The Diamond Island

My quest for UFO girl has been going nowhere.  Other than the one initial sighting report, I’ve been coming up zeroes.  The one-eight-hundred line has been a complete bust.  Not surprising really, as where does one look consciously for what is dwelling in the dark shadows of human consciousness?

Since I’ve been trying to think and nothing’s happening, I had to call up my old friend the Dark Goddess and see if she might not have an angle.  Had to leave a message, which was no surprise.  She can be hard to get a hold of.

I go through my piles of papers, as I’m looking for material I can use for my posts.  I really need to throw some of these boxes away.  I’ve been fishing in the seas of the unconscious for a long time and it’s a little daunting to see all this flotsam collected for purposes that I might not see fulfilled in my lifetime.

A newspaper comes out of the pile, with a note in invisible ink attached to it.  I use my decoder, and it’s a message from the Dark Goddess.  I freak out a little, as it’s not out of the question that she didn’t get back to me because she’d already done so.  I imagine she was sitting by the phone, listening to me leave my message and giggling to herself.

So, message tells me I should check the newspaper out because it’s got a clue.  I read the newspaper, and it’s a program schedule from my college days, for the local college radio station I did shows for.  Back when I was a DJ.  The title of the schedule is “Beyond the gottamned living end”.  Here are some excerpts from my show blocks:

Friday 11:00 – 12:00 Reverend Paul – Wacky Fun, Room tooty.
To help crazy inbred maggots

Friday 5:00 – 7:00 Extra Confession With The Reverend – Crazy Uncool
To appease the Chaos Gods.  Only this station supplies them with the rock and roll that will fill their hunger.

Saturday 12:00 – 1:30 More Redemption With Reverend Paul – Mega Mother
Hard core, heavy metal, Punk, Thrash, Death, and will take your requests.  Motorhead, Ozzie and Meatmen to help you digest.  When asked to comment on this year, Reverend Paul said, “Let’s just hit the toilets and start flushing.”

Maybe UFO girl has a radio or television program, where she transmits across the airwaves her show of doom.  Okay, then all I have to do is get me a device capable of picking up her show and tune in.  Maybe I can call in on the request line and get her to make a landing.  My mirage friend still needs a date, after all.  And my hall pass expires at some point.  Gulp, zoinks Scoob!

You aren’t supposed to look in the scary room. Even if nothing is supposed to be there, what might happen if there was something there the one time someone looks? Well, flashlight in hand, kicking boxes aside, I had to look. Even with a doll two feet from me that might develop satanic glowing red eyes right out of Baba Yaga’s skull fence.

I’m scared out of my wits, but I also know what the crucifix of my darkness is – getting a date. I’m scared and annoyed that this has to be me. There’s danger and a good laugh at the same time. The suspense is driving me crazy.

I shine my flashlight into the room, and I spot a rectangular cardboard box. The coffin analogy is not lost on me. I use a broom to pull it towards me, afraid of what may or may not be in the cardboard box with dangly packing tape ends. If it’s empty, does that mean the doll-sized dweller is about to jump on my neck and suck my blood from behind? The doll is behind me, mind you, and I am most vulnerable.

I pry open the box, and I find a rolled length of blue-gray, cut carpet remnant inside. I struggle to figure out the meaning. After some nervous sweating in a cold room, I pull the carpet out and unroll it onto the floor. I’m thinking I need a magic carpet ride.

I stand on the carpet and wait for something to happen. It’s nice to stand on a soft carpet instead of a cold concrete floor. I experience spooky feelings of trouble, and a sense of conflict. I’ve got to worry and not worry. There’s work to be done, but I’m clueless.

I turn out the lights and close my eyes.

I’m in a haunted house that I can’t stand living in. The problem is, the more I meditate on the matter the more I see that this misfortune struck me because it was necessary. I have to spend a night and a day in the haunted house to know the secret.

When I was a little monster, there was a record I used to listen to all the time. “Night in a haunted house.” The first side of the record is taken up by a spooky talking dude who guides you into and out of a haunted house with commentary. All sorts of scary sounds and occurrences happen in the background until your adventure is over.

