The Daydreamery

thejeniverse:

ofgodandcastiel:

sherbertsheperton:

luce-felice:

suckmywurst:

Make your Victorian doll.

I’m not good with things that aren’t monocromatic okay.

The animated version of Mina Mori, my steampunk self

I’m sorry but tank tops are my favorite. (not sorry about the whip tho ;D)

(Source: notrangerkimmy, via candyelephants)

It did not happen with bright lights
or swirling gasses of ruby and glass
There were no days of waiting,
days of toil, days of beauty, or coal black.

It happened with a kiss. a brush. a look. 
Started with warm words that chill the soul,
a soft breath of winter, 
and two palms that touch,
despite gravity’s unyeilding pull.

In a heavy blanket of silence, 
wrapped tight to shut in the rage of brimstone
that rests nestled in his ancient baby bones, 
he is waiting for the end of what he has started,
to give away the forever gift; 
that first beat
that rings and rings and rings.

Eyes like rain-kissed emeralds.
In his tears he is most beautiful;
his child-like face finds the maturity of sorrow
and the grace of pain.

“This is not to be qualified or quantified
examined or explained,”
he begs of the brittle wind—
for forgiveness, for redemption,
but never for release.

“It is love. 
A word that has no meaning—
Something that was carved into
the first stone
of the first rock
of the first mountain
of this planet.”

He speaks as if it is his word,
as if he has pressed it
into his chest;
A reminder that someone,
that first someone
with their first gasp of breath
and their first endless heartbeat 
on this old and fragile earth, 
was foolish enough to trap such a thing,
form it into letters and sounds.

He is a boy the size of a universe,
and he trembles in fear
of the beating of his breastbone
and the passion of his earth.

I do not know how it begins, for one can never know, but the smoke and hum of sleep flow naturally into myself, this time from my eyes, and pairs of eyes all around me, watching, speaking, knowing.

We’ve been sitting at a table, small, round and a gentle gold color. As I sweep my eyes across the room and across their many faces, the gold swells and bleeds as if the light itself was made of gold leaf, clinging and coating everything that it touched. It is the gold that I will remember, years to come; a pure and singular light of spirit.

“Does it hurt when you fall?” I ask to the shadow at my right.

“No, not at all.” The shadow, I realize, is Henry. But no, that can’t be right. I saw Henry, my friend Henry, just last week. He cannot have died from a fall from a window. I look to my left, and there is the window that he fell from. It’s stone supports are a warm gray, and I see the round stucco detail that his hands failed to gain proper purchase from, and the green grass outside that he landed upon. No, it cannot be Henry who has fallen.

I look to my right again and I realize with relief that no, he is not the short and tan Henry I know, but a Henry from my past. The Henry who was in my choir when I was a child, and he a young man. I have not thought about that Henry in years. If a Henry must have fallen from a window to pass on, then perhaps, however sad for that Henry of old, this is more as it should be.

“It goes much too fast to feel much of anything, really,” he continues. The others, all, I realize with some sense of strangeness, young men who have fallen and perished, nod in agreement. I do not know all of them immediately, but perhaps if I could study them more I would know. But their faces slide and blur and I cannot put a name to any of them. Except, of course, poor Henry.

“Except for the fear, of course,” someone says.

I do know, however, that they have come here for me. They have traveled far and wide, carrying on their backs the windows and bridges and rooftops and horses and ships and buildings and all that they have fallen from. They have gathered these piercing, timeless moments of weightlessness up in their arms and walked across ages, countries and possibilities to find me. They have joined here at this golden table, and laid their tragic last moments bare, to unfold like dioramas behind them. They have all come to tell me that it was short, it was painless, it was over almost before it began. They have come to reassure me, as if that could be of any consolation. I do not know if it is, but I watch their stories.

But there is too great a sorrow in the company of death. Not even sorrow, just resignation and sympathy. I never knew the dead could be sympathetic. It doesn’t seem right.

I leave. There is a boy with me. He is young, and fresh, and full of laughter. He has come with me to learn the lesson I am supposed to have learned. He has been me long enough to hear the voices of the fallen and to think, as I am thinking, of the life before and behind him.

He is in love. So young to be so in love, and yet there seems no other time to feel it as he feels it. I feel very old next to him, knowing the surges of passion and song that flow through him. He has been shy and scared to sing out with such love and tenderness, but now he knows there is no time. With a world filled with windows and ledges and bridges and ladders, there is no time to hold his tongue, to keep quiet when humming birds would burst through his veins.

