Leaky Ink Bottle

Madly Capering Along

2011-03-12T18:33:00.000-08:00

Page nine!

ALSO I am so thrilled to find out some people are still looking.

<3 YOU GUYS.

A Mad Caper Pg. 9 by *Chajiko on deviant ART

Good Night Nurse!

2011-02-27T20:14:00.000-08:00

I don't think anybody's bothering to read this anymore, but if you are--here is the latest artistic offering.

Night Nurse Kylee by *Chajiko on deviant ART

A Mad Caper Pg. 8

2011-02-26T18:56:00.000-08:00

A Mad Caper Pg 8 by *Chajiko on deviant ART

A Mad Caper Pg. 7

2011-02-19T20:00:00.000-08:00

New page!

A Mad Caper Pg. 7 by *Chajiko on deviant ART

I generally update every week. :)

Valentine's Offering

2011-02-12T16:10:00.000-08:00

Just a little doodle for Valentine's Day, featuring Lee and Shiro from my "Forest Caper" webcomic.

Forest Caper: Be Mine by *Chajiko on deviant ART

May your day be full of lots of love and little paper hearts!

...And Eat it Too!

2009-04-15T23:27:00.000-07:00

Apparently my buddy Sasaki decided she needed to make a cake with something cute on it. She'd never done it before.

This is what happened next:

Keep in mind that this is her FIRST cake with art on it.

SHEESH.

If I had tried to do this, it would not look like that. It wouldn't even look like a cake.

It's a good thing SOME of us have talent!

Geography--like, WHY?

2009-04-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

OK. I'm probably going to expose myself as a HUGE ignoramus here, but I really see no point in having a Geography department and major at a university.

Honestly. You study geography up through 8th grade or whatever and you know where countries are and things--but like, that's not enough? You have to MAJOR in knowing where countries are?

I work as a TA, and our lab shares space with the Geography TAs among others and I was sitting in my office hours today listening to some pompous young male person go on and on about the weather conditions in the British isles and how you don't get snow and ice there and how in the winter it just rains and doesn't get below 40 and blah blah blah. So I stuck my head in. "Actually, you do." I said, and then some other random bit of information and the male person gave me this glare and then said "That's why I said 'very often'," and proceeded to ignore me. So I went back to my chair--humiliated. A whole other group of people had heard the exchange--and you know what?

I'M RIGHT.

He's NOT.

Why do I know I'm right? Because I spent HOURS shivering in a tent in below freezing circumstances in JULY in SOUTHERN WALES, which is one of the vacation hot-spots of the British isles, and it wasn't just some freak weather pattern. It was the norm.

So my opinion of Geography and its usefulness has taken yet another plunge.

The TA then continued to talk, spewing all sorts of stuff about different places, throwing out the words "Nation-state" and things like that the same way a athlete would flex his muscles.

Pardon my french, but what the Hell does a geography student know about nation-states? Leave that to the political scientist, the historians and the anthropologists, hon, and go get a REAL major.

/end embittered rant

Why I Don't Listen to the Radio Anymore, or, Pink Fish are De Rigeour for Handbags This Season

2009-04-08T21:34:00.001-07:00

I made the mistake of turning on the radio on my way home from the grocery store tonight. I don't listen to the radio very often, and when I do it's usually talk radio (one way to tell you're getting old--political talk radio is actually INTERESTING), but tonight I was in the mood for music and I didn't have my iPod with me to plug in to the cassette deck. Anyway, there was only No Doubt on my favourite station, which I happen to hate with a passion, and then really unremarkable things on the succeeding stations, even the oldies.

Side note--have any of you noticed that 94.1 (which has previously been where I go for Beatles, Crosby Stills and Nash and the Monkees) has started playing 80's music? Does anyone else find that a little...disturbing?

Anyway. Radio. I ended up on a "HOT NEW MUSIC" station which sometimes plays some fun stuff and settled in to listen--they'd just gotten in the "HOT NEW MUSIC" of the week and were talking about how great it was. "It's called 'My Flow is so Tight'," the announcer said enthusiastically, which caused me to blink more than a little, but I listened on. It started like approximately 85 billion other hip-hop/"R&B" "songs" with some beat that's all base. The beat kept going, adding a little this and a little that--and then a distorted voice came in with the moving and memorable line:

"My flow is so tight, the beat is so sick, Chris Brown should get his butt* kicked."

Total mystification.

There was no way I could turn it off at that point--I HAD to find out who this Chris Brown person was and why he needed this indignity perpetrated upon his hinder end. Surely the song would explain it, right? So I persevered and l kept listening.

I discovered that it's apparently perfectly acceptable to repeat the same inane line over and over and over while just adding more looped bits to your "sick beat" and then call the resulting piece of musical detritus a "song". I was getting nowhere with Chris Brown, so I changed the channel. Still nothing--I listened for a little bit to someone who wanted to sell me a book of "Secret Remedies T-H-E-Y Don't Want You to Know About!" and a few other things, then began to scroll through the stations again. Finally arriving again at the station with the "HOT NEW MUSIC", I discovered to my horror that it was still going. And the singer--er, speaker, whatever--was still repeating the same line! It had to have been at LEAST five minutes.

So I turned the radio off.

Pink fish are an absolute MUST this season. Why? Because I am weird enough to like to use different coloured pens to take notes in my classes. That alone isn't so bad--it the combination of weird colours and my snobbish attachment to liquid ink pens which has proved my ultimate downfall.

Somehow my violet pen came open in the little purse I bought in Japan. Honestly, the thing is falling apart and has already been through an encounter with a leaky Drano-bottle (and Maceys tried to make it right, bless their hearts, but I had to admit that the purse had only cost me eight dollars, when REALLY it was worth far, far more than that. You can't put a price on a piece of Japan). But there on the outside were several large and malignant purple stains, visible despite the fact that the fabric is dark green. It's also got these adorable little quilted-look fish on it in light colours on the background--darling, just darling. I'd buy bolts and bolts of the fabric if I could find it. Anyway--I decided that it would probably not be too bad to wash the excess ink out and just deal with a few dark spots on my purse.

A word of warning: purple ink is extremely pervasive--kind of like a bad mother-in-law. It gets in all the cracks, runs all over the place and changes whatever is around it to match itself. I spent probably 20 minutes at the sink soaping and rinsing and scrubbing and rubbing and succeeded in making the water that I was rinsing down the sink a lovely electric pink colour--but that was an improvement from dark violet. By the end I was getting rather satisfied with myself and how easily the ink was coming out--until I noticed, to my horror, that all the little pale fish are now a rather distressing shade of pink.

This could be worse.

But I don't WANT pink fish. So I set the bag to soak in diluted colour-safe bleach (And how is THAT supposed to help, I ask you? Colour is colour!) and only got a little more pink water for my troubles.

My purse has now been soaking in a bowl in the sink for a little over eight hours, and still my cheerful little Japanese fish look like they've had a run in with a bad 80's anime. Tomorrow I will call my aunt, who is the guru of all things fabric and see if I can do something to preserve the dignity of me and my Japanese hand bag.

Post script--

ZOT

KHII: Backfired? by *Chajiko on deviant ART

*I have inserted a relatively socially acceptable term here in lieu of the one used by the "artist".

But a Moment

2009-03-11T23:36:00.001-07:00

It is remarkable to me how little effort it takes to love the people who came before us. The promise of Elijah—that our hearts will turn to our fathers—it is so close. So strangely close, and so captivating once grasped.

I do graveyard research. As an archaeologist it’s kind of a pet hobby of mine—something I wish I could turn into my thesis or dissertation, but there are very few people in the world to whom I could defend my research.

Anyway. Right now I am building a database of certain monuments found in a quiet sea-side churchyard in southern Wales. It’s tailored to the focus of my research, but when I’ve done with that I am going to add in all the detail I can to my tables of names and relationships, and then I am going to post it online for genealogists to use. It’s the least I can do.

There are far, far worse places to spend the quiet sleep of waiting.
It is startling, though, to realize how very alive these people were. And how the joy and sorrow and pain and hope they felt can come welling up from the past with so very little effort on our parts.

This stone isn’t much to look at. But if you read it carefully, you’ll see that the mother died at 34 after seeing first her 12 year old eldest son die at sea—and then losing her next son at 15, also into the depths of the ocean. This happened all the time. Ships went down, people were lost—children died of fevers and people had to move on—somehow.

It wasn’t until I read the final entry on the stone, cramped into the very bottom space as it was that the full import of this monument hit me. The husband—who called his wife “beloved” and who had buried two sons and that same wife had lived to be 80. Somehow, he had survived the travails of ocean and mortality to die at an old age, while the people he obviously loved so much were long, long gone.

I find myself weeping for this man—long since dust. Someone who may not even have spoken my language—but someone who shares the beautiful, blinding humanity that is our greatest blessing and our greatest handicap.

I don’t know if these people have any living relations or if their family died with those two loved sons. But they are as real and precious to me as my own blood, and I feel responsibility—reaching over a century of time and six thousand miles of ocean.

After all, he was someone’s father.

Jacques

2009-01-20T22:48:00.000-08:00

I don’t have any pictures of Jacques.

I never thought to take any and now I wish I had.

Jacques is a shield bug--family Acanthosmatidae in the order Hemiptera, if I am not mistaken (thank you Wikipedia, no matter how much I mock thee...). He lived behind my door in my bedroom for two years. Why? I have no idea. Maybe he liked the company, maybe he had a wife and kids in the model Wright Brothers airplane box that has been back there for almost longer than I remember.

At any rate, he and I have been room mates for a long time. I have grown very fond of him, actually. Shield bugs are really amazing little guys—they belong to the same family as fire bugs and assassin bugs, but lack the ubiquity of the former and the nasty temperament of the the latter. I have never known a shield bug to bite, sting or stink places up--or to turn up in your bed, shower, shoes and clothing drawers.

Not my picture--copywrited to someone else, I am so very sorry. But—this looks almost exactly like my Jacques!

Anyway.

I was saying good night to mum and dad the other night and stopped in the hall to give my aussie (dog) a good scratching. You know how, sometimes, when you’re stepping on something and you can just barely feel that it doesn’t feel right? Well, I had that niggling sort of feeling but wasn’t paying attention. After a few seconds, though, it dawned on me that I was standing on something. Now, the scary thing in my house is that it could have been anything from a harmless insect to an extremely venomous spider.

Like, ew. Not my picture either. Unfortunately it's hard to tell whether or not this is the relatively harmless Giant House Spider who keeps your house FREE of Hobos, or if this is the Hobo itself, the sort that you really, REALLY don't want to find in your bed. They both spin the same webs, read the same trashy romances and go through guys like crazy.

This is not because we are unclean people, but rather because we live near a river and have insects roughly the size of tennis balls.

You do the math.

