To See the Moon Rippling on the Dark, Blue, Blue Sea
Full, full moon out tonight,
I watched it through a willow tree,
I tracked its motion
Through willow branches.
Sublime.
I once explained to a person* that the difference between the beautiful and the sublime is that the sublime contains within it a tinge of the terrible. To see a sunset may be beautiful, to stand on the edge of a cliff and view the sunset... to have the abyss beckon... the darkness beneath, the resplendent flash of gold above... the greying blues around... that is sublime.
I am again losing my voice... this is not me.
Some time ago, I met *a boy online on one of those cheesy websites (OkCupid)... or perhaps he was a young man... I do not know how to classify these things. He was in that interim... boy => young man. One of the two, or, some where in between. He was gorgeous, beautiful. Thousands of kilometres away. I gave him a quote from Saikaku, he, in a joking manner, referred to himself as "hot". I told him that that was not so... that he was beautiful and that beautiful boys are sublime, and I explained to him the terrible, the terror, of the sublime. Gaping chasm... the darkness of a deep, deep lake at night.
He is gone now... whisped, vapour into the nothingness of the other side of a screen that has no answer any more.
Some images burn into the memory... so... perfect, their tendrils slowly creeping in, haunting, haunting. If even that image was never experienced.
My perception, my world-view, my Weltanschauung is made up of so many of these sublime images that perhaps my biography would be best written by a simple solitary gasp.
.................... and now ................
I am on MSN Messenger with colorstodreamin... but wait,,,
..............................a deviant vector
God I smile every time I see the "Manage Friends" option here on LJ... I especially get a wicked grin with the "Edit Friends" option. I think of them in the context of REAL LIFE.
But.......never mind
..............................
Yes, I was chatting. Yes, occasionally I chat.. I was chatting, yes.
He was telling me that he used to work as a clown for the terminally ill... and it brought back a terrible image for me.
I had a tremendous collection of stuffed animals. Enormous, all piled on my bed. They kept vigil through my insomnia, through my nightmares; Tigger, a koala, some gargantuan blue caterpillar with red Chuck Taylor's on each foot. Twenty feet in all, twenty Converses. They watched, mute, my rages... as they themselves often flew into targets across the room, smashing what was breakable. Watching as I beat my head against the wall, watching as I beat my fists into my me, bruising myself. As I did... those things very angry and very frustrated little boys do. Rage and Burn Away... rage and burn away... to nothing, to cinders
Eventually they had to go. When this child turned into a non-child... it was late in my life, perhaps, for the departure of my stuffed animals. Their spaces taken by books and notebooks. They were donated, in my mother's magnanimity, to a hospital for poor children. Children without families... perhaps for terminal children, though that last part I am not certain whether or not I inferred or it was explicitly the case.
A place for these children to die strapped to machines. Sanctioned deaths, approved deaths, bureaucratic, neat deaths.
And that damnable image...
The image, the thought that my stuffed animals were now to be the Deathwatch of these children. Silently keeping vigil...
Death is a discrete affair. Though perhaps surrounded, by doctors, nurses, perhaps a person who cares who loves... only the dying die. Only they go through it, this gate of solitude. A koala in the arms of a child on a bed as the moon comes though the windows... no hope, no more hope... just resignantion, just waiting, The beeps... the tubes... the IV and the gauze. Cold, cold sheets with teddy-bear print. Rails on either side of the bed. A red button on a wire. Breathing, eyes wide awake, stroking, gently, with the fingertips the faux fur of the koala.
But this is the image that haunts me: Tigger being strangled by the clutch of a small child in death throes at five in the morning. Tigger observant. Tigger mute. Tigger ever the sentry of what is referred to as childhood innocence.
I do not know. I can not get that image out of my head. Not for many years now.
*****************************************
He also told me, colorstodreamin did, that he read a news report about a gentleman that was reunited with his parents after eighteen years. He went to meet them in the Solomon Islands and a tsunami swept him and his mother out to sea.
Sublime.
Fate indiscrete.
