So I was attending a swish little garden party, an exclusive gathering. I'd brought along Talon Vexx, a woman of long acquaintance very dear to me, and of course we both stole the show together, as you do.
The table before us was well laid-out, with guests sitting at their places enjoying themselves. I looked for a place where we could sit together - and when I looked back, I couldn't find Talon anywhere.
I went searching for her. There was an area separated from the main party by a thick, dense hedge. I couldn't see part it. A group of men approached me, grabbed me and hauled me into the area past the hedge.
They plonked me down in this grassy area, with two rows of seats, people sitting with an expectant look on their faces, and a blonde wearing a bridal dress.
Kind of like the above.
She looks at me. I look at her.
'You're not Michael,' she says.
'I'm glad to hear that,' I think, and then say to her 'Do I look like a Michael?'
'No, you're taking the Michael,' she replies.
'I don't know this woman,' I proclaim to the crowd, and we part company. I wander along the impromptu aisle past all the wedding guests. Just a little beyond the wedding area, there's a mobile pub, and a tall, slender Black guy sort of sashays behind the counter.
I look at him. 'Give me something long, stiff, and hard, Angel,' I say.
He gives me a broom handle. Now that's more like it.
So I'm standing there, with my weapon at the ready. 'Right,' I say. 'I have questions! I want answers!'
And the alarm started swearing at me, so I woke up.
I'm working on some timekeeping. Something for me to do.
Since I'll be going to the Monday Welsh club meetings, followed by a little jobseeking in Careers Wales, it just makes sense to put in some Welsh stody. Similar deal on Fridays.
Wedlesdays are Zdetl and Klingon study days. Those are days I'll be setting aside time to study the languages of the Zhodani and the Klingons, and updating my Klingon blog on tumblr. You could say the Klingon language study has had a bit of a head start on Zdetl.
That gives me Tuesdays and Thursdays free to study, or to go shopping, or whatever else takes my interest.
Weekends are, as usual, reserved for my blogs - The Spiral Room and my Blogger meditation blog.
This first month of 2025 was filled with nightmares, and surprises, and delights.
For me, the year began with my opening a bunch of journals: a dream journal, a Tarot journal, a diary, and something for my new Welsh course: a journal written in Welsh, for practice.
I think it's giving me practice for my handwriting. It's gone really small, almost indecipherable sometimes.
January is always a sad month for us. The time period between January 14 and March 5 marks deaths and funerals - Sean's, and Sam's. It also marks Sam's birthday - he was born February 1, and died February 21.
January 24, the anniversary of Sean's death, I did something big to take Mum's mind off the anniversary and onto something positive. I bought her a tablet. I'd promised I'd get her one since last Christmas, but I finally got one for her.
It was a Friday. She's still getting used to using it today. I've been gradually getting her acquainted with its functions and capabilities.
I had to get one for myself as well. Damn, but it was so hard to say goodbye to its predecessor, but its graphic drivers had begun glitching. It hadn't updated them since 2019, and it was still running Android 8, and unable to update itself to a newer OS, so I gave it a factory reset and put it with my other dead technologies. Rest in peace, little Odyssey.
In the runup to 2025, the last week, I taught my Samsung S6 tablet to swear. The alarm just shouts "For fuck's sake, it's fucking Friday" or whatever curse-laden title I've given each alarm. I just set my new tablet, another Samsung, to swear at me at a different time of the morning as well, so I don't just curl up and stay in bed till 11am or something.
I haven't programmed Mum's tablet to swear. Some things are a step too far.
Oh. I joined a Welsh language club. They meet on Mondays. I have to be up early to get to the place. An exercise in dedication. I'll try and come back here towards March, with a catchup post on the events of February.
It's taken me till now to write this. I still find it difficult.
Last Friday, 11 October 2024, I worked my last day at the above workplace. Redundancy. They need to save money.
So, that Friday, I came in wearing my best Pride gear. What I would wear to an interview. Let them see what kind of person I am. I vowed to claim my dignity. They could never take this from me.