I had several such records. There’s one I remember quite vividly, which I no longer have because it was melted.  I left it too close to a heating unit. The story was a more mature and scary night in a haunted house, which I would listen to over and over.

I scare up the In Search Of episode on the Amityville Horror and study it intensely. Something the priest says about exorcisms strikes me as meaningful. You don’t exorcise objects (or houses) because they can’t become possessed (according to the Catholic church, or so he says). Well, I’m not sure if I buy that.

However, I do buy the clue-in that follows my brain stem process. I’ve read my Carl Jung, and very often a psychic disturbance has at its root some imbalance in the unconscious that needs to be brought to light. The possession starts in a person and flows outward. In my more modern form of reasoning, I couldn’t help but question whether the family in the Amityville Horror carried baggage with them that culminated in their psychic experience (hoax or not).

Hey, if something’s going on, you have to own up to your part in the affair, no matter how slight. Jung says nothing can plague you that which can find no space to secure its hooks in. I’m thinking I have to face facts that the haunted house is in some measure my fault. Or, even if it is somebody else’s bad coffee brewing, I have to pay my small tab in participating in it.

Active imagination time. I’m scared out of my skin, but I’m quite committed to this Scooby Doo mystery, wherever it leads. I know there are times when someone should just bogue out and call it even. Not every monster can, or should be confronted. As the protagonist says in Night of the Demon, “Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

If you pass through the Daathian doorway, you might encounter something that turns to dust in the light of day, or a hostile force that can cause you physical harm. Life is one of those funny things where you always have to make decisions as to what situation you find yourself in. You can’t hide all the time, any more than you can always go out chasing dragons.

I’ve been in situations where you had to run away many times. Goodness knows I’m a cringer at heart! Unfortunately, my intuition keeps telling me this is one of those unpleasant things you just have to cowboy up on. I never thought I’d have to really spend a night in a haunted house for real. It was something that always had a nice green “Exit” sign in view every hundred feet.

I contemplate my situation over a ceramic cup of my newly discovered draft cider (something I’ll mention in another post). Outer reality is reflecting a process going on inside my head. Considering the change in my life given my commitment to writing, a lot of unconscious contents are being stirred up at the deepest levels.

My dream journal confirms that sea creatures are being driven to the surface. The other night I dreamt I was on the edge of a cliff looking down at a sandy beach and a lagoon. A gigantic eye looked up from the surface of the water, and then a colossal (as opposed to a giant) squid swam around the lagoon.

I was scared to see such big creatures, but I also felt grateful to know there were still creatures of mystery in the unknown.

I believe now that my fears are my own, and the spooky stuff is my own fault. If I’m being scared out of my wits, it’s because it’s time for me to see it and to feel it. I know there are transcendent functions out there. The time has come for me to captain up and confront my fears and my feelings. It has to be a conscious decision.

So, you wish to spend a night in a haunted house? Well then. Follow me.

K and I were living in a great townhouse a year ago, in a perfect neighborhood for our purposes. The cats were happy, and the parental units were just down the street. If either of us needed a cup of sugar, an onion, or a spare bottle of pinot cheep-io, it was a hat trick.

For various reasons beyond our control, the landlord was forced to move into their townhouse again and we were forced out. It was a month of total panic and stress as we needed to find an affordable new home, and move all our well-settled things.

It was traumatic. Michael, one of our kitties, developed bladder stones and had to have surgery. The window on my pa’s car got broken in the moving about. K nearly suffered a nervous breakdown at having to leave her well-tended front and back yard gardens behind.

We got along well with our landlord. It was in many respects a prefect arrangement for the both of us. He was not pleased at having to move and force us out. There was naught any of us could do but accept this blow as that sort of occurrence that life throws at you. You make the best of it.

Here we are, a year later, and we still haven’t recovered from the torture of the move. And we aren’t exactly ready to make the jump to another abode yet. It would be hard to find a better living arrangement than the one we had.

The house blows. Even though, logically, it’s as convenient as the old one, and had more space. There are a number of things wrong with it, such as doors that don’t lock or close properly, and we are stuck with neighbors who are for the most part inferior to the wonderful people who lived next to us before.

