Transformative Work
Sep. 11th, 2009 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieQuick break from my thesis, because I'm trying to work something out in my head and I think my brain is about to overheat. (It's about her redefinition of "place" and how that ties into the limitations of cartography and...it's complicated.)
Anyway. I took a longing look at my fic folder, which I won't have time to touch until after graduation, alas. But just for the hell of it, and because I like seeing others' writing processes (and so thought I should share my own), I thought I would post this snippet from an untitled plotty fic set in the "Closet Idealism" universe, as well as the poem from whence it derives.
First, the poem:
Sonnet XLIII
Edna St. Vincent Millay
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
And the fic snippet:
[Background: Susan and Michael are in St. Petersburg due to political intrigue involving President Luchenko. I haven't really worked out the details yet.]
She felt like a tree in winter, when all the birds that nested there in summer had vanished. Her entire family lay in that plot; mother, brother, father each interred in their turn. And there were so many others who had left her; friends and lovers and possibilities. Sometimes a woman with blonde hair would still make her turn her head sharply, wondering; a dark-haired man in long robes, seen from behind, could still make her breath catch. Those birds had gone not just for a season.
The flutter of a wren in the snow caught her eye. From her school years in North America, she suddenly recalled cardinals, birds that stayed through the winter even in the coldest places. A tree with a cardinal living in it was never entirely empty.
She touched the ring on her finger. The newness of its presence was still surprising, but she was coming to like the weight of it, the constancy.
Back to my thesis.
Anyway. I took a longing look at my fic folder, which I won't have time to touch until after graduation, alas. But just for the hell of it, and because I like seeing others' writing processes (and so thought I should share my own), I thought I would post this snippet from an untitled plotty fic set in the "Closet Idealism" universe, as well as the poem from whence it derives.
First, the poem:
Sonnet XLIII
Edna St. Vincent Millay
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
And the fic snippet:
[Background: Susan and Michael are in St. Petersburg due to political intrigue involving President Luchenko. I haven't really worked out the details yet.]
She felt like a tree in winter, when all the birds that nested there in summer had vanished. Her entire family lay in that plot; mother, brother, father each interred in their turn. And there were so many others who had left her; friends and lovers and possibilities. Sometimes a woman with blonde hair would still make her turn her head sharply, wondering; a dark-haired man in long robes, seen from behind, could still make her breath catch. Those birds had gone not just for a season.
The flutter of a wren in the snow caught her eye. From her school years in North America, she suddenly recalled cardinals, birds that stayed through the winter even in the coldest places. A tree with a cardinal living in it was never entirely empty.
She touched the ring on her finger. The newness of its presence was still surprising, but she was coming to like the weight of it, the constancy.
Back to my thesis.
