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Friday, September 22, 2000
17:21 
An hour in the gym. Not my usual three, but Maxine was very insistent that I was very careful. I've been off for 2 months now with what I am beginning to suspect is a broken coccyx. I might have broken it coming off my bike the last time. My cardiovascular fitness and my flexibility have seriously suffered, but I haven't lost as much strength as I thought I would, so overall not bad. Either way, I have broken what was beginning to become a psychological block. Not only that but the cancellation fee I expected to have to pay didn't show on my details, so they didn't charge me for it.
"The Weapon needs to be broken, and I am sure enough that it *can* be broken that taunts like that one don't penetrate any more."
Oh it can be. Of course it can be. But then the 100m can be run in under 10 seconds. 100m can be swum in under a minute. I can't run 100m in under 10 seconds, or swim 100m in under a minute. But it can be done. There are people who can do it.
I don't doubt that the Weapon can be broken, but I do doubt that it's going to happen any time soon, or that, given the events of this week, Andy is going to be the one to do it. Not that I think there is anyone else, right now. I think about what would be required, and I think about how strong it is getting, and I can't be confident. No.
Check your tags, bruv.
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14:17
Grand. Percival's rear light is now fixed and working, all set for gymming over the winter season. I have even fixed the answering machine, so all the people who never call could leave a message if they did and we weren't in. I didn't burn my leg, but nearly did. Have now strapped my wrist again and I suppose it's time to head for the gym, because I don't think anything else is going to get sorted today.
If you are still coming, you might as well bring your swim kit.
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13:25
Note to self: Dropping hot solder on one's leg is not a good idea.
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12:24
He's not mailing me, not any more, not online, not SMSing, so I keep checking his blog to see if I can find some clue as to what's going on.
But he hasn't been updating that very much either.
It's all so very sad. I'm cleaning the house to try to distract me from all of this even though moving hurts like a bastard. At this rate I'll be off to Ireland and he still won't be talking to me and by the time I get back everything will have gone horribly wrong. I worry, you know.
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11:32
Well dinner went down swimmingly. Simon isn't a big eater, but polished off what was really an enormous quantity of venison stew and apple crumble. That's my own special recipe apple crumble, which uses a mulled wine syrup to flavour barely-stewed apples before it goes in the oven.
Was so exhausted last night that I was in bed before midnight, but it was a very restless night and I woke up intermittently throughout. I had very vivid dreams that I can't remember properly because I am still utterly exhausted this morning.
In the first dream there were a few of us out in some remote mountain community, where we had gone because there was something nasty terrorising the place. I think it must have been another island or something because we were there by boat. It was my job to track this nasty thing down, but it was also my job to protect the community from it while I was at it. The place was very popular with the sort of hikers and mountain bikers who don't like meeting other people every ten minutes, as there were a lot of rough tracks and a lot of miles of scenery, which also meant it was pretty difficult to cover. The majority of the locals were experienced however, and knew what they were doing. Those that didn't, didn't do things. Most of them seemed to consider the danger to be part of the risk of going out in their wilderness and some of them didn't want it to change. I sympathised with them, in all honesty, and didn't really make much of an effort to track the thing down. I made so little effort I didn't ever really find out what it was.
There was an incident when a young man was seriously injured and everywhere was shut, so we had real trouble providing decent first aid for him. One chap was a bit of a newcomer to the outdoors, but had a lot of money, so he had bought some ridiculously comprehensive first aid kit including intravenous drugs, then tried to give this boy an adrenalin injection in the heart. The bloody hypo had an air bubble in it and while I managed to get him to hold on, I couldn't actually get him to remove the needle because he thought he knew best. I had to run off, desperately searching for a doctor to persuade this nut not to inject adrenalin and air into the kid's heart, all the while worrying about the thing, whatever it was, eating them.
In another dream I was over in Ireland visiting Wyrd (I'm actually leaving next weekend, so I'm quite excited), and we went down to a beach with her brother and his friend, both male. We split up at one point because the way the wind worked the sand there were two options. We could carry on along the top of this dune, or go down to the left along the beach. The dune increased in height and steepness as it went on, until it was so high and steep Wyrd said she couldn't get down it to the waterfront, which is where we were headed.
So while Wyrd's brother and his friend went along the dune top, Wyrd and I went along the beach. I remember finding something there, and it wasn't a motorbike, although there were motorbikes later on. I can't remember what it was, other than there were two of them...engines, I think. I think I actually found a couple of engines buried in the sand, bits of them sticking out. Aye, that's right, because then Wyrd told me that her brother once found a whole motorbike in the sand on that beach and had even managed to get it working.
He had this dog, too, that loved the smell of oil, but only after it had been through a motorbike and it had a particular penchant for BSAs. Weird.
