lindsaysscribblings.com » Prose

Possesive

lindsay — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 06:00:00 +0000

You cannot own people – even slavery is only the (presumed and imposed) right to a physical body. No amount of bidding sub hasta will ever give you the right to a soul, and if it could, it would be worthless, as the value of such possession is in the choice of a free individual to be yours, not in forced companionship.

You cannot own people – and even if they say you do, they can’t mean permanently or completely; they can’t mean with all of the caveats you wish to impose (”Don’t talk to her.” “Don’t stand so close.” “Don’t go.”).

Yet, I wish I owned you – in the worst and best ways possible. I wish I could make you stay with me, indefinitely. I wish I could know you would never fall for anyone else. I wish I could set rules for you to follow, so I could be certain of your behavior.

But I want you to be you, and I want you to choose me and restrict your behavior accordingly. I don’t want to need to make rules or worry about having them broken.

I wish I owned you – I, the ever competitive. I wish I could defeat you, my one steady foe over these past years.

But then, I enjoy the struggle, and I enjoy your challenge – the thrill of knowing you might succeed where I cannot. Compared to matching our wills, I would find unearned dominance shallow.

I wish I owned you, but more accurately, I wish I knew you would continue to choose me, to give yourself to me of you own free accord.

No, I cannot own you, but I need you to be mine.

Last Hope

lindsay — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Particle bombs exploded at a distance; the flick of a wrist. Rainbow fireworks of tiny atoms chain-reacting. Closer now.
Through her microscope, she carefully inserted the red matter into the blue cell with a steady hand and a plastic pipette. Earth’s only defense.
As the first offending bomb tore through the solar system, shaking the earth, she skillfully and subtly tossed out her own red-centered blue particle from a raised, open platform, tethered above the atmosphere. When they raised their hands to signal the next bomb, she uncurled her fist and tensely splayed her fingers, mimicking their action: activating the particle she had created. Their explosion began, densely, and just as quickly – countered by the force of her creation – froze and then collapsed upon itself.
She smirked smugly at their surprise. Not quite so superior after all, then.
Finish her, finish it, finish earth; they told him. This can still be quick, if no longer painless. He nodded; he had no reason not to. Commanders have power, but even Commanders can be commanded, even Commanders have responsibility. His responsibility was to destroy this stubborn, selfish, misplaced world. Annihilate it. Annihilation demanded no standing opposition.
He did try, anyone would grant him that. He tried negotiating; he tried outright destruction. But she was the last hope, brilliant; she refused to be outwitted. She kept working towards survival even as he circled around scenarios for her death. The background buzz of higher authority – whispered suggestions from mentors and auditors to a favorite pupil, an inspired protégé – flitted through his edicts, but this was meant to be his command and no other’s. A test, of sorts.
She was the last hope: she did everything that could be done. She researched, she assembled, she compiled, she commanded. She petitioned for supplies, and slowly they trickled in, just enough for earth’s last stand. Enough to compose her secret weapons:
The red bundles – jumbled rods and knobs, thin and tiny – that snapped and popped, in every direction. They were weapons of economy, inflicting more damage for less production – all that earth could afford. The computer virus designed to divide his navy, destroy the perilously balanced Babel his civilization thrived on. The virus that would take advantage of a pre-existing divide between the members of his large empire. It would disassemble all orders, transmitted in Fleet Common from the flotilla’s flagship, and replace them with characters from the obscure and minor tongue of an outer-world. Like everything else, it was released into space upon creation, latent until she chose to revive it. Some coders would be able to catch it before impact, and some crews would be able to muster a translator who could begin to reassemble fragments of language before the damage spread, but at least half wouldn’t – setting the odds between earth and non-earth relatively even.
He didn’t know about her secret weapons, he only knew that she was dangerous and real. That she was his responsibility, his mark. He knew that she was dangerous and beautiful and the savior of a planet. He knew that she was an incredible kisser. His superiors didn’t know he knew this last, and he himself, though aware that an affair by no means meant a compromise, did not know exactly the havoc she intended to wreak on his flotilla.

************************************

He was unofficially court-marshaled. Denied rank. He existed outside the military hierarchy and yet his “superiors” still controlled him, coerced him with promises of restoration. They clandestinely hinted that if he could distract her, seduce her, for just a few critical moments, he could regain everything he lost and more. If he could turn his fault into a net-benefit, he too would reap a handsome profit. And her planet would be destroyed.
Such is the price of victory, and only the truly ambitious ever reach the rank of Commander.

