The Doorway: a panfandom game

Good luck on your election, Canada. Perhaps eventually, you'll even expel your monarch.

I have been run off the steps of the post office by this flock of ne'erdowells. They have taken my muffin, roughed me up, and chased me off like an unwanted dog. I am plotting my revenge.

[ Enjolras ]

You enjoy squab, yes?

My list of Things Which Arguably Benefit Humanity As A Whole But Detract All the Same From A Certain Shared Sense of Wonder and/or Common Vexation is extensive, and it occurs to me that I've been doing everyone a disservice by rendering it largely in oral form. Why deprive all but one lucky man of my incisive observations? It seems a waste of insight, particularly considering how poorly he listens. If you asked him to recite it back to you (and I know this from experience) he would reply only with a shamelessly bald summation of the bare bones of something arguably adjacent to what you've been saying: you were talking about the weather. Not a man to whom you entrust the future of human knowledge.

At any rate: meteorology.

It used to be that, apart from sailors and certain very sensitive elderly persons, no one knew when they were going to wake up to cold, blowing rain that seemed to come out of nowhere. You definitely didn't know that it had been sitting around incubating in the West Indies for a while, that it had decided to climb its way north, and that it might or might not show up on your horizon within a defined twelve hour period. You couldn't see that it stretched straight on down from Massachusetts to South Carolina (or, roughly, Marseilles to Marrakesh) in one terrifying, unbroken wall of cloud that frankly looks like something out of hell itself.

It was a surprise. It gave you something to be indignant about with your neighbors. There was a shared sense of injustice and of being put-upon that was beneficial to the community of man. Is there any force more powerful in the forging of friendship than a common enemy? It was the weather, fickle, rude, occasionally munificent, often offensive. Now, instead of shared anger, you have shared fear of something that's still cooking down in the Caribbean. I suppose the head start it gives you in terms of laying sandbags is hard to outweigh, but nonetheless.

It's hardly the same.

[Grantaire]

I have found it.

I have been to a doctor. The less said about it the better.

Never in my life have I been asked so many questions by someone so little interested in hearing the answers - when you ask a man how he feels you should be prepared to sit there and damn well listen. (We've designed an entire meal around it; it's called breakfast here, as far as I can tell, although you do a piss-poor job of it most of the time.) And such questions, too, the relevancy of which I couldn't for the life of me piece together. When - I say again - you ask a man about certain things, you'd damn well better be able to explain what the hell you're getting at. I've tried to call men out for less.

To make a long story short (a device which I'm normally reluctant to employ, but in the interest of sparing you all unpleasantness and promoting the well being of my "blood pressure"), my "cholesterol" is "a little high."

And do you know, I'd rather live with the apparently non-existent symptoms and the thoroughly run-of-the-mill risks that come with it than give in to the profoundly depressing implications of the solution. What kind of piddling race have we become, that dropping off the face of the earth after, say, fifty years of life well-lived makes us so frightened that we spend the rest of our days measuring out our pleasure in pinches and dashes? I'm ashamed to be one of you. You see no difference between food and physic, and by god, that'll make you sick more than walking around with a little poison in your veins. I'm supposed to look at the walnut - that buttery jewel of autumn in le Perigord - as some kind of dose to be taken like bloody castor oil? I'm supposed to consider a piece of fish, one of the most delicate, aromatic peasant pleasures a man can still experience in a great city, as a number to factor into some confounded ratio? I'm supposed to look at the olive, the olive, the fruit that kept company with Jesus fucking Christ in his few exquisite moments of agony, as a pill?

And wine - no. I can't even bring myself to write about the way you talk about wine. I spit on all of you. I won't have any part of it.

Knowledge truly is the engine of Satan. We've lost Eden forever.

It would see that while I might have forgotten myself, there were others who remembered me. By chance, perhaps fate, or merely an attraction to ma langue maternelle, I happened upon this place.

