Graphic Halloween Story in Coniston

Tags

Coniston, graphic narrative, Halloween, pirate ship, Port Langdale, Sansara, Writing

For a limited time of about three weeks, a graphic Halloween story set in Coniston is on exhibit at the Rox Oil Gas Station just off the Linden Road. It’s an alternative option for when you want to be in the festive spirit but don’t have much time or want to decompress from gore and fright. The story is a collaboration of Klaus Bereznyak and me.

Leaving the building and going right on the Linden Road, reaching the end and taking a left into Port Langdale, you will find a large pirate ship in the harbor.

Coniston is an interesting area to explore further. There are also pods that pass through the area, transforming into a boat when leaving the pier.

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Million Units of Intel for the Home Multiverse

Tags

Consciousness, Story Telling

I’ve been gathering a million more units of intel for my home mulitverse this year.

I’m not here for a lesson, as a punishment, to rescue or to teach but to observe and then send the impressions and information home.

The mission is going very well. 😉

Auspicious Re-entry

Tags

fiction, Pandemonium, RolePlay, Story Telling, Storytelling, Victorian, Wren Alcyone, Writing

London

May 27, 1850

The wind had finally settled down about mid-morning after keeping Wren awake most of the night with howling and the flinging of small pieces of debris against the windows of the tiny flat above the tavern.

Today she would venture outside after having kept to her quarters for most of two weeks except for forays downstairs to check on the staff, receive supplies and for meals and a bit of company.

She’d felt a bone-weary, soul-numbing fatigue and had waited it out–just a cycle such as occurs in the natural world. There were some moments when she’d wondered if she’d been poisoned, but she wasn’t important enough for that. She’d also considered whether she’d acquired the affliction that had been spreading around London for several years now, but the familiarity of her extreme languor and irritability called for dismissal of that possibility.

It was more than simple melancholy; she’d paced the floors, slept a lot, gazed out the windows and avoided her scrying ball and cards.

Today would be the day to coax and push herself back out into the bustling city even though she didn’t feel quite ready–in fact, she had a sinking feeling of dismay in her solar plexus.

Without a mental list of things to do or any plan at all really, she cautiously opened the tavern door and stepped out into the street. The air was damp and sooty; she was drawn immediately to the gentle and patient eyes of a horse attached to a nearby carriage. The driver was in the tavern having a quick pint; Wren whispered in the horse’s ear and scratched around his head–a perfect beginning to re-entry into the world.

Playing for the Queen

Tags

Legacies 1891, Legacies Nexus, Pearl Grey, RolePlay, roleplay, Story Telling, Victorian, Writing, writing

March 7, 1893

Pearl played for the Queen in her new red gown. The Queen wasn’t actually in the room; Victoria was elsewhere in the world, England to be precise, if she were still alive. Pearl didn’t know for sure because there hadn’t been any news on the island for quite some time.  It was 1893 and Victoria would live for eight more years.

Glancing up at the photograph above the piano, Pearl played her best, which was only average but inspired and that may be more important after all.

Having been born and spending her childhood in France, Pearl hadn’t had Victoria for a Queen for most of her young life. That changed when she found herself in a weird, alternative version of London for what seemed to be an eternity but was actually less than a year. Having learned she had to create a sense of home for herself wherever she was, she’d looked to the larger-than-life Monarch for a sense of normalcy in the nightmarish world she’d found herself in.

London seemed long ago and so far away now. There was no one around to wear the gown for; she’d finally put it on to play to the empty room in the tavern and to the portrait of the Queen.  She’d found the dress packed away in one of her trunks months before, and was looking forward to an opportunity to wear it–an opportunity which had yet to arise.

She continued to lose herself in the music and this let her forget for a while one of the real issues at hand; the ships had stopped coming to the harbor. Not only had there been no news of politics, the theater and of ladies fashion, which she was sure was all changing, but there had been no supplies delivered of late.

There was plenty of liquor in the tavern and she had a fair amount of wealth but the ships had simply ceased arriving. She’d taken careful stock of her food supply, the chutneys she’d made during the winter and the dry goods in the pantry. She’d found a shovel near the open crypt, the one with the coffin and strange altar, nervously borrowing it to turn over some soil to plant a small garden.  There were still tea and scones to be gotten at the Café Serenity and Hester never seemed concerned about anyone starving, although she hadn’t been forthcoming with any details, being as efficient and brisk as ever.

