Four travelers astronauts maybe have found themselves in a place and don’t know how
One wants to try to go back where they came from, one wants to keep going and see where else they might get to one is fascinated by the place they are in and is trying to figure out what it is and one is trying to figure how they got where they are. The last is the main character of the show and the one fascinated with where they are is played by the girl that played the mechanic on Firefly and her name is April, the other two are Central Casting Hothead Guy #1 and Central Casting AdventurDood #1 the last guy is just Tom Hanks Esque, Inoffensive Professor Type #1.
They discover that they cannot all leave at the same time, but they do appear to be able to leave the place in pairs maybe. They discover this by trying to leave together but not being able to until one of them changes their mind about where they want to go, and then they seem to be able to leave briefly as they are aware of having been away from the place but back again. April and Hanks start watching to see what happens when the other two try to leave, she wants to study the place they are in and he wants to figure out how they got there.
She discovers that the place is made of Light Made Solid, which was in caps in her head just like that. When the other two leave she can tell that something has changed when they “return” though the go/back is nearly instantaneous sometimes, sometimes nothing changes at all, and it seems nobody but April can see/sense the change in the moment, Hanks seems only able to see/sense the change after a long amount of time has passed. Eventually only the other two guys are trying to either go away or change their environment by trying to physically pound the walls and stuff.
The other two guys eventually appear to stop moving at all, yet still things change a tiny bit at a time, April still sometimes senses a change. She visualizes it as them trying to manipulate rows and rows of glowing columns in front of them, and she is not sure if this visualization is literal or not as OGs seem unable to interact with April/Hanks any longer yet are still affecting things somehow, and she is not sure if she thought that up herself or not. Hanks is trying to decide if they have died and are in hell or if they are actually stuck in some kind of coma nightmare and if he is alone in this and imagining the others or if they are actually on the mission they were supposed to be on and if so how did they get so fucked up and also can they fix it. April is still reporting that something has changed every once in a while.
The last time she tells Hanks that something has changed she stops herself and he turns all his attention on her for the first time in a long while, or maybe ever, and the moment she realizes that SHE is the control subject and the changes in the others are measured against her …

Yeah. I wake up.
This is what I get for watching Interstellar before bed.

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One of the side effects of the CPAP machine plus oxygen at night is that I sleep very deeply and as a result I dream very vividly. I am not sure yet if this is a good thing and today I am leaning toward not good and here is why:

I dreamed of my dead sister this morning. Not the usual dream where she visits and we have a laugh and she goes back to whatever realm she spends her afterlife in, no, I dreamed in living detail how she faked her death to escape her abusing household. She died as a result of domestic violence. She was murdered and her cophusband got away with it. I am bitter.

In the dream she came to wherever my mom and I were living (not anywhere I have ever seen) and then we took mom to the hospital where my sister had a room down the hall from mom's, she was recovering from injuries suffered during her escape. She had stitches and a split lip and a lot of bruising. She was pale behind the bruises but strong, strong as she hadn't been in years before her death in actual life. She had made chocolate chip cookies and they tasted good, there was something in them, a secret that made them yummy. She joked that she put crack in them because they were so addictive. We laughed a lot. She patted the bed and I climbed up with her and we curled up like when I was small and slept with her when the dark was too dark for me and she let me crawl in bed with her. I was worried about mom and she told me mom was ok. I asked her why it took so long for her to come home because she had been gone years. I woke up before she could answer.

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My ghosts seldom speak to me in clear, plain language that is easy to understand. They tend to communicate in feelings and hints; “take this route to the store today”, “call your mother”, and “look over here for that lost thing”. On my 40th birthday I heard my sister yell “Happy Birthday!” on an empty street in a city that was not my home. I felt her companionship on that day and it made me happy to have her along if for only a moment. When my biological father died, I heard him say goodbye to me as I watched Laramie Peak through the car window as my mother drove me to stay with relatives for the days leading up to his services. After his death, I heard my step-father’s voice in his workshop and it was comforting. I carry my dead with me, not as a burden, but as comfort and companionship. Driving a dark highway home my father and brother, his oldest son who died at the same age our father was when he died, sat in my backseat, and talked to me of inconsequentialities. Comfort. Companionship. But there are other ghosts, too, the ghosts of memory.

When I was between my freshman and sophomore years of high school I was lucky enough to attend a week-long camp for young writers, a glorious week of workshops with real writers and other geeky kids who were weird like me. I attended that camp three times but the writers who stuck in my memory, that I carry with me still, are the ones I met that first Summer at writer’s camp, Charles Levendosky and Ed Bryant. Charles passed away in 2004 and Ed just this February, three months ago as I write this.

I received in the mail today a package from a friend, copies of a play I helped her create all those years ago when I was a junior in high school and many letters from authors whose poetry and prose we wished to include, giving us permission to use their work. There was also in there a flyer from our original production, and with sad nostalgia I read the name of a former classmate who just passed away in March too young and too soon. Next I found a letter from Charles allowing us to use one of his poems in our production and the sadness became outright tears, taking me by surprise.

