Költészet napja 2012

Boredom on a canvas of blue

If you wonder ‘bout the road not taken,
You walk a path of fools forsaken.

Cold winds whisper songs of sorrow,
Naught of joy will bring the ‘morrow,

Shadows jape with a voice so lovely,
“If you’re a Lord, than why so lonely?”

Burn your hope in Melancholy,
Fear alone is your god so holy,

A plainly painted canvas of blue,
Another day shall pass or two,

No more fear, no love, no passion,
Boredom is your last companion.

Attila


Kék alapon unalmas

Ülök a kis szobában egymagam
A lámpánál zizeg egy éjjeli bogár
Most végre sercen egy utolsót, s tovább
Már nem akasztja meg tollam

Az asztalon egy ív papír
Oly kék, mint vihar után az ég
Vagy mint a Mari néni köténye, és még
Körben ceruza, hegyező, radír

... A rajz már majdnem kész, a baj csak az
Hogy ha kinézek az ablakomon
Nem látok be senki máshoz, s a padon
Sem ül épp, ki modellnek alkalmas

Hát radírt ragadok, keresek új témát
Míg a papír el nem szakad, lehet
Míg valaki fel nem csönget, ahányszor kell
Az életem annyiszor rajzolom át.

Marci

Heroes

What many people don’t understand about wars in the ancient times is that when a soldier killed a civilian abroad, there was not always a state that could call this an act of war and answer with a retaliation of an army, as it would be the case in modern times. There weren’t even independent bodies of news reports available to rely on regarding the standing of international affairs. And in general, human life was worth the strength of their arm or the cunning of their intellect.
If an army big or small was knocking on your door you would often be faced with the option of cooperation or death.
In circumstances like this, it was not unheard of that armies would grow in power while advancing trough enemy lands, by assimilating the strongest of the population to their ranks, or by luring the neighbors into join forces with the promise of an easy victory and subsequent looting.
The loyalty of soldiers was of a very volatile nature, where the mercenaries of yesterday would gladly put down their arms, or even join forces with the opposing force if the outcome of a battle was looking dire.
War itself was waged on a personal level where the charisma of the leader could be of more importance than the actual tactical skills or the resources available to the state.
On rare occasions leaders would rise from the ranks, who had the ability to rally their troops for their cause on a long term basis, and secure a force that was willing to sacrifice their lives for them. They would than advance through distant lands, and build an ever increasing army on the basis of this core.
While industrial age wars are decided by the productivity and technological advancement of a state, and military structure of their armed corps, where the individual soldier is a mere instrument of death without the freedom of choice to choose sides on a day to day basis, the soldiers of the antic were adventurers living a form of life that was from a broader perspective just as complete as that of a merchant or a farmer.
In many cases the funding of even the greatest armies of their times were dependent on occasional looting, ransom, bribes and gold from the enemies of the enemy. The states of Carthage, Greece, Rome and so on... were themselves afraid of their military, and with good reason. The military coup was a quite established way of coming to power. Governments, as far as they even existed wanted to maximize the security provided by their military, but minimize the power of their elected leaders to prevent the risk of being overthrown by them.
Only by counting in this factor of a lack of nationalism, and the not so absolute support of the homeland, can we understand the unbelievable achievements, and the almost inevitable sudden falls of the few great personalities of the distant past.

Black_March

Swordplay

The Knights

They were only pit fighters.
The fearsome collection of former fighting slaves made indifferent guards at best. Speed and
strength and ferocity they had, and some skill at arms as well, but blood games were poor training for
knights. In the pits their foes were announced with horns and drums, and after the battle was
done and won the victors could have their wounds bound up and quaff some milk of the poppy for the
pain, knowing that the threat was past and they were free to drink and feast and whore until the next
fight. But the battle was never truly done for a knight of the Kingsguard. Threats came from everywhere
and nowhere, at any time of day or night. No trumpets announced the foe: vassals, servants, friends,
brothers, sons, even wives, any of them might have knives concealed beneath their cloaks and murder
hidden in their hearts. For every hour of fighting, a Kingsguard knight spent ten thousand hours
watching, waiting, standing silent in the shadows. Pit fighters were already growing bored
and restive with their new duties, and bored men were lax, slow to react.

