The Diamond Island

I helped the bees.

The killer bees who came to rock me been wintering over and building strength.  As the spring rains of radioactive doom spill out over the land, they been buzzing slowly into hot activity, like a magma swarm of super-charged sparks under intense pressure.

All they needed was a shelter from the mindlessness of humans caught in their repeating basic mantra of bad brains programming. The killer bees grow stronger in my mind; can’t help but feel a little like a king bee, if only in a small way.

I helped more bees.

Since I decided on becoming a beekeeper, I figured I ought to start at Level 0 somewhere.  K ordered this hang-able bunch of cut bamboo wrapped and stapled together, and I put it outside for mason bees to find a home.

Those bees are rover bees, wanderers and nomads without a hive. Heh, pretty cool. They’re all over the place, but you never notice them because they come in so many shapes and sizes not always resembling the humble honey bee.

K had her doubts, but I stubbornly insisted on getting started. Next thing I know, bees! Gathering their pollen for their little larvae and mud to seal up the little nursery capsules.

She was so excited by my success that she gathered up some bamboo and created a makeshift home bunch herself.  Next, she took a block of wood and drilled holes in it.  All these things were hung in a place so as to avoid the rain and get regular sunshine (warmth and dryness being key).

Okay, so it’s like six or seven sealed nurseries now. Very small results, but still so exciting!

Started looking up YouTube videos of beekeepers, and K tuned me into the top bar method of raising hives. This looks awesome. In particular, the video of the dude installing a queen without gear and only a pipe for smoke while his kids watch strikes me as incredibly brass.

It’s a preview to get me excited about one day being capable enough to help the bees. Yes, the honey is a benefit—I am thinking of myself at least a little. The satisfaction of exploration and experience, however, is what draws me. I must know more about bees!

And I will. Muah-ha-haaa!

I have yet to speak of one of my most profound interests: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP for short). You might say it’s been a non-subject for conversation, an irrational sense that drained me of the interest of mentioning it here. No longer, for tonight the taboo is lifted!

For my birthday, I decided to purchase for myself a used copy of the core rules for the first edition of WFRP. The hardbound version, before they came out with the paperback version with the handful of edits and corrections.

The copy I received was in terrible condition: spine shot, taped together, with edges worn gray. The character sheet page was missing, and somebody’s name and phone number were penciled in on the inside of the front cover.

However, the rest of the pages were in good condition—of a stiffer paper than the paperback copy I have, and smelling of that old sensation I remember when poring over the copy I once possessed. To hold in my hands this version was to take me back to a moment in my life where I once was fully immersed in the explorations my passion for this game would take me.

I was also reminded of the terrible time I was forced to sell my hardbound copy to Powell’s bookstore to have enough food to eat that day. To relinquish this tome and many others for a handful of dollars so I wouldn’t starve. In the years to come this would be the selling of my heart that would trouble me the most: The book that began my most important journey.

I had no way of knowing an internet would appear that would allow me to gain a copy for printout through the download network if I wished. That a seller’s market would manifest in which one might see and resume contact with all the lost pleasantries of a thousand young dreams, and if necessary, claim a physical object to meditate upon.

Here it is then, in my hands once again, healing a self-inflicted wound. Who is to say this is not the very same volume I once owned? For you see, it was sent to me from a bookstore in Oregon, the state of mind where I left behind a piece of myself. There are times when even selling pieces of yourself is not enough to keep eating. You must flee into the forest and go mad to find nourishment.

I open the page containing the “Wizard’s Apprentice” beginning career, with it’s typos in magic points and incorrect advance scheme. The errors confused me back when I first read them; when they were corrected in the paperback version I was relieved.

Now I find myself looking at the 204 magic points (instead of the correct 2d4 or 2-8) and the +1 Wounds/+10 Dexterity advance scheme (missing the additional +10 Intelligence and +10 Willpower) with a new set of eyes. The typos are meaningful to me; they speak to my innermost being of what I didn’t understand.

Subsisting only on my resistance to damage and the work of my hands, but born with an accident of energy.

