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Steph's Diary
(Part II)
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Dec 29 10:52:13 1997]--
From: ()() Cpl. Usplus reporting for duty (steph)
Subject: Interlude
I'm back from Christmas now, having got more of my stuff out of my parents'
house and up here to Cambridge, but boy, it's quiet. I'm not entirely sure what
I'm going to do with the week of holiday I have before I go back to work on the
5th January, but I'm sure something will materialise.
Before the end of last year, I had a feeling something bad was coming, that
would shake things up a lot. With three days of 1997 left, it looks like I was
wrong. Unless, of course, something's happened that I don't yet know about, but
I'd like to doubt that.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Dec 29 23:24:38 1997]--
From: ()() Cpl. Usplus reporting for duty (steph)
Subject: The Realignment of Significant Stars
A new star has risen, and an old star has set. As the embers of an old year
grow dim, the blaze of the new year already prepares to come forth.
What shines now is not what shone then. Welcome, Elizabeth.
Something's Shining.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Dec 29 23:33:29 1997]--
From: ()() Cpl. Usplus reporting for duty (steph)
Subject: Hmm
I really should stop all this self-indulgent cryptic pretentious nonsense,
shouldn't I? It does nobody any good, isn't interesting (probably - I don't
know for sure, and nobody's expressed any opinions on it) to other people, and
is almost certainly bad form.
So why do I carry on with it, then?
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Dec 30 03:40:30 1997]--
From: ()() Cpl. Usplus reporting for duty (steph)
Subject: Patience
I played a fair bit of it (or at least the version that comes with Windows and
is called Solitaire) over my week at home, and I've been pondering a few
things. Perhaps the more mathematically minded of my readers may be able to
answer these questions:
1) Is sending a card to one of the top four piles (by double-clicking on it, in
Windows) always advantageous?
2) Would the game be trivial if cards were turned over from the pack one at a
time instead of three at a time?
3) How likely is a starting position where no legal move is possible? (I maybe
could work out the statistics on this, but I'd more likely than not get it
wrong.)
Just curious, really. It has to say something about the company I keep and the
way I've learned to think that I'm analysing the game in this way...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Dec 30 03:42:30 1997]--
From: ()() Cpl. Usplus reporting for duty (steph)
Subject: Evening's End
It was good to walk and talk; there aren't many people I've told the Whole
Story like that, and it's cheered me quite a bit, for some reason. Thanks.
*Hug*
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Dec 30 20:12:28 1997]--
From: ()() Cpl. Usplus reporting for duty (steph)
Subject: Juggling vs. VMS
So, can I learn juggling as easily as I learned VMS, then? (Admittedly, there
isn't much call to practise my juggling at work, but hey...)
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Dec 31 11:19:45 1997]--
From: ()() Cpl. Usplus reporting for duty (steph)
Subject: Argh
Two nights ago I set the video to record the second part of `The Woman in
White' for me, since I'd seen the first part at home and wanted to know what
happened. I put the tape in and press play today, and lo, it's recorded
nothing. Zip. Diddly-squat.
It seemed such an easy thing to operate, too. :-(
I don't suppose anyone else videoed it, did they? No, thought not. Ah well.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Dec 31 13:37:18 1997]--
From: ()() Cpl. Usplus reporting for duty (steph)
Subject: Wow!
I've just been given a truly wonderful Christmas present: an Archers T-Shirt
with the slogans `I think therefore I Ambridge' and `Underneath the Archers'
*bounce* Brilliant! Thank you, Richard!
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Dec 31 16:39:41 1997]--
From: ()() Cpl. Usplus reporting for duty (steph)
Subject: Woo!
Connectivity to the outside world from this old XT using NCSA telnet and IP
masquerading :-).
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 1 03:58:40 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Thoughts
I think I may just have come up with an interesting, possibly even coherent
description of the way my emotions interact with each other and some events.
It puzzles me as to why, and I wonder how accurate the model is.
I am at my most dangerous when I pass through the gates of jealousy, and then
through the door of hate. Not dangerous necessarily because of what jealousy or
hate are (although I have caused damage enough through them to know that they
can have extremely harmful effects), but rather because of the perspective, or
loss of perspective, that accompanies them. That I can lose control enough to
have that sort of mindset is dangerous, and if the means of reaching the
mindset is dangerous then so is the mindset itself.
The opposite of that state, happiness, can be just as dangerous, especially in
its stronger forms, for precisely the same reason: loss of perspective and loss
of control.
Loss of control isn't necessarily a Bad Thing, but one can certainly take it
too far, and the same applies to loss of perspective. My emotions have often in
the past seemed to bounce from one extreme to the other as twisted perspectives
on either end of the scale fed into emotions on the other end; usually then
the degree of control I feel over things decreases the more times round the
perspective-emotion loop I go.
I'm not entirely sure how this is going to help, though.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 1 03:59:27 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Happy New Year!
And it has been, so far :-).
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 1 04:27:06 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: `Your intuition serves you well...'
Better than I'd like, to be frank.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 1 04:32:17 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: What happens when a mirror looks into another mirror?
I'm not going to get the English out to answer that this evening, I fear;
the words won't fit what I want them to say.
Perhaps tomorrow.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 1 14:18:57 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Is
Not Good. I'm losing perspective, albeit not on the emotional axis I mentioned
above; I'm not unhappy, just seeing too much of what I feel I want to see and
not being nearly detached enough.
Funny that. Seeing meanings that aren't there usually happen with people and
subjects I'm obsessed with, and that's not the case here. Put it down to
insecurity, I think.
Looking forward to meeting Wednesday. It feels important to me.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 1 17:27:17 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Now
`Drivel sounds good from other people - that's what they're for.'
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 2 01:06:03 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Answers
Curious and welcome, not just because of the insight they provide but also
because they set me more at ease; having a reference point where I am being
addressed (in one context) provides me with a cleaner perspective in all
sorts of other contexts on the difference between what I want to see and what
I think I see.
The insight the answers themselves provide is alarming for its familiarity.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 2 01:20:21 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Directions
While this self-analysis is all very well and good, and best accomplished in
this calm interlude rather than in the midst of unfolding events, it doesn't
feel like the direction I want to go. It takes me too far towards the rational,
perhaps, and the attitude I've taken to date has been very much that emotions
are the realm of the irrational and are best dealt with as such.
It doesn't really matter; after all, the wish to analyse is an emotional one
_anyway_. *shrug* Bear with me, and normal service will probably be resumed in
a few days.
I've fixed the date for the end of this interlude in diary-space; there's
a little more than pure arbitrariness behind the decision to call most of what
has been written here `Part One', and for a `Part Two' to begin very shortly.
It's simply that the life threads that characterised Part One have been tied
up, and that new threads, whatever their colour, demand some sort of new start.
All, of course, after a suitable interlude. :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 3 01:54:09 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Today
I'm gradually persuading my sleep cycle to move backwards so that it's ready to
cope with getting up at 8am again, so I had a useful amount of morning today,
and accomplished one or two useful things. Nothing earth-shattering, to be
sure, but pleasant; I now have a file server which will be able to serve up
portions of this diary on demand, after I truncate it to the end of Part One in
a short while. It'll get the VAX doing something useful, too, which is somehow
especially pleasing.
The afternoon was given over to meeting Wednesday and pottering about in town
with her and David, which was all good fun. My previously elevated emotional
state collapsed late afternoon, though, and I was merely vaguely content for
the rest of the evening. Glad I saw `Tomorrow Never Dies' again.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 3 01:57:53 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Now
The dodgy power switch on my monitor in my bedroom upstairs has decided it is
in an `off' mood, and I can't jolly it out of it by repeatedly frobbing it. So
I shall arrange for its contacts to be shorted. That should show it who's boss.
(Meanwhile, I'm reduced to logging on from the computer room.)
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 3 02:00:36 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Urge to type
Monochrome gives me an urge to type. Even when there's nobody on, it's
sometimes very tempting to write paragraphs and paragraphs of nothing in here
for some reason. Perhaps it's therapeutic? Cathartic at times certainly, but
not now when there's nothing wrong bar a lack of emotional `buzz'...
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 3 15:55:22 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Shopping
I now have a radio for my office and a coffee machine for the kitchen here at
home.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 4 00:51:38 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Now
Now the dodgy power switch on the monitor has been s(h)orted, logging on from
my bedroom (and for all that it's a complete tip, I value having some space of
my own) is possible again. The entire house has gone to bed, it seems.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 4 12:02:20 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Last night
Large chunks added to my private diary; I felt a need to clarify a few things
to my future self which can't yet be mentioned here.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 4 14:30:37 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Perfect ()() Balance
It would be my nameline if the current one weren't more relevant, more
necessary. I need to balance two different sets of needs, and it needs to be
relatively seemless, and so far, to my surprise, it's working.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 4 14:33:46 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Although it is being put quite strenuously to the test.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 4 18:39:24 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: An extra something.
