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| Circling |
[09 Jul 2009|11:34am] |
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mood |
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dorky |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Yes - A Venture |
] |
We reach, but the ring swings free;
You have to get off the carousel to catch it.
Once left behind, though,
The horses no longer jump and prance,
Bob and dance.
Entered by morning, the carnival smells of popcorn and cotton candy
But, after the night falls,
The dizzying lights blind.
When the cryers call closing,
All the little children have already gone;
Having ridden away with the horses.
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| God is the greatest |
[20 Jun 2009|12:54pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
indescribable |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Led Zeppelin / The Rain Song |
] |
I have no belief in the words, nor can write more than "Allah" in Arabic but, for once, I feel like getting on my roof and shouting, "Allahu ackbar!"
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| Blahambra |
[20 Jun 2009|02:55am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 chipper |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Mazzy Star - Into Dust |
] |
I need to stop writing philosophical shit. Not comments in communities; that's too much fun. Trying to come up with my own. I'm too apt to go off on analogies, and that way lies madness. If I did come up with a good treatise on the nature of reality and consciousness and all that BS, I'd be smart to give it an anonymous LJ and spam everybody with it until it became famous. Ha!
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| Just a Late Night Splatter of an Analogy Which Might Be Used Later |
[12 Jun 2009|04:55am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 contemplative |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
MSNBC talking heads |
] |
Let's look at a certain kind of pocket calculator. This calculator has ten visible digits and an additional two which are only used internally for practical accuracy in short calculations like multiplication. Because there are an infinity of numbers with more than ten or twelve significant digits, the calculator can therefore only show the first ten digits of numbers with more significant digits; let's call this its "approximation" of longer real numbers. Let's call its process of doing calculations its "unconscious thinking". On the other hand, let's call the ten digits shown after all calculations are finished its "conscious thoughts" and the act of showing a number its "consciousness". Some of its conscious thoughts come directly from numbers punched into its keyboard; let's call these "perceptions". Others come from its unconscious thinking; let's call these "concepts". A third come from its memory; let's call these "memories".
Note that the calculator cannot consciously distinguish between which thoughts are perceptions, concepts, or memories. It is only conscious of what is shown within its ten visible digits.
Due to the fact that the calculator has only twelve "working" digits and thirteen possible locations for the decimal place, it has a finite number of possible conscious thoughts, with many of these come at by different ways of thinking. Let's call these its "library". In fact, any of its conscious thoughts can be either a memory, a perception, or a concept arrived at by many different unconscious calculations. The numbers shown before calculating and those shown after calculating cannot be given a necessarily one-to-one relationship.
Let's look at one such unconscious process: the method of calculating square roots. In order to do this, a number is either keyed in, used from a previous calculation, or brought up from memory; in which case, there is the initial conscious thought which is the number for which its square root is to be calculated. Then, when the square root key is used, there is a fully determined set of actions performed which end when twelve digits are arrived at which do not change after more calculating. The first ten of these twelve are shown; the conscious thought which the calculator recognizes as the square root.
Here, we have what might be considered a problem, because not all square roots of the numbers within the calculator's library have (only) ten, or even twelve, actual digits. In fact, most are not even rational; they have an infinite number of actual digits. Perhaps we are given an extra notation, a dash set above one or more terminating digits in the visible field which denotes that all digits after the ten shown repeat those under the dashes. Even given this, the library is still of finite length, and there are non-repeating square roots which the calculator cannot show.
In this sense, the calculator is inherently consciously erroneous in some of its calculations. We might say that it is "flawed". This flaw or others are possible to show in any of its kinds of calculations. If one were to add 5000000000 to 5000000000, perhaps a special light could be shown which designates the result as a number which it not within the calculator's library. A similar multiplication would give the same result. If a non-repeating square root is found, however, the calculator only shows the ten digit approximation for the actual number. Unless the light is shown for every answer that is only a ten-digit approximation of a longer number or the repeating-decimal notation can be correctly used, the calculator cannot be conscious of its error in calculating the square root.
Let's now change scope and consider the human mind. For argument's sake, let's accept the view that the mind has a subjective "I" within it that perceives through the bodies senses, its memories, or from unconscious thinking.
