13:29 
It's odd, really, how one can be forced into a bitter "Why? Why me?" by the fragility and vulnerability of the post-nightmare state. The pain is quite bad this morning, but then the pain is quite bad every morning. It doesn't always leave me breathless and clingy and tearful, angry with myself for being unable to stop the tears, angry with Frood for still being in bed sleeping, angry with the world for having the temerity to be there.
It's a strange sort of anger, as well. It's despairing, frantic, crushing. If I were a snail upon whom someone had just stepped, uknowingly, crushing the shell, I imagine I might feel angry in this way as I died, if snails feel anger. It's also very conflicting. Andy tells me massage lady is coming round so he has to go off, can't talk right now, someone is going to do things to his back. I am genuinely pleased for him, the "enjoy your massage" is genuinely meant, but I'm also angry. I'm angry because just last night he stormed off in a sulk over something he took as an insult, getting in a state about the possibility that he is turning symptomatic and I was being less than sympathetic. I'm more angry about that now than I was last night, in fact, because now it's being hammered home how much more he has in his life to help him deal with symptoms that are nowhere near as bad as mine and may not ever get as bad as mine.
Ha, I even thought that it must at least be satisfying to be in the "whack a rat bug phase" because your problems appear and you crush them, just like that. They don't malinger and fester.
Then I get cross with myself again for the self-pity that makes me so angry in others. Gradually the mood gets worse, the stress gets worse, the back gets worse, the muscles start cramping and you're left in a total mess that is all down to one person having a probably well-deserved lunchtime massage that I hope he enjoys.
It's a strange life, living in the juxtaposition of feeling genuinely pleased for your friends when things work out for them and feeling angry and bitter because it's happening to them, not you.
Make it happen for you.
Oh, I know. I know that. But it's difficult, stuck at home barely able to move. Can't get back to the PhD without a medical certificate - can't even get some job in the meantime because currently every time I move it's like being stabbed in the back by several bloody great swords. Can't get the job I want until I get my PhD. It's amazing how quickly things can stack up against you.
And there's always the vague sense that somehow you're not looking at it right, that if you could somehow change your perspective, catch sight of something that is obvious to everyone else, those things wouldn't look like a stack any more, or a gap would appear and you'd be able to sail through, so you also get the sense of being somehow stupid for being stuck in this situation when everyone else isn't.
Angry, jealous, tired, weepy, hurting, stupid, scared. Not a good way to start the day.
I should have had some coffee instead. And a croissant.
12:50
More nightmares last night. It's just one long stream of nightmares every time I try to sleep. They're getting worse. I can only remember flash images of the ones last night. I remember being on a boat, I remember there being some sort of sailing competition with dinghies and all sorts, starting from a very large beach with buildings on it and this monstrous great crane that swung round slowly, creaking in the wind, always appearing to be watching you and following your every movement, ready to pounce. I remember that there were tree-covered hills up behind the beach, rather like at Crinan yet on a grander scale, perhaps more similar to Oban. I remember that there were quite a lot of people involved. I remember that JPJ was in it again, and she was running the competition. She had an office/apartment that was downstairs in this grand house, actually underground, the only modern looking thing in the whole place, all grey walls and black furniture. She had an atractive secretary, female, and I think they might have been slightly more than professional in their relationship, but only in a purely physical, mutually pleasurable but no real attachment sort of way. There wasn't just sailing, there was running and horse riding as well.
My Mum and my brother were killed in this nightmare, in an utterly horrifying episode on a boat in rough seas, which ended up with my Mum dying in my arms and bleeding all over me, and my brother being crushed and washed out to sea, and there was nothing I could do to save either of them.
But I didn't wake up.
I had to carry on, crying throughout, looking after the people I was looking after. I remember getting off the boat and going straight to the local shop, trying to find some wine for these people to have with their dinner, weeping furiously, getting more and more angry as I searched trhough the bottles in their fridge looking for something decent, wondering why I still had to do this when my mother and brother had just been killed, breaking down in a heap on the floor.
