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[Monday 4th Nov @ 2:40pm] |
There are these notions of how the world would be better. Shoot all the anti-Semites. Wear only red socks. Hunt truth like the wolf hunts elk, in packs, with relentless teeth. Make language stand up and be something like a house, give it the force of wind, the courage of a storm to destroy itself. What we think of as wild I think of as honest. Doing, not what you think, but what you are. The difference between counting the rings of a tree and finding a place in the sky. A theory toward wolf would be a fine addition to the history of advice. Train the spine to walk on fours. Claim only that which your urine can touch. Find faith in the scent of things. Humans are metaphors. Chagall was a synagogue dreaming of being a man. When his paintings meet, they lick each other like wolves. I go nowhere without alienation, I carry it like a pouch of anvils, not belonging is the way I belong. This brings us to the strange math of our heads, the impossibility of dividing by zero. If we could solve that equation, we'd be happy. I give you pencil, I give you paper, I wish you luck. Wolf would make a better denominator. Divide any number by wolf, you get wolf.( . )
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| [foredated to late this evening] |
[Tuesday 7th Feb @ 2:24pm] |
[Haven is Haven - and though it holds within wards and walls arguably the two most important constants in Cian Andley's quicksilver, quarrelsome existence, he does not seek to enter the building that he stands before (he is Cian Andley: the building stands before him, mute and old and unequal to his unblinking stare, as much as he stands before it, unequivocal judge by inadvertent accidental virtue of mere mute presence). He is not here for that - not lingering outside only for lack of invitation in, not feebly fumbling his way toward sanctuary. Librarian aside, ability aside, even were he in need it would be impossible for him to do so. Cian has ever been the sort to stand outside in the rain though he could seek out warm hearth simply because he was outside when the rain began and the onslaught of heaven's dirty dishwater will not move him. And so even were he in need of anything that he believes can still be found within London's Mausoleum for Misfit Magics he would not stand thus outside Haven, awaiting invitation. He would move in on his own terms. Or he would stand as he does now, at a distance.
Watching without seeing. Peering through the walls, rifling through the vagaries of interpersonal interaction, learning the mindfeel of residents absently just so that they might be relegated back to background noise. So that his focus will not be broken (his focus on the girl, ever on the girl, his inattention only artificial when it comes to the familiar bulk of a thing he once thought more than a man that plays against his subconscious like a familiar tune will, one that can't be forgotten though the musician has cut his own fingers off, seared his tongue into a blackened mess to avoid ever replaying the once-revered hymn). For his focus shifted in the past, as if he had forgotten how precious things ever break. And look at what was wrought, through his blind inattention. Cian Andley stands intermittent attendant vigil, and though there's something of guilt about it he would scorn the notion of penance. Penance for one more black mark on his ashy soul? No. Some sins are mortal. There are some condemning weights a man might only sidestep to the further debasement of his belly-down self, and he will not do that. He will savor the taste of dust as his due, as he stands outside Haven not at all like a shadow or a specter. As he stands outside Haven like an exiled judge who will never seek to return home.
As he stands outside Haven like an angry and powerless man, hands hanging empty at his sides. As he tells himself enough with the implicit for now tacked on like a promise (to who? To daughter who does quite all right for herself - until she doesn't? To his forever fumbling self?). And as he quarter-turns, one hand rising up in what would almost look like a farewell or a benediction before the aim of the action reveals itself, dog tags dragged up by their chain to hit his broad palm. Cian hasn't been very actively present on the interlacing network of Librarian thought these days. He's there, yes, but in the background, clearly attending to other things (and what more could most of his co-workers wish for, than for him to be elsewhere?) aside from the intermittent habitual peanut gallery discourse with Irene (ever in three parts: Cian to Irene, Irene to Cian, both to long-suffering audience). That is what he moves to initiate tonight - the spillover is the inevitable product of a perfect storm of ferocious intensity and unadmitted exhaustion.
