So I've been thinking lately about what things or conditions truly help me, calm me down, give me space to breathe, etc. What subjects feed my soul, what do I truly love that makes me feel like there's some reason to go on, what makes me forget the usual mantras. This line of thought started during the ice storm, when I ran out of Diet Coke and started drinking so much tea. The tea literally puts me in a meditative state -- provided I drink it mindfully. Or maybe that's the thing. I dunno. I just know when I take the time to make the tea properly, sit down in a quiet room or with some soothing non-frantic music playing, I feel better. At peace.

Maybe I'm getting old, I dunno. But I have to start digging myself out of this hole I'm in and not just mentally race around the same old crazy.

This kind of path can lead you to some uncomfortable truths. For one, Warcraft is a net negative effect. It's a stressor. It makes you forget, sure -- the same way TV does. It's not constructive, though when I started playing it was. For all that I'm an officer in one of the largest guilds on our server, I have a grand total of 2 people I talk with semi-regularly -- Kill and another Gnome mage named Morgianna (another older lady like myself, we have much the same experiences in WoW so we commiserate a lot). Otherwise, there are names I know because they are often troublemakers. But they're not friends. Also the frustrations of just playing the game get to me a lot, which just adds to it all. Zoning out on farming motes in Nagrand is not a healthy kind of forgetting. It's the kind that leads to "what the hell, it's 11 PM already, where did the time go?" and waking up the next morning feeling like the previous night wasn't restful at all.

Problem there is, I love Warcraft. But it ain't healthy for me.

Further along that line, the realization that spending every night and most of my days off in front of the computer is only exacerbating things. It's alienated me from a lot of things that used to be of interest to me, such as my mythology studies, my writing, my crystal collection, the podcasts I used to get into, the ambient music I used to get into. My hippy side. The psychospiritual side of me.

Playing Warcraft, mindlessly checking Fark or my RSS feeds and the fanfic sites, it's just escapism. It's not dealing with myself. It's worsening all my problems, not helping me to heal. It's not letting me think beyond a narrow set of parameters. It's not just Warcraft that's the drug, it's the whole shebang. Everything I do in my life.

As I said, uncomfortable truths.

But the tech is inescapable. It's woven into my life. The tech itself isn't bad. It's what I'm choosing to do with it that's screwed. And it's not going to be solved in a day. No more than heroin addiction is.


And aside from pulling myself out of this, there's the larger issue of my job and my life circumstances in general.

But we will see.

Okay, kids, this one's kind of long and convoluted so get a drink and keep reading.

A few days ago I listened to my audiobook about Carl Jung again at work and once more lamented my meager dream life. Normally it's a pretty special night when I can remember a dream of any consequence, though to be fair when I do they're doozies. I've even sometimes used images I've dreamed in stories (one example being part of Lucien's battle with "himself" in Avalon when he's gone to retrieve the false Grail, which was a sort of paraphrase of a dream I had once; another was the thing without a head in my story "Khamaira's Journey"). Anyway, I don't often have really good juicy involved dreams, and as that's part and parcel of Jungian analysis I figure I'm up the creek without a poodle.

But anyway, I was listening to the audiobook and suddenly it occured to me that I could use the characters from my stories over the years in the same way one analysizes dreams. When characters "take over" and start acting on their own without conscious direction, they are usually acting out of the Unconscious mind. This is where the mythic aspects of stories come in, all of that. I've known for a long time that these characters are some important part of me. They mean something to me, they embody something of me. They're never the protagonist. But they're usually the characters I most enjoy writing, and the ones I have "relationships" with. After a fashion, anyway.

In the Jung audiobook they explain that the Jungian archetype of the anima / animus represents not only the opposite gender aspects of a person but the person's true self. So I wondered if I compared all these characters and came up with what's common in them all, I'd have a picture of my true self. The me that will be, the me that already exists somewhere in my head, that comes out as my characters.

So I sat down and thought about it, and here's what I came up with.

