oddnessmostly <$BlogRSDURL$>

Thursday, April 29, 2004

Here is the safe place for echoes to resound. Here is the safe place of echoes and small gestures.
The beastly streams she feeds to me. The way she wings me. I grow fangs and angels and seem some sordid mutation, but there's a beauty in the evolution.

Again 

and again these demon energies enter me with their own wills as armature against whatever will one as weak as I might muster. There is a sacred hall where my words make no echo. There is a heaven into which I will never be allowed. I have given myself over to the forces of another nature.

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

These demon energies do not depart.

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Porridge 

The boy woke knowing the plague was on him. He livened up the fire in the hearth, nearly swooning, nearly falling into the fire. The fire was cool against his fevering skin. His belly rejected thoughts of breakfast, but he set the water to boil for the morning porridge just the same. He gazed at his image in the surface of the water. When the plague came for his mother, her face was long and pale and spotted all over with rosy rings. The image in the water was imperfect, but he saw the hint of his mother's sorrowfully drawn and dying visage in it.

The plague had taken his baby sister first, but he had seen his mother's babies die before. She had been sad about the others, but when the sorrow came to her face this time, he knew it would never leave. He knew that the face of sorrow would be his mother's face until she died. His father was next. His father did not seem to know that it was time for him to die. He lingered and lingered until his face melted and bubbled like a thick sauce his mother once made from fat and milk and cheese. The boy and his mother had been too weak to break the cold ground and give Father a proper grave, so they dragged him out into the field and burned him with the bedclothes. The boy could not bear to burn his mother's corpse. When her time came, he dragged her to the spot where Father had been burned, feebly rolling her over to lie face down in his ashes, then running back to the house through menacing dusk, tears streaming from his eyes, ashes clinging to his fingers.

The water boiled on the hearth. The boy poured in the last of the meal and stirred. He was not hungry. He was thirsty though and drank cup after cup of water while the porridge boiled until the pail was nearly empty. He was too weak to go out and draw more water from the well. He lay before the hearth, staring into the fire. He saw things in the fire. He saw his father's ghastly melting face. He saw the too-still face of his baby sister. When he saw his mother's face, it was not her dying face he saw. It was his lovely mother. It was his gentle, smiling mother. It was his soothing, sleepy mother, singing her own sleepiness into him. As he closed his eyes, he hardly even noticed that the image of his mother's face split open and a terrible grinning angel emerged to swiftly approach and claim him.


Monday, April 19, 2004

The Boy Who Needed Beauty 

The boy who needed beauty knew that beauty wasn't everything. The boy who needed beauty knew that beauty came in many forms, that some were awful to behold. The boy knew about the eye of the beholder. He knew that beauty should be within and beauty begins at home and all that la-di-da and yadda-yadda and blah and blah and blah. Still, the boy needed beauty. He wanted more and more. So the boy set off on a journey, a quest of sorts, on which he hoped to seek out beauties of every sort to sate his hunger, love, lust, his sacred need, his profane thirst for beauty, beauty, beauty.

He drank from a beautiful stream. He slept in a beautiful field beneath the beautiful sky. He broached the depths of a beautiful wood. He swam in a beautiful sea. He lived in beautiful cities. He loved every beautiful girl who would be loved by him and also took for himself the beauty of a broken heart that heals only to be broken once again. He consumed beauty and lost beauty and found that the loss was just as lovely in its way and could be even more so over time as having beauty in hand. Some beauties, it seems, are made to be lost by one person or another, only achieving their ultimate forms when someone cannot have them.

The boy worshipped beautiful gods. He battled beautiful monsters. He learned beautiful truths and told the most beautiful lies to anyone who asked him of his travels as his travels went on and on.

As you will have guessed by now, the journey never ended. As you surely suspected all along, the boy could never be satisfied, just as you and I will likely never be. He found, however, that the journey, the need, even the loss and sorrow and desperate torment of beauty in all its forms were enough to build a life on and his life has gone on a long time.

For centuries, the boy has searched. His search now brings him to you. Your beauty, though you may think it hidden or otherwise unknown, has called out to him, has drawn him across fathomless, fabulous waters and lands and into your real world. Even now, his hand is raised to knock on your door. Whether you allow him to enter your beautiful world or turn him away heartbroken, you will have rewarded the boy for his efforts and in turn, find some reward of your own. Never doubt that you are worthy of this reward.


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?