Our relationship with the new landlords leaves something to be desired.

Now mind you, not all is woe. There are many other avenues of our life that are getting on quite nicely. Thank goodness! Rather than call our situation a disaster, I would say it’s a trying time of the soul, where every day you make one more yard. The waiting is the hardest part.

So, back to the present. Sometimes the faucet turns itself on a little during the night. K and I hear little noises that make us nervous at times. The cats, save for Blink (who is neurotic and doesn’t stand for any nonsense when she’s resting in her current choice of pad), are unsettled by the apparitions.

My appearance for a while had indicated dementia. Thank goodness for my brand new electric razor blades. K was keeping my back on that one. Our front door has a slight dent in it, with boot scuff marks. And our door handle is barely staying in place (the screws pop out at inopportune times). I feel like someone tried to break in the place by kicking the door down in the past.

We have a flapping side board near the roof, that we finally got the landlords to have repaired. The handyman will be by on the afternoon of the full moon. The tap-tap-tapping when it gets windy has been keeping us awake at night.

The upstairs toilet makes a loud slamming noise when used, so we just haven’t used it. I’d forgotten about it because we put it on the back burner last year and added it to our list of problems. But I’m starting to think its one more indication that this haunted house is a reality.

Oh yes, last week, probably because of the warm weather, we had to set free several insects. A stinkbug, several mosquito eaters, and some earwigs. Even with the heat on, the cold seems to seep into the house. Yeah, you know where I’m going with this.

It’s only just now that K and I put all these pieces together. My problems with sleep, and the stirred up feelings I dealt with earlier were just the wave of the thing under the water swimming over to the boat, so to speak. I knew I’d have to deal with things again, and that my good night’s sleep was just a rest period between rounds.

Here we are, renewing our lease for an untenable situation, and all we haven’t gotten is the scary voice telling us to “get out”. I recall Eddie Murphy using the Amityville Horror as part of his comedy routine, saying if he ever got that voice, he’d be out the door immediately. Yeah, easy to say buddy.

I’m doing laundry in the basement. There’s a shelf that was here when we moved in. There’s a bunch of junk there that I took no notice of until now. I see that there is a doll on a stand on one of the shelves, and I feel my spine start to tingle. Clenching my teeth, I turn the doll’s face towards me to make sure there are no red eyes staring back at me. I turn to the right, and I realize the space between the wall and the downstairs bathroom almost qualifies as a “mysterious room”.

It’s game time.

In my everyday life, it always seems that I pass by hidden passages to secret, psychological areas. If you take the time to look for them, and take advantage of the opportunity they present, you may find yourself traveling through the side passages of existence.

K and I decided to take a walk. Nothing spectacular, it’s a densely populated urban setting with a decent amount of greenery framing the sidewalks and spaces between complexes. For whatever random reason, we decide to hang a left, rather than straight ahead, and the next thing we know the side street heads into a wooded area.

Less traffic, birds are tweeting, squirrels are munching on nuts during a break in the freeze courtesy of Global Warming Terraform, Inc. We come across a picnic area with a large wooden pavilion and some grass with a playground. I’m feeling like the human equation is rapidly losing hold of our brainstem.

Now, on any other day, we’d just enjoy the discovery of the cul-de-sac we’ve uncovered and let sleeping dogs butter their own bread, so to speak. But we decide to take things in, and examine the details more closely. There’s a paved path leading off into the trees, so we decide to follow it. That’s when we leave the noise behind us and everything becomes rather quiet.

The path takes us deeper into the woods, and we can catch glimpses of a house here and there through the trees, but we’re definitely on a secret trail now. We catch a glimpse of the ani-mani-mals galore. Large hunting spiders out for a tasty snack, hawks looking for munchy mouse guts, and winged flyer bugs buzzing about just because you would be excused for thinking it’s spring.

We catch sight of a white stag with some deer friends (I’m not joking here), and I get to thinking we’ve had one of those experiences. K and I found a secret door and discovered one of the places that humans forget about, and it takes on a life of its own. An oasis of wilderness in the middle of sub-human anti-civilization development efforts.

