Dustless, by precis, no. 7

Dustless | Volume 7 | Flowing House
It is RoMayZine to understand: battle is endless.

Men and women struggle in the act of love, they battle: and in the act of birth, women struggle with their child: they battle. Born, a child struggles with the first blazing of the light: the battle of sight begins, and of all the senses.

Decision is battle: life is fought by decision.

Having won the first light, children battle to see and to grow. Men and women battle to keep their children safe. Death battles to take all the living prisoner, to subdue all armies of life, to grow still greater the already vast armies of dust.

In a remote province of the Desolate Cantons, two exiles meet, and speak of decisions, speak of war.

One describes a duel with the King of Swords. The other describes life by the sword, in a place humanity may be cast off: the Place of No Footsteps.

To each, battle brings a kind of liberty, freedom from a world of laws, a victory for intense life.

Yet, when their battles are over, have they not drawn closer, after all, to joining the ranks of the armies of dust?

 

Convict songs

‘…Many of the convict songs were of a low sentiment, impure and ribald; but some, slower ballads or laments, had a kind of base beauty. I have heard a choir of convicts, in a lumber camp in the Central Chun sector, singing in the evening: there was such a terrible sorrow about the song, and the voices, I was unable to listen for long.

When human voices are raised in song sometimes, the word bursts, and the world seems to melt into a state one cannot understand. But even now, gifted by the ancestors with my return to walk again under pure skies, sometimes, in dreams, I hear those deep voices singing, out in the forest as the sun went down. I am unable to encompass with my narrow mind the mix of emotions the sound of those voices stirs in me. What is one to do with the singing of murderers? It is distressing. And when I hear that song, I wake in tears.’

Excerpt from Flowing House, Volume 7 of Dustless

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Re-post

Song, “The Pretty Soldier Boy”

I am just a jahzig girl.
My village is called Alone.
Drummers drumming, flags unfurled
they came from the Forbidden Zone.
And he was a pretty soldier boy,
made for kisses and for joy,
and he said, Now come with me
to the Heart of Eternity –
the Heart of Eternity.

I followed them, the column long,
in summer on the dusty roads.
We walked in a trail of wheels and songs
carrying our loads.
For he was a pretty soldier boy
made for kisses and for joy,
and he said, Soon you will see
the Heart of Eternity –
the Heart of Eternity.

LuinShar, oh LuinShar
the city of a thousand towers
and of imperial powers
where moonlight on the Sacred Tower
burns down all our human hours
to the sudden moment of a falling star
gliding over LuinShar.

For weeks we marched over the plains,
at night upon the endless roads
he bound me up with such soft chains
I carried a precious load.
He was such a pretty soldier boy
made for kisses, made for joy,
and so we laid beneath a dusty tree
in the Heart of Eternity –
the Heart of Eternity.

I grew sad in LuinShar
for the world of orphans we made there.
But he would never make a father
or care about another’s care.
For he was a pretty soldier boy
made for kisses and for joy,
and left us under autumn trees
at the Heart of Eternity –
the Heart of Eternity.

LuinShar, oh LuinShar
the city of a thousand towers
and of imperial powers
where moonlight on the Sacred Tower
burns down all our human hours
to the sudden moment of a falling star
gliding over LuinShar.

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N  O  T  E  S

jahzig |  Meaning, roughly, “peasant”

Forbidden Zone | Buffer zone, created to protect the Western from the Eastern Lands

Heart of Eternity / LuinShar | LuinShar is the great central capital city of the Empire of the Western Lands. (Luin means “city”, and Shar means “tower”: LuinShar is thus also known as “the City of Towers”. Another name for Shar is “the Heart of Eternity”.

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RE-POST | Originally posted November 2013

Of the three killing acts

Lord Akzasosan is performing SeriaYi, the formal recounting of an episode from one’s life

‘…I don’t know. Lord Marsodor, my master of SenZatsu, the art of the killing edge, had told me, as I have recalled, that of the three acts of killing, killing itself is simple. This is RoMayZine philosophy: they have a different understanding. In one sense, it seems true: killing a man is simple. The metal enters him and exits him; and between the zuth entering and exiting, the man turns from flesh to dust. It can take an instant. But Master Marsodor also said that the first and third killing acts are complex, difficult. I have always supposed that the first act of killing is the will to kill, an act inseparable from the events leading up to the simple act itself. The nature of the third killing act – the act that follows the killing – is perhaps the most enigmatic and strange: after a killing, what action can you take? Of this, the third killing act, my Master did not speak.’

 Excerpt from Flowing House, Volume 7 of Dustless

Convict songs

‘…Many of the convict songs were of a low sentiment, impure and ribald; but some, slower ballads or laments, had a kind of base beauty. I have heard a choir of convicts, in a lumber camp in the Central Chun sector, singing in the evening: there was such a terrible sorrow about the song, and the voices, I was unable to listen for long.

When human voices are raised in song sometimes, the word bursts, and the world seems to melt into a state one cannot understand. But even now, gifted by the ancestors with my return to walk again under pure skies, sometimes, in dreams, I hear those deep voices singing, out in the forest as the sun went down. I am unable to encompass with my narrow mind the mix of emotions the sound of those voices stirs in me. What is one to do with the singing of murderers? It is distressing. And when I hear that song, I wake in tears.’

Excerpt from Flowing House, Volume 7 of Dustless