I am really pleased with today’s Free Range Poetry. Every once in a while I find a site full of awesome astronomical pictures which inspires me. So I harvest the pictures, add my poems, and post a string of the haiga as my Free Range Poetry entries.

***

So few people know me. Even my family barely knows me. I tell them things, and it just rolls off them like water on oil. They don’t listen. Sure they know things about me. They accept that I’m a Pagan, asocial (not anti-social), a poet, writer, and artist. They don’t know, nor do they seem to care, how I feel about things -in my life, in the world.

At work they think I’m demented but pleasant. I make them laugh. This is by design. I’m a very powerful empath. Miserable people make me miserable. Happy people make me happy.

Guess which I choose to be when I have the option.

But working with the public is hell for someone like me. All those people around me. I remember an episode on a sci-fi/fantasy show. I think it was the one Asimov did, but I forget what it was called; it’s been so long. It has nothing to do with my empathy, but the image is appropriate. Apparently this guy had such a bad experience in school that he still had flashbacks about it when he visited the playground with his own young son. From my own memories of childhood, I’d say he wasn’t so far off the mark. But in any event, he and his son somehow traded places and the kids swarmed him like a group of angry demon rats ready to tear him apart.

Yeah, that’s what it’s like being an empath in the service industry. Everyone wants, needs, demands your attention. Gimme, Gimme, Gimme all you have. Their needs and underlying issues are the claws that rip me to shreds by the end of the day. A night’s sleep is barely enough time to recover.

Yes I know about shields and such. I use them with the energy/psychic vampires when I encounter them. Most of them don’t even know what they’re doing, so it’s easy to fend them off. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met one who was conscious of their energy vampirism. Aside from that though, shields are distracting. I need to keep my empathy active or how will I know which way to jump, how to react -when someone is acting one way but feeling another. I can’t hear with earplugs, I can’t feel through a shield. And they’re physically draining to maintain for 8-12 hours a day, five days a week.

But I diverge from the point. I’ve told my family about this too. They don’t seem to believe me. Family gatherings are just as hellacious as work. The only difference is that my family is not so easily placated as some moron looking for a book they’ll never read. They seem to resent it when the living room is full of visitors and after a half hour I retreat to my room. (Cause you know, all we need is an empath in a room of irritable and bored family and friends to take it all in and then spew it all back out at them.) But even without my empathy, there is no room for me even to sit on the floor, and besides I’m just standing there silent like a looming hairy coatrack. (I can comb my hair over my face and look like the girl from The Ring.)

Better to retreat to my room where a little distance will make their presence bearable; where the shields around my room, which have accumulated with time, will further block out their own boredom and irritability.

I hate the holidays.

I was thinking the other night about The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies. You know how they revamped Romeo and Juliet for the 90s. I was thinking, what if they made a Hobbit/Lord of the Rings movie based in our world in our time. Sure Romeo and Juliet sucked when they did that, but I think the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings idea might be really cool. Or at least uproariously funny. Heck, it would probably be good even if done by amateurs.

How ’bout it? Anyone wanna make a Tolkienese movie with me?

***

Some of you may know that I have past life memories. These started right after the “lynching” I recieved in Jr highschool (which I alluded to a few days ago).

In all I recall ten now. A new one pops up every few years (the most recent was earlier this year), and in between I sometimes recall more details of the ones I already remember.

Well, I was brushing my teeth last night and all of a sudden the phrase “Angry Sparrow” popped into my head. And then I thought, that’s me.

You see, some time during the early 1800s, I was a young Native American man out west. Someone rustled some horses and I was the convenient scapegoat they hanged for the crime. Some of my past life memories are more detailed than others, and this one is decidedly not very detailed. So I’m glad for this new revelation.

But I know you’re thinking; the sparrow isn’t native to America. Ah but, by the 1800s it would have been naturalized to America enough for Native Americans to be naming themselves for it.

So I’m Angry Sparrow. This comes as something of a surprise because in this life anyway, my animal spirits are the Raven, Snake, and Spider. You’d think I’d be Angry Raven. Nope, Angry Sparrow, that’s me. heh Must have had a temper.