So we walked along the beach, and came to a small fishing port. There was something odd about the entire place that I didn't like, it didn't feel right. It didn't feel right at all, and it turned out that the place was run by some sort of other people, another power. Not non-humans, but a different political power system. A very tyrannical and overbearing power system. It was when I was helping one of the fishing boats into a lock and chatting to the skipper that they noticed I "wasn't from around there" and decided that I had to be a spy. The upshot was that Wyrd had to dash off with her brother, then return on their rescued motorbikes and get me before I was executed, and I was distracting the female who was detaining me by explaining to her all about Wyrd's brother's dog and his liking for vaporised Castrol GTX.
It doesn't sound as frightening and disturbing as it was, does it?
I'm so tired. It takes me forever to get to sleep, when I do sleep I have vivid and disturbing dreams, I'm forever waking up, and in the mornings I feel like I've had the shit kicked out me by someone in a bad mood. My dreams have been very dark recently. The daylight in them has looked as though it has been filtered through a blue grey filter - the way they used to film night scenes in daylight but through a filter. The soldier dream wasn't like that, the daylight in that was very bright, but the other recent dreams have all had very dark daylight. I don't know if that means anything, either externally or internally.
Don't really know what to do about what's happening with Andy either. When I try to talk to him it's like beating my head against a wall, he doesn't really respond, then he accuses me of making it difficult to talk. Well, maybe I do, but only after trying to make conversation for a couple of hours with no real success. I have barely exchanged three words with him in the last couple of days or so and he hasn't exactly been eloquent in his blog either. He's supposed to be coming over to visit tomorrow morning. At this point I'm starting to think he's so down on me right now that he won't come. And then, when I phone him up in tears asking him why, he'll say "I didn't think you'd want to see me."
Because he does things like that. He's done stuff like that before.
I don't really know how to get through to him. If I send him a message on ICQ or something, he'll respond with something to which it is very difficult for me to reply in a meaningful way, or he'll not reply at all. After a few tries at this I get frustrated, because I'm hurting and I'm tired and I don't have a lot of patience right now. And then bad things happen, and I sometimes feel as if he's doing it deliberately so that he can feel justified in being pissed off at me.
But I miss him, I do miss him. I don't know how long that will last because I'm getting weaker and weaker from lack of sleep, and if I get much weaker the coin will flip. The other side of the coin can cope better, is stronger, but it's not very nice.
Sometimes I think it would do him good to talk to El, and there are times when I've asked her to talk to him but she's shaken her head and told me he has to ask her because sometimes that's just the way it works. He never does.
Ach well, so. I suppose I'd better clear up after last night, because the Froodster neglected to do so before coming to bed, even though he said he would. If I don't do it soon the fruit flies will number in the thousands.
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Thursday, September 21, 2000
18:49
Note to self: when mixing up gel and salt, don't use the pestle and mortar.
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16:04
The Old Chinese Drunk says this to you: It is better to be multicoloured like a cup of Milo than fat like an elephant.
Thanks, man.
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15:55
Frood, the epitome of the modern hunter gatherer (there's a song in there somewhere) has just brought home 5 pounds of venison and thus reminded me that I am doing the hostess/chef thing tonight. Sigh.
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15:06
Raven sits on the side of the bath, taking form briefly in the steam, gone when I look directly at him, although his voice remains. I can hear his feet clicking as he grips the porcelain, feel him pick some piece of fluff out of my damp hair with his beak.
"It's not your decision," he tells me. "The lesson is his. It's not up to you."
"Well you tell him that then," I reply. "If you're so clever, if all of this is so important, you tell him. Or get someone else to. Find someone else to explain what he doesn't understand. I've tried explaining."
"He has to learn. This is how he will learn." A flash of him telling me how he learns by doing, not by being told. "Telling him will make no difference."
"I've noticed that."
And El sighs and reminds me that life isn't fair, that you can't pity a teacher for having to be in school every day because he chose to be a teacher.
Like I need to be reminded.
And I sigh and point out that she gets just as exasperated as I do sometimes.
Like she needs to be reminded.
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13:30
What has want got to do with it? Quite a lot, when it's wiring.
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13:28
I've said "I can't do this any more" so many times. Too many times to count. But I have never, ever said it about a friendship. I have never decided that a friendship, or what that friendship entails, is too much for me. I am not the sort of person who, should Frood and I ever run into difficulties, would throw away the engagement ring in a fit of pique, because it's a mutually important symbol with a lot of memories and love attached to it.
