Y8week7 Qanisqineq
 
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Y8week7 Qanisqineq

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(@straycat)
Noble Member
Joined: 22 years ago
Posts: 1282
Topic starter   [#38058]

Well, well, rambling and mouthfulls continued :D Looking for a synonym for snow to use in the first verse, I found the Inuit word Qanisqineq (snow floating on water) and thought it (plus the implied image etc) would fit nicely as the title.

Qanisqineq

Snow-roaming with linked arms
In our hood
With trees tall, buildings taller
And all abandoned in semi-darkness
Except for the glow of ankle-deep hoar frost
And the sound of our feet smearing the icing

Talking insomnia since the dorm room years, necrophobia since the third grade,
Thinking too much for our own good, near car crashes with our parents in them
And your friends who see ghosts, reassuring or uncanny?, like Fiona who knows
When one is in the room

Cold feet on bathroom tiles past two
The door moves
Draught or spirit?, I manage to half-joke
Before the ghost of my past climbs in, asks
“You don't want to end up sleeping in bath tubs
‘Cause people annoy you with their smells and noises
Like Catherina, do you”

And with her curled up face from a school trip in 2004 in my shower,
It leaves me ever so swiftly before I can protest against the incongruence of images
Or exclaim that I live on my own with no one to hide from and with no
Bath tub to hide in

Waking on my back in the morning
I behold my snowed-up attic window
So that's what it's like to live in an igloo
So, that's what it's like to live under ice
Oh, I, on the nursery floor with my Junior Woodchucks Guidebook,
Knew I
Would like it

At the height of my smile, the ghost of the present
Sat on my chest,
Panic or heart attack?, it droned: “Take a good look
You don't need pencils or cameras, you need to learn to memorize
A beautiful moment can't be captured by devices
All the times you tried with rooftop morning or evening skies
The light never came out right on the Polaroid”

And as I mean to object that a verse or picture would serve
To trigger a memory which else would lie dormant as I am bound
To lose my map and forget its whereabouts, the ghost dissolves and leaves its
Space to a friend

Well, then the ghost of the future
Offered me a view of
An elderly lady dragging her eyes, hunched in front of a computer screen
To complete chores that working days don't cater for
But have to be done till Monday by someone
While her colleagues fight their wives and kids and Christmas trees
“See, a sense of duty and responsibility are fine but there's a line
That you're about to cross and that your father's long lost sight of”
So it said and disappeared without ado, like they all do

And as I look up to ponder my flying visitors
I see a bright blue patch of sky through a crack in the ice on the pane
That resembles a smile, you know, the grinning kind with bare teeth
And resolve not to work on any more weekends
Starting, well, next month
For this paper and that pile of reading, they've got be done

Not so sure about the ending, that is the last three lines (or, as my linguistics teacher woudl say, the ultimate, penultimate and antepenultimate line :lol: )... but some kind of resolution would be nice, right? Even though the persona seems not to be able to carry through with it... like New Year's resolutions, her's :wink:
Any suggestions?

Cheers,
straycat.


"oh, eventually it will break your heart" - anders wendin


   
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(@jamestoffee)
Famed Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 2855
 

Hi Straycat,

Nice imagery....you got me getting scared of ghosts with the first two "encounters" :shock: ....and that's a good thing :wink:
but some kind of resolution would be nice, right? Even though the persona seems not to be able to carry through with it... like New Year's resolutions, her's :wink:
Any suggestions?
It's working as a "broken New Year's resolution angle"....another way to go...regarding a resolve, the singer is single at the end? Yes?...If so, maybe she could "embrace" her ghost visitors as friends b/c she is lonely in the end....all the year's she was afraid, but now she finds comfort that she has had the visits....

...so instead of getting the message of changing anything about her, she decides to make the best of the situation to start her "eternal friendships" now, by entertaining her ghostly guests....something like inviting them in and sitting them down for tea and asking questions like, "have you haunted any famous people?" "what have you heard from so-and-so up the street....word is she talks in her sleep" "Is death going to take so-and-so before the new year?.....etc....just a thought.

James



   
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(@straycat)
Noble Member
Joined: 22 years ago
Posts: 1282
Topic starter  

Hooray for you bothering to read through all this! :D
I say, I love the idea of her befriending the ghosts and inviting them for tea and annoying them with all kinds of questions ! :D
I'll keep that in the back of my head for later use, if you don't mind :D

Thanks!
Cheers,
straycat.


"oh, eventually it will break your heart" - anders wendin


   
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