I was given a warm welcome by the people whom I could get to call my crew one last time. My job, on this last day, was simple: to chill, to enjoy sitting in the chair with no demands.
Well, one. I had to close down all the open sites running on the system. That was easy - into settings, delete cookies, history, download history, browser cache, passwords. When I closed down those browsers, they were practically pristine, fresh from the download.
My work days were 09:00 - 17:00 Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 11:00 - 16:00 Fridays. The last few weeks, I had been sneaking in at 08:00 Wednesdays, just to get three hours' Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) to shave off some hours on the last day, with my Line Manager's blessing. So this last day's hours were, in fact, 11:00 - 13:00.
People from all over the Partnership came in during those short hours to say goodbye, and wish me well. So many of them had one question on their lips - 'are you going to be coming back?'
Even my Manager was asking this, and he was the one who made me redundant.
The next few months are going to be difficult, but come on - I've been having a shit year. This is just going to be part of the generalised shittiness.
This dream came from way back, about '01, before 9/11. Before the nazis started trying to turn the world to shit. It was daytime, and I was in a city, reminiscent of Birmingham, West Midlands, UK. There was a large shopping mall. There had been a declaration of Martial Law. The nazis had taken over. Jackbooted cunts goose-stepping in lockstep down the High Streets of every city in Britain. At the back of this shopping mall, I found refugees. Muslims, Jews, gay men, lesbians, trans people, black people, and people whose folks had immigrated from Bharat and Chechia and Poland to come here for a better life. They were cowering in the shadows. In my dream, I had come to rescue them and bring them out of the shopping mall, and take them to safety. It was no longer safe for them here, because the jackboots were literally coming up the High Street already. They were about 500 yards away and closing. I got them to leave through a trade entrance and lorry dock. We got them into lorries and carted them off to safety. I was the last person standing on the lorry dock when the last of the trucks pulled away, leaving me alone, hearing the sound of the nazis marching closer and closer. My last thought, as the dream ended, was of rolling up my sleeves and waiting to see the whites of their eyes. Time to take those fuckers down.
This one’s going to be fun to explain. I think Law 3 was the first really controversial Law to come out of this book. This is the one people point to when they accuse this book as having been written for sociopaths, schemers and the world’s Snidley Whiplashes.
Can you apply this Law to your daily life, and still lay claim to being a “straight-up” person?
I worship Tricksters. So, given that admission from the start, let me take you by the hand and guide you through this labyrinth of reasoning to come out of the “YES” exit at the end.
Smokescreens and Red Herrings
Sometimes, you don’t need to show everybody all the workings. We are adults, or at least we’ve reached our fifth instars, and we no longer need to march up to the teacher and write down our answers on the board in front of a classroom full of ignorant, judgmental peers.
Who, by the way, never could work out how I could do the sums so damn quickly, but I’ll tell you more about the Trachtenberg Method and Vedic Maths in other posts.
The teachers never knew either, incidentally.
Yes, this was an early example of concealing my intentions. I never let them know exactly what I was doing, and I was happy to be this way with the world because they really would have just trashed my stuff had I been the sort to post selfies and whatever.
Or, at the least, call my shots all the time. Social media did not exist back then. Just this weird organic thing called speaking.
And also body language, but that too is a topic for another time.
Cutting it short … telling everybody everything, showing them what you’re doing, showing them you have nothing up your sleeve and no sleeves either … recipe for disaster. Learn from the best stage magicians - a line of patter, a flair for misdirection, and you’ll sail through life to a chorus of oohs and aahs.
They might even leave you alone and spare you the fun of being punched.
Air of Mystery
You know this had to come along, sooner or later. You can be cool, and not let anything seem to bother you: but you must also learn to master the second half, namely mystery.
Keep it mysterious. Be unfathomable. Inscrutable. Aloof, at times, passionate at other times. You’re an enigma, not a Vulcan or a robot.
If you must dance, make your moves subtle and graceful, no forceful jumping around. Glide and slide, like you’re a shadow caressing every living surface.
Your currency is obscurity. Be generous with the coin. And always leave them wanting more.