Hmmm, had a really short dream last night with some odd images. There’d been a war, but society was rebuilding. Some places were better than others. Electricity had been restored in some places. There was a very odd apartment building that had sections which twisted and spun about to rearrange itself. Must have been a pain for the people who lived there. heh

There were some great Gothic cathedrals. I may not be Christian, but I really admire the architecture of the great old Churches. If I ever get to own my own bookstore, I want to buy a church and build my bookstore inside. I think I’ll call it Candace’s Opiate. (I wonder how many will get the joke… I also wonder how many people will come in looking for drugs! lol)

There were also huge skyscrapers in the dream reminiscent of the Twin Towers, so perhaps this was a dream commentary on the capture of Saddam?

The dream ended with these cobble stone roads arcing through the air, but in many places they had collapsed and been cemented back together. Still they sagged. People walked over them without seeming to notice, but I was scared to death it would all collapse while I was on it.

Hmmm, the more I think about it, the more I think this dream was a commentary on our current political situation. Everyone who believes what the media feeds them is probably thinking, “Oh Whoopie! Bush caught Hussein. Yay!” And I’m sitting here thinking, no he didn’t. Soldiers caught the old ba$tard and what does that change? There’s never any closure. Someone, somewhere, would be more than willing to take the sociopath’s place.

***

After many months, I finally updated the comic links section and the feature sections at Poesy Comics. Shocker, I know. I hadn’t updated in two months! Those unfamiliar with my comic will find a long list of comics I read on my comic links page. As for my feature page, I try to feature a Lovecraftian/mythos related site at least once a month. This is because Arkana, my weekly horror comic, is a Mythos comic. Speaking of which, Arkana also updated today, and I just have to say, I’ve really improved since I first started drawing it.

***

Well, it’s happening again, and I know it’s just the time of year, but I honestly hoped that my love of the bookstore would curtail my agoraphobia. For those who don’t know, Agoraphobia is the fear of crowds and open spaces. Well, I don’t mind open spaces, but crowds make me completely neurotic.

I’ve hated crowds since jr highscool when the other (popular) students lynched me. Well, technically it’s not a lynching unless you get hanged (as some people have pointed out to me), but the other students followed me for two blocks, spitting on me, calling me names, and throwing whatever they found on the ground at me. I think you can see, it’s not too far from a lynching.

Ever since then, crowds have made me horribly anxious. Sometimes I just want to run and hide. It’s not that I mind helping people find their books. This is my dream job. It’s the fact that you can’t turn around without falling over someone and when you’re done helping one person or even while you’re helping one person, three others are demanding help also.

There’s too many frikkin people. And people wonder why I complain about breeders and cities. People, use a little self control or spring for a little snip-snip but stop with the excessive baby-making. The world’s not going to miss your little genetic contribution and if you want a baby, there’s plenty of orphans to adopt. I don’t really hate people or children, despite how misanthropic I sound. I just think there are too many of them. Six billion people is too many people even if I don’t have to interact with all six billion.

Some nights I just want to find a quiet corner and curl up in a fetal ball. The holidays are the worst. I don’t know why people have to wait till the last minute and then gather together in one place like a semi-sentient fire code violation. Go home people. Try doing your shopping in advance of needing it rather than two weeks, a week, a day before its time. My anxiety attacks will thank you.

Did you ever sit and wonder about what part(s) of yourself you could stand losing? Like if you could and had to choose, would you give up something tangible, like one or more of your senses, your mobility, your looks, etc. Or would it be something intangible, like emotions or intelligence or your soul, etc.

For myself, I don’t think I could give up anything intangible. My emotions help me write. Even losing one would be detrimental. Maybe you think anger and hatred would be good to get rid of, but I think they’re necessary for balance. Besides if someone does something truly horrendous to you, you have to be able to feel something or you’re just going to forgive and forget and it’ll be done to you again.

I prize intelligence above all else. They say ignorance is bliss, but that’s only if you’ve never known any other way of life. If for one instant, you understood something completely and then it was taken away from you, you’d be seeking for the rest of your life. What a horrible, unsatisfying existence to lose your intelligence. It’s intrinsic to my very being to use my intelligence. If I lost it, I don’t think I could continue.

As for my soul, I don’t think it’s something you can give away… but if you’d like to send me yours, feel free. heh I can’t promise you anything for it, but if I can, I’ll drag you along with me when I reincarnate next time. Somewhere nice, hmmmm. Anyone want to be a tree next time around?

Aaaaaaaaanyway….

