Ursula

These are from my senior-year workshop portfolio. The basic themes are "I'm an ice queen - my friends are drama whores", "I hate suburban developments", and "I hate abstinence education". The really melodramatic stuff is prose, but there's plenty of doubtful poetry to go around.

***

Never to Have Been

Never-to-have-been--
I cut the threads out, wasting green.
I will not take these scissors to my life
For fear that I should leave myself in shreds.
For fear, for grief, for safe. For always safe.
I had my ends.
I thrust a needle through my life
And something bends.

***

Misheard II

Frequent falling.
In my dreams I am often too late.

I write my life through curtains, protesting--
How many times have I been
Too calm to scream?

The color of winter is white.
Is the rain white?

I am too asleep for anger.
I trip over air.
In my dreams I am often too late.

***

Health

Let us make a covenant
to remain in integrity.
What you put in is what you get out
and even the lost
can join the greater Responsible.

Let us all forget
that integrity is not a place.
Real people possess integrity, they don't live there.
Even when we enter
the House of Affirmation
bright white in a green suburban yard--
I want to burn it--
we can't live there.

No matter how disintegrated
let us assume enthusiasm
and try to hold on.

***

(For Bad Teenage Poetry Blogging Day)

The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France reads like two books: one is a theoretical exploration of the way gifts function in societies, in a "mode" parallel to the economic exchange of money and goods, and the other is a collection of details about everyday (and elite) life in early modern France. From the reenactment perspective, the details (followed through the bibliography) are a treasure-house of potential: étrennes are presents given at New Year's, usually to children and servants, but étrennes might also be poems for friends or patrons; Gaspard de Saillans wore his fiancé's blue taffeta garter tied about his neck. The discussions of patronage and the theology of gifts are interesting but incomplete: each could be a book of its own, mayhap is somewhere else in Natalie Zemon Davis' work.

Book One and Book Two of The Power of One by Bruce Courtenay each end with revenge, or perhaps it would be better to say cosmic retribution. I would have preferred less tidiness, a more sprawling bittersweet conclusion. From scene to scene the story, about coming of age in 1940s South Africa, revels in mess; shit, blood, and casual racism are taken in stride, while sadism requires intricate resistance.

I told gwacie:

We could play the reasie game. What do you want to hear about first? Ceremony? Food? Clothes? People? Wise advice?

She replied:

Start with the vigil :) Did you do a formal vigil? With a tent and things?

The question itself makes for an interesting bit of inter-kingdom anthropology: if I hadn't talked to sue_n_julia, I might not know what you mean about the tent. Vigils in An Tir are pretty free-form: usually there's a spread of food and the opportunity to talk to the person on vigil, sometimes in private, sometimes in a big group, but there's no real standard, and no requirement to keep non-peers from hearing the secret knowledge. "Formal" to me means "research vigils for knighthood and do the rituals involving a formal bath and clothing of a certain color". Since I was basing my ceremony on the Golden Fleece ceremony, and members of knightly orders were already knights, I didn't feel the need for the ritual bath. Instead, I made lots and lots of food.

( food, people, advice )

My Laurel elevation will be Saturday afternoon at June Faire. Right now, royal court is scheduled for 4:30 PM. Following aelfgyfu's example (twice is a tradition, right?) the 'vigil' will be in the early afternoon. It will involve fifteenth-century snacks, some hemming, and the wisdom of peers. Carousal will follow court.

Please let me know if you can make it, if you want to camp with us, if you need a ride, and if you'd be willing to bring food and drink.

I have a beautiful scroll which needs to be signed by Thorin & Dagmaer. Their designated signature-forging-scribe lives in Portland, and we haven't managed to connect. Would somebody be willing to put me in touch with parlor_games directly?

For Easter, I boiled a bunch of eggs. This morning, I tried to make an omelette.

As of final court at Kingdom Arts & Sciences, I'm on vigil for membership in the Order of the Laurel (the SCA's highest arts and sciences honour, if you're not familiar with this stuff). glasseye and I had already checked out of the hotel, so aelfgyfu had to lure us to court ("It's just in fifteen minutes! We're only waiting for Her Majesty to make a phone call, no, you probably don't want to walk past her right now . . .") and thrust a tunic at me.

Now I have to plan a ceremony. I'm thinking I will research actual induction ceremonies for fifteenth-century knightly orders. Things to do:

• Talk to Their Majesties and choose a date for the ceremony between now and July Coronation. (June Faire?)
  
• Write a poem for Their Majesties.
  
• Get my hands on a copy of the statutes of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Boulton says they discuss the induction of a new member at some length), and translate the relevant sections.
  
• Think about clothing. (Some women wore the regalia of the Order of the Garter; can I find a picture?) Anyone want to help me sew a mantle?
  
• Scroll? (As a "copy of the statutes of the Order"?)
  
• Talk to glasseye about "admission fee" (part of admission to the Orders of the Garter, Golden Fleece, etc.)
  
• Party!
  

From ornerie:

Everyone has things they post about. Everyone has things they don't post about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't mention often, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post.

I need to buy a computer chair. In fact, five minutes with the OSHA website suggests that I need to buy a chair, a desk, a keyboard, a flatscreen monitor, and maybe a mouse substitute, but buying a chair and improvising a footrest seems like the place to start. (I've been using one of the heavy green dining room chairs that alaric gave us years and years ago, and my heels don't touch the ground.) Anyone want to recommend a chair? It should be comfortable for short people, and you get bonus points if it looks like it belongs in a living room rather than a cubicle.

This is a bag made from recycled rayon saris and a bit of black linen. It was livejournal art for betzle.