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chanter1944Is back again! gotta love the muse of science fiction meeting the muse of self-description. Here's the result.
Oh, and the Leah referred to is Leah Brahms as seen in TNG, if anybody wondered.
And it’s not my fault that my hair’s too long. I have Amazon legs and an infant’s arms and my hair is long enough to blanket three people and keep them warm in winter. Wisconsin winter even, when there’s a foot of snow already on the ground and more coming down, enough to bury a country town to its hips and keep going, enough to bury a country hillside and swamp the steps of an icy rehearsal hall.
And it’s not my fault that my hair’s too dark. I have skin halfway to cinnamon and eyes that switch colors from right to left and only the skin is natural. I’m white beneath my sweater sleeves but I’m dark when you look me in the face, or when you sit down and you land on my too-long tangled braid, if I bother to braid it. I’m odd, odd colors amid a tawny landscape, odd patchwork pieces in a world of yellow and blue and milk, milk and cheese and cream pale supposed beauty. There’s a chocolate wedge in between all the vanilla.
And it’s not my fault that my face has scars. That my neck has scars, that my feet have scars, that my flesh has scars. It’s not my fault that I walk and I don’t look and down I go, that I haven’t got the sense to remember what happens when contact lingers too long between fabric and leather and skin. I’m not immaculate, I’m not pristine, nobody carved me beautiful and nobody sanded my surfaces down. I’m rough wood in a sea of ivory, I’m clay halfway to ebony, I’m burlap by the bolt in a warehouse full of cotton cloth. I’ve been ripped and torn and sewn back together and I’m not pretty. But you do recognize me.
And maybe it is my fault that my nails are raw, that my teeth are chipped, that my hands are marked. I did things, I’ve done things, and in some cases I continue to do things. Nibbled raw nails, rough muted red and sandstone, silver and clear lacquer and layers of nail polish--that’s my fault. I’m a chipped statue on a shelf of porcelain dolls. Prick me, rattle me, spider cracks in my terracotta mud and cloudy glaze. I haven’t gone to pieces just yet.
But I didn’t decide that my breasts would be big. That my hips would be wide, that my eyebrows would be bushy, perpetual wild growth. And I didn’t decide that I’d stare when I looked, make floors shudder when I walked, mimick accents when I talked--that was not my choice. I’m too long in some places and too short in others, my hands don’t taper into slender things and instead they widen, blunt and square. My little fingers are crooked and my palms show a thousand and one callouses. I’m not pretty, I’m imperfect, I’m a half-black sheep in a white fleece world and you know what?
I love it.
Because I can hold my own in a conversation about Eastern philosophy or religion and science or theoretical space travel and the force of infinite gravity. I can drink coffee and gossip about dark matter and dragons, describe alien faces to a detail that makes them glow, three-dimensional and Technicolor, watercolor vivid on a tabletop, and remember names and dates in a tangled web of real and imagined history, all whithout missing a beat or forgetting to pass the cream.
I can sit up all night perfecting an accent that fairly sings of County Limerick, remember plot lines over a low-burning crackling campfire, compare notes on twenty bygone remembered generations as the embers and the charcoal smoke amid the granite hearthstones. And I can map the stars in my head without ever seeing them, remember color and property and name after being told once and never get the details wrong after that one time learning.
I can walk unassisted and unaccompanied in full night down the middle of a Chicago sidewalk and not be scared. I can say outrageous things on crowded elevators and be utterly shameless, chalking it up to being just part of my charm. I can sing Hotel California at the top of my lungs and completely on key, word and measure perfect even when my duet’s knowledge of the lyrics gives out and leaves me soloing in the center of a crowded concert hall, and me in the audience with the acoustic guitarist across the room on a makeshift stage, miles and miles away.
I can stop and ask for directions and feel no embarassment, even if I pretend to be meek in the face of friendly strangers. And I can lie, not that I’m particularly proud of that fact, weaving intricate storylines and nonexistent friends--who’s Tara? Who’s Terry? Who’s Laurie again? I can look twenty-three when I’m only fifteen, sound Australian when in reality I’m just a prairie girl, act cheerful when inside I’m hysterically weeping.
I can give myself a false name, or five false names, or twenty false names and each one with a different world attached; Laila, Mary, Jia, Shara, Leah.
I’m different. I’m cobbled together and built for nonconformity, broken and put back together, worn but not unraveled.
I’m better. Better than vanilla cream, better than porcelain, better than blue and yellow and pink. I don’t have to show off my spotless flesh just to make an impression, and I can be witty and spirited and animated and still respect myself when I look back.
Mostly.
I can celebrate my difference, revel in my unconventional self-styled personality, enjoy my uniquely constructed self and be unconcerned by the taint of a two-eyed society where perception is done with the eye not the mind. I’m quirky. I’m unusual, and I’m way out there.
I’m an empress.
And why not? I’m just like she who dares to be unlike anybody else. She who dares to be different, think different, walk different, see different.
I’m Empress Leah. The only design I go by.
Nothing like a little self-affirmation after the week I just had. and y'know I really do feel better about myself, imperfections and all. I might just show that to Dr. Lueck tomorrow. Maybe it'll help balance my iffy essay.
