Poem for Thursday

Tenderness
By Erica Funkhouser

Last night the animals
beneath her window
crept out of hiding
to comb the dirt
from each other's fur.

Rising to watch,
she discovered the lilacs
lit from below by ivory vinca.
The street on the other side
of the trees continued
to contain its passing cars;
tenderly her teeth
let her tongue rest
against their curving backs.

Tonight when she lies
in bed again,
she will remember
the one kind thing
her grown daughter said today
after weeks of scrutiny,

and the moment at work
just now, when a stack
of Day-Glo folders
cascaded over her desk,
thrilling the white cubicle
with their descent.

--------

I am having a very strange reaction to That Movie: I am finding that I don't want to talk about it. To some extent, this is true even with my good friends, but it's overwhelming with my Friends list -- that is to say, with people I know first and foremost through this fandom, where the fannish interests were the initial glue that stuck us together and where I can't quite escape the fear that whatever relationship we may form will come undone if our interests move on. Some days I even feel like my best fannish friend at the moment is only in that role because she's too busy in RL to deal with other potential friends, and when she has more time, I will ironically hear much less from her.

I had thought I would mostly want to avoid rants, nitpicks and complaints...but I'm even finding that I don't want to know what people loved and adored and thought was brilliant in ROTK. I'm not done internalizing my own experience; I don't want the opinions of hundreds of others, good or bad, influencing me, and I definitely don't want to be lectured by people who love the books about why I am shallow, pathetic or otherwise unworthy if I love the films more, or at the very least, if the films have given me an entirely new way of looking at the books which have turned the books into something else entirely for me. Perhaps it is a failure of my own imagination that I did not have a fully realized world in my head when I first read Tolkien, but I have had fully realized worlds when reading other people's novels; in this case, it was the vision of a group of filmmakers that was necessary for it to come to life for me. And if that's too shallow, pathetic or otherwise unworthy for you, fine. You know how to take me off your Flist.

I very nearly unFriended someone this morning over a snotty book rant (something I NEVER do -- I have Friended everyone who has ever Friended me except for sock puppets, as it feels artificial to me to have "Sean Bean" on my Friends list). Then I relented and merely took her off all my filters, because it seems wrong somehow to unFriend someone for having opinions that differ from mine...but by that attitude I could Friend everyone on LJ no matter how little we have in common, just to be social, which is stupid. Am hoping she takes the hint and unFriends me, since given the nature of her rant I can't understand why I'm on her Flist in the first place. And wow...the last time I unFriended someone for a rant it was over her public avowals of her pro-life position, which included terms like "baby killers." Does this demonstrate fannish overinvolvement, or finally coming to my senses about how Friends lists should be about reading the people you want to read and not reading the people who drive you up the wall?

And then there's my new would-be obsession, in which it has been made clear to me that no one will put me on their Friends list until I have read the books and written some proper fic (meaning that no matter how well I am getting to know them, and no matter how much feedback I send, we won't even be pretending to be friends, and the social element is the most important thing for me in just about any fandom. Yet another reason I like the screaming Legolas teenies, even if they are screaming Legolas teenies: all one has to do to feel included is to scream about Legolas. Okay, maybe that is sort of pathetic and I can't do it, but it's a nice thought.

I did discover, to my relief, that I can still fic LOTR after ROTK. Last night was writing both B/F set before FOTR and A/F set after ROTK and enjoying both, though I suspect they were both pretty silly and retreading a lot of old ground. It's 's fault for making me wonder whether Aragorn would let Brego sleep in his bed.

Oh, am having one of those What's Real And What's Illusion mornings. Was bitched at by someone who said that people should not say YMMV and IMHO and things because men don't dilute their opinions and women shouldn't either. Which I find a ridiculous generalization, but even if it's true, why in fuck must I assume that the male model is better and follow it? God, niceness is underrated, and I have never even thought of myself as a nice person.

So some pimping: 's Araboro schmoop, 's Five Things That Never Happened To Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin Three: All The Wonder, and 's Faramir hamster and Boromir gerbil...and Faramir not-hamster and Boromir not-gerbil!

And to make me smile before I go fold laundry and finish addressing holiday cards, very belatedly (probably while watching Gladiator, because my Russell Crowe itch continues undiminished, and the advantage of being a pack rat and saving everything is that when I find out that Crowe was on the cover of the May 2000 issue of the now-defunct Talk magazine, it's still sitting in the magazine rack in the basement):