It was likely that all was well; still Pearl could not help but wonder. There were signs that others had been about the island although she rarely saw them.

She sighed and got up from the piano to pour herself another brandy and then raised her snifter in a toast to the portrait of the Queen.

Not Shopping Today Either

Tags

awareness, Consciousness, learning, Story Telling, values, Writing, writing

Not Standing Next To The Bullshit.

“Katia continues with her writing and the dishes remain soaking, the sheets remain unchanged and the time moves on. She actually has to remind herself that this is not a failure; she really cannot be in more than one place at one time. The horrors of taking on the energy of others, the horrors of people who felt overwhelmed by duties making her feel a failure because they focused on what she hadn’t done instead of what she had accomplished for them. It’s in her cells and nervous system now. Whatever choice she has made, a part of her could say that it was the wrong one; she has been programmed.

There are people and organizations she can finally see clearly as her oppressors, those she wanted to please and could be easily manipulated by with the withholding of appreciation and approval. They’d wrung everything out of her that they could because it was the way the world worked in places. They thought that they deserved it to make up for what had been done to them, for their losses and for their conditioning of overwhelm, for Katia’s stupidity for actually caring and mostly because they didn’t have the blessing and curse of feeling what it’s like to be someone or something else.

They give her nothing now; they do nothing for her but make noise in her life. She no longer cares what they think of her; she thinks of them rarely at all. What of value can they withhold from her now, when she turns and walks away?”

Searching For A Timeline That Overcame Human Bashing

Tags

choices, Consciousness, Entertainment, life, low self esteem, Story Telling, Storytelling, values

Taken At InSilico North

2080

Being alone in a strange city makes me pay attention more and gives me the space to think. The data jack implant surgery was successful but I guess I hadn’t believed  it when I was told of the need for recovery time. My sensitive system is still dealing with the meds, I’m light-headed and my energy is lower than usual. Some new and fascinating track has come to light out of all this though. I do a little research about it for awhile and then sit in the coffee shop of the hotel for hours wondering about the possibilities.

Life as it is now, sucks in so many ways. How did we get here? It’s amazing how a temporary break from the matrix can clear the mind. Of course I need to link in for some things but with my vision adjusting I’m doing so at a minimum.

Walking around the city I found little hole-in-the-wall shops that sell junk and antiquities. Discovering it’s easier to read print on physical documents; something about them drew me in at a gut level too. Picking up some really old magazines and journals from around the turn of the millenium, brittle and dusty, I went back to my hotel and began to read about life in the west. My grandparents had lived in Japan all their lives at that time.

Maybe it was the meds talking but all the while I was looking through the words, my head was buzzing with the recent conversations I’ve had with Rufus about parallel time lines. He thinks I’d be happier in another one.

It looks like we got here by some bad choices and that looks like they were made because so many bought into brainwashing about something being wrong with them. I’m talking about the humans here. Low self-esteem seemed to be rampant. There was mass hypnotism about all the things that could go wrong that left people paralyzed to take action and seeking numbness inducing substances and activities. Wow. They were made to feel shame about what others in their country had done. What others in their race were like. Their religion or lack of such. Gender. Age. Sexual Orientation. The training of humans to despise themselves and  focusing on the worst parts of their so-called natures. There were even games and entertainment that emphasized that humans were the laggards and assholes of the universe, not to be trusted and deserving of abuse and trickery.

Almost everything was pointing them away from self-empowerment. Guilt and hopelessness was instilled and left them easily to manipulate. The machinations are palpable in the images and words in these old documents about how we got to this place of every fucking thing being about survival and business.

Sure there were a few dissenting voices to living in the misinformation and illusion; they seemed to have been dismissed, ridiculed or ignored. It’s given me hope; I want to go back and then move forward in their timeline.