At any rate, I had instinctively not put my weight fully on that foot, AND it was under my disgustingly high arch, so whatever was under there was more covered than actually stepped on. I snatched my foot away and scooted my dog back--and saw to my horror that it was Jacques. He was lying on his back, his little legs curled up.

“JACQUES,” I shrieked, both alarming and confusing my parents. I got down and put my face to the floor. “JACQUES!” he had not been crushed, I was glad to see. In fact, he looked FINE aside from the fact that he had, so to speak, assumed the position. I gently prodded him and--he moved. In protest, it seemed, but he wasn’t dead yet! I flipped him over gently and he took a few steps--and flipped back over and curled his legs up. He wouldn’t get up, he wouldn’t crawl into my hand.

I was near tears by this point.

My mom had come onto the scene and had taken stock of things by this point and got down next to me in her pajamas. She somehow coaxed Jacques into her hands--don’t ask me, I think it’s a mom thing. Maybe I can figure it out someday--and he seemed to revive some. She handed him over to me, and he immediately took a nose-dive off my hands to the hard floor.

Cliff jumping, anyone?

Mom took him in hand again and kept him this time. I felt quite the louse, but was determined to know what was wrong. “Maybe he needs water!” I was frantic. But you know, little bugs DO need water. Watch the firebugs in your bathroom sometime--the drink from those tiny beaded droplets with their long probosci. Mom followed me into my room, where I dribbled some water on her hands. Jacques did NOT like that. He was not thirsty, thank you very much, and made no bones of letting us know as he scrambled to get away from the couple of drops that fell into mom’s palm.

Unfortunately, that’s the limit of my knowledge for insect first aid. Mom put him in my hands again, and this time he seemed inclined to hang on. I took him carefully into her room, where she and dad keep live plants year-round, to see if he’d rather be in there. He was really lively by this point, acting quite as if he hadn’t scared me half out of my skin by playing dead in an expanse of hard wood floor. After about five minutes I coaxed him onto a long thin leaf of a spider plant (named so NOT because it houses spiders, but because of the arachnid-shaped runners it puts out to make more of itself) where he actually seemed quite content.

Not my picture either. A running theme? Maaaaybe. This is almost exactly like our plant.

Exhausted by the excitement, we all went to bed.

I have not seen Jacques since. He may have transferred his affections to my mother, he may have made a bid for frozen freedom out the window, or he may still be happily clinging to the plant, out of sight. At any rate, at least I did NOT step on Jacques.

On a slightly more serious note:

To all of you who took the time to comment on my last blog entry--thank you. I am honoured to be the recipient of your thoughts and considerations. I’m hoping to respond to you all individually, and I am actually going to print the entry and all of the replies out and put them in my journal. I won’t risk losing such precious words of wisdom and love to the black-hole of the internet.

And on a slightly less serious note: Here’s the latest art. Some serious, some not so much, some simply bizarre. And if any of you have odd jobs that need to be done that might involve this mighty pen of mine--let me know, will you? I’m thinking I might have to resort to eating my notes and using my textbooks for warmth since my car took it into its head (engine?) to blow up.

I'll give anyone who's interested details on these--goodness knows I love to brag about my characters.

This Death Cannot Be by *Chajiko on deviant ART

Kylee and Mace Gift by *Chajiko on deviant ART

Proud of this one. Like, way.

The Mistress's Apprentice by *Chajiko on deviant ART

<3

I'm An Adult, So...

2009-01-01T20:31:00.000-08:00

I'm an adult, so...

I want you to fill in the blank. So many things can go there depending on your place in life.
Many of the young people I know who are teetering on the cusp of adulthood would finish with something to the effect of "I can do what I like." For other people it's things like "I shouldn't have to do that." or "it's my responsibility.".

For me? For me it's coming down to "I should be able to deal with this." or something to that effect.
I feel like I have no right to talk about these kinds of things because I only recently have become an adult (if I really am one. I have severe doubts sometimes). I have no children, I live with my parents, I have a job and an education and comparatively few things to think about that should keep me awake at night, staring into the darkness and wondering what on earth I'm going to do.

But—I feel like life is one giant game of dodgeball, and there's really not a lot of space between missiles, never mind the fact that there's usually at least seven or eight coming at you at once.

Work, school, callings, money, responsibility—

grief, confusion, worry, JOY—hunger, weakness—guilt, guilt guilt—gratitude, inadequacy, hope.

How many of these emotions did I feel in their infant stage in my childhood? I didn't know that growing up would cause them to flower so terribly.

So many things happen. So many things change and this Margaret weeps for things that will never be the same, things that seem like they have lost too many pieces to ever be whole again. We are so close to the Divine in moments of pure joy and grief and hope. I want to savour them, I want to grasp them in my fingers until I understand their shape and know their parts. But instead I set them aside to be considered later because I have to go to work or because my body realizes it's been 20 hours since I last slept. Or because the dishes need to be done or the dog needs out or my room is finally so ugly I cannot bear to walk into it.

Sometimes I set them aside because they are too blinding, too poignant and piquant. It is too much work to be the child of a God so perfect, so powerful, so loving in a life that leaves no time for stillness. I think I create my own chaos. I am not a peaceful person.

Where there is nothing to gnaw and worry, I will chew on myself—like an animal in a trap—until I have something ragged at which to and tear and over which to weep. Isn't there enough sorrow in the world without making my own? At least I can deal with my own sorrow. I can't fix India. I can't give parents back to orphaned children or restore the miscarried child of a grieving woman. All I can do is vacuum and try to be kind and do my best not to wound the people who love me best.

I'm an adult, so I should be able to deal with this.

Sayonara no Toki

2008-12-06T22:55:00.000-08:00

As the sun sinks into the west over Tokyo and the land of the Rising Sun, I cannot help but think that leaving this place once again has cast a pall over my life, just as the darkness slowly spreads from the east. The ancient peoples of Japan were right to call it as they did: “Nippon” written with the kanji for “sun” and “origin.” This is a land beautiful and bright beyond measure, fairly overflowing with a rich history and tradition that cannot help but stamp the hearts of those who visit here, however briefly, with an indelible mark.

I envy the people who are lucky enough to call this place home—all the while aware also of how lucky I am to live also in the country I am privileged to call home. The world is a dark place and every land has its own dark underside, but I am starting to understand that things really can be seen from the old, over-tired cliche viewpoints of half-empty and half-full. Thus I can look at a place like this, or a place like my home, and love it dearly and see all the things that are wonderful about it without making myself blind to the darkness. It is a marvelous and powerful thing to love a place or a person wholly, knowing that they are as imperfect as anyone or anything else—especially myself.

And so as I bid farewell to Japan once again I cannot help but worry that that this will be the last time I see this glorious land of dream-like beauty—just like I did the last time I left. However, there always is a last time, despite the best laid plans of mice and men. A last visit to a Book Off, a last handful of Mochi, a last rough-and-tumble with the Endo boys, the last sight of the stately and unearthly lines of a pagoda high on a hill among the trees. A last view of the Sakura, now shedding their blossoms in a late snow-shower of fragrant pink petals, the last grove of secretive bamboo and tiny delicate maple leaves.

I just pray that this will not be “Sayonara no toki” for me.

Keep yourself well, Japan, as you have kept yourself for nearly two thousands years.

Mata, ne.

Zenbu ga Hakanai Desu

2008-12-06T22:42:00.000-08:00

I went back to Uji today. It sounds funny, but I can’t even begin to explain the feeling of homecoming. I only lived there for a month, and yet the whole city has this feeling about it that is so powerfully in tune with my own heart. Byoudoin especially. Frankly, I didn’t take any pictures because there is no way for an image--digital or analog--to carry the strength of the kokoro there. It is very old and is one of the few ancient sites that has been spared the ravages of fire over the long years, and so it is still there in its pristine beauty, looking almost exactly as it did in 1049 when Yorimitsu (?) turned it from an inherited manor into a temple. And it wasn’t even new then. It’s modeled to be what the “Pure Land” or the Buhddist heaven is supposed to look like. And really? My vision of heaven isn’t much off. At any rate, trying to describe it here is as useless as it is trying to take a picture. The funny thing is, the feeling I have there is as powerful as the feeling I get at the temples of my own religion, but it’s different. This really is something more of an echo than the strong stuff I feel at someplace like the Salt Lake temple, but there are pure strains of HOME in it that make my heart yearn for something I don’t even know how to define.

We ran into these loud and cute old men at Byoudoin who were speaking gorgeously southern Japanese, known as Kansai-ben or Osaka-ben. In my opinion, such Japanese is much nicer and easier to understand than the standard Tokyo-ben or any of the northern accents or dialects, so I found myself rather indignant in class when I would have points deducted from my score when I would slip into a southern accent. At any rate, one of them spoke English fairly well and was all prepped to tell us ALL about Byoudoin--only to find out we (or at least I--this was Sasaki’s first visit) already knew it! The Japanese people I have met all seem delighted that I not only am familiar with things but can add my own comments to a discussion about something like Heian era architecture or the role of the Shinsengumi in the Bakamatsu. At any rate, he asked us where we were from and the minute I said “Utah” he was like “MORMONS!” and I was like “Yes!” and then he was like “Salt Lake City!” and I was like “Yes!!”
We also saw a group of Chinese monks touring Byoudoin, complete in their amazing dusky orange robes, prayer beads and shaved heads. It was amazing.
It was all very delightful.

Sasaki and I also went to the Tale of Genji museum today. Three rooms and a twenty minute movie using Bunraku puppets. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s masterfully done and worth every out-of-the-way step it takes to get there and every yen of the entrance fee. I wonder if I can find a recording of “Ukifune” anywhere. I would love to force you all to sit down and watch it with me. My english recording that I had been given to listen to was sort of wonky, so I turned it off and listened to the story in Japanese. Luckily, because I happened to have read most of the Tale of Genji, I didn’t get TOO lost.

The used bookstore (furuhonya) I used to go to all the time in Uji was gone. The building was still there, but it seems to have gone out of business. I was very sad. But all in all only one sour note in a day is a good way to go! (Touch wood.) When I inquired at Kyoto station after a used bookstore, the guy seemed to think I was talking about a bookstore with books about old stuff, not like a used bookstore (furu=old hon=book ya=store) and so was really confused, which is really strange because “Furuhonya” MEANS used bookstore! It’s not something I made up or something weird. It’s something Japanese people say ALL THE TIME!

When they’re looking for used books, that is.

Our bus driver on the way back to the Ryokan was really, really cute. I blushed at him shyly and Sasaki winked.

Too bad we’ll likely never, ever see him again.

The Imperial palace is, sadly, something of a disappointment. It’s a giant shoving loud tour group that’s not allowed to go inside anything or see anything cool, and the palace itself isn’t really that old. It’s been moved and rebuilt, so...NOT the same place where Hikaru Genji would have walked.

Oh well. I suppose it would have been difficult for him to walk anywhere, fictional character that he is.