This "I" can neither experience a sensual perception outside of the scope of the body's senses, remember something which is not held in the body's memories, nor have a thought which is beyond the body's ability to conceptualize. "I" can neither see in the ultraviolet range, remember the sinking of the Titanic, nor imagine a square circle. In this sense, the "I" of the mind is bounded, if not finite. Certainly, the number of possible conscious thoughts which a mind can have in the lifetime of its body is finite.
If we equate a single thought experienced by the "I" of the mind with the visible digits on our calculator, then we can say that this "I" is also inherently consciously erroneous in some of its thinking. This is inevitable when we only consider the mind trying to do the calculations of a calculator. "I" can never find the complete square root of 2, for instance. No matter how many digits of the number that can be memorized or calculated, what is perceived finally by the mind as the square root of 2 is always only an approximation for the actual number.
If we take the calculator as an example of a machine using pure mathematical logic to come to conclusions, we can say that no calculator can come to always true conclusions or that all calculators must end their calculations at some point and allow an approximation for a true value.
Likewise, even if the "I" of the mind can use pure reasoning to come to conscious conclusions, we can say that no mind can come to always true conclusions or that all minds must end their unconscious conceptualization and allow an approximation for a true conclusion. In fact, given that the mind is never conscious of the difference between things which it can experience and those things which it cannot, there are thoughts of which it cannot be conscious of its approximation as an error.
At best, when given numbers with fewer than ten digits and calculations that do not raise the number of significant digits of the answer beyond ten, a calculator can give true answers.
Likewise, when given perceptions or ideas within the scope of the body's senses, memories, or concepts and logical processes of conceptualization; a mind can perceive true thoughts.
It is the problem of finding the scope of the body's senses, memories, and concepts and defining acceptable logical processes of conceptualization which can give us the knowledge of what thoughts are true. The mind (more exactly, the "I" of the mind) can never be trusted in itself to know whether its thoughts are true.
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| Twits? Tweets? Twats? Welcome to 140 Character Hell |
[10 Jun 2009|11:57am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 crazy |
] |
Okay, that's the end of my LJ!tweets. In case you didn't get the memo, I'm a twit now. I can't believe I fucking signed up to that nonsense. Well, if it's good enough for Neil Degrasse Tyson, Justine Bateman, and Kevin Smith...is that more than 140 characters? Oops.
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| One Word |
[06 Jun 2009|04:46pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 bouncy |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Sublime / Doin' Time |
] |
Scribblenauts.
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|
| *Sigh* |
[04 Jun 2009|10:20am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
mellow |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Dream Theater - Take the Time |
] |
So long, Grasshopper.
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| Um...I still have an LJ? |
[07 May 2009|02:22am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
busy |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Queen - We are the Champions |
] |
Hey, kiddies, Roger here. Yeah, still here. Actually, I've been working on a first draft of a second story project. Sorry, Lane, but mine's a ball's out swords fight-em-up also. I swear that it's really a far-future hard sci-fi story at heart, but the main character won't know that for a while. It's Sita Roryn, the same idea I mentioned just a few posts down the page. And...I've already gotten 262 pages into it. YAY ME! I'm considering doing like I did with Bluebonnet Circle and throwing chapters onto a dedicated LJ so all of you can sample it and rant about how much I suck (or grovel at the feet of my genius). Like the idea? Wanna read it? Gimme a comment or two.
P.S. The project started as emails to my cousin wintering at the South Pole, to help keep her warm donchano? There's a definite storyline from first blood to walking off into the frozen yonder, but I'm leaving the plot details up to chance and whim this time...NO PLOT OUTLINES. So, if the character seems interesting one minute and two dimensional the next or the action goes by jumps and loooong pauses...it's just a project and a first draft at that. Enjoy!
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| We're Such Assholes |
[27 Apr 2009|04:34pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
amused |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Queensryche - Get a Life |
] |
A friend of mine who is a first-gen immigrant got a visit from his Guatemalan father this past week. The poor guy didn't speak a word of English until my friend got to him, now he's repeating the same phrase to every woman he sees. He thinks it's funny; we think it's fucking hilarious. Really, it's sad and wrong, and probably horribly racist.
"I love you bitch, you suck me best." We tried something with "fuck", but he recognized that.
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|
[25 Apr 2009|03:03pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 melancholy |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Led Zeppelin - Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman) |
] |
Bea Arthur has died. Good night, Maude.
