July 31, 2006
The End of Another Month
Greece
This is the time we've waited for, my mom says. You're old enough, we've got the money...
My Dad's going to Greece. On business. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get to come along. We've spent all day comparing airfares and layovers. It's doable, my mom at last admits. Doable. Athens in October, Curacao in December, Rome and Pompeii in March. I can scarcely believe it. After all my whining, I might end up travelling abroad no less than three times this year.
It's the time of my life when I'm finally growing into the things I've always promised myself, the things I said I'd do when I'm older. I'm starting to enter a time I've looked forward to. Isn't that a strange feeling?
And also because you've been so good, she says. There's something to be said for not getting in trouble. And little things, like how you don't complain about your car having the shakes, I know Mel will...
Oh, how I want to think that. I want to think that I've been good, and this is my reward. Greece. It's not a hundred percent certain. But it's growing. Yesterday, when I first heard of it, maybe 40%. Now I'd say 75%. Maybe more. Mom checked the calendar, and I'm not taking PSAT until the next week, it's a good time to miss school. We can get the round trip for about 1,000 USD, and my dad already has the hotel, etc.
I'm crossing my fingers...
July 30, 2006
No Whipped Cream
Tonight I made cocoa, but it was simple, in a small cup. Milk, Chocolate, a dash of Malt. No whipped cream, no MnMs, no white chocolate chips, no cinnamon, no brown sugar swirls. No whipped cream. Another of life's surprises.
I stayed up late, dreaming of Greece and reading of Rome. It's that time of night. The cicada's and powdery moths are beating their frail wingéd bodies against the glass of the windows leading into the light. But I smile, because I know something they don't.
No matter how distant the sun seems, things will turn out -- not for the better, but for the best.
July 28, 2006
Of Canada and Colorado...
"Canada doesn't count." - Me
"I think Canada would be a great place to live."
"It doesn't count."
"Why not?"
"It's not foreign enough. The exciting bit is French. And the French are le bleh. I don't want any of that."
"If you could live anywhere in the world... where would it be?"
I must have turned bright red, because she guessed it.
"Fin... I mean, Oh, wossname, Norway?"
"Eh..heh..."
"Oh Miranda, get over that boy!"
"It's not about the boy, I liked Norway before I liked the boy..." I nod. "Really." And it's true. She can read my blog for proof.
"It's too far away..." She whines. "Oh, you know where you should go?"
"?"
"Colorado! It's just like Norway!"
"..."
"Really! It's cold and everyone's a health nut and wears birkenstocks and goes mountain climbing."
"...."
She googles it.
"Where's the ocean?" I innocently ask. A glare.
"I don't see the fjords." Another glare.
Why doesn't anyone understand?
July 27, 2006
Two Stories
They also tend to worry me and make me fret, regardless of the fact that I am mostly writing at this point for A.) myself, and B.) practice. Therefore, I'm going to be working, not as ferociously, but when I'm stuck or something, on a second story, which is on the opposite end of my familiarity spectrum. It's limited third person, multiple POV, and rather typical fantasy. But I hope to have fun with it, too. :) Now I can rest happily.
That's Very Interesting...
Last day with the mud children was today. Sweet kids, really. But at one point three climbed on me at once, two in the back and one in the front, and none of them had feet touching the ground. That was a little... depressing. ;) But the bad aside... I was thinking.
It unnerved me that they all looked the same, didn't it? And it was such superficial similarity; of course their faces were as different as they could be, their shoes too, and their hairstyles, and don't get me started on personality. Only half of them even still had blue eyes. But it unnerved me. Just the hair and the skin and the shirts. And I thought....
That's Very Interesting...
Perhaps I'm happier in America, in the land of diversity to the near extinction of the norm, than I realize...
Piraty Things....
http://youtube.com/watch?v=x--liK0z170&search=kenshingumi%20don%27t%20do%20anything
Water Buffalo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FG2gzBKqnWI&search=veggie%20tales
Writing
July 26, 2006
Hilarity
Who Have I Become?
Oh, Jiffy Pop. Can you forgive me? For what I have done? For what I have become? I have changed, become too good for myself, and so, I have forgotten you.Jiffy Pop - The stovetop Popcorn. Some hate it, some call it names, some say it Never Pops, that it's always burnt. Pah, I say, Pah! It just takes a little skill to get it right. It's all in the wrist, all in the circular movements. But we don't camp anymore, and the Jiffy Pop is forgotten.
