[Tue Jan 4 10:03:58 2000]From: Moonlight carved out of Steel (lanfear)
[Tue Jan 4 10:03:58 2000]
From: Moonlight carved out of Steel (lanfear)
Subject: Countdown: 27
The countdown is a brand new feature for the new year.
Well, all right, actually it has nothing to do with the new year, this is just when it happens to begin.
The observant among you will already have noticed that it appears to count down to the beginning of February.
It doesn't.
It counts down to the eternity of my dreams, to the final horizon where the world at last reaches the sky. The count is in each single beat of my heart, opening like a rose to the rising of the sun. The lengthening days count down to a moment of promise, where the world stops and the path stands clear before me.
This will merely coincide with the festival of Imbolc, the beginning of the second month.
The beginning of a second life.
[Mon Jan 10 10:27:36 2000]
From: Waiting for the day (lanfear)
Subject: Countdown: 21
I treat my friends badly, and I know it.
I give them all I can when I know they need it, and ignore them when they don't. And I buy them presents to make up for my deficiencies, knowing that no amount of presents can make up for neglect.
Why do I do it? I do it because it's easier. It's easier by far to tear pieces bleeding from my soul to give them when they need it than it is to call to say thankyou for cards and ask how they are. It's easier because I know it, but everything else is still a mystery, after all these years. I don't know what it is that is expected of me, and when I call them I can't see their faces to tell me. I listen to their voices as I can, but their voices crackle down the line and in my imperfect hearing, and I can't tell if anything I'm saying is right, and the worry builds until the telephone is a monster crouching in my mind, and I can't touch it, even for those I care about.
Why should it be so?
Well, were you any better with your first friends, all those years ago in primary school?
Because that's what you are. You are my first friends. Teach me. Please teach me. I don't want to lose you.
[Wed Jan 12 13:54:21 2000]
From: Waiting for the day (lanfear)
Subject: Countdown: 19
I hope the kittens are all right. They seem to be off their food a bit.
If it wasn't for the fact that their reluctance to eat is inversely proportional to the cost of the food, I'd be worried.
[Wed Jan 19 09:55:16 2000]
From: Waiting for the day (lanfear)
Subject: Butterflies in winter
He sat on the windowsill, unmoving, the splendour of his colours hidden inside wings like hands closed for prayer.
When we lifted him, tenderly, by his wings he barely struggled, weakened by the cold, by the absence of flowers.
Where had he come from? A butterfly could not have survived these months of winter, snaps of cold, days of rain and snow. But neither could a caterpillar have hatched and grown strong, and there was nothing of weakness or imperfection about him.
Refreshed by the sugar water he spread his wings, vibrant red and orange, vividly marked with black at the edges.
We left him there, in the warm he sought, with a saucer of sugar water that was a pale substitute for nectar. A flame coloured Tortoiseshell, a butterfly in winter.
What meaning does he bring in with him from the cold?
Countdown: 12
[Tue Feb 1 10:04:48 2000]
From: Waiting for the day (lanfear)
Subject: Pretty sparkly!
Countdown: 0
[Tue Feb 1 11:11:40 2000]
From: Waiting for the day (lanfear)
Subject: It was a race, really, to see which of us spoke first.
In the end he won, and I'm grateful for it.
Grateful for the look in his eyes, shining in the candlelight, as he whispered of a time he had disbelieved in love, and the one who had shown him different. The one who was his world, and his joy.
"Will you marry me?" he asked, finally, his voice soft with a weight of emotion.
All evening I had considered answers. The poetic, the witty, the ones that tried to show the depth of my heart.
"Yes," I said, a world in my voice. "Oh, yes."
"I would walk through fire and storm for you. I will always be at your side. You are everything that matters to me." His heart pours out poetry to mine, and there are tears behind my eyes, for this is so much, everything I could ever have desired.
Not even death will ever part us.
[Tue Feb 15 09:57:30 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: Twelve red roses.
Fenris is the only man who ever bought me red roses, even last year, before we discovered one another's love. This year he bought me a vase to put them in as well. A strange blend of practical and romantic, he can be.
Valentines day has little meaning for us. But the meaning behind the day is the same as it is for everyone else. The spring is coming. The birds are dancing in the air to impress their wives. The flowers are budding for our little winter butterfly.
And we? A nod to the day. A few roses. Some presents. Candles on the windowsill. But a celebration of love? For us, now, that is every day. So we watched the television over a dinner of garlic bread and chicken, and went to bed, curling up against each other to sleep warm. What more should we need?
I bought him a Klein bottle. Techies.
[Mon Feb 28 14:02:36 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: Nightmare Situations
Lying awake at night, desperately needing the toilet, too afraid to go.
In my parents' house I used to race back into my bedroom and slam the door as the toilet flushed, hoping to be safe back in bed before the noise brought the nightmare creatures out from hiding. One time I hadn't known my father was still up - I met a dark shadow in the corridor, and trembled all over even after I knew it was him.
In my own house the corridor is too long. There are too many places the beast could be hiding. So I curl up in bed and feel like I'm six again.
[Fri Mar 17 11:53:14 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: I am broken.
In other words, I went swimming last night.
After a couple of lengths, the regular twanging in my ankle persuaded me that using it probably wasn't a good idea. After a couple more lengths, my shoulder gave out.
So when you turn up to a swimming pool and see some idiot doggy-paddling in a circle through only being able to use the limbs on one side, please do say hello...
[Fri Mar 31 11:29:54 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: Definitions.
'Sausage': The sleeping position in which the sleeper is rolled tightly inside the duvet, commonly adopted by lanfears.
'Silly Sausage': Any cold and tired person who spends more than quarter of an hour attempting to pull some duvet from under a sausage without waking her up.
[Thu Apr 20 12:23:35 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: I went shopping yesterday.