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| Yo Ho Ho, Dumbassess! |
[09 Apr 2009|03:12pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
amused |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
The Crew - Bosun's Alphabet |
] |
The Somali pirates have really fucked up this time. In terms that a Tolkien enthusiast might understand, the Eye has turned.
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|
| WTF MyWaste |
[04 Apr 2009|01:58pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 blank |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
U2 - Mothers of the Disappeared |
] |
Is it just me, or does MySpace show a fucked up html page half the time for everybody now? Firefox, IE, no difference. It's like they've scrambled everything and thrown it together like chimpanzees.
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| G20 |
[03 Apr 2009|05:21am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 annoyed |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
The Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen |
] |
The Obamas visit the UK. The leaders of the richest and most powerful nations on earth get together. The US, China, India, Russia, the EU...and what are the headlines?
OMG, the First Lady TOUCHED THE QUEEN!
WAR!
Please, people. Listen to yourselves.
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| Stabby Kittens |
[21 Mar 2009|12:02pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
thoughtful |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Gayane Ballet Suite - Khachaturian |
] |
I wonder sometimes why some things scare other people so much more than me, and vice versa. Case in point: pictures found by googling "creepy". I assume that people must tag them or label them so because they hold at least some level of fear, but most to me are merely grotesque or pointedly staged, and thus more annoying than creepy. What seems like a better definition of "creepy" to me is a situation wherein every part but one belongs. Isn't that the nagging bit of fear that keeps it with you long after you leave? A photo of a gothed-out girl in a cemetery isn't creepy; it's indulgent. What's creepy is a solemn funeral ceremony with everyone turned toward the coffin except one little girl, who is smiling at you. What is creepy is, later that day or week or year, walking down an otherwise busy street and seeing that same girl reflected in a store window, wearing the same outfit and the same smile. Vampires and werewolves, in themselves, aren't creepy to me. They're too kitsch, too overdone, especially when placed together, which is a horrible misrepresentation of both traditions. The ending of the otherwise only boobs-and-blood Jean Rollin film, La Morte Vivante, caught me as especially creepy. The insatiable title character's lesbian lover, after feeding victims to her one by one, finally gives herself up instead of destroying the woman, presumably knowing that she also would not be enough. What was it? A love so deep that, when she finally realized no amount of victims would bring the woman back to a sensible version of life, she couldn't take it yet couldn't bring herself to end it the right way? Whatever the reason, that was creepy. Mary Poppins was fucking creepy. Aliens wasn't. It takes less than throwing out excrutiating pain and gore or mixing up a hundred discordant symbols to be creepy, not more.
Maybe it's because I've been so close to real, personal death that I've learned that it isn't death itself that should be scary, but rather uncertainty. For most people, I think death means uncertainty in one form or another, but not for me. For me, it's going about daily life and finding something that shouldn't be there or, conversely, being in a horrific situation where there is one particular thing that doesn't belong because it isn't horrific. Let me get personal for a minute. On the night I got shot, my friends and I ran around trying to make mischief in our admittedly amateur way. There was a bank building on Magnolia Ave. that we knew stayed unlocked for about a week because it was being renovated and the doors were yet to be replaced. In my way of thinking, this building, perfectly normal looking from the outside, except for its missing doors, was creepy. Of course, that only encouraged us to run through it roughshod. It was empty of almost everything besides a few pieces of furniture and a large potted iris. Naturally, we stole the iris and hid it elsewhere while we went to our original destination, Mary & John's nightclub. After closing, we went back, and I picked up the iris to carry it to my friend's house, but we got waylaid instead. That part of the story I've told many times before and so need not detail it here. What is out of place, and makes the whole instance truly unusual, is that I set down the iris when the trouble started and was right beside it when I tried to run. The next time I went back to the lot, I noticed that someone had planted it right where I had lain. Perhaps they thought that I had died, but that's beside the point. At the time, shootings and even random murders weren't uncommon and shrines are often placed at the locations, so anyone could have brought a flower and planted it there; but I'm the one who brought it. That's creepy.
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| It Was Just a Dream |
[05 Mar 2009|12:29pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
pensive |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Bad commercial jingles |
] |
I was walking home last night. I was crossing a parking lot as a short cut between two streets when I heard a couple of short, staccato honks from a car horn behind me. I turned to see a man get out of the car and begin walking toward me with the car still running.
