Overthinking Things

Life has been satisfying.

A paycheck has relieved worrying, for a few weeks. The puzzle of the translation of the map of anxiety to the territory of poverty remains.

I have become attached to my place. It's a cave in here, and blissfully cool in the recent heatwave. Attachment, however, isn't always good. I have been mildly embarrassed to voice that I intend to fight tooth and nail to keep it. It's so much of what I want. I have complete control of the space; the lighting, the sound, the shape, the smell. I love it.

I have thought about how my time here will end, however. I could be evicted; and be forced to pile everything into a storage locker, or a clunker van, or to nowhere at all, in desperate circumstances. I could be deported in some miscarriage of justice. I could fall in love, and commit to sharing a home again with someone for a time. Life is long.

The prospect of being in love again persists in my mind. Half asleep one afternoon, I found a startlingly strong impulse to just look into another set of eyes. And this, buried in months - no, years - of not being unable to even understand the value of companionship. But I guess human love isn't reasonable. It's not a justified, or contingent motivation; it's a terminal one. It's not something we've learned to do; it's something we're made to do. Something our species (I hesitate, now, to say "we") has adapted to do.

So I still can't find it anything but wise to leave the door open to myself to do the very thing we're all made to do. But it seems also true that I have chosen a path away; that I am doing almost everything one could imagine, incidentally, to insure my solitude. I live in a few contradictions. I ask myself: if I deliberately didn't want to fall in love - could I really resist? How much leeway do I need to give myself? Should I let the distant possibility of a deeper relationship deter more radical plans I might have for my lifestyle? Should I really abandon civilization for that shack in the bush, or on other continents? Can I seriously expect to be hit through the heart like a bolt from the blue - or do I really need to do something - at least, more than the trifle I am - to make myself more visible "on the market"?

First, I learned to be me.
Then, I learned to be someone else.
Then, I learned to be happy.
Next, I will learn to be anything.

[session 4, 2010-07-08]

We are shopping out our ill-gotten credits. I buy a frame pack and survival gear.

Tweak suddenly tells us he received a call, and has to bug out. He fails to explain, and shoves off with his truck.

With our purchases complete, we have to get to the airport; Drex has chartered us a plane to our target in Scandanavia. Tzak and Razia have motorbikes, but they're saddled with gear.

On a hunch, and bolstered by my pick-pocketing success earlier today, I head out by myself to try something new. Earlier today, I was pilfering wallets with my hands, enhanced with a bit of diviner's precognition. But, of course, I'm also a telekinetic.

Waiting at a nearby bus stop, I pick out a few marks, and try to pick their pockets //from down the block//. By the time the second one noticed, his wallet had been inexplicably tossed into a nearby hedge. While he was fumbling around through it, I was able to lift it, unseen, over the roof of the nearby shop. A simple trip around the block, and it floated discreetly into my hands. A little Shoal inspiration, and Harvey Dixon was a handsome purple-headed tattoed freak.

Pie.

Cab drivers in this town demand payment up front. This is a good thing for a thief, because it was only a matter of minutes before Harvey reported it missing. We were off to the airport with the furries in tow.

-

Drex did not inspire confidence when we found him in the cockpit skimming a flight training manual. But the flight was quiet. Everyone needed the sleep, myself included. I started chatting up Razia, but these translator things... don't. Especially when you're trying to talk sorcery shop with a catgirl from an entirely different dominion and school of training.

[insert dream #1]

We arrived in the vicinity only to discover there is, in fact, no trace of civilization on the long western fjordlands of what was once Norway. It didn't get much in the way of nuclear love in the War, but no one really tried to keep living there, either. It isn't exactly barren blasted waste, like home was outside the city shield. There are thick growths of green things everywhere. All the roads were broken up and overgrown. Plants of every size and description ran ramshackle over everything. It was like an enormous public park, but without groundskeepers, trails, sprinklers, or cops to kick out squatters. It was unnatural.

And deserted.

Luckily we had a float plane, so we landed at the closest safe place - an inlet nearest our prospective Quiddity gate. It was still a bit of a hike inland, though.

