arms of win + quote dump
May. 30th, 2008 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minxyThis morning I reached for some fake sugar without really looking at what I was doing; whole wheat lasagna noodles poured all down my arm onto the dish rack. I put them back with a fairly bemused attitude about it, but didn't clean any of the dishes again because I noticed the coffee maker gurgling grounds onto the counter. It was that kind of morning.
But yesterday was made of win because I, in my first ever ficathon moderator post, sent out 40+ Gateverse Remix assignments. I'm pleased to say that only one bounced back at me because the email address couldn't be found, and I'd failed to change the salutation name in two emails, but got the assignment correct, which I feel is probably more important (self identity and such notwithstanding.)
I've only second-guessed one or two assignments, even, one of which being my own (omgwhatwasIthinkingtooooohaaaaaard...) but I read a poem today that is really, really Vala, and I think it might help direct the story choice.
Super seekret confession: my remix technique is to pick a story as fast as possible so as to have lots and lots of time to live in the world and learn it, make it my story, that kind of thing. Which means I'm already behind on picking a story, dammit.
QUOTE DUMP! First poem is the one that makes me think of Vala.
My soul?
A broken harmony
that hops over its dementia
on the cushion of time.
How they want to lay her down,
acclimate her,
recompose her,
the long-dead mortals!
Desire detached from achievement.
Agitator!
The madness of my soul
cannot repose,
it lives in the restlessness
in the disorder
in the imbalance
of things dynamic,
in the silence
of the free thinker, who lives alone,
in quiet exile.
Strong harmony broken
that of my soul:
broken at birth;
today more than ever she plants
her innate rebellion
in stanchions of strategic leaps.
-Julia de Burgos, My Soul
You are the skipped sentence in the book I'm reading.
You are the kitchen knife that slips into the thumb.
Memory: the autonomous twitch of an aching muscle.
You are the word that is always mistyped.
And, erased, defaces the page.
--Ruth Kluger, Still Alive
I've had enough
I'm sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge from everybody
Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me
Right?
I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to my friends' parents...
Then
I've got to explain myself
To everybody
I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.
Forget it
I'm sick of it
I'm sick of filling in your gaps
Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people
Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip
I will not be your bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness
I'm sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long
I'm sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves
I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self
Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die
The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses
I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful.
- Donna Kate Rushin, The Bridge Poem
there is [...]
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love
-Cascando, Samuel Beckett.
"But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it"
Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
"We live in the dark, we do what we can, the rest is the madness of art."
-Henry James, The Middle Years
"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers."
-Jose Narosky
"I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."
- Mark Twain
"Travel is a creative act—not simply loafing and inviting your soul, but feeding on the imagination, accounting for each fresh wonder, memorizing, and moving on… And the best landscapes, apparently dense or featureless, hold surprises if they are studied patiently, in the kind of discomfort one can savor afterward."
-Paul Theroux
"Travel can be a kind of monasticism on the move: On the road, we often live more simply, with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance. This is what Camus meant when he said that ‘what gives value to travel is fear’—disruption, in other words (or emancipation), from circumstance, and all the habits behind which we hide."
-Pico Iyer
"But the traveler’s world is not the ordinary one, for travel itself, even the most commonplace, is an implicit quest for anomaly."
-Paul Fussell
"Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places, and saving them from abstraction and ideology."
-Pico Iyer
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. "
-Winston Churchill
Sometimes, when I'm feeling humiliated and humble, my very power to dream drops its leaves and dries up.
-Pessoa
But yesterday was made of win because I, in my first ever ficathon moderator post, sent out 40+ Gateverse Remix assignments. I'm pleased to say that only one bounced back at me because the email address couldn't be found, and I'd failed to change the salutation name in two emails, but got the assignment correct, which I feel is probably more important (self identity and such notwithstanding.)
I've only second-guessed one or two assignments, even, one of which being my own (omgwhatwasIthinkingtooooohaaaaaard...) but I read a poem today that is really, really Vala, and I think it might help direct the story choice.