This time, I hold the rules tome in my hands and I get the message.

The recent nuclear catastrophe unfolding in Japan right now brings me back to the time of the Japanese ghosts crying out to me. This comes at a moment when I am releasing myself of grieving for another dear friend.

I recently watched an old sixties movie called Crack In The World, a film I’d seen as a very young child and then later as a college punk. A dying scientist tries to tap the molten interior of earth to create a source of energy and minerals for industrial purposes, under the guise of “helping humanity”. Instead, he initiates a rapidly spreading crack in the crust of the earth that threatens to split the planet in two.

It strikes me as prophetic how movies such as this one, or Godzilla, warned us decades ago of the dangers of striving for Atlantean power beyond our wisdom as a species to use. Do the scientists who are possessed by satanic rationalism, or the government figures that puppet dance the industrial aristocracy’s interests ever get the message?

Long presaged in our dreams and made manifest in a work of cinema to show us the intention of the unconscious in response to the mindless savagery of our owners. A behemoth from the depths or perhaps the earth-shaking birth of a second moon grant us a glimpse of the suffering yet to rise from the depths of our own ignorance.

It’s all a moot point now. The industrial age is coming to an end and there’s not enough uranium or money to keep the madness going any longer. As the whole farce decays into rust, the big question is how many more accidents, how much more contamination before the nuclear energy dead-end goes the way of the Betamax?

The movies were right. Add a dose of humor, the enthusiasm of a child, or heroic sacrifice on the side of life and we might survive ourselves long enough for the super-predator to let us live to die another day. Maybe the point of it all was not to succeed, but to get to the next rest stop by doing whatever it took to keep on holding on.

Disasters force us to look at ourselves honestly, require that we confront the shadows we have pretended live in others. As I burn a stick of incense and say a prayer of grace for my departed friend Yoshie Izumi, I also look my own gruesome shadow in the eye with compassion.

Thank the living spirit for my stupidity! There may yet be hope.

Last year I learned terrible news. If I had learned of Molly’s passing earlier, it might have destroyed me.  Instead, I took responsibility and danced. For a whole year I have held a candle and sung a song of hope and peace.

Now I square the circle and complete the grieving.  The time has come to let go and forget, so that the universe may continue to spin a spiral of love.

Keeping and releasing. This is how we find an experience of being alive.

I think now of how we go through our lives and miss so much, waste so many chances to make a connection, and this is okay.  The universe is generous and this is harsh on us.  We who are limited by our smallness.

It’s funny, but there’s a part of me the universe revealed that belongs to myself and only I. This secret can never be replaced or duplicated to my knowledge. That mystery knows Molly now and will remember if the other parts of me forget.

Caring transforms our darkness into the light of sorrow and suffering so that we might know ourselves and the human depths and heights of our unknown nature.

I imagine ecstasy, seeing my friend and almost lover in the ways she might have been and may yet be beyond the realm of our Mesozoic understanding. She is released from the obligation to carry the torch of life through the darkness of precipitous living.

I rejoice, knowing I have made meaningful some small part of her brief course in the span of time and space. That is, after all, what our calling often is as human beings.

She is free to travel, and I am released to continue on my small and winding night of the body for as long as is needed by my barely glimpsed destiny.

I love you Molly Kleinman.

I find myself staring at three stickers of Michael Jackson, next to which are two pennies found in the street of some forgotten time and place.  Two bits for the eyes of a corpse, three prizes reinforcing the message of This Is It.

I am transmutating again.

The bees sing to me in harmony with the skeleton trees in the valley. The world is rumbling and washing our small lives to pieces, exposing the lies and falsehoods by which dysfunctional wretches have guided our lives in place of us taking our power for ourselves.

The nasty tenacity of a badger is what is required to heal ourselves.

Though I am reminded of don’t know mind, still others clutch at me hoping the crutch of my caring will carry them along to the next rest stop. It’s too late for any of that; people are responsible for their own lives too, and I am mindful now of the need sometimes to step back and let people have an experience of their own dark helplessness.

The light can exist only in the face of the shadow.

