Raymond Stantz (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gone_byebye) wrote2005-11-01 08:39 pm
gone_byebye) wrote2005-11-01 08:39 pm
Rho
Fourteen years of every kind of wonder and horror the galaxy can throw at the third rock from Sol is a long time. Four days of being challenged, questioned, prodded, and reprimanded at every turn, sometimes, can be even longer.
There's a breakdown on the runway and the timeless flights are gone
I'm a year ahead of myself these days and I'm locomotive strong
My city spread like cannon fire in a yellow nervous state
I can't cut the ties that bind me to horoscopes and fate
He's been thinking. You can't not, after a sequence like that. It would take a deader man by far to avoid it. Every year there's been a Christmas, and every Christmas there's been a questioning, and every time, the answer's been the same. Yes. Keep doing it. It's worth it.
This ain't Christmas.
And I won't break and I won't bend
But someday soon we'll sail away
To innocence and the bitter end
The letter helped. The letter helped a lot. In its own way, so did the argument with Dr. Venkman, if you could call it an argument. It's one thing to instinctively feel why you made a decision, but instinct's a lousy guide sometimes, and you have to let the brain have its say. If you didn't you'd still be grubbing around in the mud, the same as every scavenger ancestor of the human species.
And I won't break and I won't bend
And with the last breath we ever take
We're gonna get back to the simple life again
Aughra had been another story. That... well... he had no answers there. So she'd said look, and see, and what do you see. Which was harder than it looked, not to put too much of a pun on it.
When we break out of this blindfold
I'm gonna take you from this place
What did he see? People. Tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions- no. No, that wasn't right, not really; what he saw was four people, four particular people, and while he knew the rest were there it was those four that mattered. Catherine. Alex. Joey. Egon. Two his age, his generation; the others...
Until we're free from this ball and chain
I'm still hard behind the eight
The boys would grow up into the world he was trying to preserve. What would happen if one of them turned out to be like him? Attracted the notice of someone like Raj, or like K or Zedd? Would anything be any different? Were they going to inherit any kind of a world at all? That was the problem... for all that Aughra was right, that he moved in the kind of shadows and silence nobody ought to ever have to live through, taking that shadow away wasn't going to help.
My city beats like hammered steel
On a shallow cruel rock
Sometimes the light blinds. The darkness isn't any kind of place to stay, but the light can blind and the sun can burn. Something has to temper that if the seedling's going to grow into a tree without being scorched into uselessness. The dose makes the poison, and the finest natural fertilizer is, so far as he knows, bull shit.
If we could walk proud after midnight
We'd never have to stop
Humanity's not ready for the Galactics, but the gap's too great to be bridged without help. If they had someone who could start slipping that help to them, one at a time or two or three or hell, even four- without being noticed- here, there, anywhere on the globe, the right person at the right time, who would remember what they needed to know without remembering where they got it from or why-
Well, you can do a lot with tactics like that. You can change a whole world, if you really try.
And I won't break and I won't bend
But someday soon we'll sail away
To innocence and the bitter end
And I won't break and I won't bend
And with the last breath we ever take...
And hey, who knows. Maybe one day, he'll get to go home.
We're gonna get back to the simple life again.
Italic text is the song "Simple Life", music by Elton John, lyrics by Bernie Taupin.
There's a breakdown on the runway and the timeless flights are gone
I'm a year ahead of myself these days and I'm locomotive strong
My city spread like cannon fire in a yellow nervous state
I can't cut the ties that bind me to horoscopes and fate
He's been thinking. You can't not, after a sequence like that. It would take a deader man by far to avoid it. Every year there's been a Christmas, and every Christmas there's been a questioning, and every time, the answer's been the same. Yes. Keep doing it. It's worth it.
This ain't Christmas.
And I won't break and I won't bend
But someday soon we'll sail away
To innocence and the bitter end
The letter helped. The letter helped a lot. In its own way, so did the argument with Dr. Venkman, if you could call it an argument. It's one thing to instinctively feel why you made a decision, but instinct's a lousy guide sometimes, and you have to let the brain have its say. If you didn't you'd still be grubbing around in the mud, the same as every scavenger ancestor of the human species.
And I won't break and I won't bend
And with the last breath we ever take
We're gonna get back to the simple life again
Aughra had been another story. That... well... he had no answers there. So she'd said look, and see, and what do you see. Which was harder than it looked, not to put too much of a pun on it.
When we break out of this blindfold
I'm gonna take you from this place
What did he see? People. Tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions- no. No, that wasn't right, not really; what he saw was four people, four particular people, and while he knew the rest were there it was those four that mattered. Catherine. Alex. Joey. Egon. Two his age, his generation; the others...
Until we're free from this ball and chain
I'm still hard behind the eight
The boys would grow up into the world he was trying to preserve. What would happen if one of them turned out to be like him? Attracted the notice of someone like Raj, or like K or Zedd? Would anything be any different? Were they going to inherit any kind of a world at all? That was the problem... for all that Aughra was right, that he moved in the kind of shadows and silence nobody ought to ever have to live through, taking that shadow away wasn't going to help.
My city beats like hammered steel
On a shallow cruel rock
Sometimes the light blinds. The darkness isn't any kind of place to stay, but the light can blind and the sun can burn. Something has to temper that if the seedling's going to grow into a tree without being scorched into uselessness. The dose makes the poison, and the finest natural fertilizer is, so far as he knows, bull shit.
If we could walk proud after midnight
We'd never have to stop
Humanity's not ready for the Galactics, but the gap's too great to be bridged without help. If they had someone who could start slipping that help to them, one at a time or two or three or hell, even four- without being noticed- here, there, anywhere on the globe, the right person at the right time, who would remember what they needed to know without remembering where they got it from or why-
Well, you can do a lot with tactics like that. You can change a whole world, if you really try.
And I won't break and I won't bend
But someday soon we'll sail away
To innocence and the bitter end
And I won't break and I won't bend
And with the last breath we ever take...
And hey, who knows. Maybe one day, he'll get to go home.
We're gonna get back to the simple life again.
Italic text is the song "Simple Life", music by Elton John, lyrics by Bernie Taupin.