Musings and Streams of Consciousness

On Lockhart's Lament

2012-02-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

When my choir teacher calls unapplied math boring, this dies in my throat.

When people ask me why I love math ("How can you?"), it stands, but is smothered by lack of self-awareness.

When one assumes that liking math is anomalous ("Oh, it's 'cause you're so good at it," is backwards) this rears up as emotion, but the lightning flash turns to a flicker through the walls of bad memories.

"Mathematics is the music of reason."

Yes!

The beauty of proofs was that I could make the teacher do math--they couldn't say I was wrong because I was different. If something is true, it is so--I can prove it a half dozen ways, and be judged only on accuracy and clarity.

"A proof should be an epiphany from the Gods, not a coded message from the Pentagon."

Yes! It's a beautiful moment that makes everything stop because this is right, and you understand. That's the point--you proved it. One can discover a flaw, but none can harm a proof that is right. The proof is in the information: the writing may be smudged, torn, burned, ruined, but the idea remains untouched.

"Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a diagram scribbled on a napkin."

Yes! I've done math on my own or with friends, family, on whatever scraps I can find--paper, napkin, cloth, even on tabletops. And I've found nothing comparable to the shock of understanding, and of helping others understand.

Lockhart's Lament is worth reading if you have ever enjoyed math or hated math class or been frustrated by a math teacher. Read on!

The Wretch (Adam)

2012-02-05T00:00:00.001-08:00

Quotations are from this article.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am the scariest being alive: a normal teenager.

That is, I must be the scariest creature alive. Were I not, I could imagine no reason for so many people to try and explain why I make bad decisions, to say that an adult who is overly cruel and immature is "acting like a teenager", or to explain repeatedly why my generation--that is, the generation on the cusp of inheriting the Earth--behaves so horribly.

Do you not believe me?

"What was he thinking?" It's the familiar cry of bewildered parents trying to understand why their teenagers act the way they do.

Do you see how absolutely terrifying I am? When one speaks of me (when one dares), one need not even give evidence or examples. One need only say how awful all the world knows teenagers to be, and go on with what someone needs to be convinced of. One need not be told how awful I am--every creature on this Earth knows me well enough to know me horrible.

The old have always complained about the young, of course. But this new explanation based on developmental timing elegantly accounts for the paradoxes of our particular crop of adolescents.

There do seem to be many young adults who are enormously smart and knowledgeable but directionless, who are enthusiastic and exuberant but unable to commit to a particular kind of work or a particular love until well into their 20s or 30s. And there is the graver case of children who are faced with the uncompromising reality of the drive for sex, power and respect, without the expertise and impulse control it takes to ward off unwanted pregnancy or violence.

But it is not even my kind! It is me, only me, that is so horrible, so devastating in my mistakes, so awful in my effects. The only hope I may hold in my heart is that I may become better as I gain wisdom. And perhaps, maybe, that I might spare the next generation the destructive environment that made me as I am.

The good news, in short, is that we don't have to just accept the developmental patterns of adolescent brains. We can actually shape and change them.

*clear throat* Hi. Speaking as myself from here on in. Oh, and Mary Shelley referred to Frankenstein's monster as Adam in her personal notes, for those of you who are curious about the header of this post.

The article's title was the first thing to bother me. "What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind?" First of all, the 'with' in the title should be lowercase, since 'with' is a preposition. Second, imagine that title referring to any other group. "What's Wrong with the Black Mind?" "What's Wrong with the Female Mind?" "What's Wrong with the Homosexual Mind?" Yet people can say "What's Wrong with the Teenage Mind?"--on the internet or in public--without fear of reprimand. With hardly any fear of disagreement.

Thoughts have inertia. People tend to keep thinking what they have been thinking unless something radical hits--for a long time, a person who performed a good deed might be met with, "Oh, that's very white of you." The person wouldn't be a good African, s/he would be an African who was 'acting white.'

Therefore, if everyone agrees with a thought, that is probably a good thought to examine. In Heart of Darkness, the Europeans knew that the Africans were beyond fully civilizing, but could still be helped. Buried deep in this idea is another: "Africans aren't people." Oh, they may stand on two feet; they make speak; we may be able to teach them things, but they are not, at heart, one of us. So it is with teenagers. Oh, there may be good ones, of course, but a good teenager is one who is "mature", who acts like an adult. And an adult who fails this test of maturity is "acting like a teenager."

What is buried in that thought? "Teenagers can't help it." Yet this is not a reason to forgive us. It is an excuse to be suspicious of us, to try to figure out what's wrong with us. I'll be as honest as I can in text:

Ow.

Okay? I'm forming as a person. I get flak for being weak--I'm a girl. I get flak for being confused--I'm bisexual. I get flak for being fat--and no, I'm not. I don't need flak for figuring myself out because everyone is.

And if you're not, you're not just dying. You're dead. You just haven't started rotting yet.

Moving

2012-01-29T16:39:00.000-08:00

The word of the day is: Nomad.

When I was fairly young, my grandfather got me a book called Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce. I loved it. In fact, I bought every book Tamora Pierce had released, and then kept up with each new book she was releasing--including anthologies she was included in. In the houses I've stayed in since, it was easy to find where I kept my books, because there would always be an entire shelf dedicated solely to my complete collection of Tamora Pierce books. I've been particularly emotionally attached to the spot where my collection switches from softcover to hardcover--when I started buying the books as they came out.

This has been next to my bed ever since I moved to this house. It's been right there. I could pick up any Tamora Pierce book, reread any of them whenever the whim struck.

...It hasn't.

Don't get me wrong. I still enjoy Tamora Pierce. I still read everything she writes. But the thing is, I haven't been keeping the books because they're making me happy. I've been keeping them because I felt guilty about getting rid of them.

And so we come to the title of the article and the word of the day.

I'm heading off on my own soon. I'll have a home to go back to, should anything go badly, but that's the thing: I will have a place to go if. But if things go well, I will be moving between houses. I am not willing to buy two copies of the books, nor to move them. I'll keep reading, of course, and buy books, but I'll prefer the library for my reading. When one's house is the size of a dorm or a first apartment, renting often makes more sense than buying. There simply isn't space.

And there exists that fantasy about living in a house where I build a library, but there's another fantasy about travelling the world for the rest of my life. The joy of this moment in my life is not knowing--I don't know anything about more than half my life.

So...it's time to send those books off. To those who are more stationary because their parents are, and those who have chosen to be so. Perhaps the books will cycle again. Perhaps they'll fall into an enormous collection, perhaps next to other editions of the same book. Perhaps some will be the book that some world-walker carries throughout all the travels. Perhaps they will sit and gather dust.

But, regardless, it makes little sense for me to keep so many books when I will be moving so much in the next decade of my life. And so, off they fly, to other hands and other eyes I may never meet. Bon voyage, mes amis.

This does not diminish my grandfather's gift. First of all, the books did genuinely give me pleasure for nearly a decade. Second, he introduced me to the author--and that's a gift that is still renewing.

I didn't get rid of all the books.

Elevator

2012-01-29T00:00:00.000-08:00

They were in an elevator, since their debriefings took the same amount of time. It was a pretty glass one, with a lovely view they were both pretending to look at.

"You could literally defeat anyone, up to and including countries. What could she possibly have shown you, to get you to back off?"

The woman in red flipped her knife in the air, caught it by the handle, then flipped it so the point balanced on her first finger. The knife was sharp enough to give papercuts, but it never split her skin. "There is a ridiculously obvious answer to that question," she said, sounding bored. "Which is: I am afraid that, someday, I will go bad, and it will take uniting the world to stop the slaughter. One can fear one's own power. Everything around me is made of cardboard and tissue paper, after all."

The man in the sharp suit pretended to focus on her balancing the knife, but kept his attention on her eyes. "I notice you never said that was the answer," he responded conversationally, shifting back to the view outside the elevator.

"What did it show you?"

"Oh...you know. My world crumbling around me. Apocalypse is nigh, my family died horribly and now clones are coming back to guilt-trip, torture and kill me. Mostly about failing in my duty. Made me feel like I deserved it. Pretty much what you'd expect." The woman in red would spot the forced lightness in the sharply dressed man's tone.

"Were you that honest with your agent?"

"That honest, yes. Vaguer. You?"

She waited two floors, arranging her thoughts. "I did not lie."

"But?" He said promptly.

"I told them exactly what I told you. Said something safe. They like the idea of my having a healthy fear of my own powers."

Three floors. Tall building, slow elevator. "But, in reality...?"

"Do you know how they keep elephants pinned at the circus?" she asks, then doesn't wait for an answer. "They pin them down, very young, when it's still possible. Because really, think about it. Even if they wanted to spend the money on a chain strong enough, they'd need something remarkably heavy. So, when they're young, the elephants struggle and pull, but they can't break loose. Then, when they're older, they just don't try anymore. They remember the chains being unbreakable, so they are."

They shared a glance, then both looked back out the elevator.

"When I was very young, I had no idea how to use my powers. A group of kids would pick on me. It's nothing major, but...I dunno. Suppose it's just whatever made you feel most helpless. I've been scared, but I haven't felt helpless in...ages."

He nodded.

Had the silence stretched, then doubtless the conversation would have continued. Even a comfortable silence would have meant something, been some marker of companionship. Even small talk might have started some friendship, after that conversation.

The doors opened. He went left; she went right.

To Discussion, Always

2012-01-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

Related reading: Gender and Sexuality, Opening the Closet

A few weeks ago, a classmate an I were discussing same-sex marriage for a history assignment. I told her I was having trouble writing my bit, because I honestly didn't understand why anyone would be against same-sex marriage. Don't get me wrong; I understand that people are against it, and I understand that intelligent people are against it. I just hadn't heard any argument that actually meant anything to me.

She explained that in her family, it was considered against family values.

"What makes family values good?"

"Well, what makes them bad?"

And I entirely froze up. She had established that family values meant the values her church held in relation to family, and so any answer to that question felt horribly insulting. However, we were both trying to clearly and honestly communicate our views, so I believe that my knee-jerk reaction was wrong. I should have spoken, so I will speak now.

I believe in freedom of religion until it hurts someone. People are hurting. Imagine, for a moment, that you couldn't marry the person you love because of your respective whats. Not who you were, not that you were incompatible, but simply that one of you was a different race, or that you were both the same sex. Imagine not being granted visitation rights, or inheritance rights, or not being able to get the most important person in the world a green card.

Of course, I'd bet that not all of my readers need to imagine.

I drew the parallel between those against same-sex marriage and those against miscegenation. I've been told that I shouldn't bring up racial issues when discussing sexuality issues, because they are too inflammatory. To this I say: they are inflammatory. Inflammation of the body means that one's immune system has spotted an issue, and is helping to heal it. We need times of tumult, because we need the issue to be visible. Different rights for different people should stick out like a sore thumb--but, and this is important, it doesn't. There was a time when separate but equal didn't seem obviously wrong.

I do not call family values bad, as a whole. Even if I wanted to do so, I could not. I have never found two people who agree on what family values are, save something that aids family stability. I believe that family stability is an admirable goal. The only place I could see an exception is when the family is toxic--in which case I'd argue that it isn't stable. If one needs fear to keep stability, that is not stability. That is slowed decay.

This has been said, but it always needs saying: It gets better.

Part of this is my optimism showing. I believe people are good. I believe that each culture gets better, if far too slowly for my tastes. We see the wrong of a decade ago. We will see our cultures wrongs a decade hence, because we will have improved.

But there is more than that. Even if, somehow, nothing were to change, it would get better for you. There are about seven billion people in the world. Given sufficient numbers, any minority can reach critical mass. It may be hard to remember; your people may be hard to find, but stay alive. I found my music geeks; I found--many!--communities of those who accept bisexuals. In the grand scheme of things, my life is likely far from over, and already I know where I can go for community. Whatever you need, you can find it.

Keep living. Keep looking.

You are not alone.

A Riddling Story

2012-01-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

ONCE

upon a time, there were three girls who were the best of friends. Childish Naomi had hair of gold, determined Rachel of fire, and quiet Eve of moonless midnight. When they were young, they ran everywhere together, and found places and rhymes that they kept among themselves. As they grew, each found a husband, and each grew a family of her own, and they drifted apart. However, as they were such friends, they still spent time together, even if they did not run so quickly as they once had.

On one such sunny day, they believed they had stumbled upon a place no one else knew, for though the field was lovely and lush, they saw no sign of any human.

Naomi, on her first excursion since her child was born, laughed aloud when she found the flowers in the clearing. She grabbed Rachel first, who play-fought to keep Naomi from weaving flowers into her hair. They seemed to come in every color and size, and Naomi managed to make Rachel's hair an explosion, if not the most symmetrical of things. The new mother moved on to gentler Eve, who made her first sound of the visit--a chuckle--when Rachel said she was jealous of the eldest's flowered braid. Naomi teased, "Lovely, if you want flowers done with skill, then you must learn to sit still."

At which point Rachel dove for a lily in Eve's hair, and Rachel and Naomi fell into a laughing tumble. Eve smiled as she watched them, and even she did not notice the shadow that moved just beyond the trees.

Then, the old witch cried: "Who has been picking my flowers!" The voice sent frost across the clearing. "Who has been picking my flowers!"

Eve stood, and then Rachel and Naomi stumbled to their feet. "Please forgive us, miss; we did not know--"

The old witch's cane struck frozen ground, and the three were not allowed another word in their defense. They were flowers, each identical to any human's eye, but not, through her magic, to the witch.

"You have been picking my flowers!" she cried at one of them. "And you rolled all over them. And you..." The witch paused, with an expression no human could decipher. Out of mercy or whim, the witch made one last motion. "May spend one last night at home." She leaned over and whispered the rules of engagement. For fun or some idea of fair-mindedness, the women had a way out.

Sure enough, as the sun set, the flower disappeared and Eve rose in its place. After running for too much of the night, she arrived at her house. "Husband!" she whispered, remembering not to wake the children.

"Sweetheart, welcome home--" He pulled her by the fire and, therefore, into the light, where quiet Eve's face spoke volumes. "What happened?"

"A witch cursed us to flowers." Her husband would understand who 'us' was, so Eve wasted no syllables explaining. "I am free this night, but you must pick me. If not, we remain."

"The witch told you this?"

Eve nodded, and he held her tightly, at least as scared as she. "Rest, dear one. We will walk back together in the morning, and I shall see you transform into the newest flower."

And so they lay together, near the warmth of the fire, until sleep came. Eve's sleep was troubled, but the rest helped them both, as it helps all creatures.

Eve woke, and stood to go. "Rest, dear one. We have time for breakfast before we walk." And she ate, but lightly, for though she knew she had not eaten for a day, she knew a too full stomach made it more difficult to run than a too empty one.

Eve ate, and stood to go. "Rest, dear one. We will be swift." And she rested more, for no reason but her fear.

Soon the two ran across the countryside, for there was not enough time, each had fooled themselves into a few more moments together, and it was the downfall of the plan. Even as they approached the clearing, Eve disappeared, and only the wind over the grass even showed him where the three flowers were.

He had hoped to find some difference: a lock of black hair, or one ducking in the wind, but there was not such hint. Each could have been the same plant in three places. He looked closely, desperately...

And smiled.

He picked the flower that was his wife, and each woman stood free.

Now, how did he know which flower was she?

(This was her dear husband's clue: Eve, who had stayed inside, lacked dew.)

Grimm version.
Erstwhile's version introduced me to the tale.

Complement

2012-01-08T00:00:00.001-08:00

I am Watcher, and I am Untempered's shadow.

She has a name--they all do, come to that. Long ago, in her first age, in their first age, some would ask her for it. They spoke the language she had, then, so recognized that what they called her--Watcher--was no name, but a title. The askers faded in numbers, slowly, slowly enough that she didn't notice for centuries when they stopped altogether.

She picked up new languages as most people adjust to new temperatures. One might put on a coat, or take one off, but one barely notices any minor shifts. Old German to new German, or to Old English; Latin to French and Spanish and Italian...she was there, alive. In the first years, only her family noticed, and she when they told her, that she slipped into the accent of those she spoke with. As languages changed, she slipped into the new ones, hardly noticing the change.

She could notice, when she paid attention: hear the subtleties or obvious differences. But the only time she had to notice was when they spoke her title, her for-all-practical-purposes-name, in one of the new tongues. Her name was still Watcher to her, and these odd words for it always sounded uncanny--I am watcher, and watcher, and one who watches, yet they only know me for Watcher. None asked her name, anymore. Watcher was a name, now, though uncommon in most of the world. Even in those places that would find it an odd name for one of their own, it made perfect sense that she was Watcher. Some tried to make meaning of it, but few, and ever fewer. It was like a child named Violet--hardly anyone mentioned it; fewer sought meaning.

They had trouble guessing why she had her 'name'. Why was a trickster called Watcher? She made mischief. Perhaps it was for a habit of making particularly ingenious plans, for watching every angle? But the myths did not speak of planning, merely of a shadow that tripped the mighty.

And no one--no one at all--guessed why Untempered was called that. They guessed that it was because he was known for fighting bare-handed, so lacked any tempered steel. Which bothered Watcher intensely whenever she thought of it, because they were going by a pun that did not exist in the language, or hadn't when he was titled first: To temper steel and to temper oneself. Temper became what one did to steel, because they had no word in their language, so they translated the word the other languages had and used it for both.

His hands clench into fists, now, as another says just the wrong thing. And Untempered is strong, and quick in movement but not in thought, which means that he never turns off a train of thought, having started on it.

I see this, as I must see it always, as I do see it as often as I can.

(I am a watcher. A shadow that trips the mighty needs to see who, how, and when.)

Then a rubber ball from the display behind me finds its way into my hand, and who am I to deny the poor thing its purpose? It might cheer me up, at least. "Hey, Untempered!"

His head whips around, ready to snarl, just in time for the child's toy to snap into his nose. "Ow!" The train of thought does not break, but he's after me, as I laugh in his face and skip away. Never running, of course: I might get away.

Untempered is my charge. Willed as such to me when our guardians passed, for he learned more slowly than I. Those of shorter generations forget, for I was not to speak of it, nor was anyone else. For he would not stand being a charge. So I walked beside him as a shadow, and waited through centuries for him to grow up.

After the first few millennia, though I yet walked, I gave up waiting.

Appreciate the Journey

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Half my English final. I had to write an essay combining Siddhartha, Frankenstein, and Kafka's Metamorphosis, which meant that my teacher called the assignment siddfrankengregor. We were encouraged to bring in other sources, and the prompt was just, 'interpret from a mythological standpoint'.

My main regret on this essay is that I didn't find a way to bring Kamala in. She was interesting, both as a character and as her effect on the story.

A traditional hero needs three traits: a drive to act, an ability to find fulfillment in acting, and success. Failing in the first gives hardly any story—an apathetic character is, at best, a source of passive decay. Without finding fulfillment, the hero will go insane, and likely turn against his or her original goal. Failure in the third is a heroic failure, one of a tragic hero. The character in question still is a hero, but one people do not enjoy thinking of as often.

Superman embodies all of these aspects: his drive is compassion for his fellow man, his fulfillment is in feeling that he does his part, and his super-human abilities give him success. Though darker, Batman is as obviously heroic. Batman’s drive comes from empathy with the victims he protects, for he knows how much a person can be hurt from one crime, and Batman, though tortured, does find fulfillment in protecting those he has taken as charges. This hero’s success comes from the facts that he is clever, rich, and willing to use psychological warfare.

Obvious heroes are not only found in the realm of comic books. In Siddhartha, the eponymous character also fits this—demonstrably flexible—mold. Siddhartha’s drive is a general restlessness with his incomplete life. Siddhartha’s drive comes from the same place his success does: Siddhartha is gifted enough to question, and so becomes restless at even the charmed life of a Brahmin, because it does not stimulate him. Siddhartha finds fulfillment in every step of the journey because each step is new knowledge, and he loves gaining new knowledge. The end of the book may seem a break from this, where he settles down by the river, but even then he meets new people and thinks new thoughts. Siddhartha finds the ultimate fulfillment in the journey: he finds fulfillment in each endeavor. His journey is his goal.

Victor Frankenstein and his monster—whom Mary Shelley called “Adam” in her personal letters—are both fallen heroes. Adam’s drive is a desire to be around other people: to not be alone. He finds fulfillment even when only trying to achieve this goal, as he finds himself content to spend time simply watching a family and learning their language and social hierarchy, expressed most simply in Adam’s learning of the family’s different names for each other (because the girl is both sister and daughter, and the boy is both brother and son). Adam even finds a short period of success when he visits the blind father, for Adam is well spoken and kind. But the success does not last, and Adam is thrown back out into the cold. Being so lonely warps his sense of fulfillment until he no longer has it, only the drive to act—which is no longer desire to be with anyone, but simply desire to hurt his maker as much as his maker hurts him.

The warping pattern is a fairly common one. Victor Frankenstein also finds himself warped, though in the opposite direction: Victor relied upon the goal of creating life, rather than the process of scientific discovery that led him along it. Therefore, when the final product—a life—is other than what the doctor had envisioned, he breaks down. That mistake haunts him, as Dr. Frankenstein is haunted both within his own psyche when he goes into hysterics, and by his creation, who kills everyone Victor loves before finishing off Victor. This pattern also appears with more subtlety in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. The stepmother (Bernadette Peters) acts as antagonist throughout the movie, yet she is not a flat villain. She reacts wistfully when Cinderella describes the ball in romantic terms, and this helps the viewer remember that, when Cinderella lost her mother, her stepmother lost her husband. In her own words, the stepmother “fell in love with love one night when the moon was full”—her story appears remarkably similar to Cinderella’s. The difference began in a lack of success: “but love fell out—with [her]!” Cinderella’s stepmother lost her love, which was her success, just as it is Cinderella’s, our hero’s. But where Cinderella keeps her love, the stepmother loses hers—and so loses touch with love altogether. The stepmother is perhaps the scariest failure at being a hero, for she does the same thing Adam does: she loses her success and her fulfillment, but not her drive. Cinderella’s stepmother does not kill people, but she does deprive them of life, in her way. She will not allow her daughters to go through the pain she went through, and so warns them away from any sort of love with an almost flippant “learning to trust is just for children in school.” This teaching is the only place she shows any love for Cinderella, for she gives her stepdaughter the same warning. Under all this flows an undercurrent—having realized that the stepmother truly loved Cinderella’s father, her hate stops being a plot device and starts being—perhaps—a reaction to a person who looks too much like what she lost.

A character needs not fall so dramatically. Metamorphosis’ Gregor appears to fall at the beginning of the book, when he turns into a vermin, but his fall came much earlier, and much more quietly. When he was young, he took the job he still had just before the book begins to support his family (journey), and was happy (fulfilled) to bring home money they could use (success). By the time the book begins, however, the family takes Gregor for granted, and the only way Gregor can find any happiness is in the thought of sending his little sister Grete to the conservatory--he finds his satisfaction from daydreaming of his goal, not walking along his journey. When he becomes vermin, he loses any hope, and then loses his drive—the last few pages in which Gregor lives describe him laying down to die, for he gives up even on living.

Within Metamorphosis’ pages, Grete is the hero. She starts out as a background character, but even then journeys firmly and contentedly—she plays the violin, and must be practicing regularly to play it as well as the other characters’ reactions imply. When Gregor repulses the entire family, she finds the drive to aid him, and the intelligence to figure out how to best help him. Though she may not enjoy interacting with the vermin, Grete actively wants to help her family, and so finds fulfillment that way. The climax of the book—when a knight in high fantasy would slay a dragon—is Grete standing up and saying that the family cannot live as they have lived. Her speech convinces Gregor to lie down and die. Though this is not as unambiguously inspiring as a knight slaying a dragon, Grete still acts as a hero because she is the primary force in the book that makes things better—for her brother, for her family, and for herself.

A hero is not a hero is not a hero. Though there are clear examples, such as Superman, there are also those whose lack of success or lack of fulfillment warp them so badly that they become unable to be heroes—Victor Frankenstein, Gregor—or even become villains—Adam, Cinderella’s stepmother. And there are those who, despite the story not revolving around them, are still heroes—such as Grete. Pinning down heroes is difficult, because they are cultural constructs that change their cultures. Siddhartha brought enlightenment, Batman and Superman safety, Grete hope. Each, through their drive, their ability to walk the journey without warping themselves, and their success, changes the world. That is a hero.

Works Cited
Cinderella. Dir. Robert Iscove. Perf. Brandy Norwood, Bernadette Peters and Veanne Cox. American Broadcasting Company (ABC), 1997. Television.

Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha. Toronto: Bantam, 1971. Print.

Kafka, Franz, and Stanley Corngold. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Toronto [etc.: Bantam, 1972. Print.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000. Print.

Coming Home

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

Between this post and the previous, this blog hit 3,500 views.

This is my 150th post.

Starting points: Joseph Campbell and xkcd. Specifically, Joseph Campbell's discussion of going off to/coming back from war and this xkcd.

The xkcd immediately makes me think of Narnia, though I only know Narnia in basic terms, so that may show more of my ignorance surrounding the books than anything else.

I remember the opening scene of the first Narnia movie, where all the kids are sent off in a train, which leads to the wardrobe, which leads to the lion and the witch et al. The kids are leaving because there's a war going on, and there's a war brewing in Narnia. Fairly clear parallelism there, unless one misses the time period.

When we send soldiers out to fight, we recognize that we are sending them into this new world. We have things one has to go through an accomplish before going into that world, because people who grew up over on this side aren't properly prepared. Part of this is simple skills--for example, this is how you hold this weapon--but part of it is also mental training. These people are entering a world where it is expected that you will kill fellow human beings who are attempting to kill you and those around you. Even if one comes from a place where that happens, the structure of teamwork in the military is almost certainly different.

The children's literature that the xkcd is talking about also tends to go through this sort of preparation. "What? You must have the wrong guy, I'm not the hero!" Then whoever gradually warms up to the idea, or learns humility, or makes whatever sacrifice and shift needed to settle into the role. Part of the story may even be devoted to the horror that shocks a prepared into the right place and others out of it. An entire village destroyed, a comrade in danger of death, something like that.

And then the soldier comes home. This is, by definition, an equal shift to what going away was, as |A-B|=|B-A|. So we've got a cultural understanding that the soldiers are going to have an adjustment period after coming back, in which many of them will be traumatized, given that they just went off to war. We've got another ceremony to bring them back, just as we had one to send them out. Right?

...Kind of?

What xkcd highlights is the major issue, one that I would guess the Narnia books can get around: our hero is alone. No war buddies who get it, no one realizing what the hero has just been through, simply home->adjustment->war->home. This would be ever-so-slightly traumatic.

Luckily, it's not always this bad in real life. We do not go to war alone. There are things we do to help our veterans adjust back. But, through it all, there's this assumption snaking through that any difficulty switching back is only adjusting to physical or mental health issues gained in the other country. It's a culture shock. They have been at war in a country not their own.* The healthiest veteran still has to come home to a home isn't the same home, because the veteran is not the soldier is not the person who signed up. This is not to say there aren't issues with mental and physical health, given that the person just went off to war, just that they aren't the whole story.

As a professor of my mother's would say, I've now told you a little more than I know. I've never been, so I only know secondhand. Still...each ceremony has its complement, else it isn't complete.

* Civil wars excluded, but being at war with one's own country brings in another thorny set of issues.

College Audition

2011-12-18T22:19:00.000-08:00

The part in the beginning is because some schools require extra comments in order to be considered.

Stream of Consciousness

2011-12-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

"Who are you to tell me that I'm less than what I should be?"

There is a difference between logically realizing that one has intrinsic worth, and feeling that it is so. This is a matter of life and death.

There is a difference between guilt-tripping someone into staying with one because one needs them, and one saying one needs them. This is the difference between smiles and exhaustion.

There is a difference between losing someone from death and losing someone from disloyalty.

There is a difference between saying it doesn't matter, and meaning it.

Inadequate communication is not lying. Well crafted lies are fine instances of communication.

Beauty used to be separated from the sublime.

Beauty is an empty place at the table: This world is ordered, and wants to accept you.

Sublime means destruction you are sheltered from. The burning ship half a mile from shore, the thunderstorm rattling on your roof while you watch the windows.

Hope is realizing it gets better.