Danger to Knowledge

lindsay — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 00:00:13 +0000

There is a danger to knowledge. A subtle danger to knowing, a certain danger to the lack of it. There is a danger – revealed in the twisting machinations of manipulation and emotionless frigidity of pure facts. Mostly, there is a danger in the harshness of what others can lord over you.
There is a danger to knowledge – a danger to another’s one-sided knowledge – to what you cannot know. There is a reasoning intensity, a plea for trust, but knowledge is treacherous. Knowledge holds no allegiance, commands no code of honor. Even the truthful are at risk of being struck for their impiety, their inability.
And yet I revere knowledge – worship it, a child presuming to be a priestess in the secular temple of infinite sagacity. I revere knowledge – idolize it, audaciously hoping to understand the enigmatic.
There is a danger to knowledge, when it isn’t mine.

Pythia

lindsay — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:00:00 +0000

The icy ketamine-laced water chilled her naked flesh up to her navel, chilled her elbows and her breasts as she clutched her knees in a shallow semblance of futile fetal protection. There were no goosebumps. No raised hairs. There was nothing except the sallow cyan tint slowly flushing her skin, a creeping ascent to her face, to betray her frigid state. Had they been open, her eyes would have added a hue to the monochromatic madness sweeping her body – darkest royal blue. But after two shots of sodium pentothal, she was unconscious. Unconscious and dreaming deliciously. Vehement dreams; prescient.
In the fluorescent light, there was an unnaturally shadowy figure ignoring the live-feed vid-screens that other staffers focused on behind their surrounding Plexiglas walls – their keyboards clacking, rendering analysis. His attention was rapt – there was no movement from the knee-high sunken glass tub the woman occupied; there were not even the stifled screams she emitted in natural sleep. But her fingertips were white with insistent pressure against her calves.
Sustainable intensity is passing. He hesitated, allowing himself to momentarily devour her figure – swift curves, arched spine, muscles athletic and trim – then resolutely signaled the charge cut. Soon enough, he knew, when they finished, he would be able to stare at his leisure.
Webs of reality tapered into tendrils before disintegrating from the screens entirely. Doubtless, the impact of this feed was already ricocheting through the Washington office. Even with the assumptions such predictions had to rely on, the majority of future time-lines had been explicit: one more heavy assault would break the Chinese battle advantage.
Indoctrination, he heard her whisper, as the flush of longing rose again, equally unbidden and unchecked. Under her momentary sway, he doubted his cause.
It was, he reassured himself smoothly, a necessary and noble cause – the best and only cause, if empirics had any say: patriotism.
Liberty paled in comparison to security, a mere perk against the necessity of life. The patriot act, Guantanamo, the end of private media. It had started innocuous and grown to this: the “friendly” incarceration of a citizen for “the public welfare” – the trapping of a mind for it’s intellect; deliberate disregard for the ephemeral husk nominally recognized as the associated body.
And yet, this mind, this particular mind, would be deified, at least in his own private thoughts. The prophetess Cassandra made martyr for his great and noble cause, that best and only cause of all truly heroic endeavors. Pythia, showering him in obscure greatness, ambiguous distinctions – waiting for an Apollo to tame the intimacies of her enigmatic tongue.

************************************************

Harsh concrete steadfastly absorbed his pensive gait. Sharp clicks and the turnstile accepted his progress, registering his presence with the depressing semi-rotation of a numeric counter. The glossy metro-ride to his apartment was a duel – traditionalist loyalty wrestling sympathy for an unwitting vessel of fortune. Smothered beneath layers of swollen prescience was a drugged awareness laboring to inhale even the briefest clarity, gasping for external stimuli. He could wake her.