The characters I used for this are:

• Zyme -- from my actual first first novel, way back in 1992.
• Inda -- from my Jedi soap opera, The Way of the Mystics, 1999.
• Pepper -- from Machina Obscura and Aquaria, 2001 to 2004.
• Myrdwyn -- from The Fall of Avalon, 2005-7.
• Trouble -- from the Zulu-5 stories, 2007-8

The commonalities between all these are:

• They're all some kind of teacher, whether formally or in the role of "wise old man". Zyme is a Master Wizard, Inda is a Jedi Master, Pepper is always telling stories and teaching by example, Myrdwyn teaches Arthur, Lucien and anyone who'll listen to him. Trouble is a bit of an odd duck in that I couldn't figure out what he's teaching or who, but he's sort of a Pepper-in-Training.
• Indeterminate age, or a marked difference between actual and perceived age. Zyme was immortal and at least 175 years old. Inda was ageless as he was a ghost and one with the Force. Pepper was in his mid-70's and looked it, but was actually middle-aged for his day and time. Myrdwyn was possibly thousands of years old. And Trouble is 47 but you can't tell since he's a cyborg and age is pretty much meaningless to him now and he acts about 12 most of the time.
• They're all singular people, loners, in one way or another.
• They're all trailblazers, explorers, and make their own path in life. Zyme was constantly experimenting and pushing the boundaries of magic. Inda was a heretic who was exiled for teaching his heresies. Pepper questioned authority and looked through antique telescopes and found that history wasn't what he thought it was. Myrdwyn was half-Fey and the prime architect of Avalon. Trouble is a crusader for cyborg rights and wants to lead his people to Saturn, in between fighting the Evil Empire to save his world.
• They're all creators, makers, and innovators.
• They tend to hide their true selves even from those close to them until they are certain of their loyalty. They're always holding something back and keeping secrets.

So apparently the shape of my true self?

Is an ageless shapeshifter, a teacher-explorer-creator who walks a lone path that no one else has ever walked. A kind of wise man, maybe a shaman-like figure, following his own unseen stars, his own conviction.

They don't all look alike except for long hair (Zyme, Inda, Pepper and Myrdwyn) and they're all tall (Inda being the shortest at about 6 feet even, T the tallest at 7 and a half feet). Magic and technology are both involved (Zyme and Myrdwyn are mages, Inda is a Jedi, Pepper came from the techno-Utopia of 2230 and Trouble is a cyborg).

And yet all of these are one person, one entity. This is the me outside of time, the male me.

I don't want to use words like "soulmate" since I've rejected the whole idea, but... let's just say I hope I never find anybody who fits this archetype in the real world, because I'd be helpless against it. I already know that's a lost cause, and I'd still get sucked in. The Jungian ideal is to integrate the animus that's in your head. The whole "Great Rite" thing in paganism? You're not performing the Rite with another person -- you're performing it with your anima or animus, the other person you're actually having sex with is meant as a form you can project your anima / animus into. They're like a living voodoo doll for your animus / anima. The Rite is the pagan ritual of Jungian integration with the Self.

So in essence, my soulmate is within me. He's been with me all along. Since about 1986, when I first came up with Zyme. He just reincarnates, as it were, everytime I get involved with another story. And shows himself everytime some other guy catches my eye and mind, since it's his qualities I'm attracted to. Tony Stark is a loner-creator, creating his path as he goes along, so brilliant that not even the engineers of his own company can follow what he's doing. The places they go don't have to be real but metaphorical. New lands of thought, science, the mind, the spirit.

This Self is what I am in the process of becoming.


The whole thing really kind of wigs me out.

Well, I'm in the rhubarb now.

Got the paperwork back from the Secretary of State's office four days ago, I got the EIN number and the bank account started today. Purple Ink Publishing LLC is now official. It's real now. It's going to happen.

Just because you're doing what you're meant to do doesn't mean you're not scared. It's not easy. If anything it's more difficult. But that's the whole point of the exercise. The universe may conspire to put you on the path but it doesn't just fall into your hands. Getting to the place where I can do this is one moment in time. Staying on the path, staying true to my goals and my vision for this magazine over what may be a very long time is quite another. To say nothing of the sheer mundane challenges of running a magazine, breaking even or thriving in an economy going down in flames...