Hoping we will overcome our fiends and foibles is madness as surely as the never ending expectation of accomplishing all the goals we set for ourselves: Always have the dishes washed, call all our friends regularly to let them know we still breathe, regularly take those steps to improve our desired skillset so we don’t feel we are wasting our lives.

Nonsense.  Hiding ourselves from the truth of our vast self because it hurts.

In this place there is the conclusion of running, endgame.  I’m done, assent recognized and heard.  All that remains is to turn around and face that which has most frightened me. No longer will I cast this task upon my mirage, or the now-escaped lost boy who I believe will find himself, or dark forces I imagine acted without my need or assurance.

Confront the specter of my own willful standing in the way.

I was willing to pass away rather than fail again so severely, but I lived on and reached this place of understanding. I knew I would rise up and look myself in the eyes, assent to return as surely as I gave in to departure.  Take off the mask of failure and behold the truth behind my collapse into nothingness.

The dark specter welcomes me; the happy are awakened and revealed.

The only one stopping me is me. Now I see what I must do and need to experience in the deepest parts of my being.  I want to be in that place. I want to understand. With that commitment illusions fall away from my eyes and I see surely that which is needed most for me to know nothingness with juh-joy.

Supermoon rising to midnight, deep self delving the farthest reaches to uncover gold.

The ebon shark and the xanthous bee are together.

There is perilous, sweet honey.

I’m moonwalking.

When I was a young boy, one of the places I loved to browse were stores with aquarium supplies.  They always had these cool knick-knacks you could put in your aquarium, from pirate treasure chests that bubbled to giant cliff sides with lots of hiding places for fish.

One time my folks bought me one half of a shipwreck set.  The set was of a sea galley in two pieces, presumably cracked in two because of a fire, an explosion, a pirate attack, or just hitting the rocks.  It could be any or even all of those!

I wanted the complete set, but my folks didn’t have enough money.  I went for the front half, with it’s detailed but fragile anchors and broken masts.  Assuming you set it up in an aquarium, a lifeboat flipped up when bubbles from an air hose collected underneath.  The figurehead was a gold, bare-breasted upper torso of a female figure.

I can remember the time as if it were yesterday.  The aquarium shop by the seaside, near the fish market.  The greedy unwrapping of my new toy, to be set in with my group of undersea toys and prizes.  Deep sea diving was a meditation I learned young.

Years passed, and the ship began to break apart and lose pieces of detail work.  One day I pulled the superstructure apart and broke the parts into smaller pieces.  That was the end of the toy.  But I kept one small piece—the figurehead, her breasts bare and her elbows pulled back as if she were thrusting forward into the waves.  She resided in The Box, waiting.

When I was a young man, my heart was broken and the life I thought I would live turned out to be a total failure.  Broken, lost, dazed; I wandered until the movie Titanic came out.  There on the temple screen of the last days of popular movie going, I connected with an experience that spoke to me of the failure of my life.

I grieved.

Down into the depths and broken in two, a mystery unknown stored within her submerged halls for all time.  Davy Jones triumphant, and I alone carried on to tell the tale if ever I regained some modicum of wit.

Yet the dreaming, yearning hope of what nothing remained moved me on.  Marking and remarking my tread with the scent of bitter tears until the voice of the unexplainable made itself known to me.

Failure is exploration, it said.

No longer a young man, I awoke, the gold of salvation on my hands and a numbing frost melting into my lips.  With the aching hunch of a starved prisoner I shrugged off rusted chains and stood up out of a cairn of stone suitable only for the dead.

A provident vision of a broken ship in two pieces from my youngest days, but the temptation is to turn away—imagining it childishness to desire what is so easily within one’s grasp now.  And a little fear, of losing again and of falling down back into the darkness.  To believe with one’s own eyes, yet to cringe away for uncertainty in one’s own worthiness.  Still longing, I convinced myself it is enough to see; this shall sustain me.

I had work to do, and with the talent of deep sea diving did what was meant to be done, rightly so.  These responsibilities I approached and accepted despite the lack of confidence, for if not I then who?  My ears might be inadequate, yet still I hear and listen.

