(no subject)

There's this poem, by Adrienne Rich. Some fic I read once linked me to a different one of this set of 21 as inspiration for the story, but it's this one that my mind keeps coming back to.

VIII
I can see myself years back at Sunion,
hurting with an infected foot, Philoctetes
in woman’s form, limping the long path,
lying on a headland over the dark sea,
looking down the red rocks to where a soundless curl
of white told me a wave had struck,
imagining the pull of that water from that height,
knowing deliberate suicide wasn't my métier,
yet all the time nursing, measuring that wound.
Well, that’s finished. The woman who cherished
her suffering is dead. I am her descendant.
I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me,
but I want to go on from here with you
fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.

I want to be that woman. Some days, I think that I am.

I see my-some days/someday-self in this her/me. But then I'm not sure if it's romantic delusions or wishful thinking or some kind of hope, because I look into the not-too-distant past or the present or where it feels like I'm going and I'm still staring down at the rocks.

(no subject)

Fic recommendation of doom!
I've decided I want to start doing this more often, because I've got loads and loads of them (though a good two or three hundred less than pre-hard drive debacles 1, 2, and 3) that are old or from fandoms that are dying/not represented well on LJ or for some other reasons aren't getting their due. That and because fictionygoodness is love, and I want to share with people the stuff I enjoy. (Maybe I'll sign up to drive the crack_van at some point; that'd probably be a good idea.) But for now, this one.

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Of The Ghost In My Bed
Author: Adi
Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager
Pairings: B'Elanna/Seven, Janeway/Seven
Rating: G [Reccer's note: She has it as G, but the one use of the 'O' word makes me personally want to bump it up a bit higher, just in case.]
Summary: Sometimes wanting is better than having, other times, it's much better than having.

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This is way high up there on my list of favorite fics ever. It's one of the earliest ones I read and one that has stood up to years of rereading. It's dark and beautiful, and so perfectly understated. I find myself reading it in this half-whisper in my head, performing it like some odd kind of spoken word for myself, which I catch myself doing with particularly powerful passages and the the works I really like, the last paragraph particularly of this being a striking example of both.

It's too short really to give much more, but it manages to be a wholly complete little fic, which is impressive considering it's a meager 625 words. I've got one disagreement with the author's word choice; she uses 'orgasmed' where I feel that 'came' would have preserved the flow better, but all in all, this is right up there in my head (along with the more common choices of "Queen of Hearts", etc.) as the first things that come to mind when I think of B'Elanna/Seven fic.

So yes. Check it out if you've got a minute, send the author feedback if you've got a second more (her email is hyperlinked on her name under the story's title), and tell me what you thought of it if you've a moment past that. I'd be interested to know what people think.

(no subject)

A minute or two ago it thundered loudly enough to shake the entire house. Which is cool, normally, but when I'm out here alone and then I don't hear any more thunder for the next minute or so, I'm liable to work myself up into a panic attack speculating on what just blew up. That's my story.

One of our lizards isn't looking good, which is sad. They were fed less than a week ago, and it's skeletal. They've been at mum's school, so I hadn't seen them in a while, but she says that it wasn't like that even two weeks ago. Seriously, it's horrible; its spine sticks up above its back and the tail is all skinny and snake-like rather than the plump thing it used to be. I feel really bad for it, because it's got some odd abdomen thing going on that makes me think that perhaps it's egg bound or something, which we're not really going to be able to do anything about. It's having trouble staying warm, though, as I realized when I took it out a few days ago and set it on a notebook on my lap and it kept insisting on crawling into my hand (which was really cute, actually).