The title speaks for all the entry. glib-glaze@livejournal.com
















IMP

...sharp, stilted shadows in the concrete creases--and the lines fell, drew upward against the walls with the dusk's light.

'Stradanie,' said the man. His features, like the pavement, cracked in lines that went nowhere. 'Stradanie... '

--__--__--__--


'Sure,' said the young man; he shrugged. 'Means what?' But his shoulders slid, hands twisting a closed switchblade through closed fists and nervous flair.

Nothing said the dead-eyed smile of the vostokchik, nothing.

Tov dreamed, uncertain hollow stories and earnest words. He woke and forgot them. Nothing. But their shadow played doubt on daylight and weighted flippant badinage to lead.


--



My time is torn, tattered and cast on too many fallow things. One. Two. Three. Surely counting may make an end...but I've moments and then, oy, well...it seems I forget. I wake and forget.

Tags: tov
Mood at the Moment: discontent
Muzikoo: Far Far by Yael Naim

'No?' said Vande, 'Ach, and I would have thought left-handed, my friend - always the trouble-makers, damn-fools. Always them, eh?'

Deadpan marred by a quirked mouth, Tov shrugged. 'Resk's left-handed,' he said, 'Right?'


Only for the sake of writing something that may be read. And it's easier, at times, to write the abstract rather than concrete - concrete being heavy, yes? Not to say abstractions don't weigh in their intangibility -- always the unknown that clings to fears.

Musings, doubtless there, on the state of Vetren'iy. If I've time, the first chapter will be roughly ready after the weekend; but the if is a bit pointed there. Ah well.

Teller's eccentricities in sketches -

Tags: progression, teller
Mood at the Moment: depressed
Muzikoo: Like Rolling Stone -- Bob Dylan

...ought really to be titled the tilting tentativeness of titles - at least, when they come into a novel entitled Vetren'iy. But words alone following number of chapters means a foundation. ^_^

Vetren'iy's tentative list of chapters here. Like as not, shifts of intent may shift the words or order.



VETRENIY

1. Rare Word, Refuge
2. Play My Game [ Fyeso Khareshevo]
3. Reality in Recollection, Right?

...the first three. They have, vaguely, summarisations - or what might be called summary if anarchy ruled the written word. Some fall simply under brief quotes or Russian proverbs.

Being light is less and more than levity, which often has its own shadow too heavy with things unsaid. Doubtless, characters of Vetren'iy stumble on that often enough.

Ach, with double jobs, fencing and university starting up again within a month, Tov's [mis]adventures are more disjointed than often or ever. Time to write - seconds here or there. Thoughts more often than pens or pencils to put them down.

In some ways, it may be a good thing, as writing weighting one down but never written out is worse than the fleeting thoughts and notes that dodge the dull inactivity of agonising. ^_^

The final chapter - 20 or 21 - ought to be this-- Pleni Sunt Caeli in Terra Gloria Tua. Though if Tov were to have the final say, it would be painfully untranslatable mat; making no sense naturally.

Er, a Russian joke, da?  'A bootsmann (or a sailor, a Navy conscript...) stepped out onto deck and immediately stumbled into an anchor, lying in front of the hatch. He fell flat. "You [blanking[ buggered [blanked]-up shitty [blank], rotting in [blanking] filthy hell of [blankedness].!" said the bootsmann, and then swore profusely.

Tags: characters, progression, writing in short
I'm Here?: contradiction, da?
Mood at the Moment: tired
Muzikoo: Gin-Soaked Boy -- Divine Comedy

I would write at some length, except that any length divorced from narrative isn't part of the narrative naturally, and I've trouble enough with its lack alerady. Though, doubtless, writing 'round it is more amusing, and more in type with flippancy than is serious debate or buckling-down to scratch out the consistent. (It does, sadly, sometimes seem like scratching. Keyboards make the image a bit more incredible.)

In the end, having started, I will write at length...

Anyhow, having dropped Vetren'iy long enough to see at a good distance, I've now come closer again. (Tov doesn't quite leave off, even if left alone.)

Difficulty comes in reading Sayers, whose characters are engaging. But I can't very well write Vetren'iy cast in Great War British aristocracy idiosyncrasy. (I have the voice in my head - amusing, all around - well, dash it, turn the bally thing about, what? off your rocker, old man, I daresay and it's not doing my investigation a bit of good. O, unreal city! No, not London - or yes London; haven't read Eliot, I see. Damned if I know what I'm talking about..that bloody Shakespearean rag...)

