to ask her for advice, and for protection from accidents.

The Lord of Iron is primarily associated with unyielding determination and stubborn persistence in face of adversity, and with loyal toiling and ceaseless work.  He is the one to invoke when accidents happen, to ask for strength to get through them.  He is often described as an old man – strong of the sinewy and tough kind – shrouded in dark smoke and almost all covered in oil and soot from top to toe.  His hair and beard is described as black, but whether this is a natural colour or just oil and soot having coloured them seems unclear but plausible.

In difference from the Lady of Steel and the maintenance crew itself, he is not described as someone who ever sings – neither humming nor hiss-singing – but occasionally he will speak to someone who is in dire trouble if they are all alone, lending some extra strength and determination.  He will never offer any outright comfort to let someone die easier, but he might point something out that the person has at first missed, like a way out or a tool that might help out.

Maintenance crew tend to associate Protectors a bit as being agents of the Lord of Iron in their own way.  "The Agency teach you that part all right, don't they?  Teach you that one face of the Lord. They teach your muscles to take after him." They respect the Protectors as people who in a way share the same duty as them: "The Protectors were like them in a way, also working to keep the Train and the machines happy and safe, but while the maintenance people were the machines' doctors and surgeons, the Protectors were their immune system and bodyguards."

It's unclear whether every Train has its own Lord and Lady, or if the Lord and the Lady are the same entities for every Train.  Seeing or hearing them is taken as a great honour.

[panterdjuret]

Origami

They came into the apartment by breaking down the door.  They stopped in the hallway; now silent and staring in the face of unresisting quiet.  They walked through my home in silence, like people in a cemetery; lost, confused, bewildered.  Cautiously they spread out to search for me; carefully touching origami furniture, origami cats, origami cutlery. Picking up origami children folded from sunburnt photographs, sienna like skin.  Staring into printed eyes and smiling teeth.  Putting them down again.  Red and blue and green and purple; every back white, protected, invisible.

Four policemen, all flesh and blood and smooth and warm, looking over paper walls, looking over paper creatures painstakingly crafted.

One of them found me on the bed, stretched out cold and stiff and he picked me up.  How light I was, how coarse to his skin.  He studied me, then unfolded me, not knowing what I was.  The only thing in there he could not identify as anything significant.  He unfolded me, smoothing out my wrinkles and creases until I was nothing but a smooth sheet of paper. Until nothing remained of me but my skin –

then put me back on the bed before they left.

[panterdjuret]

Pilgrimage

I have to go on a pilgrimage to the holy place.  To my cathedral with spires intricately adorned with vine and leaf.  To the wooden arches and beams.  To the place where the souls gather and the wild gods roam surrounded by the heavenly choir's singing framing the day and passing the night away.

To the holy place, to the sacred altar I built myself in the golden, shifting light. "Let him who is without sin among you throw the first stone" – no, I collect mine – I am a builder: I am neither judge nor jury.  Throw your stones away, you who care nothing for their beauty. I will keep mine close, I will carry them where they will drown me should I ever venture out into the river.

I won't: I am earthbound, I am landlocked, I am not for the sky to beckon, I am not for the water to claim.  I will go on a pilgrimage to the forest which whispers my name.  To the place where I buried my heart like a precious stone to be guarded by their roots, the only burden too heavy even for me to carry.

I'm going home.

I'm going home.

[panterdjuret]

(bee maker)

[For my storyteller friend, because of a letter I received this morning.  About a woman making mechanical bees and a man who loves watching her hands and the way she smiles at them.]

Her fingers were gentle and soft as he imagined a lover's would as she put metal parts together making a bumbling, tumbling bee

He watched her content smile then the graceful, long fingers as she said: "Look well: /this/ this is what I want you to do."

Learning the craft from her Spending all days with her Taking after her hands but never her smile

Surrounded by metal and wires he said: "Please, for once, just once, please touch me like you touch them."

Her fingers against his skin gentle and soft, like a lover's caressing something bumbling, something clumsy, graceless

He tried to imagine do his best to pretend but he was not a bee it was not the same

[panterdjuret]

(a battle song, of sorts)

I make myself ready for battle; cut my hair short as I glare into the mirror watching the shadows cast by my cheekbones as I whisper; "unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe top- full of direst cruelty... make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage to remorse..." I sharpen my blade on a stone and I bandage my breasts tightly to my chest as I pull on my armour I'll not be a good girl; I'll fight as good as any man and I will not regret the cuts my blade makes...