I have this irritating habit of giving small things to friends. Not mementoes, or gifts, but stupid things like bits of sweet wrapper and fluff. I don't know why I do it. A few years ago I would make "plankton" out of the blue plastic tubes that provide the body of Johnson's cotton buds, by splitting the ends and folding the resulting fronds into weird shapes. I made a lot of these. I gave all of them away, most of them to Frood. Now if Frood had kept every single item I had ever given him he would have a skip full of fluff and bits of sweet wrapper and pussy willows and bits of prettily coloured leaves and all sorts. And plastic plankton, obviously. So the standard response is "Why thank you, my love. I shall treasure it always and keep it safe, over here, in the bin."
But I gave one of these plastic planktons to another friend of mine, with whom we happened to live at the time. A couple of years later he told me he still had it, had actually kept it, and that touched me profoundly. I think he still has it. He's one of my best friends in the whole world and I love him dearly, but haven't seen him since Frood and I got married. The fact he still has that stupid piece of plastic waste says a lot, to me. Because it's not the value of the thing itself, it's the fact that it was given in genuine love and affection.
Even non-consensus things can be mutually important.
I've declared so often that I am at the end of my tether - but not with a friend. I even had a phone call from Michaela, last night, the woman who used to live upstairs from us, who had the psychopathic boyfriend. There were many times during the year we lived close when Marko told me to stop being involved, but she was, in a way, a friend, and I don't give up on friends. Now, 4 years later, she calls me to say she has turned her life around, has been travelling around the world, earning heaps of money, and has come back to Oxford for a while. She says she had to get in touch because I was such a big part of her life at the time. She phoned my Dad to get my number. The fact she did that means so much to me that we're going to get together for a drink, whether I feel up to it or not.
I don't feel up to it; I collapsed on the stairs this morning. I can barely move for the pain. But I will go, and I will be cheerful, because she was a friend.
I don't expect the same degree of committment from my friends, though. I have always felt that it is my choice to commit myself that way, to offer all that I offer, and the fact that I am prepared to do so shouldn't mean that others do too. I don't expect the same things from other people that I expect from myself. I drive a car, but Idon't expect everyone else to as well. I ride a bike where I can, but I don't expect everyone else to as well.
If someone takes a mutually important symbol and throws it away, saying "I can't do this any more," what am I to think? Fit of pique, childish tantrum or not, something sacred to me - the friendship - has been violated. Friendship is about being there for people in the hard things as well as the good things. You can't have one without the other and call it a friendship. I don't expect the same degree of committment from my friends, but I believe them, perhaps stupidly, when they say that it exists. The friendship I have with them, my feelings for them, my love for them, means that I must do whatever I can to remove the source of stress and unhappiness that has brought them to do this. If someone takes a mutually signficant symbol that is intimately bound up in a relationship and throws it away, it means that the relationship is causing distress and unhappiness and I feel bound to remedy that.
Temporary? A slight glitch? It could happen again. I don't want that.
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12:11
More nightmares last night. Or perhaps I should be calling them "difficult dreams". Ha.
I dreamt that Frood and I got a cottage. It was on an island somewhere, but I don't think it was off the West Coast. I'm not sure how we got this cottage, but the woman who had owned it had died, in rather suspicious circumstances, and we got it through some weird sort of nefarious deal or some sort of unbelievable coincidences.
No, I'm sorry. I can't talk about this.
The most vivid things I can remember about the dream were being accused of being a witch and being hanged (that came last, obviously), of discovering that although the cottage itself was tiny there was a fabulous garden out back, huge, even though it backed onto the playing fields of the local school, and there was lots and lots of really high quality produce that had been grown by the woman who owned it previously, including some fruit I didn't recognise, which was about the size of kiwi fruit but looked a bit like fresh dates.
My Mum came round to visit, with an incredibly sore back, admitting for the first time that I can do stuff with things like that. She seemed hesitant, was holding her back, asked me if I had anything to attach that would help. I think she meant electrical pain relief. I said I didn't, but I had something else, and I found the bottle of oil I had made up to take on the boat, which I lost when I got back. I even remember thinking at the time "Well that's where it is, obvious now that I have a use for it. It probably stayed hidden so that I wouldn't use it for anything less important before this moment."
But this group of New Age travellers had been round and had angered the local community by doing things at the local stone circle for Samhain, even though it wasn't quite Lammas, and for some reason, because I had talked to them, even though I was trying to explain to them how to respect the site and not to arse about with it, I was associated with them and I was hanged, dropped down a well with a rope around my neck, as a witch.
Which is ridiculous. But it was awful.
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Wednesday, September 20, 2000
21:22
Hoorah! My DNS management is working. Phew.
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19:02
I didn't mean that last post to sound so abrupt. I'm tired and fazed and a little emotionally unstable. I can still see the face of the reporter, can still hear the soldier screaming.