I remember going to see JPJ and telling her that I couldn't carry on looking after these people because my mother and brother had been killed on her boat, and I remember somehow feeling that she was to blame for the deaths, that I was being accusatory, and she was gentle and kind and offered her sympathies but she was also strangely distant as if it didn't matter to her all that much. As if I were a vague acquaintance and my relatives complete strangers.
This wasn't the worst nightmare I've ever had - I have them every night so that would be hard - but I woke up this morning more upset than I have woken from most of them. It felt very real, the sensation of having lost...
I remember waking and leaning over and touching Frood, fearfully, for I dreamed he had been killed too and for a few heart-stopping moments I thought I was lying in bed next to a dead man.
This morning I feel as though I can't deal with another nightmare any time soon. They're wearing me down.
Wednesday, September 27, 2000
18:55
Voltarol sounds like something Vikings might sing about while drinking. Hell it sounds like a word that means Vikings drinking.
We've removed the nationality restriction on Atropos, because we just weren't getting any new members, although I think, to be honest, the FAQ is putting people off by being too scary. Well, that was the whole idea. I do sometimes think that if people aren't confident enough to think that they have something to say then they won't be confident enough to pipe in with stuff, so it's probably just as well that they don't join, but I've convinced a couple of my friends to join after they said they were dubious about their ability to contribute. One of them has stayed - the other one decided he was too busy at work to participate as much as he wanted.
Ireland approaching closer and closer. If I didn't feel like my insides were liquefying and falling out I'd be excited. Must get more film for the camera, some black and white stuff too.
I must apologise, I appear to be blethering.
Why is it that I have become convinced the the Morrigan and her sisters were never really representedby ravens but by the hooded crow? Where did I find that one out? Some Valkyrie connection there too - and we're back to Vikings drinking.
Maybe Ošin didn't forget me after showing me how to use the runes after all.
18:45
Today I joined
as one of their Black Ops team. I got an evil rating of 42. Not bad, could do better. I only really want the helicopter and the tight black trousers. They ask if Evil People Inc owns your soul. Not likely, thought I, but I'll own all of yours by the time I'm done. And then I realised I was swirling down a hole into a Robert Rankin novel and decided I really ought to quit before the smell of sprouts became overwhelming and someone tried to get me involved in a game of allottment golf. I always lose. Especially when there's money at stake.
I took a stack of painkillers because I couldn't bear it. Not an OD, a carefully thought out stack, but I'm still in a lot of pain and it feels like my brain is bleeding and I feel sick, and I just enjoyed eating an olive. I hate olives.
Voltarol is the latest one I've been given. I've been told it's very good but it's not helping me. The side effects are worrying. I have enough problems with insomnia and stomach pain as it is without more. And I'm stacking it with codeine. It feels like my ears are bleeding.
All my skin is flaking off. How peculiar. Well, not really.
Aren't meterological satellite photos fun?
I introduced kwert to Simon Marsden's work today, and he was most impressed. I love that man's photos. His IR stuff is incredible. I also had an involved conversation with Aramis about belief and friends and the fact that I had a conversation with Jesus once (I'm pagan, that doesn't mean I can't talk to Christian entities. He was very nice). I'm not really lucid enough to do things like that really, my brain is too foggy, but I don't think I said anything ridiculous.
He was very nice, you know. I met him by the side of a rocky path, up the side of a very large hill, and the overwhelming impression was of gentleness. He had a very sad but heartfelt smile and was taller than I expected. He was also very understanding.
What am I going to do about the Weapon? It has nearly parsed the salt/gel mix which I had hoped would be the kryptonite in its underwear. I'm worried that it'll be too long, that it'll be too strong when it finally comes to time to dealing with it. Whether it's a thing or a bit of me, or whatever, it needs to be dealt with, and it needs to be dealt with in a way that is effective. If that way happens to be a bit odd, then it won't be any worse than some of the other odd things I've done in my life.
I know El's getting a little frustrated because she and I both can see what needs to be done, can understand what needs to be done, but it's ever so difficult to explain this to the other folk involved. I'm angry that other people have to be involved.
"There's a price for having your brother back," said Raven. "You've paid and are paying it. Do you not think that maybe your brother must pay a price for getting his sister back?"
"Well, actually, no. I didn't think there would be. I thought that I'd be price enough all by myself, and I don't see why there should be."
