March 17, 2000

"The Wearing Of The Green"

Oh yes, there's lots of GREEN around here, today. I have a green vest on, my plaid blouse has streaks of green in it, I have a pendant with a serpentine green stone, and I'm wearing my favorite celtic pendant that my Mother gave me. Laura's in maroon today, but visiting Serena is wearing a very Irish emerald green. Julia, too, left the house clad entirely in green. This is nothing unusual for Julia, however. She has assigned a color to each day of the week, and she wears items of that color on its assigned day. Fridays are always green for Julia. However she did go the extra step and wear a green jade elephant pendant as well.

But the most spectacular display of green is on the mulberry tree. When Glen and Mother planted it, it looked hopeless. Not one leaf on it anywhere. I feared it was a lost cause. I shouldn't have worried, for it was just waiting for the right season to show its colors.

March 18, 2000

"Playful Personalities"

     
Giannissi               Yaylan

Before I'd played role playing games, I didn't know how three dimensional one's characters could become. But I'm pleased how my Everquest heros have taken on such distinct personalities. In addition to Giannissi and Nerrani, I now have a new guy who's learning the basics of wizardry. I've tried druids, as Laura seems especially drawn to a wood elf druid persona, but the high elves appeal to me best. For one thing, I know my way around in the well designed and beautiful High Elven city.. Yaylan is third level already, after three hours of play, and he's an high elf, of course. But he has an entirely different personality than Giannissi.

Giannissi is a playboy, an arch queen who doesn't take anything seriously. He inherited his bad boy ways from his father. His father must have spent his youth seducing every young lady in Felwithe, for every where he looks, there are his cousins who look just the same as him. He's not too wise with money, and even a little self centered and vain. But he's trying to do better. He's beginning to suspect he shouldn't have killed all those pixies. Yet he's determined to make something of himself.

Although well in contact with his feminine side, like Giannissi, Yaylan is quiet and serious. He's drawn to femininity more as a spiritual expression. He's spent his life studying all manner of subjects. He's more concerned with justice against evil forces. Although seeing the elven slaves at the orcs' Crushbone territory does fill Giannissi with a righteous anger, he mainly likes blowing critters up - only the ones that deserve it, of course.

March 19, 2000

"Tidy Profits"

Discarded treasures, welcome for the picking

Glen and Mother had a yard sale yesterday. When they moved next door, they simply put the overflow into storage. Now they've sorted through it and sold most of the unwanted items for a tidy profit, over $300 dollars, in fact. Tidy, indeed, and now their house is less cramped as well.

We also went through various books, computer games and CDs to prune out the excess. After ten years of collecting CDs, I found thirteen I was positive I'd never want to hear again. I was a harsh critic. ''Hummph, I could have directed this choir better. All the selections have the same dreadful tone of gray. Why didn't the director have them be vibrantly lilting in the upbeat pieces? And this quiet piece should have had more diaphram behind it. It could have brought chills to my spine, if he had done it right. Hummphh!'' And toss. Another album landed in the pile because it seemed neither fish nor fowl. It hardly could be called Flirting With The Edge, as it was neither experimental enough nor soothingly mellow enough to be interesting. Yes, I was merciless.

We took several box loads into Bookman's, where we receive trade credit for them. Because we often shop there, this is our most profitable option. The bag we took back home of new items was smaller, but we have much credit left. And our house looks tidier as well!

March 20, 2000

"Maybe It's The Wind"

The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

----Henry David Thoreau

Back when Thoreau wrote this, sexist language was the norm. But a middle aged lady poet is quite adept at watching her moods, as well. The wind is making a lonely, cold howl through the cracks in our house. Maybe it's to blame for this depressing Muse result.

If you only wonder - hard place that, poised on the edge - never to know. The leap is too scary. Knowledge isn't easy. ~ ~~ ~~~ ~~ ~ I have returned the fifteenth month all alone, but with what knowledge. If you think it isn't you, you might be right.