No birds, no bees, no varmints. Just thickets, grasses, and trees. We made our way via an overgrown paved road toward a river that lead to our target, in a nearby valley.

We stop for a break. Tzak and Drex go scouting and find some caves. Tzak, the necromancer wants to find some local bones to talk to. A man's got to have friends, I guess. Razia and I make a campfire and coffee.

By the time the boys come back, they're running. Something's following them, and growling in tones one normally only encounters in nightclub subwoofers.

Having heard it, I attempt to do a seeking and read it. It's big. Like MAC truck big. We can hear trees being felled from here. It's also ugly, but none too smart. At first, this is really exciting to me. Large animals have lots of wounds to steal, and they typically don't have the kind of magical resistance needed to ward off my particular brand of essence-draining. After popping that car dealer like a ripe pimple yesterday, large wild animals ought to be easy pickings... and juicy. But this... thing was different. Its resistance to mystical intrusion was massive. It was here for a reason.

We decided to make a run for it. We had a good headstart. Razia attempted to cover our tracks, and scents, but after an hour down the valley, it became apparent that we were not shaking it. Tzak decided to risk his Zombeast - the bone-built beast of burden from our first trip - in an attempt to decoy and distract it. On the fly, we each changed out of our smelliest clothes (we'd been sweating while hiking at a good clip for hours), and threw our old clothes on it for good measure.

Meanwhile, I went divining for a place to hide. There were more caves up one mountainside, one of which was too small for our tail to fit in. At least it was a place to hide and think.

The cave entrance was impressive, and the width of it tapered steadily as it plunged into the mountain, sloping down at the whim of a rivulet of water spattered downwards from the entrance. we moved our gear in just in time. The beast had shaken the Zombeast. Tzak could still control it, but this giant creature hadn't been fooled. We were too deep inthe cave to see it, but we heard it scratching at the entrance, trying to get at us.

Tzak brought Zombeast back up behind it, and commanded it to make an attack. That got it's attention. "Run!" he said, and this time, it took the bait. Luckily, Zombeast was faster than it was.

The Art gives a practitioner a special kinship with matter - especially with earth and rock. We weren't going to beat this thing with our own brute force, but perhaps the mountains themselves could be brought to bear, if we could lure our target into its crosshairs. I just didn't want to have to do this while we, too, were in the cave.

A seeking brought to my attention another cave about 150 yards upslope. This one was a little bit bigger, meaning the beast would fit into it - mostly. I prompted Tzak to lead it into that cave. Furious, and determined to get at its quarry, the creature indeed lodged itself into the upper cave. That was my chance. I had to get closer to the rock to crack it, so as soon as the beast crawled in, I leapt out of our hiding place and sprinted for it, chaining divinations as I went in preparation for a rock breaking.

The mountain shook. boulders cracked and crushed in just the right spots, and in moments, the cave had collapsed firmly down upon the thing. Its rear limbs were still flailing out behind it, but it could not even breathe.

Handy, that.

I was about to dig into its remaining life essence when Tzak suggested we keep it alive. "A creature that big around a QUiddity gate might be its immortal guardian. If we kill it, it'll destroy the gate."

"So? You saw the power we got from the last one. Would it be so bad if it happened again?"

"Well, I'd hate to close it before we got a chance to capture and interrogate the guy who supposedly wants to destroy these himself."

I relented. Besides, I'd also love to use the gates to get into Quiddity, myself. I wanted to know where I came from.

So we cleared enough of the rocks to allow it to breath. It was still pinned, but at least it wouldn't suffocate.

The gate was at the bottom of the lake at the center of the valley. Just a stone slab really. the place hadn't seen sentients in centuries. We were it. Just us, a lonely beast, and an enormous magical beacon plopped in the muck at the bottom of a placid, moonlit lake.

We were all drained. There was nothing to do now except wait for our so-called sorceror villain to show up and try to kill the Guardian I damn near just crushed singlehandedly.

Tzak took the first watch over the beast, as I slipped into a dream.

[insert dream #2]

Hunch was waiting for me, with a new, vivid lesson.