That's dear Lord Peter Wimsey's voice; and he's much too British. Not in any objective sense. Suebjectively applied to questions of anarchy and the Russians of Tov's back-alleys and mishaps.

I suppose that's an incongruous interlude. But then, though rambling makes weary listeners, it makes lighter minds and fingers - one gets to let the words hold the weight, or the unfortunate eavesdropper. ^_~

Nothing quite so weighty about the narrative thread of Vetren'iy at this point...more the mere weight of slowly setting it into a passable passal of connected words, sentences and paragraphs. And [dis]connect characters. Being mad and dashed by anarchy doesn't support healthy relationship, doubtless.

In the end, I ought to end up back at the beginning. Which, transparently, means writing at length about isn't writing at any length in. Piers needs to wander out without collapsing and dying of some sort of head-trauma; and I still have the city's games to make congruent (conclusive really ought to be the better word).



IMP

Tags: tov, writing in short
I'm Here?: anarchy
Mood at the Moment: creative
Muzikoo: Masquerade -- Phantom of the Opera

Chesterton, it seems, had an aversion to anything bordering on resignation. His response to Eliot's Hollow Men was hurried; characteristically, though, rather on the side of bombastic. They may go out with a whimper/but I'll go out with a bang.

To be less disjointed and find the topic to which my thoughts originally fell, I ought to go back to Vetren'iy. Nothing bleak on the impish end of it, despite bleakness all through Tov's anarchical city. Familiarity, some do say, breeds contempt - indifference seems more common. But distance has left Vetren'iy more keenly delineated, less hollow and less seen through fogged glass while its alleys - yes, wandering as they do - needn't be diffident about their lack of city planners' well-considered finish.

Language concerning them here wanders, maybe.

Resignation is the flip-side to anarchy. No order, no end. What use ideas of storming the bastions of inept command? Leaderless, a mob slips in upon itself, slips up beneath itself. Though the city hardly suffers from order; disorder in the sense of disordered structures based and distant anxieties over iron-fists and leaving the lowest levels chaos and the highest - well, the highest ordered games without point.

I suppose a writer's - a storyteller's - sight is, without any doubt, inner. What an odd thing to take for granted.

--

Tags: writing in short
Mood at the Moment: content
Muzikoo: Girl from Ipanema -- Getz/Gilberto

Tov runs when there's nothing to flee; still runs. His habit.

If he'd only stop, he wouldn't hit the wall. But then again, stopping at some point leaves him nowhere.

::..::

For most points, though all purposes, I've let Vetren'iy sit somewhat - silence does the worst of things good. If it is managing any silence, though, I'll be rather surprised. Delineation is what it needs. And so, without pressing, perhaps its threads will find their binding and weave, Tov's level best to knock things apart aside.

Tags: tov, writing in short
I'm Here?: zdyes
Mood at the Moment: exhausted
Muzikoo: How Can It Be -- Forever Thursday

Tempus fugit, they said, but time is fluid. Or does it wait beside perception? Empirically, I can only say five minutes can prove worthless or endless - and it got this. It ought to be part of, the greater part of...the better part of, I'll give, of Crysi's sketch. It is the one of Tov, before anything in Vetren'iy, and naturally, involving Tov, it has taken more time and energy than its sadly sardonic protagonist [is worth].

I'm dismissive of it, doubtless - it seems terribly inept and still rough, dropping its needed points and adding the superfluous. And in that, it's not so much Tov's shortcoming as an impish one. There's some edge, some facet that slips away. What it is - silence like true still, dawn - or not enough cacophony? It's as if it stumbles into the telling like Tov's speech, start-stop and often flippant and intentionally misses connections.

All relationship begins on what? Well, usually one must say proximity. But not necassarily physical proximity; exchange of ideas is a sort of nearness; common experience. That would be a question of the relationships within Vetren'iy. If there is no common nor steady ground, then it is anarchy in all respects - only a story cannot be told on, no by anarchy. Or could it? There's always the question. If order is not, then story is what? Arbitrary.

But humanity - if mad, if grieved, if hopelessly stupid - is never simply arbitrary. We might say (or try to say) the universe is an arbitrary system (simply that a contradiction, for system implies some structure, yes?), based on chance and Earth's atmosphere the greatest happenstance, laugh or blessing, in its confines. Is it? If so, men certainly make an awful attempt at order; certainly seem to have a terrible longing for continuity; doubtless look forlorn amongst the madness of war and chaos of unexpected death.

