My Tootsie

My poor little Tootsie. I don't know if she'll ever come home again. I think about how much she liked sitting by the fire while we all worked, how good and sweet she was, how excited she got whenever dad came home, the little noise she made when we held up a T-Bone for her. The little crooked tail with a black diamond on it, the beautiful neck she once got shaved for an IV, the oversized eyes and undersized muzzle that made her look like a queen. Its starting to turn grey underneath. Starting. Only Starting. She's only eight years old.

The other night, the night before we took her to the Hospital, we put her to sleep in a little bed in the family room, put water next to her, and covered her up. We thought she might be more comfortable there than in the crowded bed upstairs. But as I was staying up late, I heard a sound and saw Tootsie panting behind me. She had dragged herself, half paralyzed, up two flights of stairs. Just to be with me. I can't imagine how painful that was. I can't imagine why she would do that.

But I wonder, did she know it would be her last night? Did she want to spend it with the ones she loved the most? In the green light falling through my office door, did she catch a glimpse of heaven?

A First

Probably my first incident triggered angst post. If someone feels a certain way, you can't change that. So don't tell them "don't feel this way" or "don't act like". Thats theyre feelings, and you can think they are your fault or their fault, and deal with it or let them deal with it alone... but don't tell them they arent real feelings. Thats not being any kind of friend.

Where now the Horse and the Rider?

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

-- J.R.R. Tolkien

It says everything and it says nothing. God I love Tolkien. Tragic, piercing nostalgia... talking of dead wood and corn and hauberks, and yet it would speak to a fourteen year old brat working at McDonalds between boyfriends...

Learning

I tell myself I'm learning so much now so that I'll always have it as I grow older, to fall back upon... but I do wonder if I'll be too busy learning to remember.

I will surely

No time. I will surely drown.

No time for language, no time for story, no time for sobe, no time for shrimp, no time for the Lay, no time for the boards... Austin, Homework, a little Story to keep me sane and then darkness.

Japanese and Such

I should call Mrs. Hirayoshi, but I'm nervous about talking to her on the phone. I feel like we won't be able to understand each other without our healthy mix of charades, pictograms, and words. But, it almost seems rude to go to someones house just to chat. So, will I just wait until she comes outside? I feel pathetic...

Random Bits of Inspiration

Another end of the spectrum - bizarre, random pieces of something greater... or of nothing at all. :P

• Under the oiled cloth they felt as thin and weak as finger bones.
• She hadn't reached her limit yet, but she knew it was there, creeping just out of sight. (Like a Black Hole was the distinct impression I got)
• Filled with horrible, unfinished creatures. They had eyes that could not see, ears that could not hear, and their skin was pale and translucent.
  

A Week of Snapshots

This week all my inspiration (An above average amount of it, actually), has all come in brief but amazingly poignant snapshots. Brilliant. In one way, I really enjoy this; because a snapshot that vivid really stays with you, and can go so many different ways, but at the same time, it really puts a strain on me! I have to do something with it, I can't waste something so beautiful, but it leaves so much work for me. :P

Meh, I shouldn't complain... there are people who are struggling to get inspiration at all, and here I am complaining about an overload. Just a few bullets, more for my own personal reflection than the interests of my (any?) readers....

• Lewis - (Originally, but briefly, Derrick) Bad film stock, kind of Sepia-toned. This was the most vivid, probably because I was open to it at the time and nurtured it. I actually wrote this one into decent words ---
• Lewis has the eyes of an intellectual... grey-blue, clear but a shade secretive, large but gently tapered off on either end. Underneath the quiet innocence is a haunted, wary look, and beneath that is one of hunger and confusion, as if he doesn't know himself exactly what he's running from. Once past the eyes, his looks are rather uninspiring; a sharpening of a poor photo reveals little more than a boy of twelve, a little short for his age. His dark, tussled hair is cut close save for a few unruly bangs at that unmanageable length, obscuring his forehead and much of his eyes unless he sweeps it back regularly.
  
  His face is well featured; he will never be 'dashing', or 'handsome', but perhaps that is for the best. He has enough to deal with without the complications girls would bring. His hands are another surprise. They are wiry and gaunt, more like the hands of a grown man than such a young boy. They are quick and clever, and he relies on them more than he should.

• A Woman with raven hair, older than she looks, braiding her hair with worn fingers as snow falls around her. There was also a slightly stereotypical and now fuzzy voiceover accompanying it.
  

• Another woman on the edge of a (cliff, structure, something), looking over a city of unimaginable beauty, so far beneath that its colours are faded. Or maybe theres another reason... I think she's standing with someone else. There is strong wind. There usually is in my imaginings.
  

In the first and the last, eyes were the central focus, in the center one, it was her fingers. Kind of a common theme there. Good times, whatever :P

Songs of the Week: Three very different selections: Strangers Like Me, The Dream Within, and Zombie.

Zombie

The other day I heard the song Zombie by the Cranberries. I listened to it a few times through, getting a feel for the creepiness, before I realised that (as usual) I was hearing the lyrics entirely wrong. Looking them up, I found date, and was intrigued enough to do a little research into the background of the song. It says this:

This was inspired by the IRA bombing in Warrington, Cheshire in 1993. Two children, Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry, were killed. The IRA (The Irish Republican Army) is a militant group determined to remove British troops from Northern Ireland.

It's actually a neat song, once you get past what she's doing in her throat.... This is my favorite line:

"It's the same old theme, since 1916.
In your head, in your head, theyre still fighting."