K and I didn’t follow the white stag, though I spotted a trail in the trees past where he had been standing. We stayed the course and followed the path all the way to a dead end in the middle of a large swampy field filled with the marks of past floods and fishy existence. It’s as if the path stopped right where the unconscious and the conscious met, and a large hillside surrounded the place.

A side path goes up further, over and along the hill, so we take that, and find it hooks up with another network of paved pathways that skirt back into civilization. We search for secret doors again, and find a trail leading off into the brush, and a large tall forest of trees. We head off into the wilderness again, and find ourselves moving through a trail-tunnel along a stream, with makeshift bridges, copious amounts of growth in hibernation, and the rustle of critters mixed with the trickle of water.

The trail ends, and we find ourselves in a large swampy field of skeletal trees surrounded by a huge forest. All around are pools of water interspersed with islands of overgrown detritus. Fallen logs are everywhere, and the rotting trees all bear the mark of woodpeckers. The only sign of life is a ruined tree house falling into disrepair and now barely accessible due to the water starting to surround the trees it was built upon.

The trail ends in a tiny field of wildflowers. Perfect for a picnic. K and I resolve to return to this place and enjoy the wilderness of the secret door within a secret door. It isn’t everyday you find a main access way to the hidden and wonderful beauty still alive on this planet. We retrace our steps and return to the main street of human misery on a wave of good feeling. Everything feels better after you’ve gotten back to the source.

Look, and listen. There are many secret doors out there. You will find one if you aren’t careful.

I’ve been out of sorts the last few days. The shock to my nervous system from finishing the revisions “shocked the monkey”, and I found myself entering near dementia with all the psychic ripples in my “Motorhead” pond. My personal hygiene took a nosedive, and while I managed to maintain the outward operations of business-as-usual, inside I felt as if my efforts had stirred up a lot of detritus from the depths of my own personal Mud Lake.

These kinds of stunned doldrum episodes can last for days, with all manner of images, memories and ideas coming to the surface. This time, I was ready with my glass-bottomed boat to catch a glimpse of whatever mudgulpers might wade past. Oh, wow, the things that I caught a glimpse of, I’m going to need an additional vacation to meditate on. The Icky Girl Power really made an impact on me. Which is okay, because I was voluntarily leading with my jaw this time. But crumbs, I really got it handed to me this time, and the tussle ain’t over yet! Thank goodness I got more skills and tools this time around.

One of this things that came to the surface was my old childhood fascination with the old television series In Search Of…, and some of the subject matter from that show. In case you never saw it, Leonard Nimoy (yes, Mr. Spock) hosted a half hour show program in which an attempt was made to explain some “mystery” from a list of “extraterrestrials”, “magic and witchcraft”, “missing persons”, “myths and monsters”, “lost civilizations” and “strange phenomena”. Leonard Nimoy would narrate as evidence was put forward, scenes were re-enacted, and highly dubious explanations were put forward. All of this was accompanied by a synthesizer soundtrack that can only be called “eerie”, “otherworldly”, and “scary as all hell”.

My memories from that time are a little dim, but I couldn’t get the soundtrack out of my mind, nor could I get over the episode about Bigfoot, which frightened the poop out of me as a youngster. Fears that Bigfoot would break into my house and attack stem from various sources during the seventies, but this program did nothing to help with that, and I would be very afraid at night, staying up late with the light on and wondering what I could do to protect myself.

So I hit the old Youtube pool and found a host of episodes from the show, including the Bigfoot episode. Many of the episodes I remember seeing. Crumbs, I’d forgotten how much I used to be a regular watcher. The music was even creepier than I remember, and even in the safety of my own home, I felt the clutch of fear from childhood return. Every unknown noise freaked my scene out! The music from the UFO episode caught a hold of my brainstem and started to replay in my head even after I’d stopped watching.

Then I found the scariest episode of all for me. The one about the Amityville Horror. That episode scared me so bad I had to sleep with the covers on and with a flashlight in my hand back then. There’s this scene where a doll’s eyes open and turn red with a satanic glow, and that scene gave me many sleepless nights. Actually watching the episode, with the spooky red room, the story behind the doll (an evil monster imaginary friend that would mess a kid up for life), and the scene with the girl singing “silent night” on and off as she went in and out of a room, well all that stuff brought back so many memories in a flood that I had trouble sleeping for several days.