Another thread that characterised 1997 has apparently come to an end.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 5 10:46:20 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Daydreams
[edit snipped]
There ought to be a better place for things like the edit that was here than
this diary.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 5 15:21:44 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Segami
`The ancient Japanese art of writing backwards.'
*grin* Thanks to cygnus for that little gem...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 5 17:43:07 1998]--
From: () Mirror | segamI () (steph)
Subject: Now
Work would have been characterised as productive today, had it not been for a
huge headache which hit at about 2:30pm, and which crippled my ability to
concentrate on anything useful for about an hour. I'm yet to work out why it
happened; it could be the remnants of the cold that I have, or it could be the
first day back sitting in a fluorescently-lit environment with very little
access to natural night.
Anyway, some useful DCL programming got done, and I've made a few useful tweaks
to the Sambe configuration and to the VMS systems; not a bad start to 1998 as a
working year.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 5 23:53:23 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Is
P A R T T W O
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 6 14:20:03 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Archives
I intend to truncate this diary to the beginning of the Interlude in a week or
so's time. Anyone wanting a copy of Part One should send a mail message to
diary@torvax.greenend.org.uk with the body text GET PARTONE.
The use of this service is logged, and I'd be grateful if copies of this diary
weren't redistributed; it's also very experimental, so don't be surprised if it
breaks from time to time :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 6 18:00:34 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm fed up. I'd light my candle but I've run out of matches...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 6 22:17:38 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Was
And so I fell asleep and drooled on my pillow (yeuch) for three hours. Guess
what? Now I'm hungry. Unfortunately also fundamentally lacking in effort, I
suspect.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 6 22:22:18 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Yes, folks
That's the first use of the silly mono attributes you've seen in this diary.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 7 13:04:39 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Is
I now have a plausibly working mono friends script, which is neatly integrated
with my existing friends script. Sure it's still horribly broken in terms of
formatting, but there are lots of silly options to add. Including, just for
anakin, the ability to read one's mail. :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 7 19:40:55 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Was
I've just reviewed the entirety of my private diary for the past three years,
and it's both surprising and gladdening to note how much it improves in
coherency over time. The most noticeable thing is the gradual control over
guilty feelings I've gained, although that's true of all feelings in general.
I'm not bouncing from one extreme to another now, and I'm a lot better (it
appears) at evaluating what's happening around me and reacting to it.
All the players in the story were strange messed up individuals back then, for
one reason and another, and we caused strange messed up reactions. Over time,
we've all changed. I cannot think of a single change that has not been for the
better.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 8 00:47:48 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Is
Sailing By starts playing on the radio, and all the vague nigglings at the back
of my mind that were going to make a profound (or at least cryptic) diary entry
evaporate into a feeling of calm...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 9 01:39:16 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: When the crystal shatters...
This evening has been one of perfect balance. It began with happiness in being
pleased to see someone I might once have cursed, and ended among friends and
laughter.
In the middle there's a bit of realisation. The year didn't end on the 31st
December 1997, you see. It ends on the 30th January 1998.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 9 01:44:45 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Elizabeth
It is so tempting to trust you completely, tell you the whole of the truth as
it stands. I surprise myself that I feel I could, given what has passed between
us these past few months, but I suppose it is the very fact that it _has_
passed that brings the temptation. Tempting though it might be, I'm not going
to be quite that open yet, I'm afraid. It should be clear to you (and to anyone
else I might but haven't elucidated the whole of everything to) that it's not a
lack of trust here, but an internal check; if I tell more than one person,
things take on the perspective of a problem, and I'm tempted to tell more to
more people until things start to snowball. For the moment, for everyone's
sake, I'll remain quiet, calm, and happy.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 9 09:21:12 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Hmm
That's startlingly lucid for the mood I remember myself being in last night,
especially considering the fact I'd imbibed quite considerably a little while
beforehand. (Although there was a coffee, a tea, and two walks from place to
place between drink and diary, which probably helped.)
Minor panic when I got into work this morning; the main Unix server had had to
be shut down (after 145 days' uptime) in the hope of freeing the DATs that its
tape stacker had decided to hold captive the previous night. It failed to mount
two of its filesystems, which was extremely worrying until I realised that they
no longer existed! Dough!
lsla2a:~$ uptime
09:22 up 42 mins, 2 users, load average: 0.20, 0.52, 0.58
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 9 14:15:39 1998]--
From: ()() Peaces of Eight (steph)
Subject: Eek
You say you're _allergic_? To _ginger_?
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 12 09:42:39 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Was
Asked to appear somewhere in town last night, I did, only to find that there
was nobody around. Finding a Jacob meant I had some company in ascertaining
that I'd be better off going back home.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 12 09:50:46 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Is
My mind is buzzing with lots of little projects I've got on the go. Getting
perl to compile on VMS, hacking a status character into the Linux terminal
code, doing some more work on my `friends' scripts, and getting my multiple
ethernet setup on tacitus to work. I'm not usually this busy with interesting
things, and I wonder why it's the case now. Displacement activity, I guess.
With that and the fact I can fill whatever other moments there are with
juggling, you'd think I'd be happy enough.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 13 02:12:31 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Words
Value balance pain redress abandonment joy analysis
Hope soul knife clouds warmth worth temptation
Fear reflection refraction difference anger truth distance
Closeness ambition madness memory sunlight corner fragments
Betrayal night destruction endings daylight window stairway
Return division creation discussion time God future
Present help diffraction newness offering levelling change
Words
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 13 02:14:39 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Yes, there's one missing.
It's deliberate, and nobody'd notice the switch anyway.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 13 09:20:34 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Is
I stayed up rather later than I'd intended last night, even though I left the
town centre at a reasonable time and wasn't too late getting back to GreenEnd.
Partly just catching up on the writings of another diarist, and partly trying
to create the experiment above. Worth it, and I got enough sleep to wake up in
time for work which is the main thing.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 14 00:42:11 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Purpose
I don't have any strong religious beliefs, and I'm certainly not an adherent of
any religion; I don't even have a very clear picture of the things I do
believe. Attempts to weave it into a coherent system have always failed because
it's always been someone else's system and therefore always alien to me. It
would be best to say perhaps that there is very little I actively disbelieve;
I'm prepared to accept that there might be something even in the most
implausible things such as astrology, even though I don't actively believe
them.
One of the things I feel more strongly about is a sense of place. Not place as
in physical location (though that's obviously part of it) but place as in
having been `placed' in situations, roles, for a reason. Destiny, if you will,
but that's misleading; Destiny in my mind can be changed, but only by an
extreme act of willpower and at a great cost. We fall into many of the actions
we take, and would always have fallen into them; our strength can only be
measured by the degree to which we see the positive or negative effects of
those actions, and our reactions to our actions' consequences.
Mostly the leap into the darkness to change direction is not worth trying.
Sometimes it is. It rather depends what you feel you have to lose.
That's no clearer for my having written it down than it's been in my head, or
than it was this morning when I attempted to explain it to someone. But it's
written now and I'm damned if I'm going to remove an edit this size just
because it's drivel.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 14 00:45:36 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Is
An evening spent playing a wonderfully fun space wargame with friends (and
geting completely trounced, but hey) is proof enough to me that I'm a happy
bunny.
Well, y'know, perfect balance and stuff, see?
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 15 01:19:44 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Is
Is that really the time? :-(. Silly Owen.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 15 15:46:16 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Is
Today's been busy but I've not really accomplished very much at all, in
long-term terms. It's quite annoying, but I'm not going to complain, since
there've been days recently where it's seemes like I've done nothing but type
stuff here...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 16 00:32:40 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Is
Thank the gods for that. I've had to live the past month on the hope that the
thing I'm trying to balance with the other could still hold enough weight, but
haven't known for sure. (This'd be X and Y, or two eggs to put it another
way.) I hope I can now breathe some sort of sigh of relief that it's all still
working. It's one of the levels of the perfect balance I'm trying to find. For
now anyway. It all changes in due course.
Memo to self: ask. There's only as much to lose in real life as there is
electronically, and you've already risked the latter.
Thinking about Venn, of diagram fame.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 16 00:35:30 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Was
Instead of just going home this evening, I went straight from work to Simon's
and thus managed not only to see some friends, juggle, and chat, but also to
listen to the Archers, before I made my way from there to the Grad Pad for
dinner.
Later followed CUSFS, where there was a goodly number of faces it was good to
see again. And thence, after a conversation with Mormegil about a good many
things, here to GreenEnd and to bed, for an earlier night than I'll've managed
for quite some time.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 16 16:49:15 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Now
I've finally got around to pruning this diary back a bit; it's a bit of a
shame, since I do like having the whole thing here to look at, but in a way
that's part of the reason I decided to snip it. I found myself looking back at
earlier entries when I was writing new ones, and consciously mimicing some of
my own styles. Much better, if I can, to be in the present.
