mostly milne

[jazzfish]

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
That’s not dead which can eternal lie,
And in aeons strange even Death may die --
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.
--ajay

See also "They're Changing Form at Buckingham Palace," both versions.

And for jameshroberts:
Cthulhu was a Great Old One.
Of him the maddened cultists sung:
his realm had non-Euclidity,
fair R'lyeh, sunk beneath the sea.

His face was octopoid and green,
and caused insanity when seen;
with rugose kin from heaven's field
and ichor-matter scarce-congealed.

But long ago he went away,
and what he dreameth none can say;
'til differently align the stars --
Cthulhu fhtagn! Ia!
--Joel Polowin

(all from The Dream-Quest of Pooh Corner)

---

I went into a house and it wasn't a house

I went over to my parents' place Wednesday afternoon to pick up a few things and take a decent bath in the tub-o-doom. Snagged my high school yearbooks, contemplated getting a few paperbacks to take over to McKay but ended up leaving them there to hold down the shelves.

They've changed houses since I moved out, but there's still a room that's "mine," and it still looks like a shrine to my teenage years. Or at least what's of them I left behind when I went away: the giant map of Philmont with photos and the trail we took marked, the bookshelves long since scoured clean of anything I might have wanted at college or afterwards, the shelves of knickknacks accumulated over eighteen years and never really cleaned out.

I poked at things in my room for half an hour or so, rummaging through my desk looking for I don't know what. Letters and notes from various people, photos of forgotten parties. All the while, the suffocating air of depression, of oppression. The sense that there's just no point in fighting, trying anything different, I'll end up in the same place anyway, why not go along with it? Only I don't know how to just go along.

But nobody listened to it,
Nobody
Liked it,
Nobody wanted it at all.
--A.A. Milne, "The Wrong House"

I forget, sometimes, just how miserable I was in high school. Out of high school, rather, it wasn't this bad when I wasn't at home. That's probably why I was so eager to get out, and never mind where or why.

I'm unhappy with my actions for my first several years in Blacksburg, but given the circumstances I don't know what I could have done differently.

Every so often I think about taking a road trip down to Fayetteville. I'm not sure what I'd do there, other than drive around and say "yep, I remember hating that." Maybe it'd be cathartic. I don't know.

Comments

[scathach.livejournal.com]

In a particularly bad time shortly after my breakup with Sean, I found myself in the dentist's chair. I was home for a month trying to pull my head together (without much luck, I might add) and had some cavities that needed filling. The hygienist was an African woman that I had never seen before -- these were my lifelong dentists, but I'd been gone for a while, so it made sense that there were new people working there, right? Anyway, it was a rainy morning, I hadn't had any coffee, and I was feeling particularly gloomy. She asked how I was, naturally -- a loaded question. I don't remember what I said anymore; something noncommittal, surely. Her response? "Well, we always make the best decisions we can given the information we have at the time." Pow. The metaphorical bolt of lighting out of an equally metaphorical clear blue sky.

The best part of this story? No one I know has ever seen or heard of this hygienist again. My whole family goes to these dentists, along with half of Springfield. She apparently came to work just for me.