At night, I tossed and turned so much K sent me to the couch downstairs. And even with three dedicated cat protectors, they all fled upstairs and left me alone to freak out about Bigfoot, UFOs, the voices of plants, Dracula, and of course the scary doll creature from the Amityville Horror. It didn’t help that I had to go into the basement to use the Jakes at night, to avoid waking up K (her own work situation has taken a rather weird turn, so she needed the sleep). I heard phantom cats using the catbox in the basement, I felt cold chills from sixth sense spooks, and images of horror flashed before my eyes before I could flip light switches on.

And meanwhile, my old fears of Icky Girl Power came back to me as well. Blob capable of coming through the sink as I wash my hands sends thrills down my spine. Green slime from the UFOs with Leonard Nimoy narration as spooky music plays in my head over and over. This goes on for two nights. I’m scared out of my wits with childhood memories and present day fright seizing a hold of me so bad I’m afraid to close my eyes and get off the couch. So I go back and watch the episodes again, and I wonder why on earth these things aren’t on DVD, because its a fabulous show.

I mentioned skills and tools. Well, I’m not a kid anymore, at the complete and total mercy of the unknown, although I’m not immune to it. Maybe the only difference is that I know how much I stink, both in terms of hygiene and ability to cope. I refuse to let the spectres of fear dancing on my head completely have their way. I engage them in dialogue, I demand they explain themselves. I interact with Bigfoot, I chase off the UFOs, yelling at them “HEY! YOU FORGOT YOUR BUTT PROBE!” like a stupid fool. I confront the scary red eyed doll as big as I am trying to choke the life out of me and I say “That all you got?” I can’t explain the impossible conflict between my pathetic little life and the vast unknown, because it makes no sense and there’s no solution.

Except that things start to happen. You can’t reach into the deep slime and not be affected, but neither can the unknown. The night terrors don’t fade when the sun comes up, nor does the immediacy of their demands, but then the music I’ve been listening to lately starts playing in my head. All the CDs I got for Xmas, The Verve, The Ocean Blue, and my new obsession, Neko Case, who has been a phenomenal find for me. It’s as if something else wells up inside of me and gives me a break. I step back and I get my head back on straight. My fears take on different shapes and forms, and I realize things are trying to talk to me and tell me important information. I’m not safe, but I’m not completely vulnerable either, and I write down stuff.

The psychic wave passes, and I start getting a hold of things again. I know I’m going to have to dive again into the waves, but its okay, there’s all sorts of scary, interesting, and lively material for me to tackle when I’m ready. I clean up my act, shave and shower, brush my teeth, all that good stuff, and I feel a little human again. I don’t smell so bad, nor does my breath make me want to gag anymore. Important stuff is happening. There are ghosts in my house, and I’m doing my best to relate to them. I didn’t even know how scared I was of Icky Girl Power until I went in search of it. I don’t know if I can come up with some of the outrageous explanations Leonard Nimoy posits in the show (some of them are really WTF moments of logical deduction), but when it comes to the irrational and the subjective, perhaps the way out really is in.

Some things are better left unknown. If you swim in the dark lake at night, you have to be ready to scrape your feet on the slimy skin of the creatures that might be resting on the lakebed. Maybe our explanations for the unknown are no better than the ridiculous assertions of the show. And sometimes you catch a glimpse of something wonderful, or you feel something slither under your feet as you tread water, and you get to tell a tale gathered around the warmth of a fire in the dead of winter.

Last night, the mysterious unknown did its thing, while I had a good night’s sleep.

As I mentioned earlier, I encountered an advent calendar with some issues I found disturbing. Well hey, the unpredictability continued and I recorded the results. I don’t know what to make of it other than a mistake in the printing process, which is the likely explanation. If I take it as a meaningful coincidence, then I chose it out of the large pile of calendars because it belonged to me. The calendar of mismatched pictures in need of a person capable of unlocking their secrets. And so I shall! The time has come to make sense of the senseless jumble before me!