Part One available from the file server mentioned earlier.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 17 22:03:16 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Is
Oh dear. It would appear that the network between anywhere and home (where
aforementioned file server, not to mention my mail and everything else) is tied
in an infinite loop somewhere in Xaraland. :-( Wonder when they'll fix it, and
for that matter whether I'll fall back on the telephone for the two or three
people I want to be in touch with tomorrow, at least some of whom don't have
any sort of mono access.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 17 22:05:17 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Was
A tableau.
The room in white, brighter than itself. The presence of earlier in absence.
I don't know why it triggered a moment of extreme sadness in me, or why I
recovered quite so quickly afterwards. But it did, and I did.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 18 22:03:19 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm glad today didn't continue the way it started, as the gloom I woke up
with, walked into town with, phoned a friend with (she had an exam, if you can
believe that), and then ended up at Simon's with wouldn't have been pleasant
company all day. It gradually lifted, though, and I spent the rest of the day
either juggling or (later) in Corpus decreasing entropy.
I also read most of Lanfear's diary for the past year over someone else's
shoulder. It was a very odd experience; I was always saying `ooh, _that_' and
suchlike. The explanation is probably that the events there felt like a large
part of my life, feeling as I did.
Later David and Wednesday came to collect me, and I arrived back here at
GreenEnd.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 18 22:07:48 1998]--
From: ()() Tomorrow is forever (steph)
Subject: May Be
I shouldn't trust my emotions when I'm feeling tired like this; dark
forebodings are hardly constructive when they're just that: a feeling that
_something_ will go wrong. (While I can think of a number of somethings that
could go wrong, I don't really want to explain them. I suppose that doesn't
help much either.)
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 18 22:54:25 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
A positive note to end the evening: I'm covered in keys!
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 19 09:26:54 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
I've pin-pointed the feeling that something is going to go wrong, but it's
nothing I can do anything about, so I shall do my best to ignore it.
Meanwhile, here's a diagram of how things should be:
A
/ \
/ \
/ \
B ----- C
/ \ \
/ \ \
/ \ \
D ----- E ----- F
/ \
/ \
/ \
G ----- H
I'll add some of the other levels to it when I get the time (and a less laggy
connection). For now, all you need to know is that the diagonal lines represent
subdivision, and that the horizontal ones are lines of theoretical perfect
balance. (See, told you it would be unhelpful :-) )
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 19 12:49:26 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Work
Yet again I manage to get something to work that I know nothing about, namely
Oracle. People ask me how I know these things and then look baffled when I
answer that I don't. I think what they fail to grasp is that after a certain
point, understanding computers is just a matter of monkeying around enough.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 19 15:21:07 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Ooh
I've just discovered that I can have access control lists for my fileservers.
Potentially very useful.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 19 15:47:47 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Right, that's it.
As of now, I'm swearing off caffeine. Don't ask.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 19 15:59:32 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: OK, so there should be some sort of explanation.
It's messing up my metabolism. I should at least cut down on the stuff.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 19 17:27:30 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
Today's gone ludicrously fast. Almost too fast, to be honest; it's 5:30 now and
I'm not really ready to be organised and have an evening yet. Time's odd, isn't
it?
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 19 21:16:35 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Being
I wonder why I want to understand. It'd be so easy to put it all down to a
mystery and leave it be, but I can't. It's just something I feel I want to do,
you know? And the fact that I can do no better than to leave it at that is
more, so much more telling than any explanation I might ever devise.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 20 01:39:56 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
It's cold outside, bitterly so. I should've gone to bed earlier, too.
Meanwhile, here's a puzzle. Who am I parodying here?
80
You'll need at least one in-joke, a metaphor that doesn't exist, and a working
brain. A pint to the first to message me with the answer, not that I expect
anyone to get it :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 20 09:20:44 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
Today's going well so far. A bit of dodgy network cable's been isolated and now
the networking on my 8086 is sort of working. Still a few glitches to do with
the bridge anbd virtual interface configuration to sort out, but that'll be
that.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 20 11:20:37 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Aaarrrgggghhh!
So much for coming off caffeine, then. Being depressed, tired, ratty, and
unable to do my job was, I've decided, not worth it. So that's my demonstration
of zero willpower for 1998 then.
I might've been able to manage if I were able to stay in bed all day, but in a
job one of whose primary goals is to interact with people and maybe even help
them, it just isn't feasible for me.
I will cut down though...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 20 17:05:51 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
Too much of today has been spent not working, and I don't like that.
Much of today has been spent in the glory of conversation, and I do like that.
You pays your money, you takes your choice.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 20 18:26:30 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Just to be different
I won't talk at all about diary revisionism.
Damn.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 21 00:09:58 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
I should probably remove from my armoury of phrases those things which baffle
rather than clarify, those things which always need explaining: those things
which always seem to convey entirely the wrong impression.
But as I've said there are three things that are always with me: the best
thing, the worst thing, and the words, and the quirky phrases are part of the
flow of words, part of the way I see things. To a degree they should be part of
the way I say things too.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 22 15:56:42 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
One of the machines thinks white is a shade of pale banana, another is so busy
it's almost unusable, the backup reruns are taking all afternoon, and in short
nothing is getting anywhere. Wanna go home :-(
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 23 00:54:24 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Between moments
The radio is tuned to that station, slightly hissy, and the clear voice (almost
familiar now) is speaking the numbers. Turn off the radio.
I'm standing in a field, a fieldmouse showing others the beauty of the stars
which only I know. Yet the stars have gone, and all there is in the sky is rows
upon rows of skulls, at one end recognisably human, at the other small prehuman
triangles, fading to pinpricks of ancestry.
Writing an obituary, here. Just to mark a passing, because it matters.
Walking in the light, the brightness, the only sound the chime of the shards of
glass hanging in the air around me. They do not cut. I am walking forwards.
Visiting, having been asked, and understanding. A room I picture entirely, on
the left of a hallway.
Hebrides, Bailey. An old man is sitting in an armchair, listening to the
Shipping Forecast. He will not see the next morning.
These are the between moments of my mind: the worst, the best, and the words.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 23 01:11:59 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Confessions and Revelations
I only needed the one last check, and that you knew exactly what I was talking
about when I said that I'd made a decision was enough to confirm in my mind
that I would tell you what I needed to tell. It might be true to say that I was
always going to, but until that moment there was always the possibility of
pulling back. In a way there still is now, but I don't think I'm going to take
that way out.
I said I wouldn't explain, but none of this has the complexion of a problem.
It is a very strange thing, and I wish I had something to compare it with, but
I don't, so I need someone else's perspective.
And I'm sorry that (different) you have been so distant for so long. All that
is left is this:
Subject: Stornoway, 24th November 1995
I
A late night lorry rumbles by.
The last I remember: a murmured sigh
And warm breath and a tense goodbye
In the morning.
II
The light has ousted the dark;
The laughs have wiped away the tears.
Something's shining.
I find it hard to see beyond
The dark cloud's
Silver lining.
III
The dawn of the twilight.
The twilight of the dawn.
Of the dawn, the twilight,
And
Of the twilight, the dawn.
IV
Consider the grammar [Sigma, F] once more.
Account for the Mongol victory at `Ayn Jalut.
Discuss the importance of morpheme theory.
Solve life
(With reference to anything you know)
V
Contradiction's not an argument,
And it won't go on forever.
Best to do
What you've long wanted to
And build a wall
That if at all
Will take forever
To bring down.
You needn't think
About feelings.
I'm made of stone;
Just chip me away
Chip-chink, chip-chink.
Whatever you say
(It isn't `Darling')
I'm yours to own.
VI
Wish on a falling star?
Not me.
Wish on a rising star?
Could be.
Head in the clouds;
That's me.
Pulse dial?
Probably.
Slow and old-fashioned,
Just like me.
VIIa
I promise
Never to tell.
(A late night lorry rumbles by)
It's a promise. Well...
(The last I remember: a murmured sigh)
...one was told, the other guessed.
(And warm breath and a tense goodbye)
That good enough for you?
(In the morning.)
VIIb
I promise
Never to tell.
(The light has ousted the dark;)
It's a promise. Well...
(The laughs have wiped away the tears.)
...some were told, and many guessed.
(Something's shining.)
That good enough for me?
(Something's shining.)
VIII
Bittersweetsweetandsourblackandwhite
whiteonblacktruthinliespresencethroughabsence
absencethroughpresence
Referentunclearambiguousconjunction
Plausibledenialfirstrefusal
Sinequanon
IX
I'm made of stone;
Just chip me away.
X
Away to the brightness
That lives and breathes.
Away in the lightness
That so rarely grieves.
Live in the bubble
That never will burst.
No pain. No trouble.
Just sometimes a thirst.
Away to the liveliness
That fizzes within.
