|
Tuesday, February 14, 2006 11:24
Same old same old I am, for the record, still having very strange dreams. A couple of nights ago there was me and a few Buds, checking out reports of a crazy hermit living on a tiny scrap of dry ground outside an abandoned, flooded building complex. From the looks of things there had been some sort of earthquake, and the rock on which the building was standing had dropped about thirty feet, putting the basement levels under the water of a lake, itself about twenty feet or so below the surface of the road we used to get there.Looking down from the road there was our nutter. He was ragged and unkempt, and seemed somehow to be scratching an existence on the only bit of the building's outside that had not been flooded: the stone platform that went along the front of the building and had once been at the top of marble steps. It had been a long time since the building became ruined. There were scrubby, bent trees and bushes growing in the cracks. The territory itself seemed swampy and marshy, other than the lake, which was quite deep. The air seemed to alternate between smelling and feeling warm and sunny; and cool and damp. It was a bit like riding along on a summer's evening and passing over the occasional river that puts a chill in the air. The door behind him, which led into the building - otherwise boarded up - had been blocked off from his side with wire mesh bolted across it. There were five of us altogether, but two of us could not fly. I was one of those who could, and so I and the other two fliers went down there to investigate, it being too far to jump safely. Although I can't remember the male flier particularly well, the other girl was a beautiful blonde called Angel. She had white, feathery wings and her outfit was white and skintight. In fact, she seemed to be the opposite of me in some ways, although I don't bother with the actual wings. The old man was obviously broken. It was impossible to make sense of anything he said, and although he was evidently scared at first, he settled very quickly while we looked around for any clue as to what had happened and how he had survived down there for so long. We had to look inside the building, of course, and that was when he became severely agitated. My male friend and I pulled the mesh off the door, bending it down to reveal a hole like the top half of a stable door. The bottom of the door was still solid. I dived through, rolling to my feet in the bottom of a stairwell. The other two followed. There was a lot of rubble and crumbled stone. It had obviously once been a very posh house, now in a total state of disrepair. But it seemed inhabited. We could not say exactly why or how it felt inhabited but it did. We went upstairs. At the top we found a huge state room, covered in dust, with a huge window overlooking the lake, standing open. There was a man there, who was initially very charming and very welcoming. He looked like Patrick Stewart. The charming persona didn't last. After a fairly brief time talking to him we learned that the building was now home to human-like creatures who weren't vampires, exactly, but were certainly parasitic. The nutter outside had either been one of their own or had been a collaborator, a trusted servant/friend who had betrayed them in some way. It pleased them to punish him by making him stay outside on that scrap of ground where they could watch him die slowly of old age. Once outside their group he had lost their regenerative capacity. They provided him with just enough sustenance to survive and that was it. He had blocked off that door to prevent them getting to him, fearful for his life. I don't know why blocking that door would prevent them getting to him, as they must have been free to come and go by some other means, but I don't think they could fly or swim, so would have had difficulty getting to him on his scrap of ground. I'm not sure what sparked it, but the Patrick Stewart character suddenly went full psycho nutbar on us, his face doing that maniacal serial killer thing they do in movies. He attacked me and Angel stepped in to help, which was really very stupid because she was a delicate thing and I most certainly am not. She grabbed him and bolted for the window, meaning to carry him high into the air and then drop him into the lake, leaving us free to deal with the rest of the nest. She made it out of the window, but the mark was struggling, and quickly he got hold of her wings. I could feel his hands in her feathers, pulling them out of shape as if they were my own. She was tumbling, falling from the air, and I was paralysed, knowing I had to help and could help, but so caught in the experience of what was happening to her that I couldn't separate myself from her enough to control my own body and go to help her. The last thing I remember was her hitting the water and me hoping that she hadn't been injured too badly as I launched myself into the air for a rescue, just as I was forced to wake up and go to work. (0) comments | links to this post
10:33 (0) comments | links to this post
Monday, February 13, 2006 10:57
More than mutually agreeable. Recently I've been fucking around on Livejournal because I'm winding down at work and lack motivation to do anything constructive with my last week (although I might be able to find the drive to fill in the exit questionnaire I found on my desk this morning).It has been a while since I spent any time looking at LJ. It had been so long, in fact, that I was surprised by how many friends I had and how so many of the people I consider to be good friends have an account that they actually update fairly regularly. I'm more of a blogger, and it doesn't seem that the two worlds coincide very much. To me it looks like LJ is a community thing - posting there is like going to a coffee morning. It's more interactive. Blogging is a more solitary affair, like performance poetry or prose. It's not so much that you're not interested in other people reading it, but there isn't quite the direct communion with others that you get from that friends function over at LJ. Anyway. That's by the by. I have managed to get into a discussion on Estara's LJ, which