[panterdjuret]

There is something doubly painful about laying in your arms: one of them is me; the other is your love: conditional.

"If you do this and this I would no longer be your friend." You stroke my hair.  As if friendship could be conditional.

Sometimes I forget that not everyone is shaped like me, with all the love-laughter I give free and unconditional.

My love it wells like the blood in a wound, spilling forth to infuse the ground with new life, stronger, unconditional.

My love too pools like the tears in an eye: like every single torn Tibetan prayer flag blessing the mountainside, unconditional.

Like a well of deep black water, my love is like an oubliette; no matter what you throw into it, it remains, unconditional.

Is yours not boundless?  A sky upholding every heavy star? Or just every shooting star wish yet unfulfilled and conditional?

Are my actions what you love, and sometimes my inactions? Could that me behind them ever earn a love so conditional?

You, willing to rend me into what is lovable and what is not – this part is good, this one is bad – they are all unconditional.

You, in whose arms I hide, when you try to reassure me, when you hold me, when I give you my love unconditional.

You, who say "I love you"; an action can steal you away, you would forsake me for your heart's sake of being conditional.

I would remain, strung between rock and pole to cliff and sky like that torn Tibetan prayer flag, a blessing unconditional.

I would remain by the deep well oubliette, well aware: if your love fades and dies, my own is still unconditional.

Those who wander into my heart, dig their burrows there will find they always have a home: a home is unconditional.

I love you: every word in you; every wound and scar on you; every bit, piece and part of you I wash in love, unconditional.

Every scrawled letter, every whisper-secret in the night; you I love: all and whole; I love even your love so conditional.

So there is something doubly painful there in laying in your arms: the first: your love – the other: knowing mine is unconditional.

[panterdjuret]

About stories as warnings

I was just speaking on Twitter about heroes and the standard hero narrative and how I don’t like it.  About how I try to not do heroes and how my characters tend to be really broken and flawed people.  Through that I also got on a side track about how I doubt the story I’m writing will ever have a Happy Ending, because life doesn’t tend to come with a happy ending.  There are good times and there are bad times for all of us, but there is no happy ending waiting at the end of the tunnel.  And when one of our lives end, it’s not the end.  As this amazing tweet says; “Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.”  Life goes on, and life in itself does not guarantee a Happy ending.  Life is full of dark and cruel and terrible endings. After that I remembered that there is a character in the train world stories who collects terrible endings in her head as stories to tell herself as she waits for sleep at night.  Terrible ends to Protectors she has known and cared about.  As warnings. So I tweeted parts of it, but here is a longer thing.  It’s about how she’s grieving the loss of a dear friend of her’s.  Who did indeed meet quite a terrible end.

She added another story to tell herself at night as she was waiting for sleep.  So many times she had been asked by new arrivals if she as an experienced Protector had any stories to tell them.  Just as many times she had told them that she did not tell stories.  Not a single one of the stories she collected in her head would she ever tell them.  They were not stories to be told to others over a cup of semi-coffee.  They were not stories to warm the heart.  They were all warnings.  They were all stories as dark as the tunnels outside, stories as hopeless as life.  They were all stories with as many bad endings to them. Now she had another one, and hiding in the dark closet with tears trickling down her cheeks she closed her eyes and began to tell it to herself, her mouth full of the taste of his blood.

I think it is important to remember that in real life, there are no happy endings guaranteed, and often the endings to our stories are pretty grim.  These stories are just as important to remember and learn from as the happy ones, the lighter ones, the ones that give us comfort and joy.

Because sometimes, if we remember the bad endings we are told and taught about, we have a better chance of avoiding them.  That way perhaps, maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll find our ending when we meet it not as terrible as the endings of some of the stories we’ve been told.

[panterdjuret]

[fire]

Where is the end of the world we're seeing? Where are the angels with their rain of fire?

The angels should be here by now to help us, to end all we bring with our guns and our fire.

Blood is the same whether on asphalt or grass, on razor wire fences crossing landscapes on fire.

The faces too look the same; dark and silent - from the newspaper pages - illuminated by fire.

If only this was a book or a fairy tale, a happy ending, not an ending born of fire.

It feels like there is nothing to do but pray: "let the world end once and for all in fire."

[panterdjuret]

(on reading and growth)

I read.  I read a lot.  I live in as many worlds as I possibly can, putting myself in the skins and clothes and shoes of as many persons as I could ever do.  It helps when this life is terrible.  It helps when I don’t feel at home in my own skin.  It helps feel at home in my own skin as well.