Forever.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 23 01:16:15 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
Sorry 'bout that. It's just clearing out old baggage, you know? It's my diary
and I'll be strange if I want to :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 23 15:00:13 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
The people want their cables, so the trees must die. This would never have
mattered to me before, but now the sawdust may as well be blood.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 23 23:40:32 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm very much in the mood for writing a long diary entry here, but I find that
there's nothing to say. Somehow all the words that might belong here have been
said elsewhere, and so there's nothing to say.
Perhaps this diary should be more of a record of day-to-day occurrences, rather
than the document of my emotional and mental states that it is, but it's not
going to happen. For one thing, people seem to like the current style, but then
these are the same people who would call me a poet. And for another, that's in
part what my private diary is for, and blurring the boundaries between what's
written there and what's written here would be a Bad Thing. For now, anyway.
A few random things deserve mentioning anyway; I've written and sent a mail I
promised I would send (which proves to me that I can take this sort of decision
without backing out at the last), and spent the evening doing, well, not very
much at all really, but in a good mood and with friends.
That's what matters really. Oh, and I juggled quite considerably last night,
which just goes to prove what I decided would be true at the start of the
month: 1998 is the year of achieving the impossible, or if you're the pedantic
type, the year of redefining the impossible :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 24 17:51:49 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Will Be
It should be OK. I can keep telling myself that it will be, but I only really
know that it should be. Having to rely on someone else without their knowing it
is a hard thing. But it should be OK.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 25 00:58:11 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
Some parallels, of my making or the world's, I could live for. And the parallel
between this entry and another I made in Part One is no exception.
I'm waiting for a reply to a mail I sent, and I suspect the reason I haven't
had one yet is that the networking between home and the rest of the world is
once again in a highly mucled state. It's Xara's fault again, too. However,
I'm a little unnerved by not having some sort of reply now, and I'm slightly
un-at-home with the world as a result. Jitter, as another diarist has described
it.
I've said in conversations with various people that I'm no good at working out
what's going on, who's thinking what; always too wary of overinterpretation of
what I do see and yet just as likely at heart (which is the fundamental thing
so, perhaps too, often) to see things which aren't there. That's one of the
reasons I seek a few answers here and there, but answers can't be sought that
closse to the causes of the questions. Maybe some day soon there'll be someone
sufficiently close to the causes to ask the questions and get useful (though
probably not desirable) answers.
None of that makes any sense, does it? I'm tempted just to delete it all, but
stet. Always stet.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 25 12:30:37 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm content.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 25 13:37:28 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: [ESC][E] mimic [RET][H]
There is no history for this user
Somehow this appeals to me...
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 25 16:09:18 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Whee!
tacitus:~$ telnet torvax 9088
Trying 195.224.38.6...
Connected to torvax.greenend.org.uk.
Escape character is '^]'.
OpenVMS V6.2 on node TORVAX 25-JAN-1998 15:54:10.27 Uptime 14 15:17:32
*bounce*
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jan 25 16:34:09 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Eep
I'm not used to being wanted. Most odd. *Hugs* to ghoti from a slightly
surprised me.
It seems that the silly games that were vaguely planned for this afternoon
aren't going to happen much; the people who were going to come are only coming
later if at all, so it's been a bit of a no-op really. On the other hand, it's
been good just to sit around and tinker with things. I now have a Message of
the Day that's distributed between my Linux box and my VMS box, as well as
writing the little service that produced the uptime message above. All good fun
:-)
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jan 26 00:28:40 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
One person turned up, which with two and a half housemates as well made for a
fun afternoon. A game of Kersplatt! to start with (for anyone who doesn't know
it it's a food fight with cards), and then Monopoly with penalties for
mentioning personal names or the word pay; penalties, of course, doubled every
time. Ergo, people became bankrupt, so had to pay penalties by being forced to
say some word in every sentence they spoke instead. Cue lots of sentences about
extremely blancmange, fluffy Bailey's, and spanners...
You get the picture.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jan 27 16:58:18 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
Today's been utterly useless, in the way some days are. I'm getting some things
done, but by and large the things I'm doing are just paving the way for bigger
things slightly further down the line. It's all well and good, since the bigger
things are things that will make management happy without mortally wounding the
wallet of the Finance Director, but it's taking a lot of organising.
So, just to make me (and anyone else who has the same feeling I do, namely that
I'm not getting anything else done) happy, I'm compiling up a new version of
Samba. On a new swish machine on loan from DEC. Cripes it's fast.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 28 00:52:58 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: It was amf.
There is much that remains unseven == 80
If you have a twisted mind and a liking for icebergs at any rate.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 28 01:00:07 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Evening
There being nothing to do (and very likely no prospect of food and company at
home) between the end of work and the start of wargaming this evening, I found
myself going to Newnham for dinner with abi, ceb, obo, bjh, and fumble. (Erk.
All these three letter names...) I was glad of the company.
Failed to awake my dormant cryptic crossword gene, evidently, since I didn't
look at the clues and suddenly acquire the ability to do cryptic crosswords.
It's a pity; it was commented at the time that I'm the sort of person who ought
to be able to, and I agree.
I had to make my way back to Chesterton soon enough, though, so I said my
farewells and left. Unfortunately there was no game; the other player didn't
appear, so I sat around Midhurst Close with cavalr-2 playing nethack and GTA,
and a nifty little LucasArts Indiana Jones adventure about Atlantis.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 28 01:02:01 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
You weren't saying anything, because you didn't need to, did you? Some people
know me too well sometimes...
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 28 11:10:36 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Very quiet around here this morning. Most odd.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 28 12:41:57 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Grr
I most definitely have better things to be doing than debugging other people's
grotty bits of csh.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 28 17:59:27 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
Decision time, or it will be soon; do I or don't I go to Wake up Screaming?
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jan 28 19:13:51 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
I've said I will, but that decision's still not really made. Sorry about that.
This is one of those moods where I could stare at a wall (or a candle flame)
for hours trying to decide what to do rather than actually doing anything at
all. It's a flash of the state I found myself in almost perpetually a year or
two ago when I was depressed; perhaps also a transference of the degree of
indecision I have about important things onto the trivial things.
To use a metaphor I've played with on occasion, one of the lower emulations is
corrupting the data structures of the uppermost one.
That needs explaining.
Put flippantly, I'll say that I'm an emulation running on an emulation running
on an emulation of me. It's not an entirely accurate image, but it works for
some things. For one, it's gives a useful impression of how things filter up
and down in my mind, and for two, it's an interesting model of what I'm like
when things go pear-shaped. Various of the emulations can be said to have
`crashed'. If the top level crashes, that's fine; I'll be overly introspective
for a while and it'll come back in due course. It's more problematic if one of
the lower emulations crashes, because that brings down the levels above it in a
more damaging fashion. The lowest level emulation, which I picture as handling
the bestthingsworstthingsandwords (the rationalised layer above the raw
emotion, perhaps) has gone seriously wrong twice and crashed once.
Why `emulation'? Because all these levels (and I don't actually think in this
very sketchy and often inaccurate model - it's just an idea I toy with) are
trying to be me, preferably the best value of me that can be managed.
And partly it's just a pretty set of words.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 29 00:07:53 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm back at home, having left the Q Club early. I ought to have trusted my
earlier suspicions that I wouldn't have a wonderful time, but I thought I could
lift myself a bit by being there. It worked for a while, too. Later, I just
lost perspective rather and found my mind wandering to random distant things on
horizon; leaving seemed the better option at that point.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 29 00:24:50 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Is
Are we spiritually linked, you ask? Not as far as I know. But... Wow. I think
that's a compliment of sorts :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 29 15:44:05 1998]--
From: ()() You were strangely aligned. (steph)
Subject: Hm
It may be as well to point out that the `you' in the entry above is not one of
the `we'.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 29 15:57:31 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: *Hugs*
...to people who care about other people. It is the simplest thing, yet it can
be forgotten through time, distance, or things which seem more pressing. It
should not be, because it matters.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 29 16:39:11 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Will be
Right, we'll try last night again. (Unless CUSFSites are hugely persuasive at
me beforehand, anyway.) See if it works _this_ time.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 29 20:32:20 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
Balance is what you make it. Perspective is what you make it.
So when I leave here in ten, fifteen minutes, I'll be doing something _I_ want
to do, because it's what I want to do, and I'll be looking at it as that,
rather than some move in some bizarre game.
Hell, who am I letting down?
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jan 29 20:32:38 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Hm. Lingering taste of fudge, there.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 30 01:55:51 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
Better. Much.
After dithering all day as to whether to go or not, I finally went to the Q
Club for the Calling, and I'm glad I did. While it was much less full than it
was yesterday, the music was generally better, and most importantly I was able
to be and stay in the right frame of mind to enjoy it.