Of the tangibles, I don’t think I could give up my senses.. though maybe I could do without a sense of smell and taste. It would certainly help if I decided to diet. heh So long as I still had my upper body, I guess I could give up all other mobility. It might be difficult to get around, but I don’t think I’d mind it so much. As for my looks, well I guess they’re not doing me any good. I can see letting them go. lol

I wonder what other people could stand to lose. Is it only because I’m more cerebral than physical that I focus more on the incorporeal aspects of life as important?

Well, I had three dreams last night, but I only know this because I woke up the first two times and told myself to remember the first two. Which I now don’t. Of course.

I know, I should have gotten up and written them down, but then I would have been awake and not sleeping and I already get little enough sleep. I hope my mother gets me the little minitape recorder I asked for, for Yule. Then I can just press a button and record my dream without getting up, turning on the light, and waking up enough to write in a notebook and then not being able to get back to sleep.

Anyway, the third dream was extra odd as if to make up for the two forgotten. My mother was a maid at this huge mansion, and the girl who lived there was having a “sweet sixteen” party. I was sixteen in the dream and for some reason, the girl invited me. (I never got a “sweet sixteen” party myself. I didn’t have any friends. Do people even still have these?)Anyway, it was last minute notice. I wanted to stop and pick up a Harry Potter book, but there wasn’t time so I had to go to the party without a present.

The mansion was huge. It was three times the size of any normal mansion. In fact, everything there was larger than it needed to be. It made me feel like I was much younger. I passed a dining room chair that I would have had to climb to get into. (Maybe this was my subconscious trying to convince me I was much younger than I am now.)

I was shown into an auditorium-type room. The birthday girl sat near the bottom with everyone else fanned out around her so they could see her as she opened the presents. I felt really guilty for not having a present, but no one seemed to notice and no one said anything. I saw this baby-blue blanket with a stuffed animal head at one end sitting on a chair, and I thought of bundling it up and saying it was from me, but I resisted the temptation. (Besides, whoever really owned it would have known.)

Suddenly, the party was attacked by vampires. (Yeah, I know how dopey that sounds. Sue me, I caught the end of NightFlyer on Sci-Fi last night.) The vampires were killing most everyone, but some they were turning into vampires too.

So I’m pretty sure they meant to kill me, but when one of them had me down, I kicked and clawed and then bit the jerk until he let me go. They thought this was pretty funny, a vampire getting bit by a human, so they decided to let me live, sort of. Actually they just let me go, but since it was pretty much a given I was going to be a vampire too now, it wasn’t much of a favor.

From that point, the dream got steadily weirder. Remember we were in some kind of auditorium, well now it was some kind of deck hanging over this ancient forest. The forest was a very long way down, but I jumped and landed easily.

The trees were huge, bigger than the mansion had been. The branches were so large and pendulous, they dipped into the ground and came up again as if they were new trees. I kind of felt like the hulk the way I went leaping and flying through them. (Yay, hulk smash! hehe)

Meanwhile, the vampire lord (master, leader?) regretted letting me go since I hadn’t come back and sent out his goons after me. I got the impression he admired my determination and grit and wanted me to either fall into place like the rest of his lackeys or be dead so I wouldn’t give the others ideas.

At this point, I figured the safest place to hide would be right under their noses. So once I managed to lose the hunters, I doubled back to the mansion. OK, so now the deck which had been an auditorium was a bed. (Don’t ask me, I guess I’m even nuttier in my sleep than awake.) It still looked like the deck, but it was much closer to the ground and had a mattress instead of floorboards. 

So the vampire lord was sleeping there with the girl whose birthday I had been attending, now a vampire herself. I hid underneath in the dirt. There was barely enough room, but at least I was pretty sure no one would look for me there.

     Just a small note then, before you move on to the newsletter synopsis and index… I do accept donations (hint hint), but I would also accept articles if they were offered. If you’d like to contribute an article to the newsletter, just email it to me and I’ll look it over. I don’t pay because obviously I don’t make any money at this (see above hint), but you can see your name in print. And that’s always nice.  If you want to send money, please do! There’s a link on the newsletter page where you can do just that.

