Sidley Park Hermit

1. To recap, Monday night the horrible leak which had been growing and growing in the boys' bedroom ceiling became more horrible and after a really scary night of buckets and pails and bins and drip-drip-drip which drove me partially insane, and a morning which including sleeping on in the car, the roof caved in.

So I fled to an extended stay hotel. I thought the boys would come with me, but they didn't want to. They stayed with their father.

So contractors came and did an estimate, and then they came and fixed the enormous hole in the ceiling and the nasty wall of mold which was in the boys' closet. So they've had 2 nights of no leaks, so I've come back home.

I felt like I was Julia Roberts in Sleeping with the Enemy or a fugitive or something. In a liminal state of neither here nor there. The closest eating place was Chick-fil-a but I drove to get a tuna sub. It's PRIDE month, goddammit, no homophobic waffle fries (or peach milkshake, which sounds even better) for you! I didn't turn on the TV either the whole time. I think some people live there because the school bus came. And I heard kids and saw a cat in a window. Today is the last full day of school for the boys. They have three half days next week.

2. Today is FESTA day which is the 12th anniversary of the debut of BTS and last night in Seoul, jhope had a concert and all seven were in attendance, including SUGA!!! So it is a very good day.

Title: I is for [Requiescat] In Pace
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Rating: Gen
Notes: Angst, part 5 of Time Loop: Reichenbach, set during "The Final Problem, this is a linked series of ficlets in which Watson relives Reichenbach based on theories collated in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes about what happened on that day.
Length: 500
Characters: Holmes & Watson
Prompt: acidic
Warning: Major Character Death
Summary: Watson wakes up on 4 May 1891 in Switzerland with Holmes (for the fifth times) and elects not to accompany Holmes to the Falls.

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Title: I is for Incarnate
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Rating: Gen
Notes: Angst, part 3 of Time Loop: Reichenbach, set during "The Final Problem, this is a linked series of ficlets in which Watson relives Reichenbach based on theories collated in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes about what happened on that day.
Length: 500
Characters: Holmes & Watson & Moriarty & Moran
Prompt: timid
Warning: Major Character Death, elements of the supernatural
Summary: Watson wakes up on 4 May 1891 in Switzerland with Holmes and discovers Moriarty more than what he seems.

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So I am a week behind on my 52 poem challenge. Last week the prompt was to write a poem about a famous person (who is dead) and the focus is on a small incident in their lives. So I chose Rilke and found an anecdote about how he had received a business letter and was composing a response, pacing near the castle where he was staying, and the first line of the first of the Duino Elegies came to him. So that's what I wrote about.


Dear Sir: Regarding a matter which requires your urgent attention... by okapi

The letter arrived in the morning post.
The envelope was dull, the lettering
was careful and upright. The poet sighed.
He slit the shroud, unfolded the dead words,
and read and sighed again. It must be deal with.
Sums would be required. On paper too fine
for the purpose, he began then stopped, stood,
and left, marching from castle to bastions
overlooking the sea, he paced the length,
back and forth, as the strong bora wind blew,
his mind was full of numbers and figures,
back and forth, he paced, back and forth until—
he heard it
on the roar—
“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’
hierarchies?”
by nightfall, there would be a birth, a verse
long-awaited as well as a piece
of correspondence, dull, careful, upright
left unanswered on the edge of a desk.


---

And here is the first stanza of the first elegy of the Duino Elegies

from The First Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke [trans. Stephen Mitchell}

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;
there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,
which the solitary heart so painfully meets.
Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;
perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.

This Wednesday's word is brought to you via new DW friend daryl_wor:

skookum

A lot of different definitions:

adjective

1. marked by strength or power
2. marked by excellent quality, first-rate
3. reliable or hard-working.

noun

1. an evil spirit or a woodland monster

origins

Chinook Jargon. Chinook Jargon developed as a language among Indigenous peoples and European traders in the Pacific Northwest (of the US), particularly around the Columbia River. It emerged in the late 18th century, primarily as a means of communication in trade, and incorporated elements from various languages, including Chinook, French, and English.

Title: I is for Innocent
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Rating: Gen
Warning: Major Character Death
Notes: Angst, part 2 of Time Loop: Reichenbach, set during "The Final Problem, this is a linked series of ficlets in which Watson relives Reichenbach based on theories collated in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes about what happened on that day.
Warnings: Drug use, needles, Murder, Suicide, please don't read if the idea of Holmes killing an innocent person and himself during a cocaine binge will upset you.
Length: 500
Characters: Holmes & Watson
Prompt:
Summary: Watson wakes up (again) on 4 May 1891 in Switzerland with Holmes and discovers Holmes' mind is fatally addled by cocaine.

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I can't listen to any music with lyrics when I am writing so I search out these kinds of channels on YT.