Once I'd managed to persuade myself that I wasn't letting CUSFS down in some
way by going to the Calling rather than the social meet in New Hall bar, I was
fine; that's the balance thing again to a degree, I suppose. It was fun,
anyway.
Someone asked me, why do you dance at these things? It's a good question;
three, four years ago I'd have put dancing down as something not to do, an
unforgivable loss of self-respect and control. Now I do it partially because
it's silly, because it's uncontrolled; because what other people think of my
dancing is one thing I can not give a damn about :-)
If it weren't for the fact that I'd promised this diary would never quote
lyrics, I'd quote a favourite one that I was reminded of earlier this evening.
Instead, it's in my infotext. Get it while it's still there.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 30 02:02:56 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Will be
Checklist for tomorrow evening / Saturday morning:
* invocation to bring the sun up
* shape of the new sun
* mead
* meadhorns
* food for Wake
* food for Afmaelisdagr breakfast
* videos for Wake
* time new sun is due to be created
Quite important, that last one.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 30 14:15:37 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Oo
I love the way diary entries inspire other diary entries around here.
Especially when I started it. :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 30 14:16:25 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
I now have half the items on the checklist above sorted. It's a start.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jan 30 18:08:37 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Three quarters, now. It's a middle.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 31 03:27:02 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
Where's the difference? What says thing T now that did not say thing T
yesterday, or the day before?
Gods I'm... Happy, I guess.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 31 09:35:19 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: The Wake and Afmaelisdagr
A most unusual Wake, but a successful one, and a slightly early Afmaelisdagr,
but a successful one (as those who have observed the continued presence of
daylight would have to agree).
I brought the sun up. It's a good sun, in the shape of a Belisha beacon. I
won't get the chance to do that again this life :-)
For reference, here's the English translation of the Arabic invocation with
which I called the sun:
`By my power and the power of the Reeves before me,
By my knowledge and the knowledge of wise men before me,
I call on the sun and the morning light,
For the coming year,
And for all time.'
Subject: Overload
The word that's buzzing around in my mind sufficiently that I'm typing this
before I give in to sleep for most of the day is overload, on every scale worth
mentioning. Tiredness, the sensation of physical illness I always seem to get
after these things, and [stuff] are all pushing the needles to the far right of
the scale. Tired and emotional.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 31 15:06:17 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Oh, and a quote:
`I've not been quite so comprehensively jumped in a very long time.'
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jan 31 16:49:55 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Now
Moments to kill, but just a few; I've tried doing two of the useful things I'd
planned on doing, namely phoning my parents and putting my wet clothes in the
tumble dryer, but my parents are on a skiing holiday and the tumble dryer is
busy drying Austin's clothes. Hey ho. I'll go and listen to Joy Division for
twenty minutes or so before I trundle into town to meet people.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 1 11:15:09 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
A phone call wakes a very dosey me up, and my mind has just started to kick in,
as has a degree of worry at the caller's tone.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 1 15:52:16 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Was
It wasn't anything much, in fact. They're now blowing things up behind me, if
that's any guide to the shape of the world ;-)
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 1 17:56:01 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Namelines
A record of the namelines used in Part One, complete with some explanations, is
now available by mailing diary@torvax.greenend.org.uk with the body text GET
NAMELINES.
Putting it together was a fun little exercise.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 2 02:05:40 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
It's not quite fair to say I was woken by the phone call. I was woken by the
knock at the door, saying that there was a phone call, and it wasn't much
effort to pick up the phone at the head of my bed once I'd walked to the door
to see who'd been knocking.
I walked to Midhurst Close, listened to a strange piece of market research
(about booze) being conducted on cavalr-2, drank some tea, and then returned
here to sort out my washing. I don't remember doing very much in the afternoon.
The one thing I do remember is going through Part One providing little bits of
information about the namelines used in there, which was fun.
Trying to awaken a (presumably) slumbering cavalr-2 on my way into town failed,
and there was no fumble to be seen when I arrived at Whewell's Court gate,
so the party watching `Scream' was just ceb and myself. A fun film, which I
think I've mentioned before in this diary. Thence to Corpus for a little while,
for biscuits and hackery songs.
And so to bed.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 2 12:53:06 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
This job has its scary moments. Moments that arise from the fact that as root
on a largish collection of Unix systems, I have the ability completely to wreck
the work of our developers. So I check and double-check and check again very
carefully before I type:
# restore -ivZF /usr/users/owend/djasplatter -f /dev/rmt0h
And then sit here and hope that'll do the Right Thing. The manual says it will,
and I'm sure it will, but there's that little scope for error that makes it
dangerous and ever so slightly nervewracking.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 2 19:23:18 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
This isn't the first time I've done this on a Monday, arriving home
sufficiently late from work that I can't be bothered walking in for pizza. It's
just a little odd, feels a bit strange. Means I've managed to get a few bits of
mail answered, though, which is nice.
Maybe I should go into town when I've answered this last one (the one that
actually matters, which I've been leaving because I wasn't sure how to answer
it), and see if I can find some food and people...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 2 23:31:43 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
I finished listening to The Archers, one of my few vices (honest), and plodded
into town. About three-quarters of the way there I realised that I'd left my
dressing gown in the tumble drier. This would be fine with most tumble driers,
but GreenEnd's tumble drier is a strange beast whose door is half falling off,
who makes strange rattling and roaring noises, and most importantly whose timer
doesn't work.
Fried dressing gown (or exploded tumble drier) didn't sound like fun, so I
found the nearest phone box and asked one of my housemates to put the poor
thing out of its misery by turning it off.
After a brief sojourn at Simon's, I was persuaded to go to the KSR with Gareth
and Karen, but didn't really feel like it. I'm glad I came back here fairly
soonish, to be honest.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 2 23:52:04 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
Definitely.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 3 00:10:54 1998]--
From: ()() Weirded but Inspired (steph)
Subject: Is
Indecision says it all, really, for today's basic drive. I've had a hard time
of making basic decisions this afternoon and evening because the more basic
decisions as to what I actually want have been very unclear and fuzzy as well.
It'll pass. It usually does.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 3 17:22:30 1998]--
From: ()() These words in shadow-play (steph)
Subject: Thoughts
Told there is a flock of birds circling in the air above this building, I reply
that it's a shame that I can't see them. The answer from Quirka comes back:
> Never mind. You know they're there now, and that should be enough.
> Well, better than nothing.
But how true is that? Is it better to know that there are birds circling above
and be saddened at not seeing them, or not to know that they are there at all?
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 3 20:48:17 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: Is
A quarter to nine, and I'm hoping that I haven't yet again left one gathering
of people for an evening of wargaming that isn't in fact going to happen. I
suppose we shall just have to wait and see, though possibly no longer than
another three quarters of an hour or so.
*bounce* Plans are taking shape for a silly children's party, even if it will
take a little while for the fundamental particles of organisation to reach
critical mass and turn into real events. There'll be _jelly_, and _ice_cream_,
and sausages on sticks and things. And games and stuff :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 3 23:43:46 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: Was and Will Be
Babylon 5 Wars happened, although somewhat lethargically. I'm feeling
completely shattered again, and it's not even as if I've been particularly
lacking in sleep these past few nights.
DEC are sending an engineer in at 8am tomorrow morning to declare our SCSI bus
dead and install a new one, so I have to be in work early. *yawns*
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 4 08:17:16 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: 8am and all's well
Dear Subconscious,
I know I may have been a bit hard on you at various points in the past few
years, but I love you. You're amazing. That you can remember to wake me up at
7am instead of the usual 8am when I'd forgotten that I needed to is a great
wonder to me.
Yours ever,
Owen
xxx
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 4 11:11:29 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: Deja Vu
The DEC engineer didn't arrive on time. Nor did the new SCSI controller.
So it's an 8am start tomorrow morning as well. Regular readers may recall this
happening before at some point in the not too distant past...
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 4 12:28:34 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: *frustration*
_Something_ is wrong with my desktop machine's configuration. By desktop
machine, I mean the machine on my desktop, rather than the machine to which the
monitor on top of my desktop machine is attached, which may best be referred to
as a deskside machine, and which I know full well to be broken. (The machine to
my right, a Sparc Classic X, isn't even turned on, so is neither being useful
nor broken. That's a lie, actually. It's making a nice stand for my VT320's
monitor.)
Anyway, yes, something's wrong with it, NFS-wise as far as I can tell, and it's
driving me nanabas with all the times it keeps saying it can't create
such-and-such a file. What's more annoying is that there's another (supposedly
identical) machine around which does work, and I can't find the difference
between the two.
*Grr*
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 4 15:42:31 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: *frustration*
_Something_ is wrong with my life. Not my work life, which seems to work just
fine, even if it does have a few flaws, and not really my social life, which
works very well indeed, considering. No, just life in general.
