| I am sure the sky will fall on my head tomorrow |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|04:04 pm] |
Ohai. Feeling a little frazzled, wound up, strung out, but only a little. I have two weeks to finish four assignments - all of which are at varying stages of completion, but certainly on the way to being done. So, um. Nothing really new there.
( Here be a certain amount of aimless rambling thinking )
In other news! I just discovered Edith Sitwell and William Walton's 'Facade' which is a suite of Sitwell's poems set to Walton's music and it makes my head explode with awesomeness.
( Youtubery under the cut )
Okay so I am weird.
Anyway I guess life is pretty good generally, bar the occasional flail. Uni is going okay, I have stuff to look forward to, I am surrounded by friends, I have a boy who cares about me and cooks for me and talks about swords and Shakespeare with me for hours on end.
So that is pretty good, I think.
Have a poem. Or a bit of a poem. I should write some more stanzas.
I know a boy who sleeps in Neverland
His chestnut hair spread out all on the silky strand
I know he sleeps there, even though by day
His tired eyes betray an older face
Who traces distant shores with worn and steady hand
But see him at his work and at his play -
World-weary smiles those tired lines erase
Until the sun is loath too long to stay
And home at last he creeps to silver-threaded sand. |
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| Watch this space |
[Oct. 1st, 2009|11:15 pm] |
Don't disregard the last post entirely, because a lot of it is factual, but disregard the singular vehemence with which it was delivered.
It was a description of how I was feeling at the time. What it quite categorically wasn't was a description of the sum total of my life right at the moment. What I am trying to do is clear out all the negative horribleness that's going on in my head so I can make room for new goals and changes.
There will be further negative posts to clear out the cobwebs, and then I will start talking about the things that are good. There are a lot of things that are good. There is at least one thing in my life right now that is spectacularly good, but more on that later. It has to be done in the sequence that makes sense in my head.
Right now, I need to write down the old bad things, and the things that went wrong, or sideways, or backwards, or pear-shaped, so that I can let go of them and adjust my metaphorical sails. Then I can discuss the things that have made me happy, that I have enjoyed, and the things that I am looking forward to, and the things that I am going to fix.
Just wanted to clarify all that.
More as it comes to hand. |
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| Things to Regret, Things to Forget: A Negative Post |
[Sep. 29th, 2009|07:48 pm] |
Right now, I feel completely rubbish. I'm tired and stressed and fed up. It's as if I don't have time to live properly.
It's as if I somehow failed to achieve every single goal I set myself for this time this year.
Oh wait.
I did, didn't I?
I was going to get that job. I haven't done it yet. I never heard back from any of the applications I sent out when I had the time, and then I stopped having time.
I was going to find a place and move out of home. No way in hell that's happening without the job.
I wanted to be healthier. And I was really fit during the holidays, which lasted until university started again. At which point I put on five kilos and stopped fitting into most of my jeans.
Then there was all the bullshit with the group project from hell and the stupid bitch who made us spend an extra week on it (because she hadn't done any work and needed an extension) and then bailed at the last minute anyway. And now all of my assignment due dates are messed up and I don't have enough time for anything.
I was going to get my licence so I could start using my car. I totally did that! Hooray! No, wait, then I completely trashed my car just around the corner from my house less than a month after getting my licence. Nice one, dipshit.
With the 48-hour game making challenge looming, I am so far beyond my stress threshold that I don't even know where I live anymore.
And I don't think I even really want to make video games for a living.
More as it comes to light. |
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| Words |
[Sep. 23rd, 2009|10:28 pm] |
Something I wrote a while ago and remembered today. I'd squirrelled it away to finish later, but I think this is as finished as it's going to get.
These words get tangled and confused,
The words we cannot stand to lose,
The words we know that have no place,
Which bring our lips and ears disgrace.
The things we said in other lives,
The lies which for a truth-ring strive,
The spaces in-between each time
We speak - the dialogue's ending line.
Half-rhymes are a half-truth's tone,
Whispered into chalk and stone -
Symbols into meaning made
Complexity for safety trade.
Speak not - speaking has no sound,
Formed in ghost-like motions round
The places that were never named
Cannot by human tongues be claimed.
Mischief through disaster spills,
To waken dormant cipher stills
Cryptic in their methods, hence
Distil the meaning; not the sense. |
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| Still working on assignments |
[Sep. 14th, 2009|12:43 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | poetry, writing | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sleepy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon | ] |
Have some more poetry. Sort of unfinished.
