Impressions of Insanity

Impressions

I'll just repeat the warning - the weblog below may contain strong language and explicit references. All links within the posts will open in the same separate window.

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Saturday, July 08, 2000

21:30

It's a sad inditement of a person's life when the only conversation she has is a vicarious one. I mean, I reckon you could classify this as vicarious conversation. I post stuff here, those with whom I would discuss it given the opportunity come along at their convenience and read it, and the information passes from me to them as if we had had a conversation, but without all the interesting feedback effects. It's more of a monologue than a conversation, of course, as even though I'd like to hear the other side it's not going to happen because there is only me, myself and I round here and that limits the possibilities.

Right now the pressure of isolation is squeezing me very hard, but I have no one to turn to. My husband is at work and will be for some time, one of my brothers is probably in Singapore or Dublin or Outer Mongolia or Peru, the other one is doing goodness knows what and may even be practising ignoring me, my parents are always busy and hundreds of miles away even if they weren't, those I would describe as close friends are too far away to visit and I don't have that many anyway, and I don't fancy sitting around in The Bear spending money I can't afford to spend on alcoholic drinks I don't want purely for the company of those to whom I am not particularly close.

And I'm still noting that I have ended a sentence in a preposition and am trying to work out a graceful method of correcting it.

When all you want is someone (or even something, dammit) to alleviate the pressure of being the only presence in the room and all you can do is babble semi-hysterically on a computer not caring even if no one ever reads it, there is something desperately wrong.

"Bring me visitors, Hugin," the empath whispers forlornly, voice cracked and hoarse from hours of endless crying, one eye red-rimmed and swollen, the other bright and wet. "Real ones, not the puppets. Please not the puppets any more."
"Take your medicine, poppet," the raven replies. "You are sick and weak and this nonsense is not helping you get better. Don't you like my pictures?"
Munin cocks his head to one side. "We know what it looks like outside that door. We know what the air smells like on cool crisp mornings. Don't taunt the girl."

The Rationalist throws another tantrum while the ravens argue vociferously and Instinct puts its hand over its ears. Frightened of being pecked, the empath huddles in the corner and doesn't notice the tears trickling down well-worn paths on her face.

Somewhere else someone starts to cry, without really understanding why.

14:44

The other dream I remember clearly started out in a bar. I'd almost call it a saloon. It was quite dark in the bar, being a place of dubious virtue, and there were no decent malts even though they had no fewer than three types of bourbon. I was sitting at a table with that chap who looks like Kurt Russell (he has appeared before) and there were a number of other people in the party. I get the impression we had all just come from a wedding or something.

Only this wasn't our world, oh no. Absolutely not. Everyone in the party was big, very big, and had certain animalistic characteristics in the way Sabretooth and Wolverine from the X-Men do. In fact, one of them even looked like it might have been Sabretooth (although there was no sign of Wolverine, which is a shame, because I could do with some erotic dreams for a change).

Well, the party went as parties go and we ended up getting thrown out of the bar. Not an entirely unknown occurence for me, I confess. We piled into cars (I'm assuming we had designated drivers or something - I know I wasn't driving) and buggered off. We drove for some way and then people wanted to get out and look at the scenery. We were on a very quiet road, no road markings, about single lane, with an avenue of trees on either side growing in mown, lush grass. There was a dry stone wall to the left (from the direction of travel) which was set back from the road by about 30 feet. The weather was cool and fine and several people set off down the road. There was a junction just ahead with a road going off to the right. There seemed to be a downward incline there and a good view across more of the same type of landscape. I don't recall seeing anything I would describe as recognisable as a village, although there were things that might have been settlements, only the architecture was so warped it was hard to be sure.

As I wandered about near the car listening to the jackdaws and looking for feathers I saw what I first thought was a jackdaw eyeing me. It wasn't a jackdaw, it was the shape and build of a raven, but it was a small one. I hunkered down, as I will when attracting the attention of cats in the street and made noises and finger gestures at it. It slowly approached, zig-zagging across the grass, occasionally moving further away, and eventually got close enough to rub its head on my leg. I touched it, then stroked it, then, in a vaguely distant way, as if I were watching myself from a distance, put my arms around it. It was very scruffy and the feathers felt softer than I expected. For a few seconds only it tolerated this, and then it stiffened and I let it go. It braaked not-quite indignantly and gaped its beak at me as if to demonstrate that if I pushed too hard it would do me injury, then wandered off a short distance before flying into a tree.

