ysabetwordsmith | Entries tagged with waterjewel

I came across this post about writing what is unreal but true, and it reminded me of a Waterjewel saying: "Some things are real but not true, and some things are true but not real." It's about the different between material things (which can be solid but wrong) and immaterial things (which can be honest but not manifest). If the body and soul don't match, the body is real but the soul is true.

So too, you can write things which are not manifest in this world, but are meaningful and valid.

Don't be distracted by solid things just because they are solid, and don't lose sight of the truth just because it is intangible. Truth is more important than reality.

Current Mood: busy
Crossposts: https://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/5857308.html

While chatting with friends, I had reason to lay out a bit of history. For a long time, my main fantasy world was a place called Hallelaine, and on its southern continent was a desert called the Whispering Sands. It had a bunch of cultures all flung together, some more functional than others.

Once upon a time in the Whispering Sands desert, there was a band called the Bintim Havah, the Daughters of the Wind. Which is to say, "fatherless daughters" who had run off into the wild because they didn't like their life in the tribe. They were sort of traders, sort of bandits, and not exactly anything. There was the one who sewed her snatch closed, and the one who made a saddle out of the tanned hide of her rapist and so on. They had a number of confrontations about gender issues. If a woman arrives pregnant and it's a boy, can she keep it? If so, when does the baby man have to leave the all-female band? Can a man be raped, or only a woman? If someone with a penis announces herself as a woman, is she or is she not? Other deserts dicker over race or religion, this one dickers over gender. Whatever.

One day, some of the Daughters of the Wind agreed with each other, and disagreed with the others, enough to peel off and become a tribe. The Taja, I think they became. And the first thing they did was sit down and throw out EVERYTHING about gender. They took it apart like a wagon in a bad neighborhood. Then they played with the loose parts awhile and agreed on two NEW genders: nurturer and provider. The former contained a lot of things commonly considered feminine, the latter contained a bunch of things commonly considered masculine ... but they were both voluntary and performative. Nobody looked at anyone's crotch and declared their gender on account of it. (Though there was that time they watched a bandit man's actions and decided that since he was acting like a nurturer, he must be one, which confused the hell out of all the bandits. They were right though.) So they went south and settled there.

Couple centuries later, another group hived off and went north, to the Brindled Hills, where they became Waterjewel. They did the same damn thing, only after they were done dismantling everything, they reassembled all the bits into five genders: hrish (masculine), hrin (feminine), hirshn (both), nrish (neuter), and shrin (I'm-not-telling). And none of that was any guarantee what was under the robes: it was statistically likely to match the description, but didn't have to, and could be anything. Waterjewel is a very weird and wonderful tribe, and most everyone else is scared of them.

There's also a bandit tribe that has what they call "the mellifluous gender," with people who can present as masculine or feminine on any given day: but always one or the other, and always day by day, neither switching in the middle nor mixing elements.

For a while, I thought those 8 options pretty much spanned the spectrum of what gender could do. That was back in junior high or early high school though. Since then, I've explored a lot more sex/gender configurations.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Crossposts: https://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/5329485.html

This poem came out of the December 4, 2012 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from catsittingstill. It has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette. This is a poem of the Whispering Sands desert, one of my established settings.

( Read more... )

Gravestone Games

There are games only played by elves,
or humans who live alongside them,
games drawn out of a lifespan
long enough to need practice
for what comes after.

These are the gravestone games
that grownups play to explore
what happens in old age
and the stage after life.

There is washing and dressing
and feeding and cuddling.
These things are familiar
from playing with dolls and raising babies,
but they are different too.

For the one playing elder
it is a chance to relax and be loved,
to be taken care of and not be responsible
for remembering or doing anything just now.
For the one playing caregiver
it is a chance to express affection
with hands and devotion and little details,
not just words as slender as wind.

There are songs that go with the games,
soft as lullabies, for a sleep without waking.

Ride on a white horse
bedecked with pear blossoms,
lie down in the soft sand between rosebushes,
set the stone in its place

and dare to say
some of the things
that are only said after death.

In this instant
they may be true
but they are not quite real:

it is still only a game.

When the time comes,
at the end of days, the players
are prepared to make the change.

The songs are fond and familiar,
the final sleep feels good after so long a waking,
the Bone Horse moves with a grace beyond angels
passing through the Pear Gate between life and afterlife,

and the stones, too,
remember all that has been said
before them, although they remain silent as the dead.

