Ancestors and bones
Feb. 28th, 2004 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
birdspiritlandTonight is sort of a quiet night for me. The term at East-West is slowly coming to an end, and I was able to spend the entire morning in bed cuddling with my beloved. It's a wonderful thing to lie there with someone who's nice and warm, and who loves you. It's a simple pleasure that I hope most people will get to experience at least once in their lives.
He's so lovely early in the morning, half-asleep and making little moises under his breath as he moves closer to me and puts his head on my shoulder. When I'm having a bad day, it's memories like this that help to get me through.
We finished reading "Mythago Wood" this morning. On to "The Silver Metal Lover" next, I suppose.
You know what's weird? Collecting antique photos of people that you don't know. Yes, I do indeed do this. It's not so much the collecting, although that in and of itself is strange, because I have no idea as to who most of the folks in the pictures are. Particularly with two pictures that I bought to represent my Vampire: the Masquerade character, Charissa Bronwyn, and her wraith friend, Lucille Stevens. With those two pictures, it's not just that the people are a mystery to me. It's also the fact that the only name and identity that I know them by is that of my roleplaying character(s). They had lives, families, thoughts, and loves of their own, but no one remembers that now. I only know these two women through Charissa and Lucille; even if I were able to learn their real names, the false identities would likely stick with me more. Are they still the same people that they were, if I've given them new lives in my own characters? Or do they have two idenitities?
So I keep them with my other "unknown ancestors", and remember them. Or at least acknowledge the fact that they existed, by framing their pictures and giving them a place of prominence on my dresser, right next to the pictures of Tyson and Katrina. I only hope that, someday, when I'm in their position, someone will find a photograph of me and do me the same simple favor.
Also, although at the moment we're studying the muscles in Kinesiology, I find that I've grown particularly fond of images and the study of the skeleton. Maybe it's that I just got done with what I consider my most successful portrait of Charissa to date. Maybe it's wanting to get back the bare bones of things. Now, granted, I've always been fascinated with skeletons and death. I'm the person who had a book called "Death Around the World" in first grade and loved it. But there's just something about the idea, like in Kristeen Young's "Rotting On the Vine":
We walk around,
pretend we don't see
the sickening joke
played out on we
have just a few years of juiced-plump skin
then it slides off;
back to the skeleton
back to the dust.
See the walking skeletons.
We're not the living.
We're the dying,
looking sicker everyday,
after the second decade.
Rotting on the vine is not glamourous,
but it will be contagious.
I'll spoil the home
if I've got to go
back to the bone.
First your face cracks. Then,
Your hair colour doesn't last.
You try to hide in fat
(That's just a skeleton gift-wrapped.)
You've got an arsenal of creams
fighting dehydrating.
If you think you can win
maybe you should squint;
Back to the skeleton.
I'm falling from the sky,
but on my way down
I'm grabbing all life.
I'm not going alone.
I'll burn the seas, and level some trees.
I'll take a species
Back to the ground.
Not going alone;
Back to the bone.
Weird and fascinating.
He's so lovely early in the morning, half-asleep and making little moises under his breath as he moves closer to me and puts his head on my shoulder. When I'm having a bad day, it's memories like this that help to get me through.
We finished reading "Mythago Wood" this morning. On to "The Silver Metal Lover" next, I suppose.
You know what's weird? Collecting antique photos of people that you don't know. Yes, I do indeed do this. It's not so much the collecting, although that in and of itself is strange, because I have no idea as to who most of the folks in the pictures are. Particularly with two pictures that I bought to represent my Vampire: the Masquerade character, Charissa Bronwyn, and her wraith friend, Lucille Stevens. With those two pictures, it's not just that the people are a mystery to me. It's also the fact that the only name and identity that I know them by is that of my roleplaying character(s). They had lives, families, thoughts, and loves of their own, but no one remembers that now. I only know these two women through Charissa and Lucille; even if I were able to learn their real names, the false identities would likely stick with me more. Are they still the same people that they were, if I've given them new lives in my own characters? Or do they have two idenitities?
So I keep them with my other "unknown ancestors", and remember them. Or at least acknowledge the fact that they existed, by framing their pictures and giving them a place of prominence on my dresser, right next to the pictures of Tyson and Katrina. I only hope that, someday, when I'm in their position, someone will find a photograph of me and do me the same simple favor.
Also, although at the moment we're studying the muscles in Kinesiology, I find that I've grown particularly fond of images and the study of the skeleton. Maybe it's that I just got done with what I consider my most successful portrait of Charissa to date. Maybe it's wanting to get back the bare bones of things. Now, granted, I've always been fascinated with skeletons and death. I'm the person who had a book called "Death Around the World" in first grade and loved it. But there's just something about the idea, like in Kristeen Young's "Rotting On the Vine":
We walk around,
pretend we don't see
the sickening joke
played out on we
have just a few years of juiced-plump skin
then it slides off;
back to the skeleton
back to the dust.
See the walking skeletons.
We're not the living.
We're the dying,
looking sicker everyday,
after the second decade.
Rotting on the vine is not glamourous,
but it will be contagious.
I'll spoil the home
if I've got to go
back to the bone.
First your face cracks. Then,
Your hair colour doesn't last.
You try to hide in fat
(That's just a skeleton gift-wrapped.)
You've got an arsenal of creams
fighting dehydrating.
If you think you can win
maybe you should squint;
Back to the skeleton.
I'm falling from the sky,
but on my way down
I'm grabbing all life.
I'm not going alone.
I'll burn the seas, and level some trees.
I'll take a species
Back to the ground.
Not going alone;
Back to the bone.
Weird and fascinating.
