a fool's musings

Boreas by Waterhouse
Fool, said my muse to me,
look in thy heart and write...

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"pathological and unbalanced"

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04.06.03 - 10:07 p.m.

Sleep is my coping mechanism

I'm tired.

I'm so very, very tired.

I can't even imagine what Dom and Helen feel like.

Meh.

I haven't really had a chance to be online this weekend, and I really haven't missed it.

I mean, I did have the chance Friday night and last night, after the kids were asleep, but instead I curled up with a Regency or went to bed.

Sleep is my coping mechanism, though I've had everyone from my doctor to random people I used to work with tell me that 'you can't sleep your problems away.'

I suppose that's true, but it's nice to think I can.

So I'm practicing avoidance of things I can avoid, and this is one of them.

I did read One Good Turn by Carla Kelly (the sequel to Libby's London Merchant, which I wrote about a few weeks ago), and in the mood I've been in, it damn near broke my heart. I was in almost in tears at various points in the story, and I *knew* what Liria's secret was.

I mean, not only have I read enough of these books to easily figure it out, I'm not stupid.

The British laid siege to Badajoz three times. I can only imagine - and really, I'd prefer NOT to - what they did to the people inside - the women, specifically - once they broke through.

So yes, again, not your typical Regency, as Nez was there as well, and his hands are not clean.

It was harder than The Wedding Journey, partially because Nez isn't quite as likable as Jess Randall, and of course, Nell was only threatened. Liria was gang raped, watched her sister die, was tossed out by her family and then had a baby.

Even though the events are only narrated in retrospect, and we don't have to go through the rape in real (narrative) time, it's still... it's not graphic but it's not easy to read.

So while I quite liked One Good Turn, liked it quite a lot more than Libby's London Merchant, in fact, it's not for the faint of heart.

I recommend The Wedding Journey without reservation, though. They all suffer together in that, and I really liked Jess Randall.

I also read The Golden Feather, which was okay, and The Rake's Mistake, which was also okay.

I guess that's it. I don't really have much else to share. Kids' parties and wakes aren't exactly the stuff of scintillating diarism.

~victoria



link

[current mood: wiped]
[current music: sit down you're rocking the boat]
[random quote: the devil will drag you under you're much too heavy to float sit down sit down sit down sit down sit down you're rocki]

~*~

04.04.03 - 5:05 p.m.

answers and Remix-Redux update

In the comments, Fyrdrakken wrote: Heck, that's worth a shot. Interesting to kind of compare and contrast what kind of a Dark Queen Eowyn would make to the version Galadriel hinted at becoming.

Well, there’s that, but there’s also all of Eowyn’s pent up anger about being a second-class citizen that would make her a hell of an evil queen, don’t you think?

And Naomi Chana wrote: So you're trying to create four (five?) AUs in which Eowyn has the Ring? And this is movieverse?

Not exactly.

I’m trying to create four (or five, though that means I need a new title *g*) AUs, *one* of which involves Eowyn having the Ring.

The others are just possibilities – Eowyn as Aragorn’s wife if Arwen does go to Valinor. Eowyn giving herself to Grima (or, you know, pretending to, and putting a knife between his ribs when he gets close) to save her people). Like that.

I vote she brings Theodred back from the dead. And possibly her parents. And Elfhild, and Theoden after his death. It's pretty clear she wants family. (If you really want Eowyn totally off her rocker, you take away Eomer, not necessarily for Bad Wrong Incest reasons but because he's her only remaining family. That's what she believed in ROTK under the Black Breath.)

That’s an interesting idea. Hmm...

Alternatively, I'd like to see the version of Eowyn's slaying of the Witch-King of Angmar with the Ring (and probably Merry in some form).

Would she slay him, though? Wouldn’t he be hers to command if she had the Ring?

I could also deal with seeing her as the Pirate Queen of the Corsairs of Umbar, but I think that might just be a fantasy.

Hee!

That sounds like fun.

I can imagine Eowyn as a Pirate Queen, with all the men her willing slaves.

But yeah, more along the lines of fantasy than actual story material. Unless… Hmm...

***

In other news, approximately 20 people have still to get their Remix fics in. Twenty out of about 70 people total. That's not bad, considering...