It seemed a good way to run away from mortgages and estate agents and chains.
Dragged Fenris with me, which was perhaps cruel, but unavoidable seeing as we both needed to talk to a mortgage advisor afterwards.
The only problem was that after I'd spotted some good clothes to make up an embryonic summer wardrobe, he refused to let me buy them. So why, you might ask, am I currently wearing new leggings and swimming costume?
Simple. He bought them for me.
He is spoiling me, despite all my best efforts to prevent him. He says that he isn't, that it's just what I deserve, that he enjoys doing things for me. Little things, large things - it doesn't matter. He does it for love of me.
And for love of him? I let him put his cold feet on me in bed. He inhabits all my thoughts, as an extra overlay of colour upon my view of the world. A part of him is within me, and I shall never be without it.
Is that love? No, it is deeper, more than that. Does the ocean love the shore, or the falcon the sky? Together we are whole, as we have been in lives before this one, and will be again.
It's too beautiful for words.
[Thu Jul 20 09:44:21 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: I've thought of a cool birthday present for someone!
...does anybody have a birthday round about now?
[Thu Jul 20 10:57:17 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: Thought for the day:
If every child who dies is both popular and talented, that may explain the large proportion of moronic and unfriendly adults.
So... which were you, unpopular or stupid?
[Tue Sep 19 09:56:52 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: A deer crushed on the road.
Another victim of the human desire to go places faster than we were ever intended to do, and our obscure need for a heavy metal carriage to do so in when much less would suffice.
I saw it as we passed. Its legs were gone, meat and blood crushed into the road. Eyes and mouth were wide open with the still and silent continuance of its final agony. Meat and blood spilled from between its lips.
Some kill to eat, some kill for fun. Only we kill, uncaring, by accident.
[Tue Sep 19 13:45:13 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: Also...
Fenris spent all night working again. It's about the third time this week, and he then goes into work at 9:30 as if he'd slept...
He shouldn't have to work this hard. But I don't think his company realises that he does. And I worry.
Does he not love me enough to spend time with me? It's a small voice, a habitual way of thinking. I know it untrue, but oh it's so easy to think, waking in the night with nobody beside me.
And when he drives off to work, and when he drives back, having had no sleep, working himself to the bone... oh, then I worry, more than ever, fearing that his work will take him from me in a moment of inattention on the road.
But he refuses to change, refuses to complain to his company, refuses to do anything, it seems, that might make it better. Or make me stop feeling like a widow before I marry.
[Tue Nov 13 15:06:16 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: My name has changed.
According to some forms of belief, this indicates that I have changed. Please let me set your minds to rest on that point. I'm ust as dozey, tactless and cackhanded as I was a fortnight ago. The only difference is that I now have the ability to be all these things in duplicate.
I would describe the wedding, but I shall confess that the sheer quantity of adrenaline bodding about my system at the time seems to have put it entirely out of my mind. And photographs will require to be prised out of my mother's unrelenting fingers.
But rest assured, I did get married. And as I look before me at the prospect of a lifetime of spelling my new surname out to idiots, I realise that I really must love him.
[Tue Sep 12 12:56:14 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
Subject: The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration
Dominated by three men, with three very different fates.
Amundsen
The only man using the right methods for the hostile terrain. His desire to be first to the Pole led him to take risks - he gambled all upon finding a new route on the polar plateau. But where others might have been forced to turn back, he conquered the Axel Heiberg glacier using not courage - though he lacked nothing in bravery - but sheer expertise. A month before Scott, he stood upon the bottom of the world.
Scott For years the epitome of British gallantry, reaching the Pole second only to die eleven miles from the One Ton depot and salvation. His feat was perhaps greater than that of Amundsen - getting so far without dogs, sometimes without skis, with only brute force and misplaced courage. It was a brave feat, and a foolish one, and Scott's men died with him as a result of his folly.
Shackleton Shackleton never did reach the Pole, though he tried for it and on the way learned the harsh lessons that Scott never would. On his third expedition his ship was caught and crushed by the ice, leaving Shackleton and his men stranded on the floes. When they finally made land, using the ship's lifeboats, there were few supplies and no hope of rescue. So Shackleton set off, in a 23 foot boat, over the roughest seas of the world, for the whaling station of a tiny island eight hundred miles distant. His men never doubted that he would succeed. Nor were they wrong.
[Tue Dec 12 13:12:56 2000]
From: I love the dreams you can't remember (lanfear)
"For scientific leadership give me Scott,
for swift and efficient travel give me Amundsen.
But when you are in a hopeless situation,
when you are seeing no way out,
get down on your knees
and pray for Shackleton."
[Mon Dec 18 12:28:42 2000]
From: Pray for Shackleton (lanfear)
Amundsen was never forgiven for 'cheating' Scott of the Pole. Nor did he forgive himself for his rival's death, always stalked by the guilty knowledge that the can of kerosene he decided not to leave at the Pole might have been sufficient to save Scott's expedition. He died in a plane crash during a rescue operation in the arctic.
Scott was acclaimed a national hero, the epitome of British courage. The legend lasted until 1979, when Roland Huntford's 'Scott and Amundsen' (later to be renamed 'The Last Place on Earth' told the true story of Scott's arrogance, and the incompetence which cost his men their lives.
Shackleton's heroism did not suit the spirit of the times as Scott's failure had. He retured, deeply in debt, to a country very different from that he had known. He was widely criticised for going south at the outbreak of the Great War, though the King himself had urged him to continue. His health deteriorated, his physicians suspecting a heart condition, though Shackleton had refused to submit to any medical examination since a suspected heart attack on the antarctic ice several years before. On his fourt expedition south, Shackleton collapsed and died at the whaling station he had once struggled so hard to reach. He was buried there, his headstone facing south.
