The War on Terror Goes To Tablestan!

maggiebloome: this conversation has made me look at your username [Plate tectonics, what has it done for you lately?] and think of dinner plates
tryx_: lol
tryx_: dinner plates just gradually move around your table to form continents
maggiebloome: and sometimes they crack and little geysers of hot sauce come out
tryx_: hehe, exactly!
tryx_: we must publish our theories of dinner plate tectonics
tryx_: it would revolutionise Dinner mechanics
maggiebloome: but people trying to sail round the dinner table would still fall off the edge
tryx_: to be eaten by the dragons below (ie my dog)
maggiebloome: hahaha
maggiebloome: that's a good point, you never know what your dog has eaten\
maggiebloome: or who
tryx_: a race of miniture people living among my dinner would not surprise me too much
maggiebloome: it's like in hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy, that fleet of tiny tiny alien ships that got eaten by a small dog
tryx_: hahaha yes
maggiebloome: they probably worship the salt shaker
tryx | Plate tectonics, what has it done for you lately? says:
i have a salt grinder ^_^
maggiebloome: oooh
maggiebloome: maybe they dance round it...
tryx_: does that make my pepper mill a weapon of mass destruction?
maggiebloome: damn, Bush should've invaded your kitchen!
tryx_: and the war against a small Australian Kitchen rages on
tryx_: the US have deployed an additional 20k troops, and reinforcements of ketchup
maggiebloome: unfortunately the guerilla troops are using terrorist tactics, such as saucicide bombing, and taking cutlery hostage
tryx_: the enemy has demanded a cup of lemon tea with some honey as reparations for war crimes commited on their soi.. erm... tiles
maggiebloome: we cannot negotiate with shitake extremists!
tryx_: hahaha
tryx_: im not sure if i can top that
maggiebloome: *takes a bow*
maggiebloome: I think we might have extended the metaphor a little too far anyway XD

(no subject)

There's still nothing so beautiful as the sky. It was cloudy on that horizon, but there was a perfect translucent diamond, like curtains drawing open, that the sun passed through just before setting. The clouds were a carpet of pink shading to orange, like a viscous cocktail spilled across the sky, or a messy heap of fairy floss, cushioning the bright yellow circle of the sun that leaves blue-black bruises wherever you next look, so that when you stare directly at it you fancy you can see the dark outline of endless space shining behind what you keep reminding yourself is a giant ball of flaming gases, millions of everything away. Eight and a half minutes.

The wind bites at your face with salt sea spray and you stare across the bay in tandem with a fisherman and a family down on the rocks ahead, and a man behind you - just sitting in his parked car, windows open, watching the sky smolder. The sun is just a semicircle now, peeking farewell over the high, dark clouds. Beneath them, on the opposite shore, a paler and heavier mass creeps inexorably towards you - the edge of the storm is visible in the sky and on the water, where a slight change in colour denotes the border between rain and shine. The thin strip of water churned white by raindrops gets noticeably wider, and the clouds are racing now, so close you can see the huge gap between the charcoal clouds above and the milky top of the raincloud, gray colour bled to the bottom. It roils and seethes, spilling across the sky, and lightning flashes beneath it like bright trees sprouting from the waves.

We run to the car, but I leave the window open as we drive away, still gazing back in wonder. It's been too long since I was truly outside, not just walking to somewhere, and beneath a sky that's other than uniform blue and a sun not too bright to look at. This is what drives us into the mountains and onto the oceans, this is the lure of the horizon, the call of the siren, the weight by which you measure love. To sit beneath the sky is all anyone can ask for.