Andy (again, you are spending too much time in my dreams, you know) had been one of those that had wandered off ahead, and so when everyone else became impatient to get a move on, I was sent after them to bring them back to the main party. They were, in fact, already on their way back, so it didn't take me long to run down and (sorry, I've just noticed a really peculiar beetle climbing up the wire for my keyboard) tell them they were required.

Only on the way back I suddenly realised, with that crashing certainty that occasionally strikes and leads to massive decisions, that I didn't want to be part of this any more, that I didn't want to be involved, and it was time to ditch, right there and then. I heard Andy's bewildered yelp as I swung left onto the side turning and the sudden cry of someone yelling (bizarrely) "Don't go down there! It's a rat run!"

But it was too late. Because that hadn't been a steep incline, it was practically a drop off, although the road followed it over. It was so close to vertical as to be a drop, although there was a very slight slope, possibly about 80°, and the jacket in my hand dragged out behind me as I scrabbled to slow my descent.

The road carried on into the distance as if the drop had never happened, and I realised that even if I wanted to go back I couldn't because I couldn't get back up the drop, and said as much to Andy, who was staring at me over the edge. Almost as soon as I said it I noticed a ladder on the far side of the road going back up, surrounded by those circular safety bars, but I didn't say anything.

Things get rather confused at this point.

There was some sort of dwelling on the right hand side of the road (with the drop behind me), a sort of split thing, with one side right up against the face of the drop. It was damp and water dripped onto it from the level above. The dwelling it was attached to was much more luxurious and very dry. I can't remember enough about it to describe the architecture but it was very, very odd, and seemed to have evolved from burrows. It was made of plastic-like materials that did strange things to light in a mesmeric, sparkly way.

There was a woman, again not exactly human, who was living there and I was told by one of the men that I shouldn't be angry, shouldn't leave, isn't it better than I know she is living in this damp place (as if being in a damp house is some terrible punishment and this woman has done me some wrong). I was told I should have a bath, it would make me feel better, and I realised that I was dirty and sweaty and smelly, I hadn't had a bath since I was last in the gym and my top could do with a wash at the very least. I was ushered inside the luxurious of the two dwellings and had to crawl up to the bathroom thing at the back of the dwelling.

The bath was shaped like a giant scallop shell, the curved half, with a single cylindrical tap, the opening facing straight towards me, at the back above the hinge. The plastic here was a pinkish red colour and the tap was golden. The top of the bath was level with the entrance to this space (there were no rooms, only spaces), so that one crawls up past where the bath is inset and leans over and into the bath itself. I borrowed some laundry liquid, my sense of perspective confused, thinking that this is in fact a sink, and put some in, beginning to wash my top. As I leant over my arms go down into the water and my breasts felt strangely yet pleasantly squashed, as though the water is very dense. When I float upright in the pool wearing a snorkel I feel the same sense of pressure on my lungs as I try to breathe, but that is unpleasant because it is difficult to breathe. This was not. The mirrored surface at the back showed the same distortion and it was then that I realised that this was a bath and I had not put in enough liquid to clean my clothing properly, and so slid right in like a seal and washed myself instead.

And when I come out there is a battle.

Four of the original wedding party have taken it upon themselves to fall out. Or, rather, one of them had taken it upon himself to fall out with one of the others and he had gained support from a friend. Sabretooth man had fallen out with Kurt Russell and he was being supported by someone who looked like he was related to Tiger. There had to be a fight, within the rules of this culture, a fight between the animal sides of these people. It was a little like tag team wrestling, only wrestling was but one of the fighting techniques to be used. they have swords and this thing that looks like the Klingon weapon, that Sabretooth's friend is whirling around so fast that it is blurred. Kurt Russell is being supported by a white tiger, an animal with a human side, which is as intelligent as any of us but happens to be a cat. Kurt Russell's animal is snake and as I watch he begins to look like a snake.

So they fight, and they fight hard. Other people stand as close as they dare, for this is part of the requirements, for witnessing, and I am so scared that Sabretooth's friend will cut me with his whirling blade for they pay not one jot of attention to the other people - it is for us to stay out of their way and if we get injured it is our fault for not being quick enough. It seems to take an eternity, and there is so much blood and so much pain.