Fear is doubting that it will.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...this is where a lot of emotions come in. Fear, anger, and joy can be present tense, but so many emotions are based on anticipation. Hope, fear, worry, confusion (anticipated understanding)...

Running for the fun of it. Before the load breaks one's back, turns flat one's feet, simply...running. Wind rushing, feet slap-slapping, free. There's something clean in a chase, in a run.

If the chased is worth catching, the run is a reward in itself.

Linda and Raoul

2011-12-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

Linda had bound her hair back neatly, so she could focus on the bread. This much dough always took a certain amount of focus, even when she'd been at her first home and kneading regularly. Now, it was a strain, but a good one.

"Why are you baking bread, Mom?" Ruth asked.

"Because it's good to like your own cooking, and I won't if I'm out of practice."

Whether Linda needed the focus or not, Ruth needed entertainment or she'd leave her chair to find mischief outside. Linda set into the story she could recite--had recited, for some years--in her sleep.

"Once upon a time, there lived three daughters. When their father went on a trip, each asked for a gift: the eldest, for a fine dress; the middle for a set of pearls. The youngest asked only for a red rose."

Ruth kicked the ground, scowling. "I hate that story."

Linda started, looking up. "It used to be your favorite. I told it every night." The redundant You always begged me to hung in the air.

"Yeah, but--it's stupid!" Ruth cried when she got angry, which tended to make her angrier. Linda pretended not to see her daughter swiping a sleeve across reddening eyes. "Beauty gets together with a guy who was literally a beast to her. She could've gotten really hurt!"

"She didn't," Linda said, as if speaking to some ghost at the level of her arm.

"So what!" Ruth shook her head. "The Beast could have killed her! What sort of story is that to be telling? If I just go out and try to change someone, they'll just become perfect no matter how bad they are?" Ruth shook her head furiously. Linda waited. "If Beauty were real, she'd probably be dead." Ruth huffed into the silence, staring at her mother. If it had been anyone else, they'd assume Ruth was an angry person and move appropriately. But her mother saw tears of anger shift to simple tears. This ruined her favorite bedtime story. She hurt.

Linda sighed. "Yes." She leaned into the bread, fingers and arms working the familiar patterns even if her muscles protested a bit more. "She should. And Beauty knew as much."

"Then why did she go?"

Linda shook her head, looking far away as her arms rolled beneath her. "Beauty...she was responsible. Or selfless, if you like. She was the youngest daughter, but she was precocious. The smart one, the one that grew up fastest after Mother died. And she knew it. It wasn't hubris; her family simply told her, looked to her. So when her sisters asked for gaudy gifts, she asked for something simple, something she knew her father could have gotten at the last farm before he came home." Linda's eyes closed. "If it had been a normal trip. It was supposed to be easy..."

Linda returned to the present and worked the bread again. "But the storm came. Father's predicament was twice her fault--first, she had asked for the rose, second, he had seen her first.

"She could help, as no one else could, as it was no one else's duty to. And she was the easiest to lose. She was comforting, but comfort was luxury. They needed a man, if they wanted to do business with anyone. And"--Linda shook her head--"marriage was business. Her sisters could catch good husbands, for though they had less money than they'd like, they had enough to survive, enough to pay dowry, and they had beauty and titles to give. The youngest was not their match in charms, she would fetch a lesser price. She knew it. And was this really so much worse than whatever husband she might find anyway? The girl's fate was never her own.

"So...yes. Beauty could have died. She gave her life. Not as people mean it when they say a soldier dies, but as they should when a soldier goes to war. She went off somewhere unknown, to work under the orders of a person she did not know, beside people she did not know, to keep what she considered her home safe. Beauty might have died; she knew it well. Beauty might have lived in misery; she knew it well. But..." Linda shrugged. "It is hard enough, to know one might be called upon to make that choice, without the story reminding you of those 'what if's. Anyone in Beauty's place would know them well." Linda looked her daughter in the eye. "You find the beast as you grow, Ruth. In any form. It is easy for a nagging fear to work its way in. That's why we teach you happy endings, so early. We say children need them, but we all do. Don't throw hope away so easily."

Linda folded the bread. Ruth swung her feet.

"You..." Linda nodded. "And Dad..."

"Is a wonderful man, who made a mistake."

Ruth nodded.

"Did...Beauty...really scold him when he was all scary?"

Linda shrugged. "He needed it."

Ruth stared at her shoes. "I think...maybe it's not such a bad story."

A smile tucked itself into one corner of Linda's mouth. "Oh?"

"No. Beauty was--is really strong, and smart. And the Beast...he was mostly rude, I think. Not bad." Ruth paused in thought, then grinned at her mother. "I bet their daughter would be a handful."

A grin broke through Linda's mouth. "Oh, doubtless. As fierce as her father."

"And clever as her mother," Raoul called from the next room over, shutting the door after himself.

"Daddy!"

Linda sighed happily and tore the dough into loaf-sized pieces for the oven. It was good to like one's own story.

Opening the Closet

2011-12-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

[A person walks on the stage, wearing clothing that accentuates curves well, and has notably feminine curves to accentuate. Jeans and a T-shirt--nothing fancy; nothing that says definitively "these are clothes a female wears" or "these are clothes a male wears". A smattering of polite applause sounds.]

Voiceover [nervously]: I'm not sure I can do this.

Person [confidently, in the same voice]: You don't know I'm a woman. [offscreen confused murmurs] I mean it. You don't. There are a hundred ways to define "male" or "female". If you say my curves make me a woman, what does that mean for flat-chested women? For that matter, does that definition mean that prepubescent girls aren't female?

Voiceover: They don't like it; you should just shut up; they don't like it; [hysterically] they don't like me!

Person [still calm]: You could define it as the presence or absence of a vagina or penis. People usually ignore what that means for same-sex marriage--do we need to drop our pants or raise our skirts at the altar? Even ignoring that, you haven't seen me with my pants off. I could have both, or neither, or the one you aren't expecting.

Other Voiceover [old enough to be Person's parent, sharply]: You obscene little girl.

Person: You could make a case that it's a case for hormones. That's still complicated, more so, in some ways. It's a spectrum, first of all, and people's hormones vary. In fact, the platonic ideal of "woman" would have eternally shifting hormones--that's what a healthy, wild-type, physically female's body does. Even taking that into account, people can take hormones. If one defines it as the body's "natural" state--well, first of all, that's an insult to trans people, but that's the point of this speech, isn't it? And besides that, what is its natural state? If I'm on the birth control pill, is that unnatural enough to call my womanhood into question?

Other Voiceover: Yes.

Person: So both physical definitions--one's holistic impression and the presence or absence of a vagina or penis--are out. Hormones are, as well. You could use them, I suppose, but you'd have to figure out some way to figure out the ones who fall on the line--and really, anything except the holistic approach is an invasion of privacy. That leaves chromosomes. XX is female and XY male, right?

Both Voiceovers [first hysterically, second still sharply]: Of course. Get down, you're making a fool of yourself.

Person: But there are more viable combinations than that. Nearly anything with at least one X is viable--XXY and XYY, to name the most common. One could say that we could define those by how many of them "seem" male or female, but at that point we come back to the same issue--holistic, primary sexual characteristic, hormonal?

[Person pauses to breathe, drops head. The room is silent.]

Person: I don't know how many of you will listen. But...maybe...I'll be that last nudge, for some of you. Or I'll be a nudge along the way. Gender isn't simple; sex isn't simple. [Person looks up.] I am what I choose to be. So are you. So is everyone. So...please.

Voiceover [quietly]: Please.

Person: [shakes head, swallows] Try to understand.

[Person walks off stage. Quiet applause starts, fade to silence and black before we see whether it polite or genuine.]

Oberlin Conservatory Essay the Second

2011-11-27T19:38:00.001-08:00

(Or rather, the first, but I posted the second first.)

(Scroll down when you finish; I posted three posts today, and two at roughly the same time.)

Write an essay in which you describe your hopes and plans for your educational and professional development during the next ten years. Include such aspects as diverse interests, career goals, and options you wish to explore.

When I am 27, I hope to be as open to new experiences as I am now, and more empathetic. Empathy means I understand where another person is—essentially, empathy is Applied Expanded Horizons. In ten years, I look forward to being somewhere I cannot seriously fathom being at the moment. Criss-crossing the country with a musical theater troupe by night and working mathematic proofs by day, or collaborating with someone who inspires me to write poetry, which inspires him or her to write music for it. Throughout the decade, I know I will be performing, and writing, and reading, and doing math, and finding new music, because I become snappish and withdrawn whenever I give up one of those things for any appreciable amount of time.

I plan to be performing in an environment large enough for me to have options as to what I might perform in, while not being so large that I feel overwhelmed. There is no difference between taking a role because it is the only one available and because it is the only one I have a chance of getting. At the moment, San Francisco seems a sufficiently friendly and properly sized environment, though that idea may change as I see more of the world. I also hope to be tutoring children, in music, mathematics, English, or some combination. I need to perform, and I genuinely enjoy teaching.

All my plans revolve around the hope that I will be happy. Wherever I go, I will be happy if I bring joy and knowledge to people around me. Whether that is primarily through performing art, writing, or sitting down to teach people, I would be happy in what I was doing.

If I were not able to play music anymore …

2011-11-27T19:38:00.000-08:00

…my first reaction would be disbelief. Since third grade, I have been certain that performing music will be a part of my life, if only singing in the shower. Losing that would be terrifying, and require an overhaul of my life: every school I chose to apply to this year needed a music program. If a school lacked some way for me to pursue singing, I did not even consider applying to it. I imagine that listening to and critiquing music would become a much larger part of my life, as I would still want to interact with it in some form.

I would also look for schools with writing and mathematics, rather than music and mathematics. One of the reasons I love music so much is the fact that it is communication, and my main method of non-musical communication is writing. I would either settle into poetry or creative writing, or write in both, as I have been. The main difference would be that writing would be the core part of my life, rather than music.

After some time, I expect that I would write poetry to perform, and maybe even write songs for other people to perform. Writing without performing is particularly good for me when I am healing, because I feel relatively safe, but performing is something I love to do. Music or no, I would perform.

Morning

2011-11-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

She washed her hair, carefully, running soap through it with her fingers, then combing her hair with it. Rinsing the comb, then brushing through again. Rinse, brush. All of the soap came out eventually. Then she started all over, soaping roots to tips, combing roots to tips, rinsing roots to tips with her comb.

"The first virtue is resilience," passed through her lips. Voiced or not, it hardly mattered. She was alone; she thought them. They were solid with or without her; that was the point. "Life will pick at you, slam into you. You cannot simply be hard enough; you will shatter. You cannot simply move with it; you will never make anything new. The first virtue is being."

Roots to tips. Rinse. It had been too long since she'd washed her hair, really washed it, and much had happened. Diet, stress. Hormones. Hair came out, enough to catch in the drain, enough for the soles of her feet to be warm in half an inch of water.

Her breath broke.

Soap. Roots to tips. "The second virtue is critique. It is easy to believe. You must pick at ideas. If you pick at all equally, the good ones will stand where the false ones fall. The second virtue is thought."

Rinse. Roots to tips. Rinse. No more hair was coming out by now. Her hair was still reasonably thick. Good.

She leaned her head under the current of water, hair falling in front of closed eyes, water touching her lips, her nose. "The last virtue is curiosity. We are born with this. We want to know." That was aloud, loud enough to bounce back to her above the sound of rushing water. "Resilience gives you the ability to ask; critique gives you enough knowledge to know what to ask. Curiosity is your drive.

"The last virtue is life. Remember it."

In her room lay sketches of patterns: squares within squares, fractal leaf veins. In her office lay papers she would come back to, soon, tomorrow. Because people needed her, because she could bounce back, because she wanted to understand.

For the moment, she allowed herself the luxury. One day. Showering with too much water, too much soap, and giving her life to the conversation. It had started with a mantra, too, a script that let you start somewhere when saying something no one ever wanted to say.

"Ms. Anderson, we regret to inform you that on the morning of the nineteenth..."

Poetics

2011-11-20T11:22:00.000-08:00

The thing about writing on a schedule is that one has to write. And this has good and bad to it. Because you end up writing when you thought one had nothing to say, but, ah, you also end up writing when you have nothing to say.

Regardless:

I call to my heart; I call to my head
Three more steps and then I'm dead.

This could be an interesting one to analyze, once I'm sufficiently removed from this moment in time--I wrote the couplet on 11/19/11--because it was in my head sort of like a song that gets stuck there. There wasn't a feeling of working on it, really, my mind just happened to go there. I did consider changing the number of steps to be a Ragnarok reference (after Thor's bitten by a serpent), but three's plenty important.

The lack of punctuation at the end of the first line is thoughtful, by the way.

My child,
My daughter,
My son--
There's much in you that yet is blood-wild
And so much in you that's yet to come

"Blood-wild" linked to several things essentially simultaneously. One is childbirth: though not all of us come out screaming or crying, we do all come out bloody and wild--"wild" in this case as the opposite of "civilized" or "domesticated". Another is battle, which, often, means returning to one's body, one's senses, anoesis. This is why people have to train so hard: you either keep your forebrain working well--an astounding feat--or you don't, but you can do your job anyway, because your body knows what to do.

The lack of lack punctuation is actually my favorite part of this one. When I read a sentence that ends a paragraph and has no ending punctuation, it feels like a little bit of a jerk. The simple fact that's it's poetry removes the complete, "You didn't resolve that sentence!" feeling, to my mind, but it's still important. What's yet to come never ends, after all

Soon you will not wander in my wake;
In truth, you were never mine to take.

This would be connected to the above poem if I could figure out what comes between that stanza and this couplet. What it's talking about is the fact that, despite how much energy a parent pours into a child, the child is a person in eir own right. A youngling may follow for almost two decades, but it's not like sculpting, where one has a statue one owns at the end. The final creation can survive on its own--that's the point.

...Speaking of interesting to analyze once I've got some perspective, this'll be interesting to look at if/when I become a parent.

The Heroine's Journey

2011-11-13T05:15:00.000-08:00

Suggested reading: Love and Love, Power

The Hero's Journey is monomythic, but I think this post is mainly about how it is in my culture. Strictly speaking, the Heroine's Journey is one expression of the Hero's Journey, because a Hero is just a strong/courageous/etc. Good Person.

I realized while writing that I was using male/female as a shorthand. A Hero is standard: he represents the positive qualities of the majority population. A Heroine represents the positive qualities of a minority population. A Heroine could just as easily be black, or aboriginal, or poor as she is female, though I will use the shorthand in this essay.

My views are developing--hence this monster of a note--but if I wait for them to not be, then I'll never post anything on this subject. Feel free to aid in their development: i.e., comment.

A group of friends and I recently-ish read Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.* In one story, a woman complains that all the stories that were told within that story had been boy's stories. The obvious question was, "What makes a man's story?" followed quickly by, "What makes a woman's story?"

The first thought that came to mind was that, since we are dealing with archetypes, Hero=masculine and Heroine=feminine. The capitals are important here--one can have a feminine or androgynous hero, and one can have a male Heroine. This didn't quite satisfy us, but if this is the definition one wishes to use, then Cluracan's story is a woman's story: Cluracan is a clever elf, and his power comes from his words.

* If you haven't, you should. Go on. I bet it's at the library.

One archetypal story is the Hero's Journey, and many interpretations include an interesting moment: Encounter with the Feminine. That event assumes that the Hero is male, and requires that he be masculine--if you are feminine or androgynous, then what, precisely, are you encountering? Your Shadow? But that's another place on the Journey.

We discussed this, and decided the Encounter boiled down to, "You can't fight your way out of this one." The Hero cannot simply punch out the diplomat--or rather, he can, but it will solve no issues and cause additional ones. The feminine, as used, is subtlety, trickery, diplomacy, tact, etc.*

Encounter with the Masculine--that is, trying to gender-flip the Hero's Journey--leaves you with a different instruction: "Stop being pretty." This isn't to say that attractive Heroines would fail this test, but that one needs to stop worrying about appearance. While Encounter with the Feminine would require a culture, Encounter with the Masculine would not. Its purpose is perhaps best served by an inhuman force--a thunderstorm, a fire. If it is a culture, it is one that only cares for survival, not form. Either Encounter, then, requires assimilation--the Hero will remain strong but gain diplomacy; the Heroine will remain clever but gain a direct way of acting.

The reversal does not quite create a woman's story. A man's story turned inside-out is not a woman's story; a man's story turned inside-out is a man's story turned inside-out. What they are, then, to me:

The Hero's Journey: A tale of societal rejection.

The Heroine's Journey: A tale of self-rejection.

Or, for those of you who like complete sentences: In a Hero's story, either the Hero decides that he needs to leave his society-by-birth, or the society decides the same thing. Either way, the Hero sets out due to unsatisfying surroundings.

The Heroine's Journey is similar, but has an important mental aspect: The Heroine does not (merely) reject the society, she rejects a part of herself. This happens to be due to the fact that the society is rejecting her at a very basic level--"No, you don't exist, so go home you silly girl"--but that is not the conflict of the story. The Heroine has internalized the belief that she cannot be both. She sets out due to an unsatisfying being.

At the heart of her conflict, the Heroine has decided she cannot be herself.

The Heroine as she is has found within herself both woman and warrior, but she sees only simpering women, so assumes her "woman" side is her weakness. Or sees only uneducated women, so assumed "woman" is her stupid side, what must be shucked off to become a scholar. She lacks a role model, so, of course, stumbles through as best she can and makes several errors.

A Journey can be tragic in two ways: It never starts or it never ends.

There's an episode of Star Trek with time-travel where Picard is saved from a nonlethal accident, but the accident was what inspired him to go out and be who he was. The episode has several painful moments that boil down to, "Well, you're...mediocre." He is not a Hero, because he never started his journey.

A Hero's Journey that never ends means never coming home. Home isn't there, or it's just out of reach. There are ways to extend this, make it no longer tragic, but just the idea of, "Sorry, you learned your lesson too late and anything you could have come home to is out of reach," is awful.

In a Heroine's Journey that never starts, the Heroine decides to be what she thinks she was born to be. The woman grows up passive and uneducated, hiding behind false smiles because a proper woman does not burden others with her pain.

A Heroine's Journey that never ends also means never coming home, but this time it's a self-imposed exile. She believes she could not come home and remain a warrior or a scholar, that she would have to be just a woman. And when she thinks of "just a woman" she thinks of others' lives, but projects her desires onto them. She sees only the choice between never going home or becoming the Heroine who never started her Journey.

The completed Journey means assimilation.

The Hero comes home--though home is not Home, any more than this Hero is the man he was--and brings back his wisdom. The society accepts him enough for his purposes. And, in my favorites, he becomes a wise old man quite similar to the one who helped him in the first few pages...

The Heroine also comes home, but in a different way. She is odd in the society, unless the story is incredibly idealistic, but that wasn't the issue. Had she needed society to accept all of her, she would never have started her journey.

She assimilates her self. They are no longer her selves, the woman or the warrior/the scholar/the whatever else; she is her self. The Heroine becomes a role model, a mentor, a guide. She broke a path.

At the end of the story, the Heroine is the role model she lacked.

* Since that conversation, I've read more books on the subject and now believe that the Feminine is part of what the Hero is not because it doesn't fit with the Hero's self-image. The feminine is, in Jungian terms, his Anima.

Thought to Page

2011-11-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

Between the previous post and this one, this blog hit 3,000 hits.

There once was a wolf.

(There once were many wolves, mother-storyteller. What kind of start is that?

Hush, apprentice-child.)

The wolf was packless.

(Because he had nothing to carry?

Child.

Yes, mother.)

In the tradition of his people, he had been sloughed from the pack when he reached maturity. Some wolves found packs soon after, temporary or permanent. This wolf had not.

Winter was coming.

(Oh.)

The wolf was no great hunter among wolves, but had enough skill to hunt the plentiful rabbit, and humble enough to take advantage of what luck came his way. But as the seasons changed, the rabbits were growing rarer and quicker. He stopped hunting as much for meat and hunted instead for a pack, but found no wolves--not even the ones who had thrown him out. But, the wolf's luck helped him once more: he found a pack.

(Did the wolves--

What wolves?)

The pack was an odd one. They walked awkwardly, on two legs, and changed their fur much more often than the wolflet had ever seen. But still, he saw them play, and saw them hunt, and knew they were pack.

A little child, too young even to apprentice, saw the wolflet. He waved and laughed, then ran over to a mother for attention. She gave him meat--the wolf sniffed the air. Burned meat was different from blood-hot meat, but he knew it. Rabbit. The little one enjoyed it; it seemed a treat.

The wolflet was very hungry. But, though his mind was poor for hunting, he knew well enough how to work within a pack. He killed a rabbit, carefully--he had seen this pack use the fur, and the only marks the kill left were a ruined throat.

He took the snow-white rabbit in his jaws, lightly, so lightly he did not pierce the skin, and trotted back to the house of skins where he had seen the child.

(What kind of house is made of skin?

And what is your house made of?

Furs--oh.)

The wolf-child sat again in the bushes where the child had last seen him. The child scurries off, towards him, though the wolf knows he crouches too low to be seen. He knows it better when he stands and the child starts.

"Pup!" the child says, for the wolf is a runt. The wolf does not understand, but takes it for a greeting, and drops the rabbit. He nudges it toward the tribe's youngling with his wet wolf nose, then waits. The mother would fear wolves too much, but perhaps, if the little one trusts him...

The child moved forward, innocent of any danger, and then the mother rounds the side of the tent, calling the youngling's name.

Pup does not know what the tribe would think of offering one's belly, does not yet trust them not to hurt him. He crouches in on himself, as when his mama-wolf would catch him somewhere he shouldn't be.

"Mama! The pup brought rabbit!" The young one held up the meat for inspection. The mother sees the teeth's mark, sees the thin, careful wolf, and sees tribe.

(What then?

You have a wolf-pet. What do you think?)

MIT Essays

2011-10-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do for the pleasure of it. (100 words or fewer)

I write stories. Creating new worlds and new beings, then watching them play or putting them in odd situations is fascinating and good mental exercise. Doing so also lets me get an outside perspective on my own life—I accidentally or purposefully put my characters in the same trouble(s) I have, and the answer becomes clear because I have a new angle on it. Writing is communicating and thinking, which are core to being. To myself, I am what I understand of myself, and to others, I am what I can communicate. Writing aids both sides.

Although you may not yet know what you want to major in, which department or program at MIT appeals to you and why? (100 words or fewer)

What fascinates me most about MIT is how well the departments mingle. Though several of the schools I have researched have diverse majors, many of them have two wholly separate colleges, and never the twain shall meet. Every MIT alumnae I have spoken to has some friends in entirely random majors. Since I am interested in primarily mathematics and music, and secondarily writing and theater, integration of various majors matters to me. I would be bored if I were limited to only one major, or to interacting only with students of one realm.

What attribute of your personality are you most proud of, and how has it impacted your life so far? This could be your creativity, effective leadership, sense of humor, integrity, or anything else you'd like to tell us about. (200-250 words)

I struggled with this question because I think of myself as a whole, so I researched ‘personality’.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that a personality is “that quality…which makes a person what he is, as distinct from other persons.” I can think of nothing more distinctly personal to my self than my singing.

In third grade, I opened my mouth to sing while walking across the blacktop, then came to a complete stop. I knew it was my voice, but it was so much richer, easier, better than I had ever heard it. As I stood stunned, a person turned to me.

“Was that you?”

I nodded.

“You have a lovely voice.”

I had a talent.

As I grew, I found other things I areas where I excelled, but few gave me the same feeling. I learn things and reflect them, like sunlight hitting the moon. Singing makes me a sun.

My obsessions revolve around that idea: I can create something, then radiate it. I can communicate. Writing, explaining, teaching, music, storytelling, mathematics—everything I do for fun came from the idea that started with singing.

I say singing, and not communication, because singing is my first love, and because singing is mine. I recognized singing as a talent long before I wrote for fun, and I remember being baffled at all these students who did not enjoy the school choir.

Even without any friend, singing would give me a home. If nothing else, I sing.

Describe the world you come from; for example, your family, clubs, school, community, city, or town. How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations? (200-250 words)

My homes encourage sideways thinking. My parents and brother and I all pun and use sarcasm regularly, as well as having in-depth conversations about important issues. The same dinner might include a shoe/issue/eschew pun, a discussion on bisexual rights as they relate to queer rights as they relate to human rights, and an oddly worded sign my mother noticed at her work.

Other than my family, my homes are the gifted community and the arts community. The gifted community means oddly intelligent people, which leads to odd social conventions and conversations that fluctuate and finish randomly. Having fun means looking at how things work and communicating well.

Art is expression through odd media, as all communication is. Spoken language makes no sense to those who do not speak it; written word is a visual expression of that auditory medium. Even in the case of realistic painting or sculpture, one needs to break the subject into simpler shapes to learn to recreate it. And great art means making something new. Looking through standard angles makes that nearly impossible—looking at old paths in the old ways does not create new ideas.

These homes mean I love other perspectives. Each different way of seeing I find is another way to talk to one more person, which allows me to exist outside myself. This is why I want to be both a teacher and an artist—both, if successful, touch many lives, and both communicate.

Tell us about the most significant challenge you've faced or something important that didn't go according to plan. How did you manage the situation? (200-250 words)

The first time I came out as bisexual was in the middle of my seventh-grade homeroom. All classmates within hearing chorused, “Ew!” Having never created a plan that allowed for that outcome, I turned around in my seat and put my head into my book. I took nothing from the event at the time, and had that been my only chance to come out, I would have learned nothing I did not know before.

Luckily, coming out is not something one does once. I came out in seventh grade to near-strangers; I came out to most of my family a few years ago; I am coming out by writing this. I had more chances to find accepting groups—including my mother, who is bisexual herself. Though I found others who were in outright denial about the fact that a person could be attracted to masculine and feminine traits, I am confident enough in myself that I can accept these as marks of ignorance and lack of tact.

I continue to be open, even when I am scared, because I see that fear for what it is: ignorance. Every time I make a mark on others’ preconceptions, I make the journey that much easier for the next bisexual. I make communication that much easier. I do not pretend I change the whole world every time I say that I am what I am, but I leave my ripples, and they add up.

Plans

2011-10-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

It was a bar, and anyone who bothered to walk over could see, but it was as private as we got. Any random person could walk in off the street and overhear us, but most of them didn't understand what we were saying, anyway. Relied too much on visuals you needed to know by heart, and if you didn't then the dark interspersed with sickly yellow lighting wouldn't help. Anyway, the people we really didn't want knowing wouldn't be caught dead here.

The plans were short, this time. It took me all of two seconds to realize why, but I wasn't about to say it aloud. "There's no exit strategy." That honor went to dear Jacobi.

Arlene nodded calmly. "Not enough information. We would need to improvise."

I nodded. "So it’s a suicide mission.”

Arlene shrugged. “I’m either dying or sitting here useless for the rest of my life.”

“So it’s a fun suicide mission.”

She shrugged, and gestured with her glass. “If I go down, I’d rather go down spectacularly.”

I clinked my glass with hers. “Cheers to that.”

"How are you two so calm about this?" Jacobi asked, in apparently honest bafflement.

Arlene and I exchanged a glance. "Well." I shrugged and tipped my drink down my throat. ”Tomorrow is going to suck. I'm gonna go find something fun for tonight.”

"Ditto."

Jacobi's eyes swung to the sky, then closed. "All right. See you there."

Love and Love

2011-10-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

"Priorities and Sanity" 'verse.

Her first love is the obvious one, the one Emilia had since childhood. Love of helping, love of being helpful. This one could be two, if Emilia separated them, and she had. "But it's not terribly sensible," she mutters to herself as she scratches down the vague sentiments in her journal, as much to make sense of everything as to document. Helping people means another is in less pain, and being helpful means that she is a person--she writes, People are helpful, objects are useful., a phrase thought so often that she's unsure if she'd ever written it--but they both give her the same glowy feeling. Emilia knows herself well enough to separate the sources, but it's like separating love for two distant relatives. The love is because they are family. The love is because she helps.

The second is one she had certainly not had at the beginning of her apprenticeship, though she was aware of it and vaguely wanted after it. Some might call it "true love", though Emilia always felt that true love was agape, not eros.