Anyway, something's wrong with it, in terms of my reactions to things I see and
feel, and I've compared it to other periods of time where this sort of thing
has worked a little better, and I can't see any difference. Argh.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 4 21:40:54 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: Is, later
Better now. I suspect it was primarily tiredness, in actual fact.
Subject: Countdowns
I've only done one countdown, and that was in my head running up to the end of
1997. There's a countup away from the past, away from half-way through 1997
(August 11th, if I remember rightly) that serves as an alternative dating
system for this diary when I'm in the right sort of reflective mood, but that's
not really counting away from anything, it's more there to create a certain
kind of feeling.
Or to express deep-seated beliefs about Carol Vorderman.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 5 11:05:47 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: Mornings
I could almost get to like coming in at 8am. There's a strange feeling of peace
as the building hasn't properly woken up by that point, and there's time to do
some of the smaller, less important jobs, before people are in and about,
asking questions.
I like mornings, dawns. I still have abiding memories of mornings in the Summer
of my first year when I walked back to my room after an all-nighter playing
DooM and xpilot, and of course there's been the Afmaelisdagr every year for the
past five: seeing the sun come up among friends. One of my more inspired taped
music collections consists of tracks all about dawn, including the first part
of `Shine on You Crazy Diamond' by Pink Floyd. That has always sounded to me
like a city waking up.
Which reminds me of the poem it inspired me to write some time ago. Before
anyone says it, I know I'm a dreadful poet, but the song of words deserves to
be acknowledged from time to time.
Dawnlight in Crystal
--------- -- -------
Dawn, and the world awakes
To a city in shades of grey.
Light, flowing onto its peaks,
Makes shadows, but takes the night away.
Breakfast, and the city
Is alive, its veins throbbing
With lifeblood, cars flitting
In the halflight. Day is beginning.
Brash notes, and dawn's town
Dies its death. The veins clogged
With deathbreed, closing down
For the day.
(The crystal shatters;
Leaves lives in tatters.
What shards remain
We cherish in vain.)
We have lost the world in the city.
And the city sleeps as if dead.
The dream ended with the night,
And the nightmare began.
(We cherish in vain,
What shards remain,
Leave lives in tatters,
When the crystal shatters.)
(c)1995 Owen S. Dunn
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 6 00:43:59 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: `Close your eyes and think of angels while I count to seven.'
I've just heard that on the radio, at the precise moment of finishing reading
amf's diary entry for today.
But that's not the only strange coincidence today has offered up.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 6 00:59:47 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: Is
We are all mirrors. When we walk these long paths through these lonely places,
we all reflect the small sparkles of hope that shine around us, and that is a
joy. But when we look into another mirror, and see a sparkle, is it hope that
we see, or its reflection? It is too easy to walk on, to decide that what we
are seeing is not what we really see... But easy doesn't cut it any more.
Perhaps, for some, easy never did. Indeed, perhaps, for some, easy never was.
I did not need to know what I learned tonight, but it matters because it means
I know you understand, and because you know I do. Sometimes, as you say, there
is a lot of reflection. As I would say, we are all mirrors.
Hanging somewhere between the end of yesterday and the moments near the end of
this evening is a large part of the truth:
Between the Darkness and the Light. Something's Shining.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 6 12:23:40 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: Midnight Bars
I miss midnight bars. What with crimson being a little on the dead side, the
cron job which puts little white bars in diary logs at around midnight is no
longer running, so there is nothing to mark the passage of days in diaryland.
It's a small thing, but a small thing which I miss.
Here's hoping for the swift return of midnight bars.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 6 16:49:40 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: Hello, old friend...
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Feb 7 02:18:36 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: Is
It was evening, and there was spong.
It was later, and there was exploration, discovery, and assembly: simple
pleasures.
It is night, and the midnight bars have returned.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 8 01:25:19 1998]--
From: ()() It's dark above you now. (steph)
Subject: Was
It has been a good day, and a whole day.
Having hauled myself out of bed, I made my way to Corpus, collected a ceb, and
then embarked on the Big Shopping Expedition (Mark One). Except we didn't yet,
since we needed money and coffee which the bank and Sam Smiley were able to
provide in sufficiency. (Actually, the cash machine was remarkably reluctant to
part with any coffee, and Sam Smiley's only gave us a negative amount of
money.)
And then there was shopping, complete with playing with lots of silly things,
and eating Creme Eggs and Parma Violets. Oh, and the stuff we bought.
> inventory
You are carrying:
a bottle of ginger cordial
a box of crystallised ginger
two mint cakes
three Playmobil men
two Babylon Five CDs
a tube of toothpaste
a cunning bracelet-making kit
a bar of cherry Lindt
Goodness. There's a lot of food in there, isn't there? Still, there's the
glorious (pink, wonderful-tasting, metal-tubed, amazingly labelled) Euthymol
toothpaste so my teeth won't rot.
Why the Playmobil men, you may ask? Well, there's a cunning plan there. More to
follow :-).
I almost bought a wonderful wolfy sweatshirt, but dithered about it, put it
down, and then someone else bought it while I stood there dithering :-(. Still,
such is life. The two B5 CDs had to happen as soon as I saw them because I'm a
sad little addict.
And then we returned to Owlstone, eating Lindt on the way, while the sun shone
down, the river flowed by, and the geese looked perplexed. It then became clear
that I really ought to have been more of a little girl, as my plaiting skills
are somewhat non-existent. However, with the aid of quantum physics and two
pairs of hands, a glorious black, green, blue, and purple bracelet was woven
for me :-).
After the traditional Gardies, there was a Gathering in Quirka's room, complete
with unexpected Amf. Ginger was consumed, discussions were held, people were
hugged.
And even that's all a poor description of the day. My mind can still taste
Parma Violets.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 8 01:27:37 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Hmm
My mother's been trying to get in touch with me, apparently with some
persistence. I do hope nothing's wrong.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 8 01:37:00 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: A conversation portrayed
S m f th m n r d t ls r m ss ng fr m wh t y 'r s y ng.
There are some I can't use, because of where we are.
u a e a a o o u a io , I ea ...
Nevertheless, it makes things hard, unless I st rt pl y ng by y r r l s.
And I start by yours?
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 8 12:26:38 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Telephones
Ah, good. It was just a random phone call to see how I was, and nothing
serious or worrying after all.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 8 17:43:29 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Two above
I really should write down somewhere else what's missing from the diary entry
two above, because in a week or so's time I won't be able to make head or tail
of it. The meaning'll be there, but not the actual words...
Curious to note how much harder the consonantally-challenged entry is to
understand.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 8 23:46:27 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: The River in the Forest
Softly flowing down,
In waves and currents, untamed;
Watch the river's course.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 8 23:54:09 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: The Stone in the Pool
A child, making waves
Moving on the calm surface;
The stone deflects them.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 9 00:05:15 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Louise
Seeing your words, how tempting it would be to answer truthfully the questions
you ask. How perfectly typical of me it would be to bounce ([stuff]) off you; I
know you'd listen, and I know you'd understand, but it wouldn't achieve
anything.
The thing that may achieve something is something I'll get around to Real Soon
Now. Honest. :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 9 00:07:15 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Yes
The bracketing above is an intentional innovation.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 9 00:07:30 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: *bounce*
Ginger cordial is _good_.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 9 11:23:05 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm waiting for INN to compile. This may take a while. Meanwhile...
A moment or two ago, I realised I wanted to send a mail to someone. I could
have just leapt into my emacs window and sent it, but I decided it'd be best
sent from one of my non-work accounts, so I fired up an emacs somewhere else.
A (proberbially Porlockian) user came in, said something, and left. Now I can't
remember who I was going to mail, or what I was going to mail them about, and
it's _soo_ frustrating.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 9 15:48:17 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Inklings
It's a good word, that. Inklings. I wonder how one inkles, and whether inklings
are the inklers or inkled things. What does it mean to be inkled anyway?
Anyway, inklings. Definite inklings.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 9 17:24:23 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
Although there's stil plenty of chance for me to change my mind, I don't think
in fact that I'll be going to Wake up Screaming this evening. With one thing
and another, I'm tired, and a quietish evening is going to be far preferable to
a loud energetic late one.
I'm open to quietish non-energetic offers, of course.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 10 00:47:17 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
I think I'm glad I didn't go to Wake Up Screaming; I'm in the sort of mood
where I might very easily have sat in a corner for most of the evening drinking
occasionally, staring into space, and watching people.
I didn't do much of note instead, but what I did do (fiddle with ssh
configuration, read news, and find yet more bits of Monochrome that I've not
yet seen, as well as natter about automounters) was suitably unenergetic.
Perhaps I take the easy course a little too often, though.
Hm. Sailing By. Time for bed, then.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 10 11:33:42 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Yes! Yesyesyesyesyes!
You can now appear in your own diary logs :-). *bounces*
Admittedly you have to rely on the random diary selector selecting your diary
out of the 420 or so others, but hey. (Interestingly, so far it's turned up
fragment's diary and mine...)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 10 15:48:22 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Hmm
I find it faintly amusing that I should find out third-hand about a party being
held in the house I live in...