I wish we had time to go down to Miyajima and see the Besso (manor house, so to speak) of Heikei no Kiyomori, the infamous antagonist of the Heikei Monogatari. He may have been a nasty human being who died of a terrible fever that was brought about by karma for all the baaaaaad things he had done, and a nasty father who drove his son Shigemori (*ahem*hotness*cough*) to die because he was torn between loyalty to his family and loyalty to his friends and leaders of the Minamoto clan, the bunch with which Kiyomori was trying to start a war, BUT (longest sentence EVAR) his house is gorgeous.

BUT we do not have time. So instead I will go to Harajuku in Tokyo one last time and try to persuade myself that I do NOT need a lolita dress, which I will probably buy anyway because all of my good sense seems to have evaporated.

Oh well.

The sad thing is...the Japan I truly love is long gone, lost in the currents of time that draw us inexorably towards a future that is uncertain and more than a little frightening to one such as I. All I can do is grasp at the pieces—pulling them from the earth and preserving them with loving care, drawing from them all that I may of a bright, peaceful age that may never actually have been.

Chajiko wa Shinsengumi no Hito ni Naritai or Something Like That, or Chajiko and the Giant Butt Splorch

2008-08-23T19:50:00.001-07:00

I fell down a mountain today.

No kidding. Not very far down, but down nonetheless.

That’s what I get for climbing a mountain after a 24 hour rain storm in shoes that are nearly bald because I can’t bear to get rid of them. (Hey, when you’ve finally found that perfect pair of tennis shoes it’s HARD to trash them, no matter how worn out they become!)
At any rate, I slipped on the downwards path and ended up butt-down in the mud, completely humiliated. I like to think of myself as sure footed, but...or butt, shall we say?

It WAS a really cool mountain, despite the whole slipping part. A path ran up behind a buhddist temple that is right near our ryokan into the beautiful ancient trees. There is no place like it at home for me. Sasaki said that it reminded her a great deal of the eastern united states, but as I have never had the pleasure to see that part of my own beautiful country, I can make no comparison.

At one point along the path we passed a single stone torii that was standing at the entrance of a fenced in enclosure, only half visible between the trees. The thing was, there was no shrine within the enclosure, and I get the strong feeling that we had run across a very old Shinto burial--my fingers fairly itched to get down there and see, but I managed to control myself. The mud was horrendous already, and there’s few things worse in the world I can think of than corpse mud.

Our path up the mountain was conveniently marked by little cement markers painted yellow and helpfully incised with the kanji “yama,” which simply means “mountian.”
Just in case we didn’t know where we were.
I saw a buhddist begging monk at Kiyomizudera, also known as the pure water temple. It was really amazing--he was dressed as monks have dressed for something around 1200 years, holding a begging bowl as the Buhdda did before him, wearing a kasaboshi (one of those awesome umbrella-straw-hats) pulled low over his face and chanting sutras. I was captivated by it.

It is always a pleasant surprise to me to see and meet people who take their religions seriously. Too many people that I have met are either “sunday christians” or even “Christmas and Easter Christians” or the equivalent in other faiths. They claim a faith as their own and follow the rules on the holy days, but don’t really let it interfere with their daily lives.

I, as someone to whom religion is as important as eating or drinking, find this very puzzling despite the fact that it is the attitude seemingly adopted by most of the world. Anyway, I’m wandering off my point. It is so very neat to see someone like that--someone to whom also religion is food and drink. It gives me hope in an obscure way, though he and I could share nothing by way of common doctrine.

We met Sasaki-kun’s other host family whilst we were here--yet another st of amazing people. As we sat at their house on sunday evening and played games I was amazed to find that once again—the bonds of familial love transcend the lines of culture and language and take existence into a higher, more joyful plane. The spirit in that home of love and tolerance was so moving and was something of a shot in the arm to someone like me, who gets homesick after three days away from home.

That’s what happens when you have an amazing family with whom you can be the best of friends.

At any rate, the Shibas (name changed for the sake of privacy...) took us all about Kyoto in a rented car and bought us food and Omiyage (souveniers) and spoke to us in easy Japanese and were generally amazingly kind to two people so many miles away from home.
Kyoto is freezing. Seriously, Sasaki-kun s about to die (she’s acclimated to Arizona) and I’m even feeling he cold through my frost-bitten Utah exterior. It seems that Kyoto is experiencing an unseasonably cold week--bad luck for us, we didn’t pack ANY cold weather clothes! In fact, I almost didn’t bring a coat at all! Ah well, I’m sure we’ll survive.

Or not.

No more moving food for us, thank goodness, just some really weird Okonomiyake that was a little heavy on the leeks and unlike any I had eaten before. I have high hopes of finding some NORMAL okonomiyake (something like a Japanese pancake stuffed with meats and vegetables. YUM.) before we leave.

Though I will be very sad to have to once gain leave this country behind me, It’s probably a good thing. Not only am I so exhausted I can hardly move, but I am starting to run out of all the money I’ve saved--which is not something I recommend.

Kyoto is an amazing series of beautiful temples and gardens one right after another, and it is also the home of some of my favorite events in Japanese history. Google “Shinsengumi” and “Bakamatsu” and you’ll see some of what I am talking about. Aside from those recent things, though, Kyoto has been the seat of Imperial power for pretty much the whole time Japan has been a country.

The nobles of the Heian Jidai (“Peaceful era” roughly 600-1200 AD) wrote positively heart-breaking Tonka and Choka (types of Japanese poetry that were the predecessors of the modern Haiku as we know it) about the capitol city in the spring, and how their hearts yearned to be there (usually these were written by exiled nobles who then either died of wasting fevers or chucked themselves into rivers in the approved Heian fashion). And frankly...though I didn’t know what they were going on about at the time I read them, sitting in a classroom six thousand miles and 800 years removed as I was, I now think I can begin to understand.

The barrier of the long years is very thin here, and seems as though it might fade away as the kagerou in the light spring rain beneath a rising moon. There is a timelessness in the shape of the sakura, and a whisper in the onion grass that calls a soul beyond the limits of mortal thought into a twilight that has been dead for a thousand years—and yet must and will continue to exist.

It is echoed in the mournful sound of the flute and the austere strains of the koto and the stone lanterns seem to flicker with it as the sun goes down, beckoning...

Naze BANANA?!

2008-05-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

((Pictures will be added soon---ALL of mine from here seem to have vanished, which makes me EXTREMELY nervous. I'll put 'em on as soon as I find 'em!))

There’s this absurd little thing called Purikura that Japanese school girls seem to go bonkers over. I’m bonkers for it as well, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, what it is is this crazy photobooth that takes a bunch of pictures all with different backgrounds and fun poses and things, and then sends you around the back to a little touch screen booth where you can decorate your pictures with all sorts of random stuff. Then the pictures print out all on this sheet about the size of a post card, tiny and cute and actually ready to be peeled off of their back because they are STICKERS.

There is nothing about that whole process not to like.

Sasaki and I have done oodles of Purikura. We can’t help ourselves--I think it’s in the female brain chemistry.

We visited a lovely graveyard today. It was attached to Sounzen Temple in Hakone. Bhuddist graveyards are really very interesting, and I have this thing for graveyards. I know that makes me sound psycho and weird, but it’s a reflection of the fact that I am an archaeologist, and EVERYONE knows that the best artefacts are to be found in burials. Everytime we pass a graveyard my fingers start to twitch and my eyes go blank. Sasaki described it as “having a psychotic brain melt-down causing me to revert to my primal digging instincts.”

I think she’s right.

The cherry-blossoms (Sakura) were in full bloom and it was just gorgeous--AND the graveyard had the graves of the Hojo family, the feudal clan that ruled the area during the Sengoku Jidai (also known as the Warring States era--roughly 1350 to about 1600) and that was AMAZING to see. My fingers were twitching like MAD.

We went down into Odawara to the castle there, which had been the seat of power for the Hojos in said Sengoku Jidai. The Sakura were in full bloom and the castle loomed up in stately splendor—a magnificent echo of the Japan that had once been.
It is really an imposing structure and positioned very well for defense. It turned back army after army until the fifth Hojo Daimyo finally surrendered to the forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the new military leader who was in the process of uniting the war-torn Japan.

For those of you who have read the book which my mother and I wrote, the castle from which Chajiko escaped by tying all of her lovely kimono together into a rope was written with this one in mind.

At any rate, it was a relief to see it. I know that sounds funny, but I was feeling oddly smothered and homesick by the not-really-traditionalness of the ryokan and the fake “back to nature” of the Hakone tourist spots. To see the castle, reconstructed recently though it may have been, was a sort of balancing experience.

I think I discovered something very interesting about Japanese culture today. I mean, I was aware of it in the past, but only in a limited sense, and today made me realize that it seems to go deeper than I had realized.

In poetry if one wished to lend a sense of verisimilitude and legitimacy to ones poems, one would make an allusion to another work, usually a famous one, written by a great poet sometime in the past. By tying ones own words in with the words of a master by the use of such a reference, ones own poem became that much more “important,” for lack of a better term.

For example, the great poet Basho wrote something along these lines:

year-end reveling
Still in pilgrim’s cloak must I
walk my lonely road.

And I, in my desire to give my meagre efforts a sense of legitimacy, may pen something like this:
the sparrow’s sharp song
startles year’s-end revelers
it is early yet

The reference to the year-end reveling calls to mind the poem by basho, which is something most readers would have known in the time when making haiku was still something that was commonly done as a form of entertainment, as well as for the purposes of art or literary exercise. At any rate, then with the reference to the work of Basho and the images his words conjure up to strengthen my own, the poem gains an entirely new level of meaning.

Am I making any sense?

At any rate, something I noticed in both Sankei-en and Odawara-jyo sort of clicked into place in my mind today. In Sankei-en, a lot of the buildings had been made around a central thing that had come from another important or significant building. A lentil piece, or a central beam, or railing banisters from palaces or temples. In Odawara, there was a metal capping-piece that had both marked and protected a nail that had come from the second house of the imperial family. What it seemed to me to be was something like what was happening in the poetry--using the pieces of something older and established to build something new, as if taking a piece of that reputation and attaching it to the new thing. I don’t know if it’s the same thing at all, but it came up in my mind suddenly as an interesting and rather startling parallel.

Tomorrow we get on the bullet train (shinkansen) and head to Kyoto, which is my FAVOURITE place in Japan. No joke. I adore it.

My Food is Trying to Crawl Off My Plate, or, Chajiko to Ugokeru Wasyoku.

2008-04-12T18:19:00.000-07:00

Did I mention that I bought an arrow? Sasaki-kun has declared me unfit for residence in Japan. Something to do with my brain having a meltdown or something and all my sense dribbling out of my ears.

But THIS is a SPECIAL arrow. See the five colours of silk? And the bell? And the paper wrapped around the shaft? This arrow is ready to do some serious demon-cleansing action.

...maybe Sasaki-kun is right.

