June 13, Third Age 3019
I write something that is not a poem at all
and then try to figure out what happened
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sometimes it seems as if my finger is still there;
I can still feel it, at home among the rest,
And if I but flexed my hand I could extend them all again.
I can still feel the cool weight of a simple gold band
That feels so right, belonging on my hand,
My belonging; my birthright, my due.
Mere shadows remain of what is gone,
Tangible shadows intangible,
A moment caught in present memory;
For the intuitive knowledge of rightness, of wholeness,
Of completion without a thought of ever being incomplete,
Was severed as well, lingers as well,
A mirage, in reach, yet unreachable - but not too far...
Sometimes it seems as if my finger is still there;
But the pen falls from my infirm grasp,
Falls from trembling fingers, the surety of long custom all lost.
Sometimes it seems as if my finger is still there,
But a glance, a movement, a blink,
And it is gone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh, dear...What was that? It didn't belong as prose, somehow, yet it didn't want to conform to any consistent rhyme scheme or rhythmic pattern. The above is a transcription because the original composition of the poem...rant...'Random Musing'...whatever it was...is so full of crossed-out and inserted words that no one would ever be able to know which were abandoned and which actually part of the final product, such as it is. I am certain that I will come back to it and compulsively cross more things out and insert more and then change my mind again about those, because I am never satisfied with what I write, alas; I am not like Bilbo.
As to the content of that bit of writing (as I will refer to it, being at a loss to give it any more definite name) - I dropped my pen today. It wasn't the first time it had happened; in the days directly following when the bandages on my hand were reduced to something less than full Harad mummification and I could actually try to train myself to write with a grip adjusted to account for the missing finger, I lost count of the number of times I dropped the quill. I mean the number of times an hour. It was frustrating, but when I wasn't shredding paper or in tears, I laughed it off. I've gotten used to holding the pen differently and working around the impediment of the bandaging, which is hardly thick enough to be a hindrance anymore, but I continue to drop the pen from time to time for an entirely different reason.
It is an odd phenomenon that has been occurring ever since the loss of that third finger on my right hand which earns me my dubious epithet. It feels like nothing's wrong, and everything is as it was, a sensation that today, as on previous days, lulled me into thinking I could hold the pen as I always had before, supported between thumb, index, and ring (no pun intended) finger. But naturally, since one of the fingers that I used as a brace is gone, the pen was insufficiently supported and fell. Unremarkable, really; all I had to do was adjust and rest the quill on my middle finger instead. But for some silly reason, the incident struck me as being deeply momentous, though I will not attempt to conjecture what it might subconsciously seem a coincidental symbol for. Or rather, I will not expound upon it at great length, because I am being ridiculous to think that adjusting the way I hold a pen now that I've lost a finger, now that my hand will never be the same, is like readjusting the way I look at life, having endured a journey that will leave me never the same.
Yet, pretentiously metaphorical as it sounds, perhaps it is. And perhaps I'm a bleeding idiot who needs to learn not to explain, excuse, and apologize for his poetry (or whatever it is).
But this poem I will not show to Gandalf.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author's Note: I actually wrote that a really long time ago and had it in reserve. Eru knows there are more where that came from...
Like my little Middle-earthified Egypt reference? I feel quite clever.
Rose Cotton, about last entry's review: I added another paragraph to the author's note (like it needed more ranting) in response to your concerns, although half of the original note was to address those same concerns; I knew someone would express them. Also, you said I "further wrecked [your] faith in [my] Sam-writing." Out of curiosity, what had I done before? (Visualize a puppy that knows it's done something wrong and so is guilty about it and whimpering piteously but doesn't know why it's guilty, because I can't translate that into an emoticon, although I do have a little code sheet of emoticons.)
I write something that is not a poem at all
and then try to figure out what happened
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sometimes it seems as if my finger is still there;
I can still feel it, at home among the rest,
And if I but flexed my hand I could extend them all again.
I can still feel the cool weight of a simple gold band
That feels so right, belonging on my hand,
My belonging; my birthright, my due.
Mere shadows remain of what is gone,
Tangible shadows intangible,
A moment caught in present memory;
For the intuitive knowledge of rightness, of wholeness,
Of completion without a thought of ever being incomplete,
Was severed as well, lingers as well,
A mirage, in reach, yet unreachable - but not too far...
Sometimes it seems as if my finger is still there;
But the pen falls from my infirm grasp,
Falls from trembling fingers, the surety of long custom all lost.
Sometimes it seems as if my finger is still there,
But a glance, a movement, a blink,
And it is gone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh, dear...What was that? It didn't belong as prose, somehow, yet it didn't want to conform to any consistent rhyme scheme or rhythmic pattern. The above is a transcription because the original composition of the poem...rant...'Random Musing'...whatever it was...is so full of crossed-out and inserted words that no one would ever be able to know which were abandoned and which actually part of the final product, such as it is. I am certain that I will come back to it and compulsively cross more things out and insert more and then change my mind again about those, because I am never satisfied with what I write, alas; I am not like Bilbo.
As to the content of that bit of writing (as I will refer to it, being at a loss to give it any more definite name) - I dropped my pen today. It wasn't the first time it had happened; in the days directly following when the bandages on my hand were reduced to something less than full Harad mummification and I could actually try to train myself to write with a grip adjusted to account for the missing finger, I lost count of the number of times I dropped the quill. I mean the number of times an hour. It was frustrating, but when I wasn't shredding paper or in tears, I laughed it off. I've gotten used to holding the pen differently and working around the impediment of the bandaging, which is hardly thick enough to be a hindrance anymore, but I continue to drop the pen from time to time for an entirely different reason.
It is an odd phenomenon that has been occurring ever since the loss of that third finger on my right hand which earns me my dubious epithet. It feels like nothing's wrong, and everything is as it was, a sensation that today, as on previous days, lulled me into thinking I could hold the pen as I always had before, supported between thumb, index, and ring (no pun intended) finger. But naturally, since one of the fingers that I used as a brace is gone, the pen was insufficiently supported and fell. Unremarkable, really; all I had to do was adjust and rest the quill on my middle finger instead. But for some silly reason, the incident struck me as being deeply momentous, though I will not attempt to conjecture what it might subconsciously seem a coincidental symbol for. Or rather, I will not expound upon it at great length, because I am being ridiculous to think that adjusting the way I hold a pen now that I've lost a finger, now that my hand will never be the same, is like readjusting the way I look at life, having endured a journey that will leave me never the same.
Yet, pretentiously metaphorical as it sounds, perhaps it is. And perhaps I'm a bleeding idiot who needs to learn not to explain, excuse, and apologize for his poetry (or whatever it is).
But this poem I will not show to Gandalf.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author's Note: I actually wrote that a really long time ago and had it in reserve. Eru knows there are more where that came from...
Like my little Middle-earthified Egypt reference? I feel quite clever.
Rose Cotton, about last entry's review: I added another paragraph to the author's note (like it needed more ranting) in response to your concerns, although half of the original note was to address those same concerns; I knew someone would express them. Also, you said I "further wrecked [your] faith in [my] Sam-writing." Out of curiosity, what had I done before? (Visualize a puppy that knows it's done something wrong and so is guilty about it and whimpering piteously but doesn't know why it's guilty, because I can't translate that into an emoticon, although I do have a little code sheet of emoticons.)