A long one...

2010-07-08

"So what you're saying is I better watch it, or else I'll incur the wrath of a bunch of furries, who are into all kinds of weird animal sex?"

"Oh, no - they're into perfectly normal animal sex."

has slipped into the habit of leaving his name off the subject of a leading sentence on a post while referring to himself in the third person, on the assumption that Facehook will prepend his name to the post.

It's only a matter of time before I start offering up this style of communication in spoken conversation.

Life is custom, not optimum.

[Meta-entry]

Jack's story is coming to me in pieces.

I wrote a nice chunk this morning that I like, but the problem is that it involves dialog with Jack's father, and there's no guarantee it will actually happen.

This has happened before; some of you may remember a story vignette I was inspired to write involving my other nWo character, Aniu Ronia of Descendance. That never happened in game. At the time of inspiration, Jebbers (an NPC played by Ric, our Scene Lord) had just arrived on the scene, and I was mulling over exactly how to negotiate his loyalties. At the end of the last game, he'd shown himself to be open to bribery, and expressed his dissatisfaction with being assigned to garrison duty, rather than front line combat. I'd decided to offer him membership in my unit in exchange for help with another problem, which led to the story. But at the next game, he decided he preferred promotion to command of the garrison force, instead.

Another problem is that, well, I'm plain brimming with ideas, both for development of the character, the storyline, AND for strategy and tactics of all these new powers and abilities I've discovered with this character. And this is just in the last week and a half since the last game! Two weeks is too long to wait! Argh. And to think I'm even going to miss a game while at Critical Massive.

Hmm... maybe that 'alone time' will serve as an opportunity for creative license...

Maybe all this need for authorial control really serves as an indicator of how much I really need to run a game. Gah... will it never go away?

We are not infinitely powerful; it's just that the greater danger tends to lie in underestimating ourselves.

I suddenly switched to Mozilla Thunderbird for email.

I'm still using the local DBmail IMAP4/Mysql backend, with fetchmail to pull down email from the server, but switching from Claws-mail was surprisingly easy. I get to get away from the annoying UI quirks of Claws, and, curiously, I can't really remember what it was that prevented me from moving to Thunderbird in the first place.

Jesus should have stuck to carpentry.

Last night, my friend Lori had me thinking last night about radical changes.

If someone had tried to tell me 5 years ago that I'd have moved to Victoria, moved in on my own, and ditched 40 lbs, transhumanism, singularitarianism, politics, Burning Man (or at least "the Nevada regional"), and half the things I own, I wouldn't have believed them.

-

I have an xmas list every year. Not because I make a big to-do about xmas, but because because I'm in the xmas tree business; that's just when the most funds come around. In recent weeks, the xmas list has been shrinking. I've been culling the hell out of it. I don't need this, don't really want that. Hack, slash. But the most important reason is that having the thing under consideration doesn't feel as good as knowing that amount of cash is in the rent buffer. It seems just being able to live free is coming into far sharper focus than gadgets. On the axe list (or at least, not on this year's list) are the projector and the hot tub. The former I don't really need in my house, since it's mostly an interface to the community. The latter simply won't fit anywhere, at the moment.

And I still have stuff to throw out. I'm eying my waterbed frame and box spring, my dishwasher, my nightstand, and a box of someone else's stuff, that magically appeared in my house on moving day because my old roommate (or someone) thought it would be handy to flash-pack it and throw it in the truck while I wasn't looking - along with a bag of rotting food garbage (which went out right away, needless to say).

Garbage collection is a tough call at my house. We have one garbage can, one mailbox, and one washer/dryer for four units; it can be a bit tight. I still have stuff leftover from moving (boxes and "cardboard bags") that I have to whittle away at in small pieces. Luckily, since I switched to predominantly produce and bulk foods, I produce surprisingly little garbage, the bulk of which is either compostable or reusable. I find myself going back to Save-On whenever I have the opportunity just to pick up extra containers for free.

I still haven't so much as plugged in my microwave. Hmm... another candidate for the toss list?

-

But these aren't exactly radical changes, in any sense; not anymore, at least.

