No one will believe this, but that's ok. We'll couch it in a what if to make it easier to digest.
What if, when you brought your creative will to bear, the energy that drove you to create was bound in your creation? A piece of your soul woven into reality. What would that look like from the other side of veil?
What if I spoke to someone from the other side last night, and they said that these creations are alive? That they ripple like firefish on the surface of an obsidian pond, the poetry swimming with the music, slipping through art and magick in fractal schools of imagination, the brilliance of math waltzing with philosophy, storytelling a prophecy of infinite possibility.
What if they sang that the Akashic record is a living ecosystem of imagination when seen from the in-between? And that the most curious thing is that even as we create it, it creates us - our dreams brush it as we drift in sleep, our desire is born within it, and we ourselves are the result of the creative spark in our parents eyes (or thighs, as it may be)....?
And what if this is why the fractal elves (themselves woven of this weave) laugh at us when we cross the boundary - just as we laugh at NPCs and characters like Deadpool who break the 4th wall?
A million faces go flickering by
15 seconds of fame fired into the eyes
A cascade of shimmering fireflies
60 frames per second of electric lies
And fantasies, and science
singing the seances of threat
The truth hangs loose as she tightens the noose
that loops around our necks
Can you slip the Not tonight?
When there's no hope left?
Can you bear the spark through the dark
and the weight of airless breath?
The new moon waxes gibbous,
the harvest has come to bear
do you sink your seed into the mud
or toss your ashes in the air?
Do you second guess your frame of thought?
collapse the crackling cascade
the fame is flame, a promise of the pain
of a million hearts, all lonely and afraid
Seeing as all the other gods get to tell their stories on the @13thFloor, here's the Adventures of Me, as told
by Sam Snake, Chief Elijah Yellowhead, Alder York, David Simcoe and Annie King
Strong cast today - TL;DR: Today is a good day to do good.
Here's our breakdown:
Present: 10S
Challenge: Priestess Reversed
Past: Queen of Swords Reversed
Future: Page of Cups
Above:6S
Below: Knight of Coins
Advice: Devil Reversed
External Influences: Knight of Wands
Hopes and Fears: 2W Reversed
Outcome: Strength
Starting with the 10 of swords, that's a card of the final triumph of battle, as well as it's cost. It's challenged by a reversed Priestess, rejecting spirit in favor of conspiracies and manipulation. In the past, the Queen of Swords (remember her from yesterday?) is still drunken and reversed, but the Page of Cups is upright, and leading us into a future of new loves and infatuations.
Above, the six of swords looks towards the recovery from battle, helping the wounded, and looking towards a new view of the world. Below, the Knight of Pentacles and Coins is saving for a rainy day, building basis of new inventions (the two cards can be very positive together, especially for those you help).
To make things weird, however, the Devil is drunk, upside down, and sitting in the Advice spot. I'm gonna let readers interpret that as they may, but in my view this is advice about how to deal with the Devil rather than a suggestion that we listen to him whilst intoxicated.
External influences show the Knight of Wands leading the viewer to become a catalyst of change, joining the positive forces of the 6 of swords and Knight of Coins. Hopes and fears are the 2 of wands reversed, indicating worry about misleading folks in a rush to complete your goals.
But should you persevere, you end up with Strength, upright and powerful, as the Outcome. As I said above, this is a good day to do good.
Sunfire roses
cascading vines
waterfall whispers
a garden of mind
A symphony silent
and sparkling with life
lingering among echoes
of wonder and strife
An electric engine
in a neuronic embrace
the neurotic erotic
in this necrotic space
using rhyme
to shape time
into heartbeats
sublime
drifting on fantasy and brandywine
As summertime falls
into autumn piles
spinning blue moons buckwild
with harvest bliss
and a homecoming kiss
I can see them rising
over the fae falls
and the ash forest
beyond the Tilting Rock
calling the mist up from the scorched land
and charred memoir
caressing the burn scars
with moonbeam teardrops
Does Dionysus still dance in the hills?