You can be on the side of the good guys, but for Hekate’s sake you don’t have to shine your light on those Good Guy credentials all the time. Leave the world guessing, and always have more to share, one tiny morsel at a time.
And here we are at the “YES” exit. So soon. Wow.
Well, it helped that I took several shortcuts without letting you know. See how I applied Law 3 there?
Next week’s post will expand upon this theme. Law 4. One of my favourites. You will love it. But I have said too much already.
So, I have this abysmal, wretched lurgey which has been going around. From what I hear, it has already spread to all corners of the globe quicker than the Andromeda Strain or news of Benjamin Netanyahu's continued good health.
Sometimes, bloody awful things happen to good people, or at least agents of chaos, mischief, shenanigans, and generalised wickedness such as myself, and the evil fuckers waltz off without so much as a sniffle.
So I am sick and twisted; but once this virus has been shaken off, I shall be back to just being twisted.
A description of how to practice Tonglen can be found here.
Tonight’s image comes from this article on Tonglen.
You’re all probably familiar with the trappings of what the West call “Buddhism.” I’ve got some shocking news for you - there may be a religion called Buddhism, but it’s not like the Western concept of religion.
What they teach is sets of techniques, which affirm the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Noble Path as set out by the Gautama Buddha. Everything else - the necessity for shaving your head, the fasting, the prayer wheels, the orange robes - is superfluous.
The techniques being taught, such as meditation, are collectively called dharma - which means reality. There’s nothing special about it. Meditation just forms a practice to bring your mind to the present, such that you’re living in the present moment, aware of where you are, and what is surrounding you.
This, by the way, is what “mindfulness” is. Another word hijacked by the snake oil merchants who follow behind every new fad going. The same jerkoff scam artists who glommed onto Aleister Crowley’s Thelema and Tarot cards, also slithered into the space carved out by Wicca and the resurgence of the runes. Hint: if you are talking to somebody who claims to be a master of the runes, but never uses the term “Elder Futhark” or understand what the words mean, they’re grifters after your money. Same deal for anybody who nowadays talks about mindfulness. Same shysters, same shill, different name.
And so to Tonglen.
This comes from the page “Bad In, Good Out” that I linked to earlier.
In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves. In particular, to care about other people who are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish — you name it — means to not run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. In fact, one’s whole attitude toward pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one can open one’s heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us far more loving and kind.
The page “How To Practice Tonglen” above opens with this paragraph.
Pema Chödrön teaches us “taking and sending,” an ancient Buddhist practice to awaken compassion. With each in-breath, we take in others’ pain. With each out-breath, we send them relief.
The article, written by Pema Chodron herself in 2023, points out one of the most important points of dharma meditation, which distinguishes the real practice from any kind of Deepak Chopra quantum new age snake oil nonsense.
Meditation is sometimes not for your own personal solitary enlightenment. Meditation is also about bringing enlightenment and peace to everyone else.
Tonglen practice, also known as “taking and sending,” reverses our usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure. In tonglen practice, we visualize taking in the pain of others with every in-breath and sending out whatever will benefit them on the out-breath. In the process, we become liberated from age- old patterns of selfishness. We begin to feel love for both ourselves and others; we begin to take care of ourselves and others.
It is that simple. Practice a breathing technique such as box breathing, and with each inward breath you visualise yourself drawing in everybody’s dark and negative energies, suffering and pain, only to transmute them to relief and release from suffering and the root of suffering with each outward breath. Each cycle, you draw in the bad, transform it like alchemy, and send it out to the people around you.
You can do Tonglen in a shop, a hospital, or on a crowded bus or train. Anywhere that you can meditate, you can do Tonglen. Anywhere you can sit down and still your body and mind, you can lighten the burdens of yourself (because you can also transmute your own darkness and despondency), those nearby, and the whole world.
This topic is worth coming back to. Like hypnosis, meditation forms a large part of my life. Compassion for everybody is a core element of everything I do, in public and private, so expect me to return to topics like hypnosis, Dharma, and chaos magic on this blog.
