Echoes in a Hollow Space

Dragons are overused

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 00:44:49 GMT

I am tired of trying to write serious stuff. It doesn't help my present state of mind, or the state of the world. So yesterday I wrote something silly, more words than I've been able to write for at least a week, and today I wrote something silly again, using the same world and characters. I don't know if this has legs but at least it's walking.

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Dragons Are Overused

“Dragons are overused, don’t you think?”

“They are the backbone of the fantasy industry.”

“And all that stuff about people riding on their backs! The g-forces would rip humans off within seconds of flight.”

“Well, it is fantasy. And people are very fond of seeing and imagining people riding dragons in their stories.”

“Pfft.” The dragon used the tip of his long, sharp nails quite delicately to pick at something lodged between his long, sharp teeth.

Maynard, the poik with whom he had been speaking, watched with fascinated queasiness hoping that whatever was lodged there wasn’t leftover poik. “Humans will be humans.”

“Lawd, won’t they, though.” The dragon shifted on his bed of ash and straw, craning his neck so he had a better view of the meadowlands outside the mouth of his cave. They were quite nice, as meadowlands went, bucolic and dotted with sheep. He made a tsk sound with his tongue to test his teeth, but apparently wasn’t satisfied he’d gotten what was lodged there for he returned a nail to his delicate work.

Maybe it was sheep, Maynard ardently hoped. “Have you been raiding their habitats lately?”

He smacked his tongue several times and seemed finally satisfied that he’d dislodged the irritant. He huffed and belched a small puff of smoke. “You know very well that isn’t a good idea these days. Too much surveillance equipment out there and jets with nasty armaments.”

“I thought bullets couldn’t pierce your hide.”

“Those heat seeking missiles hurt like crazy, though.” The dragon turned his face away from the meadowlands and laid his head on his folded paws with a disconsolate sigh. “Times are hard.”

“Yes,” agreed Maynard. “Fantasy isn’t what it used to be.”

Maynard himself had a taste for contemporary fantasy, but he’d never admit that to the dragon who, by his very nature, must be heavily invested in high fantasy. At least, that’s what Maynard assumed. Poiks fit well in urban environments, resembling large shaggy dogs as they did. Of course, there were many subtle differences, but most humans didn’t possess subtle perception and never looked twice at poiks. Unless they were fanciers of large, shaggy dogs. Of course, any self-respecting denizen of the Otherlands could shapeshift at least a little. Enough to fool even the rare perceptive humans. Most of them, anyway. Seers would always be a problem, but at least they glowed golden to Otherlanders so were easily avoided.

“Do you suppose my time has come?” asked the dragon, releasing a melancholy and smoggy sigh.

“What do you mean?”

“Am I obsolete?”

“Uhhh…” Maynard wasn’t sure what response would cause him the least pain. Dragons were mercurial at best. No guessing what this one wanted to hear so he turned around three times and laid down on a spare pile of straw.

“I mean,” the dragon continued, clearly not really interested in Maynard’s answer, “several of my relatives have given up altogether and gone into deep hibernation. Some have even allowed themselves to die, which seems excessive, but no accounting for taste. Or strength of character.”

“Mmm hmm.” Maynard scratched his floppy ears with his hind paw.

“As long as I can still fly now and then, snatch up a sheep or a cow or a horse without being observed, life still seems worth living.”

Maynard was relieved that it probably wasn’t poik that had been stuck in the dragon’s teeth. “I can imagine. And how exactly do you manage to fly without being observed?”

“The human mythmakers have invented this marvelous new creature called a yueffo and I can easily pass for one of those.”

Yueffo. At least that’s what Maynard thought he’d heard. “What is a yueffo?”

