The Seven Deaths of Peter Pan
8/16/11 03:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alasanonI)
There are some stories that never have endings, or have new ones each time they are told, and others that have only one, repeated into the darkness, a cannon fired off the port bow.
II)
She calls me by my name, by any one of the countless names I am known by, and each time I fly to her side. The 'her' in question changes, of course. I can't keep track of them. They are all the same, they were all different. It doesn't matter.
I call them one thing in the end, and then they run from me.
III)
Mothers don't tell you that self-awareness tears you apart in the end, that you end up lost and alone and the wolves howl all around you and no one takes your hand and pets your hair softly, and tells you that everything will be all right, and if they do, they're probably lying. The lying is the only thing that stays the same.
IV)
They told me that I would live forever if I gave myself to the island. 'They' is a tremendous abstraction of a trivial concept, however. 'Told' is another. Never believe what 'They' 'tell' you, not ever. There's always something left out, and it's usually something important. In this case, living forever doesn't include never dying.
V)
To die is no adventure at all. It is the culmination of silence and pain. The pain comes first, and you bear up under it, staunching your wounds with leaves and scraps of other dead things, but your blood trickles out between your fingers anyway and eventually all you can hear is the rush of it in your ears. Then even that grows still and then the silence comes.
VI)
You forget, after the first few times. The sensations just flit out of your mind like the fairies that skitter around you getting dust on everything until you have to tie down your belongings lest they float away. But every so often you'll have one death that just won't leave you. Some particular set of sensations or betrayals or the agony of a slit belly or a raging infection that takes your mind before it takes your body or why did you eat that cake? you never eat the cake. it's the first rule. Or maybe it's heartache that kills you this time, her eyes closing against your pleading, she's leaving you again and you wish that, just once, you could kill her first. (You can't. She is protected from your rage by the eternal law of Mother.)
Whatever it is, you wake up and you're still somehow sore. The pain doesn't go and there's nowhere to fly.
VII)
I'm so ancient I'm a child I'm an egg I fly and flee and run from the inevitable but I can never change the story. I have lived long enough, and somehow the knowledge has stuck in my head, decorated as it is with youthful curls and skeleton leaves. I still have all my milk teeth; I can never grow up.
There are some stories that never have endings, or have new ones each time they are told, and others that have only one, repeated into the darkness, a cannon fired off the port bow.
II)
She calls me by my name, by any one of the countless names I am known by, and each time I fly to her side. The 'her' in question changes, of course. I can't keep track of them. They are all the same, they were all different. It doesn't matter.
I call them one thing in the end, and then they run from me.
III)
Mothers don't tell you that self-awareness tears you apart in the end, that you end up lost and alone and the wolves howl all around you and no one takes your hand and pets your hair softly, and tells you that everything will be all right, and if they do, they're probably lying. The lying is the only thing that stays the same.
IV)
They told me that I would live forever if I gave myself to the island. 'They' is a tremendous abstraction of a trivial concept, however. 'Told' is another. Never believe what 'They' 'tell' you, not ever. There's always something left out, and it's usually something important. In this case, living forever doesn't include never dying.
V)
To die is no adventure at all. It is the culmination of silence and pain. The pain comes first, and you bear up under it, staunching your wounds with leaves and scraps of other dead things, but your blood trickles out between your fingers anyway and eventually all you can hear is the rush of it in your ears. Then even that grows still and then the silence comes.
VI)
You forget, after the first few times. The sensations just flit out of your mind like the fairies that skitter around you getting dust on everything until you have to tie down your belongings lest they float away. But every so often you'll have one death that just won't leave you. Some particular set of sensations or betrayals or the agony of a slit belly or a raging infection that takes your mind before it takes your body or why did you eat that cake? you never eat the cake. it's the first rule. Or maybe it's heartache that kills you this time, her eyes closing against your pleading, she's leaving you again and you wish that, just once, you could kill her first. (You can't. She is protected from your rage by the eternal law of Mother.)
Whatever it is, you wake up and you're still somehow sore. The pain doesn't go and there's nowhere to fly.
VII)
I'm so ancient I'm a child I'm an egg I fly and flee and run from the inevitable but I can never change the story. I have lived long enough, and somehow the knowledge has stuck in my head, decorated as it is with youthful curls and skeleton leaves. I still have all my milk teeth; I can never grow up.
