DPP: Polls and pictures and poetry ...

[reginaspina.livejournal.com]

The results of yesterday's highly unscientific poll regarding Kara/Lee kisses are a tie between the hot, hot making out of EoJ and the passionate kissing in the brig scene. (Five votes for each; only two for "Scar" as a favorite - which surprised me) and a couple of "Unfinished Business" (it was the lighting); and only one for "Home", which was their first kiss.) I guess we shippers are torn between the pure carnality of EoJ and the more fraught kissing of "Six of One" or something like that.

Moreover, ddt73 kindly provided a graphic of all the onscreen kisses between Kara and Lee, and sci_fi_shipper and taragel provided some moving pictures of kissing from The Oath and EoJ as well as from Scar, so I hope you'll revisit the comments if you missed them yesterday.

Now that I've polled you, I'll reveal my own preferences: I think of all the kissing, I love the "Home" kiss the best, because it was so unexpected and so spontaneous and because things were still sort of hopeful for Kara and Lee at the point. And my second choice is the final kiss in "Scar", just after Kara metaphorically slams the door shut on Kara/Lee (and slaps Lee) and just before she literally slams the door - it was, as indigo419 pointed out, one of those moments that encapsulated their troubled and ever changing relationship. As for when Lee ought to have kissed Kara, but didn't, I volunteer her return in "He that Believeth in Me." I think it would have been a wonderful callback to "Home" if he's just planted a big one on her right there and then. On the other hand, I guess the difference in "HtBiM" is that Lee knows he loves her at this point, so it wouldn't just be a spontaneous expression of his subconscious. Hmmm!

***

Just so this post isn't totally text, a little collage of some of my favorite pilot-y things:


And now for the poetry part of this post. In the last five years, I seem to read a lot of things with pilot-colored glasses, and every so often I will come across a poem that to me, perfectly describes the relationship between Kara and Lee.


Like moon-dark, like brown water you escape,
O laughing mouth, O sweet uplifted lips.
Within the peering brain old ghosts take shape;
You flame and wither as the white foam slips
Back from the broken wave: sometimes a start,
A gesture of the hands, a way you own
Of bending that smooth head above your heart,—
Then these are varied, then the dream is gone.

Oh, you are too much mine and flesh of me
To seal upon the brain, who in the blood
Are so intense a pulse, so swift a flood
Of beauty, such unceasing instancy.
Dear unimagined brow, unvisioned face,
All beauty has become your dwelling place.
- Archibald MacLeish, Two Poems from the War

Are there any sentences, phrases, poems, that strike you guys as the perfect descriptors of our doomed but oh-so-fascinating couple? Any other pairs that remind you of them strikingly? Or are they unique in your experience?

Comments

[wand3rlust.livejournal.com]

Ok, I hate being first commenter haha, but oh well, I don't know when else I'll have time to pop back by until this evening.

Pilots are totally unique in my experience - and I've been shipping since I was about 14. Though like many of you have pointed out before it's very very rare to get *this* involved in a ship. The only other couple I've shipped this much was Eowyn/Faramir and they were for completely different reasons than Kara/Lee.

Lovely poem by the way! I admit I don't read poetry as much as I'd like, but I could quote you song lyrics all day long.I won't do that, but I will leave you with a verse of a song that's on my mind for them a lot lately because I'm using it in a project.

Natalie Merchang - "My Skin"
♪Well is it dark enough /Can you see me / Do you want me / Can you reach me / Oh, I'm leaving / You better shut your mouth / And hold your breath /And kiss me now / And catch your death / Oh, I mean this♪

poetry, you say?

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

There are actually two sort of connected Margaret Atwood poems that remind me of them, "Variation on the Word Love" (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/variations-on-the-word-love/) being more from Kara's perspective in my mind; and "Variation on the Word Sleep" (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/variation-on-the-word-sleep/) makes me think of Lee's POV of the whole Maelstrom storyline.

favorite lines:

Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do.