(The winner of the) Impromptu Fiction Writing Contest with Alex (8PM-12AM) – prompts: “Renaissance” and “assassin”

lindsay — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 06:00:08 +0000

The slight amber tint of cold autumn sunlight trickled over the stone road and glazed the surrounding hilltops. Her father was certain to chide, even upon her safe return – it was not wise to walk alone through the outskirts of Milan in barren twilight. Not wise for a peasant, certainly less so for a distant Medici, a silk merchant’s coveted daughter.
But wares had sold well today at market, and foolishly, wispily, she had decided to detour through the quieting dusk. Her own tiny, weary sigh slid to liberty before she could stifle it, burdening her stride with the weight of consideration. Escapades such as this, however brief, were rare indeed in the well-monitored society of aristocracy – even the oft-snubbed mercantile lines.
There were not more than three streets between herself and her uncle’s small holding, where her father’s caravan was bedding. He was a worrier, her father, and though she longed to delay, he was already wracked with anxious preparations for their return to Florence.
With a single throaty gulp of air, delicately picking her way around the murky puddles socializing in the crevices of uneven cobbles, she began the pensive melody of an aged folk ballad.
It wasn’t until another voice – treble, full – joined hers that the youthful de’ Medici realized she had acquired a human shadow.
The knowledge snagged at her refrain, thinning her voice to a strained squeak. Thick skirts whirling, she confronted the owner of the assured, simpatico voice which had imposed a contentious duet upon her brusque solo.
“Maria de’ Medici?” the speaker softly inquired, dousing her temper with cool sincerity.
It wasn’t much blood she shared with Lorenzo – only a few drops from her mother, already a distant, if nominal, cousin – but she clung to any visage of authority.
“Si, who dares to intrude upon my regal solitude?” The words crackled with the taut caution of her mingling rank and fury.
Appropriately apologetic, he bowed his cloaked head and intoned lyrically, “Beg pardon, signorina , but the deed is done. I come only to assure you personally of Christ’s holy gratitude.”
Ahhh, but she should have known as much – his voice had the well-practiced discipline of the priesthood, and his vestments were ill-concealed to the alert eye.
With coquettish reverence, she murmured to the robed friar, “It is I who am grateful, father.” Conspiratorially, she squeezed his weathered hand, and he felt 10 discreet florins whisper in his palm.
Maria de’ Medici left the priest to his desperate rosary with a coy and painstakingly developed smile, confidently approaching what had been her paternal uncle’s villa.

Correct

lindsay — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 00:00:22 +0000

It really is funny how right I was, without fully comprehending it. I knew there was more, is more, to every story than what is initially expressed.

Time itself is a wonderful medium for unraveling secrets, but so is wisdom. It takes a while for the extended series of hints and unwittingly revealing comments to grow large enough to ascertain true motivation. And though I knew one day I would understand, I didnt suspect it would come like this- a series of blind revelations in the middle of the night. But such is the case with all wisdom; it is sought after vainly, but only received when you have forgotten to look.

Subject of tonight’s wisdom: “Openness.” Defined by Princeton Wordnet as “characterized by an attitude of ready accessibility (especially about one’s actions or purposes); without concealment; not secretive”

Two people can only be open with each other if they believe they will not be scorned for their opinions, and thus are more likely to be open if they share the same set of values. The problem is, until you are open, you never know if these values are as similar as originally thought.

One person can spend a large amount of time naively thinking another person is being “open” but understand later that said other person avoided the truth for fear of being rejected, or because knowledge of conflicting values was intimidating. It is hard to make personal feelings and actions readily accessible when worried others will be disappointed in them.

Therefore, it becomes of the utmost necessity to understand morality and consider it before all other characteristics. Openness is a two way street – the receiver and the giver both must be prepared for the exchange. Know what values people will hold themselves to, but also understand what values you will hold them to.

Openness is desirable but not always possible, and sometimes it takes time and wisdom to understand what factors prevented either party from achieving it.

You hate me WHY?

lindsay — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 00:00:58 +0000

I know I walked into that question. I did. I take full blame for continuing to pursue the subject even after you (you- the ever ambiguous code-word) showed your aversion to it. However, I must wonder at the logic behind your decision.

You don’t hate me because you believe I’m evil, mean, cruel, talkative, arrogant, flippant, or stubborn.
You don’t hate me because of something I did wrong.
To the contrary, you hate me because I am nice, curious, and positive. Because I don’t accept your self-doubt as true or healthy and I know that you are capable of more.
You hate me because for the first time in quite a while, somebody has gone through the effort of trying to understand you- and it worked. You hate me because in asking questions I seem to unsettle your perspective on the world, right after you finally perfected your self-distancing scheme.
You hate me because you are terrified of the alternative.

It will be better one day (if you allow it to be), I promise. Until then I am worried about making the distance wedged between us worse.

