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Saturday, September 02, 2000
22:47 
Off for a week now, so no posting til I get back, but expect a big one then.
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Thursday, August 31, 2000
23:13
Today's Soundtrack:
Dummy - Portishead
Showbiz - Muse
Without You I'm Nothing - Placebo
Maudlin just now. Have missed Andy very, very badly today. It's strange how the days when we feel closest I miss him the most. Perhaps it's because there's the sensation of him being there, of being a few feet behind me, and yet when I turn round he's not there and there's the instant vague disappointment. It can only be vague because I know he's not really, but it's still there because it feels as though he is. Or should be.
Here's a paranoid thought. I had a day off this week, because my vision was playing up. On Tuesday we had around 60 visitors. Today we had about 70, and I stayed longer. And yet, in the donations box for my day off, themoney suggested visitor numbers of around 120.
What does this suggest? Either the average visitor numbers stay the same every day and we get incredibly generous people turning up on my days off, or something about me is keeping people away. And I don't mean turning away at the gate because I look like a psycho, either. Around 5 people didn't come in today, and they weren't the types to pay anyway.
The suggestion is that people pay more when there isn't anyone there because they don't have the right change, so just give a quid instead of 50p. But most people turn up in pairs anyway, for some reason, and anyway, I'd have thought that most people wouldn't pay anything at all upon not finding the right change. There's no one there to force them.
Ach, I'm just an ageing cynic, really, all white hairs and grouchiness. At the grand old age of 27 (28 in a couple of months - now there's a scary thought).
Cousin Wyrd has pointed out, rather obviously (but I still missed it), that the elephant I dreamed about was likely to be Ganesha. Heh. He must have heard me complaining about no one following me around. Does he usually wink at naked people? I did wonder if it was Him, in some weird form. He didn't have lots of arms or henna painted hands or even a crimson torso. He was an elephant. The sort that says "Gizza bun". And winks at naked people, apparently. If it was Him, I wonder what He was trying to say? What His message was? Look in unlikely places for friendly faces?
He should pluck His forehead. Those bristles were fierce.
Can't wait for next week. The Jura trip. I've been plotting things to visit on my OS map. It's funny, but in all my years of visiting the place I have never looked at an OS map of it before. It looks even more enticing on there. Getting a bit nervous about tides and the like.
Today at the Stones was odd. It has been odd for a while now. First there was the man in the hawk feather cloak and the phantom animals. Today there were more phantom people. It was a quiet day, but I kept seeing shadows falling over me as people walked past the door to the hut, all on their way into the circle. There must have been more than a dozen of them throughout the day, sometimes two or three in quick succession. Whenever I looked up to take money from people, there was no one there. Occasionally I would look up quickly enough to catch a glimpse of a person's silhouette, the colour of dark, muddy river water, sort of a blackish brown, like coloured air. There is no easy way to describe it. They all vanished as soon as they reached just past the ash tree with the cool lichens on it to the right of the path.
I'll just explain that I can see energetic systems, which is why I don't dowse (pointless). When I look at a place, and look at it's energetics, it's almost like a heat haze, shifting the topography in a way I can map to energetic patterns. Almost as though I can see air density changes where the energetic system meshes with the physical, as if the air is being patterned the way iron filings are patterned by a magnet, only not in lines but in compression waves. These silhouettes are just that - silhouettes, and they don't seem to have any real substance. They aren't deep holes in the air, they are more like the silhouette of a homogenous cloud of gas shaped like a person. It's not like I can distinguish their walking movement either. I know they are walking, I can see that they are walking, but I don't see their legs moving.
This has been going on for a while now. Apparently other people have reported seeing this too, quite independently. Wish I knew what was going on. There isn't a bad feeling about it, in fact the site has been more peaceful and more beautiful than I have seen it in a long time. Visitors have been commenting on that too. We haven't been getting the same level of damage and idiocy that we did last year, even though we haven't got someone on 24 hrs a day 7 days a week. Even the ground seems in better condition, despite the moles, although I confess I am very worried about some of the deep holes that are appearing around the bases of the stones because of the dry weather. I've taken to asking people not to lean on them as well, because I'm very worried about their stability.
