(no subject)

spent the day wrestling with office 2000. thanks to sicarii for her help with tech support. ^.^
finally managed to wrest open my ancient, ancient files...
it's nice to re-read them. this is the Novel that I began writing in 1991 on notebook paper, in pencil. The earliest computer documents are in Word Perfect 5.1, vintage approximately 1994.
This is some old stuff. It was me, learning how to express myself in words, and in writing. Some of it is the formation of my mind.
The early stuff really sucks. I don't know anything.
Some of the more recent stuff is exquisite. At least, to me. I don't know how anyone else would see it.
I don't write like this currently. The most recent stuff is from the beginning of the summer. But it's all on themes and characters that are much older. Strong visuals, an exotic and nebulous setting, vivid characters, little jewel-like episodes strung out on a frayed and tangled string or set of strings, i could never tell; some episodes cancel each other out (by killing off a character, or restoring him to life; by changing a circumstance, by obliterating an event) and some follow each other, but not directly. Some of these sections are forty pages long, some three, some a paragraph. There are a hundred and thirty-three files in this folder. Some have last-modified dates of 1998 or so; but those dates are only when they were transferred to my new computer (the one before this one!) and saved in the new program. Some are still in the old old format, and are from 1997 or so. I just found an essay I wrote in a college application. ...
Such a trip, to journey back in time into my own mind.
( an excerpt )

a dragon reflects on his brief tenure as a mortal

It is the most amazing of experiences to live among the mortals of this world, to love and eat and laugh and cry and run and give birth and, eventually, die the way they do. Death is so like what we dream-creatures do constantly, and yet so different; that slow frightening passing of the self between the worlds, out of the real into the unknown, is made more difficult by the knowledge that for the mortal it is the absolute end of anything real that he or she has experienced, that there is no return, no awakening; and this is what differentiates our experiences. Though I knew where I was going, still I was as frightened and sorrowful as he was to leave those we loved behind, never to see them again in their mortal forms. I fear that I will never again feel such depths and pinnacles of emotion as I did there; it simply isn't the same to be a dream-guardian as it is to be the protector of one individual.
And now in my dreams, instead of the endless flowing colors and pure tones and scents and tastes of dreamer-dreams, I revisit those places of the physical world. I smell the dew on the crushed grass of the battlefield on the next morning; I see the sun setting behind the west tower, with the sentry's lonely silhouette isolated among the ramparts. I remember the sound of the children playing in the snow, the songs beside the dancing fire smelling of woodsmoke and candles and hot chocolate and laughter, the sound of weeping rising and falling low beneath the crackling of the funeral bonfires, the smell of blood and the haunted grim look on the dirt-streaked face of a young warrior. In my dreams they come back to me; the beautiful couple sitting together in love beneath the spreading branches of a giant old apple tree, the rays of the sun slanting towards evening across the wide grassy Plainlands, the first steps of a baby and the shape of his mother's mouth as she watches, a child's eyes growing wider as she watches her father die. These now are my dreams. Now I realize, too late, that my reluctance to take on the duty of guardian was for all the wrong reasons. But I would do it again in a moment. No longer am I content to hover, myself hardly more than a dream, the way I used to be happy. How ironic; and yet somehow it is right, as all things must sooner or later be changed, even those of the world of the dreamers.

sept. 28, 1998

(no subject)

Are You Smarter than Miss America?

I am smarter than Miss Washington D.C.