Finally Sabretooth lies dead, his friend also, and the white tiger lies panting on the ground. Only the snake man is left standing, and he bleeds from hundreds of cuts all over his body.

And then we are in a hall, somehow transported there, although there is the impression that only a short distance has been covered and I could tell which direction we had travelled, with many people standing and watching as Kurt Russell approaches an assembled mass of people all wearing white. They are surrounded by a nimbus and are arranged like ranks of a choir. I get the impression that they are ever-present, are on a slightly different plane of existence, that they are of the same People as those I am with but who have reached some other stage. Elders who have been removed to a slightly different phase. A young-looking man, who appears perhaps 19 or 20 but is vastly older, presents Kurt Russell with a tiny cup like a Fabergé vodka cup containing a dark, viscous fluid. The young man appears visibly drained. Kurt Russell drinks the cup, draining it in one swallow, and power courses through him, his vitality returns many times over and his wounds are healed.

They have a small discussion, and I can see it from both their perspectives. Kurt Russell is upset that such a thing was necessary, he complains that it was hard. The young man responds that they have put much effort and life into the liquid he has drunk, into compeleting the necessary requirements, that Kurt Russell has not lost anything for his attention and his readiness to do what must be done. There is the impression that they have been through this on numerous other occasions. Kurt Russell replies that he may not have lost anything, but he has suffered the pain and the trauma and the torment one more time, and for one such as the young man giving up a little life force is no comparison. The young man bows his head in acknowledgement of this and sighs.

The dream ends.

13:16

More weird dreams last night. My night times are just one long roll of dream after dream.

The first one I remember clearly had crop circles appearing in the area of Rollright, down beyond Long Compton. The season felt like late summer/early Autumn, when it gets really hot and thick with the dust of early harvest. The farmer decided to kick up a stink about the damage done to his crops so close to harvest, and the police were called in. Andy and I went along to help for some reason, and maybe K was there too.

There were a lot of these circles. A few of them seemed to be attributable to weather effects, because of the design of them, but others were most definitely made (given that I am entirely sceptical about non-anthropogenic origins for these things). We wandered around for a while, looking at the designs. They ranged from a tiny little thing about the size of my hand with fingers stretched, which had been created in stubble and the stubble left standing in the middle, to massive designs with outlying circles.

As we wandered the fields looking for new ones to find out the extent of the damage I noticed that we were being shadowed by a small boy. No one else noticed and I pointed him out to Andy. He looked wary and as if he were bullied regularly. Finally Andy and I hung back a bit, knowing the boy knew we had seen him, and he approached us.

Apparently he and his elder sister were responsible for the circles. She was completely mad, extremely domineering, and he was very very scared of her. She seemed to think that it was her mission to make them, and it was his duty to help her. It was as if she were trying to tell the world something, something that had been put in her head by outside forces, or something that came from elsewhere, and she was forcing him to help her but he didn't want to do it any more because of the damage it was doing to the crops. He wanted to get away from her and find something that he wanted to do, that felt right to him. He agreed to take us to her if we wouldn't hurt her but would do what we could for her. The poor kid was only about 8.

K and one of the policemen came with us and the boy (we never did find out what his name was) led us across some fields via the hedgerows and into this extremely deep, very narrow canyon (of course there's nothing of that nature in the area of Rollright of which I am aware) which was actually closed over in places, with a full ceiling which looked as though it had been carved out. There was an unspoken awareness for me and Andy at least that this boy's family had been down here for a very long time and were all mad as badgers except for this one poor lad.

We made our way through this canyon for some time, occasionally looking up at the heavy undergrowth and trees that grew along the edges of the cliffs above. The depth varied between about 50 and 100 feet. Then we saw the sister. She was up on the cliff's edge, dressed in a long white dress that was dirty and torn round the bottom. Her face was pale, her hair long, dark and wild. She had an expression of cold rage and hatred on her face and her eyes were dark - not just the actual eyes, but the skin around them, as if her hatred and fury and madness were spilling out of her pupils and colouring the skin of the lids and around the orbits.

She stared at us for a while, and we stared back, and then she turned her back and was gone in an instant. The boy immediately looked utterly terrified.

"Run," he said. "Run. She's going to release the water."