In which case, anarchy is a distortion of things, not a reflection of a binding - or orderless, not so binding - reality.

So Vetren'iy must - does - but must show the balance, inept, cracked, the scales faltering between an innate sense that disorder is not quite natural; that order is not at all apparent; that humanity screws itself, the world in stumbling through life. In Catholic terms, it is the Fall, naturally. But in the specific, it is a system[lessness] of anarchy. And as that is rather an oxymoron, there's more irony. More for Tov to mock. More to crack Piers' mind. More thread for Teller to untangle...

There is life, in Hell - and so too many have said (poor Shan and DD most lately): who needs a Hell when we have life? I suppose God, as good, could only allow it to spare one from an eternity of it. After all, those who suffer now...

::...::



...

Yes, well, that's only the briefest scrap of it, as my inclination when fearing the worst about some piece of writing, is, naturally, to bury it six-feet under. Pretend it wasn't, and while it's not, well, it doesn't seem to be - meaning of course, out of sight, out of mind. But cliches dodge points better by being rephrased. ^_^'

Tags: characters, sketch, tov
Mood at the Moment: sick
Muzikoo: Firefly -- Breaking Benjamin

You see...when you can't sleep, things begin to look blurred. Not by sight - lines still delineate, computer screen, shadows. But thought? Saturnine philosophising, and to be more latin in naming, I'd prefer mercurial.

Being ill is bloody rotten. It makes fencing frustrating as...well, Tov, I suppose. (I'm sure he'd appreciate the comparision.) Things go sluggishly and, parry-riposte touch!...I'm still standing there.

Too many ellipses now.

I'll try to look at Vetren'iy then.

"Humour is the most engaging cowardice."

A quote too apt for Tov. While I've gone back over other characters' intents and histories, finding the threads that bind the neatest, Tov has been disappearing. Where he goes? Well, he wouldn't debate the above. He might dismiss the definitions - cowardice, after all, is a judgment and perhaps survival doesn't hold more than its own weight.

'Because it's all a game. Right?'

Always a question with Tov, at least. Though he's disinclined to listen to any real answers.

It's Piers' purpose I've been caught on lately. He's an...apathetic fellow at some points, resigned at least and sometimes not quite in his right mind. Lack of sleep will do that. But the difficulty in setting the scene is in Piers' ambiguity, and anything in which Tov appears breaks it all down. Tov drives Piers' up a wall.

But...

But this is getting less than to its point. But I ought to sleep. Doubtless, I'll be less morose and less pathetic with dreams behind me. (DD knows, of course. ^_~)

...

Tags: depressed, piers, tov
Mood at the Moment: drained
Muzikoo: silence

“Check the scan,” snapped Piers.

“Sure.” Tov glanced up, eyes’ flickered derision faint - “But not scanning, right? Got the games.”

Piers swore. Over the hand-width screen, black skyline rose and the blurred silhouettes of swift-moving figures. Lettering scrolled below, off and on, breaking off - first in Cyrillic and then stumbling English, Latin.

“Call it fencing, da?”

With a furious glance at Tov, Piers swung back to the scan; his fist hit it with a dull crack. Static-laced the picture. It didn’t change.

“Get it off and back to the alleys, or Hell --”

“Too cold for Hell,” interjected Tov, “Raining.”

“Shut up.”

The figures on the screen switched places. Behind them, Frick’s heaven-ward pinnacle lanced days last light and the suspension, bridging the river, looked like webs: lace and inept mending like flies in its net. But Piers had stopped trying to twist the thing back to some use - blank-faced, wan, he sat frozen, one hand still pressed lightly to its side.

The two men paused. They held what might have been blades - but too thin and long - thin-whip steel with wire laced through its length. In the dusk, they lit, start-stop crackling and died where the electricity grounded at the hilt.

“Bloody Hell…” hissed Piers.

Tov’s brow quirked; but he said nothing

...and that a scattered piece of what essay-writing interrupted.

Being tired is no good in any sense of the word, except, perhaps, good for making sleep instant.

I've more convolution on the end of Tov. The difficulty is finding it through what he doesn't say.

Tags: city, sketch, tov, writing in short
Mood at the Moment: aggravated