Dec 11
Picture: Scary snowman smoking a pipe, with branches for arms
Candy: What look like a pair of boots from the eighties
Meaning: To stay ahead of the evil snowman, use the moonwalk boots

Dec 12
Picture: A pair of ice skates
Candy: A snare drum with drumsticks
Meaning: Use the skates to cross the frozen lake, then play the drum to crack the ice

Dec 13
Picture: A present tied with twine
Candy: A sleigh with three presents in the back
Meaning: The present is a trap! Steal the sleigh and the three wise men’s stuff instead

Dec 14
Picture: A field of stars
Candy: A glob with a halo and wings
Meaning: Don’t look at the night sky, or an alien will appear and kidnap you

Dec 15
Picture: Sleigh
Candy: Basket of daffodils
Meaning: Ditch the sleigh at the greenhouse and pick some flowers

Dec 16
Picture: Four lit candles of various sizes
Candy: Wreath of mistletoe with candle in center
Meaning: Put the smallest candle in the wreath to open the wise men’s presents safely

Dec 17
Picture: A child’s wooden sled
Candy: A toy choo-choo train engine
Meaning: The train is useless. Put the gold, frankincense, and myrrh on the sled and drag it behind you.

Dec 18
Picture: A house surrounded by snow
Candy: A boot with a buckle around the ankle
Meaning: Break into Santa’s house and steal one of his boots

Dec 19
Picture: Plate of food, maybe a loaf of bread
Candy: Teddy bear
Meaning: Feed the ravenous bear with the food Mrs. Santa left in the kitchen for her husband

Dec 20
Picture: Two dolls
Candy: Six pointed star
Meaning: Give the dolls the daffodils and they will give you the six pointed star

Dec 21
Picture: A roll of ribbon
Candy: A lantern
Meaning: The lantern is set to explode, take the ribbon in case you need to tie up somebody

Dec 22
Picture: A pile of candy, including lollipops and wrapped sweets
Candy: A mushroom (???)
Meaning: The candy is deadly poison. Eat the mushroom instead to gain an extra life

Dec 23
Picture: The eighties boots, confirming that my identification of Dec 11th’s candy was correct
Candy: A sleeping crescent moon with a nightcap on it
Meaning: Leave the moonwalk boots with the moon. When the moon wakes up, it’ll eat the evil snowman

Dec 24
Picture: A valentine heart with a lit candle sticking out the top (That is so lewd as far as symbols go, I’m taken aback)
Candy: Messed up gremlin looking Santa Claus (K’s own words, as I had no clue)
Meaning: Oh no, Santa Claws has come to get you! He’s a little slow if you took his boot, so use the valentine’s heart from Dec 7 and the second shortest candle to destroy him with the power of love!

So, if I have this right, Christmas is a time of overcoming life-threatening obstacles and gathering the right quest objects to defeat the monsters. I suppose that’s my Xmas experience in a nutshell. This advent calendar was pretty cool now that I think about it. It showed me some weird stuff relevant to my own inner process. I guess we get gifts relevant to our situation if we remain open to the possibility.

Which begs the question, what strange and wonderful things might you run into or pick up by “accident” or “design”? What does that reveal about yourself?

Now that the holiday madness has past, I’ve been able to take stock of the post-santa-claws damage.  My car’s engine mount succumbed to the forces of doom and collapsed, just in time for my yearly inspection.  So I’m socked with a repair cost and delays during the nebulous holiday spirit that means every mechanic is doing the total dodge.  As if that weren’t enough, Frankie caught a lite sneeze, and needed a vet visit to get the kitty drug hook-up.  Sometimes, if you really try, you can feel the jackup gnomes with their vacuum in your wallet.  I must have landed on the square in my personal board game where I have to lose 2 turns.