He leaves me, running. Like a shadow, I am with him now, he leading the chase up the stairs in a place I knew from long ago. It was different when I knew it then; it was a hospital, but the rooms have changed and the voices of the sick filled with the shadows of the young. This is where he lives, and this is where his love lives.

He stops at the door, his hand raised. Even with all that he has learned, he bites his lips in nervousness, stamps his feet, paces with uncertainty. Will he ever have the courage? He knows now that life can change in an instant with a single fall. A fall we all can take. How often do we walk across great tightropes of chance, and brave the rooftops of foolish bravado? Our world is not flat, nor round, but mountainous and undulating, with cliffs and meadows and mile high walls to face each day. Any moment he could fall and never have the chance to say what’s on his mind. Any moment he could fall, and never have the chance to jump.

To leap. To throw off the shackles of his fear and leap into the wind with a shout, a cry, a song. How can he take this risk, to step from the steady flat place of the lonely known and into the bottomless, featureless unknown? And if he is rejected? He will fall. He will fall like his brethren behind him, if not to his death then surely to his heartbreak. How can he take the path along the edge, when a fall looms like a black banshee calling his name? And yet. How can he stay in the silent plains of his apathy, with no forwards, no backwards, no time or change; a place where that gilded gold that so colored the sorrow of the dead only bleaches out the everlasting wilderness and drowns him with its steady, single breath? Is he to stay steady and braced upon his two firm, young and trembling legs, or is he to lift his foot and step, even though that step surely leads him off a cliff?

He looks to me, corporal now, and looks back to the door.

And before he can move, I am awake.

I drowned myself today.
You see, it’s not my fault
I was painful, all bright lights and hopeful sighs.
I was foolish, with whale sized dreams and soaring heights.
I was helpless, floating on golden stars and clouds of not yet promises.
I was hurtful, brass proclamations, fearful passions, and fires burning.
I was magical, making music from spider webs and plucking light from waves.
I was young, and free, and beautiful.

And I hurt myself.
The light within burned this fragile, weakly shell.
And left me pressed against the burning door of reality.
Passions roaring left my arms weak,
so I could not push the dark away.
Blind and careless love left me weeping,
So I could not breath in the worldly flood.

So I had to stop it, before I burnt to shreds.
So I took her,
the child inside
I took me,
my hopes, my dreams, my sweetness

And I held her under water
until she drowned.

Dusk on a cool fall day. I have been awake for hours thinking about not falling in love. I cannot know for sure if it was love, infatuation, or simply excitement. I do not think it had been love I felt that cold and orange night. Or at least, not the love that fairy princesses dream of. It was not a love to die for, a love filled with yearning. It was not a love where music played or where clothes were torn off in passionate surrender. If I am quite honest, I cannot clearly remember how I felt. I just remember thinking that for one moment, I was standing on the cliff of enlightenment with you. All before and below us was a vast valley of clouds for us to lay upon, to drink the rain of peace from, to wrap ourselves up in soft whiteness and drift into peaceful nirvana. I remember we stood there and did not jump. I don’t know why you didn’t and perhaps that is what kept me from forging ahead. I do not think either of us will find the path to that cliff again, however.

I think our love was simply that path. It fit into no other category, brought with it no other demands or sacrifices or diagrams or guidelines. It was simply the road we found together. The way we cut through jungles of youth and crossed deserts of the unknown. It was a love that did not make us want to do anything, rather, it was a love that took us somewhere. A distinct and unique time and place in our most short and bumpy existence. I have forgotten most of that path now. I know it existed, I know there are still roads and places where it is strong enough to still be found, like ancient cobblestone in the sand. But I cannot walk it again. I miss it. But it is a trail of dreams lost forever, like shapes of clouds in the sunset sky.

The baby is sleeping. The young grandmother dozes beside her in the dark and cool room in the back of the house. It is night, a nap right now will do her no good, but the soft baby breathing and her own gentle humming has slumbered them both, sent the shadows off to muffle sounds, like velvet curtains on the walls.

The young grandfather sits in the kitchen with his brandy and his magazine. His days are long with toil and he had only gotten a few short hours with the little one before she had to sleep. But it was enough. Enough to remind him of the tiny joys that were to be enjoyed, like brandy, like cigars, like jazz, in small and concentrated bursts.

