sunday night musings
May. 5th, 2003 12:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7dave and i slept most of the afternoon, so being up this late isn't such a bad thing for me.
here's something i don't know whether to think is cute or outrageous: Dave, the product of a Catholic school education, didn't realize that the Pill actually made women infertile while they were taking it. He thought it merely regulated their cycle, making it possible for the rhythm method to be employed. He'd never really given it much thought. (I've never taken the Pill but am contemplating it. Have heard horror stories of weight gain and total loss of sexual appetite, but all three of my sisters are taking it and except for some augmentation of breast size, no ill affects seem to have resulted. Heaven preserve me from growing breasts... I'm serious, I can't find bras that fit as it is and don't want back problems.)
So, there's some food for thought.
In the meantime, I tried my hand at creative writing again for the first time in months. I just felt like i had to at least try, or I'd forget how utterly. I lay in Dave's bed with him and read him two chapters of Comet In Moominland and then he fell asleep and I lay with my head on his shoulder watching his pulse in his neck from the corner of my eye, and then I decided to get up and do something. So I am.
Here's what I came up with, anyhow. Ignore the verb-tense shift; I'm trying to decide whether it has a place or not. If I knew where it was going, perhaps.... Anyhow, here are 814 words of it:
This isn't a novel. This is a place.
This is a place that I go when I need to put my mind somewhere outside the everyday, normal world. I can't afford vacations, and they don't satisfy in the same internal way. This is an expedition, for the mind.
Imagine, if your neurons aren't too rusty (they're not, and to say they are is a feeble excuse), that you're somewhere else. Block out whatever's really around you right now, and try to experience what I'm telling you about.
First imagine yourself sitting at a window. The light from the window is clear and white, the diffused clarity of a north-facing window on a bright but cloudy afternoon. There are trees outside, their tops level with the high window. It's clear and cool outside, and the window's open a crack. You can smell pine and a hint of mud somewhere in the breeze. You're sitting on a cushioned ledge built into the windowsill; the window is designed to be sat in. You can look out at a cobblestone road leading in to your right, into the wall your window's in, but two storeys down. There is a great doorway there that you can't see, but you know it is made up of massive doors a dragon's height and more. The cobblestone road comes through a great gateway filled with wrought-iron gates so tall their tops are level with your window, though they're far away, set into the outer wall. There is a watchtower to your left on the outer wall, and another a good distance to your right. The watchtowers and the great building you're in are part of a massive fortress of gray stone, but the inner building's windows are lofty and large and beautiful, unlike those of a castle. The building's fortifications are strong, but beautiful.
You have lived here for several years. The window is the window of your bedroom, and you like to sit there and look out at the road curving down the gentle hill, and smell the forest beyond. You can see the forest, a green-black curve down the steeper slope of the mountain below your fortress. And you like to watch the people, every one of them familiar, as few strangers come this far north. They are your people, and your friends.
If you were to close your eyes you would know the fortress was still there, and the people-- a thousand of them. You don't know every single name, but you know every face, and most of their names.
If you were to close your eyes you could still smell the pine, and the light would still be there behind your eyelids. You won't close your eyes, but if you did, you wouldn't miss anything. And if your eyes were closed, you would see the quiet little pulses you generally see with your eyes closed: fading ghosts of the lights you saw when your eyes were open, gradually replaced by drifting fragments of subtly different shades of darkness. If you sat with your eyes closed for several minutes, leaning back against the wall and abandoning yourself to daydream, the shades of darkness would fade into memories of light, and you would dream of the things you had done that morning, and perhaps lose yourself in contemplation of some weighty or pleasant issue that you wanted to think of. And after a time, your contemplation would grow hazy and a bit disjointed, and your thoughts would drift farther afield.
Imagine then that the memories of light behind your eyelids took on their own shape and began to move of their own volition, and you noticed but did not rise to alertness. You stayed as you were, mostly asleep and pleasantly floating in half-dream, and half-watched but did not try to look directly at the moving shapes.
And so the shapes danced for you, pleasantly, quietly, and you followed them without paying too much attention. As you slid deeper into sleep, they got brighter and brighter, until you could see misty silver shapes. Gradually the shapes got firmer and firmer; soon they were a silvery dragon, with a sinuous neck, a delicate head, a slender lithe body, long strong legs, wide bright wings, and a long winding tail. The dragon's beauty filled your eyes and as you watched more intently it brightened in color from a pale silver to a strong deep violet-blue.