"Roger! Roger!" he called, and I shielded my eyes from the parking lights to see him better.
"Jazz?" I asked, recognizing him as someone I hadn't seen since high school. He hesitated, then walked forward more slowly, haltingly.
"You have to stay in the same lane," he said, barely loudly enough for me to understand. Noting something different in his attitude from what I remembered, I began walking backwards.
"What?" I was at a loss.
"If you keep changing lanes, I won't know where to go." Underneath, at an almost inaudible level, I seemed to hear the phrase, "Wenn er dorthin kommt, wissen Sie." I just kept going, not knowing what else to do.
"Uh, Jazz, I'm not just taking one street. Most of the time, I'm walking on the sidewalks."
"Please," more urgently, "come back and go the same way you were going." I was painfully conscious of his car's idling, of the still open door. There was a flash near his right hand, as the parking lot lights were reflected in what looked like a large cooking knife.
"What the hell is that for?" I asked, nearly turning to run. He looked at it with real surprise, holding it out with his mouth open, and stopped walking.
"I...I...I..." was all he could say. I woke up.
What? Why are your eyes still glued to the page? I told you that it was just a dream. The first sentence proved it.
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|
| ... |
[04 Feb 2009|04:33pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
indifferent |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters |
] |
Left on green,
Right on
Off color joking,
Off white wedding dress.
Turns everything around;
Hollows out the monsters only rumored to exist
In bedtime stories told to
Shock and awe.
There is no
Superman in the White House;
Nor Black Panther,
Nor Mister T.
There is only
Obama.
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| Catch your breath, this will take a while |
[18 Jan 2009|10:55pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
artistic |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
The Cars - Drive |
] |
I've recently had several dreams that mixed up a Discovery show called "Alien Planet" and my hunter character from World of Warcraft. I've never written much in the sword-and-sorcery style fantasy genre and despise the kind of mixing of genres that happens in novels and other media like WoW (although I've now been immersed in that world for over a year), but something about the snatches of story I'm getting from my recurring dreams feels compelling. So, for that reason, and that I need some excuse to get back to writing, I give you a kind of introduction to Sita Roryn, a farm girl destined to become a reluctant leader and help save her homeland from destruction brought about by its own complacency. Tell me what you think, or shriek about the total lack of a cut. Either way, enjoy.
Sita Roryn
When she was a child, as with all young girls in the Upper Hills, Roryn was called "Weda". Pre-names were given for age as well as gender, because, at that time, names had only recently grown from being merely descriptions to set one person apart from another, and a single name, or variations of it, could be given to girls or boys. In her language, "Roryn" meant unexpected. It was mostly given to girls who, like Roryn, were their parents' first born, as this was an uncommon occurance. In Roryn's case, it proved to be doubly so, for she was an only child.
Children's pre-names changed as they grew, however, and most of them looked forward to what they might be called later in life. Roryn never thought about this, though. She rarely thought about more than how to please her parents or, when she felt naughty, how to steal away to talk to her Four Wise Men. They were strange characters in the way of her small society; two were widowers by the fevers that older women often succumbed to and two had never married, although Roryn suspected that one of these still harbored deep feelings for the grandmother of Weda Hathal, one of her neighbors. Whenever Roryn had free time after the farm's work and her mother expected no visiters, she would go to see one or more of these funny old men.
She liked Galem Hattal most of all, because he lived up to his pre-name, which meant cheerful. He could, and always tried to, make her laugh no matter her mood. He was the one who she suspected of being sweet on Weda Hathal's grandmother, and not just because Weda Hathal was anything but a cheerful girl. Roryn looked up to both Faryn Matta and Galem Ken, because she knew that they had been officers in the Saraen militia when her father had fought back against Stone Eye bandits who had come across the Uraeus limb of the Great Crown in small enough groups to pass between Empire patrols. Neither man would speak of those days, nor would Roryn's father, but what she gleaned from the fanciful tales that they did tell her hinted at times much darker and grander than those she knew working on the farm. Galem Ken, Like Galem Hattal, was a staunch bachelor who seemed to want nothing to do with women, yet neither missed an opportunity to go into the little village down the creek from Roryn's farm and take in what gossip he could find while sitting with the Elders in front of Winsal Dartha's feed store. Galem Hattal was a retired farmer who made his living instructing young men on animal husbandry, so he and Galem Ken, who still ran his own small foundry for making iron parts for horse tack, were naturally good friends, though they would never admit it. Faryn Matta only came down to the village when necessary to get provisions, and that only in the harshest winter, because he was a loner, and hunted for most of his food and clothing. Still, Roryn was drawn to him because of his seeming need to share his skills at survival, and he sometimes rewarded her interest with a magical trick or other glimpse at the softer personality that he had somehow almost lost decades before on the bloodied fields beneath the Twin Passes.
