[Fic] In My Beginning, My End
Title: In My Beginning, My End
Rating: PG
Genre: General
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.
Summary: Themes and variations: a writer's crafts. Jiraiya.
- - - - -
The Challenge: Me, tsubaki-hana/yountilla, and the man who owns our souls, T.S. Eliot. A gen drabble of 1000 words or less based on "East Coker" of the Four Quartets. Tsubaki, being brilliant, wrote the lyrical and inspirational We Wait Here In Empty Silence.
I, being much lamer, wrote this:
- - - - -
“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres-
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure.”
T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”
- - - - -
Friend, would you like to hear a story?
My name is-let’s not bother with that. I have a name of course, but no one’s called me that for years. Sometimes I forget the sound of it, how many syllables, over which tottering peak the lilting accent fell. It’s not that my mind is going but I grow old, I grow old, and these mishaps must be excused.
It’s not important. Names aren’t important. Names are condemning, the iron brand you can’t escape, perennial reminder of crimes past, of those to come. Names are much too intimate for this dingy tavern, where the smoke from my pipe curls around our limbs and obscures your lovely face.
Instead, pour me another drink and scoot your stool a little closer. And as I hold this cup-to your health, blessed friend-I will tell you what I am, for that is far more important.
Listen, friend: I am a writer, a minstrel of words, a dream-weaver.
Stories have great significance, you know. In the middle ages, people gathered around fires in the countryside as a pestilence ravaged Florence, the most beautiful city in the western world. The diseased wandered everywhere, it was a horrible age. But these people, the ones who gathered, they sat and told stories. Just to pass the time.
What kind of writing is mine, you ask? Romance, mostly. I’ve published a few, you might have read them. Harmless, inconsequential things-they are not the real stories of the world, only fickle distraction. The only romance that matters is the sort where you kiss the words into somebody’s thigh, but even then… The true master paints his works not in watercolors, but blood.
The first story is an old one, words in my head. Ready? This is how it begins:
There were three of us, two men and a woman. You can call us anything you like. I call us The Genius, The Queen, and The Fool. It doesn’t matter, because the story’s the same no matter what we’re called.
And The Genius, he taught The Fool:
To gut a man. First, a slice across the windpipe: the silencer. Never forget that first step. The blade needs not be sharp. You must remember to stand back, for blood is quick and a stain like that can stay for years.
The poetry of a hollowed body, cavernous, silent like the blood whose flesh is singing. The forlornness of gaping rib-cages, flayed open like butterfly wings to showcase the grinning bones underneath. And the colors-to hold the dead liver in your hand, warm purple flesh, red blood drying black under clipped fingernails. Sometimes the heart continues to beat long after the brain has died, a weak, shuddering palpitation rippling across the meaty mass, leathery skin roped with veins.
But The Queen, she said:
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
It was a war-but we’d always known there would be one.
How did the story end, you ask? I confess I do not remember. It does not matter. Haven’t you heard that there's only one story in the entire world and everything else is a variation thereof? There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. Are you going to Constantinople? That way, every ending is only a potential out of hundreds of thousands. If you don’t like a particular ending, you can choose another. Lots of others.
Here is one I am particularly fond of. This is how it begins:
There were three, two men and a woman.
You say I am repeating. Something I have said before. I shall say it again. Shall I say it again?
Two were not important-even their names have disappeared from the cenotaph, the result of too many harsh winters. But one was a Hero, and his hair was liquid amber, his fingers were poetry, and his heart was gold.
There was another war, and to think, it could happen in winter. There could be snow. It could happen in spring, and the irony wouldn’t escape anyone.
Instead, it happened in autumn.
I like autumn, the crisp air and the green grass beneath my shoes. The turning of leaves signaling a change in the wind, the tilt of the Earth that makes the seasons. One could die in autumn.
I will not tell the ending. What does it matter? They are all dead. Even the Hero, whose hair was liquid amber and fingers were poetry and heart was gold. Me, I have never been a hero. You may call me a coward, but the way I see it, even heroes need men like me to chronicle their glories, when the houses have all gone under the sea, the dancers all gone under the hill. The dripping blood our only drink, the bloody flesh our only food.
You must know that the beautiful Shahrazad told more than six hundred stories to her Bluebeard Sultan in the course of the thousand and one nights. It was something like grace in a loveless time, for love would be love of the wrong thing. I learned that from the beautiful Yumeko of Hidden Rock, that one summer when I was dream-swallowed in her midnight tresses. A great woman, a smile on her lips and murder up the silk sleeves of her kimono. I slashed her throat and wrote her into one of my stories.
But years have passed, another decade wasted, and home is where one starts from. Perhaps it’s time to try again, and maybe this time, I will find an ending that I like enough to keep. So buy me another drink, friend, buy me another drink and put your boots up this grimy bar, and let me tell you a story.
This is how it begins:
- - - - -
“The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”
- - - - -
A/N: Minus the quoted verses (including the italicized chunk in the middle), the story is exactly 999 words. This little ditty might be placed just before Jiraiya came back to Konoha and met Naruto, and I think that makes everything pretty obvious. Ero-sennin as I see him: a writer, a lover of women, a man of the world, and of course, a terminal cynic.
l’entre deux guerres means ‘between two wars’. Yes, I am about as subtle as an elephant on wooden stilts *facepalms*
Rating: PG
Genre: General
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.