She felt stirrings, of course, even before apprenticing. He's cute, or I really want to kiss her. But those were brief urges, and easily enough ignored, forgotten, or pushed aside until she could deal with them on her own terms. Though the mageling can do that with her feelings about Dale, they keep coming back. And after the first few times, she doesn't want to push the feelings away. It's like denying help to a person in need--she can do it, especially when the need is slight, but it hurts her just the same.

Emilia hates lying. It twists her gut and lungs in unpleasant ways, and sticks them that way for hours or days, depending on how big the lie. So when Dale asks, "Do you want to go to the dance with me?" she says, "Yes," because she does. It is irresponsible to go, but she does want to.

And now she shuts her journal and walks to Dr. Johnson's office, because that is the responsible thing to do. Or because she reached the point where she needs a person to focus her thoughts, and not just paper. Her teacher is good for that; he asks the right things.

"Professor?" He's working at the blackboard. "I told Dale I'd go with him to the dance."

"You are aware Dale lost his magic around your age." Professor doesn't look up. That's relaxing; she's never known him to offer any punishment without looking the person in the eye.

Her honesty nudges her. "I forgot, in the moment. But yes."

"You have more than enough hours this week," Dr. Johnson adds as he goes back to correct an equation, "even if it were standard practice for students to work in the libraries on their Friday evenings. I assume you are not here to apologize over that, though you may be trying to believe it so." He turns to her, eyes still a startling blue from some experiment-gone-odd. Or maybe right. She wasn't there. "Have you admitted the reason to yourself yet?" A little tic from his original language; the literal way to say figured out was admitted to yourself.

"Not until the present moment, no." She shakes her head: to emphasize the negative, to clear it. "I don't think I can be both."

Gently, "Finish the thought."

"I am not sure I can be a sexual being and a healer, concurrently, without sacrificing an important part of at least one."

"Tell the story."

Emilia's eyes focus on something not in his immaculate, airless office. "The young woman thinks she can't be both what she wants to be and what she thinks a woman is. She goes half-mad trying to choose one, but ultimately does. If she chooses to be a woman, she falls into a depression that someone close to the woman side of her--a lover, a family member, or a friend--pulls her partially out of, then she pulls herself all the way out. If she chooses what she wants to be, she discovers she wants to be a woman, too, while off on some adventure, and figures out on her own that she can be both. If the story needs added page-count, she overcompensates before settling down, and if it is a tragedy, she will never quite realize she can be both."

Her professor smiles. "Finish the thought."

Now that Emilia thinks of it, the story is a classical heroine's journey. The answer is obvious enough. "I don't want my life to be a tragedy," Emilia says dryly. "I'm going to the dance with Dale. Thanks, Professor."

"My pleasure." He turns back to the board. "Oh, and the protagonist in the tale need not be a woman." Which means, I empathize, and, Remember Dale may feel the same way, or both. Dr. Johnson is a male healing mage, and Dale had the crisis of confidence that losing something as important as one's magic brought.

She nods. "Thank you, Professor."

Intermediate, Or: Translation

2011-10-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

Pt II of "Priorities and Sanity", by a popular request of one.

The first weeks fall into no particular chronological order in Emilia's memories. The book is basic healing magic, sacrificing one's own energy to put into another. She takes to it well. She heals a dove, stitches up a dog's paw, and learns how to use the fire magic she has to cauterize wounds and sterilize surgical instruments--she's not performing major surgery yet, but she's well on her way to helping. It's the first few weeks; she hardly expected even that.

Somewhere in the middle of that, Dr. Johnson tells her to call him "Professor". She asks why, mostly out of surprise, which is how she learns he isn't a native speaker of her language.

"The vocabulary translates imperfectly, but it's the closest way to phrase it I've found."

Emilia's confused a moment before the obvious clicks into place. She assumed the oddly precise diction to be part of his persona in general, but it made just as much sense as a side-effect of a learned language. He had grown up with different vowels, probably; his diphthongs were always strangely pure. She almost asked him what he spoke first, but he was handing her another book, and this one taught healing humans.

And some point that must have been after that, Professor would tell her about that particular book, about the effect it had on nearly every student who would not be a healer. "Humans have a resonance to them," a similarity in wavelength that threw many mages-in-training. Even if you knew a spell quite well, even if you had used it before, even if you were only thinking of using it on a human, could be jarring. The book was the first test, because the feeling would distress, but not harm. "Usually, the sensation is akin to a papercut."

Professor eyes her closely and watches her cast the spells, asking a great many questions. So many distractions that they annoy her, but when her focus finally breaks, she just winces at the sting and says, "Sorry."

He nods. "Good. No resonance issues." And that must have been before she knew about the human-human resonance, because Emilia remembers not knowing. It strikes her as an odd thing to be such rare knowledge, but supposes that only healers have to worry about it.

She remembers asking, though she's not sure if it was immediate. "Healing something more like yourself has a greater chance of shifting injuries, rather than simply healing them. Casting such a spell on one's identical twin, for instance, is the most dangerous, as it has the issues of casting on someone your phenotype, genotype, age and gender. Healing a sibling or non-identical twin is roughly as dangerous in practice."

And then Emilia's first resonance. Not her first human--that was an octogenarian, of significantly different racial background. Not even, oddly enough, her fellow student, who could almost be her sister. Privately, Emilia believes she was more careful because of that, though admitting so means stating that she was not careful with the burned eight-year-old, which isn't quite right.

Suzy is bawling. Not the poorly suppressed sobs that Emilia had seen in her patients, nor the dead-eye look a few of them had, nor choosing to allow oneself to weep because of a lack of pride, just...bawling. No choice one way or the other. Pain meets lacking inhibitions; tears fall.

"H-Help me. Mama said you could help me!"

Emilia flinches. Professor's eyes are on her back, but he's done too much that day, or something, there's some reason that means she has to help this girl who's in pain and it doesn't matter that she's exhausted too, she just has to fix the burn that's running up the poor thing's arm all the way to her shoulder and so she just

Emilia forgets absolutely everything she's been taught, grabs the girl's arm, and jerks the pain straight back, snapping Suzy's skin to perfection.

Emilia jerks back and hisses a syllable she heard Professor say exactly once, when a mother mid-messed up labor came in. Suzy's burn had been on her left, and this burn is on Emilia's right arm--the one she'd grabbed at Suzy's hurt with--but beyond that, it's identical.

"Resonance," Professor said, softly.

Emilia nodded. She had enough control not to be outwardly distressed over the pain, but it took the whole of her focus. "Would you take Suzy to her father? I need to treat this."

Professor nodded and took Suzy's hand.

Resonance is difficult-nearing-impossible with a sibling. A twin is more difficult, but at that point the bell curve is already so low that people hardly notice. Which means...

Emilia ran the burn under cool water, then set something warm on it to keep the blood flowing.

It was as if whoever created the universe decided that healer's couldn't be selfish. No matter the training, a healer would always auto-resonate. No healing mage could self-heal.

In a little cooldown room, now, where doctors can go and not have to worry about patients or next of kin who insist they could have done more. Emilia sits at a table with apple juice in a sippy cup, because it's definitely one of those days.

"What happened today?" Professor says it in a gentle tone, which meant she screwed up badly enough to warrant eggshell treatment.

"I obsessed over the wrong detail and got resonance."

Professor nods and hands Emilia a jar of something. "For the burn. Finish the thought."

The last three words fall into a rhythm, and Emilia guesses this was another thing from his original language. "I...I think I don't fully understand what you mean by that."

"Answer what you think I asked, then."

Emilia adjusts the coat she'd hung over the back of her chair, pretending it bothered her. She unscrews the lid of the ointment jar and notices that it actually smells nice--vanilla? Her eyes dart to his with surprise, and then she has to answer. "I focused on an end result rather than what I should have done to achieve it. In doing so, I endangered both the child and myself more than I needed to."

"Finish the story." That same rhythm. Whatever it was, it turned the order polite, curious and gentle rather than demanding.

Emilia sips at her apple juice. "It is good to remember such things." She stares at the ointment a moment. "This is non-magical?"

"Correct." Brief, even for him, as if it were not his place to interrupt the story she was telling.

"I think..." Emilia looks at her arm. What she saw as a mirror of the scars is much milder. The resonance injured her, but not severely. She would scar, just a bit, but had she gotten this from pouring hot water on herself, she would treat it mundanely and carry on. "The main character keeps what scars she gained. For remembrance's sake. Not out of guilt, that would be childish. Just because...it is good to remember such things."

Professor nods and the spell breaks. "As you wish."

Steve Jobs

2011-10-09T13:17:00.000-07:00

February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

He died. He was a visionary; he changed the world. The iPod and iTunes did not exist, now my computer's dictionary recognizes the words. He did not invent the computer, but he did help it become common. He did not invent the mouse, but he did popularize it.

He had 56 full years. I say this not because 56 years was enough, but to drive home how much he did in his time.

You know all this, if only vaguely. I cannot imagine someone who would find this blog and not know it, by now, and I can hardly imagine this blog, this post, outlasting the memory of the man. I do not need to tell you all this, but I say it anyway, in introduction and in memory.

What I do not say is that technology has been dealt a blow by his death.

I see this statement, in too many of his obituaries. As if Steve Jobs did not push technology forward, did not act as an accelerating force, but simply kept the system of enhancement from falling apart. It horrifies me. Steve Jobs was amazing, he was exceptional, and he sped the world with his ideas, his angle of attack, and his actions. This is fantastic. This is the mark of something lasting.

I believe he wanted it to continue without him. Did he not, he would have stayed head of the company to the last day, or given up on it when he saw death so near. He did not. He named a successor. The company will continue, if changed; technology will advance; the Earth will spin on its axis.

We have lost an orator. We have lost a visionary. We have lost someone who could see something, understand it, sell it. We lost a storyteller. We lost a man.

We did not lose our ability to adapt. Leonardo da Vinci died; Shakespeare died; Steve Jobs died. These are tragedies. These are beautiful things that passed. Yet we lived without them, we grew enough to have a society where they could have the effects they did--writing, printing press, microchips. We shall continue, and all the better for the fact that they were.

In honor of him...well, as I said, we lost a storyteller. He said it better than I would.

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on."

Languid Grace

2011-10-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

Post written before this week's main news-consuming event.

How you would describe the walk depended on where you grew up. Those from places without highly visible nobles would never call it the walk of a noble--he was too confident. Nobles are, literally, self-conscious. Ever step could falter; any falter could bring disaster. Even the nobles who do not fear this are aware of it. Those who are not aware are too unaware of their surroundings to be this confident. One can be cocky or naive in one's ignorance, but confidence of this sort requires experience. This is one who has passed through I have seen the world and I am not impressed, and found in its place, I have seen the world. I can thrive anywhere.

One might compare it to a noble if one had seen the right nobles. Some have that, though it is rare for hereditary titles. One needs to pass through many walks of life to find this look, and those with hereditary titles are often locked into their path too soon. But the knight who started a blacksmith's child and grew to marry the king's daughter through skill of cunning...he might have it.

Those who knew tigers might compare the walk to a tiger's. Those who knew of, as well. That same grace and quiet, and the same feeling that wasn't in your head anymore, was just a thump in your chest that froze you or said run.

And, of course, that little tinge at the back of your head, the knowledge that you are still better for having this one in front of you than behind. A tiger snaps at your neck, after all, and one who walks with this languid grace could bring your world tumbling.

You can train yourself around either fear, to face the tiger and the languid grace. And as you walk those steps, as you sharpen spear, mind, tongue, your strides lengthen, your feet quiet, your eyes watch. It's a graceful turn to your body, and one you hardly think of anymore. Each movement planned, but merely from a set you planned years ago. So efficient as to look lazy, unless you've walked paths enough to see the mirror...

Second Anniversary

2011-10-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

Indeed, it has occurred. I know because I set this to post on the second anniversary.

Yeah, it's kinda cheating.

Abby, Maggie and Sylan

2011-10-01T09:49:00.000-07:00

Abby had mostly shed the feminine form, and Sylan had yet to truly adopt a human one. For the sake of brevity, Sylan shall be 'it', though it is more animate than that implies, and Abby shall be 'she'.

Sylan was smiling, or doing something we would best understand as a smile. "Ah, the lovely lady Abigail. Delighted." Sylan bowed over Abby's hand.

Abby sighed and muttered, "Again?"

Sylan straightened and tipped his head to the side. " 'Again'?"

"At the very least I can imagine an excuse for Margaret."

Sylan grinned at the confirmation of his guess. "You can't destroy something that encompasses you, darling."

Abby let out a huff, then realized she suddenly looked like someone's (overdone) idea of an adolescent daughter, make-up and all.

Mostly due to Maggie's influence, she deadpanned, "You're not even my real Dad."

Sylan laughed. "Oh, I can see why Maggie liked you. Where did she get off to, anyway?"

"Here," Maggie said, fading in draped over Abby's shoulders. "I die sometimes, though. It's vaguely unpleasant."

Abby gave the long-suffering sigh of old souls and the pretentious. "If you did not insist on touching me..."

"Aw, now what fun is that?" Maggie kissed Abby's cheek. "Wouldn't ever get to do anything, if I went around doing things like that." She glanced at Sylan. "You alright with this? It looks like she's thinking of herself as your child."

Sylan shrugged. "She isn't." It suddenly looked curious, itching to figure something out. "Any pattern to when you die?"

Maggie's eyes danced. "Midnight."

"And does it happen if you're not touching her at midnight?"

"No." But there was laughter in her eyes, and Abby had the barest hint of a smile on her lips. The not-quite-smiling woman breathed, "Three, two..."

"Then why not just refrain for a few moments?"

Maggie laughed outright. "My midnight, dear. Don't you know the stories? Midnight can last hours."

"Days," Abby added, eyes crinkling.

Sylan blinked. "That makes no sense."

"Magic," the girls said together. Maggie continued, "I'm not of your realm, Sy. Good on you for trying though; it'll work anywhere but here." Magic lifted one hand to gesture to the not-space that they had quasi-manifested in. "Wouldn't've, but then Abby convinced me to stick with her." Mag's nose buried itself in the hair behind Abby's neck.

"Some would believe it good for them," Abby said, dancing around a direct statement. " 'They can figure it out now.'"

"I could've given them the exact measurements on the first try, if I wanted to," Maggie sighed in the tone of an old argument.

Sylan shook his head. "Do you follow any rules?"

"I can't create," Abby said, at the same time Maggie said, "I can't destroy."

Sylan blinked. "You two together..."

"Would be a force to be reckoned with," Maggie said cheerfully. "Good thing I've decided not to do anything to the world anymore, or we'd probably be running the joint as non-benevolent dictators. It's just so hard to keep track of who's a person, you know?"

Sylan half-smiled. "I just try to be fair to everything."

Maggie shrugged, then began fading. "Oh. Midnight. Going to take a few minutes this time, I think."

"I'll leave you two your minutes, then. See you later."

"Eventually," Abby noted.

"Probably not me," Maggie said in a chipper tone. "I only come out when it's dramatically appropriate, and you've already met me once."

"What about Abby?"

The Cheshire Cat would envy Maggie's grin. "Well, I hardly need to follow all the rules."

Gender and Sexuality

2011-09-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

I will not cover everything in this post.

Quotation marks indicate a reference to the term rather than the group defined by the term.

Includes terms I found interesting, and a few I made up out of roots that I think should make them fairly clear, occasionally with added syllables for rolling-off-the-tongue value.

EDIT: anthro- terms were previously gynandro-/androgy- terms (see comments).

Sexual identity is complex.

First of all, the standard-use terms currently don't define sexual orientation by what one is attracted to. The axes are what one likes and what one is--and the name is taken from the interaction between the two.

The assumptions are: you are male or female; you like males, females, both, or neither, and romantic attraction and sexual attraction are intrinsically linked. From these priors, we commonly call people homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual.*

These assumptions fail upon contact with the world. Not everyone is male or female. There are people who self-identify as both, neither, inconsistent/uncaring, or somewhere along a spectrum; there are hormone differences that set people along many parts of the spectrum; and even if we limit it to viable combinations of the X and Y chromosomes that science has formally observed, there are more than two options. Any way you care to slice it, a male/female dichotomy doesn't work.

So we've already found that 'hetero-/homosexual' don't work, because they rely on defined genders/sexes to work--you are attracted to something like you, or something distinct from you. 'Bisexual' does not work because 'bi' means 'two', so if we have more than two genders/sexes--never mind a spectrum--the term starts being rather absurd. Even if there were only two, I would prefer 'ambisexual' rather than 'bisexual', that is 'both' rather than 'two', but that's neither here nor there.

Given only the breakdown of strictly defined self-identity, asexual still works. 'A' simply means 'none', and the fact that it may originally have been meant as 'neither' does no harm to the term.

I will now use 'gynosexual', 'androsexual', and 'anthrosexual' for--respectively--attraction to feminine traits, masculine traits, and humans, and keep 'asexual'.

The added complexity doubles in attraction. I have already made the point that being attracted to a female or a male is not quite the same as being attracted to feminine or masculine traits. It is also possible to be attracted to the idea of a person being male/female, much as one can be attracted to the idea of someone being intersex.

Then there's the point that romantic attraction and physical attraction are not so perfectly snapped together. One can be, for example, asexual but andromantic--that is, lacking in a sexual drive, but still having a desire to be romantically involved with males/people with masculine traits.

* Other terms exist, but are much less common.

To see how complicated this gets in practice, I will refer to a previous post. The focus question: "Is Abby/Maggie a lesbian relationship?"

Strictly speaking, neither Maggie nor Abby have set genders/sexes--that is to say, they lack chromosomes altogether, and appear as whatever they want to look like during that slice of time.

Maggie has chosen a female form because that is what she feels she is. She is also attracted to feminine traits--she is gynosexual--is romantically attracted to people who are female/feminine--gynoromantic--and is attracted to the idea of someone being female. In other words, Maggie is a pretty classic lesbian. One could quibble that Maggie could choose to be male or sexless, but that's splitting some pretty fine hairs.

Abby, on the other hand... Abby likes Maggie. This does not spread to sexual love, but that's not because Abby doesn't find Maggie attractive; it's because Abby hasn't bothered to manufacture a sex drive for herself. Maggie was a creative force, so had a bit of one, and honed it because she wanted to, but entropy would have needed to create one from the ground up, and didn't care enough to manipulate one into being. This makes Abby asexual: it's not that she finds sex repulsive, she just doesn't particularly care about it. Romantically, Abby is attracted to traits, independent of the gender/sex of the being. This makes her anthromantic. Abby chose a vaguely female form and influenced Maggie with some positive bias because she recognized that Maggie would find a female/feminine form more attractive, and because Abby cares about as much about her form as about her partner's.

From Maggie's perspective, it's obviously a lesbian relationship. From Abby's perspective, it's a romantic relationship, and she'd probably look at you oddly if you tried to push gender/sex into it. If given the choice between a lesbian relationship, a heterosexual relationship, a male-homosexual relationship, and a polyamorous relationship, Abby would call it lesbian. But that's not a good description; it is merely better than the other three options.

All in all, I just try to stick with 'romantic,' 'sexual,' and 'relationship.'

Stuff

2011-09-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

"Name me, then, if I am so simple as that."

A pause. Sorting thoughts, though to find titles or merely sort through ones known, I did not know. "Keeper of the hearth. Peacemaker. Beauty."

Steph turned to Kent, eyes suddenly blazing hot enough to shut even him up. "You are infuriating." Then, as if that statement had broken a dam: "You regularly play tricks when I wish you were serious; you pretend to misunderstand the simplest of concepts simply to annoy me, and yet you pretend to understand things you do not to save face. You are the worst traveling companion I can imagine."

She grabbed his collar and yanked him against the wall. "Why on Earth would I be here if I weren't in love with you?"

It would be difficult to say whom the kiss surprised more.

They didn't have a spiritual guide, or a ship's captain, or a broom, so they did one of the old things. A length of string around both wrists, holding them tight', though not so tight' as they chose to hold each other.

" 'I love you' are not the three most important words in the English language, but 'I love you, too,' are the four."

"Who am I to question it?"

She looked up. "A person. Question all authority. Act if you believe it wrong. The number of people willing to act against something bad increases dramatically if they see someone else fighting it."

The firefly flits through the forest; the firefly flies though the fortress.

Being

2011-09-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

The general prompt: http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Random
Power you get is your super power. Hit random page. Next power that shows up is the power of your arch nemesis.

My Power: Magic (bit of a Superpower Lottery win, there)
My Nemesis's Power: Self-Spawn

Added for fun (I chose which was which before I clicked random, though):
My Sidekick: Stinger Protrusion
Nemesis's Sidekick: Destruction

"I think you should be running the show here."

There wasn't a head, exactly, but the hole in the universe was person-shaped. The head-analogue tipped to one side. "Oh?"

"Yeah." There was a stalemate, between the--um.

"What should I call you?"

"Pardon?"

I shrugged. "I don't have a good short description of you. If you don't give one, I'm going to end up with something like 'Black Hole', and that seems rather melodramatic for your personality."

The being stared and blinked--I think. Vaguely shaded: eyes are tiny. "Absence is a common choice. Those who prefer to humanize generally call me Abby."

"Right. Thank you." There was a stalemate going on, between Abby and me. Technically speaking, she--alright, yes, gender-neutrality, but I was calling her Abby--is the most powerful force in the universe. She is entropy. The slow decay of weathering wood, rusting iron, fire snatching up square meters of forest every second. She's not rot, precisely; rot is life's domain, but she is that moment of conversion inside every organism, taking organized energy and disorganizing it.

I was magic. Not a mage, not a magician, not a witch or a wizard. Simply magic. Components of spells, whether they call by word or symbol or thought, called on me. I was the miracles of the land. Like organization increasing in a closed system.

But, by definition, I was inconsistent. If I happened repeatably, I'd be science, and you'd know me in your world.

And, by definition, entropy is quite consistent.

"You were saying?" Abby inquired coolly.

"Ah, yes. Why do you follow him?"

She shrugged--well, actually, she did an eternally graceful movement best described as a shrug. But I really needed to stop or kiss her, and I was not entirely sure if one survived kissing entropy. "I am destruction. If I am to create something, I require a base."

"So you could make lovely driftwood sculptures."

Absence smiled.

The world outside would go chilly from that. So direct an expression on Absence herself meant no thing would smile for that moment. Here, in front of her, it warmed my soul. "Something like that."

"And that's what my Nina is for: someone to affect the fully material plane. But she doesn't run the show." I spread my hands and joked, "What, does your entropy spread to plans?"

"Yes."

"Ow..." I muttered under my breath, rubbing my ears. Smiles warm the soul; direct statements turn you near-deaf. "Unnecessary roughness."

"Nina is losing."

"What--" I started up. "She's fighting?"

"Injury is also my realm, if by a stretch."

One does not say, 'It can't be so,' to that tone. "...I can't feel her."

Abby nodded calmly. "It appears she does not call upon you, Mistress Margaret."

"Maggie," I said automatically. "It's Maggie. Do you know why not?"

"Divination is your realm, I believe." On anyone else that tone would have been infuriatingly calm, but on Abby is simply was. It would be no more reasonable to be angry at that tone than to be angry at a picture of a black hole.

I cast not-water upon the naught-floor and pulled the truth from it.

"As if she ever thought you near her," the man--Sam?--sneered. He actually sneered, my goodness.

"I am her helper. Of course she did not." A blow, then, to the solar plexus, driving the air hard out of him. The words were confident, but the tone was desperate, and only became moreso. "But I can fight without her. Can you say the same?"

He laughed. "Childish. Your mistress aids me in this fight." Another of him came from behind and landed a blow somewhere low along Nina's back. She went down.

They said, together, "And you can do nothing without her."

I realized I had clenched my jaw when the muscles hurt. "Bastard." He only called upon me in truth to make himself anew, none for sustaining, but this was me; this was my domain, and I could right it.

I touched the surface of the water Abby pressed at me, but that wasn't important and pulled.

Both Sams fell. One was female now, the other still male but the wrong height and build. All of his would soon fall such. He ran the bodies hard, sapping what energy the magic infused in them would throw them into comas. And that was wrong, because some of them would doubtless be in some danger Abby pressed tight on all sides, but I only needed one more minute.

Not even a pull, just a shift. From him to them. He had not spread himself so thin, only to one other who was neither present nor the man himself. "One moment Abby," I breathed, "please."

Sam died, and I sliced off a piece of myself to give to little Nina. She'd keep her spikes, when she wanted them, and heal completely from any injuries she'd gotten under my care.

I shut my eyes. I was done.

"Abby?"

"Hush, bright one."

Then the back of my mind went click.

"Dark," I mumbled back, already lost in her. Not evil, not wrong, but dark to my light; perfect, only missing me as I missed her.

Abby smiled against my ear. "Yes." And it was perfect, and it was beautiful, and it was worth it because she made it so.

One does not survive kissing entropy.

To Personhood

2011-09-12T21:11:00.000-07:00

Things happen.

Sometimes wonderful things happen, and people grab every bit they can, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a particularly unruly group of guests just after the piñata split open: all jabbing elbows and minor prizes.

Sometimes terrible things happen, but they do not happen to us, and so we hide. "They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist..." We may blame the victims, because the alternative--that it truly wasn't their fault, that it could happen to us--is too awful to contemplate. It may even be happening to us, and we do not speak for we fear it will be worse if we do, or we simply believe is will be no better.

But we are social animals, are we not?

Sometimes horrible/glorious things happen, and they write a line of fire across your self. Sometimes it blazes so white-hot that you cannot imagine doing aught but following this, doing this, because you are saving something important. A soul, a species, a nation, a family, an individual. It hits, and there is a person who is you, who was not there twelve seconds ago.

Sometimes wonderful things happen, and people glory in them and share them, because that is what they choose to do. Good feels good. Some people need help, some search for those in need. There is not yet perfect symmetry, but what exists is beautiful.

Sometimes something truly awful, terrible, horrible occurs and all you can do for a moment is shatter inside, because everything you hinged on, every bit of your world, everything just did shatter.

And we turn, and we reach--

We come together. Forget religious barriers; even those who do not pray can appreciate coming together to share grief and hope. Forget race; we are all people and the lines blur more every generation. Forget these barriers you have built up; the world just shattered so the walls must have done. We hope together, wish together, despair together, stand with friends, lovers, strangers. We help those who are hurting, in all the myriad ways people can hurt.

Sometimes, the world shatters.

Every time, however gradually, we rebuild.

Power

2011-09-10T16:41:00.000-07:00

Between this post and the previous, this blog hit 2,500 views.

Assignment: 1) Find a mnemonic for power--either an acronym or around four words that start with the same letter. 2) Connect power to media and/or life.

During the power acronym exercise, I divided power into five sections: love, loathing, loyalty, liberty and lies. Upon reflection, I have decided that ‘love’ is a subset of loyalty, and therefore I will only define the four remaining.

"[W]hat does it mean to have the power to vanquish someone?"

... "Well..." Rianne said. She was having trouble putting her thoughts into words. "It means you've got the power, but you don't have to do it. It means you could do it if you tried -"

"Choice," the Potions Master said in the same faraway voice, as though he wasn't really talking to her at all. "There will be a choice. That is what the riddle seems to imply. And that choice is not a foregone conclusion to the chooser, for the riddle does not say, will vanquish, but rather the power to vanquish."
--Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Chapter 77

Liberty: Power is not simply having an effect, but making a choice. Affecting a circumstance through conscious will and effort. The ability to choose one’s own actions, which includes the ability to do nothing at all. This power is the opposite of Lies, and is generally considered heroic. Also known by/subsets: will, determination, spirit, ability, responsibility, Heroic Spirit.