Oh, and the Leah referred to is Leah Brahms as seen in TNG, if anybody wondered.
And it’s not my fault that my hair’s too long. I have Amazon legs and an infant’s arms and my hair is long enough to blanket three people and keep them warm in winter. Wisconsin winter even, when there’s a foot of snow already on the ground and more coming down, enough to bury a country town to its hips and keep going, enough to bury a country hillside and swamp the steps of an icy rehearsal hall.
And it’s not my fault that my hair’s too dark. I have skin halfway to cinnamon and eyes that switch colors from right to left and only the skin is natural. I’m white beneath my sweater sleeves but I’m dark when you look me in the face, or when you sit down and you land on my too-long tangled braid, if I bother to braid it. I’m odd, odd colors amid a tawny landscape, odd patchwork pieces in a world of yellow and blue and milk, milk and cheese and cream pale supposed beauty. There’s a chocolate wedge in between all the vanilla.
And it’s not my fault that my face has scars. That my neck has scars, that my feet have scars, that my flesh has scars. It’s not my fault that I walk and I don’t look and down I go, that I haven’t got the sense to remember what happens when contact lingers too long between fabric and leather and skin. I’m not immaculate, I’m not pristine, nobody carved me beautiful and nobody sanded my surfaces down. I’m rough wood in a sea of ivory, I’m clay halfway to ebony, I’m burlap by the bolt in a warehouse full of cotton cloth. I’ve been ripped and torn and sewn back together and I’m not pretty. But you do recognize me.
And maybe it is my fault that my nails are raw, that my teeth are chipped, that my hands are marked. I did things, I’ve done things, and in some cases I continue to do things. Nibbled raw nails, rough muted red and sandstone, silver and clear lacquer and layers of nail polish--that’s my fault. I’m a chipped statue on a shelf of porcelain dolls. Prick me, rattle me, spider cracks in my terracotta mud and cloudy glaze. I haven’t gone to pieces just yet.
But I didn’t decide that my breasts would be big. That my hips would be wide, that my eyebrows would be bushy, perpetual wild growth. And I didn’t decide that I’d stare when I looked, make floors shudder when I walked, mimick accents when I talked--that was not my choice. I’m too long in some places and too short in others, my hands don’t taper into slender things and instead they widen, blunt and square. My little fingers are crooked and my palms show a thousand and one callouses. I’m not pretty, I’m imperfect, I’m a half-black sheep in a white fleece world and you know what?
I love it.
Because I can hold my own in a conversation about Eastern philosophy or religion and science or theoretical space travel and the force of infinite gravity. I can drink coffee and gossip about dark matter and dragons, describe alien faces to a detail that makes them glow, three-dimensional and Technicolor, watercolor vivid on a tabletop, and remember names and dates in a tangled web of real and imagined history, all whithout missing a beat or forgetting to pass the cream.
I can sit up all night perfecting an accent that fairly sings of County Limerick, remember plot lines over a low-burning crackling campfire, compare notes on twenty bygone remembered generations as the embers and the charcoal smoke amid the granite hearthstones. And I can map the stars in my head without ever seeing them, remember color and property and name after being told once and never get the details wrong after that one time learning.
I can walk unassisted and unaccompanied in full night down the middle of a Chicago sidewalk and not be scared. I can say outrageous things on crowded elevators and be utterly shameless, chalking it up to being just part of my charm. I can sing Hotel California at the top of my lungs and completely on key, word and measure perfect even when my duet’s knowledge of the lyrics gives out and leaves me soloing in the center of a crowded concert hall, and me in the audience with the acoustic guitarist across the room on a makeshift stage, miles and miles away.
I can stop and ask for directions and feel no embarassment, even if I pretend to be meek in the face of friendly strangers. And I can lie, not that I’m particularly proud of that fact, weaving intricate storylines and nonexistent friends--who’s Tara? Who’s Terry? Who’s Laurie again? I can look twenty-three when I’m only fifteen, sound Australian when in reality I’m just a prairie girl, act cheerful when inside I’m hysterically weeping.
I can give myself a false name, or five false names, or twenty false names and each one with a different world attached; Laila, Mary, Jia, Shara, Leah.
I’m different. I’m cobbled together and built for nonconformity, broken and put back together, worn but not unraveled.
I’m better. Better than vanilla cream, better than porcelain, better than blue and yellow and pink. I don’t have to show off my spotless flesh just to make an impression, and I can be witty and spirited and animated and still respect myself when I look back.
Mostly.
I can celebrate my difference, revel in my unconventional self-styled personality, enjoy my uniquely constructed self and be unconcerned by the taint of a two-eyed society where perception is done with the eye not the mind. I’m quirky. I’m unusual, and I’m way out there.
I’m an empress.
And why not? I’m just like she who dares to be unlike anybody else. She who dares to be different, think different, walk different, see different.
I’m Empress Leah. The only design I go by.
Nothing like a little self-affirmation after the week I just had. and y'know I really do feel better about myself, imperfections and all. I might just show that to Dr. Lueck tomorrow. Maybe it'll help balance my iffy essay.