Summary: Themes and variations: a writer's crafts. Jiraiya.
- - - - -
The Challenge: Me, tsubaki-hana/yountilla, and the man who owns our souls, T.S. Eliot. A gen drabble of 1000 words or less based on "East Coker" of the Four Quartets. Tsubaki, being brilliant, wrote the lyrical and inspirational We Wait Here In Empty Silence.
I, being much lamer, wrote this:
- - - - -
“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres-
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure.”
T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”
- - - - -
Friend, would you like to hear a story?
My name is-let’s not bother with that. I have a name of course, but no one’s called me that for years. Sometimes I forget the sound of it, how many syllables, over which tottering peak the lilting accent fell. It’s not that my mind is going but I grow old, I grow old, and these mishaps must be excused.
It’s not important. Names aren’t important. Names are condemning, the iron brand you can’t escape, perennial reminder of crimes past, of those to come. Names are much too intimate for this dingy tavern, where the smoke from my pipe curls around our limbs and obscures your lovely face.
Instead, pour me another drink and scoot your stool a little closer. And as I hold this cup-to your health, blessed friend-I will tell you what I am, for that is far more important.
Listen, friend: I am a writer, a minstrel of words, a dream-weaver.
Stories have great significance, you know. In the middle ages, people gathered around fires in the countryside as a pestilence ravaged Florence, the most beautiful city in the western world. The diseased wandered everywhere, it was a horrible age. But these people, the ones who gathered, they sat and told stories. Just to pass the time.
What kind of writing is mine, you ask? Romance, mostly. I’ve published a few, you might have read them. Harmless, inconsequential things-they are not the real stories of the world, only fickle distraction. The only romance that matters is the sort where you kiss the words into somebody’s thigh, but even then… The true master paints his works not in watercolors, but blood.
The first story is an old one, words in my head. Ready? This is how it begins:
There were three of us, two men and a woman. You can call us anything you like. I call us The Genius, The Queen, and The Fool. It doesn’t matter, because the story’s the same no matter what we’re called.
And The Genius, he taught The Fool:
To gut a man. First, a slice across the windpipe: the silencer. Never forget that first step. The blade needs not be sharp. You must remember to stand back, for blood is quick and a stain like that can stay for years.
The poetry of a hollowed body, cavernous, silent like the blood whose flesh is singing. The forlornness of gaping rib-cages, flayed open like butterfly wings to showcase the grinning bones underneath. And the colors-to hold the dead liver in your hand, warm purple flesh, red blood drying black under clipped fingernails. Sometimes the heart continues to beat long after the brain has died, a weak, shuddering palpitation rippling across the meaty mass, leathery skin roped with veins.
But The Queen, she said:
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
It was a war-but we’d always known there would be one.
How did the story end, you ask? I confess I do not remember. It does not matter. Haven’t you heard that there's only one story in the entire world and everything else is a variation thereof? There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. Are you going to Constantinople? That way, every ending is only a potential out of hundreds of thousands. If you don’t like a particular ending, you can choose another. Lots of others.
Here is one I am particularly fond of. This is how it begins:
There were three, two men and a woman.
You say I am repeating. Something I have said before. I shall say it again. Shall I say it again?
Two were not important-even their names have disappeared from the cenotaph, the result of too many harsh winters. But one was a Hero, and his hair was liquid amber, his fingers were poetry, and his heart was gold.
There was another war, and to think, it could happen in winter. There could be snow. It could happen in spring, and the irony wouldn’t escape anyone.
Instead, it happened in autumn.
I like autumn, the crisp air and the green grass beneath my shoes. The turning of leaves signaling a change in the wind, the tilt of the Earth that makes the seasons. One could die in autumn.
I will not tell the ending. What does it matter? They are all dead. Even the Hero, whose hair was liquid amber and fingers were poetry and heart was gold. Me, I have never been a hero. You may call me a coward, but the way I see it, even heroes need men like me to chronicle their glories, when the houses have all gone under the sea, the dancers all gone under the hill. The dripping blood our only drink, the bloody flesh our only food.
You must know that the beautiful Shahrazad told more than six hundred stories to her Bluebeard Sultan in the course of the thousand and one nights. It was something like grace in a loveless time, for love would be love of the wrong thing. I learned that from the beautiful Yumeko of Hidden Rock, that one summer when I was dream-swallowed in her midnight tresses. A great woman, a smile on her lips and murder up the silk sleeves of her kimono. I slashed her throat and wrote her into one of my stories.
But years have passed, another decade wasted, and home is where one starts from. Perhaps it’s time to try again, and maybe this time, I will find an ending that I like enough to keep. So buy me another drink, friend, buy me another drink and put your boots up this grimy bar, and let me tell you a story.
This is how it begins:
- - - - -
“The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”
- - - - -
A/N: Minus the quoted verses (including the italicized chunk in the middle), the story is exactly 999 words. This little ditty might be placed just before Jiraiya came back to Konoha and met Naruto, and I think that makes everything pretty obvious. Ero-sennin as I see him: a writer, a lover of women, a man of the world, and of course, a terminal cynic.
l’entre deux guerres means ‘between two wars’. Yes, I am about as subtle as an elephant on wooden stilts *facepalms*