We looked at him in complete incomprehension for a while, but he was rapidly running back the way we had come. There was this sudden, deep, distant roar, and we set off after him. Andy and I made ok progress, even though the ravine was narrow and strewn with rocks, although we were not exactly fast, but K and the policeman were having a terrible time. The boy did not abandon us though.

The water hit us when we were approaching one of the closed over bits and we were swept off our feet. The level rose very quickly and I realised with horror that we were already above a closed over section, that our way was blocked unless we swam down and through the tunnel. But while I might just about be able to make it if I gave myself time to calm down and go into light trance, I knew there was no way that any of the others save for perhaps the boy were strong enough swimmers to make it. We were all going to die.

The water was rising rapidly, and the boy was swimming around the way I imagined the mouse did at the beginning of "Alice in Wonderland". The ceiling above us was smooth in the way some sea carved caves are smooth, with a textured surface, not flat and uniform. Andy was struggling to stay afloat and I tried to help him, not being able to support everyone.

Then I realised something very odd was going on. The boy had hold of some sort of narrow-diameter (about a quarter inch) pipe with a sharp hook attached to it that had been dangling from the ceiling next to a lamp. I had not noticed it. He was muttering to himself, perhaps even chanting, and his eyes were fast closed, a picture of intense concentration on his face. I was worried that he was going to impale himself on the hook, which could have been for catching sharks it was so large, although it was not barbed.

As we stretched for our last gasp of breath and the water closed over us, the boy began to blow into the pipe and there was an almost indiscernible hesitation in the rising of the water. He seemed to take huge inbreaths underneath the water and blow them out through this pipe, and I could almost hear his thoughts as he calculated the balance of pressure required for him to get air into the top of the chamber without bursting his lungs.

And it worked. He blew through this pipe, his face pure white with the effort, and a gap appeared. It was no more than a couple of inches but it was enough.

The water began to subside, and sink, and we sank down, too stunned really to comment. Andy, K and the policeman were in complete shock and seemed almost totally unaware of what had happened. Perhaps Andy had some fuzzy awareness. As we made our way out, slowly and shaking, the boy led us to a small emabankment at the end of the ravine where it suddenly became obvious that the ravine was in fact the course of a river, and there was a boat stage there with a small hut. There was also a panel with a couple of levers on it, and the boy's Aunt standing there with a look of grim shock on her face. She had pulled the lever to release the water at the far end so it could escape. A man, standing in the shadows by the side of the hut so we couldn't see his features or even get an impression of what he looked like other than large and strong (he looked like he had materialised from an essence of woodland), had the boy's sister in his grasp. She stood there silent and sullen.

The boy's Aunt hugged him in that strangely masculine, distant way some subsistence farming families have of holding one another. The love was evident but her face did not express it. The girl was handed over to the policeman in such a way that we never saw the man, and the policeman and K took her away. They seemed to be in such deep shock that they would not remember the canyon or the water, or the boy, or anything of what had happened, only that they had got the girl responsible for the crop damage.

Andy and I stood for a while, silently, almost communing with these people in a way I find it impossible to describe, and then we too hugged the boy, affectionately and with incredibly strong emotion, knowing that we could come back but it was unlikely that we would, but also knowing that the boy could find us should he choose to or need to, and then we went home.

01:16

Better. Internal links won't get buggy when archived now. Can't believe I didn't think of that before, even though I had to change the way I referenced things to make it work. Sometimes I think my brain is crumbling or turning into sponge pudding. With or without syrup, the custard is also optional.

I do miss people, to get back to the point. I miss people even when they are sitting next to me. I miss people even when they are holding me, whispering comforting, soothing words into my hair. I miss people because that sense of connection is gone. You feed an empath suppressants and even if visitors are allowed it's all just noise and gesture. The feeling is gone. I'm a passionate person, I've lived my life according to those passions, and with that gone I don't really know how to ... interact.

I don't like photos, never have, really. They don't look like people, they look like coloured splodges with flat features. There is no life in photographs. There can be art, there can be evocation, certainly, but it is very, very difficult to evoke that sense of connection in a picture. I can't really recognise people in photographs unless I already know at whom I am looking. Coloured splodges and air and steam and twigs and bark. Hugin brings me photographs that walk and talk but they are still coloured splodges.