Sometimes it takes fantasy to explain racism.   Sometimes it takes science fiction to understand the past.  Sometimes we need to be others in order to see ourselves clearly and to figure out who we wish to be.

I often read the same book several times.  Some of my favourites have seen over twenty reads, and I frequently pat them, pick them up and press them to my chest, and read a favourite passage where I stand.

[panterdjuret]

Recently, I decided to translate a part of the song Hurricane by Thirty Seconds to Mars into Ilythiiri, because why not.  Now I’ve also written it down using the writing system I’m designing for the conlang, so whooo I guess?

Here is the original translation I did of the parts of the song, for those who are curious and to keep them together for future reference.

Xun dos llaar ssinssrin - xun dos llaar ssinssrin ussa? Xun dos llaar ssinssrin ussa elghinyrr, xor dro jivelggteh whol ussta mithuthen?

Xun dos llaar ssinssrin - xun dos llaar ssinssrin ussa? Xun dos llaar ssinssrin ussa elghinyrr, xor dro droteh natha ulnar?

Tesso ussa, ornla dos elgg dormagynteh natha dro? Tesso ussa, ornla dos elgg jousteh dos zhah ditronu?

[panterdjuret]

For you who wonder what my Ilythiiri poem ‘vlos’ would look like written in the writing system I’m designing for that conlang.  Here is the original text, for reference, to keep them together:

vlos lassrinnin, vlos sokandain, vlos rosanin, vlos dathalain… vlos sune, vlos ssinjin, vlos pholor ussta ooble… vlos pholor ussta vresselven, vlos pholor ussta lithirahen, vlos wun ussta zzil; jiha lueth ssinjin… niirlen wun ussta solen, ussta vresselven glitretin dosst siltrin…

vlos tralkain, vlos jiolein, dro alus.

[panterdjuret]

xun dos llaar ssinssrin?

Xun dos llaar ssinssrin - xun dos llaar ssinssrin ussa? Xun dos llaar ssinssrin ussa elghinyrr, xor dro jivelggteh whol ussta mithuthen?

Xun dos llaar ssinssrin - xun dos llaar ssinssrin ussa? Xun dos llaar ssinssrin ussa elghinyrr, xor dro droteh natha ulnar?

Tesso ussa, ornla dos elgg dormagynteh natha dro? Tesso ussa, ornla dos elgg jousteh dos zhah ditronu?

*

For some reason I decided to translate a part of the song Hurricane by 30 Seconds to Mars into Ilythiiri, because why not.  I think it fits, especially the part: “Xun dos llaar ssinssrin ussa elghinyrr, xor dro jivelggteh whol ussta mithuthen? (Do you really want me dead, or alive to torture for my sins?)”

This was perhaps not time most well spent, but a twitter conversation really got me in the mood to do something Ilythiiri related, so there you have it.  Perhaps one day it will prove useful.  Like now should you ever be captured by an ilythiiri scouting party, you can ask them if they want you dead or if they want you alive to torture you, and I mean, that’s useful, isn’t it?

[panterdjuret]

vlos

vlos lassrinnin, vlos sokandain, vlos rosanin, vlos dathalain... vlos sune, vlos ssinjin, vlos pholor ussta ooble... vlos pholor ussta vresselven, vlos pholor ussta lithirahen, vlos wun ussta zzil; jiha lueth ssinjin... niirlen wun ussta solen, ussta vresselven glitretin dosst siltrin...

vlos tralkain, vlos jiolein, dro alus.

[panterdjuret]

Behind the Smile

There is no face behind your glitter-glass mask - no eyes peeking through the holes above the smile.

There is just darkness rimmed with black lines - and below them full lips parted in a slight smile.

One can lean one's forehead to yours, laughing and you will laugh too, with an unmoving smile.

It is easy to be satisfied with this.  Why not? With someone who is always there with a smile.

Still sometimes the mask will slip, for a moment and the darkness will spill out around that smile.

There revealed: you are as dark as your eyes - nothing but a hungry shadow behind the smile.

A shadow swirling, dancing, grinning madly: sharp teeth and fangs bared in a ravenous smile.

Should one stay you will devour, leaving nothing! Oh, nothing will be left but bones and your smile!

So run one will - run until the world spins wildly! Yet you will always catch up: an enveloping smile.

One knows this clearly, one knows it so very well so one will sit there, just trying to smile, smile, smile.

Baring one's teeth, baring further, face splitting! - until one too is nothing but a shadow wearing a smile.

Until one searches for one's glitter-glass mask – now! - covering darkness with parted lips in painted smile