This is your companion-spirit. You have known her since you were born; she has been waiting for you behind your eyelids, and used to come you after you'd stopped paying attention. She is always there now. Once you had reached your full growth as a young woman (for that is what you are) she came to you in a dream and when you opened your eyes she stayed with you.
here's something i don't know whether to think is cute or outrageous: Dave, the product of a Catholic school education, didn't realize that the Pill actually made women infertile while they were taking it. He thought it merely regulated their cycle, making it possible for the rhythm method to be employed. He'd never really given it much thought. (I've never taken the Pill but am contemplating it. Have heard horror stories of weight gain and total loss of sexual appetite, but all three of my sisters are taking it and except for some augmentation of breast size, no ill affects seem to have resulted. Heaven preserve me from growing breasts... I'm serious, I can't find bras that fit as it is and don't want back problems.)
So, there's some food for thought.
In the meantime, I tried my hand at creative writing again for the first time in months. I just felt like i had to at least try, or I'd forget how utterly. I lay in Dave's bed with him and read him two chapters of Comet In Moominland and then he fell asleep and I lay with my head on his shoulder watching his pulse in his neck from the corner of my eye, and then I decided to get up and do something. So I am.
Here's what I came up with, anyhow. Ignore the verb-tense shift; I'm trying to decide whether it has a place or not. If I knew where it was going, perhaps.... Anyhow, here are 814 words of it:
This isn't a novel. This is a place.
This is a place that I go when I need to put my mind somewhere outside the everyday, normal world. I can't afford vacations, and they don't satisfy in the same internal way. This is an expedition, for the mind.
Imagine, if your neurons aren't too rusty (they're not, and to say they are is a feeble excuse), that you're somewhere else. Block out whatever's really around you right now, and try to experience what I'm telling you about.
First imagine yourself sitting at a window. The light from the window is clear and white, the diffused clarity of a north-facing window on a bright but cloudy afternoon. There are trees outside, their tops level with the high window. It's clear and cool outside, and the window's open a crack. You can smell pine and a hint of mud somewhere in the breeze. You're sitting on a cushioned ledge built into the windowsill; the window is designed to be sat in. You can look out at a cobblestone road leading in to your right, into the wall your window's in, but two storeys down. There is a great doorway there that you can't see, but you know it is made up of massive doors a dragon's height and more. The cobblestone road comes through a great gateway filled with wrought-iron gates so tall their tops are level with your window, though they're far away, set into the outer wall. There is a watchtower to your left on the outer wall, and another a good distance to your right. The watchtowers and the great building you're in are part of a massive fortress of gray stone, but the inner building's windows are lofty and large and beautiful, unlike those of a castle. The building's fortifications are strong, but beautiful.
You have lived here for several years. The window is the window of your bedroom, and you like to sit there and look out at the road curving down the gentle hill, and smell the forest beyond. You can see the forest, a green-black curve down the steeper slope of the mountain below your fortress. And you like to watch the people, every one of them familiar, as few strangers come this far north. They are your people, and your friends.
If you were to close your eyes you would know the fortress was still there, and the people-- a thousand of them. You don't know every single name, but you know every face, and most of their names.
If you were to close your eyes you could still smell the pine, and the light would still be there behind your eyelids. You won't close your eyes, but if you did, you wouldn't miss anything. And if your eyes were closed, you would see the quiet little pulses you generally see with your eyes closed: fading ghosts of the lights you saw when your eyes were open, gradually replaced by drifting fragments of subtly different shades of darkness. If you sat with your eyes closed for several minutes, leaning back against the wall and abandoning yourself to daydream, the shades of darkness would fade into memories of light, and you would dream of the things you had done that morning, and perhaps lose yourself in contemplation of some weighty or pleasant issue that you wanted to think of. And after a time, your contemplation would grow hazy and a bit disjointed, and your thoughts would drift farther afield.
Imagine then that the memories of light behind your eyelids took on their own shape and began to move of their own volition, and you noticed but did not rise to alertness. You stayed as you were, mostly asleep and pleasantly floating in half-dream, and half-watched but did not try to look directly at the moving shapes.
And so the shapes danced for you, pleasantly, quietly, and you followed them without paying too much attention. As you slid deeper into sleep, they got brighter and brighter, until you could see misty silver shapes. Gradually the shapes got firmer and firmer; soon they were a silvery dragon, with a sinuous neck, a delicate head, a slender lithe body, long strong legs, wide bright wings, and a long winding tail. The dragon's beauty filled your eyes and as you watched more intently it brightened in color from a pale silver to a strong deep violet-blue.
This is your companion-spirit. You have known her since you were born; she has been waiting for you behind your eyelids, and used to come you after you'd stopped paying attention. She is always there now. Once you had reached your full growth as a young woman (for that is what you are) she came to you in a dream and when you opened your eyes she stayed with you.