I want visitors. I think, oh gods that word, I think I need visitors, and I feel weak for admitting a need. People say they need me and I feel cherished and purposeful. I cannot bring myself to say I need things from others, that I need other people, for that makes me feel like a burden that one day they will feel the need to set aside and will be unable to do so because of some obligation. I am not free. I want others to have the freedom I can no longer even smell. I want visitors, but more I want that connection back. I want to escape these feathered gaolers and their bare little room in which I sit and listen to their distracting, contradictory assertations.

I have one eye. I sit and listen. Did Oðin, does Oðin have these same two distractions? Sometimes Father used to tease me with similarities that were most definitely, as Andy would put it, "outside my comfort zone".

No. They bring Him news of world, and tease the wolves. They don't tease me. They taunt, sometimes, and sometimes I think they are trying to help and that somehow makes it worse.

Strange how complementary things can seem so diametrically opposed.

00:42

I miss him. Talking today to Frood about various things including finding a job elsewhere. He said "Maybe I should just pack you off to Bristol. Get thee hence, wench." Sometimes it's so hard to deal with the isolation, and it's so completely mad, because right now Frood is sitting on the sofa over there with his book and we've spent the evening inventing new food and we bimbled down to Touchwoods today and it has been good spending time together. Yet I still feel trapped and isolated because the world is still flat. Hugin still refuses to bring me visitors, just has little carboard cut-out puppets that dance and talk and pretend.

Yet I can't really talk about this with people because it sounds like madness, and Hugin even says it's madness, but Munin is the one who sings of the non-consensus, back across the border, where it is possible to see things that others can't see without them being hallucinations. So I type abstract rambles into this damnable weblog and wonder who on Earth will read it and then realise with a certain numbness that I don't actually care. All I care about is the fact that it goes somewhere outside my head and doesn't involve wielding a pen for so long that my hand cramps and spasms so that I can't read my own writing any more. And it means that those who may have an interest can find it and read it and maybe even come to some glimmer of understanding about the pressures and emotions that make me behave the way I do at times.

I went over the stuff I had posted so far today, felt a certain degree of shock at how much of it there was. Is this cathartic? Will it help? Does it say more about what is going on with me than the diary possibly can? If I get that weirdness back, if Father ever deigns to start talking to me again the way he used to, and I start posting things about that, will I seem more or less insane?

Internal links are a bugger when you have to take into account the archive feature, I just realised. Maybe having an archive directory wasn't such a brilliant idea. Not too late to change it though, if I'm quick about it.

Friday, July 07, 2000

21:17

You know, sometimes I am delighted that I still have arcane skills like those required to clean, fillet and skin fish. I'm pleased that I know when the tweezers will be required, what angle at which to hold the knife, how sharp it needs to be (very - all knives should be very sharp), where to cut, how to tell if it's fresh or not in the first place. These skills are being lost, I think. I'm 27 years old. How many 27 year-olds who are not chefs by profession know how to do things like joint carcasses and clean fish? People these days walk into their supermarket and buy plastic wrapped lumps of flesh. Some of them, I swear, wouldn't even know that pork is dead pig and beef is dead cow (well, maybe they would on the latter because of BSE). I've followed round youngsters on farm visits who are absolutely astonished that milk comes out of a cow, and woe betide them if they ever find out where eggs come from.

Then again, you look at the ingredients list on such revolting substances as Sunny Delight and it's no wonder that the urban youth of today think that all food is manufactured rather than grown. Too much Star Trek, I reckon, all that replicator business. Shouldn't be allowed.

Just look at Paranoia.

15:41

So much chuff swirling around in my head. Feelings of abandonment, feelings of laziness, of being stupid enough to give in rather than fighting, even though I don't know what it is I'm supposed to be fighting. Frustration, a sense of loss so keen it could be lemon in a paper cut. Homesickness for a home I have never had. Longings for things I cannot have or do. That 3am craving for pistachio chocolate chip ice cream when there's nowhere open that would sell it even if it existed.

I tried to connect myself to my new access points. Was faced with rejection - no penetration, hurt like blazes, like my internal organs were bruised and the skin raw where I was putting my fingers. Could feel the right points, but no joy. Rationalist stubbornly claims that if Andy tried right now he would find the same because the flesh is bruised from last time. Instinct dubious, reckons it's for preventing self-hacking or something. Or maybe it's impossible to connect to oneself. Rationalist throws tantrum, stamps foot, says "Don't be ridiculous!"

