azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 ([personal profile] azurelunatic) wrote2003-08-13 01:10 am

Night songs

Every now and then, scraps of song come to me. Some have been haunting me for years.

I used to title this fragment "In the Silence of the Night", but just now realized that it was mistitled. It needs to be "Souls I Used to Know".

The words are still working their way out of me, like the bone fragments from Mama's finger. (Mama got her finger slammed in a heavy door, and some 15-20 years later, bone fragments began to work their way out of the old wound and the finger had to be re-operated on.) Someday, they'll be fit to sing in front of others.

For now...



It was late night, far too late on a college weekend, the worst diehard nightowl nicotine addicts braving the cold outside by the dorm entrance. With them, but a ways apart, a girl, not smoking, staring up at the stars. Orange light from the dorm lights, the streetlights. She holds a stick of incense, lit, and watches the patterns the smoke makes in the freezing air. She has no mittens; she tucks her fingers up into the sleeves of her heavy down jacket.

In the smoke of her incense, in the idle chatter of the smokers, she feels the names of her dead. They aren't, strictly speaking, hers, but she's taken responsibility for their memory. No one else will. There's no one else to give them to. She can't do right by them. She can't honor their lives as they deserve. She did not know them. She can't dismiss them. She hasn't the power to send them onward. They're hers, for as long as she can bear them, and they her.

[identity profile] shadesong.livejournal.com 2003-08-13 03:53 am (UTC)(link)
In the smoke of her incense, in the idle chatter of the smokers, she feels the names of her dead. They aren't, strictly speaking, hers, but she's taken responsibility for their memory. No one else will. There's no one else to give them to. She can't do right by them. She can't honor their lives as they deserve. She did not know them. She can't dismiss them. She hasn't the power to send them onward. They're hers, for as long as she can bear them, and they her.

Dude.

This is me.....
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[identity profile] chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com 2003-08-13 07:22 am (UTC)(link)
wow...I like that.

as for the bone fragment thing, same thing happened when I had to have surgery to get my wisdom teeth removed, they had to saw through the jawbone and section the teeth to get them out, I had splinters working through for years afterwards, which was a right bitch!
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[identity profile] chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com 2003-08-13 08:02 pm (UTC)(link)
hey, I didn't know that! I was studying pottery, want to get back into it...had the plans to open a studio when we had to up and move...very cool!

Yes, have a mucked up hand would suck!
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[identity profile] chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com 2003-08-13 08:45 pm (UTC)(link)
there are SO many things I want to make.....

god I miss clay.
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[identity profile] chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com 2003-08-13 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)
oddly enough, it never bothered me much, but then I was also religious about slathering on hand cream and the like...

Apology

[identity profile] swallowtayle.livejournal.com 2003-08-13 11:57 am (UTC)(link)
I would love to hear the song, once you have finished creating it. This reminded me of how you used to sing all the time back home... and how I used to yell at you for it. I am sorry. You really do have a good voice, and there is not enough singing in the world. Even if it sometimes changes key without warning or it is the same little piece of the same song... you had to put up with my violin, which could not have been pleasant. There needs to be more music in the world, just as there needs to be more love. Now that I am an "adult", I realize this truth. It is my mission to spread both love and music, not stamp it out. Lately, I have taken to singing in the shower or walking down the street. Life is to be enjoyed. I am glad that you reached this truth so long ago... and I am sorry that I did not understand it then.