A Day of Rest ~ You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Tags

books, Consciousness, Entertainment, Line of Fire, Reviews, Stephen White, Story Telling

“But If You Try Sometime, You Just Might Find”

This morning I went to the park with a fiction book and read in natural, outdoor  light. It was a hardback book. I had snacks, put my bare feet in the grass and forgot about everything for awhile.

I’d begun to wonder if I was still able to focus on reading a book from beginning to end in a reasonable amount of time; there are fewer books I can really get into anymore. This one was called Line of Fire by Stephen White. It’s the second to last book in a series he began about 18 years ago. I’ve read all of them except the one before this, The Last Lie, which I just picked up from the library today. I liked them all except for Kill Me.

I enjoy them because he’s a great storyteller. What he writes about Colorado, the Front Range and Boulder and their residents, he nails.  I used to live there.  He’s a clinical psychologist in real life and I’ve learned lots from the way he presents his characters. He also has a great deal of interesting knowledge about multiple sclerosis. Almost everything he presents in his stories is never boring and he’s someone I’d like to have around just to hear his perceptions on things. I trust him. I like the thread of humor and irony that run through the books. They’re easy for me to read and intellectually stimulating at the same time, if that makes sense.

This book does not have a happy ending. Two of the main women characters didn’t make it ~ one died and the other’s life is in ruins in a way there’s likely no way out. Another woman did not fare well several books ago. By now you may have noticed I don’t like that kind of entertainment but with these books I never feel manipulated, abused or tricked as a reader. The payoff of reading them is worth the awful circumstances that some of the characters have been in. In the last book which is yet to come, I can only hope that Alan Gregory, Sam Purdy, the kids and the dogs will be all right.

“You Get What You Need”

I found these books by accident. They are considered suspense or thrillers, a genre I won’t read. I don’t even consider suspense books; my eyes glaze over when they’re presented somewhere.

Several years ago when I was living in Boulder County, Colorado, I had to leave for what I thought would be a three week care-taking visit. It turned into five months and was one of the most hellish times of my  life. I felt cut off from comfort or support and there was little relief around at all.

Someone in the area I was visiting, who heard of my homesickness, (I was longing for my own bed and bathtub, etc.), had a complete collection of what was then about 12 or 13 Stephen White novels. They loaned me all of them. Not only did I enjoy reading about places around Boulder and the Front Range I knew well, but I enjoyed many other aspects of the books and learned a lot in a painless sort of way. Best of all it gave me a temporary escape from an intense and-did-I-mention-hellish time of my life. It felt like a personal lifeline from the universe. I hope you know what I mean by that. Or maybe I don’t; we don’t all have to experience some things.

The point I’m trying to make is that there are likely bridges, crutches, life-line-like distractions all around that can help us get through. Something within our reach, not destructive to ourselves or others and often casually offered by someone who may not know us well at all. It might be from an unlikely “genre” that we’d otherwise overlook.

And we might not ever know when something we offer out into the great soup of our mass humanity really touches someone or helps them get through a rough patch when they feel like they’re at the end of their rope.

A Vision Through the Mists

Tags

fiction, Legacies Nexus, Pearl Grey, RolePlay, Second Life

Am I Dreaming? That Looks Like My Other Home.

August 30, 1892

The hot cup of tea I hold in my hands as I look about the scattered items all over the floor feels real. I can smell the scent of Jasmine and taste the subtle flavor, sweetened with a bit of honey. But I cannot seem to trust all my senses and I must confess that for awhile I believed there would be a semblance of normal every day life here. Here being Serenity Falls.

I’d planned to travel to Serenity Falls upon occasion for business and socialization from my home in Torn Oak but the nightmares I had there were increasingly disruptive. I would awaken in a panic and it felt like the house was spinning. Several times I dreamt that the entire roof was gone.

It was bothersome enough that I brought my potion supplies here by ship, waiting for them after traveling through a portal. I’ve read, napped and watched the  stars from my balcony, looking forward to focusing on my work. When the ship had delivered my possessions, I diligently crafted my lotions but when it was time to return I felt such a sense of foreboding that I chose to stay here for awhile  longer.