Anyway, back to the food.

So...Sasaki-kun and I are, frankly, pretty darn experienced. We’ve lived with native families, had to solve complex problems of logistics in Japanese and have managed to make friends all over the country. We were NOT prepared, however, for the food that would be served to us here as part of our traditional and (high class) Japanese dinner. Granted, this is not the sort of food ANY everyday person would eat, indeed I doubt if even a small percentage of people ever really eat this stuff in their whole lives. Suffice it to say, however, that most of it had eyes.

And tentacles.

But the kicker--the kicker was the little roasting/steaming plates next to each of our dishes. The tops kept moving around oddly, and I thought it was the steam doing something strange, as both were lit and burning merrily.

So I lifted the lid and peered in.

Have you ever seen...no, I can’t think of a simile that will do it justice. It was grey/ and bulbous and slimy.

...and it was moving!!!

As I stared at it in horror, frozen, hoping beyond hope that what I was seeing was simply a trick of hot meat (whatever sort it may be) on a cooking plate, but...no. It was still alive, I realized.

“Cover it! Cover it back up!” Sasaki-kun shrieked, snapping me out of my paralysis. So I clapped the cover back down. It continued to move, back and forth...and eventually it stopped.

I don’t think I shall ever recover. The nice lady serving everything took it out of its shell and informed me very politely that it was a delicacy and everyone loved to eat it and said “Eat some and see!” So I had to. It was nasty. It didn’t taste like much but...but...OH THE SLIME!

So I couldn’t finish it. And Sasaki-kun ate a bite too because she felt bad for me.

Anyway, we sort of picked the edible parts out of dinner and ate the strawberries that were provided for dessert (to our intense relief) and ended up full. Then we both availed ourselves of the lovely hot mineral baths (my limit is about five minutes of soaking in hot water before I literally pass out) and are finally starting to feel a little relaxed. We are both travelstained, worn, paniced and BRUISED.

Now we are devouring Sakura manju--little pink buns filled with sweet red bean paste and a mild cherry flavour--and writing in our blog and journal respectively.

One last thing that I forgot to mention, and didn’t fit anywhere in the narrative above--never, ever try to take massive luggage on the bus up to Hakone. I ended up crammed into a seat with my knees tucked up to my ears, hanging on for dear life to two gigantic suitcases (one mine, one Sasaki’s) so that they didn’t go bouncing about the bus and killing people) with another bag under my feet and another about my neck which was slowly dragging me down, and seemed determined to make a pretzel out of me. All this with a demon-slaying arrow poking jauntily out of my pack.

My only solace is the fact that I am sure the rest of the bus was in near hysterics over the antics of the crazy gaijin. Even the other gaijin. Ah well, at least I gave someone a laugh, and at least they’re happier for it!

Sugo~ku Hen na Gaijin!

2008-04-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in a Ryokan at the moment--of course, by the time any of you read this the moment will be long past, considering that there is no internet out here. And truthfully--I am grateful for that fact. Too much of my life is based around connectivity and the ability to talk to people and find out what I feel I need to know INSTANTLY. Here--surrounded by the sound of feathers and the quiet simplicity of Japanese lines, I suddenly realize how tired I am, and how little I actually hold still. I mean, I hold still quite a lot physically, but my mind is rarely quiet.

I perceive that I am wandering from the point of my narrative, however.

For those of you who are SO very uncultured as to be unaware of what Ryokan is, I will enlighten you. A Ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn. I mean, really traditional. They took our shoes away from us at the door and I have severe doubts about our ability to ever get them back. The attendants had sort of an air of finality as they directed us to the slippers--which were pink lined for the girls and set out specifically for “Sasaki-Sama” and her guest.
We were led to our room and shown the public baths--which Sasaki intends to force me into and which I intend to avoid at all costs, and then we sadly had to turn down a brief tea ceremony because we cannot drink green tea.

These rooms have tatami mats. And we’re sleeping on futon. And I’m wearing a kimono and tabi socks. Life doesn’t get any better. Well--I COULD be sitting here with an amazingly hot samurai and he could ALSO be in a kimono and some nice hakama, but...one can only ask SO much out of life. This ryokan, though, is posh. I mean, we’re scruffy little ragamuffins as far as finances are concerned compared to the normal clientele. However, none of the rich gaijin (foreigners) who stay here bother to get themselves up in kimono, I am sure.

Sasaki is gorgeous in an embroidered cream coloured formal kimono, green obi and under-kimono, and I am rather stately in a light green butterfly-pattern kimono (not formal--more like everyday use) and orange obi. No underkimono for me, sadly. They ran out of colours. She looks like a princess. I feel like a samurai-ko that mistakenly wandered into the wrong house after being knocked over the head in battle.

Of course, that brings me to the last couple of days which I have not blogged because A)time got away from me and B)Blogger has refused to upload my pictures. This blog is NOTHING without my pictures! Anyway.

Have you ever been hit on by a twenty-something (or was he thirty-something?) Japanese man in gym shorts who thought the thumbs up was the ultimate in pick-up moves?

...don’t, if you can help it.

We bought the kimono we are wearing at a used kimono shop in Futamatagawa in Yokohama, which is just one stop away from where I used to live back when I was here for the homestay. We met my host mom again and went shopping--and Sasaki-kun became a life-sized doll. Dressed up, taken apart, turned about, clucked over, dressed again. At first she wasn’t so hot about all the colours of all the things that had been chosen for her, but in the end we prevailed and she left with the most stunning kimono and obi and things for about a hundred and sixty dollars. A STEAL. I tried one on too, as it is time for me to own a real silk one, and got out with paying only 120.00 dollars. These would have cost us easily into the 600-700 range new, without all the other stuff. Mine is quite old, and I’m sure my mother will want to hack it into pieces for the silk when I get home.

Iyada, mama-chan!

We did a great deal of shopping in Yokohama, as there’s not much else to see there that is of any notable age.

Sasaki and I wandered into Harajuku, the infamous shopping district of Tokyo. It was AWESOME. We found this Gothic/Sweet/Light Lolita store and the two of us almost lost our minds. Luckily they didn’t have a way for people to try stuff on, or else we would have walked out of there with clothing straight out of something like Tokyo Babylon. At any rate, it was SO crowded we could hardly move.
And if we hadn’t been trying to get to an insane used manga store (that didn’t turn out to be THAT great *grumble grumble*) we would have stuck around and (I’m sure) bought all SORTS of silly stuff.

I am so bad. If something’s newer than abut 250 years ago, I usually lose interest (unless it’s something built for shopping). Also if it’s too old. Stone age is not what I’m wanting here, nor are dinosaurs. There’s just that nice middle that I like to study.

At any rate, as of this morning we’ve been to the Embassy three times (curse them and their inefficiency) and will have to return at least once more before things are straightened out. Prayers would be MOST welcome that Sasaki-kun can find her passport and things before next thursday?

Meiji Jingu, Sankei-en. The Meiji shrine was built by (guess what) Emperor Meiji sometime in the last 150 years. Sankei-en was built in the early twentieth century and is a ramshackle mix of new buildings in the old style, new buildings built out of or around old parts, or old buildings that were actually transplanted there. Very odd and very beautiful.

SAKURA.

Something which I have noticed coming back here that is really distressing to me is the amount of built-upness just EVERYWHERE in the Tokyo vicinity. In Sankein we climbed up next to the pagoda to the viewing platform and looked out--to an industrial nightmare. The bay, once wild and pristine, is lined with plants and factories all churning filth into the water and the air. Sasaki and I turned away, each saying that literally we were sick at heart over it.

Next, coming to Hakone, we had been promised an escape to nature and a giant change from the overcrowded subways of Tokyo etc etc...and what we got was a tourist hotspot, still with buildings all over the place. Instead of the beautiful remnants of the old Tokaido road, there are modern hotels and trains and busses and souvenier shops. Granted, the shops sell the local handicrafts (gorgeous wood inlays) but STILL. So, anyone who has ever seen a Miyazaki movie and picked up on the environmentalist overtones, this is what he is talking about. I have seen it, and it really is sickening. I can’t wait to get down to Kyoto where they have laws about how and where you can build something.

My heart yearns for the Japan that is long past--and the shreds of it can’t be found here, in the seat of modern progress.

I Don't Think I Can Be as Funny as I Was Yesterday

2008-03-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

I was in top form.

This is sort of a placeholder entry, as blogger is refusing to upload my piiiiictures. At least I got one. Sasaki writing to her mama.

More coming soon--it's thundering and pouring buckets of rain outside.

~Chahan

NIHON NI IRU NA~

2008-03-24T01:09:00.000-07:00

So...I'm in Japan.

Really.

JAPAN.

I had forgotten how much I LOVE this place.

For those of you who live with me--I know that sounds absurd to say, but it is nonethless the truth.

Things have been a little hectic and strange since the airport shuttle picked me up at my front door at 4:30 in the morning on friday. S (who will hereafter be referred to as Sasaki) and I somehow managed to be bumped out of our sets next to each other and we suffered through the whole flight alone. We GOT there OK, though, and everything went smoothly until Sasaki somehow managed to leave one of her small carrybags on the train--and of course it wasn't her camera or anything like that. It was (why would it be anything else, I ask you?) her passport, railpass AND social security card. Disaster. Calamity. Taihen. Calamari.

Katamari?

Perhaps a bisaster sapoot system is in order. Or out of order. No one can tell.

At any rate, after trying to deal with all of that (THANK

HEAVENS we both speak Japanese!) We made it to our (tiny) hotel room! Seriously, we're staying at a posh place and I think we're sleeping in the broom closet. Have I mentioned that I love Japan? All that matters, though, is that the beds are sugo~~~~~ku comfortable and there's a western style toilet and something that resembles a shower--kind of.

I can't get far enough away to display how

small this place seriously is. TINY.

Sasaki-Kun modeling the loo facilities.

At any rate--we spent sunday at church and in the company of Sasaki's host family from four years ago. WONDERFUL people. Just so warm and kind and willing to help and genuinely friendly. Their two boys are a complete delight. One is seven and the other is five and the two made me laugh harder than any comedy team I have ever seen. Our new names are a gift from the youngest--that is why "S" is now Sasaki-kun and I have gone from Chazi to Chahan-kun.

Why? NO one knows.

Electric green soda for breakfast.
Why not? And I can't get this photo to

not be sideways. LAME, I SAY!

Today we went to the Embassy to get Sasaki's passport replaced. She had called them several times to be sure of the location and procedure so we thought we were ready to go! After being practically strip-searched by the very polite and very firm Japanese guards outside the Embassy (seriously, we ran into one a block away who stopped us and asked our business. We were like "WOW.") we got inside and I sat at a table and tried to play Sudoku whilst Sasaki filled out form after form. Then she was called up...and came back five minutes later, passportless. Turns out she can't get one until wednesday, and needs to make a police report first and stand on her head, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance in pig-latin whilst eating peeps. Of course, Sasaki CAN'T eat peeps, so this was an impossibility.