But, some things were good today. Frood bought an SLR camera, a good one (not fully manual, because of the weight), and said I could take it to Ireland with me. Hoorah. Getting quite excited about that. It should be really good. Really good to see Cousin Wyrd again, good to see Ireland, see new places in Ireland. I've nearly got the parked domains for the Scottprotec website sorted out as well, despite knowing next to bugger all about DNS management (although I know now - the tracert was a good thing to learn, thanks, bruv), and I got the logo gif down to 11k so it doesn't take so long to load, without any real observable difference in the image.
I know about as much about photography as I do about web development, but I have a good eye for a photo, as long as it doesn't involve people.
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18:48
Haven't heard from Andy today at all. Another olympic sized cluster fuck? How the hell would I know?
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15:05
I feel terribly sick now but we have to go into town for a few things. I'm very weak and shaky, still quite weepy. That wasn't the only dream I had last night, but I'm not sure I can tell the other one right now. I don't remember very much of it, it wasn't nasty or anything, it's just that my mind is full of the dream about the soldier.
I might turn it into a story, see if that helps.
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13:24
When I got up this morning and came downstairs, all I wanted was to find Andy or Wyrd and just be held, be held by someone who understands what it's like to go through this sort of stuff. Someone who could tell me it was over and everything was going to be okay, that I did what I was supposed to do and whatever happens next is outside of my control and not my responsibility. Frood understands that it happens, but he doesn't know what it's like. You, humble reader, might be saying "But it's only a dream," and in many senses you would be right. But I feel the after effects of that dream - it wasn't a nightmare, but I still feel the pain and the fear and the rage and the sense of impotence and bewilderment. I feel bruised, as if I had been fighting. I feel the shock of being someone else for a time, a time very stressful in that person's life. The experience feels real, it feels as if, for a few hours, I was someone else, in another life, in a very different place.
What it comes down to is not a matter of objective reality, for there is no such thing. Like the memories, it matters not if anyone else treats them as having any idependent truth to them, what matters is that they affect me as if they had that independent truth. I ask only that people accept that they feel real to me, not that they are real, whatever that may mean.
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12:33
Incidentally, I know there are spelling mistakes in that dream recounting, but blogger won't let me edit it for some reason.
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12:27
This dream got to me because that soldier had an empty life. There was nothing but pain and fear and hurt and anger and bewilderment. There was nothing familiar to him except what was inside that little cocoon of a mobile base. The only love he had was for his commander, and he loved that man like he was his father, his god, could be persuaded by him to do anything. But it wasn't really that man he loved, it was his original commander, not this latest in a line of copies. That commander would probably never have let these things happen to his boys, but the copy did. The copy sent the grey men to bring him back, the copy had known it was a training exercise, the copy knew that the supports drained memories so that the soldiers had no knowledge of family, of history, of anything other than being a soldier. They kept their skills, the valuable bits (valuable to the Military), but no sense of who they were, only what they were.
I cried for that soldier this morning.
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12:01
1: Shadowing is a completely arbitrary term I use to refer to those nights when I am someone else, but more that I am hitching a ride in someone else's life. I don't always have access to their memories or their background, but often I do, at least a little. They don't know I'm there. Sometimes the lesson is for me to learn, more often I'm there to help them out, to give them an extra bit of poke (although that doesn't mean I can't learn something while I'm at it). In this dream of the soldier, I helped him fight when he needed to fight, but was merely observing while he screamed at the reporter. I still feel as they feel - all the pain and fear he felt I felt as my own, this morning I feel as though I have been fighting, feel bruised and sore and stiff, even more so than usual.
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11:56
Crying this morning. Pain is getting worse. It was a very rough night.
I dreamed I was "shadowing" [1] this guy in another place. He was a soldier, a very good one, but he was treated as an inferior being by all around him because his speciality was that he had no cybernetic enhancement of any sort whatsoever. Nearly everyone bar a select few, from schoolkids to weather presenters and the majority of military personnel, had cybernetic enhancement. Every single one had the small circles lacking skin on the inside of their forearms, a bluish tinted patterned metal. There were only ten soldiers like this one, all of whom worked for the same commander.
He was sent to do a job. It was a training exercise, but he didn't know that. He was kept in a state of near suspended animation. He didn't know what world he was in, or why everyone else around him was so much stronger, and every time they brought him round he was in a strange place, not knowing what was happening. The world outside was simply a place full of enemies for him. He was familiar no other world than the one inside their mobile base. He wasn't even to know that the man he thought of as his old commander was the last in a number of replacements. Expendable, he was.
In this training exercise the dropped him into an enemy base. It was based around a deep, cyclindrical structure, the size of an industrial chimney, which stretched some way under ground, with access hatches in the walls. Those access a hatches led out into complexes in the earth on the outside of the chimney.