My friend Liephus gave me a minor linkdump, which gave me a chuckle.  He’s all about the funny, and I think that’s a good a life goal as any.  First off, he sent me a link where a group of video game “experts” do a “scientific” study.  They show a compelling correlation between the time it takes for a game avatar to encounter a “crate” and how good the video game is.  See, it’s a staple in video games that there are crates everywhere.  They conceal “powerups”, “heals”, and “ammunition”.  They are often used as scenery or obstacles to liven up what are otherwise boring environments.  Some games start you out staring at a crate (and therefore are traumatic, horrible games to play), while others take half an hour before you encounter a crate (you have just found gameplay better than any vice you can imagine).

Second, he introduced me to Korean professional StarCraft matches on YouTube.  I think StarCraft is one of the greatest computer games ever made, and a heck of a lot of fun to play, either solo or against other folks.  In the matches, video game players fight to the death on-screen for fabulous glory and prizes.  The Korean announcers lose their marbles following the ebb and flow of play, which is pretty funny.  Some folks dub over them with English (such as DiggitySC), and give it that understated, but deeply satisfying humorous edge.  It’s all about the funny!  Just one more match, and I’ll head off to bed, I swear.

K and I have been watching Grey’s Anatomy, Seasons 1 and 2.  I think House is by far a better “medical” drama, but I like the premise and many of the characters of Grey’s Anatomy.  I loathe the main character, Meredith Grey, however, and her One True Couple counterpart Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd.  She’s very much an example of “The Beautiful Lady without Mercy”, making it all about herself and caring not a whit for what happens to other people.  I sense a post of some kind coming out of this in the future.

My Pa noticed the work I was doing on my rum punch recipe, and gave it the enthusiastic thumbs-up.  Then he passed along to me some vital ingredients.  It appears that I have yet some kung fu techniques to work on, and will likely have to modify my alchemical concoction.  Or perhaps do an addendum post on the matter.  But it’s very encouraging to have my efforts be recognized and have the parental unit pass along another part of the secret recipe down.  On K’s end, she’s been fiddling with crepes, trying to duplicate her Ma’s baffling ability to create rolled-up sugar crepes of smooth munching satisfaction.  She got a pair of really cool cookbooks from the holiday loot-fest, and has been readying to level up her baking skills.  Which reminds me, I have to summon the Cookie Aphid and go back to basics – the Chocolate Chip Cookie of Doom.  I’ve been experimentin’ a little too much, and need to return to solid ground.

Plans for the garden this year are already being made.  The entire garden gang got together the other day and drew up preliminary plans as to what will be planted, and how it will be harvested and stored this year.  There’s some fence work, sod-busting, and composting in my future I fear.  The ground is cold and damp, and the planting many months off.  But this year will be a new level with more hit points and better rolls, I can feel it.

I went on an outdoors weekend retreat with K a few months back, and had a bit of an accident. I was on the outside porch getting the charcoal fire ready to cook the delicious meal we had planned on. There’s this goofy contraption my pa has gotten me in the habit of using to light the charcoal, a kind of metal cup with a thick screen at the bottom. You jam some newspaper into the space at the bottom, place some charcoal on top, and light the newspaper. The charcoal gets a concentrated blast of heat and starts faster. I have my doubts about the overall effectiveness of this thing.

Take the current scenario I’ve just painted. It’s windy, and there’s no cover, so it’s impossible to light a match and get the newspaper going. So I decide to step off the porch and duck down behind the cabin to get a windbreak. This isn’t rocket science. Unfortunately, the two wooden steps are uneven, and constructed in such a way that they appear level. I step the wrong way, and tumble down like a pile of bricks. My immediate reaction is to toss the contraption and move that hand to steady myself into a controlled fall. My knee nearly bends at an unhealthy angle before I slow my fall and slide to the ground. Well, it does make a “crick” noise, and for a moment the pain is so intense I think I’ve broken something.

Luckily, it turns out to be a minor sprain. I can move about, but I have to spend most of our retreat with an ice pack and an elevated leg. Thank the maker for the rum punch we brought! They don’t call it “mixing up the medicine” for nothing. K and I have a blast at our secret little retreat zone, and get some good psychological recovery done. Around here in the nation’s capital (see also, “Doomsville”), you take mental fallout all the time from any number of different sources, and it can be hard to shake the accumulated stress.