The Preperation

The water, when it came, was only lukewarm, but Selmy lingered in the bath until it had grown
cold and scrubbed his skin till it was raw. Clean as he had ever been, he rose, dried himself, and clad
himself in whites. Stockings, smallclothes, silken tunic, padded jerkin, all fresh-washed and bleached.
Over that he donned the armor that the queen had given him as a token of her esteem. The mail was
gilded, finely wrought, the links as supple as good leather, the plate enameled, hard as ice and bright as
new-fallen snow. His dagger went on one hip, his long-sword on the other, hung from a white leather
belt with golden buckles. Last of all he took down his long white cloak and fastened it about his
shoulders.
The helm he left upon its hook. The narrow eye slit limited his vision, and he needed to be able
to see for what was to come. The halls of the castle were dark at night, and foes could come at you
from either side. Besides, though the ornate dragon’s wings that adorned the helm were splendid to
look upon, they could too easily catch a sword or axe. He would leave them for his next tourney if the
Gods should grant him one.

Armed and armored, the old knight waited, sitting in the gloom of his small chamber adjoining
the queen’s apartments. The faces of all the kings that he had served and failed floated before him in
the darkness, and the faces of the brothers who had served beside him in the Kingsguard as well. He
wondered how many of them would have done what he was about to do. Some, surely. But not all.
Outside the pyramid, it began to rain. Ser Barristan sat along in the dark, listening. It sounds like tears,
he thought. It sounds like dead kings, weeping. Then it was time to go.

The Confrontation

It was still a good few moments before the King emerged yawning, knotting the sash that closed his robe.
The robe was green satin, richly worked with pearls and silver thread. Under it the king was quite naked.
That was good. Naked men felt vulnerable and were less inclined to acts of suicidal heroism.

...

“He is a killer but not a poisoner.” Ser Barristan moved closer to the king. “Are you the
Harpy?” This time he put his hand on the hilt of his longsword. “Tell me true, and I promise you shall
have a swift, clean death.”
“You presume too much, ser,” said Hizdahr. “I am done with these questions, and with you. You
are dismissed from my service. Leave Meereen at once and I will let you live.”
“If you are not the Harpy, give me his name.” Ser Barristan pulled his sword from the scabbard.
Its sharp edge caught the light from the brazier, became a line of orange fire.
Hizdahr broke. “Khrazz!” he shrieked, stumbling backwards toward his bedchamber. “Khrazz!
Khrazz!”


The fight

Ser Barristan heard a door open, somewhere to his left. He turned in time to see Khrazz emerge
from behind a tapestry. He moved slowly, still groggy from sleep, but his weapon of choice was in his
hand: a Dothraki arakh, long and curved. A slasher’s sword, made to deliver deep, slicing cuts from
horseback. A murderous blade against half-naked foes, in the pit or on the battlefield. But here at close
quarters, the arakh’s length would tell against it, and Barristan Selmy was clad in plate and mail.
“I am here for Hizdahr,” the knight said. “Throw down your steel and stand aside, and no harm
need come to you.”
Khrazz laughed. “Old man. I will eat your heart.” The two men were of a height, but Khrazz was
two stone heavier and forty years younger, with pale skin, dead eyes, and a crest of bristly red-black hair
that ran from his brow to the base of his neck.
“Then come,” said Barristan the Bold. Khrazz came.
For the first time all day, Selmy felt certain. This is what I was made for, he thought. The dance,
the sweet steel song, a sword in my hand and a foe before me.
The pit fighter was fast, blazing fast, as quick as any man Ser Barristan had ever fought. In those
big hands, the arakh became a whistling blur, a steel storm that seemed to come at the old knight from
three directions at once. Most of the cuts were aimed at his head. Khrazz was no fool. Without a helm,
Selmy was most vulnerable above the neck.
He blocked the blows calmly, his longsword meeting each slash and turning it aside. The blades
rang and rang again. Ser Barristan retreated. On the edge of his vision, he saw the cupbearers watching
with eyes as big and white as chicken eggs. Khrazz cursed and turned a high cut into a low one, slipping
past the old knight’s blade for once, only to have his blow scrape uselessly off a white steel greave.
Selmy’s answering slash found the pit fighter’s left shoulder, parting the fine linen to bite the flesh
beneath. His yellow tunic began to turn pink, then red.
“Only cowards dress in iron,” Khrazz declared, circling. No one wore armor in the fighting pits. It
was blood the crowds came for: death, dismemberment, and shrieks of agony, the music of the scarlet
sands.
Ser Barristan turned with him. “This coward is about to kill you, ser.” The man was no knight,
but his courage had earned him that much courtesy. Khrazz did not know how to fight a man in armor.
Ser Barristan could see it in his eyes: doubt, confusion, the beginnings of fear. The pit fighter came on
again, screaming this time, as if sound could slay his foe where steel could not. The arakh slashed low,
high, low again.
Selmy blocked the cuts at his head and let his armor stop the rest, whilst his own blade opened
the pit fighter’s cheek from ear to mouth, then traced a raw red gash across his chest. Blood welled from
Khrazz’s wounds. That only seemed to make him wilder. He seized the brazier with his off hand and
flipped it, scattering embers and hot coals at Selmy’s feet. Ser Barristan leapt over them. Khrazz slashed
at his arm and caught him, but the arakh could only chip the hard enamel before it met the steel below.

