i've recently been living a life of casual elegance--that is, as close as someone like me ever could come to casual elegance. this casual elegance imparts a sort of relaxed linguic ornateness, a leniency about the state i'm in when i have to say what's necessary--there's less need within my words, i think.
what it is, is something like: life isn't continuously as hard as i'd always thought. i'm a person who tends to beat at the edges of what i'm capable of, which has the potential to sound medium impressive but is actually pretty pathetic, considering that in so many ways i'm capable of so little. but something in me's relaxed, recently. i'm capable of more than just ecstasy and agony; i'm capable of something that approaches calm.
a person can be wildly alive and never say anything about it. this is why i understand emily dickinson to some extent. i've always been wildly alive, feeling everything and feeling nothing and nothing ever happening to me. but this calm thing...it's weird. but i can accept it. because it's new--a new experience. i feel competent, i guess, which is definitely new...and seems like, maybe, a basis from which something can happen.
i'm not saying i'm not still stunted like a bonsai in many familiar ways, still, but, yeah. revolve, circumstances, revolve. i'm not sure what i want to happen--some of the things i've always wanted, i guess. something in me says it's better to have a few more gradations between up and down.
that's what it is: having these gradations will make things that are like the things i want more accessible to me. all i can do about achieving the things that i want is to ask for them, and hope that cosmic forces are listening. the things that are like the things that i want, on the other hand, i can be on the watch for. and the things that are nothing are gradually becoming more apparent.
the thing is that i have to act toward everything with the same conduct, or i'll end up in trouble--that's caution talking. but within that parameter, there's a well-mawed world opening. this doesn't make any sense; i appreciate that to an amazing degree.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
courts below, part somewhere between 1 and 6 or something
courts below (an excerpt--i'm writing it for the first time, but will assume it's excerpt-y)
I don't think Lily wanted to be friends with me. I liked her, though; I liked her hair, which kind of had the air of spun moonbeams, I liked her dark eyebrows... I liked the fact that she looked like the last Unicorn, basically. She was nice, too, and intelligent, and extremely mysterious, but genuinely so, not like a lady in a Dashiell Hammet novel, but like someone desperately attempting to fly under the radar so as not to be noticed and questioned.
I noticed; I questioned. I asked where she was going. She hadn't the skills to lie to me. I ended up accompanying her to 2969, for happy hour--2969 was both the street address and the name of the bar. It was a dive, but kind of a hot dive: a good two thirds of the clientele were young and impoverished as opposed to old and impoverished. if the kitschy oaken paneling and the jukebox filled with smiths hits hadn't indicated this, the $1 cans of Pabst sweating in most of the patrons' hands would have.
it was curiously lightless inside, and I realized we'd stepped into some sort of cosplaying-optional joint when a girl in combat boots brushed her post-halloween costume fairy wings against my face in leaning on the bar. She ordered a Pabst, and went back to her group, all of whom, I noticed, now that I'd been alerted to it, were wearing combination bondage gear and wing-type things.
"What's the theme?" I asked Lily, who I'd been sitting next to pretty quietly, for me, anyway, for a whole five minutes. She'd seemed to want it that way, and she looked around with something akin to nervousness when she answered me.
"The Courts Below," she said, giving me a sussing-out sort of glance.
I know now that she'd suspected me of knowing way more than I did, and was at this moment experiencing the pretty horrible revelation of the possibility that I was in fact the clueless dumbass I looked, and hadn't struck up a conversation with a girl I barely knew on the bus as a method of subtly hinting at the fact that I was who she was waiting for. But at the time I wasn't overly phased by her gaze. "Like tennis or something?" I asked.
She blinked about six times, immobilized, looking slightly up at me from behind her glasses. "No," she said in a still voice. "You're not the Guardian?" she asked carefully.
"Of, um, what?" I asked, fairly cheerfully. I was digging my $1 Pabst, and enjoying the process of making a new friend. Like the idiot that I am. "The tennis balls? Are we to play a match on the court of France?" I saw her horrified glance, and said, "I really never get that quote right."