It is a slipknot of desire that draws us here
It tightens and we feel it
A stopper to rational thought
Our tethers are cast out like nets
Set adrift on the slow breath of a rhythmic tide
It pulls us into each newly-defined dawn,
Sending us back with the nightfall
Have you seen the city's silhouette?
A still image burnt onto the sky's cornea
When it fades we work by the yellow light thrown
From the windows of passing trains
Which scuttle blindly along their bridges overhead |
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| Things I have learnt |
[Sep. 4th, 2009|01:59 pm] |
Another bad poetry interlude, because I don't have time for a real post at the moment. Currently beating my head against Maya trying to not suck at CGI modelling. It isn't working yet. Here's a thing I wrote.
Growing up is not about finding yourself
- Or, it is,
But in all the wrong ways
We grow up to find that we are liars and fools
That the world is all shades of dirty grey
That every moment is an in-between
We grow up into madmen and whores
Vile bitches and arseholes with acid tongues
We grow up to find that we are not heroes
That no-one can be saved
That we will never do anything right
We grow up to make mistakes and hurt each other
And destroy ourselves
And burn and writhe and twist with the agony of our lives in each passing second
And
And we grow up to find out what love is
And we grow up to know what it is to forgive and be forgiven
And we grow up. |
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| Honourable in Victory, Gracious in Defeat |
[Aug. 9th, 2009|11:31 pm] |
I am tired and I've just handed in an assignment which I wasn't happy with and I'm beginning the ramp up into the uni semester stress right now, but this is something worth saying that needs to be said before it becomes tomorrow:
Today it is two years to the day since I joined Prima Spada. Since that first Thursday, I've acquired a blue sash, a rapier, a copy of Academie de l'Espee, a whole strange array of Renaissance bits and pieces and a head full of useless historical trivia, to name but a few things.
But more importantly, I discovered some of the most amazing people on the planet.
So this is a message to my fencing friends: I love you all so very, very dearly. You are my family and the place where I belong. I value your words, your wisdom, your wit, your company and your complete and utter silliness. I am honoured that you are all part of my life. I am sometimes amazed that you continue to put up with me, but I cannot express how very glad I am that you do.
There's so much I could say here, and maybe I will try to post something more coherent when I am less tired and muddled, but for now I'll just say that the last two years have been a wonderful strange rollercoaster journey, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon.
Here's to hopefully many more years fencing, friendship and joy (and maybe eventually a silver sash!) in the future. |
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| Change |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|09:43 pm] |
I've been thinking a lot lately. Well, I am always thinking. Recently, however, I've spent a good deal of time contemplating the general state and direction of my life (I know, yawn, right? Feel free to stop reading here).
( Wall o' text begins here )
I have been trying to prove things all year, and mostly for the wrong reasons. Right now, I need to prove, to no-one but myself, that I can cope on my own. That I can be self-aware and responsible and creative for nothing but my own amusement. I hope that, for once, this is a good reason.
This has been your late-night introspective rant, fuelled by red wine to which I may or may not be allergic. |
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| The circle of bells |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|09:12 am] |
I wrote this last night on the edge of sleep. It's not particularly good and a bit disconnected, because I was literally falling asleep when I wrote it, but here it is anyway.
Within the circle of bells
I am filled
with strangeness
and the thoughts about people
I cannot express
These bells - what are they?
They ring above us
in the grey light of every sky
They toll - telling,
Describing places and names,
inscribing them in air
I am not spoken for
- I speak.
My voice is a chime
woven in melismatic chorus
Each word sounds a secret-hold,
locked into broken earth,
dissonant and unresolved
I hold against - precious and wicked,
each piece I have known.
Crystal-like, thousand-faced,
not shattered, but shattering.
Things hidden split within them
- shards opened into spaces
Stood and standing,
my hollow-self does not know bells
Her chime is charm-like,
ringing into the head,
bell-brought and known of no happiness
but that which is instinctive
- passion-like
(which love in all its forms is made to name)
I am not spoken for
but self-spoken
Life, unsung
crafts its singers
- and I am one. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|12:42 am] |
I had a fabulous day today (well, yesterday, technically, as of 42 minutes ago). A simple, pleasant, fun, good day, spent in the company of good friends (in person and then via the interwubs).
I am feeling good today - and generally improving in mood lately. More... Free? Independent? Strong? Alive?