The fourth of Roryn's odd friends was by all accounts the oddest. Quinth Naggel lived up to his pre-name just as Galem Hattal lived up to his, but "Quinth" meant trying hard, which was a compliment reserved for those who Roryn's society considered practical men. Quinth Naggel was instead a tinkerer, a builder of gadgets either useful or not. In most everyone's eyes but Roryn's, all too many of the things that he spent his time on were not. He was tolerated both for his familial ties in the Upper Hills as well as for the ocassional bit of undeniable genius he showed his neighbors, but few of them trusted him, and fewer than that understood him. Roryn understood him, though, and loved all of his curios and inventions, scuptures and toys. She knew from her earliest memories of him that he was the smartest person in the Hills, perhaps in the world, and felt defensive for him because of that. She saw in her neighbors' distrust no more than childish envy, and so begged him at every opportunity to show her his newest gadget and explain to her how it worked. With feigned reticence, he would always do so, and she delighted at the sparkle that showed in his eyes when he did.
During Roryn's youngest years, when the winters seemed most harsh and her mother and father had to do all of the farm's work themselves, she saw little of her neighbors beyond periodic trips to the village and the annual Sunday Fair. It was in front of the feed store that she met Galem Ken and Galem Hattal, and at the Fair in her fifth or sixth summer that she met Faryn Matta and Quinth Naggel. Roryn's father warned her off of the latter and her mother warned her off of the former, but she took no heed of their advice and soon learned where they all lived and found whatever silly excuse she could to go see them. Roryn loved her parents very much, though, and admired them more than anyone else. She was incorrigible, however, so that eventually her mother allowed first Galem Hattal, then Quinth Naggel, to come visit them just like their more accepted neighbors, the ones who were married and always seemed to have too many children. Roryn guessed that her parents knew she looked upon the men as uncles or grandfathers, none of which she had close by, and so gave as much approval as they were able. For this, Roryn loved them all the more.
Roryn's father was a solid, quiet type of man, more at home tilling his fields than speaking to anyone of gossip or personal feelings, and, despite her unquenchable curiosity and energy, Roryn's personality took more after his than her mother's. Her mother was a diligent and hard worker too, of course, as were all farmer's wives in the Upper Hills, but her true life was in her socializing with their neighbors. She kept their small dugout as clean as possible, forcing Roryn to help her sweep and dust, even though they really were only raising a cloud that settled again over everything. She insisted that Roryn and her father wear their best clothes when visitors came, although neither Roryn's family nor their neighbors were wealthy enough to have more than one good outfit a year. Yet, because Roryn loved her mother dearly and saw how much it meant to her, she never complained nor sneaked out when told that visitors were expected. Moreover, Roryn watched closely how her mother held herself in front of their neighbors and tried to be as polite as she, even when they brought children who were spoiled or mean. Roryn loved her Four Wise Men and her father, but it was her mother whose face and voice she would never forget.
Roryn's name was one of the oldest still used, probably because it was unusual, and she was more proud of it than children were expected to be. The ones her age who lived in the Hills cared more about their pre-names, or, more to the point, what they would become when reaching Flowering. The girls she knew mostly wanted to be given "Luris" or "Levin", which meant beautiful, young and pure, respectively. Too many older girls were given these for Roryn's taste. To her, either was like calling a pond wet or the Sky Home warm. She wanted to be called Kestor, but never said it aloud, because it meant thoughtful, and was reserved for young men. New pre-names were given at the Sunday Fair, for girls, the first summer of or after their first menses; for boys, after they had gone to ground, usually in their twelfth or thirteenth year. When it seemed that Roryn's time was coming, she listened to everything her mother told her about what it might mean to be a young woman, but she also bothered Faryn Matta until he told her about what it was like to be a young man. Especially, she asked him about going to ground. At this, he balked for many days, which seemed strange to her since he had willingly enough explained how children were made in basically the same way that animals were. This much she already knew; there was little about that which could be hidden on a farm. He seemed different when she asked him about the boyhood ritual, though, almost afraid of her for asking. Late in the fall of her eleventh year, however, he relented, since this was the time when he was beginning to train many Upper Hills boys for just that.