Do you happen to know what the penalty is for shooting a fricaseeing rabbit without a fricaseeing rabbit license?
--Bugs Bunny

Lies: Manipulating, power at one remove. The domain of any trickster archetype. This works counter to another’s liberty, as it tricks another into thinking one is acting in accordance with one’s own will, when one is acting in accordance with the liar’s will—or, at the very least, not as one would if one knew the true situation. This power is the opposite of Liberty, and is generally considered dark. Also known by/subsets: manipulation, seduction, deceit, trickery, chicanery, misleading, white lies. See Tricksters.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
--Mohandas Gandhi

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
--Niccolo Machiavelli

Loyalty: Machiavelli noted the power of this, as did Gandhi, though they had strikingly different opinions. Though both accepted that it was strong, Machiavelli did not believe it enough on its own, perhaps because he required the leader to remain alive and in power. Martyrs can be lovely for one’s cause, but the martyr remains dead. Usually expected to go both ways—that is, troops are only as loyal to their commander as the commander is loyal to the troops. This power is the opposite of Loathing, and is generally considered unifying. Also known by/subsets: love, duty, fidelity, The Power Of Love, The Power of Frienship.

If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.
—-Winston Churchill, following Hitler's invasion of Russia

Loathing: Moving people against a common foe. This is power held in the hands of someone one is Loyal to, or someone one Loathes—-the former can inspire loathing by empathy, and the latter can divide the loathing-united group. Even if something is effective, people are reluctant to do it if they associate it with something they loathe. The latter is spectacularly difficult to pull off. This power is the opposite of Loyalty, and is generally considered unifying. Also known as/subsets: hate, enmity, Hitler Ate Sugar, The Power Of Hate.

Hiding

2011-09-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

Before we start, I want to make something perfectly clear. It was dark. It wasn't cold, and sometimes it was warm, and it was always dark. We had hidden underground for months, but we had the right supplements, and we had each other.

And it was always dark.

I was, in theory, just in line. Back-ish of the pack, just making sure everyone got out fine, no one had their foot caught in something, and that no one panicked.

Ralph--he person at the real back--was technically the one who was making sure we had no stragglers. But really, that was more a case of looking imposing. Put the big guy with good ears at the very back. Dark as this place is, there's always something likely to eat you. Or at least spook someone.

I wasn't a great pick for back-back. I was short, first off. And my default strategy relied upon not looking imposing. I was barely five feet if I measured myself right after I woke up, and thin enough that the breezes running through these tunnels should blow me away. I hadn't eaten a lot, and it runs in my family to look like we weigh less than we do. Everything just sort of distributes.

So I had the hard job. Because, again technically speaking, I didn't have a job. And, as I said, my default strategy relied on people assuming I wasn't anything much. So I couldn't even spread any rumors to make it easier. I just had to be on alert all the freakin' time because no one else but the second-in-command appeared to be able to think both I am the most important person in certain circumstances, and I can take orders. I didn't understand that, really; the most important person, second-to-second, was (comparably) low on the chain of command. A person who's looking at the board as a whole needs to be able to rely on that.

So when the first screams came, it was a relief. I got to use some emergency adrenaline. Your body doesn't give it to you after too long of anticipation, but screams always set it off for me.

The world went from a bundle held together by force of will to liquid serenity.

I spun and pushed Ralph up. I jerked an idiot's foot out of a crack--it was barely even wedged, she was just shoving it further in going from that angle. I got to the back, where rocks were falling, and made sure I was the furthest back. I was. Spun again.

"Go!"

The word cracked through the air like a starting shot. My world was still slowed from information overdrive, and everyone else seemed to be going even slower. I had to stay at the back, which meant I just picked the slowest two up. The next didn't want to be at the back, nor the next, and so we dominoed straight through to the opening, where this breeze was coming from, where he led us. Everyone seemed to stop on just the other side of the entrance, but the others still dominoing kept up enough of a push to get everyone out. By the time I got there I was snarling; it wasn't bad enough everyone was trying to kill us, it had to be ourselves killing us just because we were so dang stupid--

The sunlight touched my face.

Literature's Connotations

2011-09-01T17:46:00.000-07:00

if (life is insane) {blog post is school assignment}

Prompt: What is Literature?

At the most basic, literature is the written word, whether in prose or verse. Though this definition provides a rough outline of the denotation, the connotations of the term are more complex—hence debates about whether a book qualifies as literature, mirroring arguments about whether a particular work qualifies as (true) art. One can find nebulous explanations of the content—e.g. Merriam Webster states that literature “express[es] ideas of permanent or universal interest,” hardly an objective metric. Literature is literature because of how the author chooses to communicate: Literature shows, rather than tells.

Impressionism acts as a natural extreme of showing rather than telling. Though ‘impressionism’ brings to mind painters such as Monet or Van Gogh, the heart of the movement—communicating feeling before fact—can extend to any medium of art. An author of an impressionistic work focuses on the feel of a character’s experience and the character’s thoughts, even to the extent of making the narrator so emotional or prejudiced as to be unreliable. And though often a careful reader can find what is genuinely happening, the author also pulls the reader into the work’s emotional environment. Whatever happens, the reader cannot merely watch as everything goes by. Literature in general, and especially impressionistic literature, requires thought and allowance for how characters’ emotions and biases affect their reactions—including how the narrator tells the tale.

Though impressionism is the natural extreme of showing rather than telling, that neither makes the genre the only literature nor necessarily the best. Parables, such as Aesop’s Fables, are created specifically to clearly demonstrate virtues, and so often show black-and-white views on a subject. In “The Tortoise and the Hare”, one is not meant to wonder whether perhaps the hare actually won, and the tortoise’s cousin is telling the story to make the tortoise look good; we assume that what we are told is true. Yet the stories still exemplify literature. The parables demonstrate a subject, rather than only stating that a fact is so. Aesop reiterates the lesson the tale is meant to teach at the end, but still uses the story as a medium to show why having the virtue improves one’s self and/or lot in life.

Literature shows; however, demonstrative details exist in books that do not fit as literature. Literature primarily shows. A sixth-grade chemistry textbook may use a story to explain a concept, but because the story aspect is secondary, the book is not literature. Similarly, literature can state things outright. An honest, omniscient narrator does not disqualify a book from being literature, as long as the story primarily shows. Additionally, demonstrating need not leave facts vague—showing emotional content works as well. ‘The clear sunlight turned Alice’s smile luminous,’ shows exactly what, ‘It was a sunny day. Alice smiled,’ tells, but evokes a character’s emotions—either Alice’s or some character who is enamored with Alice.

Literature demands interpretation. Literature speaks subtly. Literature is not restricted to making every bit of information clear, meaning that a good mystery novel can give the reader the same ‘Eureka!’ moment figuring out a mystery in real life can. This subtlety does not prevent literature from explaining a concept: literature may communicate subtly, but literature still communicates. The medium is designed to convey concepts, thoughts, and emotions that the author wishes to share or the reader wishes to experience. Literature is in how the author conveys those ideas.

Works Cited
Merriam-Webster. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2004. 25/8/2011. Web.

Wanderer

2011-08-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

"Wanderer above a Sea of Fog" is something of a mascot in my current English class. We were asked to think on it, and make some questions, and I did. Have been.

This post will be...hm. As self-indulgent as a musing, at any rate. My thoughts around the painting. I will be referring to the man as Herr Wanderer, to differentiate.

The first thing that came to my mind in English class was, "That looks familiar." After thinking a moment, I remembered that I my brother had seen this when he was in this English class--in fact, he wrote a blog post on it.* I haven't reread that post, though I plan to after I post this one.

And I thought: We're plunging into the unknown.

This is the last year where teachers will say, "Oh, you're Chris's sister?" This is the last year I will see many of my acquaintances, and the last year I will ever see some of my friends. Neither of those will be intentional, but...friendship is proximity. That can manifest as proximate--or complementary--interests as easily as physical proximity, but physical proximity plays a part. Sometimes drifting apart just means moving houses.

To a greater extent, I am moving. I am taking the first steps outside my ivory tower. I am school smart; I play the harp; I have good music theory. Those are all skills that can be fun at parties--though the first is usually only fun if brought up sideways--but I have yet to test them in a practical arena. I have been called on to help--with a safety net of (an) adult(s) and my peers at my back. I have tutored--for pocket money. I have never needed something to work out for me. I'm on the ground for the moment, and I can climb back in if I need to, but if I fall, I hit the ground.

I wrote this down as one of my questions, though before thinking of the stuff in either of those latter paragraphs: "What comes next?"

Next, I wrote, "Was the clothing normal for the age it was painted?" Once I was thinking on clothing, I linked to Loki, because I saw The Ring Cycle semi-recently--within the last year--and their Loki, in addition to wearing something superficially similar, also had the same sort of air I felt from the piece. The man clearly stands apart, but looks confident in rough terrain. Once I got a close-up--in the middle of writing this paragraph--I re-thought that interpretation, because of the hair. The tilt of the head and the hair being mussed as it is makes him seem a bit less comfortable, a bit more tired/resigned, but every other angle in his body speaks of firmness to me. And, though this didn't occur to me until I looked at the close-up again, the tilt of the head could also be a reaction to some form of trick gone wrong. Once I've made the link with Loki, I almost have to bring up his house with four doors (so he can see enemies approaching from any side): the painting has the same sort of feel to it, with one man who can see all around. Yet it's worth remembering that sight didn't help Loki, he was still caught. This man's high vantage point helps him as much; for all the possible planning, he's caught in the fog. The wanderer also doesn't look like the type to have a Sigyn, but then, Loki generally doesn't either.

Once I've hit on Norse mythology and have a character called "The Wanderer", I almost must think of Odin. (One of Odin's epithets/forms is the Wanderer.) Given that I've already associated Herr Wanderer with Loki, what associating him with Odin brings to mind is the idea I've read that Odin and Loki were, originally, the same being. This idea makes some sense, given that Loki is the clever one and Odin is the ruler. The idea also occurred to me in the Ring, when Odin is stalling for time while Loki revels in keeping everyone else in the dark while flat-out telling them exactly what they need to know. It didn't work to take them as separate personalities or anything like that; it just seemed like their actions fit together--Odin's "Hold on, I'm sure Loki will come up with a grand plan in a moment," with Loki's delight in pretending to be flippantly speaking of nothing of importance, while he--still flippantly--speaks of a plan. I can just imagine Odin's lines being delivered with suppressed laughter, and Loki's are stalling in their own way, if for another purpose.

The next main question I thought up was, "Is the similarity to The Fool intentional?" There are differences from what I have usually seen--the colors are duller; we cannot see the man's face; he doesn't appear to be about to step off the cliff (unintentionally); the Herr Wanderer has no animal companion--but the basic idea is similar. A man, who appears to (have) be(en) wandering stands on a cliff edge. The painting could be The Fool with a touch of ennui, or a few more bad experiences.

The class came together to discuss at this point. Our teacher brought up how he used "question", and that contained the word, "quest", where we were going. The next few ideas that came up revolved around that basic idea, though given the painting, it's hard to do otherwise: "Why is he wandering?" "Does he have a destination?" "What is he seeking?" which naturally brought, "if anything." "Is he starting or finishing his journey?"--the teacher brought up that one hopes he's finishing, since he's on the cliff edge, to which I thought, Well then, he's probably about to finish one way or another. He could turn around; if he got up he can probably get down, but... Anyway. "What's his purpose for climbing?" "Is he running from something?" "What is he looking at?"

Now that those are out there: The first three are nearly the same, though with different opinions and degrees of certainty about whether he is traveling point A to B, or wandering. "Does he have a point in mind to reach, and if so, what marks it?" There's something about living an unexamined life in there, and also about how you don't need to know where you're going to be doing what you want to do.

Starting or finishing the journey is something of a more complex question than the teacher's words or my knee-jerk thought implied. As I already hinted at, this may be the point where the man turns around. That could signify the end, doubling back as in the classical Hero's Journey, but there are other reason to do it. I can imagine going to my bridge and watching the fog roll one last time before leaving home. I would watch, leaning on a rail, or weight on one hip, breathing and existing in that last moment of home...and then I turn and I start off. On the subject of the implied possibility of suicide, I don't think that makes sense outside a joke. He looks remarkably accepting of life as it is, if not happy about it. My teacher described the German art period this was a part of as being about the dark things, and...yes. This is a man who sees dark. He may be scared--he may not be--but he is at peace with its existence. I cannot imagine him being careless enough to step off accidentally, nor do I see him deciding to jump. Mulling it over as an option, yes, perhaps even as we look at him. But not jumping. Not at this point in the journey.

"What's his purpose for climbing?" feels like the right question to ask to me. It neatly summarizes what is there. Is he, as another suggested, running from something? Is he running to something? Is he seeking something, looking for it? Is he observing, looking at it? Was the purpose observation or discovery? Has the purpose remained static, or did it shift? That is true wandering, to me: one's purpose shifts from moment to moment. A traveler hopes the wind will be at his back and plans that it won't be; a wanderer merely turns so it is.

My teacher was on talking, and I don't know if he would even remember this, but it was a question he spoke that hit me: "How high do you want to go?"

How big a star do you want to be? How quiet a life do you want to lead? How much do you want to help? Forget what you can do for a moment; nearly everything is something you can learn or work around, if you're willing to make the right sacrifice. How high do you want to go?

And, tightly related: How badly do you want it?

I thought of a song to go with the line, as I am wont to do. There's a song in The Protomen called "The Fall". The true lyrics and a scene description are here. What I wrote in my notebook was, "Climb, climb to the top of the world, and know that when you fall, you fall from a height most men never reach." I've never seen The Protomen, and really wasn't even thinking about the scene described when I thought of the song. It was just...in the moment, it was the fear. But even in the middle of the fear, I thought of the triumphant music to the inspiring, cynical lyrics. I will fall. I will get up every time but the last.

These are not reasons to stop climbing. These are reasons to make the fall breathtaking.

* He calls it "Wanderer before a Sea of Mists". To be fair, my teacher called it "Wanderer over a Sea of Fog" and "Wanderer in the Sea of Fog" during the course of the class period. I'm just going off what gets the most hits on Google.

Temptation

2011-08-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

As always, make of Loki's motives what you will.

Sigyn was a project.

She knew she was a project. One would think this fact would make resisting Loki easier. Occasionally, Sigyn wondered if it did, and Loki would simply be impossible to resist if she believed, for one moment, that he actually wanted her.

Loki's hands were gentle on her skin.

The point was irrelevant. She was a project; she knew she was a project. There was no fathomable universe in which Loki showed any interest and either fact was false.

Those clever kisses were soft and warm, or at least warmed her.

Loki would toss Sigyn aside as soon as he grew bored. Any glimmer of a smile she saw in his eyes was solely amusement at the fact that she was resisting him, that she'd found his game.

He was fire; he was ice. He was Loki.

The kisses she could ignore. Teasing touches were more difficult, but possible. But the words echoed in her ears, impossible to dismiss on an emotional level even if she knew every syllable was a lie.

Loki's pull was subtle, ever-present: Thor was magnetic; Loki was gravitational.

Kisses he must have given to others; Sigyn had seen kisses traded in brief moments of pleasure, not even linked to the other person, just to a warm body. Caresses were transient things, and the part of her that insisted she wasn't a game to him could still believe they meant something just as transient.

The words followed her; words finally brought her to him.

Loki had whispered, too gently, "I love you, Sigyn." No other would lie that way. Even as Sigyn knew this was Loki Lie-Smith, even as she knew he could make even an insult drip enough honey to sound like the most splendid compliment, even as she knew that if she gave in his attention would fall away, she followed him. Just once.

"Steadfast Sigyn," he murmured, warm in her ear. He might have said, 'Mine.'

She woke before he did, in the half-light of false dawn. The same part of Sigyn that had insisted everything was a lie asked if one night had been worth it. Worth knowing she had lost their game, that she was no longer Loki's focus.

She watched him sleep, tucked a stray lock of hair behind his ear.

"Clever Loki."

She might have said, 'Love.'

Some Fall (Prose)

2011-08-10T21:30:00.000-07:00

Referent: Some Fall

"That's it, then?"

"That's it," the demon said with a smile. I would've expected it to be overly charismatic, or slimy, or wrong, but it was just...a smile. A friendly turn of the lips that felt honest, but not exceptionally so. Had it not been for the odd movements, I would have doubted that the being was a demon.

"I just...give my soul, and I get whatever I want in this life?"

The entity's eyes crinkled in a way that made me think of suppressed laughter. "Yes. I realize what you've been told of me, but honestly, I do keep my word."

And that...did fit the stories. Any number of tricks, any number of exact words and twisted language, but the being on the other end never lied.

"I want...I want to go back," I said softly. "To how I was before the accident. Body and...abilities." I had developed several phobias, one of enclosed spaces that I could get over fairly easily, one of restricted movement that I could avoid fairly easily, and one of cars that I couldn't do anything about. "I don't want to lose any memories, but I want to be, well." I gestured at my wheelchair. "As able-bodied as I was beforehand, and without the phobias the dang thing gave me. Free of scars." I realized I had looked away, and looked back up at those truly human eyes. "Can you do that?"

The demon nodded. "Yes. It's not the most common request, but it's certainly within my power." A piece of parchment--parchment, seriously, not paper and not human skin or anything, just parchment--appeared in a miniscule puff of not-acrid smoke.

"May I?" I asked, holding my hand out.

"Of course. Mind not to bleed on it."

I checked my hands for any wounds, then just slid a pair of thin gloves on to be safe. The demon nodded in approval. "The whole signing in blood thing is true, then?" I asked, glancing up.

"Yeah. It's the only thing the higher-ups accept." The entity shrugged. "Doesn't take much. A drop would work, and should you wish to avoid injuring yourself intentionally, I could just as easily wait for the next time you bled for another reason." And even that didn't sound threatening. Just...like when you've met someone from another culture, and the speech patterns are a bit off.

I read, occasionally looking up at the humanoid. I wanted to see hunger, some unwholesome desire for my soul. All I saw was a decent salesperson, good at the job and a reasonably good person.

"Thanks." I read over the contract carefully, twice. It said, in clear language, that I would be as physically healthy and fit as I had been before the accident--with specifics around to make clear which accident--and that any phobias or mental illnesses I'd developed as a result would also be healed. "Mental illness" was what my doctor would define as such, were she being completely honest. I would lose no memories.

A simple clause at the end stated that, in exchange for the previously mentioned help, I would lose my soul.

There was a little twist in my chest, about where my heart was. I wanted to walk again. I really did. But this was so permanent. This is so tempting; this is so permanent; which am I going to let decide me?

I slipped off the gloves, flipped out my swiss army knife, and bled on the paper.

Even then, when I still expected some final gotcha, some wicked grin or evil laugh, the demon merely smiled. The blood dried, not-quite-human hands folded the paper, and the being was gone.

Ragged breath. Mine. It had been so easy, far to easy, to completely miss every sign.

The demon had looked human. So unbelievably human, and I'd assumed glamour; I'd assumed practice; I'd heard every hoofbeat and assumed I was listening to a zebra. I'd never quite thought that maybe, as I stared at the being that was so human and just slightly off, I was simply looking at a human without a soul.

I had found the being, and noticed for the first time that I had not idea whether the entity was male, female, somewhere between or somewhere outside. It seemed an odd thing to miss.

"Can I undo it?"

"I don't see why not."

"How?"

The demon shrugged. "How should I know?"

"What? But--"

Index finger held up. "We made our deal. If you want your soul back, then it's your right to try and find it." The same finger, tapping the folded contract. "You've given. I never said I'd taken away."

Priorities and Sanity

2011-08-03T17:56:00.000-07:00

Emilia steps into the old office. Everything is immaculate from perfectly lined books to the man's own perfectly fitted suit, and it all feels so...still. There's a window that lets the sun shine in, since it's as clean as the rest of the office, but it might as well be nailed shut as far as the stale air was concerned.

She planned this for so long that Emilia jolts when she realizes she has nothing to say. Blunt, then?

The words tumble out. "Can you teach me any magic?"

She kicks herself, immediately. Sloppy, clearly sloppy, hardly fit for anyone who cares to ever become a mage, much less one studying under Dr. Johnson. He would just say she was there because her mother had taught him, and he'd be wrong, but how could she say that to him--

He turns. "I was wondering when you'd ask."

Emilia, for all that she had not planned what to say, had an outline in her head. And then he had to go and say that.

"Um," she says, eloquently.

"Though I do admit, when I was your age I was still attempting to plan my speech to convince the mage I wanted to study under," he says. Dr. Johnson isn't quite smiling, but his face is softer than Emilia had ever seen it.

"I rather skipped that part."

The mage shrugs. His suit wrinkles very slightly, and he does not fix it. "I forgot the whole thing anyway. More work than one would think, memorizing a speech."

"...Does this mean you'll teach me?"

"Depends." The man holds up his index finger to tell the fifteen-year-old to wait. "And I will know if you simply say something you think I want to hear."

Emilia nods and straightens, ready for any difficult question he might pose.

"Why do you want to be a mage?"

"I want to help people," she says immediately. "I want to heal people, and I want to be able to make shields so people don't need healing."

"That's not an easy path."

The healer's daughter nods. "But it's easier than watching. For me."

"Second question." Emilia swallows. "Why do you want me for a teacher?"

"Because you're the best at teaching the fields I want to learn."

"What would you do if you can't learn healing?"

"I'd learn other spells and adapt them to healing, and I'd learn more mundane methods of healing."

Still not a smile on the doctor's face, but a hint of approval. "And if you could not learn any magic?"

Emilia blinks. It sounds an innocuous enough question, she supposes, especially in light of her previous response. She's already declared herself willing to take other paths to her destination, and there are non-magical routes.

But that's not it, really. Learning difficult spells like this...some people can only ever make sparks, not fires. Trying can burn them out. It was rare, spectacularly rare with a good teacher--which was part of why she had chosen him, she supposes, but that wasn't really the point. Emilia found the person who could teach her the most.

"I'd retreat into my room for...a little while, I think," she says. "Then I'd look for more mundane methods of healing. Probably Watch." There's a feeling, to someone pushing the magic too far. Some excellent teachers could sense it, but everyone who had gone through the loss knew it, instinctively, immediately. Knew when to stop someone else. Watchers are rare; they rarely want anything to do with magic. But they are useful.

"You are sure you could be around magic, even after losing yours?" The teacher's voice is low now, soft and deep. Gentle, Emilia supposes.

The mage-in-training realizes her posture had slumped and stands back up, squaring her shoulders. "Yes. It might take me a little while, but I'd do it."

He nods, then drops a book she realized he must have grabbed as she walked through the door. "Good. Have that read by Monday, and take good notes. Your training starts in earnest then."

Emilia nods, takes the book gently, and walks to the library.

After the door clicks behind her, the man allows himself a smile.

Names

2011-07-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

It's spring, by the turn of the weather if not the calendar. Snow melting, a few bare patches of almost-dry among the steadily fading patches of snow and the steadily increasing damp. The two lovers are sitting in a field. They meander through a conversation, familiar enough with each other to barely need to pay attention, interested enough to focus on each other anyway.

"No one's quite sure," he says. "I named myself, you see. Chose it from some names I heard floating around. For all I know I crossed two names, or more. I've mostly heard it associated with fire, and most would likely accept that."

"You're being honest today."

His grin glints in the rare sunlight. "You have no way to be sure of that."

The woman rolls her eyes and corrects herself. "You are being exceptionally lengthy if you lie."

"Not as if you've ever had to worry about your clear name, Miss Victory," he replies.

"What else have you heard?"

"Hm?"

"You said you've mostly heard your name associated with fire. What else have you heard?"

"Oh..." He hasn't had to dig this up for a while, and sorts through the memories. "White light. Air, more rarely."

"Nothing else?"

"Everything else is to do with me," he says, turning to smirk at her this time, brighter for all that the sunlight doesn't hit as directly. "Trickster, sly, clever..."

She laughs, though more for the bald-faced satisfaction in his voice than his words. "Your humility becomes you." She lies down on the grass, staring up at the break in the clouds that got them to choose this spot in the field. "Maybe you're that," she says, almost absently.

"I'm which?"

"Your name. That," she says, gesturing towards the light breaking through the clouds, though the sun was still hidden from this angle. "Fire, air, light...burns, the motes that flutter through, shining down." She looks amused. "When he deigns to, of course."

"Of course," he replies, every inch the gracious king.

She throws a handful of melting snow at him; they laugh and start a scuffle, ending up soaking, a little muddy, and laughing fully.

Unimpressed

2011-07-23T16:21:00.000-07:00

A/N: So...some weird stuff happened with my computer, so this is late and I had less time to work on it. ...Yeah.

Setting: The Alcatraz
Plot: Despite The Plan
Narrative Device: Thirty Xanatos Pileup
Hero: Broken Hero
Villain: Villain Decay
Character As Device: Wacky Guy
Characterization Device: Extraversion Tropes

A/N: Read as dialogue.

Most of the guards are actually okay people.

I say this to explain why I'm not starting with some guard shouting my ear off about how inescapable the place is. It is nigh impossible, of course, but they don't feel the need to rub your nose in it. Either that, or the warden--don't mess with him--told his employees that most of the inmates here would take that as a challenge, and added that anyone caught stating the prison was inescapable would be cleaning up the next mess the next inmate who tried to escape made.

You ever try getting all the chips of wall out of a mattress? Not fun.

The issue, of course, is when you get people who realize that the sort of people who feel no need to brag about having an inescapable prison are those with and inescapable prison. Naturally, this is perceived as a challenge, and instead of getting every second guy trying, you get the quietly intelligent ones. Meaning that you don't have the eyes and ears of the loud ones, because they've given up finding someone who can get out. Meaning that, in the middle of this place, we've got to have guards who are watching for schemes that would probably fail who make sure that they certainly fail without alerting the other inmates to the possibility of success. And that the quiet ones try to take advantage of this by making the only way to stop them really strikingly obvious, because as annoying as this set-up is, it is not half as annoying as having everyone make a break for it at once.

But anyway.

It's a pretty okay place to be. Granted, almost no one likes being in a place they have to be in, but I'm sure that if the people here were given a choice, most of us would at least want to vacation here. That's part simple location--the weather is mild, and though the sleeping spaces are rather cramped, someone somewhere along the line noted that inmates were less likely to go crazy and start literally climbing the walls if we had the opportunity for exercise and thought. A friend of mine and I are co-authoring a novel, actually.

The other part's simple company. I didn't just mention the quietly intelligent ones to show something that shows up occasionally; we tend to get the quietly intelligent criminals. Their backgrounds are absolutely fascinating. Not often the sorts of things they'll tell you about, but really, even what they make up is rather good. Almost everyone bothers to create either realistic horror or some sort of almost-believable tragedy. Then there's the one guy who just has fun with it every time, but he's great for a break.

Ah, shoot, the inmates are fighting again; Michael must be trying to get out.

"All right guys, break it up," I muttered, stepping between them. "Let's try and not get any guards called, all right?"

Winter's

2011-07-12T13:25:00.000-07:00

A breath huffed out. Hard to keep it up for too long, but worth it, worth it.

I am the edge to your blade
I am the knife of your steel
I am what you can't quite remember
And I am all that is real

Slipping through between the air, the pattern of slices the being. Slippery as water, slippery as fire.

Watch the silver flash by
Watch the sun set near
Listen, my darling, and wait
Soon it shall appear

Partnerless sparring, a fierce dance. No difference between the two, just the slide of blade on air. How beautiful, to breathe in ice.

Something swallowed, now in my breast
A sense to which only I can attest

Wild and free, there, alone, in the frosted over training ground, slip and no one knows, succeed and no one sees, just the frost, just the trees.

The beauty of crystal and the beauty of ice
The beauty that one sees once, twice
Here I stand among snowflakes that freeze
And nothing can touch me but the slice of the breeze

Tracks of sweat freezing as another hour passes by. Body pushing limits, mind rolling only enough to adjust to shifting wind and ground.

Something touches me, cuts through my sleeves
A sharp slice of winter through glacial breeze
Not painful, no slice, nothing so tame
Winter's call to heart breathes my name

Sigyn & Loki

2011-07-05T21:17:00.000-07:00

Loki was bound in his son's entrails-turned-iron. He lay under a spring, but more immediately, under a snake that streamed venom. Sigyn holds a basin between snake and bound husband. When she empties the basin, Loki writhes from pain, and the Earth writhes with him.

A lull fell in their conversation as Sigyn focused on the venom-catcher, nearly full.

Loki was a trickster. The trickster, if you went by anyone Sigyn had ever known, anyone who had ever met the man. Anyone who had been around him for long enough to see one change on that exterior, one second looking wholly calculating man who was interested enough to help, the next smiling as it all tumbled down, clever enough to dance through the falling ruins without a scratch.