I don't know. I'd like to make it last. I think I'll have a good day tomorrow too. And then Thursday. And then I'll be on a roll.
More thoughts later perhaps. Or possibly I will just drink beer.
I kinda like these holiday things. |
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| Something begins... |
[Jun. 14th, 2009|08:44 pm] |
I had been drifting in endless cloudform for a thousandyear-and-one, when I hit upon a word: quill. It stuck fast, and, where it held, formed a cliff-face with stone steps. I alighted there and moved upward on the new-made path; and that was how I walked the First Journey.
- excerpt from the Writings-of-Chalk-and-Stone (What Was First Read) |
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| Erwachte |
[Jun. 9th, 2009|10:29 pm] |
It is morning
and we move
sluggishly
swathed in the inexperience of nature
Dark circles anchor us to sleep
- our dreams do not compel us
to desire waking consciousness
It is morning
and the sun
lights only
a cold and distant world
Warmth does not reach
our toes and fingertips
encased still in the glassiness of yesterday's fatigue
It is morning
and we are embittered
by a black sap that beats
sweet-hot under our bark-rough, unshed skin
in effigy of blood
A passionless energy
drives us
- bleak furnaces burning
in hollow faces
It is morning
and lovers shift
apart
warm handprints soon forgotten
Skin is from skin removed
- closeness broken by
the ritual of waking
It is morning
and I see
a beauty that belongs to no-one
in the pauses
and pulses
of the still-unstilled world beginning |
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| Head in a vice |
[May. 30th, 2009|11:44 pm] |
My brain doesn't work. Ever ever ever. I have been doing a lot and dealing with a lot. I will continue to be doing a lot for the following week and then suddenly everything will be finished and I will collapse into more of a quivering snivelling heap than I usually am. Anyway here are some song lyrics I wrote, which are not finished.
There is a tune for them in my head but no chords yet.
Enjoy. Or not. Whichever:
Left the decision far too late
To tell if the right thing was mail or plate
To protect my needs from the vision squared
For the one I knew and the soul he bared
There's a bullet in my brain
And I don't feel right
Is the cat still screaming
In the fire at night?
Well, my hands get hot
But my skin won't burn
So the pain stagnates
And I never learn
The only truth that I ever heard
Was about how a spider could catch a bird
But I swallowed the spider to catch the fly
Me home with the birds, though I can't think why
There's an arrow in my eye
And I can't see straight
Are the brakes still screaming
Can they take the weight?
Well, they sharpened the blade
But my skin won't turn
So I just can't break
And I never learn
In other news: My head hurts and I'm going to bed. |
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| Thingy things |
[May. 6th, 2009|10:04 pm] |
Trivial post!
Have been snowed under with uni, work, things, etc. Surprise. Anyway, I am currently working on a concept design project, wherein I and a partner have to break down a scene from a story we've been given and develop concept art for it - the story we have chosen is an excerpt from H Rider Haggard's 'She', which, by the look of it, I really need to read. Here are two speedpainty things I did in photoshop (discovering, to my delight, that I can in fact speedpaint), to get a feel for the colours and tones I want to use in these environments:
I kinda like them. Will be doing more of these. That's all for now. |
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| The words fall from my head |
[Apr. 23rd, 2009|11:46 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | thoughts, writing | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Performer's Mask - Vince Conaway | ] |
Here is... something. There's a lot of strangeness here. Don't look too hard in it for meaning - it is mostly emotion, rhythm, and, well, nonsense. This is how the words fall when I do not hold them, pull them back, bind them up and burn what is not needed. Probably the most visceral self-expression I can give in words.
~
We carry them with us these
modern spirits of wantslashneed
carry them in our pockets and handbags
heedlessly whither we go
in used tissues the crinkle of plastic money,
curled up tight in the tobacco of our cigarettes, abandoned in corners and another sip from the wine glass, clinging to our
shaking
hands.
We throw them into the fireplace with crumpled newspaper and roll them up in towels with the dirty laundry asleep they fill our thoughts in the folds of time and they are naked and nameless and screaming and this is how
we
define ourselves.
There is a period
of
self-flagellation my many, my
thousand lashes pin-sharp poison tongues biting into the skin of my back relentless, burning, clawing away my flesh in the shape, the form, they –
where they pull free they
leave
handprints.
Thus marked we claw our eyes out for the birds and whisper 'Him, him. You. Love is the bearer, borne deathless, hollow-boned.'