It is not the ghosts of my dead that haunt me, it is not they who bring sadness or tears. It is the ghosts of memory that have the power to wound, memories of times and experiences past, the ghosts of ‘used to be’ and ‘once upon a time’.

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I am not known for being all that steady on my feet, even before the need to use a cane I was a massive klutz and was fully capable of falling both up and down stairs as well as stumble over air, so this story is not at all conclusive proof that there was ever a ghost in my room at the Occidental Hotel.

I arrived at my destination in the mid-afternoon, the drive had been unpleasant so I was just happy to have someplace warm and indoors to light and put my feet up. I explored my room and was delighted to find it was decorated with old world history books (dated 1919) and literature (early 20th century copyrights) as well as lovely antiques and a beautiful old radio. After a bit of a rest and a look around I took some pictures of various details that appealed to me, the pattern of the old wallpaper and the claw foot of the tub in the bath and then the lovely bed frame. That was when the first “thing” happened.

I was aiming my phone camera (because I have not had a real camera for years) at the bed when I saw a little silver bubble of light dart across the frame. Now I watch a lot of paranormal bull on the television and any one of those investigators would have either tried to debunk it as dust, and my room was very VERY clean, or gotten excited that there was some anomaly or entity or whatever making itself known. I just laughed and took the picture. I then announced to the room that my camera wasn’t very fast nor was I so if they wanted in a picture they might want to slow down. I did not see anything in my pictures later.

That night when I came back from dinner and had gotten into jammies for the night I got the phone out again and took a few selfie pictures after inviting anyone there with me to join in, again there were no extra people in my pictures. My cousin suggested later when I related this story that my new technology confused the ghosts and I should have told them I was taking a daguerreotype. I guess next time I will try that. I have never been very successful at taking pictures, let alone pictures of ghosts, so this was no surprise. I didn’t see any more little lights either.

The next morning I got up and got ready to go to the workshop I was actually in town for and since my laptop had died a sad death the night before and the sky was clear and the snow of the previous several days was melting I thought I could just put these things in the car when I went outside. I gathered up the two bags and went to the chair by the door to sit them there to wait my leaving for breakfast. The door is in a corner so the chair is on the opposite side of the door, I promise this is relevant in a minute. I stood in front of the chair with both feet on the floor and leaned down just enough to drop the bags with computer and shoes onto the chair and when I straightened up I was face first in the corner, effectively a couple of feet to the right of the chair. I tried to remember if I had tripped, but I hadn’t been moving, in fact I felt a distinct shove as if someone had their hand on the back of my head and on my shoulder. I shrugged this off as imagination then realized I was rationalizing myself right out of a great ghost story.

Because I am who I am and I have experienced things that are without explanation I usually default to ‘yes there are ghosts’ and I have lived in and worked in haunted buildings where people besides me have had strange things happen. I told whoever was in the room that I paid up for two days and they were stuck with me and it wasn’t nice to abuse paying guests. No further incidents ensued.

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I came home from the haunted hotel trip to discover that a friend had passed away. I will write about the hotel and the haunting and the poetry workshop and the weather... later. For now, teal_cuttlefish has passed away and I am sad.

Missing Alia

I know exactly when I first met Alia, it was at my first MileHiCon in October of 1998. There was a table set up for maskmaking, an activity for the underage set to keep them out of trouble but adults were invited to indulge as well. I am a person who likes to glue things onto other things in a crafty fashion so I found myself there eventually. Alia was there and struck up a conversation with me, for which I was grateful as I was surrounded by people I didn’t know and that is not a comfortable way to be if one suffers from even the slightest of social anxiety. It turns out that we had several things in common, craftiness and Paganism among them, and she understood my shyness in crowds as one of her loves suffers it as well, so she knew how to help me find a calm place and get into the swing of enjoying the day again. That was the amazing thing about Alia, she knew how to help me help myself, and did so in a gentle and allowing way. She understood my sarcasm and my sense of humor and that once I get to know people the anxiety will melt away and I can be outgoing when I feel safe. She was so very good at creating safe. I knew, ever after, that she would be there somewhere in the crowd if I needed a familiar face or a moment of calm, she was there. There were several times over the following years that she was that friend in a crowd, quietly and peacefully and never judging.

I can say that Alia “knew me when”, when I was new to Denver and hadn’t yet figured out how to drive anywhere on my own, when I finally moved to Denver and was finding my way around new friends and new places, when I would walk as far as I wanted with no cane and no rest stops. We were both younger and a lot healthier then.

Despite living in the same metroplex, most of the communication Alia and I had over the last nearly two decades was in our LiveJournal entries and later on FaceBook. When I moved back home to Wyoming we still had that computer connection and it made the times we got to see one another in person as easy as if we had never been separated by miles of highway, the modern age is a wonderful thing. We were able to share joys and accomplishments as well as sorrows and losses despite the distance in space between us, in the cyber world there is no distance.