is terribly rude of me, I know. For the second time ever I have come across someone who rejected the non-con world on the basis that the "spirits" were pushing him into crisis and he could not trust them, and didn't like the way that the balance of power was expressed: That mutually agreeable relationships really were possible? That I'd encountered people who knew how to develop such relationships - and how to assist with this - rather than regarding the appropriate relationship as being either (a) master to grateful slave or (b) tool to tool user. (I've seen both. The commonality is severe power-over and a conception that the junior partner is incapable of more - regardless whether human or god/spirit are considered junior.) And here's me, an avowed sceptic. I don't believe: I experience. My attempts at rejecting the non-con world were about as successful as refusing to believe in the existence of the postman would be on making the Royal Mail disappear. Yet I can't deny that apparent power imbalance. I might be — I am — a hot chick with superpowers, but that doesn't detract from the fact that I am owned; that when I first saw The Prophecy and heard Simon say "Sometimes you just have to do as you're told," I understood, absolutely, what he meant. Things have changed a lot in the last couple of years. I'm a lot bigger than I was. I'm more powerful - it sounds trite and corny, but it's the only appropriate word. And yet, strangely, I'm also even more of a Gimp than I was before. I remember once throwing a tantrum and threatening to leave the Old Man. I could, just, have done it at the time. I had that ability. I've grown past that now. It's very strange, looking back at everything that has happened. Gods, Core seemed like this huge, great, massive thing with powers and abilities I could never hope to match by myself. When I look at it now, it's like looking at a very strong but not very bright soldier, or a super-powerful robot. Fine for very limited circumstances: not very good at adapting to change. Celebrity death match between me and the current Core? I'd hand him his ass on a plate without even breaking a sweat. I mean, I'm getting old. Not that 33 is terribly old. But I never expected that to happen. I started this blog 6 years ago and at the time I was pretty sure I wouldn't make 30. So when I come across people who have rejected all that because they can't sort the non-con signal from the non-con noise, I'm not sure whether to be glad for them or pity them. Mostly I do neither, because that would involve caring about them and I don't do a lot of that any more. The arrogance that is part of the way the Old Man made me gives me a sense of superiority, a sense of pride that I can not only do this, I can dig it. I enjoy being this way. I have a fierce loyalty to my Family, and a wild, fierce joy in being what I am. Professional assassination. It's the highest form of public service. I don't even need to ask if it was worth the price. The price doesn't seem all that harsh any more. People might argue that I have been severely screwed by my Bods, that being rendered into something of a sociopath who can drop a friendship just because it has served its purpose is not the sort of spiritual fulfilment that one should expect from non-con entities. There are a lot of people who seem to think that Bods should not be trusted unless they are pure of intent - by which they mean altruistically concerned only with the personal development of the person in whom they are showing an interest. Why should they be? Why should any entity, con or non-con, be interested solely in the personal development of someone else without gaining any benefit for themselves? That just doesn't strike me as being reasonable - in fact, I'd trust any entity who professed to such a desire even less than I trust my mob. At least they're up front about being in it for themselves. The correspondent in Estara's LJ comments is seeking a 'mutually agreeable relationship' with spirits. This does not include the shamanic crisis experience, it would seem. To be honest, it doesn't have to, but it takes a special sort of person to get through the ditching of social programming without some sort of mental breakdown, particularly in the West where such things are seen solely as signs of psychosis. At the end of the day, as with most things, it all comes down to willingness to pay. In our paradigm, here on the isthmus of weird that is Family, somewhere between magic and engineering, we're all built to be willing to pay in the same way that most people will do pretty much anything for their blood kin. Set up from the get-go. So I've ditched a pile of standard human mores and ethics and in return I get bigger fucking guns and an ability to heal quickly. I've got past that whole self-determination thing and in return I get all the fun jobs and my own tech team. I complied with the tattoo request and now I get to move back to Scotland. Could all be coincidence. At the end of the day, all we can ever say is that it didn't not work. But then, even Uncle Coyote is saying that I'm a big girl now, and whether he exists outside my head or not, that sure does put a smile on my face. Real or not those relationships mean something to me. I'd say they were a bit more than "mutually agreeable" - they're part of what makes me what I am. When Uncle Coyote gives me that sly grin and tells me I'm a big girl now; when Dragon no longer behaves towards me like he's Brian Blessed in Flash Gordon and I'm 6 years old; when even Spider treats me with the respect she normally reserves for another House; when the Old Man looks at me with that serious expression that barely hides the pride he's feeling and says: "Time to go" — I couldn't imagine anyone making me feel better about myself or what I've achieved. I can't prove my experiences. They don't stand up to the Scientific Method any more than falling in love does. But, at the end of the day, I don't need to prove them for them to be worthwhile, even if others might think the cost too great. I mean, some people will spend a four figure sum on a dress, for fuck's sake! (3) comments | links to this post
|
In Volume 2 of Joss Whedon's