...

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me...

Re: poetry, you say?

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

Two of my favorite poems ever, and utterly perfect for pilots.

(In fact, I was going to look for Variations On the Word Love just now, but you beat me to it.)

Re: poetry, you say?

[wand3rlust.livejournal.com]

wow very nice! I especially love the first. :)

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

I think of all the kissing, I love the "Home" kiss the best, because it was so unexpected and so spontaneous and because things were still sort of hopeful for Kara and Lee at the point.

i love so much this comment.

i'll think and come back with my to cents about today's question

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

As for when Lee ought to have kissed Kara, but didn't, I volunteer her return in "He that Believeth in Me." I think it would have been a wonderful callback to "Home" if he's just planted a big one on her right there and then. On the other hand, I guess the difference in "HtBiM" is that Lee knows he loves her at this point, so it wouldn't just be a spontaneous expression of his subconscious. Hmmm!

It wouldn't have been spontaneous in the same way, but it would have been such a wonderful show of how little Lee cared about anything but Kara at that moment. How glad he was that she was back and how much he loved her.

[ecstaticdance.livejournal.com]

It would have been, but I don't think he was there at that point. There was too much between them and around him and her and just... I don't know. I just don't think it would have fit.

He should have kissed her on Colonial Day when she wore the Hot Blue Dress. Crazy, nervous boy.

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

He should have kissed her on Colonial Day when she wore the Hot Blue Dress. Crazy, nervous boy.

A Colonial Day kiss would have changed everything, maybe. Well, I think to think. ;)

MOAR POEMS, YAY

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

I have loved reading the poems everyone has shared! Thank you! I have two, one I shared long ago on this comm and the other I haven't shared before. Both are very long and I have cut them down to focus only on the passages that seem most strikingly appropriate for pilots.

Excerpts from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," by William Carlos Williams:

I cannot say
that I have gone to hell
for your love
but often
found myself there
in your pursuit.
I do not like it
and wanted to be
in heaven. Hear me out.
Do not turn away.
I have learned much in my life
from books
and out of them
about love.
Death
is not the end of it.

It has been
for you and me
as one who watches a storm
come in over the water.
We have stood
from year to year
before the spectacle of our lives
with joined hands.
The storm unfolds.
Lightning
plays about the edges of the clouds.
The sky to the north
is placid,
blue in the afterglow
as the storm piles up.
It is a flower
that will soon reach
the apex of its bloom.
We danced,
in our minds,
and read a book together.
You remember?
It was a serious book.

The storm
has proven abortive
but we remain
after the thoughts it roused
to
re-cement our lives.
It is the mind
the mind
that must be cured
short of death's
intervention,
and the will becomes again
a garden. The poem
is complex and the place made
in our lives
for the poem.
Silence can be complex too,
but you do not get far
with silence.

Begin again.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

This one says a lot to me about Lee's perspective on Kara's death, return, and final disappearance.

Excerpts from "Requiem for a Friend," by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell:

I have my dead, and I have let them go,
and was amazed to see them so contented,
so soon at home in being dead, so cheerful,
so unlike their reputation.

Only you
return; brush past me, loiter, try to knock
against something, so that the sound reveals
your presence.

What makes you read the contours of your body
like the lines engraved inside a palm, so that
I cannot see them now except as fate?
Come into the candlelight. I’m not afraid
to look the dead in the face.
Don’t be frightened if I understand it now;
it’s rising in me, ah, I’m trying to grasp it,
must grasp it, even if I die of it. Must grasp
that you are here. As a blind man grasps an object,
I feel your fate, although I cannot name it.