Current Mood: busy

This poem fills another square on my card for the

cottoncandy_bingo fest.

The following poem belongs to my oldest settings, a desert called the Whispering Sands. It's on the southern continent in my main fantasy world, Hallelaine. The inhabitants include a mix of humans and elves, and I have quite a bit of the local language Seshaa worked out. There's a narrow band of greenery along the coast, quite a lot of rocky and sandy barrens in the lowlands, some splendid canyons and hills toward the north, and then the high desert with its open dunes inland. The decadent cities lie along the coast and a few other places; there are important tribes like Waterjewel in the north and the Tazha in the south, plus quite a lot of different bandit tribes. It makes for interesting times.

Fandom: Original (Whispering Sands)
Prompt: Desert
Medium: Poetry
Summary: The desert holds many different kinds of beauty, each with its own name.
Content Notes: This poem features words from a constructed language.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy
Crossposts: http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/2508604.html

Here's a wonderful little collage post about "The Best of Enemies." I love the sizzling chemistry between hero and villain.

My desert language Seshaa has some vocabulary for this ...

duush (noun) – This one is quite exclusively a bandit concept, not known either in Waterjewel nor in decadent regions, and the closest English equivalent is “best enemy.” It’s a concept common to many cultures that place a lot of value on fighting, and it refers to a person you fight with a lot, seeking each other out in battle, always on opposite sides – yet you respect each other, and would miss him terribly if he were killed and you couldn’t fight with him anymore. You bring out the best in each other on the battlefield, which gives you both a chance to go home covered in glory if you’re lucky, and if not, at least to take turns doing so, because you’re about evenly matched in skill level. Somehow or other, Shareem seems to have encountered this term, because I’ve heard hir saying “dear enemy” to gutterfox friends, which is just too close a translation for coincidence.

murzhip (noun) – In bandit use, means “the state of affairs when a man has a woman for a best enemy.” It’s something like “hetero-aggressive,” as the expectation is that best enemies are supposed to be two men. A zorbanniyeh who has a best enemy will almost always choose a man, rather than another woman; but men strongly prefer to contest with each other. So murzhip is frowned upon, almost as much as homosexuality is in other cultures. Men will excuse it by saying such things as, “I couldn’t help it! She was irresistible. She ruined my life.” The related adjective is murzhipil and the adverb is murzhipul.

oymiki (verb) – In Whispering Sands use, means “to sculpt each other” or “to decorate each other.” The cultural connotations are subtle and complex. Bandit men use this as slang for exchanging scars in battle, especially between best enemies; decadents use it similarly for political or economic opponents trading more figurative attacks. Both bandit and decadent women use it to mean helping each other with beautification processes which are less than pleasant. In Waterjewel and Tazha use, it takes on a much gentler meaning, of two people making mutual accommodations as they form a close relationship.

yankilama (noun) – In Waterjewel, means roughly “resonance” or “echo” or “reaction.” This is a thing people share that runs deeper than affinity. Whereas benzesh is a thing between friends, and the basis for a strong friendship or romance, yankilama goes beyond that to suggest that in some way their souls were cut from the same cloth. When these two people come together, something in each of them resonates to the other, the way if you pluck a certain harpstring then certain other strings will sound in sympathy with it. It’s a perceptible hum or vibration, which some people find intensely attractive and others find intolerable – but there is no denying it and no doing away with it, any more than you could scrape off the color of your skin (which doesn’t necessarily stop people from trying). Some do manage to ignore or overlook the sensation, especially the type of people who habitually damp down their emotions; but usually it’s something you can feel the first time you meet. The people may not like each other, may indeed be so alike that they can’t stand each other; or they may be like two nuts in a cluster, barely distinguishable. When their lives touch, they immediately start to entwine, even if both of them are living totally different lifestyles. It’s like setting two pots of mint side by side; they immediately put out runners and start growing together. Then if you want to move them a week later, you have to rip the new shoots out by the roots, and they leave pieces of themselves behind in each other. Lucky people sometimes wind up in a relationship (platonic or erotic) with both yankilama and benzesh, which makes for a very intense and intimate bond. Best enemies often have yankilama between them. People in a love/hate relationship almost always do, hence the come-here-go-away dynamic with Shareem and Amal.