What a way to end a cycle... what a way to end.
.
.
I watched it through a willow tree,
I tracked its motion
Through willow branches.
Sublime.
I once explained to a person* that the difference between the beautiful and the sublime is that the sublime contains within it a tinge of the terrible. To see a sunset may be beautiful, to stand on the edge of a cliff and view the sunset... to have the abyss beckon... the darkness beneath, the resplendent flash of gold above... the greying blues around... that is sublime.
I am again losing my voice... this is not me.
Some time ago, I met *a boy online on one of those cheesy websites (OkCupid)... or perhaps he was a young man... I do not know how to classify these things. He was in that interim... boy => young man. One of the two, or, some where in between. He was gorgeous, beautiful. Thousands of kilometres away. I gave him a quote from Saikaku, he, in a joking manner, referred to himself as "hot". I told him that that was not so... that he was beautiful and that beautiful boys are sublime, and I explained to him the terrible, the terror, of the sublime. Gaping chasm... the darkness of a deep, deep lake at night.
He is gone now... whisped, vapour into the nothingness of the other side of a screen that has no answer any more.
Some images burn into the memory... so... perfect, their tendrils slowly creeping in, haunting, haunting. If even that image was never experienced.
My perception, my world-view, my Weltanschauung is made up of so many of these sublime images that perhaps my biography would be best written by a simple solitary gasp.
.................... and now ................
I am on MSN Messenger with colorstodreamin... but wait,,,
..............................a deviant vector
God I smile every time I see the "Manage Friends" option here on LJ... I especially get a wicked grin with the "Edit Friends" option. I think of them in the context of REAL LIFE.
But.......never mind
..............................
Yes, I was chatting. Yes, occasionally I chat.. I was chatting, yes.
He was telling me that he used to work as a clown for the terminally ill... and it brought back a terrible image for me.
I had a tremendous collection of stuffed animals. Enormous, all piled on my bed. They kept vigil through my insomnia, through my nightmares; Tigger, a koala, some gargantuan blue caterpillar with red Chuck Taylor's on each foot. Twenty feet in all, twenty Converses. They watched, mute, my rages... as they themselves often flew into targets across the room, smashing what was breakable. Watching as I beat my head against the wall, watching as I beat my fists into my me, bruising myself. As I did... those things very angry and very frustrated little boys do. Rage and Burn Away... rage and burn away... to nothing, to cinders
Eventually they had to go. When this child turned into a non-child... it was late in my life, perhaps, for the departure of my stuffed animals. Their spaces taken by books and notebooks. They were donated, in my mother's magnanimity, to a hospital for poor children. Children without families... perhaps for terminal children, though that last part I am not certain whether or not I inferred or it was explicitly the case.
A place for these children to die strapped to machines. Sanctioned deaths, approved deaths, bureaucratic, neat deaths.
And that damnable image...
The image, the thought that my stuffed animals were now to be the Deathwatch of these children. Silently keeping vigil...
Death is a discrete affair. Though perhaps surrounded, by doctors, nurses, perhaps a person who cares who loves... only the dying die. Only they go through it, this gate of solitude. A koala in the arms of a child on a bed as the moon comes though the windows... no hope, no more hope... just resignantion, just waiting, The beeps... the tubes... the IV and the gauze. Cold, cold sheets with teddy-bear print. Rails on either side of the bed. A red button on a wire. Breathing, eyes wide awake, stroking, gently, with the fingertips the faux fur of the koala.
But this is the image that haunts me: Tigger being strangled by the clutch of a small child in death throes at five in the morning. Tigger observant. Tigger mute. Tigger ever the sentry of what is referred to as childhood innocence.
I do not know. I can not get that image out of my head. Not for many years now.
*****************************************
He also told me, colorstodreamin did, that he read a news report about a gentleman that was reunited with his parents after eighteen years. He went to meet them in the Solomon Islands and a tsunami swept him and his mother out to sea.
Sublime.
Fate indiscrete.
What a way to end a cycle... what a way to end.
.
.