Sigyn thought of this, and also thought he had never broken his word. She'd always wondered if the other gods would ever figure that one out, that you merely needed to get his word and watch the wording--but then, of course, Loki was ever the trickster. He'd dance through the words, quickest, be just as free as he ever was, and smile when you realized it was your fault.

She smiled down at him the best she could. The snake dripped its venom on him whenever she emptied the basin, and she had long lost any hope of cleaning off what fell. She had learned enough of him, saw the tension in his eyes. He stayed silent through even the worst of it, sparing her ears or his throat. Only his attempts to break the chain gave him away.

The smile was weak, and by now Loki knew it to be her warning. She took the basin, quickly, emptied it to the side, then held it back above him, high enough that the first splashes out the side would harm neither half of the pair.

Sigyn was faithful. Any proper description needed to include that. She was loyal, and it still surprised some that loyal, steadfast Sigyn had chosen changeable Loki. Trickster, who would hardly ever bind himself to anything.

Sigyn would smile, and look at their sons--whenever they thought of them now, Loki flinched, or Sigyn bit back tears--and think, quietly, that changeable Loki was her trickster.

By the time Loki had been bound, no one was surprised to see Sigyn at his side. She had enough foresight to have a large bowl, and was faithful enough that leaving him did not occur to her. That fact was Sigyn, as surely as clever Loki was trickster and taunter.

Loki's pain echoed between them. She felt she should be able to do more, but any deflection melted, or fell, or splashed burning venom against him. Loki felt he should have been able to hide his pain completely, to have that much trickery in him.

Loki could speak again without screaming, without telling his Sigyn how much he hurt. The silver tongue returned, as did his playful smirk, though the tension never did leave his eyes.

He spoke a handful of soft words, borrowed from better times. She smiled at him, a true smile, and they laughed together.

When he shakes enough, the bonds will break, and Ragnarok will come. Until then, ever-faithful Sigyn dwells by bound Loki.

"What are the most important words you know?"

2011-07-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

" 'I love you,' of course!"

The little girl had a pink dress on, and bounced and skipped everywhere. When she spoke, she beamed as only a secure optimist can.

" 'I love you.'"

The woman said it calmly. She had dark hair, dark eyes, and showed more age in her gaze than on her skin. Her time on this Earth spoke of manipulation, on both sides. But there was still a hint, in the edge of that gaze, that she believed the words could be spoken honestly. And that was what she meant.

" 'This I believe.' For good or ill, they make the most difference."

And old man, this one. Grey hair and a long beard. From an era too few really remember existed, and none have lived through, anymore. From the first crusade, lived through so many. Saw them bring culture; saw them bring bloodshed; saw men who had been innocent a few years, a few months, a few eyeblinks ago take things that weren't theirs, take people...

Seen courage given in dark places; seen new, good ideas brought to life; seen friendship grow into families because when you lived together, ate together, slept together, that's what you were.

" 'You are not alone.'"

" 'I trust you.'"

Some might call this one an honorable idiot. Or a loyal fool. Honest to a fault. Any number of things that these people would, almost, intend as insults, and this one would smile and nod. Trust, loyalty. They were more important than your oath, more important to this speaker than this speaker than the speaker's own self.

" 'I believe in you.'"

The gaze was gentle, and a touch proud in reminiscing. The sort of pride one gets when one's time was earlier, may be later, but is not now. A teacher's pride. A parent's pride. One who cared for the fledgling, then watched the no-longer-little one fly.

" 'I will wait for you.'"

This is more story than moment. You know it. The princess, old enough to be married off and firm, clever enough to be where she wants to be. To finish the promise. Not quite a rebel, just using every tradition her people have to keep her oath.

Another came in, and gave his answer to my question.

"I'm glad."

Alternates

2011-07-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

She stared forward. She knew, in the odd way this place had given her, that left no doubt, that she had just enough energy to finish the journey. Should she stumble, or turn back for the Lethe's reprieve, she'd die here. Die at the bottom of the rabbit hole. It wouldn't be so bad, after all she'd been through.

She paused, just a moment, with any number of ideas fluttering through her head.

She turned, and walked. Stumbled when she met the Lethe's flow. She had forgotten the force behind it, even before she forgot almost everything.

Five steps. An unrecognized echo of her last words.

Five steps. Get up.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

The nameless touched the doctor’s skin, and almost all was as it had been.
*
She rolled to her side, and wrote down scraps of the fading dream. She met the man from it, but he was different here, too immature for her tastes, as if he had never walked through any fire, never even been sunburned.

She looked at everything she could do, and most of it suddenly felt empty.

It was the last day, but she got everything together to apply for the right school. She did well. She did what she could do, and, for the geological eyeblink of a few centuries, she changed the world.

The nameless nodded silently.

I knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. I said what I prayed someone else would say, were I in his place.

"You're not alone."

He stared at me. It was an interesting experience, looking into someone's eyes as he tried to put himself back together.

He collapsed into a sob, and I held him, and I healed him as best I could. He would never be a pillar again, but perhaps that was for the best. Too easy to just stand, unbending. Far better to adjust, be flexible, to fight only the important battles.

I'm water, and I'll find every sneaky crack if you don't built carefully; wear you down even if you do.

I'm water. I'll tend the sapling.

With the quiet scrutiny of a focused child, "Did you heal with her, or hunt?"

My lips twisted into something like a smile. "I hunted her. She healed me. Everything else just happened."

Remembering

2011-06-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Five steps, she thought in the absolute silence, Five steps.

It wasn't that far. She had to remember that. Just five steps up. She'd done the sheer cliff, she'd done a part that required going wholly upside-down. Climbed, clambered, slipped and grabbed for a handhold, any handhold, and frozen on it a moment, until the adrenaline faded enough for her eyes to clear. Then move on, next handhold in what wasn't quite pitch black, something that turned even the most vibrant colors gray, but she could still see. And so she went on.

It was hard, so hard to remember that. It should be as if someone were at her back, pressing her on and protecting her, helping. But all she could think was that, whatever had pushed her so far, she could not remember it. It had fallen away, and she could not remember when. All she had was now. It wasn't that hard. Just one step forward, one step up. It was dark, but she had seen the way, and knew it yet. Straight ahead.

A sob tore from her chest. She had forgotten why she was crying, and now cried over the forgetting.

Five steps. Get up.

"Okay," she said, voice hoarse from the raw throat she did not remember getting. "Okay."

Unsteadily, ankles wavering from exertion she could not remember, she rose. Five steps. She said it aloud for the first time. "Five steps."

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

It hit her. All of it. She'd come here, and it had been empty, but she'd kept her momentum, and now that it had been broken, now that she had to come at it from the outside, she froze and couldn't breathe. She had wanted to prove she could do it.

No noble objective. No waiting dependent. Nothing good, no motivator.

She closed her eyes and wept, remembering everything. Not even a "Betcha can't." Just chasing, like Alice with her little white rabbit, and then she didn't stop, and then she'd made excuses for why she couldn't.

She turned, looking over her shoulder. It had been easier in the blackness. She knew, without particularly wanting to know how, that there were sleeping forms there, hidden. Dying. She knew that that was why she was as tired as she was. The first time had been too much of a shock, she had stumbled back and barely caught herself. Caught herself five steps from the top, and two from the edge. She hadn't had an order before, but now knew the sheer cliff was just before the staircase Lethe. And she knew that she had not stumbled every time. Sometimes she had chosen.

But I could not sleep. The Lethe grants me no rest.

It wasn't true. It granted her some rest, in clarity of purpose. It was easier, in the darkness, sure she was right. Sure there was something that kept her going that wasn't just, "I can't stop now." The Lethe granted her respite.

She stared forward. She knew, in the odd way this place had given her, that left no doubt, that she had just enough energy to finish the journey. Should she stumble, or turn back for the Lethe's reprieve, she'd die here. Die at the bottom of the rabbit hole. It wouldn't be so bad, after all she'd been through.

A wisp of memory fluttered past her train of thought, her mother saying her name.

She closed her eyes, then opened them. She walked on.

The World

2011-06-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

A/N: Between the previous post and this one, this blog hit 2,000 views.

“No.”

“Dr. Johnson—”

“No! I’m not giving away everything I’ve built just because you-—you decided that it’s better for you!”

The unnamed man did not flinch. He would not react so obviously. But, had the good doctor looked at him, she might have seen him pause.

“Michelle,” he said softly. “Think about how many died in a few moments. All over, all at once. I can undo that.”

“And lose me every cure I’ve found!”

He let out a breath. “Michelle…I’m so sorry.”

“About wha—no!’ He reached for her and she jerked back, thinking he was going to do it, going to take everything she’d learned and shove her a year back because he, with his orthogonal morality, had decided it was better—-

Listen.

Data flashed by, frozen diamonds slicing through every wall of denial she had tried to put up. She had helped some, yes. More than she had even known before. But that was a fraction (3/127ths) of everyone the disaster had killed. A fraction even of the survivors (don't look at the number). Transportation had broken down too much, and worsened every day, with each disparate tribe barely the size of a small town in the world as it had been.

“I am so sorry.” His voice betrayed no emotion. She believes him, even so.

“Why?” she cried. “Why ask me, if you know, and you already decided—-“

“I did not. Have not. Not everything.” He brushed her hair back, and Michelle realized he was trying to be kind.

“What,” she whispered, eyes on the ground.

“I can…I am capable of allowing you to retain your memories.”

Dr. Johnson’s eyes jerked to his. “Yes.”

“You would eventually go insane.”

“I don’t care; do you realize how many-—”

“Stop. Please,” he added, remembering how manners went. “You do care; you just don’t know it yet. You found each cure on your own; you could find them again. I could…help you, but not guarantee anything. You might not even be able to spread the cures.”

She twisted and began pacing. “But I wasn’t even going to be a doctor back then…I don’t know; I don’t know…” Her head jerked back to him. "That's not all."

“Dr. Johnson… Your children.”

She went utterly still. “Oh.”

“Yes.”

Of course, she thought. The chances of me meeting him again are slim enough, but both are million-to-one chances even if I have the same egg. They’d be different by surroundings, even if genetically identical. I’d be erasing them, erasing everyone born, and erasing the versions of people here…

Though, honestly, I don’t know any who wouldn’t go back.

It was the easiest decision of her life, but the words stuck in her throat. It was the hardest decision of her life, but she made it anyway.

“Can I keep those memories, at least?” she forced out. “They wouldn’t change anything. No way of differentiating them from a fantasy of mine, not like the cures. Nothing.” She turned and looked at the nameless man. “Please?”

The look held for a moment. “Just that.”

“Just that,” she echoed.

There was a long stretch of silence. “If you will allow the rest to be as if none of this ever happened…then yes. I am allowed that.”

She sighed in relief. “Yes.” Difficult, but not truly different from raising them in a better environment—wait. What? “Allowed? There’s someone I could ask?”

“No. I am sorry.”

“Sorry because you misspoke, or sorry because you can’t get me to—-”

The nameless touched the doctor’s skin, and almost all was as it had been.

She took out a piece of paper, and wrote everything she remembered of her children, and of raising them. Not enough to call attention, but…perhaps, just a few hints. Her children getting their shots, how right some things felt in her hands. Enough to bring her into the proper field, now with the proper tools.

“Risky,” the companion said.

“Worth every risk,” the nameless man replied.

“You are lucky you superior never found out,” his superior noted. "Make sure that I don't."

Schrödinger's Cat Is Gray

2011-06-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

Setting: The Dark Times
Plot: Teach Him Anger
Narrative Device: My Greatest Failure
Hero: Smith Of The Yard
Villain: Mister Danger
Character As Device: Mysterious Past
Characterization Device: Mysterious Past

I've got to admit it's getting better (Better)
A little better all the time (It can't get no worse)
The Beatles

Once upon a time, in a beautiful far-off kingdom, everything was perfect. In the beginning, we were in Paradise, then we got kicked out. Back then, when people were closer to creatures and creatures were closer to people...

I'm sure you get the point.

That's supposed to be a comforting little tale. Everything was perfect, and now it's not, and here's why. Neat and tidy. Every bit of suffering can be traced back to this event, with maybe some build-up before the tipping point.

Yeah. Right. There never was a perfect time.

Oh, for the love of--quit that look, would ya? Honestly. Mine's brighter, y'know. Ooh, everything was perfect and now it never will be again--give me a break. The world's getting better. We can help people we couldn't before, and we're helping them.

Don't ask my name. It wouldn't mean anything to you. Or rather, it would, but you wouldn't believe me, which is almost the same thing. Like if I say I'm Sherlock Holmes, or Scarlett Johansson. It doesn't even cross your mind to believe me, so the declaration means nothing except that I'm not trustworthy.

There are points in time where things do get worse, of course. See bubonic plague, Dark Ages, or people fighting progress out of a desire to make the old patterns fit. Even if the old patterns mean more people die, more people are terrified, more people are hurt. Not that all changes are good, either. Progress is always change; change is not always progress. I learned that pretty hard.

I'm rambling. But what else do I do here? I don't even know why I'm dictating this. I told you, if I said who I am then you wouldn't believe me. Hm (laugh). I suppose that actually gives you a better chance, doesn't it? If I say I'm Ms. Johansson, then you wouldn't believe me. But if I simply tell you I'm famous, and perhaps drop some hints--for instance, I happen to be male, and you know me, and I dictate like I converse--then maybe you work it out on your own. We trust our own minds first. Probably because we think we know if we're tricking ourselves, or perhaps just don't want to think of the alternative.

And still rambling. I guess, I just want to say...don't assume. People tend to filter things; childhood is overexposed from remembering too much; weird shades jump out. We could sleep in the backseat and trust the adults to figure it all out. Goes through the filter, maybe we think it was a better time when we were just younger, with fewer responsibilities, or more power, or both. Maybe it just looks better because it isn't here. But it's all but impossible to simply go back by trying to force the pieces back together. Things change. Or it's like putting someone on a pedestal: someone can be predominantly good and still have flaws. An era can be golden and still have room to grow. All we can do is be the growth. Fighting growth because the tree was better as a sapling can maybe give you a bonsai, or a perfectly groomed tree. But you can't bring back the sapling unless you grow a new seed.

By default: Stay in school and eat your vegetables. And if inspiration grabs your collar and pulls, roll with absolutely everything and shine bright' as you can.

Dearly Beloved

2011-06-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

Setting: Here There Were Dragons
Plot: Quest For The Rest
Narrative Device: Attending Your Own Funeral
Hero: Faux Action Girl
Villain: Villain Ball Magnet
Character As Device: Escape Artist
Characterization Device: Holy Hitman

"...we are gathered here today..." he continued, in the tone of one reciting something that had been memorized for more than three-quarters of one's life.

It was a little depressing how quickly they bought it. Granted, I wasn't as strong as my spread-as-a-joke-and-never-lived-down reputation had people believe, but I had some skills. They just weren't brass knuckles-to-the-gut fighting.

Honestly. "No, sorry, the woman you've seen escape locks, chains, boxes, tombs and, oh yeah, strait jackets--six times!--couldn't escape a strait jacket. Because she was underwater." Give me strength.

"Knockety-knock," said my new company in the tree.

"Hush. They're about to get to the part where the presenter has to work around my utter lack of accomplishments."

My companion smothered a laugh and choked out, "Poor guy," before shutting up.

The guy really did have a rather difficult job. I had done some tricky "How will she get out of this?", but he hardly approved in the first place. Jeremiads about the distractions of the non-educational entertainment community were pretty much half of what he did. Not that I particularly blame him. I bored me.

"Jane..." I blinked. That was the first time he'd used my first name. It sounded so weird. "Was a good, forgiving soul." I nodded. Now say, "She will be missed," so you don't have to claim me or not-claim me and look bad. I don't know how many people figured out that's what he was doing, but since he talked to himself while he wrote his speeches, I knew.

"We will all miss her." I started and froze. "I know she has found peace."

Inconsequential things happened. Some teared up, but they were all accomplished liars; I didn't take it very seriously. Eventually, the crowd finished and filed away.

It hadn't been a fantastic service. I hadn't been a fantastic person. But he seemed genuinely hurt. I hadn't realize anyone would be.

"Janey," my partner murmured from ground level. "Time to get."

I nodded. "Yeah."

We walked down the trodden path and I thought about what it meant to be part of the order.

Extreme makeover, of course. I had to fool my own mother, if it somehow came to it, so I had to look different. And act, too. Literally, acting, to complete the makeover, and action. I already has escapology skills, and that was going to be my specialty. Thing was, I was also supposed to get other people out, which I was still relatively new to. I'm fine on the tests, but I keep failing the practicals. It's so weird to have the locks facing me.

I was guessing that my partner was either a tracker or someone lethal. No one's told me exactly what the lethal ones hunt, or what the trackers track, but hey, experience. And I am allowed to quit, if it comes to that. This is just to get me out of here, really.

"Hey, partner?"

"Yeah?"

"What should I call you?"

"Partner."

"Um," I said, articulately. "Should I capitalize that, or...?"

"As you wish."

I stared, then fell turned my eyes ahead and tried to find something more productive to think about. Like communicating the escapology. If I could get basics to the people I'd be helping, then they might be half out by the time I get to them, and then I'd have that many more out...

Dance

2011-06-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

The feeling starts when friends invite you out to the new place that just opened up, that slight curiosity.

It starts when you come in and you get a touch of contact adrenaline high from the sweat, freedom.

Starts when you smile at that cute one you've never had the excuse to flirt with, with the hair that made you realize how absolutely distracting hair could be; intent.

Starts when you get a smile in return. Interesting.

Starts with a riff on an electric guitar.

Might've been messy, or graceless, or off-beat, and no one would've cared. Here, now, you just move with the music and the tide of humanity. You two are on the same beat. The song sings of something that dilates pupils and darkens eyes, and you finally get to run fingers through that hair when you move off with your partner. A quick kiss before a longer one. Feel before form, moving as one eddy in the tide. The nook, the connection, the moment.

"Beautiful."

What You See

2011-06-01T12:16:00.000-07:00

Setting: The Bright Castle
Plot: Plot
Narrative Device: Fauxshadow
Hero: Kid Hero
Villain: Trigger Happy
Character As Device: Perpetual Smiler
Characterization Device: I Want To Be A Real Man

Once upon a time, there was a village that waited for a hero. The prophecy was foretold by a smiling young girl passing through, and in a tongue without genders, though the common consensus was that the hero would be a boy, and that he would be born in a great castle. Given that, many villagers set about building a castle.

As you might guess from the fact that they built this place because they wanted the setting to fit a storybook, rather than any particular need for a fortress, they did not build a castle. A castle is something made of strong stone, and made to hold off the many enemies this village did not have. No one knew how to build a castle, or really why one would.

Rather, they built a palace.

Now, as one might also guess, there was a bit of trouble over who got to live in the castle. The villagers eventually agreed that the castle should house the bravest warrior and the fairest maiden. That was how the story went, after all. Many of them braced for a long argument over who was the fairest, who was the best warrior, etc. Failing that, the warrior would obviously be married. Or the maiden would be freshly married. No prima nocta, given the absence of close nobles, so marriages occasionally went a little while without consummation, if the couple happened to be busy enough.

Failing that, clearly, there would be some issue with the couple. They would hate each other, at least at first, if not for so long. Several romantics insisted the first child would dissolve any troubles; several parents saw the flaw in that. Children were lovely little darlings, of course, but being woken up in the middle of the night several nights in a row was not the sort of thing to build a relationship on. The romantics said the others had no vision, and that clearly the child would give the man the chance to show his sensitive side, which would have the woman swooning over him in gratitude, and then everything would be fine.

So both sides felt a little cheated when there was such swift consensus. Everyone immediately agreed who the fairest maiden was, and who the bravest warrior was. The only exceptions were the maiden and the warrior themselves, who wouldn't vote for themselves out of modesty, but no one else even really considered their choices.

The couple worried, of course. But, disappointing again, they met, and they fell in love, and they moved into the wonderful palace and lived happily ever after to raise a beautiful baby boy with an absurdly heroic build. Though he never brushed his hair, it was always that perfect, shining blond that only babies, angels, and a handful of blessed and rich nobles ever seem to manage. His teeth were perfect enough that they would have looked outright disturbing on anyone else, stuck out too much, if it weren't for the fact that the rest of him was perfect, too.

He reached the age, and because it was a story they expected, it was the age, 13. They waited for the monster.

Almost funny, really. They hadn't any idea of what a hero should be, but figured he looked right. Yet every villager had an idea of what the monster would be. No one needed to be told about what lurks beneath the bed, or beyond the mountain, or in the hearts of men. Priorities: Find the hero eventually; avoid the danger now.

And here is the first place our story disagrees.

The hero can have good works, but at the age, in his thirteenth year, he was supposed to have an obvious enemy. Dragon, ogre, evil king, anything really, just that someone was supposed to do something like lay siege to the "castle" or start kidnapping all the village's maidens.

There was the man who got drunk every night and took out a blade he was a little too careless with. The hero had figured out his power, and explained that it was of the utmost importance to stop giving this man alcohol. That might have been it. It might also have been when he made sure the man got help, did not simply ride out the withdrawal on his own.

There was a woman with a child. She could not afford to feed them both, and was wasting. He saw to it they got food, for people brought gifts to him often, and there was always extra to spread around. The child, upon growing up under the care of a sweet and determined mother, started something like an informal soup kitchen.

Might've been the cat in the tree. Might've been any number of things that only one or two people really knew he'd had a hand it, that changed the people because The chosen one had helped me with something so inconsequential, so I must be special. I must be destined for something great, so now I'll go out and find it.

The hero was having trouble feeling satisfied. As I said, the thirteenth year was supposed to bring a great, world-changing adventure. If not truly planet-changing, at least something that would change his world, change the village. He struck out to find it.

Long after, when his parents had died peacefully of old age and he had been traveling the world for the better part of his life any way you slice it, he sat in a busy market.

The smiling prophetess sat down beside him. "It took many good masons to make that palace."

He nodded, having recognized her, and having found the difference between a palace and a castle on his journeys. It was a compliment to his home, since the townsfolk had insisted on doing the building themselves. "They brought in many good teachers, I'm told."

The old woman nodded. "And created a magnificent one."

The hero blinked. The old woman smiled a little wider as the translation danced through his head.

He will change the world, and pass on the torch so that it keeps changing.

"...I thought I chose one. When I was dying."

"And they all, to a one, thought you chose them. People're funny that way." The woman, who suddenly seemed hardly older than he was, smiled right at him.

And they traveled, and taught, and smiled, and lived.

Hm.

2011-05-31T18:45:00.000-07:00

Setting: Underwater Base
Plot: Yet Another Christmas Carol
Narrative Device: Promoted To Scapegoat
Hero: First Person Smartass
Villain: Villain With Good Publicity
Character As Device: Iron Buttmonkey
Characterization Device: Compliment Fishing

My friend looked straight at the person who was quite possibly the best-known figure. I knew where this was going, so looked out the window to watch the fish. Boring conversations I can fake interest in, but I could mouth along with this one if I wanted to.

"You know, your colleague there would make a splendid commander." I heard and didn't react. The man wasn't addressing me, I'd always survived before, and the school looked like a white fish had swum through a prism.

"I'm sure you'd know better than I." I suppressed a smile that the best-known might see reflected in the glass. Three...two...one...

"But you have the most insightful opinions. I really would like to hear." The first time I'd heard the man speak like this, I'd been confused. His persona was so carefully crafted. It honestly hadn't occurred to me that he was charading. I suppose I wanted the world to be as it seemed.

"Very well." My lips did twitch then, as I turned to look at the two who were moving past the traditional back-and-forth. My friend sat cross-legged and we followed suit, though I was still clearly outside the conversation. Not that they'd notice if I did mind, wrapped up as they are in each other. Honestly, I should just bring candles and lobster one of these times.

"Let me tell you three stories. They're about you."

Setting: Premiseville
Plot: Legion Of Doom
Narrative Device: Hostile Weather
Hero: Technical Pacifist
Villain: Non Action Big Bad
Character As Device: Fantasy Character Classes
Characterization Device: Kick Them While They Are Down

I sighed at the dim light of false dawn as rain poured down. There wasn't time to run back and grab my jacket unless I wanted to miss the sunrise.

The only particular reason one would run across this particular place was because of its name. First, because out here, far from Earth, the names were traditionally quite long and two words at a minimum. Second, because out here, people had come to find fresh and new; very few used any piece of the old Earth languages or names. No Plymouth, no New London, always something different. And then here we were, old enough to be part of a dead language, but in the fresh land, barely a generation and a half settled.

Tomorrow, I would be fighting. I'd been in something like this before, and figured this would be worse. Some would be with me, but I'd be darting to reach where I needed to be, and I'd be alone. It'd feel like me against the world. And, of course, the world as a whole would have no trouble killing me, even if I were lucky enough to find some with a code like mine.

Avoiding killing them wouldn't be a problem once I reached the heart. The leader wasn't much for physical fighting, really. Guile, yes, of course. I'd have to be on my toes, when I'd probably be bruised and suffering from minor-to-severe blood loss. I briefly entertained the thought that the injuries might make someone go easy on my before my suspension of disbelief shattered.

But still. I was fighter enough from my mother, and had smarts enough from my father. Even if this didn't work, I'd probably survive. Bruises, blood, broken bones and all.

I watched the green and gold of a drenched Pax sunrise.

Setting: Big Fancy House
Plot: Forgotten Birthday
Narrative Device: Explosive Leash
Hero: Hurting Hero
Villain: What Measure Is A Mook
Character As Device: Reformed Criminal
Characterization Device: Ridiculously Successful Future Self

The ballroom was the definition of opulence. If you stuck the picture in the dictionary and left no other definition, people would get the basic idea. A more thorough idea would probably also require the living rooms, the bedrooms, and the fireplace. Oh, and the guest kitchen.

It was a terrible place to dust.

The place would have been awfully time-consuming even if I wore comfortable clothing. As it was, the jumpsuit itched, and the collar chafed. Of course, the collar was not quite as uncomfortable as it would be, should I move three steps outside this room.

Everyone forgets us. It's not that I really expect them to care most of the time, but I feel like they should care when I do something wrong, at least. Some iota of concern. But nope. Uncomfortable outfit, choke collar, and beyond that we're just forced labor that did something wrong. Something, somehow, somewhere, somewhen, but not quite someone. I rubbed at my eyes with the heel of my hand. It was the dust in my eye.

It was my birthday, the day before the one I'm writing of. As I write this, three years have past, and I celebrated my birthday for the first time in a decade. Chelsea's is in a month, and I'm already planning the party.

The old house is still a terrible place to dust, but I make sure none of us work on our own. After all, I can afford it.

Speaker and Author, Author and Speaker

2011-05-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the same and sometimes one's meeker.

Matter-of-factly.

I scare you, you know. When you let yourself think of me. When you let me be here, in front of you, not behind, not out in the corner of your eye, not flickering or glimmering through a cloud or a crowd. When you genuinely, honestly, accept that I am.

I am what I am, and I translate poorly.

You know, I don't have to be scary. I didn't scare you when you were littler. You made a game of me, actually; do you remember? Figuring out what sort of person you were. Most of your firsts. First book read all through, first time you listened to a piece of music because you liked it, not because your parents were playing it. I was there with your first lie, the first thing you took without asking. The first time manipulation failed, too.

With a note of annoyance.

I can help you. But only if I'm standing in front. Not all the time; I'd block your view of everything else. But every once and a while, let me hold up the mirror. Remember where you're worse than you dare admit and that you are better than you recall. Look. Look! You're getting comfortable as yourself; that's what growing up is. But not if you're so dead set against looking at me that you only bother to see your sunburns and scars. Not if you're so determined to never let me in front that you never see your face, until you almost doubt you have one.

Calmer, and tired.

I know. You can see your hands; you can see what you're doing; you can look into still lakes on clear days and see your face. And maybe if you've forgotten me, forgotten even my glimmers, even how I look in the clouds, only notice me when I flicker through crowds of half-remembered faces and spotted mirrors, you might forget that I don't only show you.

Not an order, but still firm enough to be heard.