They helped me find my identity, but by the size of the book I won't waste my borrowed hours of life reading about misery I knew too well first hand. Of more interest to me, they offered me a job.


[Grantaire]

et tu - I've resolved to find a use for.

I can't remember who

What's the proper procedure in this place, for pest removal?

Becoming complacent with the status quo, even when we can recognize the inequality, the injustice and the suffering it brings to the majority of the world is never the only option, and it is never the right answer: When asked what must be done, one replies simply with what must be done.

For centuries, Feudalism -- the exchange of labour and life for land -- was accepted and practiced. The ruling class exploited peasants and enslaved them through means of serfdom.

In France, that changed when Bastille was stormed. In France, the actions and unrest of the citizens brought down the tyranny.

Or at least, readily postponed it.

Why is it then, that we have brought back serfdom in this time and accept it readily -- perhaps we are not enslaved by bonds to the nobility, but instead it is the banks who hold the lives of the people and debt that chains their wrists. Why do we allow for a system which exploits the majority and become complacent when it is in our very responsibility to stop this.

No man is free while he be in another's debt for what is rightfully his. There is no celebration in Bastille Day so long as the policies of oppression which we meant to strangle still loom above us as they always have.

Say what you will about Napoleon B(u)onapart(é). Two hundred years after his final and resounding defeat, a man puts on his hat and rides out into the field in front of thousands of cheering spectators who seem likely as not to think that Wellington is a kind of boot.

If I'd known you didn't have to martyr yourself to be eternally remembered, I'd have volunteered to get packed off to St. Helena so people could write poems about me, too. What a raw deal.

[Grantaire]

It is impossible, with you, to know what constitutes as night, and what you believe to be the day. Are you awake, or did you just retire?

183 years ago, on the 5th of June 1832. General Jean Maximilien Lamarque funeral procession marked the beginning of the days in which I, and many others -- included my beloved friends, died.

pas de ne pleurent pour nous

3,000 citizens took to the streets of Paris in protest of the wealth of the state against the poverty of her people. In protest of the rampant sickness that plagued our streets without aid, in protest of the succession of kings, all deaf to the people upon home they leeched.

pas de ne pleurent pour nous

It took 60,000 troops and 800 dead on both sides to spend the forces of the rebellion. But the loss of lives never marks the loss of hope. It would not be long before others followed us with great success, marking our sacrifices as few of the many who have died for liberty and the pursuit of fairness.

pas de ne pleurent pour nous

Lives lost, hardships endured, violence begotten -- it always holds meaning. And what is right will always prevail over injustice. It may not happen quick, and when the bayonet is before you, your place might be to throw yourself upon its blade so that others can climb over your back, but it will come.

So do not mourn us.

Stand with us.

Hundreds of years have passed, the reign of kings has ended but there is still illness in your streets, New York, and there is a sickness in your highest towers that causes it. If this is the land of the free, as you are all so quick to claim. If this is the home of the brave, which you all hold your hearts in devotion to -- prove it. Change what you do not agree with, and sign your oath with your blood if you must.

You have many ingenious inventions, here. Some of them a man needs about as much as a stubbed toe, and some of them will surely doom you all to a life of stunted, captious, sophistical minutiae, a race of miserable accountants - but your wine bottles are all of a size, your dark glasses come in colors other than blue, and the things you've done with trousers are nothing short of revolutionary. I say this as a man with intimate knowledge of all things revolutionary. I have touched it; I am an expert. This is true for everything that I have touched.

Your best invention, however, is the garbage bag. Instead of heaping garbage up on corners and letting it spill into the gutter and float away as rain and wind decide, now it's heaped up on corners in bags, only one of which is sacrificed ritually to the gutter. Instead of entire cities reeking of garbage, only the corners do. And your garbage is amazingly colorful.

You will always be to me the city of garbage.