“In the pit that would have taken your arm off, old man.”
“We are not in the pit.”
“Take off that armor!”
“It is not too late to throw down your steel. Yield.”
“Die,” spat Khrazz … but as he lifted his arakh, its tip grazed one of the wall hangings and hung.
That was all the chance Ser Barristan required. He slashed open the pit fighter’s belly, parried the arakh
as it wrenched free, then finished Khrazz with a quick thrust to the heart as the pit fighter’s entrails
came sliding out like a nest of greasy eels.
Blood and viscera stained the king’s silk carpets. Selmy took a step back. The longsword in his
hand was red for half its length. Here and there the carpets had begun to smolder where some of the
scattered coals had fallen. He could hear poor Qezza sobbing. “Don’t be afraid,” the old knight said. “I
mean you no harm, child. I want only the king.”
He wiped his sword clean on a curtain and stalked into the bedchamber, where he found
Hizdahr zo Loraq, Fourteenth of His Noble Name, hiding behind a tapestry and whimpering. “Spare me,”
he begged. “I do not want to die.”
“Few do. Yet all men die, regardless.” Ser Barristan sheathed his sword and pulled Hizdahr to his
feet. “Come. I will escort you to a cell.” By now, the Brazen Beasts should have disarmed Steelskin. “You
will be kept a prisoner until the queen returns. If nothing can be proved against you, you will not come
to harm. You have my word as a knight.” He took the king’s arm and led him from the bedchamber,
feeling strangely light-headed, almost drunk. I was a Kingsguard. What am I now?

The human psyche is like a Bugatti Veyron

They were browsing through cloths in a retail store. She picked out a few items, and asked for an opinion, or he just stood there feeling useless while she looked at the selection silently. Both of them were totally oblivious of the gravity of the moment.
This has to be an activity everybody is fairly familiar with.
This time however a strange thought occurred to him. He thought that that other girl, she used to look for different kinds of cloths. She wasn’t prettier, she wasn’t funnier or more suitable but damn she had a different requirement for her wardrobe.
However stupid this may seem to you, (Considering that pretty much everyone has a slightly different taste in dresses.) he became seriously bothered. Now he was convinced that shopping or being together in any way with this girl is senseless.
How blind was he not to notice before, that she used her telephone to write massages, something she didn’t use to do.
Preoccupied by his uncertainty they walked along the street chatting. He made a stupid remark that was supposed to be funny, but it fell flat because of the lack of effort. To his surprise, he still managed to score a laugh with it. It was obviously a courtesy laugh. She would almost never humor him with a courtesy laugh. The two girls were separate human beings, in small details they were unlike each other as anyone else would have. But he began to process the details as faults, and soon enough it degraded the value of this girl in his eyes.
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I have often wondered how the past experience with a girl may ever interfere with your ability to enjoy the company of another. (Other then of course the practice of comparison.)
Settling for subpar after experiencing superb WILL leave a sour taste in your mouth, there is no controversy there, but there are countless chronicles of a man being unhappy at the side of a very attractive woman, simply because he had some kind of history with a different but equally attractive other person.
This has baffled me, totally unrealistic I thought, just as stories of love have baffled me when I was a teenager.
************
But sooner or later every one of us is confronted with the simple truth the human body has evolved over millions of years not to satisfy our needs to be happy, but to excel at survival and reproduction.
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From the viewpoint of reproduction the best strategy is to look for the most attractive women for sex, with no other specifications. Men are notoriously attracted to anything with a great body on it. Compared to women they seem to be superficial in their search of a partner. Simply to maximize their chances to pass on their genes.
A human child is quite an effort to raise however, so nature required a way to turn the polygamist male into caring fathers (who take care of both the mother and the child during pregnancy, and until the child can care for himself), in the event that he successfully found a mate.
We are hardwired to love and feel affection to the one specific person we are sleeping with, and no one else, but only for a set period of time.
************
Birth control and a society where relations change at astronomical speeds were not present at our evolutional period.
Breaking up nowadays often happens earlier than expected by our bodies.
************
Being turned down by a woman is almost painless. You brush it off, and go on with your life. Breaking up with someone while you are still in love with them can seriously hurt you. (Yeah I know, I’m a genius, now go and read on.)
You have not been provided with the option to manually turn off feelings that are uncomfortable to you.
************
The human psyche is like a Bugatti Veyron driven by a fairly intelligent monkey. Unbelievably powerful, with hardly any control, that only very rarely, mostly randomly functions at its full potential.
************
This is a fault in the system. Something evolution hasn’t prepared you for. You may have youth or strength, health, resources at your disposal and adequate options to call upon, but you just sit on your ass and sink into self-pity. Pathetic. It does motivate to write however…

