"weâve got something in our blood," my father said.
"an irritation. we donât settle for average,
is what that means.â
hubris, of course. the word for that is hubris,
the fatal flaw of overreaching oneâs self
and not knowing oneâs place. it usually ends
in lightning and heartbreak.
of course, weâre not in a time anymore
where i can pack a bag and, with a blessed-prowed ship
and sufficient sacrifices burned black,
sail my way into history. if a womanâs face launches a thousand ships
they are apt to be going to war against her, not for her.
itâs an occupational hazard, really. birds of a feather.
swans are really quite vicious when provoked.
is it really overreaching, though?
we, the children of legends, just as every generation is,
we grew up waiting for letters and reading oaths
and searching our lineage for hints of divinity.
we, like all the children before us, were promised quests,
ordeals and omens and destiny with a capital d.
we grew up waiting for something more than ordinary, that is.
of course the world usually isnât that literal;
you can find a fight if youâre looking for it, of course. you always can.
but there is no quick solution, no epilogue,
the book drags on and on. the narrator is unreliable.
the plot is full of clichĂŠs and as pockmarked as the inscrutable moon
which, for the record, is neither a rabbit nor made of cheese.
were i reading this, i would have given up halfway through
which is not particularly a luxury i have, as the protagonist
though even thatâs pretty subjective. i donât get to shut the book,
shelve it for another time; i donât get to write angry letters
to the author, who probably doesnât deserve them anyway.
what iâm saying here is: is it hubris if itâs all broken promises?
we were raised on ambrosia and nectar
and here we are and itâs dust, all dust, sepia-tinted and chalky.
ashes to ashes and all that, i suppose,
it saves sweeping up.
someone told me once that dust is mostly made of us.
iâll spare you the details - they arenât very poetic, and as the author
i have the luxury of doing that. i get to cut out unsavory bits -Â
but my point is. my point is, someone also told me
that we are all made of star stuff, flung millions of miles
and billions of lightyears, congealed and quickened
and set in motion. one sets plots in motion. a story picks up momentum.
so here we are, dust to dust, in the cooling remnants of stars,
full to bursting of the food and drink of the gods.
full of stories, flaring up around us like a corona,
like the halos that are how we came to be in the first place. why?
well, if you donât believe in gods, they fade, donât they,
they lose their tenuous grasp on existence and dissipate.
much like stars. do you see where iâm going with this;
we are made of the relics of story, and in the end all we are is stories,
and perhaps that is why we tell them, condemning ourselves.
perhaps that disappointment - that ache of missing wings,
that hollowness of being - is, in the end, the only way
to speak ourselves into continued existence.
one sets a story in motion. entropy is the eventual - grinding to a halt,
petrification, you name it. thereâs a word for it in every story.
sing to me, o muse, of stories, and how they bear us
onward, onward, and ever upward.
â âredistribution of matterâ, 质éŽ