No, it was just a giant hassle and we wondered as we splashed back through the pouring rain WHY they couldn't have told Sasaki this ON THE PHONE during one of the THREE TIMES she CALLED THEM. So we wasted a whole morning going into Tokyo. But, that's life.

After we went back to Yokohama and made the police report and found some food and did Purikura, which is this amazing little photo-booth-on-steroids-and-a-sugar-high, the shopping demon that lives inside me reared its ugly head and I dragged Sasaki through the anime store and then the book shop.

NO I will not tell you how much money I spent! HOW RUDE.

Anyway, we're back at the hotel now waiting to meet MY host family for dinner, and I am SO excited to see them! I love them dearly!

EDIT:
We just got back from eating dinner with my host family. I love those guys--they are just amazing and sweet and funny. I pulled several "Chazis" as they are called in that family--I had forgotten I had an international reputation! People in America say "You just did a Chazi!" and my host family said this, after they were done laughing their heads off after I had managed to drop a piece of meat down underneath the yakiniku grill (which they'd never seen anyone manage to do before) "Chazi da kara!" Meaning, "because she's Chazi!" I recall now that they always used to say that when I lived with them for one silly thing or another I managed to get into, and it cracked me up that it came up again like that, right away!

Sasaki-kun has been labeled Chazi #2. :3 She deserves it. And now--bed. Thank heavens, the jetlag is murder!

<3>

Boot to the--er, Head.

2008-02-12T14:01:00.000-08:00

"Hooch," my mother accused.

"I am NOT," I countered. "KIM!" Shouting to my boss. "My mother just called me a hooch!"

Laughter. No support there.

"Well," Indignance dripping from the phoneline. "if I'm a hooch, then that makes YOU a Hoochy-mama."

Astonished silence. More laughter from the boss.

"I am NOT. How could you say such a thing?!"

"Think about it." Smugness may not get me much, but it is at least satisfying. "If I'm a hooch, then you MUST be a hoochy-mama."

Finally, intelligent words among the laughter from my boss's office.

"It makes good sense!"

There really is nothing like starting off your day by stepping out the door right into a pile of half-frozen dog leavings, which one of your beloved animals has kindly left for you on the front porch. There are worse ways to start off one's day, but I can think of few that are so stupid.

I didn't realize my mistake until I was halfway to work--and it wouldn't even have been then if not for the rich aroma that permeated the air inside my car as the heater kicked in.

Luckily there is still a lot of snow on the ground near my office. However, snow is only useful for removing disgusting things from the bottom of your shoes if you actually sink into it. I scuffed and shuffled in the parking lot for a while, then tried to step into the snow proper for a real cleaning. The first step took me knee deep. The rest, though, had me mincing along an top of the snow like some kind of moronic fairy-princess, looking in dismay at all the other footprints, which actually managed to find the ground. I got hold of a stick, eventually, and tried to pry some of the deeper stuff out of the treads. No luck. More scuffling. Snow mixed with crap was flying everywhere.

I ended up standing in front of the sink in the bathroom armed with papertowels, soap, hot water and my fingernails--and spent another ten minutes trying to get the stuff out. I was a half hour late to work (to be fair, I was a little late to begin with), but now my boots are very, VERY clean.

Close scrutiny of my boots reminded me, though, that they are ancient and falling apart. So I went to the mall on my break, thinking that a nice pair of office boots would not be hard to find.

Apparently, my shoe requirements are unreasonable.

Low heels are unheard of, unless I would like a pair of (undeniably cool) lace-up goth-ish boots from Hot Topic, or an insanely expensive pair of pretty-girl motor-cycle boots that aren't designed to actually be WORN (heaven forbid).

Rounded toes are a faux-pas this year as well, but apperantly zippered stretch snake-skin stilletto boots are totally acceptable, and reasonably priced to boot! (Ha)!

I think I shall start wearing my five-inch thigh boots around town. If that doesn't convince shoe-sellers to start selling boots worth buying, I'm sure nothing will.

Encounters of the Draconic Sort, or, My Hands Are Cramping Up From Too Much Typing

2008-02-07T14:27:00.000-08:00

I warn you, this is VERY LONG. However, I wrote it and would love to share it if anyone will take the time to read it. I think it's enjoyable, but I am not to be relied upon.

It would be unfair of me to blame this particular situation on anyone but myself, but I feel that I must, in my own defense, state that I would not be where I was if I had not listened to the tantalizing clues dropped by a certain dwarf with a penchant for shiny objects.

One of the unfortunate side-effects of scholarship is the tendency to focus on a goal--whether it be the proving of a theory or a discovery of fact or artefact--and to allow the details of such finding fall to the wayside to be lost in vaguary. One of the only scholarly pursuits in which this does not happen to an alarming degree is the study of alchemy, in which the method is as important as the outcome if the alchemist does not wish to blow him or herself into tiny pieces.

But I perceive that I am wandering from the point of this narrative.

At any rate, however I had gotten there, I was there and I would have to find my own way out, blame or no blame.

I had always heard that dragons favored caves and that many of them also liked to collect certain kinds of valuable objects in a single place, usually said cave, with the same single-mindedness that marks certain scholars of my acquaintance. Thus, when Norad began to speak of a cache of objects in a cave that had appeared to be magical in nature and unlike anything that had been seen before, I should have guessed that the dragon would be the corollary right away.

I do not recall if he mentioned it or not--I'm afraid I had allowed myself to be distracted by certain of his descriptions of the objects he had seen.

The cave was somewhere in the Stonetalon mountains. I'm not sure where, exactly, though I'm sure I could lead anyone who is interested back to it if they liked--and if they wished to give me a very large incentive to do so. At any rate, Norad's directions were clear enough and I found my way with very little difficulty. It was a large cave, slightly smaller at the opening, but widening very quickly into a cavern of prodigious size.

I do not feel I can express the feeling that overcame me when I beheld what lay in that wonderful, terrible place. There was not a tell-tale pile of gold, which might have alerted me to the pending danger even in that fae state, but rather the most marvelous collection of magical armour, arms and other items. I darted from one thing to another like a child let free in a sweet shop, unable to contain my excitement. The objects were among the finest I had ever seen, many of them quite old and bearing enchantments I had only seen once or twice in my entire life, if at all. I even recognized a few pieces with the same properties as the armour for which Ekimdnaleve was searching, and decided that I would bring them back for him.

It was at this point that things began to "go south," as the quaint saying goes (though why "south" would be a direction indicating ill-luck and malevolent actions by outside forces, I cannot imagine). If the dragon had had better eyesight or better aim I would not have lived to tell the tale. Or perhaps it was more concerned about not squashing any of its treasures than making a mash out of me right away. Goodness knew I had little enough chance of escaping.

The clawed fore-paw that slammed into the ground mere feet away from me frightened me more than I can say. Luckily for me, as my mind froze my body decided it was time to take action. I believe I rolled away, then jumped to my feet and made a beeline for a crevice in the wall which I had noticed only marginally in my earlier distraction. Luckily for me it was deep enough and wide enough for me to slip inside, which I did with considerable alacrity, noting that the massive bulk of the dragon filled the room behind me, blocking the door and effectively trapping me within. The claws that pursued me into my refuge stopped a mere twelve inches from my body, straining against the stone to reach me as the dragon discovered that its bestial hands were too massive to pluck me from my refuge.

The claw withdrew and I blew out a sigh of relief. Trapped though I was, I had my life for now. My first thought was to simply teleport out, if that were possible through solid rock, and I rummaged frantically in my scrip for a rune. There were none, I realized with a sinking feeling. I had used the last to port a friendly Dreanai from the Exodar to Stormwind, and had forgotten to thereafter replenish my supply.

Then there was a massive, floor-shuddering thump and the eye of the giant creature appeared in lieu of the claws at the opening to the crevice. It must have lain its giant body on the floor, I realized. I reached for my dagger, having read somewhere that the eye was the dragon's most vulnerable part of its otherwise armoured body, then remembered with an ever sharper sinking feeling that I had left it sitting on my desk after I had used it to cut a new point for my quill. A queer rumbling sound emanated from the monster, and I realized after yet another heart-stopping moment that the thing was laughing.

At me.

"What a mouse I've got holed up this time," it said, in a tone of voice I would most certainly call smug if I knew that dragons could do such. "I was going to stop up this hole sooner or later--pity I didn't do it sooner. Now you've just made this harder for the both of us."

I had no answer to this, so I fear I simply continued to stare back at that giant eye. I'm sure I must have appeared singularly feeble-witted, eyes wide and jaw slack as they were.

"Come," the beast continued, laughing its earth-shattering laugh again. "You have nothing to say of yourself? Where are your manners, little mouse? I like to know who it is that will be providing me with my lunch."

"L-l-lunch," I said, my voice breaking. "M-m-more like a m-mid m-m-morning s-snack, I t-think. T-t-there's not e-enough of m-me with which to b-bother!"

"My my," the dragon said disapprovingly. "Speak clearly, my dear, or we shall be at this all day. But you are right, you are hardly more than a morsel. But a sweet morsel indeed, and who could turn down such a tempting tidbit when it so foolishly wanders practically onto one's plate?"

"I...I d-do not t-t-taste good," I countered, aware of how flimsy an argument this was. "M-my flesh is s-stringy and b-b-bitter from t-too many y-years of..."

I couldn't think of a single thing that I had done that would have made me even remotely stringy or tough. Those particular adjectives would apply more to people like Zytonis than to a soft little book scholar like myself.

"O-of s-s-study." I finished lamely. This sent the dragon into fresh gales of laughter, and I scowled.

"Oh come," it said, once it had recovered itself, though it was still blowing great gasps of mirth. "You can come up with something better than that. What is your name, little mage, and what did you want with my lovely collection?"

I thought fast. If I managed to escape and yet left my name to the brute, it might be able to track me down thereafter and finish me off wherever it might find me. Though, if I did not escape, giving my name to the monster might ensure that eventually my friends might know what on earth had happened to me. Deciding, however, that it would be better for me to plan as though I were to live than otherwise, I quickly made up my mind. I drew myself up and tried to look as haughty as possible.

"Augustina S-Schlothiem Reinbach III," I said loftily, "and I w-was here b-because I had h-heard of a a-ancient and c-clever creature who had a-amassed a n-n-notable collection of r-rare and b-b-beautiful things. I h-had hoped for p-permission to s-s-study them."

"That's rich," the dragon chortled. "Augustina, is it? Well, my dear, I'm afraid you should have sent ahead. That way you could have known ahead of time what sort of welcome you could expect. I have given many a scholar a chance to stay here--indefinitely. I'm afraid I don't share my findings with the rest of the world. I find there are too many willing to try to wrest my...acquisitions from me."