I had moved into some sort of abandoned house outside of town. I could see the town in the valley below. The house was delapidated somewhat, with the exit door from the kitchen half hanging off its hinges. You could see the exterior yard through open gaps between the vertical slats in the door panels.
The yard also looked dilapidated, strewn with weed growth between paving slabe and growing through cracks. I went outside to see what the house looked like. Sandstone blocks, blackened by a century of industrialisation, and lighter coloured mortar between the blocks showing erosion.
The house looked endearing, what part of it I could see through the trees. I knew that it was sprawling, and I hadn't seen more than a tiny piece of it. I would have explored the exterior further, but a storm was moving in.
I went back inside, and the storm began to strike the exterior, flashes of lightning and booming thunder. Some of the rain and wind was getting in through the open gaps in the deteriorating door, invading the kitchen. Beyond the kitchen was a warren of corridors in pitch blackness, empty and almost deserted.
At the end of one of the corridors, amid the pitch black, I could hear the sound of something coming closer.
Very short, very scary - I dreamed that my face was covered in blood. And when I woke up, it really was.
Literally covered in blood. It was dripping off my chin onto my chest. I was getting it on my hands. It was dripping onto the floor, big red circular gravitational drops.
By the time I'd finished washing, and cleaned the floor, the alarm was going off and I had to get to work.
Two nights in a row, my dreams broke my sleep, and left me feeling lousy and frazzled all day. But this morning was something else.
And so we come to Day 2 of the RPG A Day challenge, and this time it’s the first RPG I gamemastered.
That could mean “the RPG I prefer to GM” or “the first time I GM’ed.”
I think I’ll go with the first option, and I’ll list the second option some time down the lane.
If I do GM a game, chances are it would be either a Lightspress Media game such as DoubleZero / Fantasy Manifesto / System Neutral, or Frostbyte Books’ Comae Space.
I love Mythras, M-Space, Traveller, and Onyx Path’s World of Darkness, among many other game systems - but they do tend to lean heavily towards crunchy numbers-based combat, rather than stories where the characters lead with their, well, character.
I want a game where I let the players’ decisions lead the story, where they get caught up in the drama and care about the characters, and the crunchy game mechanics don’t get in the way all the time. Game rules only establish an approximation of life. I like to GM a system which allows the narrative to beat the rules and crunch every day.
Welcome to RPGADay 2023, the annual celebration of tabletop roleplaying games.
This has been going on for decades, now - but this is the first year I’ll be attempting the challenge myself.
First RPG I played this year … It was a freeform, narrative game, not using any specific rule set. I was using this systemless game to simulate an adventure of The Chronicles of Shirae; the results were going up on my blog, The Spiral Room.
Halfway through the story, events took on a life of their own. Master Axan, the sorcerer protagonist, and Princess Rathi, end up having to live with one another for a month as a married couple, without rank or privilege.
Needless to say, this was not a situation which I could resolve with swordplay and hit point counting.
This dream felt like something from the mind of F Scott Fitzgerald.
Her name was Lydia. She was petite, elfin, ethereal, blonde, with a smile men would kill for. We would bump into one another in formal galas, all tuxedoes and ball gowns. Lydia had a pack of six identical suitors in black tie hanging around her, all of them offering lighters to light her cigarette, but she would always detach herself from her cloud of pilot fish and swim across the ballroom to see me.
Tonight, she was wearing something gossamer, by the looks of it. That was all she had on, other than some jewels and a smile. Draped her arm over my shoulder. Said "Let's go to the balcony."
So we went. It was cool out. Like me, she didn't notice. She said "I've been trying to catch your heart for some time. Come, join me."
I put my arm about her waist and said "Lydia, you know I'd love to do that. But I am not going to be your seventh suitor. You want me? Here I am ... your only suitor."
The alarm does go off at precisely the wrong moment.
In my dream, I had joined a team of footballers who wore green shirts. We'd been invited to play a friendly against an opposing team of soccer players who wore blue shirts. I didn't catch the names of either team.
The Blues won the match, and the Green supporters gave polite applause to the Blues fans and team. All good stuff.
Cut straight to the pub, and we'd stumbled into a Blues pub by mistake. Despite that they were the winners, the tension in the air was palpable.