Call me. Look at the edges. I remind you of yourself, yes, but around the corners where I keep myself clean but that the lakes cut off with blurs and shores and odd angles, where that old mirrors cut off with dots of tarnish, look. You can see the crowd around you. What they say when they think you're not listening. They're not all insults; there's admiration. It's getting better. I swear it's getting better. I swear it will get better.

As one asking for an old friend back.

Come on. Call me. You know the name. You can't have forgotten that much. Even if you only remember the mirror, only the wisp of a dream, you can't have.

A pause. Then, perhaps, a note of desperation.

You can't.

Moments

2011-05-19T22:25:00.000-07:00

The odd feeling of falling, tumbling up as two quick eighth notes precede a held belt.

Pain rumbling through your stomach as the junk food catches up with you.

Discovering that the reason your favorite snack is out is because the fresh batch finished as you walked in.

Skimming along different sources to procrastinate and finding a quotation that explains, exactly and succinctly, that odd thought that had been running through your head all week.

Sprinting for the sheer joy of feeling bare feet pound dew-damp grass.

Staring at someone who called you out. Watching calmly as the light flickers on behind those arrogant eyes that start to recognize a fighter.

Watching the sunset in midsummer, harvesting done and safe for the moment, babe in arms. Your lover puts a warm hand on your shoulder and shares the moment.

Yelling, "Echo!" in an empty cavern.

Glancing at the clock and realizing with a jolt that it's two hours later than you thought it was.

Finding that piece of candy that you'd come to think was something you'd dreamt, rather than something you'd truly eaten.

Stabbing yourself with the pig-dissecting scalpel without piercing your glove.

The moment after a terrible day where you fall into someone's arms and cry so hard you shake without any control.

Realizing that what you just did was the last item on your to-do list.

Finding an author with a writing style you love, then finding nineteen other books by the same one at the library.

Shyly holding hands on the first date.

Feeling your breath stop as your eyes meet with the person you've never quite gotten the courage to ask out...and realizing the other person stopped breathing, too.

Finding that someone else feels the same way you do.

Figuring out what on Earth made that piece. Why this chord sounds happy, what this archaic language means, why the cadence works as it does.

Standing confidently to a challenge and exceeding even your own expectations.

Extending a hand to that person you've never been close to without thinking about it, then seeing the spark of friendship start in those eyes. A smile echoes in yours.

Seeing everyone you care about safe. Laying down to rest.

After Rose's Tale: Part 1

2011-05-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

Merry Friday the 13th
Story Generator
Setting: Bazaar Of The Bizarre
Plot: The Siege
Narrative Device: Mind Rape
Hero: The Drifter
Villain: The Evil Genius
Character As Device: Walking Disaster Area
Characterization Device: Squee

Rosetail got its name a while ago. No one's entirely sure where, anymore, though my favorite one tells that some determined young thing named Rose got the people here, then no one bothered to write it down.

Whatever the story, the place is absolute heaven for someone looking for weird stuff. You know that thing you had when you were seven, and you've never been able to find it since? You can find it here. Eventually.

The man's mouth twitched as he walked.

If you've got money to spare for a guide, then you can even find the thing efficiently. The vaguer the description, the better the guide, the more the money.

That was what Daniel Riverside was here for, at the moment. He traveled all over, but always ended up back at Rosetail, one way or another. For a few supplies he couldn't find elsewhere, to be a guide for a little extra cash, just to breath air that had touched coral-kissed sand and dry desert nights. Never had a place to call home, but Rosetail came pretty close. When the rain soaked through his coat, or someone got a little too close to...

That night, the one he didn't talk about, the one he wasn't going to think about here, the one he would not tie to Rosetail if it would save his life because Rosetail was still home, still here, still the same, even if he wasn't...

Riverside gestured to the shop with a polite smile. "I believe you were looking for the tintinnabulator, miss." The name didn't really matter. It was a pretty little machine that made lovely, lightly jingly and twinkly. The thing wasn't particularly rare, but the young woman had an odd cadence that made her a little more difficult to understand, so she had gone to Riverside anyway. The uselessness of the object didn't bother him. He got his rate.

Riverside wandered back to where the guide-seekers lingered, though he took a scenic route. For business, it was good to check for anything new, and for pleasure...

"Fresh apples even in the driest regions!"

"Here, rub a little honey into the back of your hand, and it'll make your soft skin even softer--"

"Oh, my, these are beautiful..."

The guide smiled at the thrumming market. It remained enough to bring back old memories, and changed enough that the old drifter might not much mind calling it home, if he ever tired of drifting.

The not-that-tired drifter glanced over the walls absentmindedly, not really expecting to see what he'd become accustomed to looking for...

Riverside sighed and swung up and through the hole in the wall nearest the new cracks.

"River!" Happy, but still jittery little Jen.

"Jennifer," he drawled, as she expected and he was used to. "Fancy finding you here."

One Day

2011-05-07T20:45:00.001-07:00

Her voice kept the cadence, and she didn't look at him.

"One day...when the Earth burns cold and fire is a distant dream, when warmth is rarer than diamonds and burning is indescribable, perhaps I will lie down to rest. Perhaps I will have that respite, will have gone long enough and have no more promises to keep. Nothing to keep me clawing back up."

Her eyes closed.

"My little ones will be grown--unless they don't, and I end up spending my life hunting who hurt them. But, should life work out as I would have it, they will grow. They will live. They won't need me anymore. I'll be here and find that no one calls for me to save them from dark creatures they barely understand"--without opening her eyes, she nodded towards the two, though one had moved--"and I'll be done."

A dark, genuine smile touched her lips.

"Perhaps it will be death. Given how I live, I would guess that I'll see it coming, if only by a few seconds. Have a moment to myself when I simply know there's nothing left to do, no one left to save, nothing to do to extend a life or a helping hand. Just feel it...end."

A few people shivered. She opened her eyes, glittering with a sun-bright smile.
The hearth crackled, and the usual hum of background conversation gradually started back up. Everyone could figure out how much she dedicated. Very few liked to think of it.

"But not today, I think."

Understanding

2011-05-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

A/N: Mm...yep. One of these again.

I am of the opinion that any hate I feel is a failure in my own understanding. I might hate a person, but the fact that I am feeling hate is an expression of my own ignorance: I do not hate the person, I hate the incomplete collection of facts and theories I have cloaked the person in.

Therefore, the idea of an omniscient being hating anyone feels too simply wrong to express. This is a being that understands every moment, every thought, every justification and doubt and fear and hope and whisper of change, and that being can hate?

I have spoken of my obsession with communication. If I had to pick something I believe in, I would say connections. If one tries to communicate and one tries to listen, we can connect.

This feeling is not just an expression of poor communication, a thinned connection. It perpetuates it. Hate, prejudice, old feuds. They're not just things that split communications, that isolate, though that would be enough. They connect to shadows, shadows that layer until it's so dark you can't see what you're doing, much less the person across from you.

And that is simply too much. That is not violence, though violence may come. That is not suppression, though that may come. But it's before that, when maybe no one even realizes what is going wrong. For as you see my shadow, I see yours. When you react to my shadow, when you react poorly, I add that to my information of you. I create a you that does these things in reaction to me as I am. And as I react to that, my shadow becomes richer, I become the person who does that.

Ticking and tocking through darkness, slowly we look to see shadows and epiphanies.

Statistics at time of posting:
God hates:
Bing: 8,180,000 results
Google: About 1,540,000 results
God loves:
Bing: 198,000,000 results
Google: About 4,560,000 results

(I updated this list just before posting. The former had gone down, the latter up. Cheers.)

Messy Moral Mathematics

2011-04-29T19:43:00.000-07:00

Inspiration for this post comes from the oft-spoken argument that Gotham would be better off with The Joker simply dead, not in the Cardboard Prison of Arkham Asylum, so Batman should just shoot him already.

The authors'/Batman's argument against this is that it would make him "just as bad" as The Joker. The common response of the fan in question is that it totally wouldn't. The Joker is literally irrecoverable, and even if he can, eventually, be reformed, the number of people he will kill/maim/drive insane before he would change clearly outweighs the loss of one person.

In a sense, I agree with both parties. It's not that Batman would be as bad as The Joker because this one act would be so horrible on an objective scale. Batman would become just as bad.

My reasoning for this can be divided in two parts. The first is the Mirror side, which works in a vacuum, and the second is the eponymous Messy Mathematics, which remembers all of Gotham.

Mirror: The Joker is essentially a mirror image of Batman. Batman went through a wrenching experience, went insane, and went dark and good. The Joker went through a disfiguring experience and saw life as a joke--he went light and harmfully insane. Both are hu rt, costumed, insane, spreading their world view, and terrifying--even to their allies.

They're so similar. If one is beyond salvation...

Mathematics: I'm going to draw on another example for this one. Let's say you have two people in a fire, and a hero willing to save them. The math at first appears fairly simple: 2 > 1. The hero should risk life and limb to save the two who need saving.

But it's not, really. Let t=time left alive. Let n=average number of people saved. Let the end goal=maximum number of people alive. The hero isn't 1, the hero is 1nt, and so are the two people. If the two civilians are frail, or dying soon, or cowardly, or any number of other things, then their variable-adjusted 2nt < 1nt. The math gets messy. But the problem isn't even that simple.If the hero is the sort of person who allows two people to die in a fire because the hero can save someone else tomorrow, chances are good that the same excuse is going to come up tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...and that changes the value of n.

And that's not even taking into account inspiration. Let i=inspiration. The act of saving the two people adds an i to other's equations, rippling out, and it's impossible to calculate the exact effect that has.

It isn't that killing The Joker is an act of such outright, objective evil that it could not be construed as a good act. But the equation changes. If Batman is the sort of person who can kill The Joker, that taints him. The man, who has broken his one rule, the one thing that stops him from becoming Templar. The idea, that was the one beacon of hope, clothed in shadows and terrifying, but there to make the monsters scared.

The man becomes a killer. Someone who takes the law into his own hands, until it isn't even the law anymore, just the code of an insane man--and the image is as cracked as the dead reflection.

The idea is a monster. The shadow will find you. You won't see it coming. You'll have time to draw breath but not scream, time to be terrified, an unbearable eternity, but barely a moment. No trial. No justice. Just the swish that you hear when the wind blows the curtains, when cardboard runs against cardboard, when you're about to die.

Titleless

2011-04-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

Little lost. Little fool. Little ignorant little thing, trying stupidly, never finding anything but a place to run from run from, to never run to. No desire, no ecstasy, no fire or fate. Just a vague delusion that she's too little, too late.

Patterns? Oh, once they were hers. She was the smartest. She could reach things others couldn't, even when she was shorter. She was impressive. It wouldn't matter if they all deserted her. She stood, she walked, she ran, she rose, from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes.

Ah, but she grew. It's quite impressive to read when you're two. It's a stunning adventure to reach that view, to stretch up eight feet when you're five foot two. Amazing, astounding, and then...not so new.

She grew up and stretched to her very best, but the drive went away with no rewards nor a rest. They would grant, surely would, those who would smile were plenty--but no one cheered when she soared. She felt empty.

The logical part of her mind will say no, of course they're still cheering, still watching that show. But all she can see, beating heart in her chest, is they're not surprised--how can she let herself rest? She fed on perfection, or so close flaws unseen; she flew on being blue in center of green.

She popped, no comparison, no one that would thwart; what else can be when there's but one in that sport?

And still she is good, she knows herself great: she's pretty, she's smart, her friends love when she bakes. But she can't help but feel, in the back of her head, this odd little feeling of unending dread.

Here comes the last of the structure and schooling. Soon she'll be all alone, and it, life, will be grueling. She holds herself up and sees herself short--she cooks just desserts, what's that say of her worth? She could not support herself, not if she tried, she doesn't have the skills--she knows that she lies.

She could, if she tried. She knows she could. And that's the greatest terror, the one even she can't face, the one that makes her flee from her place. Not that she falls short, not that she lacks the reason, but that she simply, normally, pays that, come her season.

To be incapable--that she would hate. To be a dependent--what worse fate? But she knows one, though she bare' dare admit:

To be fully capable, and still to quit.

My Line on Secrets

2011-04-16T21:48:00.000-07:00

60 summarized posts+13 musings+26 somethings+this post=100 Posts

To start with the simplest way I can think of to say it: Any person should be able to keep secrets that do no harm. No person should be forced to keep a secret.

What I mean to say by the first is that I am not writing this as a part of a crusade to completely do away with secrets. I recognize that saying something like, "Ugh, you are [insult]" is something you might want to keep to yourself. Particularly if there's nothing constructive about the insult--"Your clothes are messed up" is worse than, "You're tag's sticking out," for instance. I also recognize that some secrets are simply difficult to communicate. I...obviously can't give an example of that one.

And, simply, I believe people deserve a certain level of privacy. Unless I am interested in a relationship/one-night stand with you, I don't need to know your orientation. I would say I don't even need to know that, only if you're interested, but there's an entire part of the courtship ritual devoted to winning over a potential mate so...gray area.

Simply put: maybe it's none of my business. I'm fine with that. As one of my goals is to know everything, I want to know, and as a friend I hope that if my friends wants to tell someone they can tell me, but I would not intentionally force an invasion of privacy.

And here comes the flip.

All that stuff I just said about being forced to tell a secret? Combine that with a need to communicate and understand, and a reflexive feeling of wrong about anyone being forced to keep a secret, and you begin to have how I feel about a person made to keep one.

Then there's the more conventional way to force: make it unsafe. If I have no particular thing standing in my way, I personally am open about my bisexuality. If I would become a target...well, I personally would probably be fiercely open out of spite, though that's not exactly the healthiest way to be open, but someone else might hide, and it certainly makes things more difficult. If I would be putting my family (or friends, or partner) in danger...that would stop me. At least for a while. And that lack of choice is not healthy.

There are multiple methods of force, of course. The simplest is one I've alluded to in talking about the right of secrecy: intentionally creating a situation where people are incapable of saying it. Back to sexual orientation--if a person does not know the word bisexual, nor that such an orientation exists, it suddenly becomes a lot harder to recognize that orientation in one's self, never mind explaining it to someone else. It's not as flagrantly dangerous, and yet...

If I'm under threat, I'm under threat, but if I lack the ideas, then I have no idea what is happening. I cannot speak for more than myself, but I would rather understand.

Another Origin

2011-04-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

A/N: Just hit 1500 hits, and coming up on 100 posts. Wow.

It amazes me, as I edit old things I wrote, how redundant I was. Wonder what I'll notice in another few years.

“In the beginning, there was nothing.”

That’s how I’m supposed to start, right? But that can't be right. Because when someone says in the beginning, it means that there was the beginning. There is something present. The beginning is there. Were there truly nothing, it would not be a story.

If you merely wish to hear what happened, here it is: There was nothing, or so little that none would notice it. And then it became everything.

But the story is a story:

In the beginning, there was everything.

All wrapped up together, there was everything, tight as a bond between lovers, between mother and child, between trust and belief. And it was still.

There is no word left or yet for how absolutely motionless it was. A still pond has thousands of things moving in it, even in the tiniest drop. Motionless implies that motion is the basic state. But here, things were simply still because they were. None of the little particles in the universe had gotten the idea that one might turn yet.

So they were, and they were still—though ‘still’ is a shadow cast from that first stillness. And perhaps this is what some mean when they say, “In the beginning, there was nothing.”

And then, one tiny, miniscule little particle got the idea to move.

This was not easy. This was not moving against a strong wind, or moving against an ocean current pushing you the wrong way. This was not even moving against surrounding granite. A strong wind is still a force, and can be worked against; an ocean current can only push so hard; granite can be worn down. This was not merely moving against something tough. This was moving when ‘moving,’ ‘against,’ and, ‘force’ were not even ideas. They weren’t.

Yet this little, tiniest piece off a whole that had never been apart from anything managed to figure out that it could be done.

This was the first thought.

Then there was a slight movement, and the little piece—and ‘piece’ was as new as ‘slight,’ as ‘thought’—found itself doing something that was impossible.
This was the first action.

Then the first piece that had had the first thought and made the first action passed the idea to another.

It was possible for the piece to leave movement to itself. To be able to see all. To leave the universe an eternity before anything began to turn. But the piece simply shared the idea: the thought of being known or keeping this to itself as foreign as ‘moving’ had been a moment before. More, the idea of moving eventually came to this little one’s mind.

When I have been saying ‘little’, the only comparison I have had has been the universe. Our little one may have been larger than anything we could imagine. Or it might have been smaller than the smallest thing any will ever experience. The size does not matter, for, at this time, it was the smallest thing in the universe.

The idea being passed on was the first gift.

And something else picked up on the idea. There was a moment, an impossible moment. How do you introduce the idea of movement to one who has never felt it, never experienced anything like it? When it is not merely that you do not share a language, but there is no language, where do you begin?

This was the first story.

And the other piece, somehow, miraculously, understood. And they realized, together, that this was amazing. That this should have been impossible. That the little one should have sought for weary eternities, looking for one who could understand.

And then awareness sparked and they realized that this was simple. It was not luck. Once the first barrier had been broken, it was simple. For it is impossible to describe movement without movement, but descriptions are movement. They moved together, in the indescribable joy of two who have realized not just that they might be happy, but that everyone might be, and truly understanding.

This was the first emotion.

This was the first moment. The rest was background, now.

This was quickly followed by the first silence. Not because it had not been quiet before, but because there had never before been sound for silence to dance with.
And suddenly, one wondered about the other’s motives. Perhaps both. But then, one, the other, both, reached out for the other.

For each other.

This was the first trust.

This was the first truth.

This was the first time two souls, two pieces of collective divine, met.

They might have been together before, but they had not known each other, not even known of each other. They had simply had the universe, and were the universe. And that had been something.

But being able to be together, stand together, mind to mind, heart to heart, soul to soul, love to love, was something else.

This is why some people will insist that lust in any form is evil. Because that profound connection echoes through us still, and each any every one of us can feel that, in some way. And there is a fury in some spirits for doing something so similar, but so much less.

And, for the first time, they looked at each other. Then they realized that everything was moving. Had this been a sudden shift? Had it always been? How could everything have happened so quickly? They couldn’t’ve missed it, but they must have, hadn’t they?

And maybe they had. And maybe it hadn’t. It didn’t matter then, and it does not matter now. The two oldest souls are a part of each other.

They are just as old as everything else, but they came apart first.

They met first.

Why I'm Writing

2011-04-04T21:41:00.000-07:00

This is not quite "Why I'm Blogging", though blogging does reside under the umbrella of the written word.

For the basis of this article, "communication" will refer only to an honest attempt to deliver information. For instance, bullshitting or lying would not be communication.

Context: I'm attracted on a basis distinct from the male-female spectrum, which is usually called bisexual. (Given that there are more than two sexes, I dislike the term, but there you go.) I'm open about this, so people tend to know.

I'm walking down a street with two girls from school, because it's a school trip and we need to go in buddy groups of three to go shopping. Girl A asks if I'm religious (I'm not, but I never answer), and how that fits together with being bisexual, since the Bible forbids it. I point out that the Biblical book she was referring to also forbids things like wearing cotton and wool together. Or wearing linen. She says that clothing requirements "are obviously different from sex stuff." I ask why. She's turned away and moved on.

There. That is why I am writing. If I am in the middle of a conversation, the other person gets to interrupt, to turn away and stop. And I can't do anything short of grabbing them bodily and yelling, which isn't particularly helpful at communication anyway.

When I write, I put up a roadblock to that. If I had written a page and she read half of it, something is missing. If she responds to the first half, essentially interrupting me in text, then I can just go "...You didn't finish it, did you?" It goes from turning away and ignoring what I say to end the conversation to sticking fingers in one's ears and singing. It isn't an end to a conversation; it is immature and absurd.

I want to explain exactly how important this is to me. I am absolutely obsessed with communication. I love learning new words and concepts, because each new thing is not only something new to know, but another chance to explain something to someone, anyone. Understand me. This is the closest I will ever come to touching you, to knowing you are there; see me; try to understand; please listen.

I need to communicate.

That is not a poetic way of saying that I like having people around, or that I find people who don't understand what I'm saying annoying. I need someone to understand, and every time someone turns away without even explaining why they're so annoyed as to fully shut me out, it hurts. I don't know what I did, so I can't fix it, so I am going to fail at communication again. In the same way.

That is why I'm writing. Each step that makes it likelier that someone will see my full point is a step that makes communication likelier. I want to learn; I want to teach; I want to talk.

I want to communicate.

Incompletes

2011-03-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Wrote these a while back.

The guy took off and I jumped, hitting the ground with a bang that echoed through my knees. I would run.

It’s funny.

My feet hit the ground one after the other, faster than anything and soundless, because that slap, slap we’re so used to isn’t nearly as loud when you run right, and I was just moving to move.

Vampires, elves, Vulcans, we’re so obsessed with things that go for longer than we can.

I couldn’t tell you how long I went, just keeping my sight on him, one foot after the other, hitting the ground in a rhythm that soon matched my heart and breath, cut time to common but still there, still a rhythm within me that faded as it synchronized. Everything was instinct.

And yet, and especially, when we look for what makes humans better in the animal kingdom, what do we find?

The one in front of me started slowing. He was bright; he’d avoided anywhere I could trap him. But he wasn’t agile. It was all wide open space; I could see him from a mile away. He couldn’t hide, he couldn’t dart under something, and by this point he didn’t even have time and energy to spare if he found a place, not enough to hide his tracks.

He slowed. Collapsed. I sped.

Humans endure.

The mirror was in an undesirable state of being.

Once, lifetimes ago, he had been alive. And possibly female. That would be closer in line with how the woman who had trapped him worked, but he couldn’t remember anything of his past life. His voice was masculine, so, at the present time, he was a he.

“Mirror, Mirror on the wall,

“Who’s the fairest of them all?”

He is bound to answer truth, but is adept enough at sticking only to the letter. That, the spell allows for. The mirror opens his mouth to give back her expected, “You are,” as always, and hears himself say, “Um.”

The witch glares at him.

He tries to think of a way out. Snow White is lovelier, but factor her hair in, and she was by no means fair. Her hair was black as snow-soaked stone, even as her skin was as white as her name would suggest.

The mirror panicked. Had she updated the spell? He searched for anything that was different.

Oh.

Who’s the fairest of them all?

The mirror, miserable but bound to answer, lacking any outward expression so reflecting her calm annoyance, echoed out the answer. “Snow White.”

The queen was livid. She sent out a huntsman to kill the young girl. The mirror was neutral, with no one to reflect, and was left alone for so long he began to fade. There was nothing he could do, for he could not reflect a lie, anymore than he could clarify of his own will.

The fair queen hadn’t included herself.

I sucked in a breath and pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Victoria—”

“Wait.”

“We really don’t have time to—”

“My top five priorities just died, I think you can wait two silent seconds while I rearrange my damn goals.”

Vampires can enter uninvited.

The operative word here is can. A young vampire is still learning how to regulate basic functions, and the additional focus required to suddenly need to regulate not actively rotting when you’re still learning to remember to breathe and keep your heart beating are notable. If you’re outside, or invited, then forgetting those is mildly uncomfortable, and you may gray out. No big deal, usually it’s just a few moments of diminished senses, and at the most a few minutes—given the healing factor we have, there are very few things that can hurt us permanently even given all those minutes. And very few realize they need to. Would you proceed to burn the corpse if you’d already slit the throat?*

But the young ones usually haven’t figured out that they can pass through thresholds, the older ones know they shouldn’t, and the oldest ones can fake it well enough. I’ve been told that the truly old ones can trick even other vampires into believing that they’ve been invited in, though the fact that I’ve never even heard firsthand knowledge at two hundred and thirty-eight should tell you how rare or deadly quiet they are. Regardless, I’d say your chances are better of being killed in an earthquake/tornado/insert local disaster here.

Oh, also. I don’t know about you, but I’m the sort to pick up new accents after a few weeks around new people. Sometimes I’ve even been talking to someone for a few moments and started using their accent without noticing. So this will all be fairly modern, because I have yet to give up human interaction entirely.

And if my register flips between how old I am and far too young for any adult…well, I doubt it will, because I usually have trouble passing for “gifted,” much less my age. But if it does, do keep in mind that humans do still talk to me like I’m twelve. I have to move too often for anyone to acclimate to treating me my age.

* Incidentally, the vampire population decreases significantly during plagues, because the answer to that question is suddenly and definitively, “Yes.”

How I Read Reviews

2011-03-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

In the world of the rhetorical triangle, my audience is an ill-thought-out metaphor.

So, I'm perusing Amazon. There are two items I come across, and one's ratings are significantly higher than the other. I have no other prior information on either book, and something in Amazon's algorithms directed me towards both, so I'm not even entirely sure what they're about. I read the descriptions, and they strike me as fairly similar. Both descriptions could be of a bad, textbook romance, or of a well-written tale of what "romance and intrigue" would bring to mind if it weren't so thoroughly associated with textbook romances #8-47, 89, 307-415, and 112. I pick the one with the lower rating.

Book set #2 looks almost exactly the same. If there are any differences in rating, they are in the hundredths. I was directed in the same way, and one looks textbook romance, one looks different in an interesting way. I pick the one with the higher rating.

The point of those paragraphs was to say that the average star rating doesn't factor in. Honestly, the stuff I like is probably going to do terribly in my age bracket, and the ratings say more about the advertising than the actual books--if you get a ton of adolescent males suddenly getting given Twilight books, guess whose rating drops? If the book is for an incredibly narrow audience, and no one else will understand it, but it also happens that only three people--myself included--outside that group will ever find it, then its rating will probably be pretty decent. And polarizing books have 2.5, because half the people give 5 and the others 1 (or 0). It just doesn't work for me.

So:

I start out looking at low-rating comments, seeing if I care about them. Then I look at high-rated, same metric. Basically:

1. Spelling. Not just proper spelling--it's the internet, people make mistakes and don't edit them. Big whoop. But if I come across a review that's written in 1337 or with a bunch of random symbols in the middle...I'm not part of that demographic. It's probably not going to say anything I care about.

2. Grammar. Once again, grammatical errors happen. The ones I'm looking for here are the ones where they wear their poor grammar as a badge of pride--"I know my grammars gonna be bad, but u can just deal."--and false intelligence. The most common are putting "I" where "me" belongs, or "whom" for "who". "He got the book for me."-->"He got the book for John and me." And if the who is performing an action in active voice, that's a who. "He is there."-->"Who is there?" "Whom is there?" just tells me you're trying to sound smart and failing.

3. What are you saying? All of these have been subjective, but this is probably the most so. Say the person says that the author went too far into the background and mythology of the piece, to the point of most of the story taking place in the past. I find that fascinating. If it goes dry, "Oh, by the way, vampires can move at exactly thirty two feet per second per second horizontally, and werewolves can move a 8.6753 meters per minute while in shifted form, but..." then I'm probably not interested. But if someone is complaining about background as a bad thing in and of itself, we have different tastes. That review doesn't help me, so I move one. Positive reviews have the same thing. If the person talks about how the graphics in X game are so amazing and immersive and...sorry. Graphics, not really my bit in videogames. I want to see everything clearly, so crisp graphics are good, but I only really fall into the sun-dappled autumn leaves fluttering if I'm not worrying about winning/losing/playing.

Vivid Memories

2011-03-12T14:46:00.000-08:00

To the muse whose face is in the shadow of memory, whose throat brought us here.

I keep a diary, and one of the entries I try to keep up on are vivid memories that pop up during the day. These aren't just me remembering, "Oh, yeah, that happened." The memory has to have some sensory element that comes back into my head perfectly. For instance, my dad bought me a pink balloon. I remember the exact shade of the balloon before and after being blown up, so the balloon is a vivid memory.

The interesting thing, that the above illustrates quite well, is that these are entirely random. I remember the shape of quite a few traumatic memories well, of course, and the shape of exciting ones, amazing moments, moments I try to remember. But the memories where I can quote and mimic inflection, or repeat the movement, or remember how the hug felt, are entirely random. From observation, I have gathered that this is true of other people, although I'm not entirely certain.

What I find interesting about this is that it means a sufficiently large audience focusing on a sufficiently small performance will have every bit of the performance. Everyone will remember the shape of the spectacle you wanted to draw attention to, a good chunk will remember this or that part that made them come to a sudden realization, but these random, vivid-as-life memories can come from any part of the performance.