And most of the latebloomers have been in touch with me about their lateness, promising to deliver the goods as soon as they can.

Those of you who haven't been in touch will probably be getting a ... gentle reminder email from me sometime this weekend, though with the way things look (Victor's b-day party, if it happens, Giovanni's b-day party, possibly the wake, my optometrist appt.), I don't know how much online time I'll have.

I want to go home. 15 more minutes. Sigh.

~victoria



link

[current mood: sad. tired]
[current music: Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen]
[random quote: what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?]

~*~

04.04.03 - 11:33 a.m.

seeking comfort

Into your hands, Father of mercies, we commend our sister in the sure and certain hope that, together with all who have died in Christ, she will rise with him on the last day.

We give you thank for the blessings which you bestowed upon her in this life they are signs to us of your goodness and of our fellowship with the saints in Christ.

Merciful Lord, turn toward us and listen to our prayers: open the gates of paradise to your servant and help us who remain to comfort one another with assurances of fatih, until we all meet in Chris and are with you and with our brother/sister for ever. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

In peace let us take our sister to her place of rest.

May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs come to welcome you and take you to the holy city, the new and eternal Jerusalem.

~*~

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

***

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

***

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No,"

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do;

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

***

A VALEDICTION OF WEEPING.
Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth.
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more;
When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore;
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.

On a round ball
A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.
So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolvèd so.

O! more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere;
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea, what it may do too soon;
Let not the wind
Example find
To do me more harm than it purposeth:
Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,
Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.

The above are by John Donne.

~*~

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

~Dylan Thomas

~*~

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. ~Hamlet.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.~The Tempest.

~*~

Prayers. Poems. Words.

They're supposed to be comforting, but I don't find them so....

~*~

Requiescat in Pace.

~victoria
looking for meaning where there's none to be found



link

[current mood: existential]
[current music: The Boys Are Back in Town - Thin Lizzie]
[random quote: You shatter me Your grip on me A hold on me So dull it kills]

~*~

04.04.03 - 9:39 a.m.

Mourning

Sigh.

Yesterday was Victor's birthday.

My sister-in-law's older sister died yesterday.

She'd been ill for a while (cancer), but... gah.

I'm just... Death still baffles me. I don't fear it for myself, but I don't like it. I don't like knowing I'll never see the other person again. I don't like *forgetting* the person. That the hole opened up in my life will quickly be eclipsed by other things, and only infrequently call attention to itself after a while.

And this is just people outside my immediate sphere.

This is why I always wanted to die first, die young (relatively). So I wouldn't have to go through losing everyone else and ending up alone.

Meh.

We all end up alone anyway. Born alone and die alone and everything in between is just a desperate attempt to cover that up.

~victoria



link

[current mood: sad]
[current music: something by Queen on the radio]
[random quote: Every man's death diminishes me]

~*~

04.03.03 - 11:30 a.m.

The White Queen (and I don't mean Emma Frost)

This is a very rough version of something I've been working on - it'll actually be the last section of Four Wishes Deep if I can ever figure out the first three.

It's a combination of two things: Eowyn takes the Ring, and also that Five Things That Never Happened challenge that was floating around.

how does Eowyn get the Ring? Well, I have a backstory in my head, and it goes AU early on (based on the fact that, in the books, Theoden seems to know Boromir, even if Eowyn doesn't know Faramir. With Gondor and Rohan being such close allies, I always wondered why that was so. Though I guess Faramir, as the younger son, wouldn't necessarily be sent to Rohan on diplomatic missions. Still, I'm applying the idea that fostering the sons/heirs of other monarchs/nobles was practiced in M-E.) that Faramir's already in love with Eowyn and she's got eyes only for B. And then the Ring lands in his lap when he captures Frodo.

Maybe I'll write it, but I doubt it. It's too complex to rethink all that.

Suffice it to say, Faramir brings the Ring to Eowyn instead of his father (lust is often more powerful than familial approval, no?) and Eowyn takes it, thrilled that she can break out of the cage she's been in.

And this is a scene from her court, once she's Queen of the World.

***

4. The White Queen

She sits upon a golden throne on the dais. Her two consorts flank her, a step below.