Then it became apparent that I needed warmer clothes due to freakish storms and I missed some of my books as well. Contacting the Captain of the ship who knew of my home, I arranged for another few crates of my things to be delivered to me here. A few days ago he returned with the strange pronouncement that Torn Oak was no longer there. The harbor where his ship had always docked was not to be found and his navigation instruments were otherwise reliably operating.

The Captain had always been trustworthy before and I didn’t quite know what to think. Then the view on the horizon here seemed to be changing through the swirling mists and my dreams became very strange once again. I have doubted my sanity, something I thought I was beyond after everything I’ve been through.

So I keep myself very busy with my books, lotion crafting and puttering about. When I stand on my balcony and squint my eyes I can almost see my beloved cottage on the far hill. I’ve been too frightened to explore further and I dare not mention it to anyone lest they see it as a sign of instability and weakness.

If the strange vision continues I might ask my neighbor, who is a Doctor, for some sort of medicinal relief.

Seeking Inhabited Lands

Tags

choices, Game of Thrones, life, RolePlay, roleplay, Second Life, Wren Alcyone

Still Searching

Wren considering traveling from Winterfell to Gulltown

I keep hearing echoes that winter is coming. It must be true. And even though I have the presence of mind to take care of my life in the moment, even though I was raised to stand on my own two feet no matter the harsh circumstances, it may be time to move on. Time to look for a more hospitable land.

And if it is mostly uninhabited as well, Nobles haughtily walking with their noses in the air, small folk shuffling along with their heads bowed and eyes on the ground, at least it can be a change of scenery. A more mild and hospitable clime.

And if it turns out to be a mistake, no matter. I would have simply chosed with the best I knew. When this life is over I will surely see how it all did indeed matter.

Slink With the Herd or Tromp a New Path?

Tags

Grey, RolePlay, roleplay, Second Life, Shadowrun

August 27, 2080

Sometimes making decisions seems to be such a crap shoot. Go with my gut or apply logic? Never having all the information, there comes a time when looking to the matrix isn’t enough; I just have to go with the random bits of data that come across my link and try to make sense of the mosaic of factoids.

Going with my gut usually works when matching up a tea selection with a customer in the Golden Dragon. Or choosing which dress to wear with my mood, if indeed a dress will carry me through most of my day without my having to make a quick trip into the sewers or a creepy abandoned building.  It doesn’t work so well when most of the chummers I interact with have lost whatever empathy or emotional body they ever had.

Getting a read on an augmented creature with whatever brand of crazy they’re programmed with, interspersed with my interactions involving the bewildering cultural differences of other races, it’s easy for me to lose confidence in my ability to navigate through this life.

We’re all hooked up together some ways. This Runners Haven island sometimes calls for being temporarily allied with those one would normally avoid. It’s more than just being a business owner, although I take that very seriously. Got to have some sort of purpose, right?

It’s so expensive to get a copter ride off this island and the traveling by boat to the mainland is damned dangerous. I get so lonely here. It’s been ages since I’ve seen someone without pointy Elven ears or mostly tech parts. Someone who knows how to laugh. The Chief Regulator Troll spends most of his time shacked up with his woman, or so I’ve been told. Those who took over this island have vanished apparently. For how long, I have no idea. Again, not much data about it comes across my link and the whispers on the street have been eerily silent.

Friday evening I went to the Cat Scratch Club to forget about the week and have some drinks. I looked around the crowd and saw few I knew and even fewer that I’d want to talk to. Ryan arrived and we had a little catch-up talk and a few drinks before some jerk grabbed her, yelling something about a job. I had to pull a knife on him. Sad. I can’t go anywhere without weapons.

There are large paw prints in the damp areas of Mourningwood Park. Maybe the Elf twins have had some failed magic and have become a tasty snack?  No idea.

I’m strong and independent. While willing to collaborate and be a team player with what I can bring to the table, I can also take the initiative and travel this path alone if need be. Without a spirit animal. Without the Corps. Without the Yakuza jerks who brought me here to run the Golden Dragon. If there’s to be a freaking blackout, I can read my old books by candlelight. I’ve got plenty of soy noodles stashed.

If the island is to be abandoned to the rats, the street sams, the junkies and the chipheads, I’ll need to be prepared for a quick exit. I’m keeping an alert watch on it.