But there is a distance now that we cannot cross even with all the technology we could want. There is no cell service or wifi in the Summerlands, sadly.

I will miss you, Alia, I already do. Terry Pratchett wrote in Going Postal, “Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” and I have been thinking of this quote ever since another well-established Denverite passed away, another MileHiCon attendee at whose celebration of life I had been very much hoping to see Alia. Instead I will speak both their names, and they will never die in my heart.

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I realize I am spoiled in that everyone I know likes my writing, at least to my face they do, and any criticism given is usually in the form of "could you try this instead" or "this isn't clear here, could you work on that" and so I am used to getting actual helpful comments and constructive help when I share some writing. I just got a "critique" in the mail of two poems I sent to a contest and there were no more than twelve words and every one of them was negative and there were no suggestions of what could improve the pieces. I don’t call that constructive, I call that whiny bitching and so you hated the poems, could you just say that instead? It would be more honest and piss me off a lot less.

Pretty sure I had more to journal about but for now I am just peeved and can’t remember what else I wanted to bitch about.

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But since being invaded and taken over I guess we knew this was coming, now everyone and their dog is in queue to upload, maybe copy/pasting the last dozen or however many entries I have over in LJ would be quicker than importing. *laugh*

I will still have my LJ because until they ban me for posting Illya/Napoleon fanfic in the past, well, that is where my first journal love is located. *sigh*

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After 20 months of fucking around, we finally got my mother's gall bladder taken out. The surgeon said it was completely flat (and gall bladders shouldn't ever be that he says) and very diseased. Why did it take so fucking long you ask? Because the surgeon in the town where we live (and yes there is just the one that does gall bladder surgery apparently) fucked around ALL LAST CALENDAR YEAR and then finally admitted a couple months ago that he had no intention of operating on my 74 year old mother. There is more story but I am tired and have bronchitis and need to go lay down because ugh. We ended up going two hours up the highway (it's like a hundred and twenty miles or so) and finding a doctor who isn't a complete dick. So that is good. She is still in a bunch of pain post-op because she is not metabolizing the gas they pump in there so they can see the organs, and that sucks, but it's better than it was, so it's a win, conditionally.

I ended up in the ER because I spent two days hanging out in the hospital with mom and because I have a poor immune system that is further compromised by the meds I take, I am sick as a dog, and that sucks since I am a cat person mostly. I should never be in hospitals because they are fucking germ factories where I am concerned. I promise I was careful and used hand sanitiser and everything, but still, am hacking up a lung. *sad face*

The play was fun, we had a great time and I think the audience did as well, they laughed when they were supposed to anyway, so that's good.

I gotta get better because I just sent off my entry fee for a poetry workshop the end of the month, and I get to stay in a haunted hotel, YAY!!! (yes, that IS why I decided to go to the workshop, why do you ask?)

Speaking of hauntings, when I come back with the ugly details of the Mom's Gall Bladder Saga or Dr. Douchebag Needs Slapped, I will relate the latest not so fun ghost happenings. The short version: Don't Fuck With Me When I Am Sick.

Pic or it Didn't Happen, Selfie at Dress Rehearsal and in the other I am on the far right:

saw this today and it struck a nerve. no doubt there will be a rant later. or not.

So my mom hands me the free local paper last week and says "hey, you should check this out". What she thought I should check out was auditions for the local theatre group. Like a complete idiot I showed up (and was the ONLY person to show up) and now have a part in the reader's theatre/dinner theatre planned for the end of March. DirectorBecky asked me what part wanted to read (after handing me a sheet describing the characters) and I told her that I would read for whatever she thought she could cast me as considering I walk with a cane and don't do stairs. I now have the part of Martha, who gets all the deliciously bitchy lines, it is AWESOME, except that it really isn't, of course, because I haven't been on a stage in thirty years and high school drama club was a fuckton of years ago. Also, I can't memorize any better now than I could back then, worse now in fact. *sigh* But it is set in the 40s so I got to buy myself the cutest damn dress (because Hello, their wardrobe though extensive is not ever going to have things to fit me, yo) and that dress gives me the excuse to go to Denver for the 40s ball, which happens annually and which I have been soooo wanting to attend. The next night more of the actual local theatre members showed up and it turns out that one of them (also named Becky) is my cousin, sort of. Her great-grandfather and my grandmother were brother and sister. So the added bonus is family, yay that. The folks that are in the group are fun and all seem pretty nice, so far it has been a good time.

I had a really terrible weekend this weekend and spent the entirety of it in my chair with my feet up because pain and swelling and yuck, oh my. This is why I am wondering what the fuck I was thinking, play practice will be four nights a week starting next week, so what the hell am I going to do when my pain level hits supernuclear and I still have play practice to do? Oh shit. The best I can and hope for forgiveness I guess, but hey, one of the members is actually a real doctor, so there is that. (And added not!bonus, he is one I have seen in the ER when blood clots showed up in the OTHER leg, so um, yeah, that is not awesometastic.)