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12/14/08 12:49 pm - Minutiae

Information you didn't ask for, because this fascination with memes has got me curious. Why not.

Do you have any pets?
Yes.

What color shirt are you wearing?
Entirely inapplicable.

Name three things that are physically close to you:
1. Spade.
2. Pillows.
3. Phone.

What is the last book you read?
Set This House in Order by Matt Ruff; Baudolino by Umberto Eco.

Are you or were you a good student?
Yes, if only briefly.

What's your favorite sport?
Hunting, baby. Oh, I'm a crack shot.

Do you enjoy sleeping late?
No, but I do enjoy staying in bed long after waking.

What's the weather like right now?
Miserably cold, cloudy, and damp.

Who tells the best jokes?
In all the world, or of those I know personally? For the former, I haven't a clue how to narrow it down. For the latter, each has their own brand of humor, I suppose.

What was the last thing you dreamed about?
Snow.

Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?
Yes, and yes again.

Do you believe in karma?
No.

Do you believe in luck?
In a manner of speaking.

Do you like your eggs scrambled or sunny side up?
I'm not much for eggs.

Do you collect anything? If so, what?
Books. Experiences. Automobiles. Memories. Lovers. Occasionally, dust.

Are you proud of yourself?
I don't know that proud is the word others might choose for it, but sure, yeah, I'm proud.

Are you reliable?
When I wish to be.

Have you ever given money to a bum?
Yes.

What's your favorite food?
Ha. I'll bypass the blatantly obvious and say that, in more recent recollections, chocolate and orange juice ranked highly.

Have you ever had a secret admirer?
People have great difficulty being secret about it.

Do you like the smell of gasoline?
I'm indifferent.

Do you like to draw?
Not purposefully, no. I've been known to scratch away absently at the margins while on the phone, however.

What's your favorite invention?
Cinema.

Is your room messy?
Not at all.

What do you like better: oranges or apples?
Apples.

Do you give in easily?
Oh, absolutely. I'm famously a pushover.

Are you a good guesser?
Yes, but then again I've got an unfair advantage, don't I.

Can you read other people's expressions?
Yes.

Are you a bully?
Naturally.

Do you have a job?
Not exactly.

What time did you wake up this morning?
6:00PM

What did you eat for breakfast this morning?
I just nibbled a bit.

What do you plan on doing tomorrow?
Bidding farewell.

What's your favorite day of the week and why?
Every day has infinite potential.

Do you have any nicknames?
Yes.

Have you ever been scuba diving?
No.

Is there someone you have been constantly thinking about? If yes, who?
Not constantly, no.

Would you ever go skydiving?
I hardly see the point.

What toothpaste do you use?
None.

Do you enjoy challenges?
Immensely.

What's the worst injury you have had?
Death, or possibly tandem lectures by Louis and David.

What do you want to know about the future?
Everything!

What does your last text message say?
When?

Who was the last person you spoke over the phone to?
David.

What's your favorite school subject?
Anything and everything.

What's your least favorite school subject?
I haven't got one.

Would you rather have money or love?
Love.

What is your dream vacation?
Anywhere with a bit of warmth and intrigue.

What is your favorite animal?
The human sort.

Do you miss anyone right now?
No.

What's the last sporting event you watched?
Some mixed martial arts event with Quinn.

Do you need to do laundry?
No.

Do you listen to the radio?
Often.

Where were you when 9/11 happened?
Asleep.

What do you do when vending machines steal your money?
I cannot recall ever having used one.

Have you ever caught a butterfly?
Yes.

What color are your bed sheets?
Patterned onyx.

What's your ringtone?
I have several.

Who was the last person to make you laugh?
Louis.

Do you have any obsessions right now?
Always.

Do you like things that glow in the dark?
I don't dislike them particularly. I really couldn't care less.

What's your favorite fruity scent?
Citrus.

Do you watch cartoons?
Occasionally.

Have you ever sat on a roof?
Countless times.

Have you ever been to a different country?
Many.

Name three things in the world you dislike:
Mediocrity, meaninglessness, ennui.

Name three people in the world you dislike:
That idiot rare books dealer; the flat-eyed old gypsy who plays erstwhile haunt to the corner square; Miley Cyrus.

Has a rumor even been spread about you?
Dozens.

Do you like sushi?
Certainly not.

Do you believe in magic?
I do.

Do you hold grudges?
No.
--------------

How many tabs open on your computer at present, if any?
This and another four.

What size font do you generally use when using Word?
Whatever the default happens to be. 

If the current weather had a flavour, what would it be?
Rotten.

