(no subject)

I Foresee the Breaking of All That is Breakable, by John Estes

Perhaps, after all, it is merely a desire
to use the word thanatopsical -
but if you can wash or handle
artifacts like this blue
tea mug, carried from Crete as a gift
from a friend, or this nacreous
orange bowl,
a honeymoon souvenir
bought in a now-defunct artists'
shop in Colorado, or
this antique Chinese mudman
carrying his sponges
and fish from a day at the pier,
without a pathological
fixation on the day you will stumble
and drop it, or smack it
against the sink divider or brush
it with a hand reaching
for the letter opener, you are junzi:
a superior person, as Confucius had it.
You probably make love
to your spouse without imagining
betrayal and pay taxes
without complaint
because you think nothing
in truth belongs to you.

They invented the earth for people
like you, and then salted it.

(no subject)

So I'm reading this DS9 novel, right? It is Fallen Heroes and is pretty good - I'm enjoying it. And I'm reading along and, at one point, one of the characters thinks about having gone to see a production of The King in Yellow performed on the station.

And my immediate thoughts were 1) Doesn't the Federation have rules about maybe not performing plays that inevitably result in madness and destruction? and 2) that is why everything bad that has happened in this book has happened. I don't care what the actual reason turns out to be - the ultimate reason for all the bad things is that someone decided that it would be a good idea to summon the Tattered King.




(This is my favorite random shout out in a DS9 novel so far. Though I also really enjoyed the fleeting mention in one of the others about Ayvon of the Seven, a famous Bajoran freedom fighter.)