"Miranda, do you think they want the Jiffy Pop, or is it more trouble than it's worth?"
"... Jiffy Pop?"
"Yeah, it's been on the counter."
OH. Jiffy Pop. I have forgotten. Forgive me. I have not changed so much. Not really. Blame my head, not my heart. ;_;
One Hot Day in the Mister
It was lovely. Soon, though, the water wet us through, and we moved through it, dripping slowly, making movements like water running through a steam. I've spoken before about losing yourself in a rhythm; this was one of those times. Though the beat was lopsided and the dance was clumsy, I forgot myself nonetheless. Shining in the sun, glittering like melting snowdrops, becoming the steam itself, tumbling over and into tomorrow.
Simple and Clean
You don't hear me say please
Oh baby, don't go
Simple and clean is the way that you're making me feel tonight
It's hard to let it go
You're giving me too many things
Lately you're all I need
You smiled at me and said,
Don't get me wrong I love you
But does that mean I have to meet your father?
When we are older you'll understand
What I meant when I said "No,
I don't think life is quite that simple"
The daily things
That keep us all busy
Are confusing me.
Thats when you came to me and said,
Wish I could prove I love you
But does that mean I have to walk on water?
When we are older you'll understand
It's enough when I say so,
And maybe something are that simple
When you walk away
You don't hear me say please
Oh baby, don't go
Simple and clean is the way that you're making me feel tonight
It's hard to let it go
Hold me
Whatever lies beyond this morning
Is a little later on
Regardless of warnings the future doesn't scare me at all
Nothing's like before
- Utada Hikaru, Simple and Clean
Of course, it could mean nothing at all. A lot of J-pop is so ambiguous that I often wonder if they were even planning to say anything at all. :P But still, it's nice, sometimes, to revisit an old favourite.
July 25, 2006
Bailar... Y Sentir El Ritmo...
Anyhow, my mom's trying to teach me to dance. I have no rhythm. None. I'm a walking hyperbole when it comes to that, actually. When I was little, I clapped in between all the other kids. Never understood why. If I happened to slide into pattern for a few notes, by freakish chance... it scared me. I felt almost too caught up in it. I'm the type that often goes into nearly ecstatic states. I occasionally feel almost like I'm coming out of myself, like I'm part of everything. For this reason... I avoid drugs like the plague. Also because I know I'd get addicted. But getting into rhythm... does that... and I don't like it. Same as on the road. I tend to go about a mile below the speed limit, because right on that line, we're all moving together... bah. Rhythm frightens me. I follow the rhythms of speech, well enough, and sometimes I think I can almost feel the rhythm of the earth under my feet. But whether that makes sense or not, whether I can or not, well... suffice to say that I hear nothing in music but words and poetry and a pretty sound.
She's trying to teach me to dance. Starts with footwork. Real simple stuff, like from aerobics. I start getting it... a little.... But it's all memorization, all calculation.
"Do you feel the rhythm?"
"... No..."
"Do you feel the rhythm?
"... No..."
"Just feel the rhythm! Don't listen to me, listen to the music!"
"...."
"Do you feel the rhythm?"
"... No..."
Still, my footwork slowly progresses. Then she tells me to put the arms in. Actually suggests it might help. But it all falls apart. Move two things at once? You're kidding? You might say I'm the type who can't walk and talk at the same time. In fact I can. But only because I'm so good at talking.
But to dance? You're kidding?
Kids, Kids, Kids
Put Nate down for his nap. Easy, once I gave him elephant and a binky. No diapers. ^^ Grace swam in a blow up pool; I kept an eye on her, both when I could spare them, through the glass doors as I folded laundry and stirred noodles with butter. She didn't like them, though, because I added salt and a touch of garlic. Disgusting. Just when I thought her about the pickiest blonde monster ever to walk the earth, she sat there and ate two or three cups of cottage cheese right before my wondering eyes. So that was that; she even earned the fudge cakes I had brought for desert.
Had a mug of Clam Chowder. Watched "The Pacifier" and then four episodes of "Kim Possible." The opening song to that is nostalgic, one of the last disney shows I actually watched, once or twice. Brings me back to a summer, a week spent at my grandparents house, drawing bad pictures to impress (I thought) my aunt Janet. She's so nice, though, really, she might have been impressed. That was years ago, though, summer after sixth grade; four years. And part of me thinks of Kim as a new show. How old does that make me? :P
Haley came home from the hospital with a big bandage on her leg, holes where her IV had gone in, and a huge round of complaints. I listened patiently to every one (from how much her leg hurt to how buttery the hospital popcorn was) as her mom filled a prescription at KMart. I do love those kids, you know. The Moores. My parents like to act like that makes them the Moorish invaders.