Memory pines for things lost and remembered and grows painfully, angrily jealous at the experiences of others, apparently so exquisitely intense in their absence from the experience of self. This bruising more than poor form. Sometimes it feels if the bruising is the form going into slow and inevitable decline.

Hugin and Munin.
Munin whispers "Look what we have lost. They still have it. What did we do that was so wrong?"
Hugin scoffs "Madness, all of it. It might be powerful but it is still madness, and it is arrogant to think you should be capable merely because others are."

But neither brings news of the world. Boxed, isolated. An empath locked in small, bare room and fed suppressants. No visitors. Occasionally Hugin brings pictures of loved ones that don't look like the ones Munin has, but Munin's pictures hurt more. Crave Munin's pictures but too scared to look, wish more that Hugin would bring visitors.

13:35

More horrible, weird dreams. Marko and I in Bristol for some reason, staying with...whom? I don't know. Marko goes off back there, I want to look at something. Is Andy there at that time? No, I don't think so. Marko goes off, I realise halfway through looking dreamily at this bizzarre pond thing (a cross between a pond and a swimming pool with very dark water, concrete sides and a small bridge type affair with a metal gate on it across it) that I don't know where the place we are staying is. I'm watching small fish (that looked like the small fish in the River Lowther) and slightly larger fish with teeth swimming by the surface of this black water and I realise I don't know how to find Marko again. A yound lad, maybe about 13, wheels his mountain bike past me and looks at me strangely.The grass around the pond/pool is a very dark green.

Sighing, I decide that what I have to do is find a place that sells maps of Bristol and then maybe remember where it is that we are staying. It is a friend's house, I should be able to remember the address.

Finally I find a department store (which I think was Boswell's, but there isn't one of those in Bristol) and a map. I wander outside and I think this is where I run into Andy/meet up with him and explain the problem. Only somehow we lose the Bristol A-Z as I'm trying to remember where this friend's house is (which I'm saying is in Conniston Road, although I have no idea if that road actually exists or not). So we have to find another one.

For some reason we end up in the loading bay Debenhams, parked in a corner of the staff car park, because the escalators and lifts had stopped working in the shop and we got trapped on the 3rd floor with the guns and fishing equipment (I know, I know) because the escalators and stairs fitted together in this weird Escher fashion and it became impossible to get to the 4th floor where the maps and cigs and sweets and magazines were. We explained to someone, this aging wrinkled man with a nice smile, what the problem was and he gave us a new A-Z for free.

On returning to our car we found it blocked in by a dark blue renault and a red something or the other. We asked this other man if he knew who the car belonged to and he said yes. We pointed out that we were blocked in and he sort oflooked at us and said "Yes. So you are."

Eventually, in some way that involves details I can't remember, we got out of the car park and found this place where Marko and I were staying. There was a back room with lots of office equipment because a business had been running from out of there. When I turned the lights on all this equipment fired up and started delivering months-old messages over strange communications equipment. We nicked the fax machine and the colour printer because the people who owned it weren't coming back.

Then things got very surreal and I can't quite remember enough to write it down.

But I couldn't get out of bed this morning because I was held too strongly by the Dreaming. I don't like it when that happens.

00:39

I have this vision. No, it's not a vision, it's an idea. An idea of people across the country who know about the prehistoric monuments in their area, who know about the ASLaN charter and what to do about threats to these places. Who know who to contact. And I have this idea of a team, a small group of committed people (who should be committed?) who will pack up kit and go to wherever they are needed, don fluorescent flak jackets with the logo emblazoned across it, and do what they can to protect the archaeology with the blessings and support of organisations like English Heritage and who could represent ASLaN professionally and with commitment and maturity.

The PTRA and the TA.

It's late. I should have eaten by now. I think it's a good idea, if I can strip it of the romantic soft-focus photography and add the mud and cold and frustration that I know would be there instead.

Anyone joining the PTRA or the TA must acquire:

1 copy of CADES, campsites for the locating of
1 tent or bivvy bag, for sleeping out of the rain
1 sleeping bag
1 crash mat or thermarest
1 camp cook set including small stove and kettle (PTRA only)
1 platypus or flexiflask, water for the carrying of (PTRA only)
1 set of heavy boots, for walking in mud
1 attitude of tolerance and patience including the ability to tell people nicely not to damage things before getting shirty with them

Do you think we'd get any takers?