Her people come from far and wide this day, to lay their petitions at her feet, and she hears them. She is sparing of her mercy, but for the women of Rohan she doles it out, remembering what it was like to be one of them, kept caged and useless on the hearth while the men rode out to war.

They bring her their cares and woes, their complaints and their triumphs, and she is proud of what she has wrought.

There is peace in Middle-earth now, the Peace of Eowyn, Queen of Rohan. Through her alliance with Faramir, Steward of Gondor, she rules all of Gondor and Arnor, as well as the Mark. With Eomer at her left hand and Faramir at her right, who would gainsay her?

A young girl stands before them now, dressed in breeches and a rough homespun shirt, her straw-colored hair caught up in tails. Her parents stand beside her, and the father says, "Tis unnatural, is what it is, that a girl should take on so. She demands -- a girl-child of twelve summers -- demands to be trained as a soldier. Whoever heard of such a thing? May as well teach her to fly, for all the use it will do her."

Eowyn smiles, and a chill fills the golden hall of Meduseld. The men of the Mark are hardheaded and slow to learn. Her peace has been bought with their blood. They are still chafing at the bit, and she has not spared the whip or the spurs with them.

“She shall be trained with my own guard,” Eowyn says, “much as I trained at her age.” She gestures with three delicate white fingers, and the gold ring upon her right hand gleams in the light of the hall. The girl is led away by one of the door wardens, into her new life as a soldier of Rohan, in the service of the Queen.

The father cringes. The folly of his words is suddenly borne in upon him, and he has nowhere to turn now.

***

And that's it. I'm not sure what she'll do to him, but you can bet it's pretty horrible.

Now if I could just figure out the other things. Obviously, one is winning Aragorn's hand (if not his heart). One is something to do with Wormtongue. The third is... I may do Bad Wrong Incest again, unless something else clicks into place.

Hmmm...

Now, if only Aragorn would cooperate and let Legolas bathe him, I'd be a happy writer.

~victoria



link

[current mood: good]
[current music: Fire and Rain - James Taylor]
[random quote: Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.]

~*~

04.02.03 - 10:23 a.m.

Name Game, part deux

Addendum to the name meme, via Yahtzee:

1) Do you like your name?

Now I do. As a kid, not so much.

2) What do you like best about it?

It’s strong, regal, elegant, not overly common

3) What do you like least about it?

When people try to shorten it to Tori or Vicki

4) If you HAD to change your name (witness protection program, whatever), what would you want it to be?

Marcella

***

Random things that made me smile this morning:

An ad for "Bare Knuckle Stout - brewed to produce a dark body and a creamy head" on the bus stop.

Picking out the VW Bugs on the road, even though I had no one to play PunchBuggy with.

the new BMW Z4.

Thinking of my Eowyn-as-Slayer fic.

"As Is" by Ani DiFranco

***

Quote of the day:
Just give up and admit that you're an asshole. You would be in some good company. I think you'd find that your friends would forgive you. Or maybe I am just speaking for me. ~"As Is" - Ani DiFranco

~victoria



link

[current mood: better]
[current music: Barracuda - Heart]
[random quote: If I look down I just miss all the good stuff, If I look up I just trip over things]

~*~

04.01.03 - 5:22 p.m.

the name game

Haven't done a survey over here for a while...

Gacked from Celli:

1. What does your first name mean?

Conqueror. Or, you know, victor.

2. What does your middle name mean?

God is gracious.

3. What does your last name mean?

No one seems to quite know. It's been associated both with silversmiths and glovers, so...

According to this site, "Pusateri kept a tavern or an inn."

Huh.

4. So what does your name mean when put together?

Conquering yet gracious bartender/innkeeper/silversmith/glove maker?

*snicker*

5. What would you have been named if you were the opposite gender?

Anthony.

Just what the world needs, right?

6. Any other name oddities?

My middle name is my Confirmation name. Technically, I don't have a middle name, as there isn't one on my birth certificate, though it's on everything else.

~victoria



link

[current mood: stressed]
[current music: Rag Doll - Aerosmith]
[random quote: the waiting is the hardest part every day you get one more yard]

~*~

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The painting is "Boreas" by John William Waterhouse. Again, not a muse, but I like her. She suits the color scheme.

The quote is from Sir Philip Sidney.

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