Peredhil

My son posted a Facebook status message that started me thinking so I thought I'd pass the infliction on. His message was, "Inaction is slavery; Action is freedom". So, fill in the blanks. How do you view the dichotomy? Feel free to expound with philosophy or explanation if you wish.

I like this

Peredhil, still bemused from having run into Signe again, Portals in to vote. He's dressed in a light-grey raw silk Armani suit, comfortable orange tennis shoes with neon green laces, and wearing a tastefully small AAFGW button on his lapel. Bowing to Tanny, the Ranger, and the Angel, he shows his Ring as proof of ID, and enters the voting booth. Exiting slow minutes later, he smiles in satisfaction and notes absently, Not allowed to discuss politics if you don't vote.

wanders through, face lighting in delight, oblivious to sexuality, fangs, and the rest. Signe! How delightful. huggles I do hope we'll have time to chat soon, so much to catch up on!

Q'... You simply rock. <3 <3 <3

Inspirations were Monty Python's Flying Circus and P.G. Wodehouse.

Welcome. As you've found, the Cabaret is a great place for a social thread like this. Your short story in Library would prolly do better in the Assembly Room, if you want feedback, since the Library is for works archived here but written for other sites. Fortunately our ever-clever Quincunx found a way around it to give you feedback anyway. Side note - you might want to set your feedback level in your profile. The Banquet Hall has a sticky explaining the different levels, and it's in the Walls of the Pen Keep too if I'm not too senile. The Banquet Hall is for poetic works. The Recruiter's Hall is where the Elder Wyvern hatches schemes and accepts applications. Most of all, have fun.

How did I brainwash you, my love, my love, That you could see past the years? What tricks did I use, that you found my heart, Mystical passes of the hand or the smell of my fart? I'm really at an impasse, you know, Because you refused to let me go, Without knowing that you had love for me, And such honesty and trust I just had to agree. So what clever moves or lines, my love, my love, That captivated such an untamed feral feline? What other than honesty and talking to your face, Consideration and bible studies pled my case? I'm really at a loss, you know, To explain how a love like us could grow, The world isn't the only one not to understand, How someone so wonderful could give to me her hand.

I do like this, yup. For a poetic doodle, it has a bit of depth and philosophy, while being easy to read. Somehow in my mind ties in well with the road one that Tanuchan recently wrote.

Very graphic and brutal, like the act. But I respect highly the uplifting determination of the ending. One of your best, Rev'.

I like this. Any more hidden gems in the glen called hard drive, seeking the harsh light of day in which to play, leaving moonbeams behind?

heh, I like this. format is effective, and the message is cleverly put. Have to love them all.

Chapter Three It has been several days since we arrived. It rains morning, evenings, and nights. Dorchester has finished fixing the machine. He seems a bit put out I won't let him use it until he redoes all his bloody equations. Let him stew! I have removed all the control instrumentation and locked them in his closet, and hidden the key. Looking out, I notice that the panther is back. He is staring at something near to the tree's base. Probably one of the small red deer which graze in the evenings. Gor! Bloody Dorchester's out there taking pictures of the beast! Running down the stairs, I threw open the door. "Dorchester! I say, get your bloody ass back in here immediately! There's a panther eying you!" To say that I was furious would have been an understatement of the situation. I mean, stiff upper lip and all that rot, but a fool and a panther, wot? Dorchester, of course, turned and grinned foolishly at me. "Colonel! Old man, dash it, happy to see you!" In response to my frantic gestures, he began to amble back to the machine. "Yes, yes, Eric, I know about the panther. Lovely specimen, what? Pity he didn't leap. Would've had the shock of his life." "Are you Irish? Is the moon gone full? He's got fangs and claws. All you've got is your stone head! This isn't the London Zoo." Tapping a curiously bulky belt, the Earl continued his slow pace. the panther had descended gracefully to the ground behind him. In no particular hurry, it began a measured pace after the dolt. Its tail lashed slowly as it glided across the glade like a ripple in water. "Colonel, you fail to grasp the situation fully. This belt," another tap, "generates a field impenetrable by anything larger than molecular atmosphere. I've been working on it for the past week." At my look, he hastily continued. " -- Between the equations I mean!" The panther was scant paces behind Dorchester, who'd stopped several feet from the door. "The beast would have merely slid harmlessly off, baffled and unable to understand it's inability to best the human mind and English ingenuity." Turning, the Earl spotted the panther. Taking a quick step back, he frowned. The panther had crouched and was snarling soundlessly, tail sweeping broad strokes. Dorchester shattered the silence. "Here kitty-kitty-kitty! Do be a love now." Taking a rapid step toward the beast, he squatted! "Here kitty-kitty-kitty," came the falsetto, "Come to the Earl and prove his genius, what?" Baffled at this bizarre prey's behavior, the large cat crouched yet lower. Its front paws worked the ground beneath it. When the Earl lunged up and took two rapid steps toward it, it was too much. The tableau broke into action. As the cat spun and leaped into the ever-present underbrush, I sped from my place at the door. Coming up behind Dorchester, I heard a quiet, "Pity, I'd had hopes of being attacked." Placing a hand on his shoulder, I spun him about and applied a doubled fist to his jaw. With an astonished look, he slumped to the ground senseless. "Ass!" Looking about furtively, I picked him up and ran like hell's furies pursued me for the door. The Earl's belt buzzed a merry hum in my ear as I ran.