Current Mood: busy
Crossposts: http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/2452275.html

This poem came out of the November 1, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from janetmiles. It was sponsored by Shirley Barrette and Anthony Barrette. The setting is the Whispering Sands desert in my main fantasy world, Hallelaine; and the language in question is called Seshaa, which means roughly "the voice of the desert" or "the sound of wind over sand."

Pranks and Shenanigans

When a bandit lad
empties all the wineskins at a revel
and refills them with vinegar,
that's a prank.

When Waterjewel's best potter
makes a pot from a dozen kinds of clay
just to see if that's possible
and then dances nearly naked through a revel
with the pot balanced on its head,
that's a shenanigan.

The wind carries one word
for these two things:
wayan.

The desert remains
a collage of cultures divided
by a common language.

Current Mood: busy

Pranks and Shenanigans

When a bandit lad
empties all the wineskins at a revel
and refills them with vinegar,
that's a prank.

The wind carries one word
for these two things:
wayan.

The desert remains
a collage of cultures divided
by a common language.

Current Mood: busy

Pranks and Shenanigans

When a bandit lad
empties all the wineskins at a revel
and refills them with vinegar,
that's a prank.

The wind carries one word
for these two things:
wayan.

The desert remains
a collage of cultures divided
by a common language.

Current Mood: busy

Pranks and Shenanigans

When a bandit lad
empties all the wineskins at a revel
and refills them with vinegar,
that's a prank.

The wind carries one word
for these two things:
wayan.

The desert remains
a collage of cultures divided
by a common language.

Current Mood: busy

This poem came out of the May 11, 2010 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from zyngasvryka. It was sponsored by laffingkat as part of the 2010 Holiday Poetry Sale. Season's greetings to all, and many thanks!

zyngasvryka asked about getting students too tired to make mistakes. That happens to be one of the favored teaching methods in Waterjewel, so I pounced on it.

Learning to Relax

-- a Waterjewel poem

Carry the stones up the cliff
until your hands can hardly hold them.
When you climb down again,
your tired fingers will curl perfectly
around the hilt of your sword.

Run through the desert
while the sand swallows your feet
and the sun slowly falls asleep behind you.
When you tumble to the ground,
you will fall flawlessly
as your loose muscles accept the sand's embrace.

Spill the words through your ears
and over your tongue,
hearing without listening,
speaking without meaning,
until thought spirals away into silence.
When you sleep,
your dreams will speak in tongues.

Current Mood: happy

Learning to Relax

-- a Waterjewel poem

Carry the stones up the cliff
until your hands can hardly hold them.
When you climb down again,
your tired fingers will curl perfectly
around the hilt of your sword.

Current Mood: happy

Learning to Relax

-- a Waterjewel poem

Carry the stones up the cliff
until your hands can hardly hold them.
When you climb down again,
your tired fingers will curl perfectly
around the hilt of your sword.

Current Mood: happy

Learning to Relax

-- a Waterjewel poem

Carry the stones up the cliff
until your hands can hardly hold them.
When you climb down again,
your tired fingers will curl perfectly
around the hilt of your sword.

Current Mood: happy

This poem came out of the November 2, 2010 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from siliconshaman and sponsored by fayanora. The poem comes from one of my fantasy settings, the Whispering Sands desert, where the Bone Horse is one of the messengers of death.

The Pear Gate

-- a Whispering Sands khazal

There is a door that cannot be seen from this side of life,
rendered invisible by the thick veils of flesh.

Only when the last verse of poetry falls from your dying lips
into the cupped ears of the Bone Horse kneeling by your bed

will the Pear Gate appear before you in all its glory,
arching high overhead to define the threshold between here and there.

The slim silver-gray trunks hold leaves of jade and petals of pearl,
the perfume of the fruit flowing down as heavy as white honey.

Only when you ride on the back of the Bone Horse
can you reach high enough to pluck the Pears of Paradise.

Taste their sweetness and you will forget the bitterness of mortality,
all of life's regrets washed away at last when you swallow.

There is a door that cannot be seen looking over your shoulder at death,
for it belongs to a threshold unremembered in the light of the Bright Beyond.

Current Mood: busy

The Pear Gate

-- a Whispering Sands khazal

There is a door that cannot be seen from this side of life,
rendered invisible by the thick veils of flesh.

Only when the last verse of poetry falls from your dying lips
into the cupped ears of the Bone Horse kneeling by your bed

will the Pear Gate appear before you in all its glory,
arching high overhead to define the threshold between here and there.