Andley blazes into the peripheral attention of countless Librarians like an unusually unruly cherubim of frustrated emotion and misdirected, thwarted energy - and then dampens without vanishing like a suddenly banked fire as soon as he notices his mass intrusion. No apology, no explanation. He would never stoop to either - but he hates the loss of control, hates himself for it. Reaches toward Haven almost without thinking about it, toward the source of his overweening... say frustration if you will, but it's tiredness, the fractiousness of an overgrown infant who has learned late that gravity is truly a constant, that eventually the feet of all idols must touch the ground. He reaches toward the heart he wants to crush and strokes it unevenly, one quick rush like a child rubbing a cat's fur the wrong way, all spite. He doesn't wait to watch the aftermath. Just keeps walking. Just sends the absent end of a thought arching toward Irene's mind like a lazily thrown ball. 'Alcohol.' He is walking away from Haven. He is seeking still-familiar ground, something that will never buck under his very feet and rearrange itself into something at once known and alien.]
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[Thursday 27th Oct @ 1:56pm] |
[Priorities in the usual awkward-incorrect alignment, the malformed (half-)madman doesn't make his presence known to London at large (to daughter, to brother-beyond-blood, to - perhaps, if she's reading - the witch-woman who is as likely to still be making her own wild way through the world as she is to be in London, somewhat within reach though he has no illusions about his ability to grasp her) until after business is settled. But for the paperwork, of course. That can always wait just a little longer, and the (anti-)social animal can only stay silent so long.
Does he mirror Em-of-entries-past consciously or subconsciously? It could be coincidence, in another man. All that's certain in Andleys is that nothing is ever quite random, that there's an inevitable twice-cutting edge to everything. That was Em ignorant, to a certain extent. This is Cian obliquely admitting that he's acutely aware of the gilded things he's broken, even if he's as yet unaware of the extent. This is the world(ly man) orbiting closer to the sun (no sons, just the one daughter bright and beautiful and even more brittle-breaking than he is) than is deserved, as he ever does.
And it's a hello to the rabble on the journals, as well. Because every coin has two faces, and when given the choice he'll always show the irrelevant edge.]
Magic in one word. Go.
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| [narrative(s) forthcoming eminently, i just miss this fucker] |
[Saturday 22nd Oct @ 8:04pm] |
[Back in London. Back home in a roundabout halfway manner of speaking, back in the apartment that is little more than somewhere to house liquor bottles and whiteboard and dog while reserving space for a daughter to roost. Back where he can just drop the damn bag, kick off his shoes and luxuriate in the strange stillness that will persist until he picks the aforementioned dog up in the morning. He doesn't settle comfortably back into his space. Cian does not settle, a constant irritant on the face of reality, and he is not so easily molded a being that this intrinsic irascibility wilts just because he's home. Hardly. He stalks about, instead of sinking into a chair for some fucking well-earned relaxation. He pours a drink. He ends up in his study as per always, foregoing sleep in favor of adding the shards of knowledge gleaned during the latest round of Library duties to the files he keeps, to the whiteboard that stretches nearly about the room, that eclipses even his forever-surging presence. He's turned up nothing world-shattering in the months away, nothing curse-breaking, but there are - hints, bits and ends. He winds them into what he already knows as if the answer might assemble itself slowly out of disparate shards (as if he'd see it if it did, as if he isn't far too close to this to ever take the requisite steps back to see the forest he's planted, tree after tree after be-damned tree).
His absence hasn't, he absently assumes, gone entirely unnoticed. Not by the Librarians (he won't call them his fellow Librarians, oh no, won't lower or raise them that way), at least, not any more than one of their number lacking is ever something that can be ignored. For he may not be heart or brains or liver, he may be the organization's spleen when he's within the bounds of the Library itself, but he knows that he and his make up for their jack of all oddities downtime by playing at god and global white blood cells alike when needed, and he knows that most of the Library either knows or guess or assumes - for why else would someone like him be tolerated, sneering rule-breaking recalcitrant bastard that he is? Irene is a low-grade equally irritated-exhausted hum in the back of his mind. They plug into each other near-constantly on the job out of necessity, and over time they've learned to let that ebb slower than it has to just to cut down on the post-job paranoia (it's difficult, it is, to go from ready-ready-ready to relaxed). The rest of the Library is just a theoretical hint of a thing, until he sets his tumbler down, lights a cigarette, and reaches for his dog tags. They would more or less take turns with this, too, if she didn't need sleep more than he ever has or ever will. But she does, because he's Cian fucking Andley. And if there's one thing about the man that can be perpetually relied about, it is that though he may be inconstant, though he may be ill-tempered and growling and though he may devoutly believe himself to be scum and those around him not much better, he is practically incapable of ceasing motion, of stillness, of peace. The job is done, for now, and well done. But there's no rest for the wrecked and the wicked.
( London Librarians )
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