If you could feed any celebrity to an emu, who would you choose?
...what?

Are you into Shakespeare?
Eh.

What was the last illegal activity you participated in?
Public intoxication.

When did you last eat a taco?
Never.

What did you last take a screenshot of?
I haven't the slightest idea.

What is your ideal holiday?
Something entirely unexpected.

Describe your surroundings.
A bed strewn with pillows and utterly unkempt, a dog sprawled lazily at the foot of it, and all this within an unlit room, the better to let the golden glow of the streetlamps play amongst the shadows through rain-spattered windowpanes.

What was the last movie you watched?
The name of it escapes me, but it was rather like the Stooges gone dapper and Spanish.

Any posters up in your bedroom?
No.

What material was the last cup you drank out of made from?
Crystal, certainly, though it has been quite some time.

Last thing you had stuck between your teeth?
He wasn't stuck, exactly.

Any pen on you at the moment?
No.

Where did you last catch a bus to?
I don't know where it was headed, but I did hop one in Stockholm to tail a fellow.

Do you play any sports?
In cat and mouse I'm a veritable Olympian.

How do you feel at this exact moment?
Content.

Do you like snow?
It has its place.

Skittles or reeses pieces?
Neither.

What's your favorite thing about/part of christmas?
Beauty.

If you had the ability to fly, where would you fly to first?
If?

Favorite Mario game of all time?
Mario Kart.

Favorite video game of all time?
GTA or Call of Duty.

Ever played the Wii?
Yes.

What's your least favorite type of music?
The imitative, formulaic, overproduced, prepackaged sort.

Do you know all the words to the national anthem?
For which country? I know several.

What was your favorite game to play at recess as a kid?
I had no recess.

Do you believe that ghosts really exist?
You bet.

Favorite toppings on an ice cream sundae?
I'm guessing chocolate might be the appropriate answer here.

Who's your favorite band/musical artist at the moment?
Why this obsession with picking a single favorite? I simply refuse.

What about of all time?
Again!

How many myspace accounts do you have (that you actually use)?
None.

If you were going to start a band, what would you name it?
Oh, something terribly dreary and self-important. Perhaps The Vampire Lestat. IF I were to do such a thing, which of course I'd never do.

Does anime make any sense to you at all?
Sense isn't really the point, is it.

Would you rather go surfing or skydiving?
Skydiving.

Are you good at understanding slang terms?
Mostly.

Do you own a Rubik's cube?
I'm sure I have owned one at some point or another.

Does an apple a day really keep the doctor away?
Idiotic.

What time did you go to bed last night?
Round about 7AM, I think it was.

Are you in a relationship right now?
I am.

If so, with who, if not why not?
It's really quite a secret, isn't it.

Who's your #7 on myspace?
No idea what this means.

Do you prefer myspace or facebook?
Neither.

Why do you prefer that one over the other?
Pointless.

Do you think it's cool or annoying when singers use the computerized voice?
Depends on the use and the singer.

Have you ever gotten lost in a tree?
What a perfectly ridiculous question.

What's your favorite television program to originate from the 90's?
I watch far less television than I do film. I can't name a particular series from the 90s that's worth recalling.

Would you rather have a cold and sunny day or a warm and cloudy day?
A day in and of itself, regardless of type, would be a hell of an anomalous wonder.

Favorite fast food restaurant?
None.

Favorite sit-down restaurant?
Still and always the Cafe du Monde.


10/2/08 04:27 pm - Whispers

It seems, mes enfants, that I'm in the know.

Pity you're not.

Nyah.

9/30/08 10:18 am - The search...

...for the perfect new server continues. Oh, but we've not forgotten about you, mes enfants. We're thinking of you, maybe even lusting after the thought of getting you back into our collectively conspiratorial, whispering proximity very soon indeed.

9/23/08 03:40 pm - Forum shutdown

As I'm sure you've all noticed, our forum server has decided to muck up in a major way. This means, my loves, that we're shutting our doors while we unleash the resident Hounds of Hell (Wolfie, cher, that means you) to track down the server administrators and put the fear of something far worse than God into their quavering little souls, until they're spooked sufficiently to set things right.

Look here for updates and for the news that we've reopened.

8/19/08 05:10 pm - Transubstantiation

Through pale green leaves newly unfurled and transparent with tender life, the teasing meagre heat of the early spring sun spills down, gilding their still-curled edges in soft-focus gold. Difficult to distinguish through all this glorious brilliance, the tree’s gnarled limbs are a blur, heaviness rendered diaphanous and trembling, a seeming afterthought in a riot of light. The very air is a tangible thing, full of subtle depth, shot through with dancing yellow beams in which the tiny motes of dust spark and flash like newborn stars.