"No," she said, the horror covered up. "Not a problem." She was cool as starlight--I know now that that's her default setting when dealing with the un-deal-with-able. At the time I accepted her sangfroid.
"What're the Courts Below?" I asked...and noticed another wingspan brushing me, this time on the back of my neck.
"The Courts Below?" I turned at the voice, and looked up. It was a man this time; the costume wings were black, and feathered. He didn't have on any makeup or anything, but he was buckled into a black pleater vest, and his hair, like Horace Tabor's, shone dark as a raven's wing.
"Yeah," I said.
He smiled slightly. "Like on her t-shirt," he said, and I realized--well, I wouldn't go so far as to say realized, but I noticed, in the back of my mind, which is where I always notice the things I later kick myself for ignoring--that his teeth were more tooth-like than actual tooth-shaped. If that makes any sense. It was more the impression of teeth than teeth themselves--more the impression of a face than a face itself. That is, there was a definite face there. But behind it I had the sense--the ignored-as-entirely-improbable sense--of a Francis Bacon-esque blur (Bacon the painter, not that other dude who might have been Shakespeare if you're a prick). "That's funny, the shirt," he added, to Lily. She maintained her silence, and I laughed slightly, internally, at how shy she was.
"She said an ex made up the language," I responded with insouciance.
This was a dumb, DUMB thing to say. The man in black merely laughed, however--and I didn't notice the way his laugh made his mouth stretch uncomfortably wide. Or not really. "Did she?" he asked, eyes dancing at her, and then switching their laughing focus to me.
"So you know what the Courts Below are?" I asked.
"I do," he said amiably, and sat down. He smelled good--there was a bit of a scent of amber about him, buried within the predominant notes of oak and fire, but I've always been partial to anything sweet, even on a guy. "Do you like Lovecraft?" he asked, looking into my eyes with his smiling gaze.
"Oh yeah," I said. "Crazed gods at the gate and half-monsters melting and inbred New Englanders, what's not to like?"
"Have you noticed how, almost always in Lovecraft's stories about chaos and madness, nothing ever happens?" he asked, eyes smiling harder.
I cast my mind back, thinking over the slender Dell paperback I'd picked up in a library booksale. Individuals went mad in the Lovecraft I'd read, sure, but civilization was never so much at risk that a passel of librarians couldn't rescue it. "Hunh," I said.
"Disaster's always averted," he said. "The door always closes. Not full stop, but it closes."
"I see what you mean," I said. "Is that what the Courts Below thing is? Sort of a post-Lovecraftian apocalypse cosplay?"
"No," he said. "Oh no." And he smiled wider. His eyes were faintly repulsive; I've never been one to be able to resist what I was repulsed by, and looked into his face more closely. I was unafraid. I'm too stupid to be afraid, usually. I have no sense of consequences. Things that phase people with common sense don't phase me. But the thing that pulsed behind his face withdrew slightly from my sharpening gaze; I was conscious first of a faint sense of disappointment, and then of a faint disbelief that one watery-ass Pabst had gotten me buzzed enough to see visions of Hell in a stranger's eye. "That which is without order is ordered as well, if you see what I'm getting at," he said.
"No," I said.
"Disorder is ordered around order," he explained kindly. "Disorder has to revolve around order as much as order revolves around disorder."
"Okay," I said, visualizing.
"So the gate stays closed in a Lovecraft story not just due to the intervention of a handful of librarians," he said, grinning while quoting me to myself. "A laughing idiot god may be a laughing idiot god, but even a laughing idiot god knows he has to continue laughing idiotically in order to maintain his principle of self."
At this point my preconscious became aware that he was addressing his remarks to Lily. My conscious mind did not catch on to this, and I listened in utter engagement to what he was saying. "Lovecraft says that the laughing idiot gods have no principles of self," I said. "That's what makes them laughing idiots."
"It's a conundrum," he said. "Possibly," he added. "But the world of the Courts Below believes that it's the gate that is the active principle, rather than either the side of chaos or the side of order. In the Courts Below," and here his smile widened to truly uncomfortable proportions, "we seek to know the Threshold."