00:07

Dead in the water. Ha. And now Andy talking about the dreaded amanita.

Thursday, July 06, 2000

22:32

Two hours in the gym and all I can think about on the way out is

DON'T FORGET TO GET PEANUT BUTTER.

Hungry? You betcha. But what did I really learn from the gym? I'm not sure. Is one supposed to learn anything from a gym? Probably not, except that petite Japanese girlies should eat more pies and the step machine is more of a killer than going up actual stairs ever is. I learned that I'm even less sure about what is going on in my head than I thought I was.

Schizophrenia universally, as far as I am aware, consists of voices telling you that you are unworthy, that you need to do bad things to yourself. I don't get those. What I got today was "Be careful now, take it easy, you're still sick, we know your limits now." And yet the world is still flat. The world is still so flat I nearly impaled my face on a piece of machinery because I seem to have forgotten how to judge depth (a peril of being monocular, although the party tricks tend to make up for it as a general rule). Am I mad? Is this merely an impression of insanity or am I going the whole hog here? Are we talking the return of non-consensus weird shit or am I just mad as a bloody badger?

And today, up at the stones, I thought I heard El. I miss El, I miss her desperately, but I'm getting used to being without her. I thought I heard her when everything started that horrible slump into depression, when the landslide starts so inexorably that you can almost see it in the landscape around you, a heat haze of shifting topography, as if the very air density is changing in response to the weight of dark emotion that wraps you in its mortal cloak. I thought I heard El the way I used to, when she really needs to communicate with someone, that irresistable urge.

What does that topography look like? How does the landscape model of consensus--non-consensus--insanity appear if you lay it out in front of you like some 3D map in a GIS package? Are the border regions between the states hills or valleys? Which of them is closer to sea level?

How much pretentious crap can a person spout before someone decides they should not be allowed to pollute the gene pool or even the meme pool any longer?

Ditching. Been thinking about that a lot today.

ditch

a trench dug in the ground for drainage or irrigation, or to serve to mark a boundary; any long narrow depression carrying water; the border of a bowling-green; the sea (slang). -- vi to make, repair or clean a ditch or ditches; (of an aircraft or pilot) to come down in the sea (colloq). -- vt to dig a ditch in or around; to drain by ditches; to throw, or drive, into a ditch; to crash (a vehicle) deliberately; to abandon, or get rid of (slang); to escape from or leave (a person) in the lurch (slang); to derail (U.S.).

I've never looked at the full definition before. Now I'm practically laughing until the tears come.

18:29

Notes from the Stones
Been dead in the water for almost 2 weeks now. Feels awful. So completely depressed. Can't believe how much I missed of what went on at Mayburgh - all that stuff about the Ancestors being upset over the actual stone being from the other tribal area. I'm not much of a People person these days but I should have picked up on that. Everyone is more clued up than I am. Andy and K both saw the dead girl at the roundabout, I didn't notice. The world is still flat. It's getting hard again to find the meaning.

Stones haven't been talking to me properly for months. Only a little better today. Knew there was stuff to be cleared before going in and there was (the usual flowers - and handfuls of tinsel, fer feck's sake). Mr Creosote has been all over me during the last hour or so although he seems to have vanished again. He's developed a trick of bouncing off the side of the hut like a skateboarder doing a very short wall ride. Don't know why.

Depression coming in hard. Pain in back threatening. Hand cramping. Should go to the gym tonight, it has been too long. So wary of hurting myself again though. Shaky. Don't understand why it has to be so hard. I have no faith, how can I have a crisis of it? Why am I so scared and, dammit, jealous, that the weird shit is happening to others and not to me? Didn't I used to ask for just that every so often, in a sort of half-hearted way? I feel inept and useless and blind and unworthy and that just annoys me. I'm hurt and angry that my capability has been taken away from me with no word as to when or even if it will be returned.

Used to be one of the big guns. Now I'm barely an empty, scaled-up water pistol with a broken trigger that has lost the cap to keep the water from falling out and I'm infuriated. It frustrates me that I can't do the things I want to do. I feel dizzy and my head hurts and I'm even worried about driving home because I can barely see to get the words on the paper in a legible form.

The whole thing is worse than infuriating.

