Trí labra ata ferr túa...

Autumn Daybreak

Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud
At dawn, a fortnight overdue,
Jostling the doors, and tearing through
My bedroom to rejoin the cloud,
I know—for I can hear the hiss
And scrape of leaves along the floor—
How may boughs, lashed bare by this,
Will rake the cluttered sky once more.
Tardy, and somewhat south of east,
The sun will rise at length, made known
More by the meagre light increased
Than by a disk in splendour shown;
When, having but to turn my head,
Through the stripped maple I shall see,
Bleak and remembered, patched with red,
The hill all summer hid from me.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Iascaire is ea m’athair le ceart Conas ná raibh a fhios againn cheana agus diamhair na mara chomh glé sin ina shúil? Lá an adhlactha, iompraíonn sé doircheacht mhoch na maidine ar an trá sin a shíneann ó dhoras an tséipéil go dtí bruach an tsaoil. Siúlann thar an slua atá bailithe sa chlós, a chois báite sa ghaineamh gan cabhair a iarraidh ó éinne dá chlann mhór mhac. Ní thuigimid an fharraige fós, dar leis, a cneastacht ná a racht. Tá naomhóg an bhróin bun os cionn ar a ghualainn chomh dubh le fuil théachta, an fharraige ag fiuchadh le deora goirt a loiscfeadh súil na gréine. Scarann tonn na sochraide roimis is cuireann sé a dheartháir sa pholl atá tochailte aige féin is an ngealaigh ó aréir. Nuair a shiúlann ón uaigh ar ais, tá gile na dtonn is uaigneas an domhain i ngleic i súil ghlas mo shinsir.

My father is really a fisherman How did we not know already, when the deep mystery of the sea shines so brightly in his eyes? On the day of the burial, he carries the early morning dark on that beach that stretches from the church door to the edge of the world. Walks past the crowd that has gathered in the yard, his feet sunk in sand, asking no help from any of his many sons. We still don’t understand the sea, he says, its kindness or its anger. The naomhóg of sorrow is upside down on his shoulders, as black as clotted blood, the ocean boiling with salt tears that would burn the eye of the sun. The funeral-wave parts and he buries his brother in the hole he dug up with the moon the night before. When he walks back from the grave, the brightness of the sea and the loneliness of the world grapple in my father’s green eyes.

translated by Michael S. Begnal

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward

by John Donne

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They'are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face.

Swiped from the inimitable zvi :

Ask me for five things about a particular character and/or show/movie/book and I will respond with a list or a ficlet. You know the drill: "Five things Wesley wouldn't change if he could," or "Five times Neal couldn't talk his way our of trouble".

As an added bonus, I'm opening this up to my original and RPG characters as well. Have at!

First these two...



They've only been together 56 years, you know.

And now these two, who have only been together fourteen years, the hussies!



Seriously, the only threat gay people pose to my marriage looks something like this:


And even then, if A. (a gifted linguist, especially fluent in French) tries to steal my husband, I can run him off by making him cry when I try to pronounce au jus.

Edit: Crap, I just realized that you folks here on DW probably don't know. The cute guy with the goatee in the picture above acutally is my husband, torberg . This is him at our wedding reception dancing with one of my best friends from college, A.

The following was lifted from theferrett It's kind of a gloomy day on the Internets, so I'm going to try to generate some cheer: Tell me about something good in your life. Leave a comment expressing something beautiful and happy that's lifting you up today. Feel free to cheer on any other commentators while you're at it.

Here, I'll start: Herself has the sniffles. This, in and of itself, is not necessarily good, but it does mean that the perpetual motion machine actually occasionally slows down. It even means that Miss Independence actually wants some cuddling, and will sit still and just be with me on the couch. We watch Sesame Street and VeggieTales Silly Songs and she'll talk to me about them in her incomprehensible toddler-speak. She occasionally chuckles. Dude, chuckles. It's awesome.

Also, I'm married 5 years today. Torberg's sick as a dog (as he actually was on our wedding day), but we're here, and we're together, and we're still an inseparable team. Yay us.

Now you tell me something lovely and enlightening. Happiness is best shared.

Yes, I also celebrate the great state of Oregon on this day, but I ran across this on my LJ Friends List courtesy of Sihaya09, and it is just gorgeous and says everything I've been too confused and agitated to say when I'm confronted by the hard-core V-Day haters. It's also primarily what was behind my decision to start celebrating the great state of Oregon on this day about, criminy, fifteen years ago, now. I wanted to take joy in something, not tear something else down.

The writer is yuki_onna, and if you really like this, I believe she's got a web comic floating around out there.

I have never understood the desire to stomp all over Valentine's Day and snuff it out. Every year I look over my friends' list and it's a litany of "This is a fake Hallmark holiday and no one should celebrate it" and "I hate this day, who's with me?" and my personal favorite guilt trip: "If you REALLY loved your partner, you'd treat them specially every day."

I don't get it. I don't understand the fervor to destroy a holiday. To force others to see it through the same black glasses. To shame anyone who celebrates the 14th with anything other than bile, vitriol, and the occasional superior sneer.