The enemy base seemed deserted, at first, unused, the fear was incredible. He (I) made entrance through a hatch, began searching the corridors. There was so much tension, ever corner, every shadow seemed to hold an enemy. Then he found them, down i the lower levels. There had been a radiation leak, they were all wearing raditation suits, and there were red hazard lights providing all the illumination. Even more fear. To have to fight and know that you are being bombarded by radiation. He (I) was sobbing as he dodged shots from the weapons they carried, long guns like rifles but with a prominent bulb on the end of the barrel. They fired "solar flashes", bright like a single spark from a sparkler at bonfire night, increased in size to be as large as a man's head. He was dodging these things, ducking, rolling, hitting people, firing back with a similar weapon of his own, every second looking to find a way out that was rapid, that would take him out of the radiation, trying not to get hit and killed.
Finally he spotted a hole in the floor and dived down it, feeling cool air on his face. It could have dropped straight into the chimney, and the chimney could have been bottomless for all he knew, but he had this fear of radiation, knew he would be dying anyway if he didn't get out.
He landed on a small platform that gave way in a controlled bounce to take the impact of his fall. Immediately he leapt from this onto the ground, the floor of the chimney just in front of him. Behind him, some hatches opened and people started firing at him, but he returned the fire, all of them dropping. There was this wonder somewhere, far down, in is mind, about the fact he had not been hit, but he was too caught up in the mode of combat for it to register properly.
But then this blonde women, with the circles on the insides of her forearms, walked right up to him and stuck a microphone in his face.
"You're one of them, aren't you?" she said brightly. She had perfect teeth, cropped blonde hair, boyish, with bright blue eyes. She was tall and slender - taller than him. They all were, the entire group of them. They all wanted to touch, to see him. "Hey everyone, it's one of the old guys. What are you doing here today?"
She was a reporter. She was with a tour group who had somehoe got in for a trip round the abandoned facility. Suddenly all the people our man had shot started getting up. He couldn't understand it, didn't know what was going on and his mind snapped. He hit the woman with the butt of his weapon. She carried on talking as if she hadn't noticed, the only effect a pause of less than a second where her eyes glazed briefly as if some machine in her head was reinitialising. He hit her again, several times, nearly screaming iwth rage and fear. He hit some of the others, hit one of the guys in radiation suits.
"How does it feel to be smaller and weaker than everyone else?" she asked him.
He went mad. he went absolutely stark raving bonkers. He grabbed her, taking her by suprise, ran with her and slammed her against the wall. She blinked, that was all. He had her round the throat and she was just letting him do it, more confused, more "does not compute" than anything else.
"Wait! You wait!" he was screaming at her. "You fucking goddamn machine! You wait! One day! One day! You think we don't have a fucking purpose? We do the fucking jobs you can't do because of all the fucking machinery, because of interference! You bitch! You goddamn fucking bitch! All of you! One day!"
There was all this spittle flying, he was shaking and crying. So much anger and pain and fear and also hurt pride, so many feelings of impotence because the rest of the world had been changed to be stronger than him, had changed so much and not taken him with it in any way that meant he could be part of it.
Then a black craft settled down and a couple of big burly men got out. They grabbed him, he was still fighting, thought that they were the enemy too. They were so much bigger than him, both dressed in black, had very dark skin, but dark grey, not black, had rolls of flesh but not fat. They said nothing, but held him in a choke hold, impervious to his struggles, lifting him off the ground, until he fell unconscious.
He awoke later with a sore head, sitting on a chair inside the mobile base. It was quite dim in there, dim but familiar. He was in a lot of pain. He (I) could feel his head resting back against springy supports. The supports were in a horizontal v shape, to cradle the back of his head, had a certain amount of movement in them so that the weight of his head leaning on them would push them into the correct position. In those supports was machinery that generated impulses wich fed into the the back of his head and sent him into this near suspended state. He knew all that. Everything in the base was familiar to him, including the other men, still dressed in full kit, who sat in their respoective chairs, apparently asleep. Monitors next to their heads showed their status, generated images of their heads revolving, colours dancing within the images showing activity. On each monitor there was one head with flesh and one head that was just a skull, with different patterns of colour. He could not read the text, not even the alphabet, of the information that scrolled past next to the heads, but he had some vague sense of what it was telling the people who used it.
He didn't want to sit down, to do as he was told, he hurt and he was tired and angry and bewildered, but his commander, the one familiar face whom he trusted implicitly, talked gently but firmly to him until he was persuaded. But just as he was settling down, adjusting himself so that his head leaned back on the supports and his shoulders were firmly held by the contours of the chair, he happened to look outside through a tiny one-way window and see an old woman being attacked in the street by three youths, who had brought her to the ground. The window was in a door, and even though he was not supposed to use that door, he leapt up, out through the door, and kicked the shit out of the three youths.