I recently re-read the section on radical self-reliance on the Burning Man website's description of the ten principles that guide the community:

Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

This wasn't really what I had been expecting to read, and it certainly isn't what I would have said had someone asked me to describe this principle. Inner resources? All this time, my focus of self-reliance has been on the external tools and supplies needed to get by in life, on the playa and off (as the contents of the previous section of this post attest). It hooks into pulling your own weight, into making a living of your own labor and wit, into the shame and dignity of the Protestant Work Ethic.

It never occurred to me, until I read this formulation, that it takes an entirely different, but real, kind of self-reliance, not insure that you have everything you need to survive and flourish, but to trust that these things will come to you even if you can't, or don't.

This sense of peace, of tranquility; this radical self-assurance, is what I have been missing, at times.

What could I accomplish with this ability? What couldn't I?

But does such assurance mean trusting that, should you thrust yourself into one, that your friends will pull your ass out of the fire - or does it mean being able to trust the very flames themselves, to burn you away into what, ultimately, is the fate of everyone?

As a fire safety, I occasionally cross the notion that christens fire as an honorary living thing. It eats fuel (digestion), it ejects smoke and ashes (excretion), it breathes air (respiration), and it spreads more of itself (reproduction). Today, I wonder if we don't have this backwards.

I wonder if, instead, the living are simply honorary fires.

The Nevada Regional Burn

proper name: That thing in the desert.

I've been to Burning Man seven times between 1999 and 2006. But being a man of modest means, I haven't been back since. I've been active, and continue to be, in the Vancouver and Victoria communities since I moved to Vancouver in 2003. I get what I want and need - and far more of it - from burning locally instead schlepping out to the playa every year. It costs less, and I see a lot more of the people I love more often. I consider it good stewardship of the heart.

"Regionals", in burner parlance, are the little community cells that seek to foster burner ethos and events in a smaller, more localized fashion. Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert may have inspired it all, there will always be questions about its scale, and sustainability. Its uniqueness among burner-driven events makes it clear that, if something should keep the Big Daddy from continuing, it won't affect the dozens or hundreds of regional communities from carrying on the traditions that inspired them.

With this perspective in mind, melded with the shrinking significance and importance of the Big Burn in my personal estimation, I see it as apropos to frame these attitudes by calling the original event "The Nevada Regional". Perhaps it might be appropriate to call it "The San Francisco Regional" instead. Perhaps there's already a smaller Nevada Regional I don't know about.

Suddenly, I feel a lot better. I have a better mood, better motivation, better energy.

This has little to nothing to do with the world outside, and everything to do with the world inside. This is what body & brain have decided. I have been and will be paying more attention to this. Because, while I am somewhat precaritized, it's probably not going to be the world that kills me; it's my body.

I spent most of last night on a software research binge, investigating voice transformation effects. I learned about voice synthesis and formants. Keywords: Ardour, Audacity, LADSPA, VocProc, Autotalent, Rubberband. I dug deep, which is something I haven't done in a while. I did not achieve the effects I wanted, but I think I know they're possible, now. It felt good to suddenly realize how much time had gone by.

IT feels good to feel good; but I would feel better if I knew how to produce these circumstances more deliberately.

The world outside is a rough rough ride. The world inside, unknown. We don't know what we're doing. - I see doom on the large scale. The only hope of salvaging this short life, is as one man. I have to give up, to reject all that is hopeless in politics, and industry. I don't feel fear, in the present, because I've got another month. I'm torn between doing SOMETHING, and not knowing what. I feel lame. But really, would competence bring me any closer to security? Or is it just the feeling that counts? I feel little. I venture this is what anti-depressants feel like. Not much motivation, not much anxiety. onward.

Apparently, I've done it.

My finances have become no less precarious, but my heart has cleared of fear.

Boy, do I have plans for Jack, now... hm... *rubs hands together*

[session 3, 2010-06-24]

My head woke me with its familiar hangover throb. Tweak was at his workstation, tinkering away at something. I groaned and rubbed my face.