Another round with the Mud Children. Paige was clingy again, Mira was being a brat according to her mother, Laura spoke a little more (her last name is Quesal, rhymes with Weasel, and she is one year older than I). I'm also wondering if it's possible to be sexually harrassed by a five year old. Grant was petting my thighs when he sat on my lap. I'm thinking of not following them up another year; can't have children that scary get bigger than I am.
Neither the Moors or the Mud Children can hold a candle to the Girl Scouts, though... :D
July 24, 2006
Mud Children
The children all kind of look the same from head to toe, because a lot of them have nice little tans, and Mira and Grant especially have the most amazing gold skin tone. Lucy's a lightish shade of black, and Paige is just about as dark skinned as you can be and still look Chinese. Other than those two, nearly all of them were blonde as toddlers, but now that they're going into first grade their hair is darkening, turning dishwater blonde like everyone else in America. That's what happens in a melting pot, you know. You get mud children. :P
I'm working with Sharon Peebles, who is alright I guess. She's very happy to have an extra pair of hands out of me, but has a tendency to treat her volunteers like hired work she has half a mind to fire, and also I think she doesn't like me. The only other one working Kindergarten is Laura. I'm not sure how old she is; older than me, but not an adult yet. She's very friendly, but she doesn't talk much; just laughs at whatever I say or whatever anyone does. I don't know how useful she will be. I'll have to find out.
So that's out team for "Dig It!": Me, Sharon, Laura, and the Mud Children.
July 23, 2006
Prologue, Hello and Goodbye
Prologue:
Hello and Goodbye
I remember the day my father sent for me. I would like to think of it as my first clear memory, but that’s hardly the truth. However often I think back upon it, focusing and sharpening and perhaps adding in the things that came after, it remains the memory of a child: a fog of confusion and raw feeling, broken by moments of strange clarity.
It was late spring, and I was with my cousins. The green hills where we ran overlooked our village, and the streams were ice cold, fed from melting snow higher up in the mountains. We didn’t dare to stay in the streams long, but splashed in and out, revelling in the contrast between the freezing water and still, warm air. We ran to keep our blood warm as our clothes dried out, screeching with delight as we flew heedlessly into the woods, away from where the stream fell over the edge of the cliff.
There was nothing special about that morning, but I remember it all: every footfall, every time the cold water slowly sank through my boots and into my skin, every flourishing twig that whipped against my thighs as I ran. My memory has embraced that last hour, lengthening it as I might have if I had known what was to come. Every moment we spent up in the hills, ran through the ice-cold stream or went shrieking into the well-loved forests beyond was a moment left in the southlands, and I cherished every one.
In the morning, a glimpse of the horizon revealed white sails. By noon, a ship filled our harbour. It’s hull was enormous before me, and the sails stretched up like clouds, too large to have come from anywhere but the north.
Ever since my mother died, we had known that my father might come for me. We might have known from my birth and it would not have made it easier. My cousins cried. My aunt kissed me and said it wasn’t right, that seven was too young to be taken from my homeland. And from my family. They made me promise never to forget the land of my birth.
They need not have worried. I would not forget the southlands. We may forget a place we have been, but never a place that has been us. I could not have forgotten the land whose cold rivers ran in my blood and whose stones and iron formed my bones.
No, I would not forget them. But neither, in the end, would I weep in remembrance. The southlands were my heart and body, but to the north lie my heart and soul, for I am of it as well. I was not leaving all that I was. So I cried, too, when they told me I was going away, but the tears lasted only as long as the soil beneath my feet. Out on the waves, the shore vanished quickly behind us. I pointed myself with the ship, and it went where the winds took it. To the North.
It was not a long voyage, and though I had little companionship, I was not yet lonely. My heart was filled enough with coming and going, with hello and goodbye. It was long enough ago that in my mind it has become one long, sunny day. The sailors found me a wild child, and were half frightened. Northern children, I would learn, restrain their most primal curiosity from an early age. The crew, the few passengers, and even the merchant my father had asked to bring me to him all set me to govern myself. I ran and I climbed, heedless of splinters or falls, though I had many of each, loving the sea spray even when it stung my eyes and skinned knees. At midday I would sometimes fall asleep on the salt soaked, sunny deck, cradled by the waves crashing beneath me.