Anyone who quotes himself deserves to spend the rest of his life spitting in the wind but I've already said everything I have to say of any import and paraphrasing is a waste as well as a bore and so I come to an impasse and shilly-shally away afternoons and evenings wondering whether I ought to open my mouth in the first place (no) or tread the middle ground and settle for talking to myself (too late) or perhaps sing in the shower (unlikely, cf. aversion to soap) because at least a man can rhyme a little and not feel like too much of an ass when he's essentially playing shadow puppets with the mirror but then I remember (when did I become so chowder-headed rubbish at remembering?) that the only point is to amuse myself, not myself, oneself, I mean to be as general as a politician, and that's done just as well by not moving one's ass out of bed or dislodging the tongue from the roof of one's mouth and so I suppose what I want to say and you'll have to forgive me because I've said it before but if I do say so myself it's impossible to improve upon is that it's a frightful old world and goodnight.

I've found a cap.

I will dress as a Red Sock, and be despised in costume as I am any other day of the month.

And even if not having shaved for a week can't quite put me on par with Mr. Napoli, I have to say - never had I seen so many groups of men who make me feel almost handsome until I started watching baseball. God Bless America, indeed.

I have been here since March 20th, crossing the threshold of eight months merely eight days ago. In that time, I have been blessed with the opportunity to help the citizens of this city, the refugees such as myself and the good people of France who suffered at the whims of a madman. I have learned a great deal and come to understand the importance of progress and the revolutions which turn this world.

Not a day passes when I have not felt with deep significance the opportunities that I have been granted, but today I was visited by an old companion, one which I have not met since my eyes burned with the smoke of gunpowder and the dust of the Paris streets. Today, I was visited by the loss of a friend.

He was a man whom I loved, and a man who gave his skill, his intelligence and his life unselfishly. I know what awaits you, Combeferre, and you shall be missed, and remembered not only by me but by every man, woman and child whose life you touched while you were here. Rest well, gentle soldier.

"Death is not an eternal sleep -- Death is the commencement of immortality!"

As attested in various musicals, books, films and other sundry 'works of art', I've a rather prodigious ability to get lost inside my own head. And it's not so much lost as it is thoroughly captivated by one idea or another that lends itself to another, then builds upon a foundation which yields to the combined strength of the twinned ideas whilst the other strikes bricks into the wall. I'm a bit early for post-Modernism, is all, and I prefer seeing connections where-ever I go.

That said: I've determined that the small not-for-profit which was started as a way to bring help to those affected by the human bombings needs a grander scope. I've a patron of a not entirely ill repute who promises that there are no strings attached and given that, I've applied for a business license. People are still hurting, they still need us. So, I suppose (with a smile) I shall put my shoulder to the wheel. As ever I have.

Okay, when you tell someone you can drink them under the table, they better back it up. I kicked some ass. Now it feels like my head is detached from my neck. Oh well, I have some aspirin.

There are few things more important than having a place to rest our heads. We, in this tower were lucky enough to be welcomed into this world with a bed waiting and shelter ready. There are plenty of organisations in this city, of which the Phoenix Project is one, that do what they can to provide homes, shelter and safety to those that need it. I am grateful for their aid and pleased to gift my time as much as I am able.

But beneath the citizens of this fine city, there are still others in need. I thought I would extend my efforts further and give at least one the warmth, love and security that she deserves.

Meet Sandrine.

It's surprising, this day and age, how a chap can just walk off with some money plain as day. It scarcely comes in solid form what with these pay pals.

But then, I suppose the French never were known for their ability to keep a hold of things. Still, no harm done in the end I suppose.

I cannot - for much longer - hope to continue maintaining any nature of calm regarding the invitations I continue to receive for Fashion Week. An interest in clothes and a recognisable face does not a woman with time or desire to sit on the side of a catwalk make.

Besides, it's not for my I'm bloody busy, alright, and I'll not be caught dead in most of what goes for fashion these days.

So, if anyone wants to go, I've about five separate chairs that you're welcome to claim should you have the desire.