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 11 00:31:59 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
Today has been good, and today has been good. For most of the day, I've had the
sort of enthusiasm for anything and everything that I dimly remember from the
past; tunes have been ringing around my head, along with words and ideas, and
my desk looked like a bomb had hit it as I took computers apart and rearranged
bits of hardware.
Acquiring a gloriously silly not-very-portable portable computer was one of the
highlights of the day...
...and then a _good_ evening complete with table football (whose abbreviation I
can't spell), juggling, and nargery.
I won't mention the day's only glitch here, except to say that it wasn't a
problem.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 11 00:35:50 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Was
I remembered. I'm not sure why that's important. Perhaps it's pride in having
helped to create something, perhaps it's because it's something that's clearly
me... I don't know, but I'm glad I remembered, anyway.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 11 00:41:42 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Careff
(This entry precedes the first entry in this diary referring to Careff. I've
inserted it here more or less on a whim, and partly as an incentive to push the
story a bit further than the beginnings recorded here and the fragments of
continuation already seen in this diary.)
The storm continued. The sky was inky black, and the dim lights of the
monastery above disappeared behind the cliffs as the rider turned
towards the shore. He dismounted, tied the horse to a ring set in the
rock, and pulled his hood closer around him. The sea spray stung his
face nevertheless, and the horse whinnied nervously.
'Quiet, Laken,' he murmured. 'Not long now.' As if in reply to his
unsaid prayer that they would arrive soon, a light flashed, some way
out to sea. 'Well thank God for that.'
He fumbled around with his lantern for a moment, and finally managed
to light it. Opening and closing the cover, he signalled 'welcome' to
guide the ship safely into the small harbour, the only one on the
island. Yet another part of his penance, this self-imposed confinement
so convenient that it had the full blessing of the Church. He still
remembered the first time he had come to greet the ship, and the extra
cargo that it bore - the body of his dead queen.
'Careff!' He looked up again at the sound of his name, startled that
someone on the ship should know him. He raised his hand in
acknowledgement, trying to remember the voice as he searched the faces
on the ship, and then the approaching boat for one he recognised.
'Dorann? Is that you?' A gust of wind took the answer away, but when
the boat came to rest against the shore and he helped tie it fast,
there was something wrong. 'Dorann?' he murmured to himself.
The man in the boat looked up and even under the hood of his thick
cloak, Careff could see the familiar lopsided smile. The hood was
thrown back.
'Close...' He shrugged. 'My father couldn't make it. I came instead.'
'Patrik? God, you look just like your father.'
The young man frowned. 'That was almost ten years ago, Careff. He's
changed since you last saw him.' He waved to the ship and started
unloading the sacks and crates from the mainland to the island
monastery. Slowly, further out to sea, the ship began to turn away.
Careff started to speak, but Patrik cut him off. 'Yes, it's unusual,
but I've got the Church's permission. I'll be staying here for a day
or two, and then we'll be leaving.' Seeing Careff's face, he turned
and walked towards the horse. 'I'll explain, but it's definite, my
Lord. We're going back.'
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 11 12:48:04 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Mass hallucination
At least two spods witnessed an amf, but it wasn't there when we tried to send
messages to it. Too much beetroot, that'll be it.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 11 16:36:52 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!
The mail system's running on half its pistons, the Sun I'm trying to upgrade
won't hear of it, I've got ten thousand jobs on my whiteboard, and my emacs is
beeping about not being able to autosave because some pillock has filled up the
user disk.
*beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep*
Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 11 23:19:37 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
Lecterns. And coffee tables. Someone was in that kind of mood, evidently.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 12 01:06:02 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
As one of my housemates has commented, I don't actually spend much time here at
home these days. My life seems to move from bed to work to town to bed, often
with little interaction with the other inhabitants of the house. I don't have
any problem with this; I could do with giving myself the odd night in, but
beyond that I'm doing what makes me happy, and as long as I pay my way in terms
of rent, food money, and being tidy, there's no reason for others to object
either.
I still feel comfortable here. There's a gentle ticking that I can faintly hear
off to my left as I type this, which is something more rooms should have; I
should give my friends ticky clocks, so that I can feel more comfortable in
other places. I'd still not be surrounded by such a wealth of stuff, though,
the important thing being that it's my stuff. Other people's stuff is wonderful
too, of course, but one's own stuff is special.
I like my room. Perhaps the three toy traffic cones and dead PSU that sit on
the turntable of my stereo explain this...
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 12 01:07:16 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
Where am I? Good question, but one I'll need to get back to. Now is the time
for sleep...
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 12 09:46:28 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Someone's filled up the user disk again
And my emacs is beeping again. Fortunately:
lsla1a:~$ xset b off
...will be my friend while I run my autolart scripts to fix the problem :)
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 12 18:01:50 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Will Be
Tomorrow is Friday 13th, which is notable even in the eyes of those who don't
believe it's unlucky for the simple reason that there are lots of people who
_do_ believe this. In my usual fashion, I shall remain happy to be convinced
that it is an unlucky day even though I don't see anything of significant
magnitude that can go wrong.
Just in case, though, I'll be taking full backups this evening.
The day after tomorrow is the 14th February, St. Valentine's Day. I don't
really know what I think about St. Valentine's Day; it's never been of any
significance to me in the past, and may or may not be in the future, but on my
softest squishiest emotional level I like St. Valentine's Day. On more rational
levels I don't like the rampant commercialism, but I know that I'm an emotional
being much more than I'm a rational one and I know that I prefer things that
way.
It's still possible that some day St. Valentine's Day will fail to see me
breaking a New Year's Resolution. It's entirely possible it'll see a card, if
you can believe that - I never used to - but whatever the case it's something
that there's a place for in my world, if only because my world is an emotional,
soft, and squishy place :-).
Just in case, though, I'll be checking the post on Saturday.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 13 02:16:33 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
Today was much better than yesterday. I had as much (if not more) work to do,
and as many (if not more) problems with doing some of it, but I was calmer
about things and less stressed, with the result that I left at 5:30 in a
cheerful mood to see a beautiful red sky against which the birds circled.
The evening saw a few moments spent in the computer room downstairs, doing
little but spod, followed by food and a brief amount of CUSFS. Thence back here
to watch Bubblegum Crisis until 2am. It may not be wonderful for me on the
level at which I need to get sleep, but it's excellent on any other. There's
one sequence (during which `Hurricane' plays - this will mean absolutely
nothing to most of you) I could rave about but I wouldn't be able to do it
justice.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 13 02:22:16 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Was
*click-cla* *click-cla*... *click-cla* *click-cla*... *click-cla* *click-cla*
Go on, pick up the phone.
*silence*
Good. It's a strange feeling to be here and listen (*click-cla* *click-cla*) to
the phones ringing, imagining conversations, listening to the long rings
(*click-cla* *click-cla*) that never get answered, the short rings where
perhaps the caller decided not to bother after all, was perhaps too afraid to
make the call, or maybe simply dialled the wrong number.
*click-cla* *click-cla*...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 13 12:40:33 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
A current rate of approximately one supposedly startling (but in fact not so,
to me at least) revelation per week. Hm. I wonder who's next ;-)
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 13 17:20:14 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Thoughts
Where am I? It's a question which needs asking, and preferably answering as
well. I'm obviously not speaking in terms of physical location, because that's
clear: I'm sitting in my office at the end of a busy Friday, being glad that
there's nothing else clamouring for my attention. What I mean is `Where am I?'
in terms of life paths, plot threads.
I don't know the answer. In a way, the answer _is_ that I don't know the
answer.
I'm remembering the joy of parts of last year, tinged with sorrow and regret as
it became, and wondering what I've done to deserve this as yet untainted glory
season.
Realising as I write this diary entry that there's still a lot of odd thinking
going on; we don't `deserve' happiness. We create it.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 13 18:05:06 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
It is now too late to avoid breaking my New Year's Resolution.
*grins*
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Feb 14 02:07:38 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is of Was
This is going to be harder than I thought. Explaining the stranger mental
traumings of late 1994 to someone who has no context is bound to be, but I
shall try anyway on the basis that I said I would and it's an interesting
exercise.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Feb 14 14:22:34 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: No mail for osd1000
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Feb 14 14:42:23 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
Safe. That's what I feel sometimes, when...
Strong. That's what I feel sometimes, when...
Vulnerable and weak. That's what I feel sometimes. Wishing for tab completion
on my thoughts in other people's brains.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 15 00:13:11 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
I left Christ's this evening after `Heathers', deciding that sleep would be a
good thing and that I didn't fancy Alden's Japanese gangster film. It was only
just past the bus station that I realised that this might not be such a
wonderful plan, as it would mean I'd be back at GreenEnd early while the `St.