Chapter Two Having expected to come to test within the confines of Castle Bladworth, I had felt a definite psychic shock on first seeing the present view. Entirely surrounding the traveling machine is a jungle. A lush forest. Very un-British. No order here. Vines and flowering shrubbery were not scantily present. Rather, the one ran this place delighted in vines and shrubbery strewn about carelessly. No discretion had been used, no feng-shu. It is obvious that the master decorator had never asked him or herself, "Is this hibiscous needed?" or even a simple thought such as "perhaps a mossy boulder or bit of soft grass?" No, the architect of this scene had pulled up every stop, ripping out doubts from the mind, and replacing them with clashing floral arrangments of every type. Flowers fornicating pollen left, right, and straight-away. With unrealistically large insects assisting the flowers in their orgy. Bloody Australian-sized buggers. Not that there weren't trees. Tall leafy trees grew thickly where ever the shrubs weren't, and in a few spots contending for where the shrubs were. They provided yet more opportunities for the bloody vines to grow. Sumatra had not been so cluttered. Come to think of it, how did all of these plants get enough sunlight? The high canopy provided by the trees should have inhibited the undergrowth. This mass of green growths lacked all semblance of inhibitions. Not unlike that skirt in Manturia, come to recall. Even unto the wild panther staring across the way to stretch a metaphor. I hadn't thought there were panthers on English soil?

Technically this should be in the Library, but I may come back to it soon. Chapter One I had to admit, it was definitely a traveling machine! But as to whether it had done duty in moving us through time I did not know. According to the theory which had been laid forth before me, we should have traveled through time into the future, then to the past, and have come to rest once more in the present. The theory had been reduced back to hypothesis in my mind. Something had gone amiss. In the Eternal Circle of Time, like circumnavigation of the terrestrial sphere on which I was born, going far enough in one direction should b ring one back ot the beginning point. Fine enough on paper. Once the Earl had attempted to enlist my aid, I had made him run through it all very thoroughly. I had had not the least desire to discover myself taking a one-way trip down a river of time. Enough soliloquy! Proceed to inquiry. "Dorchester, have you quite gotten it through that marvelously dense skull of yours that we are not in the dungeon of your keep?" Harsh you might say, but I bloody well meant it to sting. "Patience Colonel, I have been comparing the things with see with the equations, and have discovered an indisputable fact. Either our sense deceive us, or equation Sixty-seven has another derivation than was suggested." "Suggested? My dear Ass, do you mean you haven't actually plugged test information into the thing?" "Quiet! The other equations were so consistent with what I thought, I didn't waste time doing the last four equations." "FOUR!" "Don't use that boorishly injured tone. I have made it quite obvious that I am an engineer, not a physicist. Everything fit so well, I didn't see the need." I maintained a distinctly wounded scientist. Freudian slip there, I meant to say silence. I had desire enough to wound his Lordship, the Earl of Dorchester, but the old bear had shown in the part a similar lack of attention to detail. I had overlooked it in my eagerness to be doing and risking again. A jaunt through time had seemed just the thing. All in all, it really was unfair to pin him now, I mean, dash it all, he was an extremely brilliant mathematical engineer. Pity he had been trained by the Yank's government. The universe has so many needless complexities and loose ends, at times I think it was manufactured by American government. Suppress the shudder, Eric-me-lad, the Universe hasn't treated you all that badly. "Move on Eric," I prodded myself gently, "delicately pin the Earl with action." "Dorchester." "What now. I'm busy." "Old man, do take a moment and solve those last four equations, what? You may crawl under that afterward, and I will hand you the tools for which you have been groping industriously." "Why?" "I would dearly like to know where we are, to whither we go, and when we may return." "Presently I shall, at the moment I am occupied. The screwdriver please." "Grab it yourself," I grumped, walking away. Behind me I heard a faint reminder that I had come for adventure. "Yes, but...", I thought, looking out at the verdant jungle. A rather over-sized panther, reclining indolently on a branch, looked back and yawned widely. Adventure. Bah!

