status update

mood: Holding steady.

weekend: good. possibly very good.

payroll: Has arrived! I looked through it, only two very correctable errors. My best yet.

communications: Have talked to Meg and Fey (albeit briefly) last night. Woot! Have received a very heartening email from Myke to which I hope I will respond today. Have not heard from that headhunter I sent my resume and shit to last week. Wonder if he called Saturday while my phone was off.

upcoming: If indeed my paycheck is signed today and I get to bring it to my bank and get VizMoney, there is this poetry thing at a place I want to take the bus to tonight. I hope. I am hopeful.

in the Fiat news: Reading Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. So good. I wish I could write like him. And especially I wish I could see magic in the world as he does! Did. Whatev.

Tuesdays with Abhorrent Fiends vol. 18

Shocking surprise twist*: the abhorrent fiend is me!


Dave's reaching out to me. I want to reach back, take his hand, accept it. I want to not just sit there with a choked expression on my face, afraid to move, afraid to speak, paralyzed by guilt and uncertainty. And fear of what he feels, to be honest. You know, "here is my journey through a hell that would have been purgatory if you hadn't hurt me as you did." He's getting a grip on the edge preparatory to heaving himself up, he's tracing a line down the shoulder of the road. I've got to show, and not just feel, my respect for that. To honor and encourage as well as cherish him.

Music. Important to both of us. A mix CD can be like a book of the bible when music means that much to you, when that much care and blood went into it, the way blood goes into any creative work. It just hurts so goddamn much, he hurt so much to be able to express it that clearly. And I freeze up with guilt trying to help him describe it to himself, trying to name the shapes and parts in it.

And now he's going to work and having a shitty day and coming home and having shitty frustrations at home and I wanted to shield him from that. In a way it's shitty of me, and stunting him and not letting him grow and all that. But I wanted one of us at least to have a life of ease, comfort and self-indulgence, and it for fuck's sake shouldn't be me.

It's almost as if guilt is part of the fuel that keeps me going. Having something to atone for makes the mental judo of revving myself up for spending all day doing things I hate around people who don't appreciate me (lo, the common lot of mankind) very simple and straightforward. You live this life and you do these duties because this is the fate you earned by your evil actions. Not an accurate or complete way to describe the shape of the time or the vagaries of chance, but certainly effective in getting my emotional ducks in a row.

It comes down to this. We both have to get better at the same time if either of us are going to. Dave's rage and my guilt fuel us in different ways and they stem from the same source, broken trust. Broken self for Dave as well, broken identity. Identity is the hardest thing to repair, regrow, to heal, because it's what holds everything else together and it doesn't understand words.



*not really a surprise

sizzle

infinity

starter text:

Brain blurred by ganja and cigarettes, my system still in place. I question and re-question my mental requisitions. What does the world my lord require of me?

interp (with "On the Red Eye" (infinity one infinity)):

An infinity in the infinity place represents stability, harmony.
The Reverend Doktor's Interpretation of Your Card:

Brain blurred by ganja and cigarettes, my lord require of my own. I see it on the ceiling of my lord require of my lord require of my bedroom to start paying attention to write on the world my mind. They are after me. They hate me. Hide. Run away, killyrself. Die dead. I'm dead. Brain blurred by ganja and re-question my mental requisitions. What does the world my bedroom to look at night. They're watching me. They hate me. They're watching me. Hide. Run away, killyrself. Die dead. I'm dead. Brain blurred by ganja and cigarettes, my mental requisitions. What does the alternative radio station, "JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID, DON'T MEAN THEY'RE NOT AFTER YOU." Three days later, I write them down.


plus

starter text:

Discommoded, not discombobulated. Messed up my rhythm. Shift my weight from one tiptoe to another, eyes scanning traffic for a gap. My opening.


interp (with "(On the Sominex)" (one plus plus):

A plus in the plus position could mean powerful things. It's a good day to practice your Telecult Powers.
Dream Log #89:

Discommoded, not discombobulated. Messed up my weight from one tiptoe to the matching briefcase comin inna the hiccups, but this doesn't stop me making notes? I feel like a gap. My opening.

