What You Walkin' On?


I found an old man in a wooden lifeboat, rowing his way through space toward a ring of burning white light. A spiral path of stones seemed to mark the path he followed.

I walked up beside the boat and kept pace as he rowed. "So. Where ya headed?" I asked.

"Kansas City," he answered in a gruff tone.

"How ya gettin' there?" I asked next.

"Gonna walk," he answered as he pulled once more on the oars.

I sped up to keep pace as the lifeboat pulled away. "That's a boat but I don't see any water. What're your oars pullin' on?"

He looked up briefly and pulled again while the lifeboat creaked. "Yeah well... what you walkin' on?"


Inspired by "Gate", the artwork of Alexey Andreev

Oh the tangles web we weave. Or something.

I got fed up with the waiting today and actually went to ask Mr. McCollum himself what the deal was. It's been 2 weeks since I won the bid on the job in Jacksonville, would like some reliable info, k thanx! Only to find out I've been punked. The job doesn't exist.

I kid you not.

For close to a month now I've been thinking I'm heading for Jacksonville. Yet only today do I get it confirmed (as I'd suspected) that the job doesn't exist.

So Mr. McCollum claims he's trying to fix this, either find me a job down there, have somebody create a job for me in FL, or prepare to offer me and several others in similar straits another batch of jobs. I had asked because I'd really have liked to get started on getting an apartment lined up, yadda yadda.

So we're back to square one.

So not happy right now.


In other news, have been doing some interesting thinky-thoughts re personal symbology, dreams, etc.

Had an interesting dream a few nights ago that had Dionysus in it and indicated to me that something is going on in my subconscious. There are presences - or a presence - that is working to unlock my subconscious to make it more accessible to me. Also another dream told me I am in touch with higher forces. It provides me with a chuckle, though, to see the forms the symbols take. During the "communicating with higher forces" dream, it was a smartphone type device that could link in to the Secret Service network -- those who were closest to the "highest" presence, i.e., the President. And a giant radio telescope, a "big ear". In the Dionysus dream, Dionysus took the form of a "too sexy for my shirt" kind of redneck on a customized Harley, with a bunch of keys and several bottles of Jack Daniels. Dionysus/Bacchus was/is the god of drunkenness, wine, drugs, etc.. This is the god of ethneogenics, i.e. psychedelics. I was yelling out of a second floor window at him that he was going to steal things from me while he was apparently unlocking something in the garage on the ground floor -- i.e., I was on a "higher", more intellectual level and Dionysus was unlocking things on a "lower", more primal level.

I have a weird mind. I do.

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.

First, a very good article regarding being an Introvert.

And yes, I am an Introvert. By the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I am an INFJ. It's said to be the rarest of the Myers-Briggs types, accounting for only about 3% of the population.


In other news, I've been nominated for the Parsec Awards for my podcast. This means I have to go to DragonCon. I probably won't win, but hey, networking.

I want to strangle my subconscious.

But on the other hand, when your characters completely obliterate the outline and start acting on their own, that's the mark of a good story. It's also the mark that you're in mythic territory. I haven't done any analysis of the story while I've been writing it, I've just been concentrating on the writing. All that happens during the editing and afterward. But after spending years doing this you can kind of tell when these things are happening.

Well. The commander of the Axis-class cyborgs, A-2, apparently got orders from Bayles to scuttle the explosives set-up, secure the site and the holomorph, and arrest Trouble for desertion, theft of Marine Corp property (the Tithonus cyborg body) and something else I can't remember right now. When I quit writing last night he was ordering his men to get the EMAW Trouble had been carrying and to put him in restraints. With Rage, Rumble and Danger right there, not to mention a bunch of their group from Chronos. Up until that point, A-2 had been a bit of a hard ass but on the whole he'd been fairly nice to Trouble. All of the Axis-classes had, after some initial uncomfortableness. T got complacent, or something. I think he forgot these kids work for Bayles, and they're loyal to Bayles to the nth degree.

Well. I gotta go to work. But... damn...

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.

Had a weird epiphany this morning on my way to work. The shower, driving on the way to work... why can't these things happen when I'm at home sitting at the computer?