It was Spot's pursuit of a his pleasures that begins the meat of our tale. Or perhaps the salad serving before the meat. The place setting? clears throat and wrenches mind back on track. Whether it was the trail of an old enemy, such as the fox Spot had never quite caught, or a bitch in heat giving him a Viagraic jolt, Tug was to never know. One moment they were ambling along, heading to their favorite sunning spot in the meadow on the far side of the corpse of dark fir pines, and then next Spot was going much faster than was wise for his age, belling loudly his cry, and Tug was left to try to follow. Being a wise child, Tug like his forebearers had planned to live, grow, marry, and die within seven miles of his place of birth, rather like the deer which fed on the meadow's morning dewy grasses, but the pursuit of Spot took him beyond his comfort and into the beginning of Adventure. For such was the way that these sorts of Things happened, willy-nilly and rarely prepared with packs and spiky irons and three meter poles for traps and such sorts of gear, but rather pursuit of a feckless hound to avoid the homecoming hiding with the leather strop his father used to deal out justice.

Oh wow. *hugs* ... I wish I'd written this.

Another winter song. 11/29/1983 People stride by, all uncaring Unaware that I'm here staring They pas my doors and scurry away Turning their collars against the day. ᅟ But in my room I watch them go ᅟ Restless mice afraid to slow ᅟ Afraid to laugh, afraid to play ᅟ Afraid of night, afraid of day ᅟ From my window I still perceive ᅟ The tangled fates their small lives weave ᅟ A Gordian Knot of fears they live ᅟ Afraid to take, afraid to give... The trees, they grow and fight for life Yet fight no wars and breed no strife On sunlit days the bark feels warm Secure yet scarred from weathered storm. ᅟ Outside my room I watch them grow ᅟ Sucking strength from far below ᅟ They feel no pain, fuel no hate ᅟ They feel no love, nor celebrate ᅟ From my view I yet perceive ᅟ Life has more than growing leaves ᅟ Trees so tall, thrusting to the sky ᅟ Higher emotions pass them by... In his mansion the rich man hoards A thousand jewels over which he lords Gold-chased bed and porcelain vase Yet not content with what he has. ᅟ From my room I see his greed ᅟ He has no friends: an aching need ᅟ From his trap is no remission ᅟ His love is lack, want and suspicion ᅟ In my sight I now perceive ᅟ Love needs trust, not fear of thieves ᅟ A store laid up beyond the sky ᅟ What value earth's stores, when we die? The beggar whines and claws at coat A pitying tear catches in my throat Yet when I share what I have to offer Rejects living waters for coin-filled coffer. ᅟ From my door I watch and grieve ᅟ People search while the world deceives ᅟ Offered joy, they seek for fun ᅟ Look for hope, when life is done ᅟ Yet in my heart I can perceive ᅟ A way to life, if they'd believe ᅟ A way to life all might achieve ᅟ If Word of God they'd just believe... In from of my door they all pass by No hope in eyes, afraid to cry Can truth and light pierce waxen ear? They might believe if they could hear - I leave my room and end my sight The time as come to speak with might To teach a word that doesn't lie To offer choice before they die... To offer choice, before they die...

