project2501

thoughts of you sustain me in the cold.
those dark nights, the "mean reds", when nothing seems right
i imagine you asleep here, breath even, skin warm.
i would press against you, lay my cheek between your shoulderblades,
and let your heart speak its secret message to me:
that nothing is lost, that life goes on, unfrozen;
that winter, vast, dark, endless winter,
can only scrape its claws against the walls of love
and draw back, shaking its ponderous head in confusion
at the bright, quick, incomprehensible flame.

愛してる。　あんたは僕の春と僕の火。

if the roads were paved with ice that never thawed or cracked,
i could skate from Maine to Nebraska, up to Alaska and back...
'cause you keep me warm...

( 12-13-2010 )

[Note: This review is part of my series on the Final Fantasy games. To read them all, click here.]

( Final Fantasy III )

[Note: This review is part of my series on the Final Fantasy games. To read them all, click here.]

( Final Fantasy II )

So, anyone got a copy of FF3 they want to lend me? I think it was released for the DS. :)

[Note: This review is part of my series on the Final Fantasy games. To read them all, click here.]

I have embarked on a project that I've been saying I will do for years: playing all the games in the Final Fantasy series, all the way through, in order. I at least want to play the first six (well, five, since I think one of those was never released in the US), since I got into the series with FFVII.

Granted, this is not the kind of life goal that ranks up there with, say, writing a novel, or getting out of debt. But that's okay. I'm allowed to set goals that aren't all grown-up and serious, too.

( Final Fantasy )

So there you have it. I am a giant dork.

Also, who did I loan my copy of FF IX to? Its absence from my shelf is a mystery.

( process )

( poem )

the bright birds whirl their incomprehensible patterns through the unquestioning sky,
& for a moment everything is louder, and hurts: the white birds, the blue sky, the yearning in your own heart.
they wheel around you as the world wheels around you, semaphore-flashes in the too-bright sun,
flinging words to each other in short, sharp cries -- a language you will never understand.

the white birds spin their patterns through the sky, and you are caught, half-remembering.
but they are gone between one breath and the next, between memory and forgetting,
the bright fragments scattered in all directions, the poem dissolving into sky.

raise a glass tonight, my friends.
raise a glass for love, the great mystery that, in the end, escapes us all.
raise a glass for those unspeakably beautiful things which, in their inevitable passing, become even more beautiful yet.
raise a glass to the understanding that love is not enough, to the certain knowledge that, no matter how much you love someone, it does not mean that you can make them happy.
raise a glass to the moments of pure happiness, the ones you know, even at the time, will shine in your memory years later, glittering gems amidst the dullness of the everyday.
raise a glass to those pretty dreams of a future that is always receding into the distance, never arriving.
raise a glass for a love so bittersweet that it is indistinguishable from pain, from longing, from happiness, from all the strongest emotions you've ever felt, all screaming through your head at once.
raise a glass to knowing better than to give up things you know you can't do without, even when your heart tells you otherwise.
raise a glass to waking in the morning to know you are finally home, and that you cannot stay.
raise a glass to figuring out what you want just in time to feel it slip through your fingers.
raise a glass to knowing you had a chance to break the pattern of your own selfishness, and missed it.
raise a glass to having caused more pain with love than you will ever cause through hatred.
raise a glass to knowing when to walk away, though you leave half your self behind.
raise a glass to coming back though all seems hopeless.
raise a glass for one last kiss, though you can hardly breathe for crying.
raise a glass tonight, for love.

Current Mood: not as emo as it looks
Current Music: martin gore - coming back to you

i miss you so much, tonight. i miss every one of you. and when i close my eyes, almost, i can reach out, i can feel you there, far away. whether you are in Albuquerque or Oregon or San Francisco or Dublin or just down on 30th street. living your life, day by day, without me. you kiss her good morning. you go to the shops. you dance in the black light. you fall asleep early. you chop wood for your fire. you tie back your hair.

and afterward, you all go to coffee, and everyone laughs at your jokes.

and you've changed, you've changed. you've cut your hair, you've grown a beard, you've changed your style, you've changed your walk. you're older now -- we're both older, now. but i -- i would still know you, if i saw you tomorrow. i would still know you if we passed on the street. you are in all my stories. you are in all the songs. i could never forget you, scattered fragments of my heart.

but have i changed the smallest thing? is anything different at all? a half-remembered fragment, like a trap -- the smell of shampoo, a familiar turn of phrase, a stranger's gesture? the slightest pull, like gravity? when you close your eyes, can you feel me, too?

Current Mood: lonesome

From "Anecdotal Evidence," by Eliot Weinberger, in the Fall 2003 issue of Conjunctions. (As reprinted in the June issue of Harper's.)

On a cold, rainy February night in New York, I remembered the story André Malraux used to tell -- and which, at some remove, was told to me -- about Mallarmé's cat, whose name, almost needless to say, was Blanche.

On a cold, rainy February night in Paris, a thin and bedraggled alley cat, wandering the streets, looks in the window of Mallarmé's house and sees a white, fat, and fluffy cat dozing in an overstuffed chair by a blazing fire. He taps on the window.

"Comrade cat, how can you live in luxury and sleep so peacefully when your brothers are out here in the streets starving?"

"Have no fear, comrade," Blanche replies. "I'm only pretending to be Mallarmé's cat."

my first thought upon waking:

sleeping, dreaming, is so very simple. then you awaken, and the mesh of causality settles upon you like a net.

( it's been so long since i've told you a story. )

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
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5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Recent Entries

十二月で火

12-13-2010

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy

process / poem

seagull poem.

"i'd like to propose a toast."

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[Feuilleton] Mallarmé's Cat

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