Life as we know it

It is our body that is responsible for what we are. Mortality, hunger and pleasure derive from the physical form.
Ritualized and strictly monitored as sports are, they are the true form of social equity. On its platform you will only ever be judged based on your success, and everyone plays the same game. Strategy, precision, athletics and grace form the bases of a social event that unites all aspects of life as we know it.
“Use your body; you will never have a more powerful tool at your disposal.”
The tricks it is capable of are enough to keep you learning till you have no more time to learn.
Play and enjoy music, as it in itself is wonder how rhythm and melody produces pleasure. It seems controversial that it is impossible to program a machine that writes music, as it basically is just a row of numbers and notes. It however has been the overwhelming experience. And why on earth does a specific melody give rise to a very specific feeling, unifying in such a way all humans?
Trough rigorous training and dedication gymnasts will show you the boundaries of our society’s learning curve perhaps, but do not think for a minute that all possibilities have been discovered.
Above it all sits the main computer, the brain, more powerful than anything humans will ever create. There is actually a rather long thesis about the concept that higher intelligence cannot be created described in the book GEB (Gödel Escher Bach). It proposes the idea that any artificial intelligence is ultimately caped by the intelligence of its creator, but even that is highly unlikely to be reachable in practical terms.
The sensors that provide feedback from your surroundings and your own body can be the source of joy with some experience. (And as a social creature you can even benefit from the experience of others. Countless professions like chefs and masseurs are the proof.)
It has been said that everything in life that is beautiful is free. Only the boring logistics cost money an recourses.
*****************
My love for the wonder of life has been my first conscious decision about anything important…the second being the determination to do anything to improve or at least to preserve the quality of it.
Of course I am greatly unsatisfied by the events taking place in the world today, and the total lack of improvement in pollution control. It is one thing that natural selection and thus evolution has been in most aspects disabled, but it is a totally different problem that we harm our own bodies to an extant where it cannot function properly anymore, by consuming impossible amounts of different poisons in small but ever increasing portions.
At least I thought, every new generation has the benefit of the almost perfect genetic code, and they can hope to live in a better world that may slowly be cleaned up by its inhabitants.
However I have been shocked to learn, that this in fact is not the case. Actually the long term damage of hazardous material has been proven to carry on and have a negative effect even on your offspring. A negative effect currently only viewed as a danger to your health, but surely it may also affect your brain.
I foresee a bleak future where the human race is preoccupied with its petty economical brawls while it slowly sinks in its own filth. Everyone gets affected by the quality of air, and the pureness of water, so as they degrade all human beings become more and more unhealthy. And unnoticed, unmonitored even the greatest among us will become ever so slightly… less great.
The beauty of brain damage is that by the time you notice it, it’s always too late, so if there ever was a global cause of it, we will all become stupid before we could even start doing something against it.
Now how much does a possible future of humanity disturb you, where we manage to undo the process that has not been possible anywhere else in the known universe, and has took millions of years here, in the time span of mere centuries. (Starting from the industrial revolution.)
I mean of course, it’s quite an impressive feat, but I would rather be proud of something else…