"You see?!" he screamed, to no one in particular, sobbing. "We're not obsolete."
They came outside and got him and put him to sleep. Til next time.
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Tuesday, September 19, 2000
19:55
According to Andy, the strange smell I am exuding is adrenochrome. The Lycaeum appears to be divided on whether or not this is a psychotomimetic substance, however the biochemistry is quite fascinating.
If all this stuff is to be believed, then I'm a walking Hunter S. Thompson novel.
I should be surprised.
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18:16
Rude is just so....insufficient. Really.
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17:21
"sic transit gloria delphinidae"
Thank you Simon, that's really lovely. I shall treasure that thought.
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16:21
Oh fuck. People are so fucking stupid.
The fuel protest has come to an end. This is cool. I didn't agree with the protest, I didn't agree with what they were trying to do, but even if I had I would not have agreed with the way they went about it.
Apparently, someone on local Welsh radio commented that all we need now is for the tanker drivers to go on strike, and suddenly a new fuel crisis has been sparked as this comment was published as a rumour that tanker drivers were going on strike, and people rushed to fill up their tanks. The queues, apparently, are worse now than they were last week. Some stations are reintroducing rationing. The oil companies say that there is no sign of any protest or strike, it's all a rumour, but people are queueing just because they see other people queueing.
I put 20 quid's worth in the car at the weekend. I haven't used it. I don't intend to. When I have to go to Tesco's tomorrow I will go by bike. When I have to go into town tomorrow, I will go by bike. When I have to do whatever I have to do round here I will do it by bike. Good grief. What's the panic? I don't need the car immediately. I have sufficient in there in case of emergency.
I'm still amazed by how many people are coming to Sainsbury's by car. Why oh why oh why oh why? Time to build a trailer for Percival, I think.
Have you ever read Spike Bike? You should, just for a laugh.
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16:02
Question for the anonymous reader:
Would you prefer to have the archive files in a sidebar on this page or do you like it the way it is? If you look at the weblogs page or even go up one level to the index of this section, then you will see the sort of layout I mean.
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15:34
Crying again now. Just been sick. Obliques cramped and did horrible things to my right hip just as I was about to leave for the gym. I will go tomorrow morning, get another session in this week while Frood still in bed. If I do 2 sessions a week for 4 weeks, then do 3 sessions a week, if I'm careful, I should get fit again without hurting myself.
But I'm horribly depressed that I've had to cry off. I feel fat and lazy and stupid and worthless and pathetic, even though I know this isn't true. 5 feet 6, 144 pounds (at last weigh in), 36-20-36. When I'm not suffering from water retention, in which case it goes up to 38-25-38, which I hate. Not fat, no, but I do have curves. Not fat. Lazy, maybe. Worthless is just depression talking. Stupid I certainly am not, although I can be slow with some things. Pathetic? Maybe. Maybe.
It just hurts so much. It really hurts. And pain wears you down, it's why they use it as a method of torture. It weakens you, it makes you depressed, it's emotionally exhausting to be in constant pain and yet still have to get on with your life. If most of the rest of your life happens to blow goats as well, then it becomes incredibly difficult to keep going every day, to stay cheerful, to stay motivated, to stay determined.
Two weeks on the boat would have been so good. Fuck, who am I trying to kid? A lifetime on the boat looks attractive right now, even though I know it would be a lot harder than my current situation.
A small cottage with a large garden somewhere on the West coast, doing a job I love, living amongst people I love. Oh, it's not as if I'm asking for much, is it? Just perfect contentment. Aye, right. As if.
What does it say about me that I know what I want so precisely? Right now I know what I want, I'm not naieve enough to think that this would necessarily remain the same, but the principle.... the underlying foundation behind my dreams is actually applicable to far more than the specific set of circumstances which I imagine. I dream about a cottage, near the sea, with a herb garden, friends and family nearby, but I could be happy in a LIH development with my friends somewhere, as long as the resonance was there.
I've tasted what it's like to feel capable of getting on. I want to get back to that state.
GODDAMMIT I WANT MY LIFE BACK!
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13:39
Do you ever read Andy's Blog, humble reader? Do you ever stick your head over the fence to see what's going on next door, to compare the sheep on his farm to the sheep on mine? I think his cows give better yields than mine. But here, here we have a vicarious conversation.
Please to check the entries for Monday the 18th September. I can't link to his posts because the irritating bugger has neglected to provide permanent links for his blogs, the sod. He does have a search facility, however, so you can probably find it ok. The entry he has was written in response to the entry I posted on the same day.
Here's my response to that. Vicarious conversation. Ghods, it's just so sad.