Anyway, some few weeks ago I bought some back issues of Parabola magazine on EBay. Parabola comes out quarterly and is one of the publications that Prof. Campbell specifically recommended. So I've begun collecting back issues and reading the current issues. Anyway. I was reading one of the back issues this morning before work. Each issue is centered on a theme, and this one was on Masks and Metaphors. I was reading an article on these masks used by Balinese topeng dancers to portray the characters of their plays. These characters are archetypal characters from their mythology, and yet the mask makers sometimes specifically carve the masks to resemble real local people, sometimes as a parody of them but mostly to give the characters relevance in the current world. The article said that the actors will spend many hours simply meditating on the masks after they're made, internalizing the character and the mythic, archetypal meaning of it in the stories they perform.

Okay, so I put the magazine down and got in the car to go to work, and on the way it occured to me in a visual flash: the Green Man image from the old pagan days and then the image of the face of my character Trouble from the Zulu-5 stories. With these images and what I had been reading, it came to me that a cyborg is the modern equivalent of the old Green Man images. The Green Man represents the personified lifeforce of the forests, a manifestation of the forest itself, drawn from and composed of the living greenery it represents. The cyborg is made of the stuff of his world in the same way, built of metal and circuitry and sensors, the face is shaped of the stuff of its world. Where the Green Man represents the embodiment of the lifeforce, the god concept, of the forest, the human brain within the cyborg represents that same lifeforce embodied as a human mind. Both are the animating principles in the masks.

You can't have a mythology unless you have symbols that speak specifically to your place and time. It's the same archetype, but this is a modern symbol that speaks to modern people, here and now. A cyborg is the personification of our world now. It's a synthesis of man and machine, a symbiotic relationship between man and machine. The human brain can't live without the machine to sustain it, and the machine can't live without the human brain animating it. And as our world is composed now of technology and will only become more so in the future, this is the symbol that personifies both the aspiration and the fear of what humanity will become.

So, yeah, I'm writing mythology.

I've been working a bit with the Monomyth lately (the Hero's Journey structure). I got a new Joseph Campbell book and I've been re-reading Vogler's "The Writer's Journey" as a way to get a different perspective for "Tantalus and Sweet Charity". Boy howdy did I.

Okay, so when I wrote "Tantalus" I did so using the plot skeleton formula, which I heard about on a podcast from the Odyssey writer's workshop. (Show #11 of the podcast). Just to make it more challenging and interesting, I wrote the story in first person from both Rage and Trouble's perspectives, alternating between them. They both go through the entire plot skeleton structure. After I got done with the first draft, I let it go for a couple days and in my sudden influx of spare time started re-reading Vogler's book again.

I've now spent the last couple of hours analyzing the story ("Tantalus") on the Monomyth structure, and it's changed my entire conception of the story. This isn't just a simple adventure to rescue Rage. The entire story is about violation, trauma, and about reconciliation and healing from them.

I was going through the whole thing and finding more and more indications of this in the dialogue and action and getting more and more creeped out. This is the kind of thing you pray for as a writer, but at the same time it can completely freak you out seeing the stuff in your story you didn't even know or intend to put in there. You go into it to write a simple adventure rescue story. You come out with a psychological story about violation and healing. And that kind of story was the furtherest thing from you conscious mind when you wrote it.

IT ... FREAKS... YOU... OUT.

More later as events warrant.

Discovered something interesting last night. If I forget to turn off the Meraki and the modem at night, it makes the speaker in my old clock radio make little random popping noises, kind of like when you have your cellphone near anything with a speaker and it makes the weird modem-like noises. Only these from the Meraki/modem are just single pops, occurring randomly throughout the night. They're not loud enough to wake me up, but they are loud enough to disturb me enough that I spend what feels like all night dreaming.

It sounds sort of like the noise the clock makes when the alarm is about to go off, and that sound has caused me to dream in the past.

I figured this out after three nights of having very vivid dreams. At first I thought it was some kind of spiritual attack owing to unexpectedly encountering an old enemy from my pagan days a few days ago at the grocery store. Then I heard the noises from the clock radio and realized it was making me dream. It apparently makes me surface enough that my brain goes bugnuts and begins spitting out the machine code, so to speak.

I guess I should get out my digital recorder and start keeping track of these things, huh? Could be useful.