July 21, 2006
Our Summer
St. Louis Hurricane
* - Bad and initially unintentional pun
O Canada!
That's right! Canada! Cool, wet, 75 degree Canada!
Eheu!
July 20, 2006
Check it out:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5965139,00.html
In better news, my Cybernation was saved from annihilation by a team member nuking my enemy. Perhaps unfair, but ah... If I don't feel delivered.
But for the heat...
Desert Rose
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of fire
Those dreams that tie two hearts that will never die
And near the flames
The shadows play in the shape of the mans desire
This desert rose
Whose shadow bears the secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume that would torture you more than this
And now she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realize that nothings as it seems
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of rain
I lift my gaze to empty skies above
I close my eyes
The rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of love
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
Sweet desert rose
Whose shadow bears the secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume that would torture you more than this
Sweet desert rose
This memory of hidden hearts and souls
This desert flower
This rare perfurme is the sweet intoxication of love
- Desert Rose, Sting with Cheb Mami
Hot
It's hot. Hot so the radio stations give out free ice cream to win the loyalty of the masses. Hot so the thunder storm shut off power to half a million people and they've got shelters set up in the downtown, because here air conditioning isn't a luxury, it's a need. It's hot so you can't think properly, you move slowly, your mind shuts down. It's ot so I'm dreaming of the sea and forests of pine. Hot so the moisture rising off the river brings the percieved temperature up to 115 degrees fahrenheit. Hot.
Buckling Down
Sweating in Air
First no snow, now this... I'm pointing myself away with every droplet of sweat. They won't see me around here any more. At least to Wisconsin, for college. And then...
Sometimes it's easy to forget I'm stronger now when the bright light at the axis of the dragon's jaws seems especially bright. I'll fall to it, if it wants me to. And I'll go.
Far and away. ;)
The Heat...
July 18, 2006
El Ron
The Iliad
B.) "And you in your despair will be powerless to help them as they fall in their multitudes to man slaying Hector of Troy."
C.) "Nor will you be able to help them at all, no matter how grieved you are, when man-killing Hector is cutting them down by the dozen. Then, I say, you'll rend your heart with wrath and remorse."
These three lines are, unless my good sense misleads me, all viable translations of a single line from the Iliad. Which do you prefer? In my opinion, B is the best. It lends to it the greatest amount of excitement, and puts it in understandable language. A seems to me the dullest of the three, and C is abominably wordy.
So here's why I ask: At Stian's recommendation, I bought A from Borders. Lovely book, Hard Cover with a design and title in gold on dark navy. I thought it was dreadfully boring, that perhaps something was wrong with me and I couldn't get into it. After 7 long pages, I reached the above line. Little bells went off in my head, and I suddenly remembered Stian quoting that line from B, his translation. Obviously, his was a lot better. Then I understood; quality of the translation was everything. So I went to the store, and at Barnes and Noble they had it cheap cheap, so I looked up that line and found C. It seemed better to me, somehow I didn't notice the "Then, I say"'s, but anyway it is a little more exciting. So I bought it too. And now what? I think I just read C as if its a story being told to me, sacrificing a little eloquence for a bit too much colloquiallization (not a word, as far as I know. ;)). But gah! Stian, what brand did you buy and why do mine all suck?
Finance and Inventory
Breakdown:
-125$ (savings)
=====
75$
-25$ (movies)
=====
50$
-25$ (waldenbooks)
=====
25$
-1$ (cookie)
=====
24$
-13$ (breadco)
=====
11$
+ 45$
=====
56$
-5$ (pocky)
=====
51$
- 44$ (barnes and noble)
=====
Balance: 7$
Brethren (Hardcover)
The Illiad
Mastering Spanish Vocabulary
The Poisonwood Bible
The Catcher in the Rye
4 Packs of Pocky
French
Voulez-vous aller et mourir avec moi? Le Français n'est pas très confortable pour moi. ;_;
July 17, 2006
Colour Guard
July 10, 2006
A Compliment
"If I had a son, I would marry you off right away."
It's funny, I understood it was a compliment and everything. But that didn't stop me from blushing and kind of... removing myself from that part of the room as quickly as possible. :P Kind of glad he doesn't really have a son!
July 07, 2006
July Photos
What do you mean I'm 12? I'm sixteen, really, I am, I swear it! :P
Miranda stylishly eats a designer Neopolitan Ice Cream Sandwich.
I sit here quite alone and eat and cry. This summer is not what it should have been...
