The Musings of Alencia Lysander

Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down of his soft breast uncurls his coral feet. Creature of the sea, made from the deep, Not its darkness where the hundred monsters Sleep but from a deeper still, where pearls And other jewels their corazón await, A depth so clear, so still, Deeper than the deep, about its treasures Clinging like a sheet, edge upon the edge Of what is seen, a flicker and a sweep. This way to emerge! Royally too evident become And darker darkness radiate, to sweep and fly, Ever in the way things underneath Have shown themselves And wear the world as a wreath, Oblivious to any demand, "Why?" Through the deep purple of the dying heat of sun and mist, the level ray of sun-beam has caressed the lily with dark breast, and flecked with richer gold its golden crest. Gold on gold more gilded, on the other hand, recedes Into a darkness and stillness, leads The mi...

Incarnated among appearances, a voice That like the lazy morning lilts and in me Lingers, under the familiar, invisible And barely audible, a promise or a spell In which is rehearsed the gaiety its tiding brings, A solemn exhortation to rejoice, Where, like the spider's fly, the things Of all this world harbored, what the earth Produces and their elements of birth Entangle me.  Wound up in and by these lives I only can watch raptly as by chariot arrives The sorcerer who keeps within her gallery The forces of her manifest. What worth Will carry me into the ice of afternoon, If through the prism of the morning I can see, Under the endurance of the present, what lacunae, Omens of her rapt appearances, are yet to be, The whistle and the adze, spokes and song, if humanity Unable to endure, unwilling to commune, Is yet too stubborn or too weak to come so near The revelations I prefigure here?

Because they read no books, the villagers cannot believe in labyrinths; The children come the closest when they listen to the priests’ imbroglio, More because the church is warm in winter and in summer smells of tamarind -- And buzzing springs and swerving falls -- than what a soul, if simpatico, Ever could be brought to understand. No distinction between oval and ellipse Can root itself in blameless limbs, and more than any creed a piece of chocolate Is the currency in idle hands. When heedless, unschooled puberty eclipses So sensual an age, blooming hands could not care less to trade a coronet For those still sophistries. Life swings too eagerly towards what the sage decries In time-bound tomes as heresy to notice or escape what it implies.

On crystal days when the air is clear By the mountains ruined in cold The rustics drown themselves in beer While their sheep keep close to the fold.  The young man waits by the sleek hillside; His mind gone to heaven, his soul alone Sings elegies for absent brides While the sun slides through the gloam.  The stars salt an ache that deepens The dark blinds those who cry Pens scrawl the words that cheapen While the crows fly. This time it is only stars and frost -- The world doesn't mind the lost.

I've spent a bit of time recently watching YouTube videos related to the question of what makes something an RPG.  Since studying literary theory in college, I've become skeptical that you can give clean-cut definitions of the various genres.  I think two works belong to the same genre if they are similar enough across various dimensions.  The problem with similarity is that it's vague.  Everything is similar to everything else in some way, just on a general metaphysical level, and once you get to the products of human culture, each of them is much more like each of the others than it is different.  So arguments about genre tend to fixate on arbitrarily selected differences the importance of which are then magnified to the level of dogma. I believe there is no one difference that will always make X a member of genre G rather than genre G'.  The products of culture are descriptively rich, and there are any number of relevant features that make our experien...

I keep waking up late -- 10:30 or 11:00.  My husband gets up at 7:30 every morning to work and asks me to make a sandwich, but I'm too tired.  I end up grumbling at him in bed for a few minutes before he gives up, but I don't fall properly back to sleep until he leaves.  I'm too much awake to fall right back to sleep, but I don't have enough energy to actually get up.  So then I wake up much later and the day's gone.  As I was dozing this morning, I thought of Confucius' remonstrance against Zi Lu for sleeping during the day: "Rotten wood can't be carved.  A mud wall can't be plastered."  What an optimistic view of human nature!  Or at least of education.  But we're stuck in the grooves habit has laid down for us -- which having been laid down, it's very hard for us to switch tracks. As for grooves -- I've learned that the exercise regime I've been trying to lay in place for myself is called "greasing the groove."  T...

He finds that with propriety he cannot write about his own life.  He acts against people, but he would not make those people conscious witnesses of his actions.  He seals himself away from others, both by the barriers he places in their way and by the silence he erects to guard those barriers.  It is the assault of an animal -- the very thought is contained in the action, and the thought is nothing besides, or at least has no other expression than, that action. To the departed: it was a matter of drifting, it was a matter of harm.  The harm became a wound, the wound scarred, the scar is a rift.  I think of it like a gap that fills up with all the hostilities of the world.  It is something radical and diseased, and I want no part of it.  I also would like to be someone else.  There is now what is for me an insurmountable investment of pain required to cross it, so I would rather call it a loss.  But I feel the pain enough to remark it. ...