I wonder if you can see it, this vision of mine that I’ve held in mind so long, a treasure worn smooth by the hand of gentle memory, loving so to worry it over like a lucky stone.

No match for the still-frozen ground upon which you lay, this watery perfect light that graces the early morning, and though it coaxes the bitter frost into glistening droplets of dew—a naiad’s transubstantiation—you shiver just a little with the chill. Barest flutter of the eyelids, inky dark lashes framing that plane of cheekbone that knows the press of my fingertips like a whispered secret, and then the slightest frown. Not enough to rouse you from slumber; only enough to let me know that you’re less than pleased by the creeping cold.

I could wake you, warm you. But I’d rather let this little displeasure unfurl you into the daylight on its own, the better to savor that surly, bitter pique out of which you’ll need to be cajoled. I’m used to it, the bite in the air that lingers long after dawn here in this valley between mountains that always seemed impassable, until now. You, in your well-lit world of warmth and tidy fires and neatly appointed salons, have never been. Maybe, as I sit watching you and making a breakfast of the last of the wine, I want you to suffer a little for it.

I want you to understand.

Tempted by your repose, the dappling light teases into a hundred transient shapes that flirt and sigh over the stillness of you shoulders, arms, chest and thighs with an intimacy both peaceful and playful. Ah, jealousy. I am inconsolable with it! But even in sleep you have always known just how to goad me, and so your lips part, kissing at the frigidity with breath that steams faintly white against their darker outline.

Adulterous, this. But that’s not the worst of it; no, for now the wind shifts to lift your tousled hair away from your throat just long enough to chase the sun along the line of it, until it pools in acquiescence upon your face and softens your entire visage into shimmering minimality. You look, in this attenuated moment before wakefulness, painfully young.

Powerful, to see such shining innocence in you. Your eyes never reveal such things. It is an unshakably seductive intimation, the boy within the man made luminous in this single unwitting instant of simplicity.

Muddy wheels heave stiffened wood into motion far in the distance, and slowly then, there comes the rhythmic crunch of hooves on brittle melting ice. It seems already that we’ve waited so long, and yet it seems also that they will arrive too soon, that something intangible and sublime will escape us as we board the coach and become not two, but part of a company of souls bound for anywhere but here.

But we are almost on our way, inconceivably, euphorically. And in my heart a precipice is reached from which my soul gazes outward and knows, with aching certainty, that all things are possible, and that everything at last has meaning, and that life is about to begin.

Anticipation shocks its way through my limbs, and I reach out to give you a little shake. I know I don’t need to. The flickering sunshine has already done my work for me, and you lay there now looking cross and uncomfortable, determined to make plain what an insult the breaking day has paid you before you’ll offer me, squinting through the light, the smallest grudging smile.

It is more than enough.

It was everything.

I left you long ago to your treasured darkness, my love. For me, there is only this: your smile set aflame in perfect remembrance of the sun.

8/10/08 11:20 pm - Mine is the Earth

 I’ve said it before, even waxed poetic in my way, about how perfectly Louis wears sorrow. He immerses himself within it as if he were born to the very cause, and never is his beauty more poignant, nor his soul more palpably definable, than when it shrouds him in all its somber finery. And I had expected it, of course, his sorrow. I had expected, even wished for, disbelief, or better still, his flashing anger. Perhaps violence. Certainly I had expected the cruel sting of blame.

I had not ever expected him to frame her death as his own fault, and to flagellate himself with it. Too heartbreaking, that thought; I couldn’t quite understand it, nor acknowledge its significance.

For a long moment, I remained silent, surprise beating out any words I might have otherwise thought to say. Then, “no.” Emphatically, more loudly than I’d intended, but there it was, absolute in its negation. Then again, “no,” softer now, as I moved my palm across the subtly trembling expanse of his back and grasped his shoulder. I stepped close enough to feel the press of his body against mine when I leaned to whisper in his ear.

“No. Absolutely not. You didn’t fail her.”

Whether my words registered, or whether he was indeed aware of the weight of my hands upon him, wasn’t for me to know. It wasn’t divination I sought as I brought my brow to rest against the curtain of his hair. The tightening of my grip upon his shoulder gave no rhythm to the syncopated hitch of his silent sobs, and when I wrapped my other arm around him, hand pressed open to his chest, I only felt their jarring intrusiveness drive deeper into him.