"Like in Hellraiser?" I asked, after what was nearly as dramatic a moment as can be expected considering that we were in a dive bar serving $1 Pabst with a number for a name in the middle afternoon, and that Ask, which, I found out later, was the guy's name, had eschewed his actual wings in order to don his semi-hokey Courts Below cosplay.
He laughed. "Sure, why not," he said. "Lily," he added, looking at her for what to me seemed to be only the second time. "How's it going? Nice shirt from your ex."
"We have to go," Lily said in a smooth voice.
"Mmh?" I asked, looking around at her. She was breathing shallowly, and I put down my can of beer and left with her.
"See you soon." The man's voice followed us to the door. It wasn't a strange voice--later, though, I'd remember how it seemed hollowed, like Robert Duncan's knock, drifting. Later too I'd remember that I hadn't said the thing about the librarians he'd quoted at me, but only thought it. At that moment, on the street, though, I was mostly just worried about Lily.
I don't think Lily wanted to be friends with me. I liked her, though; I liked her hair, which kind of had the air of spun moonbeams, I liked her dark eyebrows... I liked the fact that she looked like the last Unicorn, basically. She was nice, too, and intelligent, and extremely mysterious, but genuinely so, not like a lady in a Dashiell Hammet novel, but like someone desperately attempting to fly under the radar so as not to be noticed and questioned.
I noticed; I questioned. I asked where she was going. She hadn't the skills to lie to me. I ended up accompanying her to 2969, for happy hour--2969 was both the street address and the name of the bar. It was a dive, but kind of a hot dive: a good two thirds of the clientele were young and impoverished as opposed to old and impoverished. if the kitschy oaken paneling and the jukebox filled with smiths hits hadn't indicated this, the $1 cans of Pabst sweating in most of the patrons' hands would have.
it was curiously lightless inside, and I realized we'd stepped into some sort of cosplaying-optional joint when a girl in combat boots brushed her post-halloween costume fairy wings against my face in leaning on the bar. She ordered a Pabst, and went back to her group, all of whom, I noticed, now that I'd been alerted to it, were wearing combination bondage gear and wing-type things.
"What's the theme?" I asked Lily, who I'd been sitting next to pretty quietly, for me, anyway, for a whole five minutes. She'd seemed to want it that way, and she looked around with something akin to nervousness when she answered me.
"The Courts Below," she said, giving me a sussing-out sort of glance.
I know now that she'd suspected me of knowing way more than I did, and was at this moment experiencing the pretty horrible revelation of the possibility that I was in fact the clueless dumbass I looked, and hadn't struck up a conversation with a girl I barely knew on the bus as a method of subtly hinting at the fact that I was who she was waiting for. But at the time I wasn't overly phased by her gaze. "Like tennis or something?" I asked.
She blinked about six times, immobilized, looking slightly up at me from behind her glasses. "No," she said in a still voice. "You're not the Guardian?" she asked carefully.
"Of, um, what?" I asked, fairly cheerfully. I was digging my $1 Pabst, and enjoying the process of making a new friend. Like the idiot that I am. "The tennis balls? Are we to play a match on the court of France?" I saw her horrified glance, and said, "I really never get that quote right."
"No," she said, the horror covered up. "Not a problem." She was cool as starlight--I know now that that's her default setting when dealing with the un-deal-with-able. At the time I accepted her sangfroid.
"What're the Courts Below?" I asked...and noticed another wingspan brushing me, this time on the back of my neck.
"The Courts Below?" I turned at the voice, and looked up. It was a man this time; the costume wings were black, and feathered. He didn't have on any makeup or anything, but he was buckled into a black pleater vest, and his hair, like Horace Tabor's, shone dark as a raven's wing.
"Yeah," I said.
He smiled slightly. "Like on her t-shirt," he said, and I realized--well, I wouldn't go so far as to say realized, but I noticed, in the back of my mind, which is where I always notice the things I later kick myself for ignoring--that his teeth were more tooth-like than actual tooth-shaped. If that makes any sense. It was more the impression of teeth than teeth themselves--more the impression of a face than a face itself. That is, there was a definite face there. But behind it I had the sense--the ignored-as-entirely-improbable sense--of a Francis Bacon-esque blur (Bacon the painter, not that other dude who might have been Shakespeare if you're a prick). "That's funny, the shirt," he added, to Lily. She maintained her silence, and I laughed slightly, internally, at how shy she was.