Some Sites of Interest

Pagan and Wiccan Ritual Clothing
Make Your Own Ritual Clothes
Original Magickal Designs
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This Pagan Week : December
Humor : Coffee Prayer
Article : Tools of the Trade: Part 11: The Clothes that Make the Witch
Quote : Albert Einstein
Craft of the Week : Making your own Talismans
Humor : Martha Stewart’s Yule Planner
Who’s Who in World Mythology : Avalon
Quote : Willem de Kooning
The Magi’s Garden : Calamint
Cartoon
Poem : Keeping Things Whole
Quote : Anonymous
The Power of Stones : Basalt
Humor : Loki Loves Me
A Dreamer’s Guide : Mimicking to Minutes
Quote : Ralph Waldo Emerson
Previous Newsletters

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In other news, be sure to check out my webcomic, Poesy Comics, which I mention so infrequently. It updates on Tuesdays with a Mythos horror comic entitled Arkana and on Thursdays with Free Range Poetry.

Back to my post about honesty… I got to thinking about virtues. You know, they say patience is a virtue, etc.

The early Greek philosophers felt prudence, temperance, courage, and justice were the most important virtues. The Christians adopted some of these and added their own –prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, charity, hope, and faith- to counter their seven deadly sins. The Romans had over forty, most of them associated with a specific deity. And there are many a modern list of virues.  

In schools across the nation, students are taught ethics without virtues. They debate social issues without reflecting on personal conduct and morality. In one way, it is good to see the larger picture. Many social commentators of our times have said that we have grown technologically without matching that growth socially and ethically. People should be aware that they are part of a larger whole. They should be aware of how actions affect the world.

On the other hand, where do personal ethics come into the picture? Am I wrong in thinking that personal conduct virtually dictates social ethics? If we each held ourselves accountable for our actions, wouldn’t social ethics take care of itself? I know most people are concerned about others dictating their actions, even through something as simple as an understanding of what people consider virtuous, but should they be so paranoid that they don’t even attempt to modify their own actions? No, it seems personal gratification is at the top of most everyone’s list.

My “favorite” virtue, or rather the one that I think exemplify the others, is integrity. Integrity is something like responsibility, justice, and honesty all rolled into one. Concepts like integral and integrated come from integrity. If someone formed “integral,” a word meaning essential, from integrity, does that mean people once felt integrity was essential to human socialization? By way of the word “integrated,” did they feel it brought people into unity?

To my mind, integrity goes hand-in-hand with concepts like chivalry and honor. Well, they do say chivalry is dead. And honor… honor is what one does at a public function or awards ceremony. Apparently it’s not an aspect of every day life.

Once again I find myself most closely align to antiquated systems. The only “modern” code of conduct that is similar to mine is the nine virtues of the Asatru. That’s not really a surprise. I agree with the Asatru Rede as well. (More on the Redes next time boys and girls)

To my mind, virtues are all things that lead to respect. You must respect yourself and you must respect others. If you hold yourself to a strict code of conduct, an honor code if you will, a code of chivalry, then others will respect you as you respect them.

Its no wonder the “Age of chivalry” epitomized in the Arthurian Legends and many fantasy books still draws readers. It gives people hope and something to aspire to. Nobility is in the heart. It leads to nobility of word and deed.

What happened to that?

Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggg! Evil Xanga….and Topcities!

For anyone who wanted to see the necro-worm thing I dreamed about the other night (just prior to this post for anyone who didn’t see the dream post), please try this link instead. I suspect that Topcities must have one of those “anti-theft” policies against direct linking to pictures or some kind of bandwidth issue so I made a small page instead which I hope will allow you to see the creepy-crawlies.

I like to think that I remember my dreams because I want to. I want to be a professional writer and dreams are one of the best places to get ideas, soooo… even the scary ones are potential stories waiting to be born. I am quite greedy about my dreams. I wish I dreamed every night instead of an average of once or twice a week.

That they follow a story-like continuity is something I attribute to my imagination. I expect that as I dream these dreams, they aren’t as fully formed as they are when I wake up. Somewhere between dreaming and the first few seconds of wakefulness, my subconscious fills in the plot holes. When I put them down on paper (er, on the screen), they’re a lot more homogenous than when I actually dreamed them. Which I imagine makes them a lot more entertaining to anyone who reads them.