First Day of School

lindsay — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:00:14 +0000

The first day of school. After 11 years, 12 if you include kindergarten, it still comes back to the first day of waiting desperately to be dismissed from paperwork.
The first day of school is above all else a chance to establish the self-image you want to promote with teachers for the rest of the year. A time when the avid learners snap up the front row seats and everyone else huddles to the back. A time when impressions are made or lost and everyone stereotypes everyone else.
The first day of school is about the little lies you want everyone else to believe. “Oh, my life isn’t THAT boring when I’m not studying,” or “I will actually pay this much attention in your class after 13 weeks of sleep deprivation.” These lies are communicated without speaking, and vary from person to person. They are the insecurities we all face when left alone for too long.
The first day of school is when you finally see all of your friends again. Then you realize that for the rest of the year you won’t have time to see them except in class or in an extracurricular because you are simply that busy. Then you realize that this is a much less than pleasant revelation, but because you want to get into the top-rated, private, amazing, fill-in-the-blank-with-your-favorite-unobscene-adjective, college-of-your-choice you will still participate in these activities that suck away your life. Then you realize that you like said activities, and if there were only 28 hours in a day the world would be a better place. There are not 28 hours in a day. Even if there could be, industry would monopolize them.
The first day of school is the inevitable step towards the last day of school. You will daze through all the hecticness in-between and wake up on May 24 at 3 in the afternoon and wonder where your year went.

Theory on Nerdom

lindsay — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 00:00:04 +0000

I’ve spent the last week in Alice, the city of my paternal relatives, which I visit once or twice annually. I conversed with my cousin Katie (before she and Leisel once again converged into single-minded immaturity), discussing my life and activities over the past 6 months (since my visit at Christmas) with accompanying pictures. There were, sadly, far too many “”ummmm”s and “like”s (the digression of every modern American’s vocabulary) and “I just don’t understand why…”s for my liking.
As I showed picture after picture of Debate, Latin and Octathlon, she could not repress her confusion and slight revulsion. “Lindsay,” she asked, “why on earth do you LIKE being a nerd?” I put her off for a moment, then pulled her outside and sat her down in a plastic green lawnchair on Grandma’s porch.
“You may not understand this,” I began, “but every high school is stratified, and every person or group perceives the hierarchy differently. The overwhelming majority of students evaluate their ‘castes’ based on popularity, but for nerds, like myself, there are no ranks. I am not the only nerd at my school, and we simply exist as a whole (though admittedly, we perceive ourselves to be at the top of any pyramid), diffusing outwards to our acquaintances and then to the ‘regulars.’ It sounds awful, but I (like everyone I am close to) know that one day I will be very successful because I have spent time cultivating my ability, while those who once enjoyed status based primarily on appearances or foolish jokes live thankless lives in constant pursuit of an ephemeral, and possibly even intangible, pop-culture happiness. Maybe one day they will learn to dedicate themselves to their work, but only then or through some miraculous stroke of luck will they succeed. But it isn’t good enough to wait on luck, its effort that wins the day. Why do I like being a nerd? Because nerds try.”

Guilt, I kissed him

lindsay — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:00:19 +0000

Guilt hammers me when I reflect on what I did. What I did. I kissed him, Ross. I kissed him even though I knew we were leaving in four days to fly home. Cities that are states apart. I kissed him even though I knew this, maybe because I knew this. I broke my own code of conduct to kiss him. I never thought I would kiss someone I didn’t believe was my other half, or that I wasn’t attempting to convince myself might one day be. But I kissed him, even though I knew he was leaving and even though I knew he wasn’t my other half. He was quiet, sweet, nice, and smart, but he didn’t give me stomach pangs when he walked into a room. He was quiet, sweet, nice, and smart, but maybe not so nice if he kissed me with the same knowledge I had. He was quiet, sweet, nice and smart and that should have made me drool, but it didn’t. I kissed him, even though I knew this. I kissed him because my lips had been aching for contact. For four months, my lips had been straining for contact. I had been delirious imagining lips and tongues whenever my eyelids fluttered shut, if only for a second. I shouldn’t have, but I did because I still couldn’t get over craving that last kiss. So even though I knew, the aching overwhelmed me, and I thought maybe if I could just feel lips against mine again I would forget physical desire from then on. I thought I would forget physical desire from then on. I was wrong. It satiated me until I was home again, in a city that was states apart. And then the hunger, the aching, the straining, the daydreaming returned to taunt me. I violated my code of conduct to kiss him, Ross. I didn’t get stomach pains when he walked into a room, but I kissed him. And I still am aching.