Oh the good natured ice cream randomness.
Sun Poisoning
It didn't work. And I've been so long without a sun burn... without anything more than the slightest bit of reddish colour, almost bringing me to normal skin tone, on my forearms and lower legs. It's been so long, I guess it didn't know how to handle the sudden radiation. Or perhaps it was because of my mostly anglo saxon heritage with the hint of Native American, I've heard that can be a risk factor too. At any rate, I had an itchy rash. Called Photodermatis. I felt like a giant mosquito bite.
Showering and etc didn't help, and by that evening I had a definite SUN BURN. Gah! I could kill myself. I've been doing a good job, for so long... But there it is. Luckily I put sunscreen on my face and chest, so they still look lovely. And I happened to be wearing a one piece, which shielded yet more skin. :P It's really only my shoulders and back, and a little on my lower chest.
Funny thing is, it doesn't even hurt like I remember sun burns hurting... and no hot-shower-feels-like-acid. Just the itch...
Random News
Oh, and Melissa had a record phone bill. The people at the company couldn't believe it. In one month, she managed to rack up 3,700 text messages. That's about 123 a day, for a bill of 350$. She'll be working that off forever, at her income...
July 06, 2006
The Witch’s Eyes
A candle was lit in the cool darkness of the house, its flame flaring wildly for a moment on the fresh wick. My eyes were drawn first to it, and then to the man that held it, set it down with such care that it hardly shifted in the dish. For half a moment, he watched the flame as it flickered and subsided, then turned to me.
“You have my eyes.”
My ears had grown accustomed to babble, and it took me a moment to realise I understood the words. Even then, their meaning puzzled me. In the south, blue eyes were rare, almost unnatural. Once, as my older cousins liked to tease me, they had even been considered the mark of a witch.
“No… I have the Witch’s eyes,” I said with all seriousness, not understanding his meaning. He didn’t smile or frown at this, merely nodded.
“That’s what she told me as well.” I almost asked who she was. But he was staring at me with such thought in his eyes that I felt my own grow silent for a moment.
“Are you my father?” I asked after a long pause.
“I am. And I suppose that makes this your home.”
He made the briefest of gestures about him, and I followed it, eyes dancing from shadow to shadow in the faint light. The fabric of the chairs was finer than any of the clothes I had ever worn, and I looked almost cautiously towards the walls. Pictures were traced into their perfect white surface, lions and eagles in gold thread, hardly recognizable in all their artistic ferocity. My home. For a moment, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the lion, frozen in it’s eternal roar.
“Are you frightened?”
“No.” I replied on principle, before falling into admission. “Or… I’m not sure.”
“It must seem strange to you.” He said. “As strange as your lands were to me. But there is a difference, you know. You belong here. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” An automatic response, half hearted. But it was enough for my father, and he quickly changed the subject.
“I regret that I won’t be able to see much of you for a while. This is a very bad time of year for me. I would have waited to bring you… but we couldn’t delay any longer.” His words were formal and difficult, and I remember working to understand them, sometimes even having to guess.
“Delay? Wait? Why not?”
“The time had simply come.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s harder to change as you grow older, you know. Harder to gain, and harder to lose. We become as rigid as old stones.” Then he smiled for the first time, though not with happiness. He reached out towards me, and I felt his hand touch the dark waves of hair near my forehead. Distantly I noticed that his hair parted in the same way, peaking a little first. “But you’re still young.” He said, and slowly pulled away. You must be tired after the voyage, so go and rest now. The girl’s name is Dania, she’ll take care of you.”
I wasn’t tired, and I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I wanted to talk to this man who was my father, little as that meant to me. I wanted to ask about the eyes I couldn’t see in the candlelight and what he meant about the old stones. But Dania was wordlessly beckoning me, and I found myself going to her. I looked back once, and my father had already turned away, already busied himself with something new. But he held his hand against his head, as if suddenly wearied.
I dreamt that night as I rarely had in the southlands. I was lonely that night. I’m convinced we dream out of loneliness, to fill the emptiness inside. I dreamt of being on a ship again, lost, years older. I couldn’t admit I had nowhere to go, and nowhere to return to. The ocean was blue as the eyes my father and I shared. In the distant past, those eyes would have cast me out as a witch. Even now, they damned me to wandering.
July 01, 2006
Hello and Goodbye
A little something I whipped up the other day. I might continue with it until I grow bored.