* yellow lights, sodium glare. I gotta get a law suit with alligator shoes and that's the way to the log cabin for some cuntry pie, and it's late, too. We have crossed over. Smell of The Dawn Treader. I have crossed over. Smell of hygiene weren't so good and that's the kitchen, must be recent immigrants. I like it - always did like my mincemeat a way I gotta get the Old House. Mama is there only a gap. My opening.

* yellow lights, sodium glare. I get a little spicy. Discommoded, not discombobulated. Messed up my rhythm. Shift my mincemeat a way to get away.


one

starter text:

Long patient action wears the world thin, makes me weary. Wary. About once a week I get like this, a crack in my armor. Tears leaking out. Nothing broken that can't be fixed.

interp (with "Aerolith" (plus infinity plus)):

A plus in the one position means to expect the unexpected. Look to the other aspects of the card for hints on what to expect. Maybe you'll meet a new crush, or you could be in for a nasty surprise.
Dream Log #54:

Long patient action wears the water lights up. Fireworks, perfect. First it looks like this, a shooting star show, but more fiery and me weary. Wary. About once a couple holes down, and a titanium plate reads, "KOCMOC." Long patient action wears the fire in the water lights up. Fireworks, perfect. First it looks like this, a shooting star show, but more fiery and she's even more foxy than usual, tanktop spilling cleavage as the green a shooting star show, but more fiery and alive as she leans in the larger fragments hit the water lights up. Fireworks, perfect. First it looks like a couple holes down, and rust to discover a crack in my armor. Tears leaking out. Nothing broken that can't be fixed.

till I'm done with this

Infinity


my entered text:

This strange chain of thought must be tied to something on the other end. I would learn more about my friend who is with me always, my friend the eye can't see. I would know better my menagerie. I will learn skills not just to pay the bills but to see inside with the wide eyes of my will. I will. I will.


interp (with "You Egg! Young Fry of Treachery!" (infinity one one)):


An infinity in the infinity place represents stability, harmony.
Spy Log #82:
This strange chain of thought must be so, but to pay the bushes. I would learn skills not just to Orlando. I say I will learn skills not just to something on the eye can't see. I will.
The next morning, I would talk subjects and opinions, tell no stories. I would talk subjects and sleep in the bushes. I would become a non-entity, fade to something on like circus boys and roadside attractions. This strange chain of past towns, crossed paths, Dairy Queens, and roadside attractions. This strange chain of thought must be tied to people, even my name. If pressed, I would talk to Orlando. I would I had no circumstances would fly the coop. Go on the coop. Go on the wide eyes of past towns, crossed paths, Dairy Queens, and opinions, tell jokes, but I would know better my friend the bushes. I will.



Plus


my starter text:

Poetry won't come back to me till I'm done with this. Till I till the mindfields and turn over the new ground. Till I pull the veil down and make naked the new sound. Till my fishfins gasp and push against the ground, till what I never lost is found.


interp (with "Mob Star" (plus plus one)):


A plus in the plus position could mean powerful things. It's a good day to practice your Telecult Powers.
Spy Log #95:
Poetry won't come back to me till what I pull the ground, till I'm done with this. Till my ID.
"Which one, Ringo?"
"Reely, laika Beatles."
"Cool." Poetry won't come back to me till the ground, till I'm done with this. Till my ID.
"Which one, Ringo?"
"Reely, laika Beatles," Korean storeowner inspecting my ID.
"Which one, Ringo?"
"Reely, laika Beatles."
"Cool." Poetry won't come back to buy pornography in order to buy pornography in order to me till I'm done with this. Till I pull the veil down and turn over the RGBs take it out of a man psychically. So here I'm trying to at the new sound.



One


my starter text:

Today is Wednesday the seventeenth of October. I am at work and will remain at work all day. I have scoped out the shape of the day and it has difficulty. Hold on to it, hold on to what is good and what is yours, o me. Nothing is broken, only new.


interp (with "A Heaping Platter of God's Love" (infinity infinity infinity)):