Eowyn's Dirge

In The Two Towers (Extended Edition), Eowyn sings a little dirge at her cousin's funeral. I remember this song; I remember hearing it for the first time. My friend Christina got it and called me over for a sleepover. We watched the whole thing through, then our favourite parts again. It was a long, wonderful night.
But this scene stands out in my memory mostly because it was the last time that the scenes of grief and devestation in the Lord of the Rings remained just that - didn't affect me on a personal level. I don't know what happened after that - whether I grew up, whether what I saw really did allow me to understand better, whether my melodrama at last exceeded my hyper unrealism.
Her grief wasn't real to me. Eowyn's Dirge was the last harmless tragedy.

No More Seperate Peace...

Mood: Recovering

No more Seperate Peace. This occurs to me suddenly. Like all English required reading Books, I resented the book at times, but now that it's over I realised how attatched we had gotten. I have to say it goes on the board with To Kill a Mockingbird and Watership Down as English assignments I really enjoyed. Like Scout, Jem, Fiver, and Hazel - Brinker, Leper, Brownie, Gene, and Finny will be with me forever. Who would have thought that the destroyed book with the sappy title, the cliche setting, and far too introspective cover could do what so few English novels have done?

Goodbye, Finny. Goodbye, Gene. ;_;


As a bizarre sidenote: Hogwart's least popular Headmaster in History was also named Phineas.

History Class

Honors World History rocks my socks. We learned so much today; we're studying ancient Chinese Dynasties... and we learned about a guy who made lakes of alcohol and hung meat from tree's; a prime minister who covered the smell of his decaying emperor with rancid fish; a thousand terra-cotta warriors and rivers full of mercury. The most disturbing part was Lady Dai...

"Two Thousand years later and her skin is still soft..." said the movie guy suggestively. I didn't think this was possible so I looked it up, and the realities far more gruesome... http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-08/25/content_368631.htm

The Kinslaying of Aqualonde

This is a great painting by Nasmith of The Kinslaying at Aqualonde. This is probably my favorite painting by him, and I chose it when we had to write a poem about a painting for English Class in 9th Grade. Here is my poem :)

Dreamlike Fury,
The stench of blood,
The calm of the water,
And the dead floating there.

Rushing Steel,
The solemn tide,
The lamp lights untroubled,
And the red stains below.

Silver Strings,
The dark sky,
The silver-white swan ships,
And the death they will bring.

The battle in all it's rage,
With clash of sword and twang of bow,
Carries a ways across the water,
Before the echoes fade.

The lords in all their fury,
Make history in eyes of men,
Yet can set no ripple,
In the calm of the night.

Fixation Ending Slowly

Three pictures of peace to round out the batch...

Water is a thing that must Flow

Tidbit

Banjo Kazooie

I loved Banjo Kazooie... though I don't remember the graphics being quite this good! :P

River

Look at these nearly effortless peices of beauty... I love this program. Everyone should get Terragen... Just slap some terrain about, add grass and flowers; adjust the camera and lighting, and get snapping... beautiful stuff. Absolutely beautiful.

A Matter of Trust

This is the cover of A Seperate Peace by John Knowles, which we are reading in English this year. Notice the ghostly people on the tree. An interesting book. It compares The Fall of Man with each youth's journey through adolescence and into the harsh realities of adulthood. So much love Naivete.

I don't know whether it's this book or what happened on I Need Hosting that set these feelings off, but I feel like I've been losing some of my naivete lately. It's a matter of trust. The more I want to trust, lately, the harder it is.

I've even been having trouble with some of those people I call friends lately. It makes me want to cling closer to those I truly trust and care about. I hate growing up.

Daily Angst

I hate being angsty, but it happens sometimes I suppose.

I was thinking the other day about how I'm fairly optomistic, and I can't imagine why people would waste so much of their lives worrying and complaining. But, with all the blessings I have, how can I not be happy? I can't even begin to understand the lives of people who have been deformed from birth, or live in a nation ravaged by war and genocide, or have had their whole lives uprooted by a natural disaster. And then I almost feel guilty sitting there and thinking about it. It's hard to get your mind around. Then the big questions come up, and I just want them to go away ;_;.

Manga Collection

My Manga collection is growing more impressive. ^^ In fact, I need to find a new series to collect!

Chobits - 8 (Complete)
Planet Ladder - 7 (Complete)
Fruits Basket - 11 (Up to Present)
Ranma - 8

Yay and Such. 34 in Total.

School Starting

My Schedual:

Honors Biology 1 and 2
Latin 4
German 1
Honors World History
Spanish 3
Honors English 2
Algebra 2 / Triganometry

Once again I find myself in Honors Science without the Honors Math... always a challenge. My goal for this year is to get:

Honors Biology 1 and 2 --- B
Latin 4 --- H
German 1 --- A
Honors World History --- H
Spanish 3 --- A
Honors English 2 --- A
Algebra 2 / Triganometry --- B

I think these are reasonable goals, too. ^^ I'm very excited about my history class. World History pwns Modern American History. Even with Mr. McCarthy. Who's now Principle. Gah. Why must life be so strange? :P

I suppose it's fairly obvious I failed at finding Ben. I tried, I really did. ;_; But theres only so far you can get with a first name, an age, and an ip address.

The Other INC

The other I Naur Celedril, my rpg, has been unceremoniously deleted without a care or even a notice. This makes me rather angry. I also hosted all my photos on it, so it will take me a while to relocate them all. But, theres nothing I can do. Its time to swallow my overlarge pride and move to Ezwhore, I suppose.