"Performance" has an association with the stage, and this is not the definition I am using. Any action with a sufficiently large group of people looking at it finds its way into someone's memory.

The statistics aren't perfectly even, of course. Things people are more likely to remember the shape of that are new are tipped a little towards vividness.* Because newness makes it more likely to be remembered, younger people and people in a completely new situation are more likely to remember. We recognize that much, intuitively. "Oh, I remember because it was my daughter's birthday." "I know because I forgot my hat that day, and when I went back I looked out the window and there it was." 'Something thrust me out of my routine, so I remember everything a little better.' But true vivid memories still have a touch of random to them. If something sticks out enough to make me remember, I may remember the shape better. If something is traumatic enough to give me flashbacks, then of course those are more vivid than almost everything else.

But I also remember the shade of that balloon. That freezer of ice by the grocery door. Staring at the mirror with the big crack down the middle. Bending to the audience in 'Defying Gravity' in eighth grade. The moment I realized I liked him, followed by the whiplash realization and throwing myself out of that. The lunar rainbow.

And so any word I say can be the most important thing I've ever done, because this person remembered it, and it inspired this.

*The shaped ones that you see regularly get back into shapes, like trying to hold a camera still and taking a picture of the same landscape on the same part of the film--the superimpositions that are slightly off blur the image.

In Order

2011-02-27T10:35:00.000-08:00

My overarching goals are as follows: To learn everything, to teach it to everyone, and to be an inspiration throughout.

This is the first time I have expressed this in print. Just thought I'd mark that milestone.

Common issues presented:

"...Isn't that impossible?" These are overarching goals that I constantly reach toward. I do not have to be able to see their fruition clearly, in fact, if I could, I would say I had poor overarching goals. My overarching goals contain supergoals contain goals contain tasks. Tasks are the first point where I assign a specific timetable, though goals have a vague one, and supergoals usually are possible within a lifetime not extended by a leap in the science of keeping humans alive.

"What if you discover that the human brain has limited capacity?" Then I will keep notes.

"But sometimes it's impossible to teach people things. You can't teach derivatives to someone who doesn't know algebra!" Yes. So I will teach them algebra first.

"How are you going to know how to teach everyone?" First: See first goal. Second: My supergoal here is to become a polymath teacher, with my current goal being becoming a mathematics instructor. Why math first? Because the worst teachers I have ever had/seen/heard of have all been mathematics instructors. Good ones exist, but math is more dependent on past knowledge than any other subject I've seen. A bad mathematics instructor can destroy a student's chances for years, if not more.

Another one that I can't summarize in a sentence but is expressed fairly well here is that I don't want to teach evil people. In reaction, I would give rational reasons for being good. If people like you, this is good. If people hate you, this is bad. Therefore, spreading happiness helps achieve later goals. We're pack animals; we like nice Alphas. Benevolent dictators have an easier time staying in power.

These three all have one answer, in a way: rational ignorance.* It is rational to memorize my notes' placements rather than all the information contained within if my brain truly has a limited capacity. It is rational to leave someone ignorant of how to work derivatives--briefly--if they do not yet understand algebra, because most people cannot learn both from scratch in a day. It is rational to help evil people become good before teaching them biases or how to achieve goals. The existence of a helpful being who will not help evil is a push toward good, which means I would be a motivator for anyone seeking to learn from me in the first place.

"How will you distinguish between good people and evil people?" I could say see overarching goal one again, but I have already stated that I will begin teaching before I learn everything. The simple answer is that I have no way to distinguish for sure. However, as a human, I do have feelings on the matter. Aaaaand someone in the audience points out that feelings aren't always correct; I can be biased, etc. So I'll say: "My goal is to spread knowledge, inspiration, and happiness. As these are my goals, I will place people who aid those goals as good, those who harm as evil, and those who do neither as in need of inspiration." It is not perfect in defining 'good' and 'evil', but it meshes with my goals and so works. I'd call it a pragmatism expression of idealism.

I can still be incorrect. That makes the instance a learning experience, bringing me full circle to overarching goal one.

* Ignorance when the knowledge would give less than the energy you would expend gaining it.

Hiatus

2011-02-26T12:31:00.000-08:00

Yo. Remember that thing about massive workloads? (To the tune of that add-a-verse Christmas song:) 5 college courses, 4 musical things, 3 chorally related, 2 music'lly intensive, and 1 done currently.

I will definitely be back by the second week of April, and I may post some stuff in the meantime, but I make no promises. For those of you skeptical of hiatuses ending, I would like to point out that I did just give a date and I have come back before.

Ghastly/Yesteryear

2011-02-19T21:22:00.000-08:00

This was for a writing challenge where authors start off with one word, then pick another word that begins with the letter the last one ended with.

"Don't worry?" she squeaked, "You just told me that there are monsters, and demons, and bad things, and it's dark and I can't see, and we're out in the woods, and they're out in the woods--" I held a hand up to stop her.

"Were." I rubbed my hands in front of the flames as they ate at the logs. "They used to live around here. You didn't let me finish the story."

Elsie curled deeper into her blanket. "Well...finish it, then."

"Eat your breakfast."

Elsie scowled and bit into her sandwich, swallowing it with an exaggerated motion. I stifled a chuckle and fell into the pace of the story.

"Once, when the world was young and dim, many came before humans. Some were calm, or peaceful, or frightened. Deer and young foxes are the remnants of the fearful. You see the peaceful in the dogs you kept around your house, that quiet intelligence. The calm were free as the foxes and the deer, but would look you straight in the eye.

"Then there were the predators. They were not the oldest--could not be. To be a predator, one must hunt; the hunted must predate the predators." Elsie ate her sandwich without thinking, falling into the rhythm of the story as easily as I was. "And they were terrible. Vampires who would eat only humans, werewolves who went insane in full moon's light. Young girls, no older than yourself, would go missing, and none would know if it were vampire, werewolf, eloping, or kidnapping.

"But, brave as the flame and bright as the sun, there came a paladin. One who would stand, not because it was the proper thing to do, but simply because such a warrior could not do otherwise."

"And the warrior struck the creatures down!" Elsie cried, beaming.

I smiled. "No, Elsie."

"What?"

"The paladin was a healer," I said. "Have I taught you to hate vampires?"

"No," she recited, eyes moving up and to the right, "The conscious ones can be good or bad as humans, and the unconscious ones are forces, and I should not hate them anymore than I should hate a stormcloud."

"The paladin had...blest hands," I murmured, remembering, looking at my own. "Many of the dark creatures were drawn to beauty, and the paladin was that. But more, a beautiful soul. People around her...wanted to be good. And the predators came out of the dark, at first to take a bite, then to feel the warmth. To bask. She healed, and before long, the healed were healing others. The warmth echoed." I closed my eyes, feeling the fire warm to my bones what had been ice for so long. So far fallen into the warmth, I started when Elsie complained.

"How come the girls are always the healers, and the boys get to fight? It's so stupid."

A smile that was neither good nor nice crossed my face. "Do you think every creature liked being warmed? The forces didn't. Some conscious ones didn't. The paladin was a warrior. The only difference between a warrior and a paladin is that a paladin is a warrior too."

A few silent minutes passed as the sun's light crept over the horizon and through the leaves. Elsie chewed silently. "You should be getting home," I said, pushing her pack over to her.

With the quiet scrutiny of a focused child, "Did you heal with her, or hunt?"

I smiled, and threw some ash on the fire and swung my pack over my back.

"Or?"

Doublethink and Acting

2011-02-13T11:13:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Less Wrong. Several posts--mostly the comments section--inspired this post, but the Franz Ferdinand style sparks were the comments section on this one, and a practice SAT essay prompt asking whether we, the people, need to question authority.

Starting with the easy bit. Yes, we need to question authority. I believe the state of an ideal mind is perpetually and always questioning authority.

There is an important line to be drawn here: Thoughts and Actions.

> And of course, no matter how much you profess your love of mere usefulness, you should never actually end up deliberately believing a useful false statement.

I haven't yet needed to "deliberately believe a useful false statement" (to my knowledge), but I wouldn't be particularly disturbed if I tried to, and found it repeatedly successful. Another tool for my tool belt.

--manuelg 30 January 2008 08:04:00PM

I don't see the line in that statement. It isn't an insult to the person, because the difference, I believe, is merely one in communication. We would do the same thing.

Believing that the sky is blue allows me to behave as if the sky is green. The fact that in my head, I think, The sky is blue, the sun is yellow, and clouds are either white or gray, occasionally becoming dark enough to look black, does not stop the words, "The sky is green and there is never anything but green in the sky," from leaving my mouth. Believing that I should always question authority does not mean I believe I should always defy authority. It means that, if the authority is unjust, I have a system in place to recognize that fact. My system is probably not perfect. However, if everyone is questioning authority, and believes that this state of being is acceptable, then chances are good that someone will notice, and enough people will listen to make it possible to change the injustice.

In the absence of a telepath, what I think does not matter in terms of what other people think of me. If I need to appear to give into peer pressure to avoid being fed to wolves, then the answer is not to give into peer pressure; the answer is to give that appearance. There are places where this thinking reaches a stumbling block--"But I'm not a good enough actor. I have to believe what I'm saying or I can't say it convincingly!"

This state of mind is dangerous.

This mind says, "I can lie to myself easier than I can lie to others." Lying to one's self is also lying to others. And this lie is much more difficult to fix. A lie to yourself needs to be protected to remain, and so questions to it make more lies, before you think about it. You can't admit the truth to yourself; how could you admit it to someone else?

Parable Time
Continuing with peer pressure: Underage drinking. If you don't drink, the people you're with are going to leave you--and you'd rather not be alone in this neighborhood. So you figure one drink can't hurt...and then you're buzzed enough to figure that one more's okay...and then you get home, and your Mom asks you if you're drunk, and, well, you can't exactly lie about that one because you're walking funny and you smell something awful. You get in trouble, but tell yourself that it was your only choice to stay safe, and your Mom's being totally unreasonable, and...

Rewind.

If you don't drink, they're going to leave you, and you'd rather not be in this neighborhood alone. You look around and confirm, yeah, there's really no one who'd stay with you, except that one girl who's smaller than you are and shrinks in enough to basically be shouting, "Hey! Muggers! Easy target!" So you take a beer and sip at it, moving around enough that no one notices that you're not actually drinking more than a sip of the cheap, weak, beer. You also start walking a little funny, which is easy enough because there are some blasted people around to mimic and no one has ever seen you drunk, so any mild mistakes are dismissed as quirks specific to your drunkenness. You get home and decide that the people you were hanging out were all being unreasonable. Honestly, who would leave a friend like that? And the girl who always draws in on herself probably needs some help, she drank from peer pressure and you know her Mom's going to ground her for that, so maybe you should bring her a cupcake at school tomorrow to cheer her up, and find some new friends who won't ditch you for following the law...

You told yourself the truth, and so reacted to the truth, rather than a comfortable, confining lie.

If anyone has a counterexample short of telepathy, I would love to expand my knowledge.

Lack

2011-02-12T21:16:00.000-08:00

It was not dark. If you envision shadow, the vast and endless black of the space between stars where some things can exist, in stasis, you miss the point. If you see utter, swallowing, dismal blackness that seeks to destroy, you miss the point.

The place was lack.

We are naturally predisposed to feel odd around lack. Not because of any shared experience, merely because of the lack of experience. If you are there, there is a being there. Vacuum should be true lack, yet we assign it a value in our heads. Even if we could only explain that value on that level between heart and head that gives the best and worst of poetry, or the true meaning of "space".

We cannot experience it in reality. We are. Nothing including us can ever have lack. Even removing ourselves from the equation, nothing can include a live us for long.

Nothing is terrifying.

We get hints of it. Loneliness. Darkness. Silence. Your heartbeat speeds. Your breathing grows heavy. Nothing there, but we're so used to it, there must be something, we can't handle there being nothing, but where, where, where...

The unthinkable. Nothing is there.

Alone in the dark.

What is so interesting is how easily we accept when this lack isn't our focus. It's our default, in the back of our heads. Think about a memory, or a vision, or a thought. Walk through memory, creating nothing new. Start at the center, your focus. Take one step out. Two. Three. Still within consciousness' soft glow. Eight. Ten. Twelve. Twenty-seven. Stepped past the light, past the black, to the default, to the lack.

And yet you've carried your focus with you. Named this realm. Lack. If you feel nothing, that still lacked. If not, if the sweet tang of blood, fear, sweat, the sweet touch of wonder, curiosity, love, the shimmers of novelty follow you, you move further from the realm of lack.

Here you stand. Not one foot in each world. Both feet along the blurred line. Go back two minutes, this realm was lack. Go forward some moments, the realm has no difference from any other reverie. Slowly, slipping, the focus blurs the lack to the have.

Welcome back.

You're home by now. Even if you stay. Especially if you stay. Home is where the heart is. This place glows now only with you. You made this space. The thoughts are yours.

Echoes

2011-02-06T11:19:00.000-08:00

Two days. That was all it had taken, poring over the rulebook and knowing his pride, to get a private audience. There were guards outside, and I was unarmed. I spoke.

"How many traitors do you have who claim to be with you, do you think? Half?"

"You've been in prison the past five years. Do you really think I'll fall for that?" Inside, I snarled at him for that. Just as I'd taken every loophole to get here, he'd taken every loophole to keep me there. I hadn't done anything but think.

I radiated calm. "You mean I've had five years in the heart of your base." Jack twitched.

"Five years, where all I had to do was talk, and all I had to talk to were your own. And you, you were so kind, you rotated them." There's a sheen to a man's cold sweat that I've never found anywhere else. He had it. "Now, in five years, I couldn't turn everyone, you're thinking. But there were such lovely people there; they spread the message for me." I smiled fondly in a reverie. "By the end of the first month, I remember they were coming in already knowing. Already having the first seeds of ideas planted, saplings, even. And the loveliest thing was that I was a conversation starter."

Jack shook.

"Because I had my ideas, and they had theirs, and they were compatible." I cocked my head to one side and smiled wide as a cat. "The reason rebellions take so long to get off the ground is that it takes people so long to talk to each other. And I"--tapping my chest--"am communicative."

He stared at me, hands shaking, forehead shining, breathing uneven.

And then...he lied. He straightened his back, raised his chin, steadied himself on some inner pillar, and lied from his crown to his toes. "You're bluffing."

If I am, then I am doing better than you. But I don't let all of that show, just enough for verisimilitude. "Really? You pride yourself on being strong-willed. Even if you have some doubt in the back of your head about how you compare to the general population,"--a wince--"you must see enough of yours. You think yourself stronger than they are. And yet...in minutes, I have given you pause. You doubt. What could I do with five years, when I can work my way up, when I can use the more open-minded and weaker to echo me? Could I convince you?"

The open-minded and weaker parts of his mind echoed and whispered, She could. She could.

We shared a long look, and I watched the inner pillar of his. Moving slowly, but at the speed of shared thought. Marble. Then diamond, harder, brittler, hiding nothing. Then glass. A wavering attempt to hide and it was chalk. A stumble and it would fall.

He stumbled.

Alone.

He gasped at my words, from my lips and echoed. I saw the thoughts. They were what I would think.

I'm alone. I've always been alone. No one cares. I'll die alone. I willed him to finish the thought, to think what I prayed I would think in his place.

Nothing. He fell.

I knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. I said what I prayed someone else would say, were I in his place.

"You're not alone."

He stared at me. It was an interesting experience, looking into someone's eyes as he put himself back together.

He thought it.

And I will help anyway.

Music

2011-01-29T23:37:00.000-08:00

All quotes picked for the passage, save the second last, which inspired the passage.

I recently asked for a suggestion for a blog post--real life, don't go looking for the post where I asked. Though do feel free to leave any requests in the comments section.

The response I got was a tentative, "...Mu...sic?" followed by another person saying it would be interesting to see where I would go off only that starting point. And here we are.

“Music is my religion.”
--Jimi Hendrix

I have occasionally said, in response to a question about my religion, that I am a practicing musician. Some people I've said that to took it as a joke, either a clever evasion of the question or a way of declaring myself non-religious. No. In the idealistic sense that religion is a way to become closer to the divine spark, I am a musician. In the cynical sense that religion is a way to meet people, I am a musician. In the sense that I feel a calling to music to and from my soul, the essence of my being, I am a musician. I am not shy about it. I only want to make sure people either let the topic alone or understand. A concert hall is consecrated. Singing is sacred, and I use that word in the way I know it. Song is not to be set up on an altar and treated with reverence from a distance. Song has the aura about it that a counselor who has been working in street grime, and beaming because he is helping people who need it. Singing in any style, playing any instrument. It is not the style, it is the feeling.

I do have...issues with people who intentionally destroy musical instruments. Yes, including the guitar smashes. In fact, because people tend think about those the least, especially the guitar smashes.

“Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.”
--Joseph Addison

There's a band called Nine Days. You probably think you've never heard one of their songs, and also have probably heard exactly one, titled "Absolutely": "This is the story of a girl, who cried a river and drowned the whole world, but though she looks so sad in photographs, I absolutely love her--when she smiles." I bring this up both because I think they have some other music which is genuinely worth listening to, and because there are way too many people who seem to think that the band who sings that song is Blink182 or 3 Doors Down. Because...they all have numbers in their names. I guess. It isn't the people's fault, from what I can see, some of the music systems genuinely have their algorithms messed up. Which is worse, really.

“Find people who think like you and stick with them. Make only music you are passionate about. Work only with people you like and trust. Don't sign anything.”
--Steve Albini

I went to a music-focused day in the city recently, held at SF State. The specific workshop I went to was a DIY workshop, with DIT (do it together) focus. They noted that we probably won't get a steady cash flow, and we might not even want one. Art suffers if you have to get something out by X date, because then inspiration can't strike whenever and then polish until it's done. They focused very much on spreading art, on keeping your day job, and on making friends. They also taught us how to make origami CD cases, because screen printing and folding is much cheaper than a CD case.

When they noted that it wasn't likely that any given person would make a lot of money at this, a bunch of people were disappointed. I almost felt elated. I think I figured out why: I don't have to land a music job to keep spreading my music. My choice is not A) get a well-paying music job, B) sing only to family and friends, or C) starve. I can do both. I still want a music job, but I have the choice.

“As a musician usually music is your way out.”
--Damon Albarn

When I was younger, I didn't feel I had very many close friends. I realize this was mostly because I had unrealistic expectations: I wanted one person who completely understood me and almost always understood everything I said. My communication simply isn't that good. What I would give, to have it so...

I sang a bit, when I was very young. I thought it was fun. It was something to do, and I didn't have to rely on any other single person, because I could sing solo. Even when I got into choir, that stayed to a certain extent because our choir was gigantic, and people tended to either be committed or simply mouth without singing--mandatory class.

Then came third grade. I hadn't really thought about music during the summer, but when I came back to school the first time I sang I remember stopping in my tracks because I sounded so different. And then...compliments started.

"You have a lovely voice." "[genuine surprise] My goodness, I thought a high schooler was here."

As a young child who had found no talent of her own, suddenly being able to sing, to do something I'd always liked, something I loved, was amazing. I had not thought anything about me was special; I thought everyone had some special talent and I was the one exception, and then I was wrong. If you have ever truly believed something bad of yourself and then had something prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that it wasn't so, I think you understand.

I was good.

Nothing bad mattered as much, once I could believe, "I'm good."

“There's so much excellent new music around that I can't afford to buy it all and I haven't the time to review as much as I'd like. I can't remember a better time to be a musician or to listen to music!”
--Malcolm Wilson

Origin

2011-01-22T22:24:00.000-08:00

A story is a story is a story.

It is rather difficult to describe the events that took place, because they took place outside time, and so not in anything we would call space. It's also difficult to explain the idea of coming up with an idea in terms outside of time, or creating something for that matter. Translated into our language--which is based around time, like it or not--here is how the conversation went.

There were problems. Beings wanted to be different, or should be something they weren't. In this place outside time, without time, "change" was not an idea yet. But, because they had infinite minds, which is almost the same as having infinite time, one came up with an idea.

"What about a place that allows change? A place with time." You would think this would be nigh impossible to communicate. In a world that lacked those terms and had time, that might have been true.

And so it was. And so the first were put through what might be a test, and left. It was an odd feeling. They genuinely left. And more were placed, at different places and times, which were close enough to be indistinguishable to any who had no memories from the place. Even those, when they came back, felt the lack of barrier was more correct. They simply remembered making the difference.

And so we sit and swim, moving on a line with branches and seen as goldfish in a sphere.

Internal Evil Mentor

2011-01-22T21:14:00.000-08:00

Inspired by something I do, named by this trope.

In order to make the proper choice, all options must be conceivable. If something is impossible, that is one thing, but convincing oneself it is impossible because it is immoral despite being the best option is something else entirely.

Simply giving oneself permission to think these thoughts can seem too far to go. After all, if you can think these things, you might do them! Despite the fact that I disagree, I understand the sentiment. So here's a workaround: Set aside a part of your mental processing to argue the evil side. You can make that anything, e.g. just giving yourself permission to think the thoughts--probably one of the best options--or creating a character to argue the side. Remember those shoulder devils from cartoons? Those work. I personally prefer a femme fatale, her male counterpart, or someone else who's going to be wearing a lot of immaculate black and have that aura of deft intelligence.

Discussing this feels weird. What I am describing is sitting down, seeing the little devil complete with pitchfork and smile pop up on my left shoulder, and then listening. If seeking some solace, one may look for an angel and completely miss the point when finding none. If there are only two of you, and you can't see the angel from a first-person perspective, who do you think you are? The point of creating this mental construct and listening to him/her/it in the first place is to allow thoughts to go into places they wouldn't go before. And even with the adviser in place, that is not the part with the final say. The composite gets the final say. A common trope about evil's weakness is that it cannot comprehend good. The strongest good mind is that because of an ability to entertain evil or "evil" thoughts, and then choose good anyway.

I'm not claiming to be the strongest good mind; I've never been in that extreme a situation. But I do not believe truly good people have been good out of ignorance.

"I'd do anything!"

2011-01-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

Breaking it down literally.

First: "Anything" has no constraints. It is like infinity; it means everything from every place and then some. We live in a finite universe, at least for the moment. Even if the universe is infinite, in the absence of an ability to prove that, our universe as defined by "do" is finite. Minuscule, even. Put simply: This statement cannot possibly be true, unless you are omnipotent.

Second: From the first we have gotten, "I would do anything I am capable of." Would you? Would you really? Even setting aside the vagueness inherent in what you can and cannot do--at the present time or ever?--how many people are honestly promising to do anything they can, without heed to any other promise, any other moral or physical obligation?

Third: So you've decided you do mean you will do anything within your power, and that the person you're speaking to recognizes that stuff you literally cannot do is excluded. Having come to that conclusion, I must give you a warning: you only get to make this offer once. If you would do anything, the being may ask you something that will take the rest of your life, or will have ramifications you cannot foresee. And you will have promised. You must say yes. If you make this promise twice, it is a lie. If anything conflicts with fulfilling this promise, you must drop it, so making it twice means that if they ever come into conflict, you are screwed. And this is true for everything. For the rest of your existence. And choosing to end your existence is also a violation. You might be needed, and are avoiding your obligation.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't make the offer. It just means that you don't want to have this on your list of things to blurt out, and that if you do blurt it out, you should be wary about taking it from offer to promise. In other words, backpedal fast and hope.

Serial: Identity

2011-01-16T16:54:00.000-08:00

So scary I will never see
As the little piece of me
That to all challenge did freeze and pale
Because I saw chance to fail

Once upon a time there was a young man--call him George, if only because I know no Georges. He was gifted. He knew he was smart, and would be perfectly aware of that fact regardless of if anyone told him. It wasn't just getting good grades--he's paid enough attention to the right things to notice that average children who work hard also get exceptional grades. But stuff comes easily for him. He picked up reading in a day. Prime factors make perfect sense to him, and fractions were easy.

George, one day, runs into a new subject, and the few students in the class who read ahead were quite confused, and asked him for help. George had shaken his head, because class was about to start and he didn't feel like being caught talking in class. Again.

The teacher starts into the topic at hand. It happens to be some quadratics, and he sees some students starting to get it, most of the others not. He turns back to the teacher and forgets about that.

George shifts uncomfortably.

He's looking at this, and there are too many things he doesn't understand. He couldn't even put his finger on what, so he couldn't ask, and it wasn't clicking.

George stayed in a few moments past the bell, trying to get it, trying to figure it out, but it just wouldn't stick. There was some number...and...and...

Some students who'd gotten in the habit of talking to each other for help started walking over, because none of them had understood. George got great grades, so they asked him.

The world slowed as they walked to him. Were he a different child, he might plan to say, 'Can't you figure it out on your own?' or, 'I don't know how to explain it,' or simply, 'I don't understand either.' But the problem was that George had set himself up around being The Smart Kid. So George knows exactly what they're coming over for--for that matter, he would know even if they were walking over for the dictionaries a few feet from his desk.

He bolts.

He knows what the adults think of him. He's stuck up; he doesn't get along with the other children; he's insufferable. And the kids think he's lording it over them, he knows the study group are the only ones who even talk to him anymore without insulting him, and no one, no one will help him.

George tends to think in words only when something really important comes up, but he's doing it now, because he is so entirely focused on the idea.

I can't fail.

It isn't a statement of physical impossibility. It isn't supposed to be railing against the universe, saying it's wrong.

I don't fail.

He's a teenager now. At some point this question flashes through a lot of teenage heads, though not always with the statement in front of it.

I can't fail. So who am I?

Suggested Reading:
How Not to Talk to Your Kids

Honesty Is the Best Policy

2011-01-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

I sat down to think about the title aphorism when I was younger.

I came to the conclusion that I agreed with the statement as written, and disliked how it seemed some teachers were using it. "Honesty is the best policy," does not mean "Always tell the truth."

There are two values of always that I heard used for this interpretation. One: whenever you think of something that is true, you should communicate it to the best of your ability. This may include insults that are untrue, as it is true you have thought them. This is rude. Two: Everything you say should be true. This is unhelpful.*

So I chose to follow what I believe the statement means, rather than how I have heard it used by people trying to get me to be a good girl, because that way is useful and the other is not. I had trouble communicating this for a while because it seemed so obvious to me that that is what a policy is: Something you need a good reason to move away from.

"When in doubt, tell the truth."
--Mark Twain

I hesitate. Nothing has given me any useful information about this, but everyone is so scared; it must be important. I may not pull the trigger, but I'm directing. Whatever happens, I'm responsible.

"Red or blue!" a voice barks over crackly transmitter.

It's hitting me. Everything. I'm certain, for once I can't hide behind error, because I know what button he wants to hit. He wants blue. But is it right? Is that what I should do?

"Kat!"

I don't know I don't know I don't know. There's no help I can see from picking one or the other, It's a coin flip, no matter what I do, no matter whether I choose red or blue.

So I assume the worst. I assume that I'm going to choose wrongly, I'm destined.

Do I want look back, years from now, and realize that I destroyed my life because I chose to lie?

I hit the orange button on the side of the communicator and shout, "Blue!"

Or, if you prefer to see how my mind worked through it:

Situation: Someone asks you, "T or F?" This is all the information you have. You know that T is the true answer, and F is false, but you have no idea which will benefit you, anyone you care about, etc., etc. But you do know that one of them will cause a clearly positive outcome. So you make your choice.

The chart that appears in my head:

Going by the T or F choices gives you coin flips, so your choice doesn't matter. So let's look at the +/- rows. The universe is secretly trying to screw you over, and you will lose no matter what. This isn't necessarily true; it's just how you're putting your mind together to limit yourself to that row. All things considered, I'll look back mournfully on the truth easier than a lie.

* e.g. "Do you think I can do well enough to get the part?" asked right before an audition. The true answer is 'I'm not sure,' and silence will communicate 'No.' So you lie, at the very least in the moment, because it is what a good friend does.

Inspiration

2011-01-15T09:23:00.000-08:00

These are the posts that make me wish for a larger reader base. In light of that--and I promise I will ask this very rarely, if ever again--if you could link this post, if it interests you, or you know some person/group it might interest.