Removed a buried bead today, some random clutter, a few coins. Someone had done a crap in one of the stones, the tall holed stone. Second time now, and same stone. Got a bad feeling that something is wrong with the Whispering Knights. Won't get a chance to check until I get a relief shift on Friday, although I checked the King Stone and all was well. The toads in the circle look happy enough, and that's always a good sign. Some pretty damn fine spiders too. Some more scratches on one of the stones to the left of the current entrance facing into the circle - always distressing. Another Beorc, by the looks of things, dammit. What are they up to?
Also got harassed by a couple of fundamentalist Christians today for about an hour. I'm so used to generally friendly and tolerant people asking about pagans up there these days that I don't even think about it any more. I just tell them the truth. It wasn't until one of them said:
"Hasn't anyone ever told you that Jesus loves you?"
that I knew I was in trouble. They were pretty aggressive too, invading my personal space, coming over all patriarchal, addressing me as "love" in every single sentence. At one point I thought one of them was going to grab me, at which point I'd have probably broken his nose and then called the police. Another visitor came in after they had left and told me he had been harrassed by them as well, despite being a methodist and a member of the Salvation Army.
They were quite stupid.
I wonder if the stuff at the stones is anything to do with settling down from the transition after the work we did at Easter? It's almost exactly a year since stuff went really ape up there, and almost exactly 6 months since we tackled the problem in a sustained and aggressive manner. If it is that, it might explain why it feels as though they are treating me differently now too.
Ghods. This is all too weird. I'm both disconnected yet still able to do this stuff.
And the PhD mess is getting even more complicated. Too much to think about right now and Frood just came home.
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Wednesday, August 30, 2000
20:44
Just saw aye-ayes on the TV, Found out that they can chew through metal and concrete. So if he couldn't pick the lock, he could eat it!
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14:40
I've been thinking about this idea of going walkabout. I'm not keen, as I've already said, and at first I thought it was because I was afraid of my own incompetence, that I wouldn't be able to cope alone. But that's rubbish, really. I spend heaps of time alone. I've spent whole weeks out of contact with anyone with whom I would want to be in contact. It's not an issue of capability, although I admit that being ill means that hiking alone is more risky.
It's a question of the need to share. When I stand on top of a mountain and gasp at the view, it means that much more to me if there is someone I can hold and share that moment with. If I am traipsing across rough terrain in foul weather it actually makes it fun to have someone to share the whinging. When I am forcing my knees to carry me up a steep hill with a pack on my back it is good to have someone slogging up too, so that I can tell myself "If they can do it I can too."
But mainly it's about the good things. Mainly it's about knowing that someone else had a good time, that someone else will have happy memories of beautiful things and goals reached. Mainly it's about being able to share the experience. That's why empaths don't do well alone. For the same reason that when watching a funny programme I will look round to see that others are enjoying it too
Is it possible to share one's experience of the Land with the Land itself? I like being up at the Stones alone, but I prefer being up at the Stones with one or two people with whom I want to share the experience. What would going hiking alone for a week teach me?
Of course I could just get someone to hang me from a tree for nine days and see if that does the trick.
Maybe the sharing is the point. Maybe that's why it is necessary to do it alone, so that the experience is a personal one, not shared by anyone else. So that anything that happens happens to me, not to some putative "us". I don't know. I am alone so much of the time you would think that I'd be able to have that sort of experience anyway.
The idea still scares me. But I do need to find this trigger.
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12:08
Stuck at home today. Vision is badly blurred, full of ghosts. It's like watching a TV channel when the reception isn't quite right and you get ghosts of another channel wading through the picture. Didn't think that driving in this condition would be a terribly brilliant idea. Besides, the stones were absolutely dead quiet yesterday, only a measly 60 people turned up. I think they all went to visit on the Monday, which was heaving. I feel a bit bad about not being there as it was New Moon last night and I'd have liked to be there in case anyone was up to anything last night.