The even younger uncle sits on the couch alone. In the small and simple house, sound travels too far and fast. He cannot turn on the TV to watch his shows, or play his video games. He doesn’t mind, but the lack of usual distraction leaves him at a loss. The baby sleeps in his room. He waits on the couch, staring at the wall, the ceiling, the floor. He is not impatient, but he is aimless. There is simply too much time between his current breath, and when his sister will return.

But when she does return from the dinner, there is no time for breathing. The baby is awoken (unintentionally) and swiftly moved to her tiny car seat, her blue eyes still glossy with the colored, mashed and musical remnants of baby dreams. The car pulls out of the driveway minutes later, and the house is free of it’s welcomed sentence of silence.

But the grandpa washes his glass quietly and tiptoes to bed with whispered goodnights. The grandma, now awake and lost for a night of sleep, brews lukewarm tea to sup while reading in the dim light of the den. The uncle continues his silent vigil on the couch until he relents with a sigh, and heads to bed.

It is not just the night that brings each cough and footstep across the rooms like a shot. The uncle stands awkwardly in his room like a stranger, feeling the softness of dreams pushing against him with silent disapproval. The sleeping baby has left threads of it’s slumber all throughout the house. The magic of her unknown dreams from centuries before have permeated the walls and air. To sleep and dream, she had created a cocoon of falling stars and ebony clouds. All that energy, enough to fuel a miracle, was wrapped around her in joyous, peaceful layers. The uncle, though so young, robust, full of rebellious nighttime heartbeats, can not resist the baby’s spell. He, like his father, slinks into bed to dream in colors, music, and raw and wondrous certainties.

Only the grandmother remains awake. She has weathered the silk and fur embraces of her own babies’ slumber, and though she can feel it all around her, it is not she who would be enveloped. She forever lays outside it, ever vigilant. For the dreamy webs of peace is to her like the quilts she has woven to keep her family warm. She will hold her babies tightly in them, and forever guard their slumber.

First post! I guess it’s fitting that it’s a long lost memory of when I went to Ireland as a child. All those pictures are lost in boxes, but thankfully Corrinne on Flickr has some great shots. (Link above!) So here goes.

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Outside the warehouse, past daddy’s work and the mill of friendly faces, there is an old double-decker bus. In some places, The red shine has faded to obscure and grayish sadness, and it sits squat and half buried in vines and wild flowers. It is left there, half smudged and blurred by wilderness, accepting it’s fate and slowly drowning in peonies. Light filters through the leaves but through the stubborn window frames you can see the table with its half eaten breakfast and abandoned card games.

There is a young man with a matchstick in his mouth pacing through the hazy fog outside. Or is it a copse of daisies? He could be swimming through the flower fields, that frown of concentration rippling out over petals. He is older than you, much so, yet he seems as young as any hero in the story books, so fresh and forward and you wonder if he still dreams of slaying dragons or if that has all disappeared through endless compromises. 

On the chessboard by your elbow, ivory pieces shimmer as if glazed with dew. Shimmering white and ancient, like lilies in a garden pond or white washed doors that line the gray and cobbled streets. It rains here all the time, they say. The gloomy, creamy clouds and their rains fuel the hills and valleys. The green. You’ve never seen anything like the green, the way it claws up buildings and throws itself across rolling hills, and weeds its way into respectable houses and sticks to all the boots and wheels that ever risked crossing through it.

It covers all and everything, except for the white cliffs and churning waves and golden sand and the soft chestnut of your pony’s hocks. He is short and stubborn, with a face like a grumpy child. You have stolen him from his grain to take him into the hills, to make him race along the waves like black beauty and while you whoop and holler into the wind you can feel his indignation and self consciousness. He is only a pony. He is old and tired, and feels small, even with tiny you and your tiny legs squeezing around his belly.

This is his home and he finds it familiar, though to you the fresh splash of salt and thick smell of green will follow you home and forever stick to your skin. It will wear off with the ages, with other adventures, with the daily dredge of your normal day to day. But that green has filled up your eyes, the fog has enveloped you in it’s feather breath, the smell of air leaping off cliffs has permeated your very being. Though you may forget, it will never leave you. Close your eyes, and you shall see it all once again. That endless green, the white waves, and the soft muzzle of your smallest friend.

Image from: http://www.ejphoto.com/shetland_pony_page.htm