"Enough of Telling Stories and Our Well-Meaning Lies..."

*flops pathetically*

Am working on my Jules Verne geekslash. It's fun, except that it was working very well as a study of post-book (Stephen) Fix, who has shown up rather consistently in my Eighty Days Vernework (Constant is Change; Time Inn [actually an LXG fic]), explaining a little more about his transformation from book!Fix, but--

It's rather difficult to throw Conseil into the mix, especially post-book Conseil. For one thing, he's very post book--a little more than six years, I think--and for another thing, considering the way Fix is behaving just at present (i.e. living in a seedy part of Paris to pursue his beautiful emo existence), it's hard to figure out just exactly how the two of them are going to meet. I mean, really. Who else besides me can't somehow see Conseil making an unscheduled trip downtown for absolutely no reason, just so that he can coincidentally bump into the torn and tattered remnants of Fix's broken soul? Quite right.

On the other hand, I really do like what I've written so far.

Most of the regulars do know him. If you sit on one grey street corner long enough, begging the same heartless gentry for the same desperately-needed pennies, watching the same barefoot, threadbare people wander by you, the same carriages roll past, the same grey skies grow light, grow dark, you recognise faces after a while. You know who's due by to-day, who'll come Monday.

Not all of them can do that, of course. Some of them are too far gone, and all the faces look the same. Nobody ever gives them anything, and they spit on everyone. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Stephen has been spat on before. Once it made him angry. Now he just goes on. It doesn't matter. The regulars know him. They call out his name, pronouncing it with a soft French accent made harsh from living on nothing. They make his name grey, although it used to be green. Stephen was always a green name. His mother made it green; his friends at Oxford; the girl he was going to marry: Stephen was always a green name. Here in Paris, it's grey, and Stephen doesn't care.

The regulars hate him one day and love him the next. He has been struck, he has been kissed. Sometimes someone pulls him into a corner and shares a bit of bread. It's a grey spiderweb, and it's hard to tell which strands are safe and which ones trap. Stephen never looks where he's putting his feet; he only walks and finds out and is never surprised.

Yes. I just need to find a plausible way--

Damn you, my dear detective. I can't think of any way to uproot you and get you the hell out of your seedy little district, either, because you just don't care. Gah. And I can't work on my other Important Project until you're done, either. Do you mind making an effort?

Fix: *blank stare* Effort?

Yes! You know, helping things along?

Fix: Things?

Like your faith-affirming, life-rebuilding love affair with a sweet Flemish manservant, yes.

Fix: My what? *clutches at Passepartout* O_O

*wibbles* For me?

Fix: *Passepartout!* O_O

...Oh, for-- *sulks and gets back to work*

"All That I Have are These, to Remember You..."

*sparkle*

I find it amusing that everything has a purpose in this house. When I make the frozen green beans and broccoli of which I am so madly fond, it is my task afterwards to pour the boiling water onto the weeds in the sidewalk cracks in order to eradicate them. Waste not want not, particularly in the summer, when water is so low.

In other news, here is a short-haired Soujin:

Here I am, smiling. Very sillyishly, too. Oh, look, you can see my work badge! The hair is curly like whoa.

Mum was having trouble with the camera. I like it, despite the redeye liek whoa.

Lastly, posish. I'm sitting on the stairs. ^_^

Yay!

Photographs from the trip notyet back from the store. *sulks*

Mum is doing the flowers for the wedding of the really bouncy priest who got me metaquotesed! *beams* He's wonderful, and I'm very happy.

"And He's Good for Relieving My... Tension..."

*so proud of Patrice* Well, the Ann Landers column in to-day's paper used the name Patrice for one of the parties in a sordid affair involving e-mail unfaithfulness, which should not amuse me the way it does.

Also we got letters to-day!

One for Horatio from Hamlet, one for me from Nanni. *beams* Much squee, although I am very jealous of Nanni for her caves.

Also, I've been thinking... But it's serious thinking, and I don't think this is a serious post. I'll think about it later. ^_^

I love you all so much.

"Did I Say That? It Seems a Million Years Ago..."

I am... very inadequate.

I want to be a better person; I want to do better things. I love too many people: I want to show them so. I don't. I don't finish things when they're begun.

I keep losing people. It must be my fault. I keep losing people. They go away. They disappear. Or they don't. We just stop talking. What am I doing wrong? I don't--I hate it. It makes me hate me. I love people too much to lose them, but I am, I am, people I used to talk to all the time--we never speak, and I feel like such an idiot when we do.

Oh, for heaven's sake.

When I love too much, sometimes, I feel as though my heart is going to break. It's ridiculous. It won't happen. But I feel tight and my head hurts and it's confusing, a little. I feel too hot. I hurt. And I love too many people too much.

I want to be the right kind of person, the kind of person people love, but I want to do it without hurting myself, which is sensible, and at the same time feels selfish. I want to love everybody the right way, and I want it so that it doesn't hurt and I am happy to love everybody. But I am happy. It just hurts. I want that to make far more sense than it does.

I want, I want.

I want to feel proud of myself.

And I want to keep the people I love. I feel as though they're slipping right through my hands, away from me, which is melodramatic and perfectly true. I feel as though I weren't holding tight enough.

I hate that part of the people I love have never been real, that part of them may die any day, that part of them leave me, and that the people who love me back only make me wish I could love them better.

I don't think it would be better not to love. I wish there were an easier way to do it.

*adopts accents of Buckland* I expected to be fit for it.

Damn it.