Until some gorgeous blonde got up onto the soundstage and began singing the Blues' anthem.
This song. TW: Strobing and flashing images from the start.
The blonde sounded incredibly nervous as she began the first verse. She was looking at us, in the far corner.
The words played on around our heads
Perhaps we went too far
We'll soldier on until the end, again
I stepped to the back of the room, and belted out the next verse.
This clutching hand around my hand
So pitiful and frail
Makes bleeding hearts begin to beat again
We both sang the chorus.
We stand in a different light
That's cast upon, this gigolo and gigolette
We stand with a different frame around us now
But when we talk, we talk in time
We'll shine with profiles so strong and so clear
And when we move, we move in time
Won't fade like pictures that come back again
The band extended the bridge so I could get up onto the stage. I introduced myself. The blonde's name was Samantha.
We stand in a different light
That's cast upon, this gigolo and gigolette
We stand with a different frame around us now
And when we talk, we talk in time
We shine with profiles so strong and so clear
And when we move, we move in time
Won't fade like pictures that come back again
They played the bridge again, and extended it a little so Samantha and I could work out the strategy. Turned out that the fans loved the chorus and played it three times, so that was what we both did. I turned to the mic and said "I had no idea this was your anthem! I love this song!"
By the time the bridge was over ("One! Two! Three! Four!") Samantha was in full voice as we sang the chorus, this gigolo and gigolette. We stood with a different framr around us now.
At the end, I thanked the crowd, told them it had been a fair match, the best team won, and hope to invite them over to our pitch next time. Then Samantha took over singing the chorus and getting the crowd to join in.
I made my way over to the group, and quietly told them "Let's get out of here before they change their minds and skin us alive!"
Then the alarm went off. I had not felt so relieved to have been woken up.
Just in case you need to know, this is a parody. Sing this to the theme tune of a certain Bond movie. Give it your best Dame Shirley Bassey impersonation.
For however many years, I have been pondering the usual philosophical questions, such as "What is my purpose in ife?" I've struggled with existetial angst with the best of them. Silver haired academics and teen Goths who've barely started shaving can probably equate.
Lately, though, and by that I mean the last couple of years, I've felt increasing periods of something I have been unaccustomed to. A feeling of being comfortable in my own skin.
It's hard to explain, though I'll give it a go. Since the lockdowns began, I've felt as though I have had time to myself to figure out what's important. And I've come to the realisation that my occult practices, my hypnosis, my blogging erotica, and my studies of Welsh and other languages (including Klingon) are what's important to me.
I've been coming out of various closets in my lifetime - as an asexual a number of years back; as a non-binary person in 2021; and this year, I'm making it clear to the general public that I am heavily into both hypnosis and the occult. I am a chaos magician. I am a hypnotist. I am all of these things.
Most of all - when I make these statements, I feel comfortable saying them. I accept myself. I am comfortable in my own skin.
And that helps me to help others feel comfortable in their own skin.
Okay, so as part of my revamp of The Spiral Room blog on Wordpress, one of the things I am doing will be to split up the stories this year. There are four stories coming out in 2022, and the first story to come out is The Chronicles of Shirae.
This is a fantasy story, plain and simple. A community of sorcerers set up their home on an island in a realm called Mid-Sea, a thallassocracy - an Empire of The Ocean. There's more to it than that, but the point is that there will be 13 episodes for the first run of 2022. The story takes a break after March, and from April o June 2022 the story will be a new chapter for Taken Under.
From July, the next thirteen weeks will mark the first thirteen episodes of the final chapter of Den & Lauren. I've not decided how many parts this finale will have, but the thirteen episodes of 2022 are far from the last episodes for Den & Lauren, yet.
That leaves the thirteen episodes remaining of 2022. At this point, I have no idea what will go there. It could be a story set in Fioracitta, or a superhero story. I'll have a better idea, closer to October, and I'll be ready to launch the final 2022 story as and when the time comes.
But for right now, the story of the week is Shirae. The latest episode aired this Sunday gone. Here's the link. Enjoy.
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