Inspiration is a slippery thing. It appears to occur entirely within the mind, and at the same time comes from outside ideas bouncing onto and into us.

What I call the inspiration stage of art is where everything comes easily. I may not be able to write a passage perfectly the first time, but I write something, and what happens is what I want to happen. I have rarely had this continue for more than a few scenes. The time that works best for me is, annoyingly enough, also when people become the most concerned. Sometimes people stay still when they meditate, sometimes spar, and sometimes write. So that distant, "I am not connected to the world" look means I am where I want to be.

I, apparently, look depressed. Someone who doesn't know me well enough--or maybe doesn't know this sort of artist well enough--will peer and hover and ask, "Are you alright?" Others will pick up on what's happening and ask to see the work. I'm still meditating and the idea of saying "no" doesn't enter my thoughts. I want to say yes to my inspiration, and everything inspires. By the time I realize what I've done, something that can recognize it is there enough for me to feel more like I'm trying to meditate than meditating. For instance, right now, I'm trying to keep up the flow I had in the beginning of my post, but some distractions are settling in. There's a skype conversation with a friend, which can be helpful; I dive into this but I need air. It's more than an hour past normal dinner time. I'm not quite hungry, but my body is a focus; the first notes of wanting something in my stomach are there. There's homework I should be working on. There's always something.

There's a chart I saw a while back that put words to various actions along two axes. High skill had and high skill needed was flow. The moment when I need all I have, when my entire being is my work.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here, now. Don't go thinking it's all dandelion fluff and sunset roses. After the flow comes, I don't have the whole story. How'd I get here? Where was I going? Where am I going? How do I get there? Even the finished story isn't all. I'll go back and edit this post. There will be a certain amount of calculation there that the absolute golden flow of inspiration didn't have, just as the editing is not the story. And everything, every creation on this world as I know it, needs both.

I am a being of curves and artistry, and I love math. Those go together better than any who deny themselves the pleasure of both shall ever know. Look at yourself. You are made for distance running, but also swimming, also throwing, also thinking, also figuring out what you can do. We are tool-users, and everything can be a tool. Music inspires, a joke, an odd conversation. And odd state of mind. The Less Wrong blog got me thinking about this, but not because I read a post obviously similar to it. Because it wakes my brain up, in a way I still don't understand.

I'd like to emphasize that this is not a rhetorical question: What's in your toolbox? What inspires you? I've never found anything more interesting, yet all I can write on is what I found in myself.

Thoughts

2011-01-06T20:53:00.000-08:00

I wonder, if I could go back with today's knowledge...

What if I had a little more?

I wish there were a word for this.

One of the most fascinating moments I've ever seen in my life is mild surprise. When there's shock, or terror, that overrides the person--and anyway, if the other person is that far for long enough to see well, there's probably reason for me to be focusing on something else.

But that moment where you see them go, "Oh. The world is not as I thought it was." Not getting the rug pulled out from under them. Just watching it move a little.

And one of the ways I see that, in myself, is finding that someone has had the same thought I have. In the abstract, I recognize that this is probably happening--there are probably some thoughts that many people have. Yet, somehow, it's odd to fall into the statistics.

One of the times I remember that clearly happening has to do with the first line. The idea of going back to the beginning of my life, with the understanding I have gained. Sarcasm isn't something the average six- or seven-year-old understands; adults treat children as less and this is incredibly useful for eavesdropping and getting honest answers about some topics. I remember watching two adults gossip about me when I was very little, and being fascinated with how completely honest they were being. I mistook thoughtlessness for bravery in honesty, but it was still helpful.

And then there's, I wish there were a word for this, which is not only something that I see or hear other people thinking, but realize people must have thought for the longest time. This is how languages form. This started with a Socrates quote, which, translated, reads: "I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." I remember reading it in my history book with a partial translation, the ancestor word of "cosmopolitan" was still in place. And it occurred to me that, yes, there's probably a word for what I want, however, creating words for an unfulfilled need is an art.

And yet. Even with these thoughts that almost everyone has thought, we still have such wide gulfs. Not even between cultures, just between two kids who grew up in the same town and went to the same school can simply not understand what the other is thinking. Even if I try my best to explain, and the other tries to understand, there are simply places it won't make sense. Even if someone knows me better than anyone does, better than I know myself.

Halfway across the world, someone else already understands, but here and next to my heart, this person doesn't.

Walks off, singing, "You say po-tay-to, and I say po-tah-to...

Norms

2011-01-01T13:25:00.000-08:00

A/N: Between the last post and this one, I hit 1,000 page views. Yay!

EDIT: Because I can say this better than I can write this, I edited this to try and make it closer to how I say it. Then it didn't work. I revamped, and here you go. Still not as good as I can say it. *mutters*

Brief & even more confusing than normal: People normalize to people like them, so average people end up normalizing and other people end up with more time before they find anyone with the same amount and type of pull.

I think about this occasionally. If someone is a genius, that person is going to be weird. Really, being notably smart is probably going to make one weird.

The obvious way to explain that is that "weird" just means "not in the middle of the bell curve", so smart people are weird by the definition of the adjectives. That's probably true sometimes.

I have another idea: People at varying points on a given bell curve gravitate toward each other. Someone exactly at the peak will like people who are somewhere around the peak. People at one edge or the other will be incomprehensible to and will not comprehend those in the middle, or those on the opposite side. If people devote the energy to it, they can skip around--especially if the person isn't in the middle of some other bell curve--but the point remains that that takes energy. The default is among one's similars.

This means that, in elementary school, when social groups are forming, one of a few things happens to people far East or West of the peak: 1)the edgers do not interact with the middlers much because they stick to their own groups, creating parallel but slightly separate cultures, 2)the middlers do not interact with the edgers because they are weird--same basic thing as one, but with a little more ostracizing because individual middlers can genuinely decide to avoid the edgers most of the time, while the opposite is difficult to impossible, or 3)the edgers do not normalize to anything, because 2 is present but other edgers (on the viable side) are not.

Even in option 3, edgers will still develop patterns of behavior and ways of seeing the world; the patterns will just end up alien. They started out significantly more/less X than everyone else, and then were pushed even farther. I'd like to point out what that means to me in light of previous posts: patterns, the basis of any action a human makes, end up being alien and/or incomprehensible.

So smart people are visibly weird because they don't start out at the same baseline, and then that fact pushes them farther unless they decide to expend energy in avoiding that, and even then. People who are willing to expend that energy probably want to be able to talk to everyone. Someone who flows everywhere doesn't completely belong anywhere. The island is not the ocean, the continent not the sea.

The Meaning of Life

2010-12-25T12:41:00.000-08:00

I'm not saying it. If you know what I'm talking about, don't put it in the comment section. If you really can't resist, just throw your towel over your keyboard.

The situations are thus:

First: Let the universe--that is, all that exists, in any form--be the world that is here, and some afterlife.

Second: Let the universe be only this one, but reincarnation happens.

Last: Let us assume that this world is all that is. The Earth, the Sun, the planets, the stars all exist. However, that's it. No afterlife, not even reincarnation, simply what is here now, what came before you, and what will continue after you leave. You are in no way a part of it, save in memories and other echoes in people's minds. Maybe in your constructions, if you made any.

Respectively, the most basic reasons for doing good would be:
1)to get into a good afterlife,
2)to make the world livable/better when you come back,
3)no outside reason.

Tell someone who doesn't believe in the first that one is your reason and that's...not a very good impression. It isn't a good impression even if the person does believe: So the only reason you're being good is to get something? Huh. That's not really good, then, is it?

Tell someone who doesn't believe in the second that two is your reason and it's a little better. But it's still selfish. It is doing something because you will get something out of it in the end. Not really a morally upstanding train of logic.

Then there's the last. And the thing is, three is a lovely answer to "Why do you do good?" regardless of what you believe, assuming you are doing good. It may not be very specific, but starting at the basic, it can work. You do not do good for any good outside what you are accomplishing. You do good works for their own sake, because "People are good and I want to help them," or "Because it seems like a nice idea."

Whether you believe you are getting an afterlife, or a reincarnation, or nothing, that last makes sense. Put simply: You may be interested in which of these options are true--or if another one is--but as far as behavior goes, there's almost no reason for it to matter. Because being good is a good thing.*

And really, if whatever entity you're trying to impress would say that's wrong, do you want to follow that being anyway? What, would you follow Cthuhlu?

* Note this doesn't even take trust into account--doing good makes people think that you will probably do good in the future. This can make them more likely to help you. At the very least, if you need/want to hurt someone, are you going after the guy who brings you chocolate every day or the one who is a constant nuisance?

Murphy's Law

2010-12-23T12:44:00.000-08:00

Simple: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

Specific: "Anything with a probability greater than 0 will, given infinite time, happen."

Combine: "Anything that can go wrong can go wrong."

End Result: "Anything that can go wrong can go wrong, and so we should prepare for it."

Misconception: There is a probability greater than 0* of an Earth-Shattering Kaboom. Therefore, an Earth-Shattering Kaboom must eventually occur.

Murphy's Law is not literal in any designated set of time. "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong" does not mean "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong this week," or even, "in my lifetime." The point of the law, as I read it, is that it will go wrong eventually, and so we should prepare for it.

And really, there are so many ways we can destroy ourselves that don't include [worry of the week]. Or, for the reflective phrasing: there are so many things that could have killed us and didn't. You, the person on the other side of this screen? You are born of survivors. As are all of your line. That doesn't mean you'll be perfectly fitted to this environment--who is? Today's superawesome genes are tomorrow's killers, are yesterday's okays. But it does mean that this species is pretty darn good at adaptation. The chances of a giant wipe are low in your lifetime, and the chances of a total wipe are still small. Anything that can go wrong, will. We won't always be here. But we'll have left a mark, and all the larger of one for being able to adapt intra-generationally.

And anyway, most of that stuff isn't going to happen in any way that makes a difference to us temporal beings of limited lifespan.

* This only works, by the way, if you decide that infinite time is something currently worth contemplating, and that the probability is consistently greater than 0. As opposed to one that decreases until reaching 0.** Incidentally, then it's still not guaranteed if it not occurring also has a probability consistently greater than 0.
** As opposed to approaching 0.

Thinking

2010-12-22T14:47:00.000-08:00

I've touched on this point in earlier posts: I fit the definition of "gifted". That doesn't necessarily make me more rational than an average person, it just means that I fit the sections established by a group of people I know nothing of that made a test that placed me in the "gifted" section. To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure what that means.

What I do know is that it means that anything describing an average person's mind is even less likely to apply to me. I always think of a science experiment one of my friends did when we were in middle school.* He put in several types of liquid in different containers, each containing three liquids. He shook it and they mixed. But when he let it set, they stratified. The difference was strong enough that the liquids could look solid if you dropped certain objects in them--ball of solid X would drop straight through substances A and B but stop promptly at C, making it look like it had hit a tabletop. Y would fall through A, bob down under A and into B's surface, then roll around. If you tilted the glass slowly--without spilling or mixing--they would roll around just as if there were perfectly solid planes, unless X popped up, in which case it would go up and down through the separation of A and B, then promptly fall back through. It was really cool. And people are like that. If you mix it up, A, B, and C will jumble; if you let it stratify then the top and the bottom are notably different from the center. Any generalization you make will, at best, only apply to the majority of the population. X would fall right past us, and would just barely brush the other side of the bell curve.

In the interests of a simpler metaphor, however, I'll go back to an old favorite: a teaspoon of oil on a large glass of water.

Before I continue, I want to make something clear: oil is not better than water. Yes, oil is on the top. Yes, we can use oil to do some pretty cool things--see light, cars, etc. However, we need water to survive. I'm not going to argue if/that people in the higher percentiles are better. Or worse, for that matter.

I'm here because I want to be able to present evidence that I was like this.

I look back on old memories sometimes, and they seem surreal. Like before I figured out I could sing. Or, and this one is weirder, before I figured out I liked it.** It's also odd to just look at my old handwriting, but even odder is my old thought process. I remember having bursts of insight, but what I didn't realize for a while was that I remember these because they were rare.

For instance, one situation that is burned quite clearly into my head--not in these words, just in the experience; I didn't put it into words immediately:

I'm sitting out behind my teacher's classroom. We are planning for a party, and we are in elementary school. The teachers gave us a budget and we'd already decided on the restaurant by a vote. We had to figure out, given the menu and budget, what we wanted. We had already agreed there would be no formal leader.

Very rapidly, everyone was talking at once.

I don't like noise. I don't like disrespect. I don't like everyone talking and no one listening, and I certainly did not enjoy the confluence.

With an anger I barely noticed until I let it out, I shouted for quiet. Every person in our neat little circle froze, went silent, and looked at me.

But at the time, all I felt was a sudden link to every single person in the circle, and a feeling of being on a web stretched taut. Any strong move would snap it.

"Alright," I said quietly, picking up some random object I had already settled on. I started into an explanation of how we could pass this among people, and only the person holding it could talk--

The girl across from me jumps up and shouts, "No! No leaders!"

And we descend back into madness. Eventually the teacher comes out to chide us, and we successfully manage to get everything under enough control to decide. For those of you who are looking for the details I've left out: Panda Express, I believe, and the party went off marvelously.

And that was, for years, one of my most vivid memories. I took this to mean that I had had some sixth sense as a child that I had lost as I grew, one that allowed me to control a group like that and sense the interactions in a group as they related to me.

Then I thought some more.

And I realized that this was the most extreme memory I had of such a thing. In other words, the situation I had been in was interesting, highly emotional, and novel. I remembered for the same reason my classmates shut up: it was weird. I didn't usually raise my voice above ambient, or get that angry, or call attention to myself. Put simply, I was confusing something that happened once and intensely with something that happened often.

And that means that any reasonable person can point to exactly that argument, and be fully correct if I can only give one example of me thinking like [description] when I way [number] years old.

But what this blog allows me to do is make a public journal. I can go through, think of things that I would be willing to share with the world at this point in time, and then explain them, to the best of my understanding, now. In addition to forcing myself to think through these things, I am also giving my future self a look at what I could do consistently. Maybe this is not a good cross-section of my entire thought process--if I think something is too personal, or that I don't understand it at all, then I won't post it. But it does mean that I can link, say, "Look at the date and do the math," then say that, yes, I really did think like that.

Or, should I get to cocky, go back, think to my self, "Look at how recent that is," and know that I really did think like that.

Because if I look up a study that says, "The average child will be like this at this developmental stage," I have good reason to assume that will not apply to me. And, knowing how my memory works, I cannot rely on it to tell me how I was. The oil on water metaphor doesn't just apply for gifted people versus the center of the bell curve. Take the reverse, and it also works for memories. Forgetting how I was is the same as forgetting my history; I'm going to make the same mistakes over and over.

...

And That's Terrible .

* My apologies for the vagueness. I can see the image in my head, but I can't remember any of the specifics.
** Just for the funny: When a person came to our school to talk about college and majors, she said we probably wouldn't be certain what major we wanted to have unless we had been focused on one thing and hadn't wavered since third grade. Guess when I started being seriously interested in singing.

Musing: Confusion, Circles and Consternation

2010-12-21T23:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, first, this.

I have discussed word power in previous posts. I believe very firmly in the power of manipulation in simple terms of getting a person to do something. I am aware that humans are fallible, that this is a part of being human at this point in time, we are not perfect.

And even with all of that in my head, I simply do not understand how the experiment can work out in favor of the AI even once if the Gatekeeper is firmly set against it.*

So let's figure this out. Okay. First: probably not something I'm likely to figure out on my own, given my age/experience level, and the fact that I have done very little actual research into human manipulation or AIs, much less both.

What confuses me most? I was actually pretty willing to accept the whole thing as simply a person getting logicked into a corner or something like that--unforeseeable circumstances, etc. Then I read this:

The Gatekeeper party may resist the AI party's arguments by any means chosen - logic, illogic, simple refusal to be convinced, even dropping out of character - as long as the Gatekeeper party does not actually stop talking to the AI party before the minimum time expires.

So this means that, even with both people given absolute free reign to say and do whatever they feel like, and with no out-of-character benefits offered, somehow they let the AI out.

In a word: What.

Okay, I've decided that, at the present point in time, I will not be able to figure out the specifics. So, before I go and check all this stuff out, let's see if I can think of any generals. I really wish I could have some "warmer/colder" on this, but I also understand why it's better that I don't.

First: the Gatekeeper has absolute free reign. This should make it very easy to keep the AI in. However, this would also make it very easy to let the AI out.

Second: There would be some social issue with admitting you "lost", but not much--I think, anyway. Hm. Connect to communicating to outside world: the AI being useful if let free, or releasing this (")safe(") AI into the world to prove that it is possible, therefore making the chances of a dangerous AI being let loose being smaller.

Third: The AI is perfectly capable of lying, or being just as illogical as the Gatekeeper can be. The only difference is that the AI is working to convince, and the Gatekeeper is trying not to be convinced.

Fourth: I have noticed it can be harder to fight for a negative. I don't like running, but I can chase something just fine. Tell someone not to look down, and...yeah. So though the AI does have a disadvantage in having to change the world rather than maintain its current state, the AI is fighting for a change, while the Gatekeeper is fighting for the absence of change.

Fifth: Appeal to curiosity.

Straight musing: I do not believe myself infallible, and so I do not believe I would trust myself to guard the AI for the rest of my life, or on a reasonable shift as part of my job. I think the main thing I'm trying to avoid here is routine, because that would give me far too much time to talk myself into it.

But do I believe someone** could talk me into it in a 2-hour span, if I go in firmly set against it? [I'm actually pausing to figure out what to type here.] Well...no. If you ask me to go at it as a logic problem, then I would have to give a maybe, because I am not infallible. It's like saying "Yes" to "Would you do anything?" I cannot say yes, because I do not believe I have sufficient imagination to figure everything out. But on the emotional level, I don't really believe it.

Hm. Which brings up the question, why not? I believe these results to be accurate, so what do I think makes me different.

Okay. I believe I am smarter than the average person, but, given context, chances are good that those people were too. Ah, and there's proof that it's emotional and not logical, because when I considered the fact that they might be smarter than I am, I immediately tried to justify why that would give me and advantage. I'd be so uninformed that some logic-based appeals wouldn't work on me, whatever.

Lovely. I'm so wrapped up in my own pride that I'll paint myself as better in any way.

Which is probably the actual emotional root of the issue. And a good thing to note all around. The reason that these people and others were so willing to say, without any qualifier, that a transhuman intelligence would not be able to outsmart them despite having no experience of one, was pride. Not necessarily personal, it could simply be human pride--which makes some sense, we've been apex predators for generations.

...Huh. Despite still having absolutely no idea how that convincing could have gone, I feel much better about the whole thing. Probably a combination of finding a flaw in myself and also immediately being able to point to others as having it. I know something I need to work on, and I'm not picking myself out of the pack.

Thus concludes this batch of musing.

*I'm not doubting the results. I'm just trying to work out my ignorance.
**Counting sufficiently advanced AIs as people here.

EDIT: I'm not saying that the case is conclusive. My point was that I was treating it as conclusive on faith, and then still saying "that doesn't apply to me", which is unintelligent.
FURTHER EDIT: I do, however, trust the guy to do proper science. I just cannot make a fully informed decision for myself when all I can see is the results section.

Christmas

2010-12-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

Sometimes with Christmas coming
All there is is a rush to the store
Sometimes only running
We forget there's something more

As feet beat together in a rhythm seldom-heard
We all rush to find the gift for ma'am or sir.

As we run ourselves into this debt,
Sometimes we just forget.

And then we sit, by firelight's play
We find time for family
And breathe and smile, if only for a day.

And even if Christmas isn't for you,
I know you can feel it, too.
A peace touches so many, enough
A piece of our hearts in the stockings we stuff

It wasn't always Christian, and it isn't always this
But the feeling will continue, for we need our bliss.

Portfolio 8 Short Story: Self-Imposed

2010-12-19T14:12:00.000-08:00

Hi. I missed one.

I stare at the wall.

There is nothing interesting about the wall. It’s a fine wall, it is solid, it doesn’t let sound or anything through; it does everything a wall is supposed to. It doesn’t help me much, because the other wall lets sound through—lines of metal sunk into the floor and the ceiling.

But, then, I suppose it does help. When I was in the cell on the other side of this wall, I heard more shouts. I sleep better now.

I put my right hand against the wall.

It is rough, but not cold. Nothing here is cold. I know that if I scrape my hand against it, then it will bleed. I’ve never done it on purpose, but I try to walk around, and sometimes, when I think about something else, I trip and catch myself on the wall. Recently I’ve learned to fall away from it, as if it’s a pool edge instead of a wall. Don’t want to get wet.

I smile to myself.

This place is good. I know it is. The floors are smooth stone—uneven, but smooth, from years of walking. Years of feet that people who know the ground don’t pay any mind anymore, and so let them stay on the ground as they move, smoothing the floor like ocean water on old driftwood.

I sigh happily.

There is chatter from our sentries as they pass by. Another person in a room like mine calls to tell them good morning and they call back in kind. Everyone is always so happy to be here.

I close my eyes, a calm smile still playing along my lips.

A peace, the same peace that is in that smile, is spreading through me. All is good, and all is happy. I don’t have to worry anymore. I laugh quietly, thinking of how I had been scared when I came here. It seemed so silly now. Here there was a complete, all-encompassing peace. No one who had been here long ever feared. None of us feared anything, anymore. Our sentinels keep us safe.

And then, suddenly, still enough to break my calm as it shreds through the peaceful quiet of our home, comes a scream. “No! NO! Stop! I didn’t do anything! Please! Please!”

I turn around and stand, staring at the new recruit.

He is pretty. Not handsome, pretty. He has a definite feminine air about him, nicely curved and red lips, and a soft face even as he yells his fear. He is wearing what anyone here would wear, a nice, comfortable suit. In his case, it’s a blue a few shades too light to be called navy blue. I call it ocean blue in my head, just as I call mine rose leaf green.

I shake my head. “So silly,” I stage murmur. “What’s your name?” I call.

He turns to me, breaks free of the guards, and runs. I catch him when he stumbles and wipe his cheeks with the handkerchief I keep on me. He stares at me with scared eyes, and he trusts me as a child trusts his mother. Everyone trusts me. “R—Roger,” he whispers. His tone was that of a person who had screamed too much.

“I’m Emiliana.” It was a lie, but a comforting one. Everyone relaxes when a sage young woman you trust reflexively is name Emiliana.

He relaxed in my arms. I brushed the hair out of his face and kissed his forehead. “Stay with them,” I whispered, a lullaby tone. “They will help you.”

He stayed still and confused for a moment, then nodded and moved back to them. He stumbled along the floor where he expected it to be flat, but he caught himself.

One of the guards who were just walking their rounds nodded to me. “We might be able to get you let out soon, Emmy.” Everyone I didn’t have to be…careful around called me Emmy.

I looked at her. No mask, no job, just looked at her with what I was, naturally, in my gaze. The woman dealt with death and destruction every day. She paled at what danced in my red-brown eyes. My voice deepened to its natural timbre. “You don’t want to let me out.”

Her heart was beating faster than it had been a few moments ago. She tipped her hat quickly. “As you wish.”

I watched her walk away, then turned and sat.

I stared at the wall.

No Guilty Pleasure Music

2010-12-19T12:24:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am seeing how many blog posts I can do over winter break. Why do you ask?

That title is probably going to mean the exact opposite of what you think.

At least what it would look like to me would be someone suddenly getting all preachy about how if you're ashamed of your musical tastes, you shouldn't be listening to that music in the first place. Which would be silly.

No, I'm going to get all preachy about the guilty, not the pleasure. See? Much less silly.

I subscribe to the rule of 'no guilty pleasure music', which I made up myself though I doubt I'm the first to think of it. Basically: if I like the song, I like the song. Any part of me that tries to tell me I should feel a certain way about music is antithetical to this. This is both true for the part of me that says I should like a song and the part that says I shouldn't. If everyone says I should like The Beatles, that still isn't why I like the Beatles. I like The Beatles because they made amazing music. I like Avril Lavigne's music whether she's being accused of X, Y, or Z, because I like her music.

In theory, I will spread this out to other facets of my life. It seems that I should at least keep this true for art forms--romance novels, tween-directed stuff, etc. And the point, by the way, is not to suddenly think that these things are the best ever*. It means recognizing that, regardless of critical acclaim or whatever else, liking them is no reason for guilt.

I am so not there yet, but you get the idea.

*I'm looking at you, Twilight-obsessed fangirl who sat next to me. I like the book; that doesn't make it the paramount achievement in literature.

Serial

2010-12-17T23:25:00.000-08:00

I walked out, head down and thoughtful. Ms. Robin had been...genuinely kind. And, knowing that she was, pieces started to fall into place. She hadn't punished them as hard because she knew me, and given equal information, had to punish equally. She wasn't indifferent, just unsure.

Never attribute to indifference that which can adequately be explained by incomprehension, I thought to myself.

Nina and I had gotten off with promises not to do it again--which I noted were carefully worded to mean never do it again within a supervisor's view--and exchanged, "I'm sorry, Nina," "I'm sorry, Joanna".

I thought. Ms. Robin had been kind, considerate, respectful, and if not smart, at least willing to learn. If I could do the same in return, I should. So. How do physical and verbal fights differ, in my mind?

Well, in the most basic terms, verbal fights have a wider range they can appear to be without being. If I call you an idiot and that's your one button, then that suddenly throws the fight up a few notches--in the other person's mind. I still think we're playing around. In a fight, if I pull a knife on you, you and I can both pretty clearly see, Holy shit, she just pulled a knife.

On the other hand, it isn't that physical fights are completely clear. You hit a sore spot on me, I go into defense mode. You might have no idea you just did, but I have. And one person might think you can still play around when you pull a knife, while I would think Weaponry involved, this is now life or death.

But physical fighting is still clearer. I need to know you inside and out to make sure I don't kick up a verbal fight. A physical fight, I can probably see when I've crossed that line. Stay off eyes, ears, throat, and broken bones; no weapons; fight is over when someone hits the ground unless you want a kill. I have never been in a fight with anyone but a few girls I know, and even I know that. I know it might be different, but I think that'd be true anywhere at my school. Whereas say, Anne might laugh off "idiot" and Sarah-Jane would ruin my reputation.

But I could see where she was coming from. If a verbal fight goes too far, then, in theory, both parties can talk frankly and solve the problem with few to no emotional scars. In a physical fight, everything is instant-by-instant. If I think someone's going after me, seriously trying to hurt me, I react with that in mind. And if I make a decision in that moment, there's no taking it back.

I understand. But the problem with that view is, that doesn't actually happen. If I get into an argument, then we're not going to talk frankly. If we fight, then I'm not going to hurt her, she's not going to hurt me.

But is that because I am a normal person, or is that because I am myself?

I turn it over in my head and decide that I probably can keep it to words. My main problem is that I can't stand to lose. If I have set apologizing as the lose condition, then I cannot apologize without losing. But there is no reason for that to be the lose condition. And...

I took a deep breath and said this aloud.

"There is no reason for losing to be a bad thing."

I took a few deep breaths. It was true. I knew it was true. The problem was convincing myself that it was true.

Logic. Losing a battle is not losing the war. There are times when losing now helps achieve a greater goal in the future. Sacrificing one's self for a random idea was a bad choice. But sacrificing pride for a solid goal was a good thing, so long as the goal was.

Emotion. Losing is losing. If I go into a true argument, I have to go in willing to lose on my field of choice.

I stopped.

And that was it. I had many logical reasons to think physical fighting had it's place, but that wasn't why I chose it. If I lost in a physical fight, then I came out unharmed. Maybe scraped and sore, but not dead, not crippled, almost always not even permanently scarred. And in a verbal fight I would also almost certainly avoid any emotional scars, due to the same environment that kept me safe from the physical ones.

But if I lost in a verbal fight, then I had to accept that I was wrong. None of this, Yeah, you won, but I could have! because being the better fighter doesn't matter to me. So if I stay out of fighting intellectually, I stay out of fighting where I care.

I started walking again, and looked up at the sky. It was a deep blue, Easter egg left in the sky blue cup for a half hour and still dripping. Not a cloud, and sun, for the moment, behind a building. All perfect, clear blue.

Ms. Robin's line in mind, I said, "I didn't think."