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May. 17th, 2002 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kuangningWhen I was a girl, I developed what was maybe a strange habit. I would take both hands, pinch the skin on the sides of my stomach, and lift it as far upward as I could. Then I would hold it there until my fingers cramped or spasmed, and I'd have to let go.
It hurt, but it felt, while I was holding that skin away from me, as if I'd lifted one of the worst weights anyone could have punished me with, too, and it was a relief. The feeling of that weight settling on me again was almost enough to make me cry.
I broke the habit as I got older, but I took up a worse one - I took to bleeding. More refined sensations, same relief and release, plus it was more powerful - instead of just lifting the weight, bleeding let me punish myself for it, let me destroy without anyone caring. And the weight didn't make itself felt again so quickly after I bled. Sometimes, if I bled enough, it would be a week before I stopped feeling floaty and weightless.
I haven't bled or wanted to bleed in some time, now. Not as much time as you might think, but still, some time. But tonight I'm thinking about it (not thinking about doing it, just thinking about it in the abstract) because I've got that urge to peel away my skin again, to open myself up.
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zibblsnrt posted lyrics, awhile back, to a song called Hymn to the Breaking Strain. It compares humans to bridges, to buildings, to steel... I think it's wrong. When I think of humans, and a few in particular, I think of glass. We bear weight. We bear incredible weight, as a matter of course. It's the blows, not the weight, that usually cause us to shatter. But still... sometimes I want to run away, I want to shake myself and watch everything fall away. And to stand there, bare to view, and take the measure of myself.
This I am. This I am made of. This is part of me. This is what I became when the fires blasted me, and over there is the mould, and when I have passed through the fires still to come, that is what they will make of me. That will be the shape of me, but it will not be me, because I am more than my shape. That will be my image, but neither will it be me. This... this is me.
It's impossible. I can't stand outside myself, to gain that view and that surety. I can't lift away my skin long enough or even lay myself open deeply enough, verbally or otherwise, to be rid of the things that make me opaque to myself and at best translucent to everyone else. No matter how loudly the voice inside me screams that, like every human, I was given a spirit meant to glow fire-bright and to flow like any quicksilver thing for as long as the inner flame burns.
But I'm tired of the limitations of my skin tonight.
Hymn to the Breaking Strain
The careful textbooks measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
The blame of loss, or muder,
Is laid upon the man
Not on the steel - the man!
But, in our daily dealing
With stone and steel, we find
The Gods have no such feeling
Of justice toward mankind
To no set gauge they make us -
For no laid course prepare -
In time they overtake us
With loads we cannot bear
Too merciless to bear.
The prudent textbooks give it
In tables at the end -
The stress that shears a rivet
Or makes a tie-bar bend -
What traffic wrecks macadam -
What concrete should endure -
But we, poor Sons of Adam
Have no such literature
To warn us or make sure!
We hold all Earth to plunder -
All Time and Space as well -
Too wonder-stale to wonder
At each new miracle;
Till in the mid-illusion
Of godhood 'neath our hand,
Falls multiple confusion
On all we did or planned -
The mighty works we planned.
We only of Creation
(How much luckier the bridge and rail!)
Abide the twin damnation:
To fail and know we fail.
Yet we - by which sole token
We know we once were Gods -
Take shame in being broken
However great the odds -
The burden or the odds.
Oh, veiled and secret Power
Whose paths we seek in vain,
Be with us in our hour
Of overthrow and pain;
That we - by which sure token
We know Thy ways are true -
In spite of being broken,
Or because of being broken,
May rise up and build anew,
Stand up and build anew!
It hurt, but it felt, while I was holding that skin away from me, as if I'd lifted one of the worst weights anyone could have punished me with, too, and it was a relief. The feeling of that weight settling on me again was almost enough to make me cry.
I broke the habit as I got older, but I took up a worse one - I took to bleeding. More refined sensations, same relief and release, plus it was more powerful - instead of just lifting the weight, bleeding let me punish myself for it, let me destroy without anyone caring. And the weight didn't make itself felt again so quickly after I bled. Sometimes, if I bled enough, it would be a week before I stopped feeling floaty and weightless.
I haven't bled or wanted to bleed in some time, now. Not as much time as you might think, but still, some time. But tonight I'm thinking about it (not thinking about doing it, just thinking about it in the abstract) because I've got that urge to peel away my skin again, to open myself up.
zibblsnrt posted lyrics, awhile back, to a song called Hymn to the Breaking Strain. It compares humans to bridges, to buildings, to steel... I think it's wrong. When I think of humans, and a few in particular, I think of glass. We bear weight. We bear incredible weight, as a matter of course. It's the blows, not the weight, that usually cause us to shatter. But still... sometimes I want to run away, I want to shake myself and watch everything fall away. And to stand there, bare to view, and take the measure of myself. This I am. This I am made of. This is part of me. This is what I became when the fires blasted me, and over there is the mould, and when I have passed through the fires still to come, that is what they will make of me. That will be the shape of me, but it will not be me, because I am more than my shape. That will be my image, but neither will it be me. This... this is me.
It's impossible. I can't stand outside myself, to gain that view and that surety. I can't lift away my skin long enough or even lay myself open deeply enough, verbally or otherwise, to be rid of the things that make me opaque to myself and at best translucent to everyone else. No matter how loudly the voice inside me screams that, like every human, I was given a spirit meant to glow fire-bright and to flow like any quicksilver thing for as long as the inner flame burns.
But I'm tired of the limitations of my skin tonight.
Hymn to the Breaking Strain
The careful textbooks measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
The blame of loss, or muder,
Is laid upon the man
Not on the steel - the man!
But, in our daily dealing
With stone and steel, we find
The Gods have no such feeling
Of justice toward mankind
To no set gauge they make us -
For no laid course prepare -
In time they overtake us
With loads we cannot bear
Too merciless to bear.
The prudent textbooks give it
In tables at the end -
The stress that shears a rivet
Or makes a tie-bar bend -
What traffic wrecks macadam -
What concrete should endure -
But we, poor Sons of Adam
Have no such literature
To warn us or make sure!
We hold all Earth to plunder -
All Time and Space as well -
Too wonder-stale to wonder
At each new miracle;
Till in the mid-illusion
Of godhood 'neath our hand,
Falls multiple confusion
On all we did or planned -
The mighty works we planned.
We only of Creation
(How much luckier the bridge and rail!)
Abide the twin damnation:
To fail and know we fail.
Yet we - by which sole token
We know we once were Gods -
Take shame in being broken
However great the odds -
The burden or the odds.
Oh, veiled and secret Power
Whose paths we seek in vain,
Be with us in our hour
Of overthrow and pain;
That we - by which sure token
We know Thy ways are true -
In spite of being broken,
Or because of being broken,
May rise up and build anew,
Stand up and build anew!
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