“It’s an acronym. Humans are so very fond of acronyms. U-F-O. Unidentified Flying Object. Covers a multitude of shapes and sizes and basically boils down to any strange thing seen in the skies. As long as I can surround myself with enough light they can’t really make out my true form and they can’t capture a good image of me on those nasty cameras of theirs. Anyway, most of the time I’m flying over remote areas at night where I can pick off livestock with ease. Although I understand real UFOs only take parts of the cattle and horses they capture and leave the rest, perfectly good meat, behind to rot. Really bizarre behavior.”

“What constitutes a real UFO?”

“Haven’t a clue, Maynard. They must come from the Otherlands, but I’m not sure which kingdom, tribe, or caliotrope they belong to.”

“Very interesting.”

“Yes. They’re all the rage right now amongst the humans. Always something on their televisions and social media about them. I don’t know how they can make something so remarkable so boring, but they bang on and on about it until you just want to scream with tedium.”

“I’m taking a media break at the moment,” Maynard admitted. “Always another tragedy, always some internecine warfare amongst the opinionated set. Gets tiring.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Mind you, the internet has its advantages. You can say whatever you like and no one knows you’re a poik.”

“Or a dragon.”

“Exactly.”

They fell silent, looking out across the bucolic meadowlands. Large white clouds hugged the mountains in the middle distance. Three bright blue lights emerged from the clouds and zipped across the meadowlands at incredible speed, then up and over the mountain hiding the dragon’s cave.

“Show offs,” he grumbled.

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Musings

Tue, 22 Oct 2019 21:01:08 GMT

Some days I think that Twitter is nothing but people showing off their preciousness. Other days, when I am showing off my preciousness, I think it's a wonderful tool for self-expression.
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When I used to watch the show about the coroner, Dr. G Medical Examiner she often asked the question, “Why is it always guys?” Often about some scheme or stunt that went badly and fatally awry. Of course, she was in Florida.
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Any shows hosted by Albert Lin are fascinating combinations of technology/science, history, and myth and Dr. Lin is an enthusiastic and exuberant explorer. I’ve been enjoying Lost Cities with Albert Lin on NatGeo, but I’ve also enjoyed his previous series on the Mayans, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Tomb of Genghis Khan.
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No one would dream of asking a man about compromising for love, especially in the 80s. This interviewer probably assumed he was scoring quite a coup here, revealing something dark about Eartha Kitt. What he was revealing was something dark about himself and his assumptions.
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I tried not to be overly concerned about the Garlock creep when I read about it the other day. Then the next morning at 12:19 we had a 3.7 quake about 15 miles from here and I thought, "Is this the beginning?" I was reassured when Dr. Lucy Jones posted this later in the day:

People are talking about the “unprecedented” movement of the Garlock fault after the Ridgecrest quake. It’s true we haven’t seen this in the 30 years of modern geodesy on the Garlock fault. But we’ve seen it many times on the San Andreas & it has never caused a quake. The movement on the Garlock is called triggered aseismic creep. It is in the top few hundred meters of the fault. No quake can occur in the shallow part because there’s no confining pressure. Big quakes begin 10-15 km down. Big quakes triggered aseismic creep on the San Andreas fault in 1979, 1992 & 1999. The creep never caused another quake. Ridgecrest was the first big quake near the Garlock since we have records so it’s the 1st time we’ve seen creep on the Garlock. But it’s not unprecedented.

Dr. Jones is always so reassuring.

So, as I was saying, we had a 3.7 quake centered about 15 miles from here. One sizable jolt traveling southeast to northwest through my house. It sounded and felt rather like the ghost of an elephant running through the attic. Being an experienced earthquake experiencer I sat there for a moment to see if there would be more (because earthquakes are sometimes sneaky and there will be a jolt, a pause, then more and sometimes harder). But there was not, so I went back to reading my book. I did hear sirens heading Compton way (the epicenter) so that may have been related. Living in California is often a question of both denial and bravado. I have my earthquake supplies and my emergency plans but I try very hard not to think about quakes the rest of the time. I did think that any out of towners at LAX (about 1/2 mile from here) or in the surrounding hotels at 12:19 got an especially memorable "Welcome to California." I hope they appreciated it.
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Pain is a great teacher.
It teaches anger, it teaches
self-pity and doubt,
fist-shaking, a stunning
loss of perspective.
If it goes on long enough,
it may also teach humility,
acceptance, even courage.
But that’s never a sure thing.
Mostly pain teaches pain.