The slim silver-gray trunks hold leaves of jade and petals of pearl,
the perfume of the fruit flowing down as heavy as white honey.

Only when you ride on the back of the Bone Horse
can you reach high enough to pluck the Pears of Paradise.

Taste their sweetness and you will forget the bitterness of mortality,
all of life's regrets washed away at last when you swallow.

There is a door that cannot be seen looking over your shoulder at death,
for it belongs to a threshold unremembered in the light of the Bright Beyond.

Current Mood: busy

The Pear Gate

-- a Whispering Sands khazal

There is a door that cannot be seen from this side of life,
rendered invisible by the thick veils of flesh.

Only when the last verse of poetry falls from your dying lips
into the cupped ears of the Bone Horse kneeling by your bed

will the Pear Gate appear before you in all its glory,
arching high overhead to define the threshold between here and there.

The slim silver-gray trunks hold leaves of jade and petals of pearl,
the perfume of the fruit flowing down as heavy as white honey.

Only when you ride on the back of the Bone Horse
can you reach high enough to pluck the Pears of Paradise.

Taste their sweetness and you will forget the bitterness of mortality,
all of life's regrets washed away at last when you swallow.

There is a door that cannot be seen looking over your shoulder at death,
for it belongs to a threshold unremembered in the light of the Bright Beyond.

Current Mood: busy

I came across this fascinating article today, "The Politics of the Desert Romance." Now of course that title has to grab my attention, because one of my all-time favorite settings is the Whispering Sands desert. This setting shares a lot with our Middle Eastern cultures (historic and modern) but there are enough fundamental differences that it couldn't fairly be called Arabic or Persian or Sumerian, etc. Still, it's a desert culture, and it does rather run to romance plots and subplots, if one defines the term rather loosely in comparison to the mainstream genre. So I couldn't resist making a few comparisons ...

The word “sheik,” originally a term of respect referring to a Muslim religious leader or an elder of a community or family, suddenly took on new connotations of irresistible, ruthless, masterful, and over‐sexualized masculinity in the West—before ending up as a brand of condoms in America by 1931.

Probably the closest parallel in my setting would be Oldren-Asul or "bandit-lord." (The population variously consists of the decadents in the cities, the bandit tribes wandering the desert, plus the Tazha and Waterjewel.) Let's see, irresistible? No, very tempting some of them, but scene sketches to date include resistance. Ruthless? Variable depending on character, with the majority being willing to do anything to protect their tribe. I don't think they qualify as the most ruthless: that would be Khaafid (a decadent ruler) among villains, and certain of the Tazha among the non-villains.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: thoughtful

The word “sheik,” originally a term of respect referring to a Muslim religious leader or an elder of a community or family, suddenly took on new connotations of irresistible, ruthless, masterful, and over‐sexualized masculinity in the West—before ending up as a brand of condoms in America by 1931.

Current Mood: thoughtful

The word “sheik,” originally a term of respect referring to a Muslim religious leader or an elder of a community or family, suddenly took on new connotations of irresistible, ruthless, masterful, and over‐sexualized masculinity in the West—before ending up as a brand of condoms in America by 1931.

Current Mood: thoughtful

The word “sheik,” originally a term of respect referring to a Muslim religious leader or an elder of a community or family, suddenly took on new connotations of irresistible, ruthless, masterful, and over‐sexualized masculinity in the West—before ending up as a brand of condoms in America by 1931.

Current Mood: thoughtful

The Wordsmith's Forge

The Writing & Other Projects of Elizabeth Barrette

What Is True and What Is Real

The Whispering Sands

Poem: "Gravestone Games"

Poem: "The Beauties of the Desert"

Best Enemies

Poem: "Pranks and Shenanigans"

Poem: "Pranks and Shenanigans"

Poem: "Pranks and Shenanigans"

Poem: "Pranks and Shenanigans"

Poem: "Learning to Relax"

Poem: "Learning to Relax"

Poem: "Learning to Relax"

Poem: "Learning to Relax"

Poem: "The Pear Gate"

Poem: "The Pear Gate"

Poem: "The Pear Gate"

Dancing to the Sound of Shattered Stereotypes

Dancing to the Sound of Shattered Stereotypes

Dancing to the Sound of Shattered Stereotypes

Dancing to the Sound of Shattered Stereotypes

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