"W-what's the use of h-h-having them t-then?" I inquired, losing track of my danger as I considered the dragon's words. "T-they do you no g-good, hidden a-away as they a-are, and if you r-r-remove such t-things from m-mortal ken the c-chances of more p-precious things b-being created after t-their same m-manner is less and l-less l-l-likely!"

"Precisely." The great eye blinked and then shifted away from the immediate vicinity of my refuge as the massive creature changed positions, settling itself to wait. "Why on earth would I want people making copies of these lovely, unique things for which I have gone through much trouble to acquire? And as for using them--why should I? I have no need of their power, but I admire them much as a lady might admire her jewels."

"T-that is s-selfish," I said indignantly. "T-those things m-m-might be d-doing m-much good for s-someone who needs t-them, right n-now!"

The dragon blinked, then displayed most of its shining ivory teeth in a wide grin. "Selfish? I suppose so. Are you going to come out now? I tire of arguing."

"N-no. I t-think I shall r-remain in h-h-here, thank y-you. I am q-quite c-c-comfortable as I a-am."

The dragon began to laugh again and stretched itself out to lie where it could see me still clearly. "It will be a shame to cut you short," it said almost regretfully. "You've made me laugh more in the past hour than I have for ages."

"I-I'm quite t-t-the entertaining s-sort, actually." I said quickly. "I'd b-be happy t-t-to s-stay for a b-bit and r-r-regale you w-with w-witty stories, if y-you should l-like."

I got the response this preposterous suggestion deserved when the creature simply gave me a pointed look and an unpleasant smile.

After an interminable ten minutes of silence which I filled with frantic attempts to figure out what on earth I was to do, I noticed that the dragon seemed to be falling asleep. Its breathing became more and more regular and its great copper eyes were half veiled by drooping lids. I knew this would either be my chance to escape--or a ruse that would seal my fate.

After another ten minutes the dragon did seem to be actually asleep. If it was not, then the creature was a better actor by far than any I had ever seen. Its paws and tail twitched, and it mumbled low in its throat much as a sleeping dog might. I moved forward cautiously and silently then, glad that I had taken so much care in my youth to learn to make no sound while walking. I was halfway out of the hole when then thing I had been dreading--but hoping that would not happen--happened. Luckily, it took the massive beast just long enough to raise its fore-paw and heave itself into a sitting position that I was able to move mostly out of the way before the blow fell. Instead of crushing my bones and sweeping my head from my shoulders, the claws grazed my head and right shoulder and left several long, bloody furrows behind.

I stifled my cry of pain and pressed myself back yet again, watching those dreadful claws scrabble at the rock as the creature sought to pull me from safety. There was blood streaming down into my eyes, and running down my arm to drip off my fingers. As I pulled the mangled remains of my hood from my head with my left hand and clumsily tried to staunch the bleeding, I saw the dragon look curiously at its reddened claws as it withdrew them, and give them an inquiring lick with a long purple tongue.

"Oh my," it chortled. "You ARE a catch! I haven't had anything that sweet in years. Come out, my dear, before you waste all of that lovely blood on the rocks. Might as well put it to good use, hmm?"

I was done bantering with the creature. However, I began at this point to take a rather dim view of my future. Either I would bleed to death and die in this hole, or I would make another half-baked attempt to escape and end up crushed in a dragon's jaws. Neither one was all that appealing, though I have to say that, on the whole, would rather have preferred the former to the latter.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard another voice--this one oddly distorted and seemingly to originate right in the crevice with me. After a moment I identified it--Rask's voice, coming from my forgotten hearthstone. Cursing myself for a fool, I closed my left hand around it to muffle the sound, lest it alert the creature to the plan that had sprung up in my mind.

"Celune? Are ya a'right? Did I hear yeh scream?"

"R-R-Rask," I hissed frantically. "A-a-and anyone e-else w-who can h-h-hear me--for t-the sake of m-my life, I need you a-all to m-make as m-much n-noise as p-possible. S-shout, s-scream--s-sound like the b-biggest army y-y-you c-can."

There was a long silence in answer to my request, then after a moment I heard several other voices along with Rask's giving willing, if puzzled ascent to my request. I toggled the thing up as loud as it would go, then spoke again.

"R-ready--NOW!" In one move, I hurled myself to the opening of the hole, throwing the hearthstone as far as I could toward the back of the cave. The sound the burst from the thing was startlingly, blessedly loud--and sounded like a very angry group of people which had somehow gotten in behind the dragon and were now descending upon it to do battle. As the dragon turned to defend itself, I hit it with the most powerful frost spell I commanded, praying to whomever would listen that it would hold the thing long enough for me to get away. For a miracle, frost encased the creature's feet as it swung about, looking for the source of the threatening sound and I ran for my life along the wall towards the light, and life.

I would not have made it, I believe, were it not for a little spell known as "blink," which I had learned as an afterthought, thinking that it might shave a few minutes off of travel time when I was in a hurry. Now, as it sped me along every few seconds, leaving the confused sounds of the cavern farther and farther behind me, I swore I would never ignore a minor spell as long as I lived.

I will never forget the sight of the sky as I burst from the foul den--the west was blood red with sunset and the clouds blazed trails of glory up into the midnight blue bowl of the sky. I continued to run, knowing that the ice wouldn't hold the dragon much longer, and lost myself in the forest beyond.

I spent that night shivering in an abandoned fox den, listening to the dragon as it raged and then quieted at last towards dawn. I was rather weak with blood loss and reaction by then and was glad to set out under the protective canopy of the trees before the sun had risen over the mountains in the east.

I don't remember the name of the settlement I stumbled on at last, only that the people there were very kind, and that I knew that I would have quite the story to share when I made it back to Stormwind. I would probably scar, and I would never live down my foolishness--but at least I was alive for yet another day.

A Little More

2008-01-27T16:14:00.000-08:00

I know my blogs have been picture heavy lately, and this post is no different. I find that I have very little to say about my life lately—my pictures are doing the talking, really.

Quill Once Again by *Chajiko on deviant ART

I love this guy. He is currently at the top of my hot-list. Also, can I just say that I WANT a feather cloak like his?

Why my gallery wouldn't give me an embed code I cannot tell. Hope this works:

Celune, my World of Warcraft character and her love, the blood elf Jath. Their peoples are on opposite sides of a war, but they have found love in each other through their common interests—scholarship and magic.

THis picture is a good illustration (ugh bad pun) of the leaps I'm making in my drawings. Couples have always been VERY difficult for me to draw, and this is the second successful one I've been able to do in the past three weeks! Not only that, but there's foreshortening on her body in that pose. :3 Also, note that I've drawn a background and be AMAZED!

Art

2008-01-20T16:06:00.000-08:00

This is really just to showcase some new art because it's been so long since I've shown any! Most of these are characters belonging to me and to my friends in World of Warcraft. The one with the pony tail is my character, Celune!

WoW: Phrae and Celune by *Chajiko on deviant ART

WoW: A Matter of Respect by *Chajiko on deviant ART

WoW: Love in Name by *Chajiko on deviant ART

Charlene by *Chajiko on deviant ART

Quill by *Chajiko on deviant ART

It Was There After-All!

2007-12-21T13:40:00.000-08:00

I think I was just a little late in blinking the grit out of my eyes. Once I finally got them clear I realized that it really IS Christmas-time---and also that I have yet to send the gifts I have for the people I love who are far away. So they will be late.
But, if I may be trite for a moment, it is better to be late than never. This is certainly true, at least, in the case of non-perishable gifts.

It seems like the want of loved ones is more keenly felt at this blessed time than at any other time, but I am finding that I am instead realizing how lucky I am to HAVE these loved ones, be they down the street or across the country. The miles have ceased to matter to me mainly because I can hear their voices anytime I please thanks to the marvelous technology we have been given, and their faces are as fresh in my mind as if I had seen them only yesterday.

Distance is a small thing to those who have much to love and much more, even, to be grateful for.

There are boxes wrapped in my paper under the tree and I have no idea what is inside them. In fact, I only "asked" for one thing for Christmas--a pair of slim black leather gloves I could use for driving--so I have no idea what delights await me in their nests of vericoloured paper and glorious trappings of curled ribbon and shiney bows.

My mother spoils us rotten.

That or she decided to wrap all the socks seperately this year to ensure the prolonging of the festivities.

My dear older brother said he can never read my blog posts because they're just TOO LONG. Well, pooh to that. I hope it was sufficiantly short this time.

As for the creative offering--I did this in the summer and there is A LOT wrong with it, but there're still things about it of which I am very fond. It was a gift to a friend I met online and it's both of us as characters done in the style of "Fire Emblem" a game of which she and I are both very fond. I'm the one with the purple hair and the book (Fire Emblem is a strategy game in which you control a small army of various units belonging to certain classes, each of which have various strengths and weaknesses in battle. I'm supposed to be a shaman--a user of arcane ancient magics, a scholar and a bookworm. I thought it was appropriate!)

Just click on it to make it big once it loads up!

FE: Gift--Coloured by *Chajiko on deviant ART

Somewhere in the Middle

2007-12-17T10:19:00.000-08:00

I seem to have lost track of Christmas.

I've been saying for months that things just seem to be slipping by, and it holds true here as well.
I've been sick and working and playing World of Warcraft and keeping track of money and saving and hanging out with my family and my friends--all things I do all during the year. We decorated the tree, cleaned the house,decorated the house, put up and cursed at lights, made ornaments, had a party, ate things that were bad for us, etc etc. Somewhere in the middle of it all, though, I have lost it.

You know that feeling that you have when you're a kid and you just CAN'T wait for Christmas? Every day is an agonizing eternity of waiting, but it's still wonderful in spite of it because the eternities are made of hard yellow sugar-cookie stars, sprinkled with green sugar and spangled with lights seen dimly through drifts of fallen snow.

I worked in video game retail for the last two Christmases and it is really easy to loose track of that feeling in the midst of the grasping, shoving, swearing, covetous throng. I thought it would be different now, but I think the problem lies with my heart. Even putting together boxes of magical things for the neighbor children that I love dearly failed to move me, and I kept my ill humour, as a sad reflection of Scrooge's nephew Fred, to the last.

This is very possibly my last Christmas at home, when I think about it. Murph will most certainly be gone next year, Gin and Kris have their own life back East, Cam and Lorri will be likely doing their own thing and I may not even be in the country, when it comes to that. I can hardly imagine that coming home to an empty apartment on Christmas Eve after teaching school will bring me to feel any holiday cheer.

And yet, knowing this, I still flounder. I can't seem to keep up--the days just whisk by and I find it now to be the week before Christmas and my hands are empty. They're NOT--not by a long shot, and still I guess I just can't see it.

Maybe the sad truth is that the sugar-cookie feeling is something that fades with age and it's not something that can be caught at anymore as we lose track of the green sugar sprinkles in the fac of paying bills, going to work, worrying about tuition, cooking and all the other thousand things that seem so inconsequential and yet, all together, consume the adult life.