Thoughts are scatty too. This whole business with the new structure and reworked access - I'm sorry, but the idea of having anyone stick his finger in my navel with constructive intent, even if he is my separated-before-birth twin brother, is absolutely ridiculous. Feed me the chlorpromazine now, doctor, thankyou very much, I'll take Room 202 - that's right, the padded suite.

I can't believe I said "even if he is my separated-before-birth" rather than "particularly if he is..." The whole damn thing is preposterous.

Sometimes consensus and non-consensus have very blurred edges, even when it isn't apparent the edges are blurred. Sometimes it's a process of evolution. Sometimes a thing is non-consensus only because consensus hasn't got a proof for it yet or found a 90 per cent sure explanation. Think of all the things that have changed in consensus. Consensus used to say that the world was flat and the heavens revolved around the Earth. If you say these things now you aren't even borderline consensus you're completely bloody barking. Sometimes I can put my rationalist's hat on and look at a thing and come up with an explanation that might work in consensus and just about cope with it. So much of what happens I can say "Hey man, that's ok, that's mapping. I can cope with that." But recently. Oh ghods, recently.

The Rationalist is suffering from apoplexy.

09:43

Ghods. Struggling out of a dream involving the entire world that I knew being systematically abducted by aliens. Strange sequences: being chased across an abandoned airfield by a small UFO (not of the Adamski type) only to see a much larger one glide into view and start melting tarmac with a non-pulsing green laser. Watching a pair of pants floating out of a window that I knew had been shut, along with a frying pan, one of my friends close behind, prone and floating and somehow so peaceful. Flagg and Joe coming over for the week of my birthday (coincidentally - they didn't come over for my birthday, if that is important, they came over for Halloween - which isn't after my birthday at all, so I can't even calculate dates whe I'm dreaming about aliens) while the struggle against the alien menace goes on and we all go for a swim only to have some of the bathers taken away. They didn't just take people, they took everything, seemingly at random, or on a first come first served basis. Whatever their traction beams alighted upon.

The alarm was doing its snooze thing all the way throughout, so I was waking up, looking at the clock, and sinking back into this nightmare world every six minutes for about an hour. I couldn't get free. Fairly typical for me, really.

And now I'm stiff and sore like I really have been running around fighting an alien menace and I have to get to work. Ho hum

Wednesday, July 05, 2000

22:52

One forward slash in the wrong position can make so much difference.

Frood is online and that's just scary, to see the rubbish he puts out.

While I've been wrestling with this I've been looking at BDSM sites on the net, and I do wonder. Some of the Nascakiyetl stuff made me wonder just how much of that entire cosmology is set up round the D/S principle but the more I read of BDSM the more differences I can see. For a while that idea disturbed me, that it was set up around that principle, but the more I think about it and read about it the less and less it looks like BDSM. Why should I care though? I don't really. Certainly not any more.

This has nothing to do with my illness.

Pain has been bad today, currently bad in my ribs, but I think I really should set up another one of these specifically for the illness. Sometimes it gets so bad I can't breathe and that is never pleasant. Today I had another one of those stabbing headaches that are so bad that the eyes start to water. It's bad enough that I can't go out on the bike in Oxford without the anti-pollution mask on.

They're goading me into going to the gym again. I should have booked a session for tomorrow.

I should add that I've been looking at text based BDSM sites. The pictures don't really interest me as such. I'm more interested in the psychology. I can't get my head around the power play, not really, and in some aspects I think I should, but I don't. I don't understand the whole 24/7 philosophy, although in some ways it makes more sense even than the part time D/S philosophy. I don't understand how anyone could hand over all decisions to someone else, to the point of not being free to ask for release. Not as a matter of volition. Is this abdication of responsibility? You read some of it and it seems obvious that the submissives are the ones in control. Dynamic equilibrium. Ha.

21:36

Someone should make this thing easier to use, I mean really.

18:59

Finally a set of aesthetics I think I can live with...

Why? The weblog, I mean. Well, you know. I've decided to have another bash at getting this DD (dread disorder) sorted out and it seems like a good idea to keep some sort of diary.

Will mean getting a printer at some point so I can hand it to the doctors, but maybe Andy would oblige. And there's a privacy option for the weirder stuff too. ha. The question being, of course, whether to keep one that is specifically for the medical symptoms and one for other stuff, like thoughts. Hmm.

18:30

This looks like it might be an easy way to keep the symptom diary. Better than having to manually convert all the damn time.