I remember the day my father sent for me. I would like to think of it as my first clear memory, but that’s not really the truth. However often I think back upon it, focusing and sharpening and perhaps adding with things that came after, it remains the memory of a child: a fog of confusion and raw feeling, broken by strange moments of clarity.
It was late spring, and I was with my cousins, up in the green hills that overlooked our village. The streams were ice cold, fed from melting snow higher up in the mountains. We didn’t dare to stay in them long, but splashed in and out, revelling in the contrast between the freezing water and the still warm air. We ran to keep our blood warm as our clothes dried out, screaming with delight as we flew heedlessly into the woods, away from the edge of the cliff where the stream fell over into the seaside valley.
There was nothing spectacular about that morning, but I remember it all the same. I remember every footfall, every time the cold slowly sank through my boots and into my skin, every flourishing twig that whipped against my thighs as I ran. My memory has held onto that last hour, lengthened it as I might have if I had known what would come after. Every moment we stayed up in those hills, ran through the ice-cold stream or went shrieking into the well-loved forests beyond was a moment left in the southlands, and I held onto every one.
In the morning, a glimpse of the horizon revealed white sails. By noon, there was a ship filling our harbour, too large to have come from anywhere but the north.
Ever since my mother’s death, we had known that my father might come for me. We might have known from my birth and it would not have made it easier. My cousins cried. My aunt kissed me and said it wasn’t right, that seven was too young to be taken from my homeland and from my family. They made me promise not to forget the land of my birth.
They need not have worried. I would not forget the southlands. We may forget a place we have been, but never a place that has been us. I could not have forgotten the land whose cold rivers ran in my blood and whose stones and iron formed my bones.
No, I would not forget them. But neither would I weep in remembrance, after all was said and done. The southlands were my heart and body, but to the north lie my heart and soul, for I am of it as well. I was not leaving all that I was behind me. So I cried, too, when they told me I was going away, but the tears lasted only as long as the soil beneath my feet. Out on the waves, the shore vanished quickly behind us. I pointed myself with the ship, and it went where the winds took it. To the North.
It was not a long voyage, and though I had little companionship, I was not lonely. My heart was filled enough with coming and going, with hello and goodbye. It was long enough ago that in my mind it has become only one long, sunny day. The sailors found me a wild child, and were half frightened. Northern children, I would learn, restrain their most primal curiosity from an early age. The crew, the few passengers, and even the merchant my father had asked to bring me to him all let me mind myself. I ran and I climbed, heedless of splinters or falls, though I had many of each, loving the sea spray even in the way it stung my eyes and skinned knees. At midday I would sometimes fall asleep on the salt soaked, sunny deck, almost cradled by the waves crashing beneath me.
The sun was hotter every day that we travelled. We made good time, and I remember wondering, vaguely, where the south turned into the north. I expected something to happen when it did. A lightening bolt, a clap of thunder signalling our passage. A change in the colour of the sea and sky. At the very least, some magical gate dividing the one from another. But there was no clear line. The two blended together, like hello and goodbye, like the coming and going. It’s a strange feeling, one I’ve come to know well. In my memory, it still tastes like salt and smells like sea air.
We came ashore at last, and I got my first view of a city. It sat under a bright, hot sun, all smooth stone and glittering marble. I had never seen such a busy place. There were as many people in that harbour as there were in my entire village. The people were different: their features were more delicate, and some of them had hair like fire or spun gold.
A thousand different smells came to my nose. Rising even above the salt of the sea was the sweat of multitudes, for here were a thousand men and beasts tucked into a small pocket of earth. The buildings rose to contain them all. The noise was unbearable, a constant background of chatter and the clip-clop of hooves on cobblestones. Still, above the odours were fruit and bread and perfumes, and above the racket was a music I had never heard before. Silence and stillness for art and civilization.
I was enthralled by the change, but not quite overwhelmed by it. God granted me that I was too young to believe anything impossible, and thus accepted the new world with wondering eyes but an open mind. So great was my desire to take it all in that I wonder how I made it the short walk from the ship to my father’s house, stumbling on sea legs and staring at the sky, at rows of windows reaching beyond my view, at laundry lines and people shouting in a language that sounded like dripping honey.
All this, and then quiet. It was two months before I came outside again.
Post Cards!
I'll give away one right now, because I need to apologize for it's contents:
Stian, I sort of... forgot about yours until the last minute, I realized I hadn't written it yet, so I randomly threw something together that's not properly content sound, much less, the grammar... hmm, yes, well... I can't really believe I actually sent it, so just... appreciate it for what it is, okay! :P