It was a simple thing, really, although Roryn thought it unbearably cruel and heartless. After years of working their family farms or in their parents' shops in the village, Upper Hills boys were specially trained for one summer in hunting and survival skills, then taken by the Elders one by one across the Stone Eye border beyond the Twin Passes and let loose to find their way home alone or die. Knowing the land below the Passes as she did, and hearing all her life about the predators and bandits beyond, Roryn suddenly felt very sad for all the boys that she had before then barely noticed. Also, she finally understood the utter silence of adults that surrounded children's rumors of ones who had never returned. Although Roryn could not remember any among her close neighbors, and realizing that this was why she had not thought to ask about it before, there had been one boy from a family who lived close to the river and had visited her farm a few times when she was very young. One year he had simply stopped coming, and she had been told that he had died of fever, but now she was sure that he hadn't. He had been healthy and strong; the fever only took the old and the weak. During Roryn's eleventh winter, while many of the boys she had known were fighting for their lives in the great wilderness, she thought often of Cresson Tass, whom she had once considered quite handsome despite his obvious discomfort with adolescent growth and development, and cried for many reasons for which she had no words.
On the day, about two rounds after the Long Night, when Roryn's father was first able to comfortably make the trip to the village for provisions, she begged him to take her, because she could no longer bear to stay in their warm home with her constant visions of pain and death. Neither were alien to her, she knew with a farmer's intimacy where her meat came from, but going to ground was different from the quick, almost respectful, slaughter of cattle or sheep. Patiently, her father agreed, but made sure that she was doubly well protected against the cold, a gesture that only slightly averted her mother's objections. They had both known how deeply that Roryn was affected that winter and thought that this short change may help her spirits.
The trip to the village was indeed not long, given two whole days of thawing from relative warmth. And Roryn had taken such a trip before, during a winter that had been unusually light with snow and ice. When she and her father reached the village center and the feed store, however, she knew immediately that something was wrong, because there were more men there than would gather on any single day throughout spring. As soon as she saw the faces of men she recognized as the fathers of boys old enough to be sent across the Passes, Roryn knew what it was. None of the boys had come back this year. Not one.
She was held away from the talk between the Elders and the rest, but the men's voices were to frightened and angry to be kept low. The first boy to be sent had not been seen for over a round, and the last was yet ten days still out. Although three of the men, the fathers of the earliest sent, had mostly come to terms with their loss, the implausibility of a total loss was too much for the rest to believe. The Elders tried to quiet the anger and say that setting up a search was still too dangerous and in any case forbidden. To Roryn's shame, her father agreed. But Faryn Matta, who had been standing close to the center of the gathering since Roryn and her father had arrived, did not. When he raised his voice to a level Roryn had never heard, all others became silent, even those of the Elders.
"They are not just your children," he said clearly so that all near the feed store could hear, "they are men of the Empire. Perhaps you have forgotten that, but I have not, and you can be sure that the Stone Eyes have not as well. Each winter, we send more boys up there to fight their way home, as was the agreement I helped to strike before many of you were born, and each winter the Stone Eyes have kept that agreement; but listen to me: it was never meant to be a permanent peace. You know this, no matter how much you pretend that this is as it has always been and always will be. The Empire never signed a formal armistice, and the Stone Eyes never sent an ambassador. I don't know how many times that I have told you this, though you only laughed at me, but now your boys have paid for it with their lives. Regardless of what you would like to believe, the war has never ended, and this can be nothing less than a warning that they mean to bring it to us again."
During his speech, Roryn had grown more and more frightened, her images of boys being eaten by wolves and bears giving way to half-formed visions of torture and slavery that she had gotten from long days spent listening to the tales spun by her Four Wise Men. Now, she was painfully conscious that all those stories might have been true, or worse. The man she had known as a strong, though reserved, father looked as frightened as she felt, and shook visibly as he watched Faryn Matta speak. In the older man, she no longer saw a hunter of game and a trainer of boys, but a hunter of men and a leader of soldiers. All eyes were on his face, as if waiting to hear orders to battle.