Can't. Aye. It comes down to can't in the end. Quantum twinning there may be (and it is an incredibly sexy notion). I may well be able, at times, to smell him, feel the texture of his skin, know what he is thinking, how he is feeling, even, occasionally, what he is doing, but that doesn't mean that we live inside each other's heads all the time. He might disagree. I don't always know whether the thing that is keeping Andy silent is just an "olympic sized cluster fuck" that he would appreciate having someone interrupt, just for some human contact, or some heavy chat session with Tam, which would be a very bad thing indeed to interrupt. I don't know if he's in a meeting, taken Tam to the cinema, out to dinner with friends, being designated driver for a night round town, whether he has left his phone at thome, or it has broken and he's incommunicado for purely mechanical reasons. He might be driving. There are all sorts of decent reasons he might be keeping stum, and I don't feel I have the right to interrupt. It might be dangerous. It might prove problematic in other ways. I don't know whether it is acceptable to interrupt an olympic sized cluster fuck. If I send SMS and don't hear a reply, perhaps after the third with no response, then I have to assume that either there is a communication breakdown, or he's busy doing something that is too important for him to interrupt for a few brief moments to respond with a message saying "busy right now, call later". If he can't interrupt what he's doing himself, then you can be damn sure I'm not going to do it for him. He's in a much better position to judge what is interruptable and what is not. He lives two hours drive away. I can't make judgements like that.
On Evarne, he would retreat to the bows of the boat and sit there. Most of the time I didn't know what he was doing, it looked to the rest of us like he was sulking, or blogging on his palm, so we let him get on with it. I interrupted only once, and it appeared he definitely was sulking, so I left him to it. But I could see him then, he wasn't far away, he wasn't doing anything important that would suffer for an interruption. I can't decide that in other circumstances.
I can invade his space. Of course I can. Gods, if I can hit myself over the head with an axe (and have - had a big lump there for a few days. Luckily it wasn't a big axe), then I can invade his space. I can be an unwanted presence, an irritating distraction, quantum twinning or not. There are some circumstances in which an unwanted presence or an irritating distraction can actually be highly problematic, so I play it safe.
But it doesn't stop me worrying, or wondering. No.
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12:45
I keep dreaming about Jemima Parry-Jones, the woman who runs the National Birds of Prey Centre. That's three nights in a row now, and there have been a couple more in the last week or so. Last night I dreamt that We were all going to see kwert and on the way we had to stop overnight by the coast. There was a place there like the old Plymouth Marine Laboratory when it was still on the Hoe, a massive house converted into a marine life discovery centre, and it was being run by Jemima. She had falconry going on there too. It was right on the waterfront, with an underground section running down to seaports that looked out underwater to where you could see cormorants (sea ravens, you know) diving for fish. There was an octopus on a stand that had been dried and mounted and varnished or something, or maybe it was some sort of plastic, and a poorly otter in a little tank. I think I was after a job. When she was talking to her staff (she had three staff, all female, all 40 years plus) she referred to me as the raven lady.
I went back the next day and the otter had died. It was awful.
The dream went on with us (Wyrd, Frood and Andy) visiting kwert. The plane was delayed, and we spent a long time sitting on the ground wondering what was going on because all the staff had vanished. It was a very big plane, with plenty of room to move around. This black guy got really pissed off with the situation and Andy had to calm him down. When we finally got off the plane at the other end it transpired that Kwert was delayed because he was trying to find something for dinner and he was having trouble with elves.
The night before I dreamed that Jemima ran this crystal (as in lead crystal) shop on Jura, producing glass table sets with mystical properties. She was giving me advice on life, the universe and everything, and gave me one of her table sets (retailing at something silly like 160k). These things were basically not for sale in a shop, you had to come and make an appointment. They were more like usable sculpture with a magical dimension. It was lead crystal, in strange futuristic shapes, the wine glasses looking like tubes you get in science fiction series, with one end cut at a diagonal. It came with special stands for the glassware to sit in when at place. The crystal was tinted with violet towards the top, flecked with violet paint becoming opaque towards the bottom. She seemed very wise, but also very down to earth and practical. I can't remember what she told me, but I remember that I was getting around in this little red kayak for some reason.
I don't know why I'm dreaming about JPJ all of a sudden. I hope she doesn't mind. There's not a lot I can do about it anyway.
I've just been looking at the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency website, looking at their vacancies. I've just missed my ideal job, Environmental Protection Officer for the West region. I'd love that job. I could live for that job. But the application form asks about your state of health and I can't help thinking that no matter how good the rest of my application was (and I don't really have the experience to make a really good application form), if I was truthful about the problems I've been having I wouldn't get the job. The job market is ferocious for that sort of thing.