Just to be clear, I don’t make anything up and I don’t fill in details once I’m awake, but I have to admit my dreams aren’t normal by any stretch, so I came up with the above theory. heh

I don’t know that I am really searching for myself (as per AshleyShea’s comment). I don’t really care to fit in anywhere, as SilverRavenKat can tell you. I am a complete non-conformist. Since my new job doesn’t care much about “dress-code” so long as it’s inoffensive, I’ve even been considering getting my hair dyed green! hehe I love green, and there’s already someone with green-tinted hair who works there.

But I am trying to become a published author so maybe that is what all the not fitting in and money issues were about in the second dream. I just sent out a shortstory to Lindisfarne press the other day, and I haven’t heard back yet. I know these things take time, often a couple months, but given my track record with publishers, the longer it takes the less I am going to hope that I’ve actually been accepted. And if I am accepted, that will only make me more nervous. Keep reading… 

My last publisher jerked me around till the day my book was supposed to be published, then had the nerve to say, “Duh, Didn’t you get my email?” He proceeded to tell me that his new investors had deemed my manuscript unsuitable for his market and even though my contract had almost a year left before it was up, maybe I should start looking for a new publisher.

Anyone who’s hoping to get published, I know some people have had a good experience with my previous publisher, but I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone. So even if they should some how see this post and feel wronged, I don’t care. Everyone should stay away from MediumRareBooks because they are jerks . I hardly wrote anything but a few poems for almost two years because of them. And I certainly didn’t look for another publisher. Another blow like that to my ego, and I might’ve done something… hasty.

But the thing is, I couldn’t do much about it because MRB is based in California while I am way over in Pennsylvania. Lindisfarne is in Washington. If they treat me like MRB did, there’s still nothing I can do about it. It’s all very depressing and nerve-racking. I don’t know if it’s better to be accepted and wait on being published or just flat out rejected. It would certainly cut out the anxiety-middleman and go straight to the pits.

I had two dreams last night. Guess my brain’s making up for lost time. Argh, my sleep’s been so crappy lately.

The first dream was Lovecraftian. If you don’t know Lovecraft, go read some!

An uncle had been murdered, and I wanted to find out who did it. So I got this dried up larval thing and stuck it in glass case with a corpse. It was all bundled up in the corpse’s arms like a little baby. Then I did something, performed some spell or something, which made the little bugger come back to life.

Dried up, it had a head like a flattened starfish with a gaping maw which opened five ways on it’s face. There were no eyes or other sense organs that I could see. From the back of the star extended a dried up protuberance like a dessicated sausage.

Once the creature was reanimated, the starfish head fleshed out a little and the mouth could open and close (and slobber). The sausage-like extenstion in the back really fleshed out and became as long as my forearm and spongy like any larva. Its gellid, semi-translucent body squirmed about like dismembered limb.

This necro-larva (for want of a better word) was supposed to reanimated the dead body and speak through it to tell me who the murderer was. Instead it tried to break through the glass and get me. Guess it prefered looking like a demented doggy treat than being reconstituted.

***

The second dream was more disjointed. I was an alien among aliens, but no one could figure out what I was, not even me. There were humans there, but I wasn’t one of them either even though I looked mostly like one.

Since no one could figure out what I was, I didn’t have “sentient status” which meant I didn’t have any rights and could be used as a slave or whatever anyone liked. Fortunately, there was a family that took me in as their “slave” and took pretty good care of me.

Unfortunately, they weren’t very wealthy and had a lot of mouths to feed. They were also between homes and the hotel didn’t want any unknown aliens on their premises so I had to go out onto the street to sleep. First I found money and bought lotto tickets for the family, but they were all losers. Then I saw some kind of bowling deathmatch, winner takes all, so I tried that out.

You had to make your way up a double-dip slide while bowling balls were shot at you along the lanes below and then from above. If you were the last survivor, you won. Let’s just say I was uniquely suited to dogding the balls.

I won, but they wouldn’t give me the money because I wasn’t legally a sentient. (Like it’s against the law to be intelligent, heh.) However, the owner of the games was a big crime boss and a rival gang had kidnapped his daughter or she had simple gone missing. No one was sure. So I said I would find her and then they would have to give me the money. They laughed at me but agreed.

I woke up before finding out if I found her though.

***

Addendum to the first dream… I took the time to draw pictures, scan them, color them, and paste them to my blog, and what happens? Well, if you can see them, all well and good, if you can’t (like me) and would like to, go here…

http://harmony0strs.topcities.com/images/pic1.jpg

http://harmony0strs.topcities.com/images/pic2.jpg