As I’m sitting there, nursing a cup of medicine and putting the ice on while the steaks sizzle on the grill, I get to thinking. What happened to me bears a striking resemblance to a scene in my book! Rordan, the main character, is fetching his foster brother some tea when he has an accident. He sacrifices the tankard he’s holding to avoid a nasty fall and ends up mildly injured. Granted it’s not a perfect match – I’m holding a metal contraption that resembles a huge mug, not an actual tankard, and Rordan injures his foot while I injure my knee.

But it’s a meaningful coincidence that’s not lost on me. Rordan’s “accident” is no accident, and I’m not sure I want to be having the same kinds of experiences as a character in my book. On the other hand, it makes me feel closer to what I’m doing with my writing. I’m kayaking those turbulent waters of the unconscious again. Which means I have to watch out for the monsters lurking in the crawlspace beneath porches, waiting to take a swipe at people walking by.

The progress on my book continues. I’m 87% through the revisions, and am about to tackle the climax of the story. Come on, big creative push!

I got my hands on the DVD for Hawk the Slayer, and am very pleased I made the acquisition. It’s a sword and sorcery movie from 1981, and is actually watch-able, in a Beastmaster kind of way. The dialogue, characters and plot are all hilariously awful. I place the movie somewhere between average and good. It’s not “good enough” to be good, but it isn’t “average enough” to be average. This is the kind of movie you can watch with friends and have some laughs. Though nothing will beat the sheer WTF-ness of The Core. All I can say is that the universe must have taken pity on me for having suffered through The Return of Captain Invincible, and compensated me with a movie that is both bad and fun.

Just finished Season 1 and 2 of Heroes by means of Netflix. K’s new computer, plus our nifty high speed FIOS connection, equals “watch now”. Apparently, you can watch Netflix movies on your computer, who knew? Because we subscribe, we get a certain amount of free hours of viewing each month, so we’ve been draining that account dry to get caught up with the show. Maybe I’ll go into analytic detail of the show in another post, but for now all I’ll say is the show is worth watching. Lots of problems and plots that don’t add up, and Season 2 drops in quality significantly, but I’d say Season 1 was a heck of a lot of fun.

Musically, I’ve been listening to The Cure’s Wish and really digging it a lot. It comes on the heels of Disintegration, which carries the distinction of being my big breakup album. So to hear the post-breakup energy many years later after putting college way behind me, it’s very cathartic and enlivening. I’ve also been listening to Deutsch Nepal, a dark ambient sound that I’m really starting to dig. I’m going to have to get some more of this stuff. It puts me in the zone when I need to concentrate at work or hash my book revisions out.

On the cat zone, K and I got a large bath mat for the upstairs bathroom, and Frankie loves it. She uses it as a springboard to dash downstairs, then comes back up and rests on the bunched up mat. Frankie made sure to trill at K and give her the head-butt leap of affection to let her know this was approved. Meanwhile, Michael and Blink got a new soft throw to lay on. The fuzzy warm goodness does well on the couch, and when a human sits there with the throw over them, the two cats gravitate. Even independent Frankie has been taking turns resting on it. Wow!

My car was broken into the other night. I drive a bucket, and one of the doors doesn’t lock all the time. Needless to say I never keep anything valuable in there. Just a glove compartment jammed full of napkins ripped off from fast food joints, some moist towelette packets, and a pad of paper with a pencil. I could follow the progress of the intruder exactly. First, the pad and pencil tossed casually to the floor of the car. Then all the napkins got shoved out of the way and left on the passenger seat. Finally the moist towelette packets had been thrown on the ground outside of the car in disgust before leaving the door semi-closed. I had to laugh, because it’s a lot of effort to clear the compartment out for zero returns.

It may be winter for all practical purposes, but I’m still looking forward to next spring’s planting. K and I got ourselves a garden weasel finally, and aim to test it out as soon as the ground dries out a bit from the recent snow we had. The ground hasn’t hardened quite yet with the cold, but the weeds and other plants are on the defensive. I’ll give the scoop on how reliable this ding dang darn thing is when compared to the TV commercial soon enough.

And on a final note, I have yet to begin writing my Xmas cards. The beat down looms!