I know that most of us were shunned on Valentine's Day in school. Believe me, my little cubby was empty, just like yours, and I yearned for a construction paper heart from boy after boy--and never got them. I understand that there is a history of trauma, and the standard geek reaction to past trauma is to organize the world so that there is no chance of that trauma re-occurring. Thus, Valentine's Day must be killed.

But here's the thing. This world is a beautiful place, but it is also often dark, and cold, and unfeeling, and life slips by, not because it is short, but because it is so difficult to hold onto. Holidays, rituals, these things demarcate the time. They remind us of the sharpness of pleasure and the nearness of death. They tell us when the sun leaves, and when it comes back. They tell us to dance and they tell us to sleep. They tell us who we are, who we have been since we lived on the savannah and hoped to taste cheetah before we died. I know we're all punk rock rebels, but the paleolithic joy of fucking in the fields and dancing around a fire doesn't go away just because certain of us would like to think we're beyond that. This world needs more holidays, not less. More ritual, the gorgeous, flexible, non-dogmatic kind that isn't about religion but about ecstasy in the sheer humanness of our bodies and souls. More chances to reach out, to sing, to love, to bedeck ourselves in ritual colors and become splendid as the year turns around.

And no, I'm sorry. It doesn't work to say "make every day special." First of all, most of you know damn well that you don't shower your partner with gifts and adoration and that most precious of things: dedicated, mindful time every day of the year. Even the best relationship is not a 24/7 orgiastic festival of plenty and perfect moments. No human can sustain it. If every day is special, none of them are. If every day is special, specialness becomes monotony. What makes days special is the time between, the anticipation of a the day, the planning, the surprises, coming together, cooking, playing, reveling in sheer time, watching the dedicated colors and rituals that wire our brain for pleasure spring up in the world to remind us that we live in it. The entire purpose of holidays is that they are a kind of otherworld we step into, full of special symbols, that informs and shapes everyday life--and some of life, no matter how some bloggers would like to deny it in their Grinchitude, is always everyday.

We celebrate the harvest. We celebrate the spring. We celebrate birthdays and death-days and the beginning of the year and the end of the year. We celebrate our parents and labor and Presidents. What in the world is so terribly wrong with celebrating love? I know not all of us have partners, but it is a rare soul who is without love of any kind. What kind of shrunken, sour heart does it take to insist that everyone else stop delighting in ritual and love? So few of us post about the magic of holidays--I think they're ashamed to. It's not cool to take unabashed pleasure in the silly and the soft-hearted.

As for the commercialism of it--well. It is commercial. So is every holiday, yet somehow we don't stomp all over Easter the way we tar and feather Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is no more a fake holiday than any other. If I hear someone call it a Hallmark holiday I'm actually going to scream. I'm only going to say this once:

Valentine's Day, boys and girls, entered the Western mind in Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, fully-realized as a day to celebrate love via an obscure saint, with red hearts and everything. Yes, celebrated in an allegorical bird-nation, but guess what? That makes it even more awesome. I will take a holiday my buddy Geoff invented over almost any other. If I had my way, we'd start exchanging bird-themed gifts and ditch Cupid.

This is a great holiday. It's pure physical, sensual pleasure, divorced from any dogma at this point. Saint whatever. Pass the sex and food.

And as a medieval holiday, it has quite a long pedigree, thank you very much, even if you don't count in the Lupercalia (which you really shouldn't, unless wolf skins play a large part in your personal celebrations. If so, more power to you). The fact is, some human made up every single holiday there is. They're ALL fake. No one is more real or authentic than any other. At least this one was invented by a broke poet instead of a bunch of sex-starved priests. We live in a postmodern world--everything is what we make it. If Hallmark wants to force mainstream kids to buy jewelry they can't afford, they're more than welcome. I don't have to care about that, or take part in it. But I also don't have to get up on a soapbox and crush their joy in it. I know better. I know this day is an act of literature made flesh. But their world is not less valid for being Geoff-less.

And more than Geoff--think about it for a second. In the midst of winter, we are encouraged to come together and have sex (let's not be coy.) To escape the snow and ice in each others' bodies. The colors are red and rose and white--the colors of fire in the winter, of blood, of flesh, survival even in the barren times. We exchange hearts, the very vital core of our bodies. It is the last holiday before spring, to remind us that the fertile world will come again, with flowers and sweetness and love. Even surrounded by death, by blood on the snow, be it St. Valentine's blood or your own, life will win out. The traditional food is chocolate--which can be preserved through the winter and does not rot, full of sugar and fat which keep our bodies going through lean times. This holiday is as old as time: o world, even in the freezing storm, come together, make love, make children, feast, smile, and know the sun is coming soon.

Seriously, you have to stop trying to take that away. If you remove ritual from the world, you leave it greyer, and sadder, and all you have in its place is the triumph of having ruined something another person loved, which is a shallow and bitter triumph indeed. Get down off the soapbox, have a little chocolate, look out at the melting snow, and say something kind to someone you love. To be human is to take part in ritual, to demarcate the time with feasting and song and vestments and ecstasy. Life slips by, so very fast. Spend it in the practice of joy, not the destruction of it.

Happy Valentine's Day. Geoff bless us. Every one.

Ooh. Pretty...

Hanuman Temple Photo, India Wallpaper – National Geographic Photo of the Day

Shared via AddThis

I've been sucked in again. :)