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Wicker vs. Roach: a supplemental book review

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 21:44:33 GMT

Christine Wicker’s book, Lily Dale: The Town That Talks to the Dead covers some of the same territory as Spook by Mary Roach—although I think, at the end of the day, Wicker’s book was more genuine. I liked reading both, and Roach is very funny, but she went into her skeptical deep dive exploration of the paranormal with the goal of mocking. She did quite a lot of that in Spook, sometimes to funny effect, but other times to her detriment as a reporter.

Wicker also went in skeptical but was genuinely interested in exploring the lives of the people she encountered. She approached them with respect and a reporter’s eye towards following where the story led, rather than leading the story. I won’t say she became a true believer by the end of the book, but she did emerge from the story changed by what she’d experienced.

Even Roach had to admit that she could not come up with rational explanations for everything she encountered. Yet she clung to the rock of her disbelief like any true acolyte of scientism. And that’s fine with me. I don’t require anyone to drink the Kool-Aid. Some people need to disbelieve no matter the evidence to the contrary, just as some need to believe despite rational explanations. As Ms. Wicker said so eloquently in her quote of the day, below.

See my full review of Christine Wicker’s book here.

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To Jung or not to Jung

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 21:49:44 GMT

An essay, containing secrets that really aren’t secrets.

Yes, I know that Carl Jung is a deeply flawed human being, but his philosophy explains the world to me better than anyone else I’ve encountered. He makes poetic sense of the twisted labyrinth of human consciousness—and it requires poetry rather than logic to explore those paths. Besides, who better to act as shaman on such a journey than a flawed human being?

(Psst. Here’s a secret: no living, breathing human being is without flaws. Purity is not possible in the earth realm. And, in fact, shamans in tribal society are often “other” and strange and outcast people. They make the best interpreters of the less-than-upright world of the spirit and alternate realities.)

I have other shamans I listen to, other paths I explore, but always swing back to ol’ Carl. I don’t swallow his philosophy—or anyone’s—whole. (The story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is an active metaphor in my psyche.) But I do use Jung’s work as a basis for my own worldview and personal explorations.

(Psst. Here’s another secret: any philosophy worth its salt is a means for discovering your own way of looking at the world, not something slavishly to be followed. Anyone who tells you to walk in lock step or that you must attain righteous purity is probably a spiritual fascist.)

(Psst. There are many valid spiritual paths. What matters is finding the one that gets you closest to the mountaintop.)

I even went so far, in my flush days, of purchasing the complete facsimile edition of The Red Book when it was issued in the earlier years of this century. (It’s almost doubled in price since.) It was so visually amazing that I had this idea to display it open on a library pedestal so I and my guests could page through it if they had a hankering. I don’t know if that’s pretentious or not. I suspect it is, but at the time, it just seemed neato kobeato. And now I’m past giving a damn what people think, anyway.

That idea never came to fruition, however. First, because we had a bird at the time who flew freely through the house. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of birds knows they can’t be potty trained. Need I spell out the possibilities of open display of an expensive book in a house of fluttering birds? The bird, certainly, could not be contained in a cage, at least not during daylight hours. That would have been a violation of her spirit. And a metaphor, of course.

The second and more practical reason why I never got around to displaying it was because I never got the library pedestal and because I fell headlong into the emotional and physical pit of caregiving for many years. The bird, bless her, went to the sky gods a few years back and is no longer a risk to my book. But. It took me a long time to crawl out of the hole I existed in. In some ways, I am still crawling, though I think I may finally be sitting on the lip catching my breath before getting up and moving on. My energy, both psychic and physical, are still not at full strength. I will get there (or some form of there anyway) unless I croak first, but my feet are not quite resting on the earth yet.