I think about the week on the boat, and I think that if I got a job like that, up there, then I would be fit enough. I had plenty of energy on the boat. I was up early every day, I was hiking, I was motivated, I was happy. Even when the pain was bad I had no trouble getting up and facing the day. A job like that is what I have tailored all my qualifications towards, it's what I want to do. If I lie, and I'm wrong about how much it would help me to move up there and do something that I have always wanted to do, then I could be dismissed if they find out, if my health deteriorated again. If I tell the truth, I won't get the job. As I am now, I'm not sure I'm fit enough to do the job.
I'm fucked all round, basically.
I also have an application form for the England and Wales Environment Agency. That form only asks if you are disabled. I will apply. they keep your details on file at the recruitment agency the EA uses. But right now I don't see a way forward.
Consultant appointment on the 18th. We'll see.
The pain is still bad today. I was going to try to go to the gym. I don't know if I can, but I don't know if that is just because I am sore and tired and need to push harder or whether it is because it would be a bad idea to go today.
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Monday, September 18, 2000
23:09
i appear to be interfering with my computer monitor. How very groovy.
Damn.
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21:58
I hate the silences too. I hate the feeling of worry, of fearful wonder, and being unable to do anything about it for fear of interrupting, of getting in the way of something important. It's often enough I've been told that if I don't hear anything it's because something is getting in the way.
So something is getting in the way. But what if that something is something horrid and nasty?
Don't be silly.
But I do worry, and I just hate this feeling.
Can't call, it's not important.
Can't call, would be interrupting.
Can't call, it would be silly.
Can't call, it would be invading his space.
Dammit. This is daft. But I hate the silences. I hate wondering what is happening to him today that he can't talk to me, and whether it means he's unhappy - not because he can't talk to me, but because of whatever is happening. I hate wondering and feeling unable to ask.
The pain is awful. I think I have a fever.
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19:42
I am freezing cold yet my skin is sodden. The palms of my hands tingle, spreading up into the palm-side of my fingers and their tips. I am frightened, crying, scared, and I don't know why. I can't stop shaking. My hands are like lumps of ice when I press them to my face. I can barely think.
I don't know what is happening to me.
All day I have worked on configuring the various bits and pieces that will make up the website that my Dad has asked for his company. I have done as much as I can without further information from others. I don't know what to do now. It served to distract me from the pain for an afternoon, but now there is nothing left for me to do. My book sits waiting for me to return to typing the scrawled text I wrote so many months ago, that has lain ignored for too long, but I am so cold and tired. I feel as though armed marauders have attacked me, brought me to the ground, then kicked me mercilessly about the back and kidneys. I hurt so much.
The stress that vanished so miraculously while I was on Evarne has returned as if it had never left, is progressing apace as it did before. I feel so ill. I am so scared.
Why? Why does this happen to me? What is it about this place, this situation, that causes these terrible things to happen? Where does my strength go? To where does my determination vanish? I smell of sweat and sickness, and today's bathing has not removed that.
Why does it have to hurt so much? I can't remember what it is like to be free from pain.
Please, please make it stop.
I want to go home.
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Sunday, September 17, 2000
19:44
Oh gods. It's a bad day today. So restless I cleaned the bath. I mean really cleaned the bath. Urgh. I don't think that bath has ever been cleaned properly. Nearly took the ends off my fingers.
Oh bruv. Nothing? It's not nothing. The Weapon is the coming together of Wyrm and Raven. It embodies the dilemma of the empath-shifter. What is it other than that which it is given to be?
I am Balichor.
I am the fulcrum.
I am the rock by which the Universe can be altered.
I am Land.
I am People.
I have been nothing.
I have been everything.
I will be nothing.
I will be anything.
I stand alone.
I can be all that there is.
Do not dismiss me.
Embrace me. |
If you treat it as nothing it will win, for it can be anything. It is not just a lump of stuff to be left in a box. It is more than that. A personality aspect, aye, it is that. It is strength, even in weakness.
But it's form? That, that can be altered, that can be changed, that can be dictated. Raven is the People, but He is of the Land. Watch ravens fly, watch them speak to the trees and cliffs, see them sing and dance in the updraughts where the seas crash against rock.
Bind it, break it, make it squirm.
Disembowel it? You give it a form, one that can and must be fought and conquered. Treat it as nothing and it will call you liar and it will be correct. Treat it as something that can be anything, but will be what you determine, then you will succeed. Empath-shifter. It can only be that which it is given to be. It has no intrinsic value, but that is its value. Raven can be anything by virute of being everything. The Weapon, where Land and People collide, can be anything by virtue of being nothing, but that does not mean that nothing is all that it is.
The form it has now is one that was given to it, given to it in fear and distrust, with lack of focus. It can have another form. But you have to remember that we are not that different, we are one and the same.
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