Written to a young Irish lass at the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville TN. On a whim I wrote her this and had a button made of her face which I wore at work. She asked me out and I was too tired after the final day to go! 06/14/1982 Red red hair Frames freckled face, Even white smile Causes blood to race, Apparition named Tracy - Can you be true? Such beauty given flesh, So fresh and new. An information girl Seated in narrow booth, Handles with grace Many visitors (uncouth), Crisp white dress With string black tie, Covers pert young form - Brings unhidden sigh. The World's Fair may end But I have her picture, Pleasure of meeting Tracy Has made 1982 richer, The button on my chest Shows her smiling face, Proof positive manifest My claims I based.

A typical winter mood poem 12/20/1982 I write these words they fill my mind With unsated longings, relief hard to find. A flickering flame, a growing vine Fire-lit bodies in love entwined. I need to give, to share, to thrust These growing thoughts in which I trust You'll share a moment's thought and smile Listen to my song; please stay a while. Faerie towers thrust to the sky, A gentle mother wipes child's eye, A new-grown check afraid to try, Teaming market-square: sell or buy? This terrible need to communicate Please give an hou and share the fate Of charming prince arrayed in style Listen to my song, please stay a while. Our bodies forget while minds soar free Together we'll glimpse eternity For your presence sweet, there's extra mile, Listen to my song, please stay a while.

This prolly belongs in the Scarlett Pen... 10/10/1982 Velvet-voiced Propositioned ear, Lips so wet Lips so near. Trembling sighs Sweet caress Quivering thighs Silken dressed. Passion's moans Inarticulate gasps Fleshed bones to bones The lovers clasp. Arched back face Half-spoken pleas Tortured pace Sweet fingers tease... Heaving breasts Surrendering release Surging... crests! Subsides to peace.

hormones are a pain. 10/15/1982 Winsome lass A tiny mite Looks at me Eyes wide in fright, I smooth over The brief surprise mmm, deepest blue With gray-flecked eyes In such depths I long to sink long eyelashed Nose sweetly pink Fair smooth flesh Firm alabaster Heart-breaking wench Leads to disaster Long slender legs Large natural breasts Sharp-edged tongue Full of jests. She lifts me up Or casts me down With winning smile or too-cute frown She's the woman I'm helpless against The tragedy is She doesn't exist!

Ode to Pizza. I've written several poems and songs on this topic, dear to my heart. 10/15/1982 Mouth-watering cheese seasoned to taste Gooily combined with rich tomato paste Thin flakey crust delicate and light tiny little meatballs half out of sight. Pizza! Pizza! Our stomachs cry to you! Pizza! Pizza! Nothing else will do! your wafting smell incites desire With tons of Coke we quench the fire. Truly pizza's a gustatory delight It tastes so good when made just right I'm eating my pizza night after night! (And night after night after night after night...)

a stream of conscious nonsense write. 10/14/1982 Twas nigh unto a short-sheep's toe When battled Fred and Little Moe They fought with leers They fought with haste They beat each other with library paste. Into the Autumn gloom was spent Another blow, another feint A battle of consuming rage Soon arms tired of punches made And so they switched to lemon-aide. Spring has come while cats meow Little Moe wipes fevered brow Frantic Fred wearily sighs a sigh Of days flown by; back to the struggle They renew the pace and begin to juggle. Fred drops a stitch on Little Moe's toes But bones self-knit, it's a zucchini throw A Custard pie Some Indian pork A Little Bighorn for just such work. The dawning day of New Year's End They reconcile to re-swear as friend They've forgotten the grievance They fought to redress It's still undressed, I now confess Their logical thinking (and yours too) Had badly bruised the tipsy canoe To escape further fighting And multiple contusions They jumped ship and landed conclusions. This poem is over, has passed season In its defense I claim no reason Its only thought Was to spank a Fancy (Want nude photos? Just ask Nancy. Where she got 'em I don't know.) But a well-rounded Fancy seems to glow...

10/27/1982 A sledding day A sledding song A swooshing slide It won't be long The snow is firm And fleecy white Our delighted screams As sleds we fight Quick 'round a trunk Racing down a trail Cold-bitten cheeks A cliff! We bail! Intrepid riders of the snow Ignoring winter's bite Warming hands 'round hot cocoa Breath steaming out so white.