I would like to fling my voice out like a cloth
over the fragments of your death, and keep
pulling at it until it is torn to pieces,
and all my words would have to walk around
shivering, in the tatters of that voice;
if lament were enough. For this suffering has lasted
far too long; none of us can bear it; it is too heavy –
As little as a captain can hold the carved
Nike facing outward from his ship’s prow
when the lightness of her godhead suddenly
lifts her up, into the bright sea-wind:
so little can one of us call back the woman
who, now no longer seeing us, walks on
along the narrow strip of her existence
as though by miracle, in perfect safety –
unless, that is, he wishes to do wrong.

For this is wrong, if anything is wrong:
not to enlarge the freedom of a love
with all the inner freedom one can summon.
We need, in love, to practice only this:
letting each other go. For holding on
comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

You knew so much of all this, you were able
to do so much; you passed through life so open
to all things, like an early morning. I know:
for love means being alone;
and artists in their work sometimes intuit
that they must keep transforming, where they love.
You were far beyond all fame; were almost
invisible; had withdrawn your beauty, softly,
as one would lower a brightly-colored flag
on the gray morning after a holiday.
You had just one desire: a years-long work –
which was not finished; was somehow never finished.

Hear me; help me. We can so easily
slip back from what we have struggled to attain,
abruptly, into a life we never wanted;
can find that we are trapped, as in a dream,
and die there, without ever waking up.
Anyone who has lifted
his blood into a years-long work may find
that he can’t sustain it, the force of gravity
is irresistible, and it falls back, worthless.
Help me.

Tell me, must I travel? Did you leave
some thing behind, some place, that cannot bear
your absence? Must I set out for a country
you never saw, although it was as vividly
near to you as your own senses were?

I will sail its rivers, search its valleys, inquire
about its oldest customs; I will stand
for hours, talking with women in their doorways
and watching, while they call their children home.
I will see the way they wrap the land around them
in their ancient work in field and meadow; will ask
to be led before their king; will bribe the priests
to take me to their temple, before the most
powerful of the statues in their keeping,
and to leave me there, shutting the gates behind them.

And only then, when I have learned enough,
I will go and watch the animals, and let
something of their composure slowly glide
into my limbs; will see my own existence
deep in their eyes, which hold me for a while
and let me go, serenely, without judgment.

And fruits: I will buy fruits, and in their sweetness
that country’s earth and sky will live again.
For that is what you understood: ripe fruits.

And that is how I have cherished you – deep inside,
where you put yourself, far away
from all the world.

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

OH, my HEART. This is so beautiful and uncannily perfect.

I love your other choice too. Oh, William C. Williams <3

[nazkey.livejournal.com]

First off, I love all the sepia tones in your picspams bb. Great coloring.

Second, I love poetry, but unfortunately, don't remember any that I could quote. Like wand3rlust says above, I can quote song lyrics for you forever tho. There are way too many to count and for the past year, practically every song I listen to reminds me of pilots, but the two songs that have really punched me in the gut are:

"From Above" by Ben Folds I posted the lyrics on my LJ HERE (http://nazkey.livejournal.com/10850.html)

And this one ... oh my gods this one. I seriously sobbed the first time I heard it.

"The Promise" by Tracy Chapman *coughs* I might be in the middle of writing fic for this one ;-)

If you wait for me then I'll come for you
Although I've traveled far
I always hold a place for you in my heart
If you think of me If you miss me once in awhile
Then I'll return to you
I'll return and fill that space in your heart

Remembering
Your touch
Your kiss
Your warm embrace
I'll find my way back to you

If you'll be waiting
If you dream of me like I dream of you
In a place that's warm and dark
In a place where I can feel the beating of your heart
...

I'll find my way back to you
If you'll be waiting
I've longed for you and I have desired
To see your face your smile
To be with you wherever you are
...

If you'll be waiting
I've longed for you and I have desired
To see your face, your smile
To be with you wherever you are

...

Please say you'll be waiting

Together again
It would feel so good to be
In your arms
Where all my journeys end

If you can make a promise
If it's one that you can keep
I vow to come for you
If you wait for me and say you'll hold
A place for me in your heart.