Odd thing happened on Monday. In fact, this week is getting gradually weirder. I was doing my warden bit and I looked across at the gate and saw a flash of a man. He was fairly tall, but bent over a little, leaning on a shoulder high staff that he held in his right hand. Actually, I think he was holding it with both hands, but he was holding it on his right side, in a right handed sort of way. He looked a little like Iggy Pop, actually, with shoulder length, straight, naturally streaky grey hair and an etched face. He was tanned, almost leathery. He was wearing a hawk feather cloak that seemed to catch the colour of the sun. As soon as I saw him he vanished.
He wasn't the only thing I saw on Monday that didn't hang around. There were animals too. I think I might even have seen a leopard. Quite a few ghostly people. The stones seem to be "talking" to me again. I don't feel like they are turning a cold shoulder or just treating me as if I'm not there any more. I do feel like part of the furniture, like the grass or the trees. It's not that they're used to me, they've been used to me for ages. It's more than that, I can't really describe it.
The little robins have started getting their adult plumage and have become much more wary. Or at least they were yesterday.
Dreams have been weird, but I can't remember them properly. Just echoes of the context. I know that Karin was in my dreams last night.
The week is dragging by so slowly. I got a book on Mountaincraft and Leadership for the navigation section yesterday, and a map of Jura. I need to get a map of the Kilmelford area as well. All my thoughts are turning to getting out, getting away. Not just this next week, but the rest of the year as well. We're going up to Scotland next week, Andy and Frood and I, to spend a week with my other brother. There was a bit of a scare when it looked like Frood wouldn't be able to come because of work, but that's all sorted now and we're all terribly excited.
That reminds me. Must see if I can get some meths today.
I'm terribly sorry. I seem to be totally disjointed today, completely unable to put my thoughts in order. Although I should mention that those twins have been given sanctuary by the Archbishop of Ravenna. I did make a plea to the void for something to be done for them, for someone to pay attention to what they wanted, if they were capable of having an opinion at some level. I didn't think anyone would listen, as no one is talking to me any more. Of course, it might well have been nothing to do with me or what I said, but Ravenna? It does seem as if Dad is arseing around. Maybe because I asked, maybe it was something that was going to be done anyway.
Of course, it could just be coincidence. I remember reading about Austin Osman Spare. It was in some book that Peter loaned me once, about Crowley and his cronies. Apparently Spare made the decision to take the path in which he treated everything happening around him as being a message to him from the universe. In other words, he made a conscious decision to read too much into everything. He was a total loon. I do occasionally worry that I am inadvertently taking that path myself. How much of it is coincidence, how much of it synchronicity, how much of it is what Andy calls the 2CV effect?
The 2CV effect? Well, if you have a particular thing about green 2CVs you'll notice far more of them on the road than someone who hasn't. You see more of them because you have a pattern matching program in your head that picks them out. You notice them more because they are important to you. I wonder how much of Spare's approach could be seen as an overlap with the Zen concept of mindfulness. Everything is important, everything should be done with mindfulness. Be mindful of everything you are and everything around you. From a not-very expert position, over here, it seems as if the two could be related quite closely.
But I'm rambling again.
My point was, I am sensitive to anything to do with conjoined twins and corvids. The little girls I was talking about before have been offered sanctuary at Ravenna. In some senses that could be the 2CV effect, it could just be a big flash in my pattern match because it has both twins and Raven in there. But that's two big hits. You can drive yourself mad thinking about this sort of thing. Well, madder.
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Sunday, August 27, 2000
17:58
Just swapped a whole pile of the files over to SSI. No one will ever know the difference except me. Not too sure whether this was the right thing to do or not, took fucking hours. One day I'll find out how to make the same edit to lots of files without having to open them and code it by hand. Still, now have easy navigation headers and footers on nearly everything. Just have to edit some of the other hippyshit files now.