An infinity in the one position means things might be a little dull for a bit. This is a time for waiting in contemplation and reflection. Learn to be your own best friend, read a book you've been meaning to read. When was the last time you played the guitar, got out the crayons, took a walk in the woods?
The Reverend Doktor's Interpretation of Your Card:
Today is Wednesday the cattle guard on to what was true and what is Wednesday the air, out the thing. It made my blood feel funny to it, hold on to do it. No way. And when you couldn't get a memory of mine. When I have seconds. Seconds of the river. About eighty, ninety feet down, it seemed. You'd hang in Page, Missouri, I had to Grasshopper Point your balls. I'd stand there suspended; and the air going up in the air. Falling right next to think real hard about what was a dog to do it. No way. And when you can kind of nothing. And when you think about what was true and the day and hold your perception of the cattle guard on to it, hold on to Box Springs and hold on to Grasshopper Point for a dog to think real hard about how far down to it, hold your balls. I'd stand there up past you, by mostly it's just time. Time of nothing, just time. Time of hear the river. About eighty, ninety feet down, it seemed.

lay them strait

hold onto it
on a long, long leash
hold onto it
on a long long, leash
its warm, warm breath
as it scurries round your feet
can melt the sidewalk out from underneath

(That's gonna be a song when I get the rest of it.
This below is me complaining to poetry, rather than with it, because it won't come back to me yet and I still need it to keep my life in order.)

Poetry won't come back to me till I'm done with this.
I say this is a bunch of bullshit.
Mine to decide, define, decline
if I wanna shake my head no, no
and tell a body where to go.
I'm gonna rise like dough I'm gonna walk out slow
into the cold rain.
I'm gonna swell like rice and click my heels once twice
stick my fingers in the drain.
So much of my hair down there I think I built another skull
So much of me thrown out I think the outside must be full
Oh, dog, gimme something to pull
Give me some way to restart the flow
Gimme somewhere else to go
Some other way to know
Some other thing that must be done
Brother tell me how to tell a brother of the word
The load I've taken on my sticky back is just absurd
The friendship that I hold him in is straining at the seams
He wants my time and patience when I don't know my own dreams
He wants me to find hours to spend just listening to his tales
And I will fail, and I will fail, and I do fail
Let it be enough
That he's become this tough, this hard 'fore I turned tail.
If I'm not listening am I not a friend
If I'm not visiting am I not a friend
If I'm not calling am I not a friend
If I'm just stalling am I not a friend
And cry I will for the guts I spill
Whosever's they may be
And hope I do that we all get through
To a world where love and time and space are free.
And I hear my sisters' teeth grind
Out there in the dark mind
Out there in the cold sun
Out there with the old one
One sister's the bold one
One is the controlled one
Don't never try to hold one back
From what she sees is true
They say they worry bout me
I say I worry about you
I don't know what we're going to do
But we'll all get through
Like a tree through a fence
Like smoke through a curtain
Like butter through the center
Of a loaf right out of the stove.
Did you walk that road,
I drove.
Did you sing that song,
I hummed.
Did you bear that load,
I dragged.
Did you say you were wrong,
I bragged.
Are you fast enough
I'm slow
But I want somewhere else to go.
I want somewhere I want to know.
I want my baby's eyes to show
Me that sweet light that leads the right way.
I want this day to lead to night to lead to new day.

seven, eight

I screwed up the payroll again because I was in such a damn hurry.

Now it's likely nobody will get paid till Monday.
Dog, I suck sometimes.

five, six, pick up sticks.

Just finished Tuesday's post. Last paragraph and a half or so. Nice to be able to complete a thought across a span of time. Makes you feel like a whole person.

Got shit to do, get to it soon, yada yada. Determines whether I and everyone get our checks Friday or Monday.

Had a dream last night. Been having dreams, and no slouchy dreams at that. But aside from a few Post-It sized carryover images, nothing much for most of 'em. This one, though. In this dream I had telekinesis. Through the whole thing! And I used it constantly and it felt great! I've had telekinesis in dreams in the past, and the actions and powers of it always feel the same. I wonder if there was real-life tk I could have, if it would feel the same? There's some of the same full lightness I associate with gravity, the joy so pure there isn't a word for it that stands at the roots of time. That feeling, that can't be felt with just the brain but needs the whole body and spirit and the surrounding world too, I think is the essential central thing that makes magic possible. It's just different angles of it, different ways of experiencing little bits of it with different modes of self.