Do the Sasquatch still run free?
Do the fae still parade their thistle blades beneath the oaken leaves?
They do for me
Even in silent soliloquy
the unseelie cacophony
Sparkles bright against the entropy
of cubicles and clenched teeth
fluorescent lights and too much bleach
the smell of the sterilization of imaginative belief
So I keep old Bacchus waltzing
make sure the squatches are well fed
belt out the blues for the little folk
and let them party in my head
'cause if I don't
the part of me
that wants to breathe
is already dead.
I've been using this software for a long time, and thought the wider Fediverse might dig it. A tool for astrologers, Maitreya (formerly known as Maitreya's Dream) is a free, open source software released under the GNU license that charts both Western and Vedic Astrology, and has been in active development for over 15 years.
@13thFloor@caribouslim Thanks for the link - interesting software. Looks like you intended it for the 13thFloor Microblog, but it didn't get there. Adding this reply to see if it does the trick. #13thfloor
Testing this method on posting to Kbin from Mastodon shows that the post will appear in the Microblog section when you:
@[community name]@kbin.social
Hashtag additions to magazines/communities on kbin are inconsistently publishing at the moment, so if you want to make sure your post gets published, use this method.
For those wishing to publish on the 13th Floor Microblog, include the following in your mastodon / pixelfed / tweet style post:
Ground control to Major Tom, and all other travelers of the Fediverse (and all other associated verses).
Our annual #Space_Cowboy convention is now open on the #13thFloor for registration to all lawmen, bounty hunters, bandits, smugglers, pirates, astronauts, and rogues of both inner and outer space. Guest speakers include Buckaroo Banzai on proper neurosurgery techniques in the 8th dimension, Jet Black on managing bounty hunting from a business perspective, and karaoke duets on the main stage at midnight with Maurice.
One new event this year is our vote for best Space Cowboy. Nominations are now open, and if you have a favorite, please post them here to be included.
Lyft driver last night decided to tell me his life story. The guy was more than a bit unhinged, so I just let him talk.
Veteran, tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Starts talking about his domestic violence towards his ex-wife and children, laughing about how he had only jokingly threatened to break his children's legs, and when he stabbed his wife in the arm with a wire, it wasn't really a stabbing.
"I told the judge, if I had wanted to stab her, she'd be dead."
Complains in great detail about all the money she took from him, his prison time for the assault, and describes with glee hiding his assets in his vintage car. "New chrome, new hood, new tires - bitch wasn't gonna see that money!"
Continues on about how his new girl came from Iraq and knows what a war zone is like. Brags that he'll send her back if she doesn't marry him. Turns out he's never seen her in person, but has sent her over $7k through some online hookup site that charges per message. Goes off on how he helped her move from Canada to Chicago (we're in California), and complains about how each time he sends her money to come out west, she never shows up.
"I've bought the tux, the wedding dress - it's all ready to go - it's that or Iraq."
Note that all of this was punctuated with constant bouts of chuckling and provided completely unprompted - I said maybe three words the entire trip.
Why do I relate this story? First, it was watching bad karma in action, both the fuck around and find out phases wrapped up in a tidy taxi ride.
But I found myself wondering what he was like as a child... he was clearly struggling in the smarts department, but he had a natural friendliness that belied the horrible shit coming out of his mouth. It got me thinking to what this guy might have been like had the army not put a gun in his hand and sent him overseas to kill. He was in his forties, but his mind was that of a violent teenager - almost as if it had been frozen at the point in time when he was deployed.
I speak about this because I've seen the same pattern in other vets I've known, including some I went to high school with (1st Gulf War vets). Something gets permanently broken in them, keeping them in a state of constant angry adolescence that takes childish glee in abuse, cruelty and savagery as a way to normalize their experience.
And then they come home, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake as they try to integrate to a peacetime existence, unable to grow up, Peter Pan with a gun in hand.
I wish someone had made this clear to my friends who joined up. There's more than one of them who's too dangerous to be a friend to now.