But even as I replied I knew I couldn't argue with him, that this isn't even down to him, it's just the way things are. Sometimes things just are, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. If anyone could do anything about it it would be him. He's got so many tricks up his sleeve. I've even heard, through the non-consensus grapevine, that he's figured out some way round the one-shot only issue. I should tell Andy that, really.
Do the doctors really not understand how much this thing hurts? Bugger them.
I need to start a career as a writer. So I need to write some short stories. As an exercise you may mail me with some subjects or ideas for stories and I shall publish the ones I do here.
storyteller@ravenfamily.org
Don't feel you have to though. It's not obligatory. I won't send the rest of the Black Ops team after you if you don't.
14:46
So we're having ISP problems. The ISP we use, Worldonline, is one we chose because it does 24/7 access. Well now they're not doing it any more and we're having to change ISPs. But I'm really cross with them, because other ISPs anre managing to give 24/7 access, and it's only their lack of ability to plan and organise that means they can't afford to do it any more. I wouldn't mind if they upped the prices in line with other people, but no. Dammit. Time to leave.
Another web related thing. I downloaded the new version of Eudora and installed it because I thought the chilli peppers would help me compose really nasty mails to fuckwits. I then spent a frantic couple of hours trying to resurrect version 3 from the ashes because Eudora 5 sucks. It blows goats. It's ugly, it doesn't give you the option to turn off rubbish like other people's styled text, and it has a goddamn preview pane. Haven't they learned anything from the Outlook experience? The only advantage is that it allows for separate personalities, and I manage so many email accounts it's almost worth it for that, but really. No. Horrid and nasty.
I didn't check to see if it gives you the option of changing the "from" field. I should have done. I could use that facility.
Gods these painkillers make you witter endlessly about rubbish.
Off to see Bob at Eagle Tattoos tomorrow. I think he may be the man to do the important work. Both nervous and looking forward to it, and this is just to see if he can help me in the first place, never mind getting the work done. his is the first studio I've been into where most of the work on the walls is his own - not just the photos of tats, but the artwork itself. Not only that, but the style of stuff he does seems to be just what I am looking for, which is grand.
My abdomen still feels terribly wide open round the connection point. It started feeling like that maybe a week or two ago, off and on. it was very wide over the weekend. Andy said he could get three fingers into the SP connection point, which is just insane. I didn't notice, and normally that should have hurt like hell. I keep looking down and expecting my intestines to be falling out over my lap. The new painkillers are making me feel a bit queasy today, and I'm fairly stressed, which isn't helping that at all.
Worried about what's going to happen with the Weapon, too. Sigh. Just not a perky person today.
13:26
Demon rabbits the night before last, something about boats and the new SLR camera last night, all nightmares. Gah. I could do with a peaceful night's sleep. Then a massive bloody phone bill for the mobile because they neglected to take out the money last month. Dammit.
I'll get to the weekend in a minute.
I'm reading another book now. I'm reading quite a lot at the moment - I go through phases. Normally I don't have the time, or the money to spend on books. At the moment Im reading the utterly fascinating "Washing of the Spears", which is billed as "The bloody story of the Zulu War of 1879". But it isn't. It's a compelling, informative and data-packed volume detailing the rise and fall of the Zulu nation. It is so jam-packed full of stuff, indeed, that it sometimes covers 6 generations of events in 2 paragraphs, and it never slows down. The author is Donald R Morris, who was born in 1924 and wrote the book while serving in the US Navy. The book was published in 1966. The amount of research that this chap has done is absolutely astonshing, and if you have any interest at all in other cultures, and how different they can be, or any interest in the colonisation of Africa, or even just an inquiring mind, I'd recommend it.
It has even been republished, you can buy it from amazon.co.uk, with a foreword by Mangosuthu Chief Buthelezi. The issue I have is the 1978 reprint. It's quite heavy going - the brain starts to feel overly full every couple of pages or so, but the sheer comprehensiveness of the telling is remarkable.
I am reading, at the moment, because my back went into spasm a couple of days ago, I'm on some serious anti-inflammatories and painkillers, and I'm not much use for anything else.
Monday, September 25, 2000