lacksconviction | 7 - UM WHAT I CAN BE PALS WITH BRAAGI IF I LIKE...

[Video clicks on, and Loki has taken off his amazing helmet, and is actually quite simply dressed today! He's sitting in the garden, and has a book from the library open on his lap. He lifts one finger, when recording starts.]

I like this, and wish to impart it to you all:

[He clears his throat a little, then reads aloud from the book]

Waking up in the same skin isn't enough.
You need more and more evidence
of who it is that
wakes up in the same skin.

But what evidence?
Reality is unreliable: a whirlwind
of dust that appears
and disappears every day.

Your thirst stretches out it's white dunes.

Every day in the dust
you distinguish

not islands but their darkness
heaped on the polished mirror of a sea.

Not doors but their shadows
slammed in the house of wind.

Not lighthouses but their half-second SOS
in red, green and yellow.

Not language but languages.

Not a hand closing a curtain
but a hand.

And the day is over,
not wiser than the night in which
you waited for someone
who came and wasn't what you waited for.

[He lowers his hand, and smiles faintly, to all appearances completely at peace with everything about the world.]

It's written by Kapka Kassabova, of Midgard. I like best those first few lines, the thought of doubting who it is who shares your skin...

[He closes the book, and smiles again, before reaching down to end the feed.

Yep, this post was literally Loki just publicizing the fact that he is alive, uninjured, and happily enjoying poetry and sunlight up in the gardens while the Avengers are all FLIPPING OUT FLIPPING OUT EVERYWHERE OMG!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

doctor_j_crane

I hope that you borrowed that book from the library using appropriate procedures.

From:

lacksconviction

Perhaps the tomme belongs to me? I might have brought it with me in the event of my death for all that you could say?

From:

doctor_j_crane

You're saying that the book comes from your room?

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lacksconviction - Date: 2012-09-11 10:09 pm (UTC) - Expand

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doctor_j_crane - Date: 2012-09-12 10:46 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

singe_john

That doesn't sound very hygienic, sharing skin.

From:

lacksconviction

And requiring of a degree of generosity that not many here possess, I'm sure.

From:

timesbureaucrat

How very one-bodied. I have two personalities inhabiting this "skin" as you put it. Albeit one of them is dormant. [Narvin is a bit literal minded and fails at appreciating literature. One more reason he and Braxiatel could never get along.]

Edited (fixing because I failed at reading comprehension the first time) Date: 2012-09-11 04:42 am (UTC)

From:

lacksconviction

As I said, written by a Midgardian. It's culturally relative.

From:

darknessb4me

What, really?

From:

timesbureaucrat

Indeed. My first incarnation remains a part of my psyche. He's simply put away to sleep.

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From:

cujothebigreddog

[The barge has been a complete fucking shitshow. You are like a cross between Rudyard Kipling and a troll, Loki, but you are not currently being a shitshow.

You look really pleased with yourself. Did you dress in drag and trick some giants out of Mjolnir or are you just happy to see him?

...He comes back after a while with his own book. Brood with him, Loki. Stop smiling. ]

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
--But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
--Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

Some of the poetic sagas Sigrun read for me, they had this recurring device where it'd stop on a cliffhanger and go: "would you know more? Would you yet know more?" Always reminded me of the beginning of Burnt Norton.

From:

lacksconviction

If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

[He repeats the lines, ponderously.]

What do you think of that idea? That existence is always exactly what it is?

[He's interested, and he waves a lazy hand at the later comments. He remembers how the Norse recorded their Sagas.]

Yes, I know the style. It's good for when you're telling tales to children, and for when you've many verses to remember.

From:

cujothebigreddog

Also helps if you've had some mead.

[Sigrun can drink him under the table any day, and has.]

I don't buy the notion of predestination, complete determinism. Definitely don't believe in an infallible deity. Never have. Too tidy. Too easy.

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lacksconviction - Date: 2012-09-11 11:16 pm (UTC) - Expand

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From:

ichoosefight

That's actually pretty cool. Is it from the library, or just something you had laying around?

From:

lacksconviction

The Library. Checked out in accordance with all proper procedures, I assure you.

From:

ichoosefight

The library belongs to the people. I'm a library naturalist.

[ Oh barge politics. ]

From:

psychic_hotline

At least, so far, nobody seems to have been rising to this in the way he wants them to. Or they've done it under a filter, which is - not really better, but at least it deprives him of the audience he wants for this sort of bullshit.

In the meantime, she's been keeping a close eye on him since this whole stupid thing started so she might as well go and talk to him. The garden's quiet and rich and no matter what he's wearing, Loki looks kind of out of place surrounded by living things. She tucks her hands in her pockets.

"I never really got poetry."

From:

lacksconviction

"I'm more familiar with the epics, myself. Stories, boasts, that sort of thing."

The book is open on his knees, and he turns a page without looking up from it.

"I like this though. It's as if you're reading the saddest and the strangest thoughts that mankind could amass."

From:

psychic_hotline

"Yeah, that wears out pretty fast when your day job is dealing with what happens when the 'saddest and strangest thoughts' don't stay on paper." She sits down next to him. "Then again, my favorite book is Wuthering Heights so I guess I'm a hypocrite."