We, he
he
falls asleep in corridors, doorways, subways
ticketless and unmanned, pilgrim-like
work late, wake early, when the dead arise they will integrate seamlessly into the population.
Chalky
dead-living filth under my fingernails from the skin of every person I have ever touched and you wonder why I am so afraid.
I clamp my tongue
choler rising instead
to fill the space between myriad names
they are
ungraspable, they witness and fall fountained black bile ink-like wrenches them into unforgiving being and voices are thousand and thousand screaming in chorus, an echoed echoing vision.
I thus marked
I
bite my tongue, bloodied
burying words in sand for the birds, the birds, smile and whisper 'Borne in it we are defined deathless, bright, hollow-boned. Love, love. Love is the bearer'.
~ |
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| Snowsong |
[Apr. 7th, 2009|12:38 am] |
I have no useful words today. Here are some I prepared much earlier, on a snowy day in Nozawa Onsen. They help keep me calm and clear-headed on fuzzy days. I hope you like them.
~
The cold air is never still here
- it is tempered with the quickness
and sharpness
of those whose lungs it fills
- scurrying along narrow streets
and exhaling vapour.
Thoughts fill the air like snow
flurrying, fluttering
swirling, unique, and meaningless.
Our heads are only clear
when the sun strikes a path
- arrow-fallen -
into the valley below.
Clarity is a brief, pure tone in white
pitch-bright and sun-sounded
until the clouds close and soft
thought-fall returns.
The world is muted
grey-white
- our shadows, half-forgotten and cowardly
like untruths, follow us
through the ice-feathered pines.
We rise slowly
to the mountain heights
and unveil deceit,
beginning our descent
wraith-quick,
scattering down the slopes.
A crow catches
the ghost-trails
we track across the mountain face
- catches them in his beak
and weaves them into songs.
Our shadows, too, are caught for a spell
frozen, inhaled
made into nests to hold half-formed ideas
carried by the wind.
We leave them behind
in the white-grey cold,
steam rising from our shoulders and hands
where the snow-thoughts touch
on our bare skin.
Without shadows
our tongues become
stone shrines to silence
We do not speak, but listen
to a song-sharp language,
unknown, yet familiar
We taste its words soundlessly
and the wandering downward paths of thought
ring
like frost-hung bell-tones
in our minds. |
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| Just smile and nod. (She can be a bit slow sometimes) |
[Mar. 11th, 2009|08:57 pm] |
So for those of you wondering about my previous post, I just had a bad day yesterday. I was working on something out at uni and it took longer than expected and didn't go as planned, and, overall, came out looking not as good as I had hoped.
I was tired and then I forgot to eat dinner and it all piled up and I got frustrated and upset. And then I got more frustrated and upset because this time it only took me 9 days to go from 'optimistic about the new semester' to nervous wreck. I don't want to be stressed, but it's just the way that I deal with things. It's not a good way of dealing with things, but it happens that way anyway. I am trying to change this, but it won't happen overnight.
At the moment I think I'm still getting used to working 16 hours a week, plus 14 hours of timetabled classes and 20 - 25 hours of study, as well as 7ish hours of fencing training. And then there are social events and general hanging out or occasionally even relaxing.
Oh, and sleeping. I do have eight hours timetabled in every night, but I'm not quite getting all of that.
I'm still suffering from uni course doubts. I know I'm not in exactly the perfect course, but it's the only one that covers a) multiple interests, and b) the industry I want to go into.
So that's all. Just balancing a little precariously at the moment. |
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| Not dead |
[Mar. 4th, 2009|10:19 pm] |
Just making excuses. Creativity fail, I know.
Um um. Lots to think about at the moment. Sorting myself out for uni etc. Starting at new job tomorrow. Lots of hours. Hope I don't crumple.
Starting a band. Getting software and equipment.
Class readings, lots of study to do. Musn't neglect homework and assignments. It's what my Sundays are now officially for. Since I do fuck-all else on the last day of the week.
Maybe less uni social stuff this semester. Maybe less social stuff all around.
I'm a bit jittery, excited about some things, but frustrated and annoyed about others. On and off. Trying to manage things, trying to not get worked up about things going sideways and pear-shaped.
I need sleep though. Sleep now.
GON OUT BACKSON BISY BACKSON D. H.
PS if you get that reference then you're as childish as I am. |
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quirksilver's journal
discontent
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