March 22, 2000

"Ratty Like That"

(On playing Everquest:)

This game is too much like real life!

----Julia Cybele Cachia

That was Julia's cry of frustration when she got lost in Erudin. I wasn't of much help. I'd visited that city briefly, but didn't like it much. Now, if she had gotten lost in high elven Felwithe, I could help her. It reminded her of her worst nightmares, lost in a strange city, feeling helpless and panicky, lost in a confusing maze.

Real life is like that sometimes. We are the mouse in the maze, being tested to see if we can find our way out. ''What cruel experimenter is laughing at us, now?'' we cry to the heavens above.

Some days are just ratty like that. I myself had a real rat of a mood treed in the basement of my mind yesterday. I tried not to let anyone know it was there. The company visits, the mental living room is neat enough, but I can hear the pattering of little rat feet busy in the basement. Will the rat stay there, or make an unpleasant appearance?

The rat mostly laid low. Today is a new day. I have some nice cheese laid out.

March 23, 2000

"Transitory"

Grady Towers

Monday and Tuesday my mind was occupied by scurrying worries in its basement, of the kind of fear we all hope is irrational. That 'channeled' poem, is it prophetic? Is Laura going to die in fifteen months? Will Julia die? Will I die? The mind, if allowed to, can go on awful tangents. In the middle of all this tangeting, Monday night we got a phone call from a friend we hadn't heard from in ages. When we lived in Tucson, Jay used to visit a lot. We'd occasionally meet at a restaurant with other friends in the Triple Nine Society, an high IQ society. In February of 1997, we were still coming down to Tucson for enjoyable gatherings, but as time went by, we didn't see so much of Jay, nor of his friend Grady.

The two were battling friends. They always loved to argue. Grady lived for debate. He wanted to take Julia on, regarding some fine point of psychometria, but Julia didn't want to get in a debate. We lost contact with Grady after that.

He was always an odd reclusive sort. He loved solitude. He worked as a security guard, in spite of the low pay, because it left his mind free to explore all manner of subjects, such as foreign languages, statistics, genetics, constellations, bird calls and his own private writing. Grady could listen to his movie soundtrack collection, as well. This was more important than earning piles of money. He wasn't a materialist, by any means. Even in that 1997 gathering, "He spoke of Thoreau's aim of simplicity. He said material possessions own you, rather than you owning them. Thus he has never sought prosperity in his life. Why bother, for you may lose it all?"

But he did collect books. His small apartment was crammed with books. "His niece, JoDee Rudd, said yesterday, 'I remember when I was little and he would stroke my fingers across a page of his book and say, `words, JoDee, beautiful words.'" (from Tuesday's Arizona Daily Star article)

He'd been a security guard for more than ten years, and had faced dangerous situations before. The post at Tohono Chul Park, a tranquil Tucson park, was a relatively serene position. The only disturbances he had encountered before at Tohono Chul were caused by javelina and an occasional transient. Monday evening, however, a different fate awaited him. Grady was apparently ambushed by one or more burglars. As his job wasn't considered high risk, he was unarmed.

Investigators found evidence of forced entry into the doors and windows of the park's gift shop, maintenance building and administration building. O'Connor said other than a small amount of cash, nothing was missing.

``Everybody is pretty freaked out about it,'' said grounds curator Russ Buhrow, whose office window was shattered. The donation canister that was broken into held no more than $21, he said.(Arizona Daily Star)

For twenty one dollars, the burglar(s) shot him! Not just one shot, but several times. FOR TWENTY ONE DOLLARS!!

The news didn't shock us as it might, were it not for the recent death of Shayna. But now as I think of it, sadness fills me. My own haunting fears are of an unexpected, violent death. We never know when it will come. Grady probably went to work Monday thinking of all the things he was studying, with no idea this would be his last day. The more people I know die, the more it's driven home to me how transitory life is. It just plain scares me.