hummingwolf: (two)
hummingwolf ([personal profile] hummingwolf) wrote2006-11-04 11:55 pm

Self-sacrifice enables us to dance.

I think, here is oblique
praise for the storm
ready to eat.
with heart of earth; with thoughts of love affair?
and why.

last night i know, in the same name every time
i've got you under the tent of night between the planets
and the mother brood some deed of sacrifice?
her floating robe, in royal amplitude,
falls in deep water,
it belongs to me.

look! The cupboard has closed.
wee, small hands, quick finger tipped,
slipped the key to time and space folding up
i saw the thing descending, circling, here.
and marking you i shall find again
dancing on the hollow of the fence.

--MegaHAL

Oh, my children, you do not know how weary your Mother becomes, giving birth to you, nourishing you, bringing you back to myself again. Being your Mother, holding the lives of all my children, is a burden in ways you can never understand. How could you? For all your boasts and all your glories, you are still so very young.

This is how you know your Father loves me: air and water, in the guise of storm, he comes to me in the night. This royal robe I wear--this identity--time and space!--comes off beneath his hands, my willing sacrifice. I renounce myself; he claims me. Time and space, falling away, forgotten in his inconceivable storm. Our older children--the littler ones--carefully gather up that royal robe and all of you in it, fold it up and put it away. For a while, I am not your Mother Earth. For a while, because of Father Sky, I forget myself, and I dance at the edge of the worlds.

[identity profile] missprune.livejournal.com 2006-11-05 05:01 am (UTC)(link)
Enigmatic! Quite compelling -- the mother/father prose.
ext_3407: squiggly symbol floating over water (two)

[identity profile] hummingwolf.livejournal.com 2006-11-05 02:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you! Written late at night, at a moment when the MegaHAL output suddenly started making sense to me.

[identity profile] hraith.livejournal.com 2006-11-05 01:24 pm (UTC)(link)
MegaHAL is a breath of fresh air once again in a smog of NaNoWriMo drivel.

What's that last bit? Did you write it? It's coherent, and quite good (in an overwrought sort of way, still, but overwrought seems to be the theme of the month. *grin*)
ext_3407: Dandelion's drawing of a hummingwolf (Hummingwolf by Dandelion)

[identity profile] hummingwolf.livejournal.com 2006-11-05 02:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, I wrote the last bit. I realized that the HAL poem suddenly made perfect sense to me from one point of view, and I figured I'd better write something from his partner's point of view before it all slipped from my mind.

quite good

Thank you!

(in an overwrought sort of way, still, but overwrought seems to be the theme of the month. *grin*)

::grin:: If anybody's allowed to be melodramatic, it's Mother Earth and Father Sky. I mean, have you seen those two? Whirlwinds, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes--they go crazy!

[identity profile] hraith.livejournal.com 2006-11-05 07:12 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a tempestuous love.

[identity profile] aekiy.livejournal.com 2006-11-05 05:45 pm (UTC)(link)
That was a surprisingly coherent MegaHAL-ism. I found myself wondering if it was a surprisingly coherent MegaHAL or a surprisingly incoherent poem.. ehe
ext_3407: squiggly symbol floating over water (Incredible String Thing)

[identity profile] hummingwolf.livejournal.com 2006-11-06 03:11 pm (UTC)(link)
I know! When I read this one, I wasn't sure at first if HAL was being more coherent than usual or if my brain had finally been warped enough to find sense in everything. Usually any output that long will make my eyes glaze over.