Super seekret confession: my remix technique is to pick a story as fast as possible so as to have lots and lots of time to live in the world and learn it, make it my story, that kind of thing. Which means I'm already behind on picking a story, dammit.
QUOTE DUMP! First poem is the one that makes me think of Vala.
My soul?
A broken harmony
that hops over its dementia
on the cushion of time.
How they want to lay her down,
acclimate her,
recompose her,
the long-dead mortals!
Desire detached from achievement.
Agitator!
The madness of my soul
cannot repose,
it lives in the restlessness
in the disorder
in the imbalance
of things dynamic,
in the silence
of the free thinker, who lives alone,
in quiet exile.
Strong harmony broken
that of my soul:
broken at birth;
today more than ever she plants
her innate rebellion
in stanchions of strategic leaps.
-Julia de Burgos, My Soul
You are the skipped sentence in the book I'm reading.
You are the kitchen knife that slips into the thumb.
Memory: the autonomous twitch of an aching muscle.
You are the word that is always mistyped.
And, erased, defaces the page.
--Ruth Kluger, Still Alive
I've had enough
I'm sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge from everybody
Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me
Right?
I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to my friends' parents...
Then
I've got to explain myself
To everybody
I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.
Forget it
I'm sick of it
I'm sick of filling in your gaps
Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people
Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip
I will not be your bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness
I'm sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long
I'm sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves
I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self
Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die
The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses
I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful.
- Donna Kate Rushin, The Bridge Poem
there is [...]
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love
-Cascando, Samuel Beckett.
"But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it"
Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
"We live in the dark, we do what we can, the rest is the madness of art."
-Henry James, The Middle Years
"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers."
-Jose Narosky
"I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."
- Mark Twain
"Travel is a creative act—not simply loafing and inviting your soul, but feeding on the imagination, accounting for each fresh wonder, memorizing, and moving on… And the best landscapes, apparently dense or featureless, hold surprises if they are studied patiently, in the kind of discomfort one can savor afterward."
-Paul Theroux
"Travel can be a kind of monasticism on the move: On the road, we often live more simply, with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance. This is what Camus meant when he said that ‘what gives value to travel is fear’—disruption, in other words (or emancipation), from circumstance, and all the habits behind which we hide."
-Pico Iyer
"But the traveler’s world is not the ordinary one, for travel itself, even the most commonplace, is an implicit quest for anomaly."
-Paul Fussell
"Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places, and saving them from abstraction and ideology."
-Pico Iyer
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. "
-Winston Churchill
Sometimes, when I'm feeling humiliated and humble, my very power to dream drops its leaves and dries up.
-Pessoa
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 06:58 pm (UTC)(I may still be giggling. Don't mind me.)
Super seekret confession: my remix technique is to pick a story as fast as possible so as to have lots and lots of time to live in the world and learn it, make it my story, that kind of thing. Which means I'm already behind on picking a story, dammit.
Oh, man, that was TOTALLY my strategy last year too. Which I guess means I'm also behind...oops.
Good luck! It'll be awesome :)
*dances because it's Friday and the sun came out after the thunderstorm*
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 11:21 pm (UTC)Oh, man, it's *FRIDAY*? I totally forgot, dude. That means I have to go to LA tomorrow, I should call my friend and confirm we're having dinner... [/stream of consciousness]
I solemnly pledge to read lots and lots of stories this weekend, maybe even pick on to remix!
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 11:31 pm (UTC)I suspect it's a problem in a lot of cases. Though with the remix, I'm not sure if it's the quality of the fic that matters so much as a fic that has something that bites you as having a different possible path (I know last year when I read through my author's stories I had one jump out and scream "REMIX ME!")
Yes! Friday! Eep! Have fun in LA! Don't get lost or eaten by the smog monster.
Yay stories.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 07:34 pm (UTC)Also, congratulations on the moderating. You are teh awesome.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 11:21 pm (UTC)*polishes mod badge*
eta: friended due to incredibly awesome ostrich icon used by the mod.