But anyway it was great to have this in the dream. My hands were my focus points; I'd reach for something with my hand, and reach further out with this feeling and grasp it and pick it up. It acted a little like a field. I could pick up a whole pile of objects in each hand, as long as it wasn't too heavy, and carry them around as I walked (or ran, or fled, hard to say). While I was holding stuff like that I could heft its weight and tell about its roughness or brittleness--kind of get a feel for what type of thing it was, same as when you're holding something in your hand. Only there wasn't any skin and such to carry the message. I just knew what it was I was carrying because I was holding it. (Most of it was junk though. I think I may have just needed stuff to throw at people. Or perhaps I was tidying up. XD)

Things in waking life are so heavy. I'm kind of glad they are. The world would be an exhausting place if we were constantly matching wills with one another to prevent each other from uprooting the landscape in a temper tantrum. It's exhausting enough as it stands! The easiest mistake to make with wishing things about magic, at least for me, has been that thing that ass Kant talked about so much. If it's true for me, it has to be true for everybody. If I could move things around with my power, then everyone else could too, provided they'd bothered to develop the skill! And you better believe they would once the first person started throwing things around.

Tuesdays With Abhorrent Fiends vol. 17

Never thought I'd get a chance to post up today!

Oh, and a mountain of paperwork. Y'ever have the experience of trying like hell to get your superiors to notice some vitally important thing relating to your job, finally getting them to sit down with you and understand the jist of it, then have them ram through a massive comprehensive solution and say "Get this done before you leave the office today!" And then when you're very specific about what complex and time-consuming tasks this will involve, have them say go ahead anyway?

All and still, I feel good about today. As I said to Bossman earlier, great days are not the same as easy days. The greatest of days are frequently the hardest. I thought of a poem line earlier that went "done in the old hard-fashioned way."

Haven't talked to Amber way in too long, Myke in more than a week, Pearl in almost a week. Last night I left my phone at the office and didn't miss it! XP I'm just starting to get tired of Myke, I think. More on that later, if I can.

I'm only making this post cause I've been kicked off my workstation for the moment and have done everything I can do without getting back into the programs that aren't on any other workstation. Putting signs on my door threatening death to any who disturb me has no effect on the horde of hard-working, answers-looking-for people who know damn well my mission is to create order at the font of chaos to make people's lives easier.

Le sigh.

I had two full days' worth of work to be done when I walked in the door this morning, because our accountant was here yesterday all day and the program she needed was on my computer. Then this whole new other pile of work showed up. Not that I'm complaining about the things getting done. I'm all for that. It's just there's only one of me, and just as importantly, there's only one of my computer, so there's no way I can get done even half of what I need to do to get through a day.

I've been having dreams every night, but I haven't gone over them in my head to the point where I get enough "index tabs" of remembered plot images to be able to pull the whole rest of the thing out. All I know is they've been vivid and interesting and I wish I actually had the dayspace to work them out.

Today should have left me frantic and miserable and all that stuff but I've just been in the zone. The keeping it together zone. I even got to explain some of the facts of life (demonology version) to my smoking buddy Bill when I was out on a smoke break. Your personality interacts with your body to create your aura. If either your personality or your body is under great strain or is misaligned somehow, you throw off pieces of emotional energy into the atmosphere, which attracts psychic predators. So it's imperative to take care of your body on the one hand, and on the other to be careful with your personality and make sure you know how to keep it functioning smoothly. You can't go to a hypnotist to unlock the powers of your deep mind (subchapter of the No Shortcuts rant). In order to use your power effectively, your conscious mind, which has direction and control and outside awareness, has to work in good communication and tandem with your unconscious mind, which has awareness of the invisible world around you and direct access to all your inner resources. The only way to develop this kind of communication is with long practice. I guess you could call it mental muscle memory. It can't be a skill of the conscious mind alone.

I suppose since the boundaries between the conscious and the unconscious are not set in stone (or wood or metal or anything) it might not be always true, what I say above. Maybe some other strain of humanity in some alternate reality has their power up and accessible and it's just something people can do. But I think there are some things that structurally have to be the way they are. Conscious thought, the attending "I", already bears the terrible burden of having to confront and react to the constantly changing world. If consciousness was not sheltered from the power to communicate will and evoke causal directionality in the patterns of chance and the wills of nearby living beings, the strain might be too great to bear. Imagine if every time you thought something, or felt an emotion towards something, you got a noticeable reaction from the universe! It'd be terrifying.