As I've said before, I cry more and more at Christmas the older I get. It seems to me, though, that it is not indeed for those golden groves that I shed tears.

It is for Margaret and myself that I weep.

Not Much to Report

2007-12-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

Really, not much. Thanks to the "Share and share alike" germ policy in my family I now have a bone fide cold and am slogging through this week in misery.

I drew this and I think I'm funny: WoW: Playing the Part

Blogger's apparent inability to copy/paste is driving me batty.

Mum and I have finished our initial draft of THE BOOK. I am now going to do a hardcopy stylistic/copy edit and then we should be ready to really send it off.

Getting Somewhere, Maybe?

2007-12-07T14:18:00.000-08:00

Things seem to happen all at once, both the good AND the bad.

These last two weeks have been quite full, and I'm a little befuddled as I look back on them.
My teaching application is IN. The die is cast and fate's fingers now play cat's cradle with my future.

I also have hit my target weight by just changing my eating--which shocks me to no end. I was eating well and working out the majority of this year with very little noticable result. However, once I started to make sure I was sleeping more, did not eat after six thirty and strictly monitored what I took in during a day, I lost 20+ pounds. I wasn't eating badly to begin with, you understand, so you can imagine my shock. I haven't even really worked out since september because I felt so lousy, so...go figure. I am now down to about 115 lbs, which I have not been since my senior year in high school. And I fit in my wedding dress again.

My room is a mess. I keep cleaning it and within ten minutes it is back to its comfortably entropic state. I think the problem is lack of dresser space and not enough bookshelves--despite the three in my room, parts of which are alread double-stacked with books on just about every subject under the sun, as well as sundry DVDs and video games.

Then there are things like the fact that the government has decided that doctors HAVE to charge certain amounts for certain things--no more, no less--which spells disaster for the working poor like myself when we run up against things like sinus infections.
There's also the new information being released that talks about how Zoloft (one of the damned anti-depressents an irresponsible doctor put me on in college) is soley responsible for suicides, nightmares and all sorts of terrible things in otherwise healthy people. I am recalling those years of nightmares, loss of sleep, suicidal thoughts and anxiety attacks in a whole new light. Lawsuit, anyone?

But life keeps rolling on. Roofs leak, dogs make funny noises, cars spin out on wet roads and new installments to book series never seem to come out. The whole last three months have just sort of slithered by, and I'm left staring out the window at a wet, dreary december wondering why I don't get to wear my halloween costume again.

My World of Warcraft Guild is amazing. I know that sounds really silly, but the whole reason why I stuck with that game instead of giving up after my two month's subscription that I bought it because I met those guys. It's the people, not the silly grinding gameplay that make it so worth it.
We're a role-play guild--in other words, we are the nerds of the nerds. The nobility among dorks; the diamonds in the rough of all gamer-dom. I can spend hours happily staring into my computer screen, playing out the life of a character to whom I have become absurdly attatched. Behind the public /say and /emote commands there's an underlying stream of Out Of Character chat in which we discuss everything from politics and minimum wage to the things we love to do in our spare time (aside fro WoW, of course). Girls and guys, people of different ages, backgrounds, beliefs and physical appearances all gather on this intellectual playground of sorts to enjoy the most direct kind of mental socialization.

This is not to say that there aren't idiots there, because there are PLENTY of them, but when you find a group as good as mine, it's something you really want to hang on to.

Here's the creative feature of the week:
Once again, this is a piece about Celune, my WoW character and newest roleplaying creation. The last story bit I posted on the blog is hers as well, just for the sake of the background. This one takes place in her 21st year, right after the death of her teacher. I'm really quite proud of it, so I hope you enjoy it. :)

Celune did not stop at the elven settlement as she would have done before, but pushed straight on through to Ælfwine’s tower. It was quite dark by the time she arrived—but she’d only gotten lost twice on the way, and once she’d gotten to the settlement she knew the way as well as she knew her own room in the tower.

She mounted the stairs and stared at the ancient wooden door for a long moment before pulling the worn keys from her pocket and fitting them in the lock, speaking softly the word of power that would free the tumblers and open the ancient mechanism. The door made not a sound as it swung inward, and the consuming darkness melted away as the torches Ælfwine had enchanted flared to life on the walls.

There was only a thin coating of dust on the floor and no foot-marks showed more recent than the ones she herself had left on her last visit. The tower had seen generation after generation of mages, and now it was hers. She would die in time and it would go to her children, or her student—or it would wait in empty silence until someone came along to possess the secrets of the library within.

Her footsteps echoed hollowly in the vaulted ceiling above as she strode through the central chamber and climbed the stairs that would lead her to what had once been Ælfwine’s study. Her own chambers were in the top of the tower, but there was nothing there now for her, only the accouterments of a life to which now she could never return. The steps beneath her feet were worn in familiar places and the wood of the hand-rail under her fingers was smooth and comforting, gleaming darkly burnished by age and use in the flickering light of the torches.

Ælfwine’s door was battered and scratched by years of importunate pets and careless students, but the old wood was solid as stone. Celune pushed it open and breathed in deeply the familiar scents of old leather, dust and parchment. The fire in the grate sprang up eagerly as she entered the room as if in ecstatic greeting, then died down again as if disappointed at recognizing a face other than what it had hoped.
“I know,” she said into the silence. “I-I miss him too.”

The desk was as he had left it before he had taken to his bed that final time. The ink in the bottle was as wet and dark as ever and his griffin-quill lay across a sheet of parchment, half filled with Ælfwine’s neat, ordered hand-writing. It had grown a little spidery in his old age, but was legible as ever. This was the first time she had been able to bring herself to enter his rooms after he had passed, and so this was the first she had seen of this particular missive. She sank into his battered chair, her eyes running over the lines of text.

Celune— the letter began,
My child, daughter of my heart, I am writing this to bid you a last farewell.

Celune could not read for several long moments. Dashing the tears from her eyes, she continued.

I know that Kenric’s messages will not reach you in time—and even if they do, your abominable sense of direction will ensure that I will be long gone before you set foot in your home again. I leave all of this to you, child. All the learning of my long years, the learning of your mother’s life, and the collected wisdom of the Masters before me. I know your contributions will equal, if not eclipse mine, and so I have no fear for the secrets with which I have entrusted you.
I was serious, child, however when I told you that I did not wish you to return to this ivory tower of sorts until you have seen all that you may in this world. Your prodigious talents were not meant to be locked away, but rather used for the good of the legacy to which you were born. Travel is in your blood, my dear, though you may not be able to read a map. Your knowledge and wisdom can only increase as you seek understanding. Trust to your heart and to the Light that has ever guided you—and remember to chronicle your experiences that they might do you and those who come after you the good for which they were intended.
I am going to a well-deserved end, no matter what that end may be, and you need have no fear for me. I fear for you, rather, daughter. You must trust others and yet chose your friends with the utmost care. I regret now that I did not give you the chance to become acquainted with many outside of this cloistered existence. However, you are bright and quick to learn, so I trust that the harshness of this world will not bruise your spirit.
Remember child, the love that your parents and I bore for you in our lives will linger with you as long as you can recall us to your thoughts. It is as real as the magic with which we have surrounded ourselves and is more powerful than any spell I have encountered in my long years.
Peace, my daughter. I go to my rest.

Celune sagged back into the chair, her fingers running over the parchment as if seeking the last lingering warmth of his touch. After a long moment she got to her feet and walked to the first of the bookshelves that lined the room, towering up into the dimness of the high ceiling. They were by no means the extent of the learning locked in the tower, however. These were simply the notes and specific concerns of Ælfwine himself and Celune hoped to find what she sought here, rather than having to descend into the dim archives below the ground, catacomb-like in their convoluted secrecy. Soon she would have to move much of her master’s work there to make room for her own, though, and then he would truly be buried and gone.
But not yet, she though. Not yet, for the love of the Light.

She was unsure where to begin—Rem’s condition was delicate and likely almost unparalleled in her experience with magical maladies. There were a few mentions in some of the more ancient texts, but those were accounts of states of being that had been chosen by a caster or inflicted intentionally. Jethillak’s unique problem was all the more vexing because she had run across nothing like it in all the years of her studies.

“Of course,” she said aloud, “those years are not so great.” The fire flickered as if in laughing response, and Celune smiled to herself. “Jeth is a Warlock,” Celune reasoned aloud. “He deals everyday with powers I would not care to touch and those powers also appear to be a fairly guarded secret. It stands to reason, therefore, that his problem has something to do with those powers themselves and I am unlikely to find an answer in my arcane pursuits.”

Mentally setting that particular problem to the side for the moment, she turned to the question of reuniting Rem’s spirit with his body.

She pulled several volumes off of the shelves, standing on tip-toe to reach the highest of such, and took them back to the massive oak desk. She opened the top drawer and carefully set her teacher’s last letter and quill inside. She extracted a new sheet of parchment from another drawer pulled her own quill from her scrip and began to write.

The sun had crested the trees and was streaming in the high window before she finally sat back with a ragged sigh and massaged her sore fingers. She frowned down at her palms, critically examining the two identical sets of gashes. They were finally healing, but they would scar. Even the kindly priest she had met in Stormwind had been unable to erase the traces of her ordeal completely.
“It will remind me,” she said softly, watching the dust motes dance in the late morning sun as it pooled over desk and floor. “That I must not trust too easily.” Her thoughts strayed then to those she had met since leaving home—her fortuitous encounter with Raskolnikov and successive introduction into the Revolutionaries. Enteris, Sunja, Gilther and the rest of them passed before her mind’s eye. So many had showed her kindness, even Zytonis had, in his bluff and unpolished fashion. Then there was Sangerath—silent and grim and yet so kind to her in her hour of need. Jethillak and Lorelynn and a paladin she’d never before met had come to her defense when she found herself in over her head—so many who had been total strangers had proved themselves ready and willing to extend a hand to such a small person as herself. It was her duty and obligation then, as well as a pleasure and honour, to do all she could to help them.

She folded her arms across the desk and considered the fire, burning impossibly low now in the face of the morning sun.
Yes, I will do all that is in my power.

Her eyes drifted shut and Celune slept at last.

Skipping Record

2007-11-27T10:08:00.000-08:00

I seem to be a little stuck.

My JET (Japan English Teaching) application is

going in this week, and I don't even know what to hope.

Part of me really hopes that I will get in and part of me really REALLY hopes that the book mom and I are finishing up will make both of us filthy rich (a la Harry Potter). Of course, thus are the dreams of any aspiring author.

I guess this is just one of those times where I am leaping hurdle after hurdle...and still feel as though I were standing in the same place. The things that I am working on seem so long term that getting them done degree by degree carries with it no feeling of accomplishment. The book, my application to JET (the results of which I likely will not receive until mid january or later—and that's just whether or not I qualify for an interview), my independent study course, my various and sundry drawing and writing projects, cleaning out my stuff and getting a storage unit and on and on, ad nauseam.