"Good morning," He chirped, briefly. "Sleep well?" His face was glued to whatever was on his screen, but I could hear the smirk.

"Fuck," I blurted. Only Tzak was on the couch. "I had this fuckin' whacky-ass dream."

"Oh yah?"

"Yeah. You'd invited a dozen hot, trashy chicks over here, got them drunk, drugged them, and we took turns stealing them blind and fucking them for hours on end. Crazy, eh?"

Tweak turned to face me, finally. After sizing me up, he cracked up laughing.

"What?" I said.

"No you, idiot. That's what happened last night."

"Bullshit!" I say, laughing along. He only rolls his eyes and turns to his workstation. He hands me a memory card, which I plug into my phone.

I'll be damned.

-

Tzak and I perform the enscription of the healing blessing. It works out. before too long, we leave for the library. Drex calls us - he's back in town, and will meet us there.

Tweak steals a car. I hop in - what the hell. He then hands me the wheel and climbs in back. I manage to coast safely to a stop, get out, stare at him, and take the bus the rest of the way.

Eventually, we all get to the same library. We meet Razia, a canid/felyd hybrid female. Kinda hot. Zee sent her our way. She doesn't speak English, but Tzak knows this weird furry language she knows. She's is also a sorcerer, specializing in illusions. She's on the team. Drex just introduced her to Tzak and Tweak before going weapons shopping.

Tzak has blazed through tons of research on Quiddity's gateways. He thinks the most likely candidate would be in Norway. Road trip!

We need money for supplies. Tweak suggests we knock over a car dealership. I'm getting the idea that Tweak is something of a gangster. Ya think?

I case the place, identifying who to rob of credit cards. Razia tarts herself up as a human celebrity and starts making a very sexy spectacle of herself. Tweak goes... shopping. For cars. Tzak does some very impressive sleight of hand on the security guard, introducing him to the floor. Me? I supercharge my precognition from the enscription i made this morning, and take advantage of the crowd that has gathered to cheer on the famous tart on the sidewalk. Everyone has slowed down, in my eyes, and I'm fast and nimble. I swipe eight cards out of pockets before being noticed.

I could see the swing from a mile away. Boy, this guy didn't even bother with an accusation. I blocked the blow trivially, and decided that, if the guy decided he wanted to hit me for bumping into him, he probably deserved what he had coming.

So I sucked the life out of him.

I could feel, in the slow motion dance of myriadic fates, the pulse of his blood, his breath. I could see the wave front of newly-secreted adrenaline spreading through his cardiovascular system, and on it was written one blazing glyph: FIGHT. force rushed, triggered by nerve signals, out of the bowels of his muscles, through his bones... and when it focused, finally, on the points of his knuckles, it jumped the gap between our bodies, and into me. But instead of punishing my tissues, it compressed, invigorated, and reinforced them. At the same time it fled from him, chastising his own violent impulses, crushing his own bones and organs.

It was as if he had punched himself. And I was all the more whole for the impact.

That's what you get for messing with a dreampunk.

And yet, he was no slouch. All I was doing was holding up my arms, but despite the punishment being reflected back onto him, he just kept swinging. It felt awesome, powerful, to be hit like that. I was taking in every ounce of fight he had, and making it my own.

Until he fell.

I lowered my arms, relaxing from my defensive stance. I was BUZZING, but as far as anyone else could see, this guy had just started wailing on me from out of nowhere.

"For fuck's sake," I faked, "What the hell is wrong with this guy?" And I turned around and left, skipping my way down the street with a pocket full of stolen credit cards.

By the time I got to the end of the next block, feeling more solid and invincible than I had EVER felt in my life, I had changed the face of each card to look like me.

Apparently, robbery is easy.

LAter, I discover Tzak has blown the security room, where the cameras send their signals, to smithereens. There will be no evidence of our spectacle. In a way, that makes me sad. But life goes on.

Drex, who's been out for most of the afternoon's festivities, calls to report he has secured us a chartered jet. Not bad.

It's been ten weeks, but I finally got my xmas lights back up.

I'm home, now. This pleases me.