Meanwhile, The Red Book gathers dust in a safe location. I have cleared a space in the living room for it, but must wait for an appropriate book stand, mostly for financial reasons. There’s another metaphor lying underneath that dust and waiting, but I’m not going to pursue it here.

Meanwhile meanwhile, my dreams are fertile again, full of archetypes and sendings from the Universe and conversations with muses and the dead. Dr. Jung, with one foot planted on mucky earth and the other in the Other, helps me interpret them in a way that Freud never could. In his stumblings down the crooked path of his life, he made ancient wisdom acceptable to (if not accepted by) academia. He prowled the borders of liminality, pulling hidden lore into the light. This made many academics (who are a conservative lot) deeply uncomfortable, but he did more to make the study of folklore and alchemy and such things valid to them as subjects of learning than anyone else in the early 20^th century.

So, I cast a skeptical eye on the trickster nature of the man, but am deeply appreciative of the magus.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

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Hellier and synchroncity storms

Mon, 18 Feb 2019 22:47:06 GMT

Hellier, the Planet Weird original YouTube series: Mothman Prophecies meets Deliverance meets Carl Jung meets Finding Bigfoot. This is more of a philosophical paranormal series so if you’re looking for the brainless demon chasing of Ghost Adventures, this will not be the show for you.

I liked it, binged it yesterday. I started watching in broad daylight, just to be safe and to make sure I could sleep comfortably. (Huh.) There definitely were some creepy parts, but this is more a show about curiosity and exploration of the subterranean realms of the human psyche and the world-beneath-the-skin of this world. And synchronicity. A whole lotta synchronicity. (I watched the last two episodes in full dark and my sleep cycle was not disturbed.)

If you’ve ever been caught up in a synchronicity storm, as explored in this show, you’ll find Hellier more credible. Even if you haven’t, it’s a fascinating piece of filmmaking. Despite my casual linkage above to other things, it’s also a unique piece of filmmaking, as passion projects often are.

So, if you’re in the mood for something to expand your mind and your horizons rather than the idiotic pap of most paranormal shows, you might like Hellier.

I was once close friends with a paranormal researcher. I never went on any of his investigations with him—mostly because he lived 2,000 miles away—but he would discuss his cases in detail with me. I was a sympathetic and avid ear, frankly. Much younger and with my youthful sense of invulnerability still flapping around the edges of my psyche, I took a deep dive into the subject. Then weird synchronous shit began happening to me. Nothing as weird as the things that happened to him, nothing horrifically spooky, just fricking weird. But as I wasn’t even directly involved in his cases, it did rather freak me out.

“Oh yeah, that kind of thing goes on all the time,” he said. “It’s mostly harmless if you don’t give it energy.”

Which was not reassuring. It harkened back to something a witchy woman said to me when I was thirteen and another batch of synchronous shit started happening to me. “It can’t hurt you if you don’t let it.” I backed away from it then, shut it down with extreme prejudice, and the things stopped happening.

When it happened again in conjunction with my friend, I told it very firmly to go away and leave me alone, and it did. I’m sorry, I am not profoundly courageous when it comes to these things. I prefer to channel it into art, if you must know. Art is a buffer zone between the realm of the trickster—where this stuff stops and ends, in my opinion—and about as much as I can handle, in those days and in these.

Weird things continued to happen to me, but rarely with the sense of something focusing on me that happens in the middle of a synchronicity storm. That attention is what keeps me from sleeping at night. I continued to be friends with my paranormal researcher for some time after that, but eventually we drifted apart for reasons that had nothing to do with synchronicity or paranormal research or the trickster. (Or did they?) I still think fondly of him and those discussions because it expanded my mind and my psychic horizons.

Even if I was too much of a wimp to fully commit. I’m happy with my decision. And, really, I think “it” is, too.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

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