vicissitudes arise

He built himself a house of glass and varnished wood.

The men who were with him said later that the effect rather reminded them of a museum: lacquered wooden floors too shiny to have been lived on, but too dull to be brand new, worn smooth by the passage of many pairs of feet; glass windows and boxes indoors, serving not only to contain and protect, but also to compartmentalise and separate thematically; geegaws and doodads spaced well apart, carefully labelled and catalogued and sorted. Here and there stood, on a plinth of marble or granite or some other stone, an artifact of especial interest. And in the midst, an indefatigable curator working fastidiously, tirelessly to keep things in order.

Yet this was no museum, except perhaps one about himself. The men helped him move in, and brought in his many belongings from the various locations where he had secreted them, in various guises. This time I had to help him remember.

He was a tidy man, by now, but anyone possessed of anything near the sheer multitude of his belongings would pick up a few things about being tidy by the time they reached his age, so to speak.

On each occasion that we had moved previously, the movers with us would invariably give us trouble of some sort, usually by inciting some sort of local inquisition. Maybe it was because this time he had no long beard and had trimmed his usually unruly hair (I swear it was the beard which always did it), or maybe it was because we had so many things that needed moving that we would end up paying them quite a fortune, but this time we managed to finish moving unmolested.

For once, they went about their business quite professionally. So well, in fact, that the master gave each of them a rather generous tip which, for the first time I’d seen, they declined. Instead they pointed to something saying “Service Charge” on what they called an invoice. But he insisted, and they took the tips eventually. That’s capitalism for you.

Perhaps he was right. This age had no need for him. This age also had no use for him, but he wasn’t the kind of person who would feel marginalised by that sort of thinking. In any case, age discrimination didn’t really apply to people like him, in a manner of speaking.

The master was quite happy to retire. As far as he was concerned, he wasn’t retiring, anyway. And with him out of the picture, this age would eventually have no use for an ancient bird.

There are five hunters in the clearing huddled around the fire, wearing armour of dun leather and furs more to keep out the cold than for actual protection from physical harm. Their eyes are fixed upon the old man in their midst; now on him, then again on the young raven on his shoulder. He wears thin robes, seemingly impervious to the freezing winds and drifty snow. The fire flickers, sputters, and the deep rolling voice of the old man goes on and on:

“… Quoth Vingthor thus:
Answer me this, O Alviss, Dwarf,
for of the doom of Men thou knowest all:
How is Ale hight, that is drunk of men
in each and every world?

So quoth Alviss:
Ale ’tis hight by Men, among Æsir, Beer,
called Veig by Vanir, Pure Drink by Jotuns,
in Hela, Mead, called the Feast-draught
by Suttung’s sons.

Quoth Vingthor thus:
Dwarf, thou art wise! Such elder lore
In any breast never ere have I seen.
Yet cunning words have wiled thee indeed:
Now in thy hall bright Sól is shining.
Day is come, Dwarf. Stone be it to you!”

The men shudder and sigh appreciatively, and at length a new saga begins. The night draws on, but the hunters, though weary, do not tire of listening. Though Alviss of old is now stone, this old man is himself all-wise, too. So they say.

The deep rolling voice goes on and on, and mingles with a sound of distant thunder. The raven is silent.

There is a (modern) saying that hindsight is 20/20. We in our quest for perfection keep finding new and complicated ways to express how perfect something is without explicitly stating its flawlessness for fear of accusations of hubris and overstatement.

And it so happens that even hindsight is not perfect.

The ancients likened the passage of time (and our place in it) to us standing still, with Time itself rushing from behind us, flowing around us, fleeing before us into infinite distance, vanishing. Like a river, almost.

But rivers do not flow in straight lines on infinite featureless planar surfaces, hard and gray and dead. Just as flowing water shapes the Earth itself, so Earth defines its rivers too, from cold mountain spring to fecund delta, and the banks of the River Time are pocked with immense reaches of terrain of all sorts. We puny humans cannot easily choose where to sit by the river’s edge and watch it go gracefully by.

And so sometimes our vantage point is not so good. It is not in the restless nature of Man to stay put indefinitely. Our vistas change. No exceptions. And in hindsight, from different angles, different perspectives, we see all things … differently.

And I remember something.

I remember many things which I otherwise forget
except when it becomes inconvenient for me to remember them.

So I remember remembering, now, when I really should not.

I remember this day, a year and a day ago,
when I remembered that day, a year and a day ago:
the caffeine;
the insanity;
the physics;
the astronomy.

And I felt strange
and dreamt a technicolour dream that night.

And life happened
and kept on happening.

And more technicolour dreams.

I used to dream in monochrome
and I liked it better that way.

And I remember saying
This is Very Strange
this day, a year and a day ago.

And I remember knowing why.

And so this day then, I made an end of it all, and we did not know how, or that it ever happened, or if it even should have happened.

And I did not know until today. I would have said goodbye, had I known, but then I would not have done it at all. Perhaps this is the closest I will be able to manage: looking back, after a year and a day, and realising something amiss only now — and doing nothing, if only to honour the memory, now buried, of smiles emerging unforced, which we wore a year and a day ago, a year and a day ago.

I’ll try not to forget that.

Time moves on, and so do I. We all must; we all do. No exceptions.

They say hindsight is 20/20.

Hello.

I have a confession to make.

You might recall that I claim to dream in black and white.

That is a lie.

Or at least, it is a lie now. It was half-true before. I would dream in colour during nightmares, especially the vivid ones, but for the most part my dreams would have been dominated by a particular unsaturated hue. Effectively I would dream in monochrome.

Until about a year ago.

Since then colour had started creeping into my dreams. These dreams got more frequent. Now they are no longer just nightmares. Sometimes they are vivid enough that I cannot tell I am dreaming.

It has not escaped my notice that this started happening after I first met you.

And so it disturbs me. It disturbs me very much, because I do not know what it means.

You affect me in strange ways.

You make me happy when I should feel sad, and you depress me when I should be joyful. You make me fail Concentration checks. You make me do strange things.

And I dream of you. In colour.

This is very queer.

awkwardargyleanorak:

drunkenbutterfly:

fitofhonesty:

fuckuniform:

fishingforadream:

it’s an idea ;) which will probably fail but let’s give it a shot so we can spread the love, ahahaha. give a compliment to the person you just reblogged this from.
as there’s no one above me, i’ll just say you’re all so lovely and nice :)

i don’t know you personally, but I can see that you’re absolutely stunning

I don’t know you personally either but you seem lovely & funny & ambitious & creative & mature & lovable & I should stop before you start thinking I want to wear your skin.

i love you min, you’re everything ^-^ i wish that rhymed better ‘cause then i could turn it into a song so i could say “i love that song, i want to have it’s tiny song babies” or something ha ha

You’ll be alright. You’re strong. I know you’ll be okay because I like you and you can’t like someone who doesn’t like themself. The people I fear for are the ones I don’t like because they hate themselves so much they won’t let anyone else like them either. But I do like you. And I know you’ll be okay.

You’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. Also, you’re mostly smarter than you let on.

I wonder if the whole little boys business counts against that, though.