A devious thought came to me then -- that I had never, in all our long history, been privy to such an unadulterated intimacy as this. Always captivating, but always a step removed, Louis had forever kept the greater part of his striving penitent soul under lock and key, no matter the extent of my pleas or derisions, my ridicule or my affection. What little privilege of it he grants others is essential and understated, only rarely passionate, and never unconsidered.

Save on this night.

To see him right in the very midst of himself, with all his preciously guarded sorrow torn down to be replaced by this fresh and undeserved anguish, was the most surely devastating truth I’ve yet to know from him. When his hand came up to clutch my sleeve, I felt the breath catch in my throat, and I shut my eyes against his touch. My lips I pressed to the side of his face.

Letting go at last from that iron railing upon which he’d leaned, he let his weight come to rest against me. I spoke then in the formless and inconsequential whispered words that make up the language of solace, embracing him from behind with both arms and hearkening to the insidious thud of his heart in those moments when words simply would not come. My right hand settled atop his as it held fast to my left arm, fingertips pressing into my unforgiving flesh hard enough to buckle mortal bones, but not this monstrous hardened frame.

The pattering slickness of his blood tears slipped down the back of my hand, painting the seam where my fingers laced into his a deep crimson. Thirst bucked up inside me, predictable and voracious, whet by the slate of his suffering.

Desire, brief but intense, flared in me to drink it down and savor it, that suffering; to make it mine in all its melancholy variation. And with all the sinfully selfish greed it could muster, my blackened little heart whispered that Louis should be undermined in this, his moment of finest lamentation. She hadn’t earned it, after all, this perfectly pitched sorrow which was rightfully mine to cause and to appease.

Damnable, unconscionable bastard, aren’t I. Oh, and don’t I know it.

I reached up to touch the source and confirm the inverse miracle of his tears, hating the way they marred the perfect angles of his face even as I lusted after the incandescence they lent his spirit. My movement was enough to snap him out of his grieving reverie, and before my fingertips ever touched his cheek, he had broken free of my arms with sudden and sobering violence.

Deferent, I stepped away and watched as he gripped the railing once more, this time with force enough to send a series of low metallic groans through the thing. The sound seemed uncannily fitting, wrenching as it was. Only after a long moment’s confusion did I separate out Louis’ own half-strangled shout from the weeping of the wrought iron that he’d pulled free of its cement casing on one corner of the ledge.

It hadn’t been discernable as words, really. But it epitomized denial just the same, and with it all the unbelieving anger I had dreaded and anticipated all along.

It never did come to fruition, though, that threat of truly unchecked emotion. From the little distance that I’d given him, I watched rage and the will to fight against the fatal knowledge I’d imparted die within him before ever taking wing. It sent him to his knees, with only a whispered “Merrique” to punctuate the descent. His arms went lax at his sides, and remained there unmoving as fresh tears retraced the drying stains of those that’d fallen before. They were the only hint of expression on his face, otherwise so blank now that it sent a chill through me.

I had my hand over my own mouth, though I didn’t recall when it had gotten there or what it might possibly hope to silence. There was nothing to say, after all. Absolutely nothing.

I let it fall, and ran the other back through my hair – such an inherently mortal gesture – before leaning back into the wall I had backed up against. Sliding down against it to a seated position, knees up, arms crossed atop them, I let my head rest on my forearms. I studied the million tiny imperfections in the gravel between my feet with the curiously detached quietude that comes after having witnessed something raw and resoundingly final.

Only when the looming dawn struck the paler pebbles with its bluish cast did I look up at Louis again, who I knew had remained frozen exactly where he’d gone down. Frightening, to see him look so very much a statue, some errant Pietà left sullied and forgotten to the mercy of the elements.

Well, that wouldn’t do. Had to get him somewhere, plain as it was that he wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it himself. I rose and went over to him, not looking at him exactly, but placing my hands on his shoulders and telling him to get up. No sympathy in my voice, nor cruelty. Just a strange commanding flatness that brooked no argument. When I said it a second time, something stirred at last, and he obeyed silently; it seemed the very idea of argument was entirely beyond him, hollowed out as he had been by the wicked blow I’d dealt him.

(The tale unfolds further here.)

8/10/08 11:11 pm - Mine is the Earth

Whisked away by Khayman to pay homage to the ancients after our adventure had come to an end, Mona and Quinn had long since been gone.

Sent away by me in some errant fit of nobility, Rowan was long since gone.

Too many weeks to think about, since Merrick had gone.

All things considered, I should’ve been gone too, a long while ago.