Again, the vision, reduced price in a different place.  With signs from the intuition speaking loud and clear.  To shake off my last hesitation and accept is like lifting a mountain, moved.

This is my soul, my life, broken in pieces yet now whole and together as a secret treasure of the deep.  Where mysteries are found and solved.  Washed up on the shores of my being for me to behold and consider.

The Titanic is razed, and raised, rebuilt as miracles of inner healing take place.  My bruises are made clear; my dirty clothes wiped clean and my cuts sealed over with the softest of care.  What was unmendable has been renewed.

K and I meditate on this strange wonder.

A while back, I reviewed a small release of music from a band led by an elf gal who goes by the alias of Solarbird.  Well the crafty and inventive songster is back with her elf posse, CRIME and the Forces of Evil, along with a full-fledged album of new improved songs to whup our behinds with a belt!

Solarbird put forward a raffle to divvy out a series of advance copies in exchange for a review. As per my usual truculent self I said, “Funk Dat” and bought the album off the Bandcamp space. I told her to keep me out of the raffle and I was going to do a review anyway, because of course—I had already made up my mind to do so!

Last time, I was curdled and mixed about the music the band put forward.  I knew I was going to give the full album a fair shot once it came out, though quite frankly I thought it would be a chore.  Save for one track, the style of that first release let my expectations down and the sound grated on me.

Okay enough yapping already! What the Hek do we have here anyway?

I was impressed and surprised.  Consider me totally floored.

First off, the title is awesome.  I’ve stated my superhero stance before, so the title of the album, Dick Tracy Must Die, is a stance I immediately understand and sympathize with.  I’m on board at the conceptual level.

I’m impressed with the Bandcamp interface—I’m all about low barriers. I got myself a high quality download and cover jpg with no-fuss and no-muss.  This really is a step forward in the ability for artists to control the horizontal and vertical.

I know the site takes its cut, but right now this format kicks the music industry in their undead nutsac.  I know that I’m giving most of my Ducats to the people I choose to support.

Musically, the tracks are outstanding.  The audio has been cleaned up.  There are lots of extras in the background for punctuation.  There’s variety in the subject matter and sound while still remaining distinctive as a style.  Having listened intently for a week now, I can’t think of any song that sounds unfinished—these birds are grown up and fly on their own.

Having let go of previous expectations, I can at least make that kind of objective statement about the material.  It holds up as good music that has been pushed through the dip to fruition.

What I wasn’t expecting was that I would actually like the stuff.

Maybe I ought not to be surprised, since what we have here is different, interesting, and independent at its core.  All stuff I really dig.  It’s hard to remain unmoved by the biting insight and subtle wit of “When You Leave”, or the sincere and reasoned tenderness of “Let Me Help.”

Solarbird’s voice has been blended with the music and now the cranky, irksome elf has been replaced with a softer and more even level that lets the lyrics deliver their potency without detracting from the energy and skill of the strings.  Nothing’s wasted here.

While I like some songs more than others, I can’t find a single one I dislike.  There’s the outrageous and knowing humor of “My Boyfriend”, the restrained buoyancy of return in “Stars”, and the sorrowful understanding of “Thought You Knew”—the territory covered is impressive.  I have yet to tire of it.

The group characterizes itself as acoustic elf-metal.  I would venture to say their sound is better described as acoustic elf-chrome—lustrous, hard, and pure.  This is the kind of punk music you would hear played in Rivendell when the elves had downed a few.

Or in the markets and fairs of Cascadia.  Played by those few diminished immortal elves who never went into the Undying Lands, yet have enough kindness and wisdom in their hearts still to sing songs of complexity and beauty.

The elves of Middle-Earth were known for crafting items of exceptional artistry, but that only explains half of what I’m hearing. I can’t help but feel there’s an edge to all this.  It’s music you’d hear played by the elves in the movie Wizards, where fantasy magic and archaic technology mix.

Solarbird has a machine gun now.  Die, Dick Tracy, die!