So. $500 today. My income tax refund check, when it comes in. Whatever we can make on subscriptions, after we go live on January 1st. If we can just get, say, 1000 subscribers I'd consider the first year to be a resounding success. That would put us over the expenses, with some left over to pay my web editor and story editor and maybe pay to go to two or three cons. That's enough for me.

I was thinking earlier that by all conventional standards my life is essentially worthless. I have no kids, I have no husband, I live in a dump, I'm a three time college drop-out, and I work in a dead-end job that anyone could do with two weeks of training. I'm a non-entity. So it doesn't matter what I do with my life. I've chosen to devote my life to science fiction because it matters to me. It's the thing that makes my life matter to me, that maybe to this small world and culture I could contribute something of lasting value. There are people in this world who would stand up to a firing squad for Shakespeare, or Bach, or quantum physics or Picasso, because these things are simply transcendentally sublime. There is some quality in them that is beyond words or images or music or math. For me it's in science fiction, and I'm just glad I found it early enough in my life to be able to do something about it.

I've decided I'm going to use the Simreality wiki as an offline place to store stuff, the bits and pieces of thinkythings that crop up out of the froth of my brain. This is one of them.

Open Source Humanity

(added May 25, 2008)

DNA as open source code, analogous to the kernel in Linux.
-- as a philosophy of life, connects:

Body Modding
Tattooing
Body Piercing
Cybernetics
Genetic Enhancement
Chimeras
Transhumanism
Nootropics / Psychedelics
Telepresence
Brain Uploading


Open Source Humanity concerned with functions and capabilities, not forms.

What matters is freedom of consciousness, not forms.

Open Source Humanity philosophy provides the options that enable that freedom.

Hmmm....

I was thinking today that things like YouTube, blogs, Flikr, are so popular because they allow people to create things. Fan media culture is all about creating stuff with other people's toys. It's fun because you're participating in it and using it for your own ends. Making stuff up is just fun.

In my life I have had things that over periods of years and even decades have continually changed and evolved in my mind and in so doing reflected back to me things that I needed to know at that point in time. It's as if something speaks through them, using words and symbols that have always been present in such a way that different phrases or actions or events suddenly take on new levels of meaning. When it works, it's uncanny. Simultaneously creepy and reassuring in the way of all bedrock spiritual truths that suddenly reveal themselves.

When I was a teenager it was the Styx song "Come Sail Away." I'm not joking. At various random times in my life that song would come on the radio and a line or a verse would suddenly resonate to some situation in my life with an eerie relevance.

Nowadays, it's Star Wars.

I just got through watching Episode 5 (The Empire Strikes Back for you uninformed heathens). I was watching the first parts and laughing and making jokes at the screen and (worse) thinking "Why didn't they have homing beacons in their radios?" and "Why didn't Han immediately call for pick-up when he found Luke or at least tell them he'd found him?" and stuff like that. Completely forgetting that this is myth, not reality. This quit for the most part when Yoda came on the scene but I wondered -- and sorrowed -- that I no longer seem capable of feeling any wonder, or of seeing anything as symbolic. I'm always so cynical now. I don't daydream anymore.

Yoda complains that Luke is too focused on the future and the horizon and never has his mind on what he's doing, but in my case that's the entire problem. I've eliminated all imagination from my life.

But I must be capable of something because I still don't see a little green latex Muppet. All I see is the Jedi Master.

So I was sitting there watching and wondering (for the hundredth time, it seems) how do I get myself out of this because I know that's part of what's killing my writing. I don't know how to get out of it.

Yoda covered that too.

"You must unlearn what you have learned."

So I need to figure out what it is I've learned in my life that has left me like this, and figure out how to fix it. I've got to somehow figure out how to restore my faith in a lot of different things.

I've always thought of my whole life as a test of the Force. Maybe the whole notion of being in confrontation with it is wrong.

Maybe despite consistent appearances a lot of what I assume about the world is wrong.