Earlier in the afternoon of the night I met the cop, I was passed by someone on a bicycle with a black-and-yellow police jacket on.

...Except that it said: P O L I T E

Tolmie Lane, a short alley between the Galloping Goose trail and Douglas. It's around midnight. I'm nestled deep in my headphones, texting a friend when I spot a car sitting in the middle of the alley ahead. A single bright light shines on and off a few times. The police car approaches, and stops beside me. I take off my headphones. I can't see the driver in the dark.

"Hey how's it going?"

"Good, yourself?"

"What are you up to?"

"Just walking home."

"Where are you coming from?"

"A friend's place in Esquimalt."

"So you're just coming off the Galloping Goose?"

"Yeah."

"You know this isn't the safest place to be walking this time of night."

"No, I suppose it isn't."

"Where do you live?"

"Cook and Finlayson."

"Alright, take care."

"You too."

Make of it what you will.

Tzak owed me a healing blessing. So much had been going on today that we hadn't had time to explore the enscription ritual I had negotiated in exchange for divining his staff. Granted, I hadn't been able to reveal much; my power was still new. But he begged off, for the moment. The power required for the upkeep of the boned beast of burden that was pulling our makeshift wagon was keeping him drained and in poor condition to attend to experimental rituals.

I was skeptical, but I couldn't really argue with him. I could only hope he wasn't bullshitting me just to keep from having to fulfill his end of the bargain. It didn't seem to be that much in terms of power cost, but, hey - he was the fool who decided releasing an imprisoned demon was a good idea. Who knows what he was up to in that furry head of his?

Then again, it //was// the demon that showed him how to take ownership of the staff's spirit, and not me.

No matter. We had a long ride ahead of us, and we had a library of new books to browse. In the Divination sorcery text I'd picked first, I stumbled upon a simple recipe for geolocation and navigation. Using them, I found out that, yes, we were back on Earth, headed right back to Victoria. By dusk, we could see its radiation shield over the mountains. In between reading stints, chatter was sparse. It didn't seem either of them were too eager to get to know each other.

-

We arrived late the next day. Tweak and I exchanged contacts, but Tzak had no phone, and no ID. He dropped us off in front of the temple of Nekra. I went shopping, and debated how much booze I could buy if I went without an apartment with my new credit account. It was a Low rating; there wouldn't be any access to any black-tie events, but there had to be some cheap drink specials somewhere to take advantage of.

I am blessed with an older physique. I may be 13, but I look 30. It took some poking around in all the seedier places to find a place that would overlook the age on the ID while running it through the till. But yeah, I found one.

I hadn't finished my second beer when Tweak calls me, obviously happier than I'd ever seen him so far, and invited me to a party at his place. Sure, what the hell.

-

When I arrived, Tweak was clearly a different person. He had a buzz going, and a concomitant smile. He was hosting a party, offering people drinks, and chatting up the whole house. //Now// I started learning about him. The city must be his element.

His place was decent. I chortled when I found //BDSM for dummies// on his bookshelf. I lied and told him it brought back memories for me; that this had been one of my favorite books that my mom had burned. He loaned it to me.

Tweak had also managed to purloin an illicit commerce terminal, and had been using it to shift credits off of stolen cards. I thought that was impossible; that's the first thing any punk thinks of. But he told me a little about how it works. There's an art to it ; it's complicated.

I have no fucking clue how he does it, but the place was steaming and full of intoxicated women. This guy knows how to make a party work. I'd never seen anything as badly gender-balanced as this. And they were all high and horny, drugged on something. Tzak was there, and already taking advantage of the situation by the time I arrived - and there weren't even any chicks of his species there. And when they weren't getting laid half-unawares, their cards were leaving their pockets, being scanned through the terminal, and finding their way back into their purses.

That night, I didn't exactly //lose// my virginity. I've got it right here on video. Tweak had slipped me a memory card the next morning, along with the number of Ellise, the girl who'd been most impressed with me, according to him.

And as I came that last time, right before I passed out, something uncoiled at the base of my spine, and roared. It was terrifying. But I didn't have any time to run before I went under.