Faryn Matta issued no such orders. Shrinking, visibly straining to hold himself straight, he only added, "We must send a messenger to the Empire, or at least to Saraea. If I am right, the Stone Eyes will be here by last snowfall. If we have not prepared before then or left the Hills, we will all share the fate of our boys." Reacting as much to his change in attitude as to the alarm in his words, several men began to argue that he was exaggerating or lying. Before long, he had lost his place at the center of the gathering and Roryn lost sight of him. Her father took her by an arm and went into the feed store, where he bought on credit quite a bit more supplies than they had come for. Within three hours, just before the sky had become tinged in scarlet, they reached home, and her father gave her mother the news. They sent Roryn to bed, but she could not sleep. Over the crackling of the night-fire, she heard them arguing about what they should do. Over her mother's objections that they could not wait to find out what the Elders planned and should go to her cousin's village in the Lower Hills, Roryn's father insisted that they stay and see.
One round and twelve days later, a large force of Stone Eye soldiers, wearing arms and armor like had never been seen in Saraea, poured over the border in the Twin Passes and laid waste to the Upper and Lower Hills before being halted and turned back by a hastily gathered army of mostly under-trained men. Of those living in and around Roryn's village, nearly nine out of every ten were put to the sword, including both of her parents. Roryn was spared as a captive and taken back over the Passes by slavers. Daring all, she escaped in the midst of the wilderness and fought her way through to safety in Saraea. Others were held for ransom, including Faryn Matta and Galem Ken, who came close to being executed for their part in the war long since fought. Of Roryn's Four Wise Men, only they and Quinth Naggel survived the incursion, but no one knew how Quinth Naggel had managed it, and he refused to say. Some twenty days after her captivity, Roryn began menses. That summer, at a dishearteningly small and short ceremony during what would have been in any other year a time of joy and hope, she was given the pre-name "Sita", which means stands alone. It had never been given to a girl before, but the Elders said that they saw enough strength within her to honor it, and her new guardians, Faryn Matta and Galem Ken, accepted it in her parents' place.
In Roryn's culture, people's pre-names changed many times during their lives, but from that day she never found cause to change hers again, and no one found the strength to take it from her.
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| How Far is Too Far? |
[12 Jan 2009|11:51am] |
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mood |
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envious |
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music |
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Fleetwood Mac - Future Games |
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Unfreakingbelievable. Someone in my family has finally realized a life's dream, made it to the pinnacle of her profession, and I couldn't be more envious. The caveat here is that she is completely, utterly, batshit insane. In a good way, but still. My cousin Genevieve has, after only a few years of working on the Ice, gained a permanent place in history. She is wintering at the South Pole. For those of you who know nothing about this, it's an outpost of skilled, uber talented, yet hopeless social misfits at the most southern point on the planet, some thousand miles away from the nearest acceptable modicum of civilization. Moreover, she will now be spending, what, seven or eight months there in almost fathomless darkness at temperatures of possibly 50-80 degrees below zero. Congratulate her if you feel the need, I have. Gods help me, I would trade with her in an instant.
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[06 Jan 2009|01:38pm] |
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mood |
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 anxious |
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music |
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Taps |
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Bad news from the Motherland. Our bearish overlords in Russia have cut nearly half of the US LJ work force, owing apparently to the imminent death of the Russian stock market and our parent company. This may be a premature warning, but don't be too shocked if you get online some day next week and your journals have mysteriously vanished. So much for that $175 I spent on a permanent account.
EDIT: in response to the weirdness, I've created far2sane at insanejournal.com, just in case. I think I'll backup my poetry there, at least.
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| The Mystery |
[06 Jan 2009|04:06am] |
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mood |
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jubilant |
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music |
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tappity tap, whirrrrr... |
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Be it soft, sudden, strained, or unsought;
There is nothing in human interaction
So frightening,
So fulfilling,
So frustrating,
So assuring,
So dangerous,
So tempting,
So torturous, or
So sublime as
A first kiss.
By lips, yet unvoiced;
Face to face, yet unseen;
It is the replacement of dreams by reality and reality by dreams.
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