I feel like I'm waiting for something that never is going to happen. At least, if it DOES happen, I will be so worn down by waiting that the thing itself will have lost its luster.

As Hugh Beringar of the Brother Cadfael books said: "If a man finds at eighty what he was searching for at twenty, he might prove a shade ungrateful." and Cadfael replies with something like this: "He may have found by eighty that the thing he wanted wasn't worth the having after-all."

There's a lot of wisdom in that, but I'm no sure I'm old enou

gh to really appreciate it yet.

I think one of the reasons why I have not "settled down," in every sense of that word, is that I am really afraid of being bored. I don't want to wake

up one morning and look at the life I have made for myself and realize in a panic that I feel stagnant—trapped and unmoving with my

feet solidly mired. Of course, if I love whatever it is I am doing, that's not going to happen. At least, if it DOES happen I'll be able to work through it log

ically.

I guess I just have yet to find anything—or anyone— that I am willing to commit all my considerable energies to.

This post was not going to be about this. I WAS going to write about how dog sitting my aunt's dogs is like being a single mother with a two year old and a seven year old. It was going to be witty, funny, dry and philosophical. At least I got the last

one—maybe.

Celune briach Cyncad: scholar, mage and directionally challenged. My World of Warcraft alter-ego. It's in the middle of being coloured, but I lack the motivation to finish it at the moment...

Filling in the Blanks

2007-11-16T23:04:00.000-08:00

I pulled what would have been called a "double-swindle" today, if I lived in the world of crime. Of course, I can't tell the story because the two people whom I "swindled" read this blog. Maybe someday.

I will update soon, I promise! I've been playing WoW and drawing and I haven't wanted to make a new post until I got the picture coloured...but I see now that is going to take much longer than any of you guys will want to wait.

I wanted to throw the phone out of the window at work. Phones are are hateful things—unless of course it's your mum or sister or something calling!

There is a guy I am going to strangle. Male delusions are the bane of my sanity.

...the body of my laptop is cracking. Why?? We CAN'T TELL! I think I'm going to save up for a faster laptop with a bigger hard drive anyway, though. When a single photoshop file takes up 35MB, even a 60 gig hard drive can fill up pretty darn fast! So, if you guys hear of any extra money-making opportunities, let me know. Hopefully between the voice acting money I hope to be earning very soon (I'm ready to record that audition when you are, dad!) and what I'll earn from Jim and Gigi for taking care of the dogs it should get me at least started!

At any rate, here's a bit of a story I'm working on, if any of you would like to read it!

As I put quill to paper I find myself suddenly at a loss as how to begin my tale. My old teacher would tell me to just start at the beginning and keep going until I reach the end, but I’m afraid that there are few stories that can be told in such a simple way. Perhaps an introduction of myself would be the most polite, if not the most literary fashion in which to begin.

My name is Celune Cyncad—it sounds an ill-chosen name for one such as I, I know, but my father was Caradoc ap Cyncad and it was thought fitting for me to bear his name at my birth, girl though I am. My mother gave me my first name for the moon, for my hair was as silver as that lunar orb from the day I was born.

Her name was Elanor Wheelwright and she was the daughter of carpenter who had been raised in Westfall. She, however, left home at a fairly early age to seek training and instruction when her prodigious talent in the arcane arts became apparent. She was as pale a creature as ever walked the earth; her hair was so light a gold as to be nearly white and her skin was like ivory. She had great blue eyes and a ready smile—these are the things I remember best of her.

My father was a priest, and he was the son of Cyncad ap Rhys, the great paladin. He was as dark as my mother was light, with skin bronzed to a rich copper from years in the sun and hair as black as a raven’s wing. The two were like day and night—the dawn and the twilight come at last together.

That, at least, explains my mongrel looks.

I inherited my father’s temperament and my mother’s penchant for all things arcane, though my skill is very small compared to what hers was. My love of books and learning is something I got from both of them, though I believe I have taken it to entirely new heights.

I was orphaned at the age of five. At least, I believe I was orphaned—to this day I still have no proof of my parents’ death. We spent the early years of my life traveling a great deal. One of my earliest memories is being tucked up in a sling at my mother’s back while she and my father walked down road after endless road. I don’t know why we never settled down, but we were content.
It was an abominably rainy spring night when all of this came to an abrupt halt. We had stopped for the evening and my mother was attempting to light a cook fire—even her talents were being taxed by the buckets of water pouring down on us from the heavens—when there came the sound of someone crashing through the underbrush. I remember my father leaping to his feet and my mother diving for her staff when, out of the undergrowth, stumbled a grizzled man in torn grey robes.
“Ælfwine!” My mother cried, dropping her staff and rushing to support him as he stumbled. “What in all the hells—”
“No time,” he gasped. “Get your gear and move. They’re right on my heels!”
I heard at that moment the most bone-chilling sounds I had ever encountered in my short life, and to this day I have heard none to equal them. It sounded like a thousand old bones being rubbed together, and the trees beyond the ring of firelight shifted and swayed through the rain as though stirred by some great breath.
“Take Celune,” my mother caught me up and thrust me into the man’s arms. “Take her and go. We will hold them off and catch up with you on the road. There’s no way all of us could get away, even if we run!”
Ælfwine nodded and clasped my mother’s hand for a moment, then turned and ran with me in his arms. My last sight of my mother and father was them standing side by side, alert and straight with their magic crackling around them as they stood to face whatever it was that was coming for us.

...And for my NEXT Trick...

2007-11-06T12:31:00.000-08:00

I know, alot of updates in the first couple of days.

Partially it's because I have alot to say lately--while the other part is that it's just sad to have a half-empty blog.

Art is a funny thing. It comes in fits and starts and then abandons you right on the edge of brilliance to fend for your sorry self. Pieces that you were totally thrilled with not two days ago suddenly turn ugly, and things you swore you'd burn turn up as the standard of loveliness.

Then there's the backsliding and stagnation in skill, style and technique, but that's a whole other sort of vegetable.

This piece is easily one of the best I've ever done. I've been trying to emulate its style and flow lately to no avail--I'll just have to keep on slogging through, it seems.
(WARNING: It's GIGANTIC. O_o)

....I'm the one in the upper right corner with the flag.

New Fears, Old Fears

2007-11-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

When I was a child fear took the shape of THE DARK or THE CLOSET or THE THING UNDER THE BED. It was a real fear—as real as anything we ever feel in our entire lives.

Are these groundless fears? One could say yes and one could say no, but they are there and I have never met a child free of fear. Some have more to fear than others, and to many the fear is of things that are very real and very close; they are things to which no child should ever have to be exposed.

As I grew older the fear began to change. The childish fears of things with EYES in the closet gave way to fear of shattering myself socially, the fear that I would not be smart enough, the fear that I would never fit in.

I was sure at this age that this feeling of fear was something that would mellow with time and age and would eventually become a comfortable old fear, as familiar to me as my own face. Then I would cease to fear it and begin to see it simply as was it was—either a reality to be accepted or an illusion to dismiss.

This is true to a certain degree.

However, fear changes shape as one grows out of adolescence. Suddenly, in those awkward years between the un-childhood of the teen years and the un-adulthood of the late teens and early twenties, things start to take shape in the world and these new visions can be vastly frightening. Siblings leave home—they get married or they leave on missions or they simply grow apart. Friends one were certain one would have forever slowly drift away, and the daily routine of life suddenly becomes both alien and precious, something to be held and examined and kept close until the very last breath.

As the vastness of the world begins to close in and things start to make sense again, things continue to shift out of balance. Fear of failing classes, fear of new room-mates, fear of having to choose between the people you love.

These too, however, are juvenile fears. It is in that first step of adulthood that both the terror of what is to come overwhelms and engulfs. Fear for oneself turns outward into fear for the people one loves—fear that the one time you fail to say goodbye is the one that matters, fear that you will fail those who have you alone to rely upon, fear that not enough care will be taken in the choices made by friend, love, sibling or child. There are fears of an empty bank account, fears of natural disaster, fears so horrible you cannot put a name to them, though there are people who live in them as a reality everyday.

The childish fear of the dark finds a new and terrible shape in the fear of people who live in the darkness, and a fear of the darkness that can take hold of the mind. It is a fear of those who would spread their own darkness to everyone they touch.

Comfortable Phobias. That is how I've heard some of these things described after they have been felt a certain amount of time. I can see how it would be so—I mean, one cannot allow oneself to fear all that is to be feared or else one would cease to be. There would be no joy, no hope—nothing for which one could ever get out of bed in the morning.

I suppose that I, standing as I am on the brink of true adulthood, feeling in a lot of ways as I do that I have only myself to rely on, am feeling these new fears as strongly as I ever will (outside, of course, the experience of a mother fearing for her children. I imagine that is an entirely new class of feeling). I imagine that they will fade in sharpness over time, because that is my only answer to these things.

It seems to me that people who find themselves in depression are the ones who can find no answer to these fears—they are the ones who cannot look them in the face, or having done so, deem themselves wholly unworthy of the task to meet them as one must.

Hope, I suppose, is the only answer to all this. Hope that the pain will dull over time, hope that things will not turn out as terrible as they seem--hope that the people who love you will continue to love you, no matter the terrible mistakes you may make.

How else am I ever to move forward?

Lost Again...!

2007-11-04T18:52:00.001-08:00

So...I just started playing World of Warcrack—er, Warcraft, I mean, and it's really a gas. I played mostly as my undead mage on a regular PVP (player vs. player) server, but then I ended on an RP/PVP server as a human mage. (For the uninitiated, a regular server is where you're just playing for the sake of playing the game and you're not any sort or specific character. On the other hand, a Role Play/RP server is where you come up with a character and a backstory and you play the game as that person, in character.)

At any rate, I've really been enjoying myself even though I'm playing on the Alliance side instead of the Horde side, which is what I generally prefer.

This's all just to lead up to my newest piece of art, titled "Lost AGAIN!"

This is the first time I've ever done a full coloured background on the computer, so I hope it worked out.

On the home front...I need more money. And less fat. And more storage space. Does the year seem to be just sliding away to anyone else? I blink and a month and a half has gone by.

Everybody's Doing It

2007-11-01T21:56:00.001-07:00

Fine. You all win.

I'll "blog" (have I ever told you how much I hate that word?) my art outside of DeviantArt,

but I demand comments! And piggies!!

Aw come on...I'll comment on yours if you comment on miiiine! *nudge nudge*

Seriously. If people read this, I'll be stoked.

As for the title? I needed something clever-sounding and memorable, and that's what came out.

Be glad—the last time I came up with a "creative" name, I ended up labeling myself as "HarmonianHiccup" on unnumbered BBS across the 'net.

As soon as I can convince "blogger" (eeche.) to upload my art, I will post it. In the meantime...