And I found a broken gif on my science page that no one has ever told me about. Shows how many people visit that section.
Also added a short piece on the nature of weblogs to the hippyshit section.
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12:24
It was the elephant's left eye he put through the window, if that's relevant, and there was actually some sense of it not being an elehpant at all, but a man who had an elephant's head, or a man in an elephant suit. The eye, when it winked, although an elephant eye, was terribly human, and he seemed to be quite comfortable standing on his hind legs, as if his spine was meant to work that way.
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12:09
Gah. More weird dreams.
Excuse me, there is a daddy-long-legs, my nemesis over there. It probably explains why one of my wind chimes has come down after several weeks of staying up. Either that or I'm under attack again.
Anyway. This morning I dreamed that I was dreaming. And in my dream of a dream I was standing at the edge of a field. I'd just been talking to Crywalt about free ISPs, which is daft, as he lives on the other side of the Atlantic, and now was standing by a field of cotton. For some reason I was doing a favour for the farmer, or maybe he was paying me, a job, but what I had to do was pick the cotton. It wasn't ordinary cotton. The plants were tall, the same height as me, and had between one and seven heads on, with leaves a bit like tarragon leaves but bigger and longer. The heads were covered in fibrous material that was red, a very exotic-fruit looking red, with hints of pink and mauve. Apparently the way to do it was to prise apart the fibrous material and only pick the cotton heads that were about the size and shape of mango seeds. It was pretty hard work, but they were fluffy and soft and smooth inside, like pussy willow. Not like the flax plants I've seen. I had a big basket to put them in.
Then, in the dream, I dreamt that the farmer returned and I was waking up, and was lying in bed with arms outstretched picking this cotton, and trying to get my head round being lying down in bed and being in a field picking cotton talking to a farmer. he was really grateful and gave me this box of toys, one of which was a toy car, a model T Ford, still in its box. But what had woken me up was this fuck off huge wasp and I was really scared (as I'm badly, really badly, adrenalin injection carrying badly allergic to wasp and bee stings). I was trying to wake up Frood, to get him to chase it out of the open window, and also to show him this toy car I'd been given (even though I had been given it in a dream), when suddenly there was this massive rumpus from outside and a goddamn elephant tried to stick its head through the window. There was one eye and the top end of the trunk sticking through. I could see the rest of the trunk curling around below, and the short, stiff hairs on its forehead. I was nervous, thinking it was going to get its trunk in through the window and grab me. I wasn't exactly scared of it, but I kept thinking of the time Frood told me about feeding an elephant peanuts and getting covered in elephant snot, and as I was naked (I sleep naked) I didn't want to get all coated in elephant slime. Urgh.
Then the elephant winked at me, quite deliberately, and took its head out of the window. It seemed to shrink down and I saw it had been standing on its hind legs so it could reach. There was an entire circus outside, parading down the street. The wasp flew out of the window after the elephant.
Then I sat up in the dream, and for real, looking out of the window after this elephant, watching the circus go down the hill and round the corner. I guess the breeze coming in must have woken me up, but there was a good time when I was utterly confused about what was going on, expecting to see a circus and realising that all that was happening was that the people across the road were ogling my breasts.
If this dream has some deep meaning, I don't know what it is. The elephant was male, incidentally. And Indian, I think, from the high forehead.
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02:17
Oh yeah, I changed the icon for the url again. The first one was just icky. This one looks better. If the icon next to the url doesn't look like this thing linked to here, and you want it to, try bookmarking the site. It should come up in the favourites list (only works with IE5, I'm afraid). If you have already got a bookmark (crivens!) you'll have to delete that, clear your temporary internet files and restart. Then bookmark it. Or something.
I still haven't got this to work right on my machine. if you have any hints and tips, do get in touch.
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