"She said an ex made up the language," I responded with insouciance.
This was a dumb, DUMB thing to say. The man in black merely laughed, however--and I didn't notice the way his laugh made his mouth stretch uncomfortably wide. Or not really. "Did she?" he asked, eyes dancing at her, and then switching their laughing focus to me.
"So you know what the Courts Below are?" I asked.
"I do," he said amiably, and sat down. He smelled good--there was a bit of a scent of amber about him, buried within the predominant notes of oak and fire, but I've always been partial to anything sweet, even on a guy. "Do you like Lovecraft?" he asked, looking into my eyes with his smiling gaze.
"Oh yeah," I said. "Crazed gods at the gate and half-monsters melting and inbred New Englanders, what's not to like?"
"Have you noticed how, almost always in Lovecraft's stories about chaos and madness, nothing ever happens?" he asked, eyes smiling harder.
I cast my mind back, thinking over the slender Dell paperback I'd picked up in a library booksale. Individuals went mad in the Lovecraft I'd read, sure, but civilization was never so much at risk that a passel of librarians couldn't rescue it. "Hunh," I said.
"Disaster's always averted," he said. "The door always closes. Not full stop, but it closes."
"I see what you mean," I said. "Is that what the Courts Below thing is? Sort of a post-Lovecraftian apocalypse cosplay?"
"No," he said. "Oh no." And he smiled wider. His eyes were faintly repulsive; I've never been one to be able to resist what I was repulsed by, and looked into his face more closely. I was unafraid. I'm too stupid to be afraid, usually. I have no sense of consequences. Things that phase people with common sense don't phase me. But the thing that pulsed behind his face withdrew slightly from my sharpening gaze; I was conscious first of a faint sense of disappointment, and then of a faint disbelief that one watery-ass Pabst had gotten me buzzed enough to see visions of Hell in a stranger's eye. "That which is without order is ordered as well, if you see what I'm getting at," he said.
"No," I said.
"Disorder is ordered around order," he explained kindly. "Disorder has to revolve around order as much as order revolves around disorder."
"Okay," I said, visualizing.
"So the gate stays closed in a Lovecraft story not just due to the intervention of a handful of librarians," he said, grinning while quoting me to myself. "A laughing idiot god may be a laughing idiot god, but even a laughing idiot god knows he has to continue laughing idiotically in order to maintain his principle of self."
At this point my preconscious became aware that he was addressing his remarks to Lily. My conscious mind did not catch on to this, and I listened in utter engagement to what he was saying. "Lovecraft says that the laughing idiot gods have no principles of self," I said. "That's what makes them laughing idiots."
"It's a conundrum," he said. "Possibly," he added. "But the world of the Courts Below believes that it's the gate that is the active principle, rather than either the side of chaos or the side of order. In the Courts Below," and here his smile widened to truly uncomfortable proportions, "we seek to know the Threshold."
"Like in Hellraiser?" I asked, after what was nearly as dramatic a moment as can be expected considering that we were in a dive bar serving $1 Pabst with a number for a name in the middle afternoon, and that Ask, which, I found out later, was the guy's name, had eschewed his actual wings in order to don his semi-hokey Courts Below cosplay.
He laughed. "Sure, why not," he said. "Lily," he added, looking at her for what to me seemed to be only the second time. "How's it going? Nice shirt from your ex."
"We have to go," Lily said in a smooth voice.
"Mmh?" I asked, looking around at her. She was breathing shallowly, and I put down my can of beer and left with her.
"See you soon." The man's voice followed us to the door. It wasn't a strange voice--later, though, I'd remember how it seemed hollowed, like Robert Duncan's knock, drifting. Later too I'd remember that I hadn't said the thing about the librarians he'd quoted at me, but only thought it. At that moment, on the street, though, I was mostly just worried about Lily.
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