Poem for Thursday

From The Book of Questions
By Pablo Neruda
Translated by William O'Daly

III.

Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?

Who hears the regrets
of the thieving automobile?

Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?

--------


Short superb Neruda for . Hope you are over the flu, sweetie.

I started to do that "fandoms my friends write but I don't know about" meme, then panicked about Due South, because one of my friends will stop talking to me if I favor one guy while another will stop talking to me if I favor the other one. Also, I decided that I don't know enough about Pros to make clever snarky comments, anyway. But in case anyone is keeping track, the fandoms I do read widely enough that they have their own folders of saved fic on my hard drive are:

Andromeda (I ship Dylan/Beka, Dylan/Tyr and Beka/Tyr absolutely equally, will also ship Tyr/Harper, Tyr/Trance, Tyr/Rommie, Beka/Rommie, Trance/Rommie or really any other permutation, it's all the show's good for);
Avengers (anyone with any Steed/Peel please let me know, though will read Steed/Gale too);
Buffy (which encompasses what minimal Angel I've read);
DS9 (sub-folders for K/O, G/B, O/B and Dukat);
Enterprise (Reed is so very very gay!);
Harry Potter (the Lupin/Black sub-folder is bigger than everything else in that fandom put together though I save Marauders fic and Snape fic, plus maybe five grownup H/D stories);
James Bond (mostly Brosnan-era, 99 percent GoldenEye for reasons you can all guess);
La Femme Nikita (Operations/Madeline, though have quite a bit of Nikita/Michael, just never cared as much);
Lord of the Rings (much more A/B, B/F and A/A in various permutations than anything else, but I have quite a lot of Eowyn fic and hobbit fic as well, though I could never write the latter);
Mission: Impossible (the TV show, pretty much all Rollin/Cinnamon and none of it good);
Pirates of the Caribbean (just because of sheer volume -- I really don't consider myself involved in this fandom);
The Prophecy (all archived at The Devil Made Me Do It);
Sentinel (never wrote a word of it, barely watched the show, but some of the fic is amazing);
Sharpe (oddly, this is one fandom in which I really enjoy crossovers);
Smallville (one sub-folder for girlslash, one for Lionel, a bunch with author's names on them, and then the vast teeming mass of Clex);
Space: 1999 (a brief but intense flirtation with J/H);
Star Trek (the original, and want to guess at the size of the K/S sub-folder?);
ST:TNG (Riker/Troi, P/C and P/Q in sub-folders);
Star Wars (original and prequel, slash and het, I'm all over the place with this one);
Starsky and Hutch (never really watched it but hey, it's classic);
Voyager (Janeway/Chakotay has its own massive folder, with sub-folders by individual authors and sub-sub-folders of epics, story collections etc.; the general Voyager folder also has sub-folders for just about every possible pairing and trio plus lots of gen authors);
X-Files (more M/S than M/Sk or M/K, I really did not slash this show much, and have a weakness for Doggett/Reyes);
West Wing (undivided by 'ships, which should tell you something about my lack of investment);
Xena (including the entire Hercules universe, with a huge guilty sub-folder of Ares fic);
a bunch of literary-based fic from Pride and Prejudice to Narnia to the vamps of She Who Sues Fanfic Writers;
a bunch of one-offs from movies, mostly starring Louise Fletcher, Sean Bean or Viggo Mortensen;
and a folder full of articles on the legal, moral and entertainment aspects of fan fiction.

Oh yeah, speaking of whom, and which. The, um, RPS folder, with sub-folders for boy-band stuff written by people I know, SV-based stuff, Trek stuff that I don't want to talk about, and a massive lotrips folder where the VM/SB fic, drabbles and series all have their own sub-folders because there are so damn many I saved.

Aaaand speaking of RPS, mentioned in an introduction to one of her drabbles that she'd read that Sean Bean loves old churches, inspiring to find The Other Mr. Bean: "A BLOKE'S BLOKE, THEN?" asks the hypothetical interviewer about Sean Bean, and then answers his own question: "Not exactly. He likes old churches and adores William Shakespeare."

So, okay, I know that viggorli fans believe adamantly that Viggo's poem "Communion" is about Orlando Bloom, because of the line "bloom of compassion." Which I think is just coincidence, but this is the part of "Communion" I've always wondered about:

YOUR BREATH
DOWN MY BACK
SENT AWAY NIGHT AIR
THAT HAD ME SHAKING
IN THE UNLIT ANGLICAN
DOORWAY.

So this came up in last night, where was looking up a body of water in New Zealand for travel-related purposes having nothing to do with LOTR filming and found "Whangaparaoa Bay: A succession of picturesque bays leads to Whangaparaoa Bay (Cape Runaway), 50km (31mi) west of the North Island's East Cape. The beaches are deeply shelved and littered with driftwood, and the old Anglican church, nestled under Norfolk pines on a lone promontory, should not be missed. Cape Runaway can only be reached by foot, and it's advisable to seek permission before going on private land." And you know what seemed obvious to several people simultaneously? "It's the unlit Anglican doorway from Viggo's 'Communion'!" And really...who would hang out in unlit Anglican doorways, unless he was with someone who loves old churches?

Ahem. Oh look. AGAIN! And I really thought I was giving Hufflepuffish and Gryffindorian answers!


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