Instead, an entire week or maybe more had passed since they’d scattered to the winds. A week, come and gone, and still I hadn’t taken my leave of Blackwood Manor. The peculiar rhythm of the place had taken hold of me, yes. Its people too, and the easy warmth of their company, and my protective adoration of them, yes. But for all the strength of their hold, these things did not make me tarry, did not spur my lingering encampment.

Like the dead and soundless absence that punctuates the explosion from that which ignites it, I had, perhaps unconsciously, expected others to feel the space she’d left behind, to sense the snuffing out of her flame that had all too briefly flickered, incandescent and sublime, before smoking into silence.

Expected it and relied on it.

Hidden behind it.

But if they, any of them, had marked Merrick’s passing, they let not the faintest whisper of recognition loose into the ether that binds us all. And please do believe me when I say that, had any immortal, rogue or beloved or ancient or otherwise, caught wind of any part of that whole macabre affair, I’d have known. If Mona or Quinn or Khayman or those they’d been amongst had pushed the fact of her demise further down the circuit, I’d have known.

This meant, of course, that the one she’d loved most, the one she’d spellbound into willingness as her very sire of the blood, the one who’d made her and adored her and fought against himself in vain, did not know that she was gone. It meant that he had not the vaguest inkling of what had transpired on this cemetery vault that had become her makeshift pyre; had no concept of the spiritual war she’d waged for the benefit of a dead baby’s soul and a damned man’s sanity; had no knowledge that the price she’d paid was her own preternatural life, though whether as reward she’d won light or darkness I could not say.

I stood in the very place right now, staring down at what little still marked the site of her death. Nothing more than a bit of blackened grass along the edges of the tomb, which the Shed Men had days ago scrubbed clean, no questions asked.

I was taking my leave of her as I’d not been able to do before. No momentous pendulum of events swinging back and forth with my beloveds in the balance. Just me and the memory of her, and my savoring of it and mourning it.

And then it was time to go. It had been for too long now.

I made the trip to Paris easily enough, though the lightening sky wouldn’t let me seek Louis out immediately. Or, more precisely, I allowed myself the luxury of assumption, and told myself that he’d already have quit the waking world by the time I would have arrived at his door, and so instead I wandered the streets, familiar and yet not, until the dawn forced me to find a place of rest.

Senseless distraction was mine to create and wallow in on the following night at will, resolute as my own delusions were that, somehow, time elapsed would make any of this the least bit easier.

Such a brilliant liar I am, and to myself above all others.

But it was time now for the truth, and Louis deserved it, and lie as I might, I couldn’t escape owing him that much, and owing Merrick as well. At least that much, and probably far more.

He was easy enough to find, as I’d known he would be, waiting as he was in perfect ignorance for our return. From a rooftop on high, I kept a watch over what had been their building, but was now only his. I refused to find him inside of it, in the space that was still full of her presence and all of the markers of her furiously alluring essence. In the space they’d shared and loved in, just the two of them, just weeks ago.

Unbearable, that thought.

And so I waited for him to make his exit into the night, and once he did, I tracked him. I hunted down his private wanderings, stalked his secret acts. I played the voyeur to his kill; his abandonment to the hunger, which he’d let build up inside himself for hours, was total, and I thrilled to it like the adulterer to a kiss. I made love to the knowledge of his obliviousness until the threat of dawn blushed silver on the horizon, sending the numb frisson of reality down my spine.

He’d returned at last to their apartments on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, and I thought perhaps that I’d bought myself another night’s parlay. But only moments later, his figure, so intimately recognizable, appeared on the rooftop, strolling casually across its graveled expanse of garden to the far edge, where he looked down peacefully on the city lights far below.

No perfect moment, this, but then there never would be, whatever my litany of prayers. I drifted over to the near edge, coming down soundlessly upon the scattering of little stones. The lip of the building’s edge rose up just over waist-high, and I leaned against it now in a perfect mockery of ease, crossing one ankle over the other and resting an arm along the cast-iron rail that ran across its top. I said nothing, and made no move toward him.

Perhaps I failed to breathe. But I waited to be noticed just the same.
 
(Hooked? Want the whole story, do you? Find it here.)

6/25/08 12:00 am - Transported.

Heat rises up phoenix-like from the flagstones, and in the fragrant red dust riding its wings there is written a mantra of memory. Shadows swirl along the edges of the night in its wake, a scripted epitaph.

Warmth breathes its way like a lover's sigh beneath this icy flesh of mine to make of me a mourner, though it's not the passing of the present day that bows my head in penitence.

Place and time dissolve at the fading blush of this little kiss of heaven left behind, and I am with my entire being elsewhere, all at once.

I remember.
Current Location: Long ago
Current Mood: contemplative
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