Okay, so a long while ago I swore I would level up on the knitting power. It’s pretty sad news that a category on this blog has been limping along at only one entry for such a long time. Can you guess my undeveloped side here?

No longer! Unpacked (again), re-learning my skill (again). I will get back in touch with this and make myself the very scarf that Kimaroo mentioned I need in this day and age of psychic blizzards.  Everybody needs an advanced tool of civilized multi-purpose function in this era of Road Mutants In Training.

But hey, sometimes the trove comes up extras on the bonus round. Lo and behold at the store, an array of potions such that K and I thought were relegated to an age of history sadly written. Just goes to show that anything can reappear when the world turns with a subtle flavor.

Behold, potions of healing goodness! K loves this beer, swears by it and has sorely missed it. We plan to stock up before those Roguesy weirdoes turn off the emergency damage repair spigot accidentally again.  For now though, it is exceedingly cool to run into an old friend of tasty character and refreshing vitality. Times are tough!

Of course, scrolls of revelation are included in the package as well. For my roleplaying game group I do maps and tokens as part of my full Game-mastering package of goodies.  Here’s a picture of one such map that I created, of the village where the characters begin their adventure.

Yes, full on detail and color of the highest order.  These things help my players imagine the scale and scope of the area they find themselves in. I was telling Kimaroo about this very thing, when I realized I ought to show her what the Hek I was talking about.

Yes, magic items are everywhere. Because we need them.

For the last few months, I’ve found myself at a high degree of stress factors with diminished creative activity. You could say all sorts of components and clusters of energy have been blazing hot and ashen. Then, the downslide into long periods of rest and dulled, zombie-like shuffling about to no particular aim. Whatever’s going on in the deep unconscious, I’m pretty much surfing it as best I can.

No doubt, this last year I’ve been processing and working out an avalanche of dislodged material from my brain connections. I’ve truly felt like this was not for the faint of heart or tender of spirit, yet I’ve managed to keep the trans-warp drive going on jury-rigged plot devices.  Work, relationships, artistry; all on the hopper alert main panel with flashing jewel studded lights.

The past returning along the elliptic, the future looming across the event horizon, and the present busting a move on the loudspeakers and display panels as fast as I can render a thought.  Still, I’ve found fun where I could and helped people along in whatever manner I could find the wisdom and strength to do so. Really, there are long periods where all you can do is hope, and wonder, and dream your way through these blizzards of the soul.

It’s time once again for a recap of the honeycomb hideout news. We got killer bees recharging their pew-pews and buzz-blares through the winter in the central stairwell. The garden is in slumber mode, while all the amazing bonus critters are street fighting it out on reserves or scavenge dice rolls.  There’s the sound of psychological sparks flying as internalized experimental processes run on bio-organic energy sources. It’s an introverted circus of exploration during a time of cold withdrawal.

After last year’s snowpocalypse, and the resultant gigantic creatures that emerged out of the space left behind when humans retreat indoors, there was a huge furnace of frightful manifestations all around the immediate area.  It gets me to wondering if people are hip to the amount of work that needs to be done just to maintain the local life support systems, let alone the scale of megalith size collectives.  Make no mistake, it’s definitely a sliding about of earth’s subterranean top.

I mean, even long term protective gear forged in the treasuries of lost youth are showing damage from the goob-a-loo resounding.  We just can’t depend on the ol’ standbys to keep on truckin’ to the remaining Stuckey’s still able to reload the chili dawg torpedoes.  I look at my Merlin-size library of tracts, tomes, potions and tablets—and I’m shlumped to the floor. The slack in the vast array of miraculous to godawful junk isn’t there.  It is closed to me, save by only the most intense of effort.

Despite the relentless pressure of deep sea diving without a hat, I’ve managed to hold it together—and keep more than a few people I know sane through their own blast furnace or stellar particle shower.  There’s a volcano of one million years BC metamorphosis scale clearing her throat in our hearts, I just hope I can dodge the boulders and screaming dinosaurs as they tumble past me into the abyss. But in the meantime, at least there’s still late night horror hosts to ease the squeeze on my brainstem!