holy crap, i have livejournal?
I forgot.
Hello to everyone. Hi. Yeah, hope you're doing well. Um, well, shit, it's certainly been a long time, hasn't it?
Now to continue as we began.
When most people tell you about their past lives, usually they'll tell you about preists and princesses, about heroes and soldiers and other such nonsense. Really, the vast majority of people throughout the ages were farmers and, before that, everybody was a hunter-gatherer. Peasant farmers all look the same, and hunter-gatherers really all look the same, so it sort of all blends together. I've been a princess once-- I'm sorry, Japan, it seemed like a good idea at the time and why the hell haven't you gotten over it, it was thousands of years before you actually became a unified island nation? -- and a preistess a few times, but honestly, really? Nobody that would leave much of a mark, much of a trace. Except the princess, and she shouldn't have. They didn't write things down, she should have been completely obliterated by now. I mean, knowing about things before archaeologists find them is reassuring and all, but still. . .
Nope. I'm weird. It should come at no surprise that I've spent the last few thousand years whoring and mistressing. And farming, and sometimes dying a solider in an army, one of so many nameless corpses. Thousands of years of flesh and base survival, thousands of years of taking freedom and pleasure where most would see only shame. See, I knew it would make sense. And in this lifetime, I would have made a damn fine courtesan. There are tricks, you see, to holding attention. To entertaining. To making men dance like little puppets while they think they're lording it over you.
Oh, I never said I was nice. I just said I was still good at it.
It's fun to read back over this stuff. It makes things clear. I was happy, when I was with Rory, when I was in college. I'm pretty content with my life right now, but there's this burning residue from the part where my life collapsed inward, and I don't see any of that in the callously carefree woman who wrote most of this.
Christ, Rory and I were so young. We didn't know shit. We still wouldn't know shit, if we hadn't had each other to mess up with. He's still. . . oh, you know how most souls, they carry around shadows and baggage and secrets and sins, and you can see them sometimes, if you're me, if you're also a genetic mutant throwback to the days before Heisenburg's uncertainty principle was applied to Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Rory's still one of the brightest, most beautiful souls I've ever seen. He's so. . . pure, in a way. All of the worst things he's ever done, all of the stains on his soul, those are things he's done with me, to me. And they aren't so bad. Not in the grand scheme.
Of course, I'm still offended. But as far as souls go, he's got a real beaut.
I miss him, sometimes, that brown vervain yearning. I catch myself excited at odd moments, plotting out a life together we're not going to have. And yet, why not? There's so much misery and self-constraint in the world.
I showed him my list, the list I'd made after we split, the list of qualities I want in a man. And no, silly people who have read this novel this far, looks weren't on the list. I'm not requesting redheads here, just kindness and fidelity and a whole host of other very attractive qualities. And he said, that's not the man he is. But then he said, give him ten years, because it was the man he was trying to become.
So, okay. Things are good now. And if I want it, if he wants it, there may still be time for that life we tried to build together back when niether of us knew shit. Maybe.
And maybe I'll follow Victoria Woodhull and shout for free love, short skirts and the female orgasm so loud they give me a presidential nomination over it. And maybe, maybe in the last seconds of my life, all I'll see is an endless flow of words that slip away from my fingers.
All in all, things are wonderful here.
Hello to everyone. Hi. Yeah, hope you're doing well. Um, well, shit, it's certainly been a long time, hasn't it?
Now to continue as we began.
When most people tell you about their past lives, usually they'll tell you about preists and princesses, about heroes and soldiers and other such nonsense. Really, the vast majority of people throughout the ages were farmers and, before that, everybody was a hunter-gatherer. Peasant farmers all look the same, and hunter-gatherers really all look the same, so it sort of all blends together. I've been a princess once-- I'm sorry, Japan, it seemed like a good idea at the time and why the hell haven't you gotten over it, it was thousands of years before you actually became a unified island nation? -- and a preistess a few times, but honestly, really? Nobody that would leave much of a mark, much of a trace. Except the princess, and she shouldn't have. They didn't write things down, she should have been completely obliterated by now. I mean, knowing about things before archaeologists find them is reassuring and all, but still. . .
Nope. I'm weird. It should come at no surprise that I've spent the last few thousand years whoring and mistressing. And farming, and sometimes dying a solider in an army, one of so many nameless corpses. Thousands of years of flesh and base survival, thousands of years of taking freedom and pleasure where most would see only shame. See, I knew it would make sense. And in this lifetime, I would have made a damn fine courtesan. There are tricks, you see, to holding attention. To entertaining. To making men dance like little puppets while they think they're lording it over you.
Oh, I never said I was nice. I just said I was still good at it.
It's fun to read back over this stuff. It makes things clear. I was happy, when I was with Rory, when I was in college. I'm pretty content with my life right now, but there's this burning residue from the part where my life collapsed inward, and I don't see any of that in the callously carefree woman who wrote most of this.
Christ, Rory and I were so young. We didn't know shit. We still wouldn't know shit, if we hadn't had each other to mess up with. He's still. . . oh, you know how most souls, they carry around shadows and baggage and secrets and sins, and you can see them sometimes, if you're me, if you're also a genetic mutant throwback to the days before Heisenburg's uncertainty principle was applied to Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Rory's still one of the brightest, most beautiful souls I've ever seen. He's so. . . pure, in a way. All of the worst things he's ever done, all of the stains on his soul, those are things he's done with me, to me. And they aren't so bad. Not in the grand scheme.
Of course, I'm still offended. But as far as souls go, he's got a real beaut.
I miss him, sometimes, that brown vervain yearning. I catch myself excited at odd moments, plotting out a life together we're not going to have. And yet, why not? There's so much misery and self-constraint in the world.
I showed him my list, the list I'd made after we split, the list of qualities I want in a man. And no, silly people who have read this novel this far, looks weren't on the list. I'm not requesting redheads here, just kindness and fidelity and a whole host of other very attractive qualities. And he said, that's not the man he is. But then he said, give him ten years, because it was the man he was trying to become.
So, okay. Things are good now. And if I want it, if he wants it, there may still be time for that life we tried to build together back when niether of us knew shit. Maybe.
And maybe I'll follow Victoria Woodhull and shout for free love, short skirts and the female orgasm so loud they give me a presidential nomination over it. And maybe, maybe in the last seconds of my life, all I'll see is an endless flow of words that slip away from my fingers.
All in all, things are wonderful here.