Valentine's Day Massacre' party was still in progress.
This was touted as a party strictly for those with nothing better to do this
evening, in other words the unattached. While I may be single, though, I do
have better things to do. Sleep is one that immediately comes to mind, though
almost anything is preferable to the implied moaning about one's state that
such a party carries. I'm happy, dammit.
Anyway, I dithered for a minute or two about what to do, and eventually carried
on walking towards Chesterton. Once here, I was surprised by how quiet the
house seemed - I had expected the loud noises of people being drunk at each
other - and was able to slip upstairs to my room here with no difficulty. I
shouldn't have any problem getting to sleep either.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 15 00:19:09 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is, with reference to the entry two above and another elsewhere
I'm safe. I'm strong. I'm special.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 15 11:40:00 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject:
FEELING BOUNCY STOP FOUND BEDROOM FLOOR STOP ATTEMPTING HOOVERING STOP OUT
LATER STOP STOP BEING UNTIDY STOP PULL OUT STOPS STOP NO MORE STOP GO ECONOMICS
STOP
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 15 16:24:00 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Will Be
It was the year... everything changed.
The interaction of time and life is a strange thing indeed. Most events could
not be said directly to change the shape of a year, or the shape of lives.
Some can, and have to, because that is the way things are, have always been,
and always will be. Quite literally, that's life.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 15 17:10:05 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Hmm
( )
()()
[]
<+-AMF-+>
Er, yes.
Hmm.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 15 21:41:44 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Wisdom
With a great deal of help from fumble and his PCW, I've managed to extract some
of my writings from a long time ago. While they're still in LocoScript format,
a bit of seddery has rendered them readable, and it's surprising to me how much
I'd written then which makes some sort of sense now.
Expect a few of the random wibblings to make their way in here, among which the
following:
X
Perceive the truth kindly through your own eyes and others will perceive that
same truth as you do.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 15 23:18:56 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
I read my horoscope this morning, which isn't unusual for a Sunday. What's
unusual is that it didn't say `wait a bit and things will get better'. What's
more unusual is that with reference to some bits of [stuff], the horoscope
actually made sense.
I don't believe it for a minute, but as always I await being proved wrong. I
wish the same could be said for a prediction I made towards the end of last
year; I said that something would happen to completely change the shape of
things before the end of the year. It was pointed out to me this afternoon that
it did happen, but that it hadn't become clear until now.
If anyone hears me making a prediction, tell me to stop it. It's entirely an
uncomfortable feeling that I could do without.
These are part two days, glory days. Predictions and mutterings are interlude
things.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 16 09:18:04 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Bletch
>From this morning's crop of newgroup messages:
--
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Subject: newgroup alt.i.love.abbie.cummings y an_insomniac@geocities.com
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 1998 17:13:29 GMT
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The original article was:
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pex.net!pipex!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!woodstock.news.dem
on.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!gapint.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail
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Happy valentines day Abbie, I will always love you
--
Bletch.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 16 10:48:19 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
The chocolate machine here could _really_ do with being chilled. The Caramel
bar I just bought was marred by the fact that it was slightly warm and slightly
squishy.
On another note, it was _sooo_ tempting earlier this morning to go into the
office of one of the Directors and comb his hair into two points. I had a comb
with me, as well, but decided I didn't actually want to be fired and went to
take some machines apart instead :)
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 16 12:53:59 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
Damn. Damn damn damn. I don't want to have this suspicion, I really don't.
I'm too nosy for my own good, that's my problem.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 16 13:28:45 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
Sorry for the wibble above; I was just somewhat surprised.
A little bit of digging has revealed a couple of identities from the most
recent account creation batch :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 16 18:34:34 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Ugh
My stomach is complaining. I do not feel well.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 16 21:50:54 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
Sometimes the beauty of symbology is the sheer beauty of the symbols
themselves. Names are just another kind of symbol, but there's something about
a name, even account names and pseudonyms here, that is different. Names have a
strange sort of power.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 16 23:11:40 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: As angel wide as the sun
That takes me back a bit. Good to see, though. Definitely.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 17 00:52:08 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: [Stuff]
This entry's going to be rather raw. You have been warned.
I said several entries above that I was feeling safe, strong, and special. At
the moment I don't feel any of them; I feel weak and vulnerable, and as the
candle flickers to my left and the radio burbles behind me, you're not here.
You can't be at the moment, of course... Maybe you never could be. Until things
like this diary entry become a lot clearer so everyone knows where and who
everyone is, nobody can be anywhere or do anything. Stagnation.
It sounds depressed, and I can just blame that on tiredness, perhaps, or
the stomach-ache that's plagued most of this afternoon and evening, because
along with all the rest of it I'm happy. Happier perhaps than I've been on a
constant level for perhaps six, maybe nine months.
Changing things, making things clear, takes away the stagnation but things
probably break. But then, things probably break left alone and stagnant, too;
that took the best part of 1997 to find out.
What do I do? Can you tell me? Would you, even supposing you knew who you were?
Would you perhaps see these glory days as well and not want to break them?
Things need to be clearer. I said to one of you, my readers, that I might
explain things. For a closer perspective on the situation, I think the time may
be right for that. While there are two people I've already spoken to about
this, they're distant (one physically, one... socially), and I do need a closer
perspective.
I'm happy. These are my glory days. But sometimes I need to take more than I
can give, and risk breaking everything. Certainty, knowledge, stability... I
suppose that's another way of feeling safe and strong, but from here, with the
candle and the radio, they're not as tempting as hope.
Maybe that's the problem.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 17 01:05:57 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is
And my stomach's _still_ feeling as if someone's stuffed it full of
ball-bearings.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 17 11:19:37 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is / Will Be
Things have been set in motion. *smiles* The world is full of surprises. We'll
see if this is one of them.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 17 13:43:00 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Is / Will Be
/* You are not expected to understand this */
Four questions: what, when, how, and how many.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 17 15:55:18 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Users of steph's desktop:
an ldap-3.3 compilation
a message about our internal web
a web page about patches
reruns of a backup script (*yawn*)
a list of connections fo DECservers
an xconsole saying that /usr is full
an xclock, an xload, xbiff, and an xterm telling me who my friends are.
Monochrome
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 17 17:20:00 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Day One Hundred and Ninety
It's been a gloriously sunny day, but I've been in here, staring five inches
into the screen of my monitor on the brink of seeing psychedelic colour flashes
chase across my eyes as they did over the weekend. It's been pretty hard to
concentrate on very much as a result. Still, walking around the Science Park at
lunchtime was pleasant. With the small degree of woodedness and the lakeside
(or pondside, since I suppose it's more of a pond than a lake) that the area
around the Trinity Centre offers, there's something of an escape from the
feeling of being at work. It's a shame in a way that the walk was driven by the
need for privacy while having a conversation, rather than by the walk itself,
but there'll be time for walking for its own sake...
I'm still feeling somewhat queasy, but it's not as bad as it was last night.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 17 21:20:59 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Here
There's something in me tonight that wants to write. I could bring forth as
many of the fragments of the song of words here as I could remember and it
would still not be enough for the wish to write that seems to be everything at
the moment.
So...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 17 21:33:54 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: The Tower
I run my hand over the old wood of the door, feeling its warmth compared to the
sharp cold of the metal. Looking quickly to one side, even though nobody will
have followed me here (and how could they? Everyone who comes here finds their
way here of their own accord.), I pull on the ring and the door opens easily.
It's cool inside. Closing the door behind me, I walk into the central room and
breathe. Nothing more, just breathe, just like Death does at the start of `The
High Cost of Living'. I suppose the reason is the same in some ways as well:
the sheer experience of it. When all you can hear and feel is your own breath
and the beating of your own heart, you have to either revel in it or not think
of it; there are no half-way houses.
One by one, I light all the candles and sit in the centre of the room as,
above, the bell begins to toll.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 17 21:52:06 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Fict and Faction
The two threads that don't really work in the real world in this diary, namely
the story of Careff and that of the Tower, are mostly fiction. As some of you
who've waded through my home page to find the story `But for an Only' will
know, I used to write. Unfortunately, now, I don't seem to find the gumption to
put the words and ideas together to create something, which is a shame since
I'm overflowing with ideas and words most of the time.
Careff's story is entirely fictional and based on my fantasy world of Eriyada;
while there are similarities between some things that Careff did/does/will do
and some of the things I have done, am doing, and will do (on a different
scale) the similarity is something I see in the story after I've written the
words.
The Tower is entirely metaphor. A playground for expressing certain things that
have been with me for the past few years. It's set halfway between this world
and Eriyada, I suppose, in that it borrows ideas from both and belongs in
neither. It's not going to convey any information, but I put the entries
here firstly because I like writing them, and secondarily because I think my
readers might like to read them. Maybe if they or I am very lucky they'll get
an idea of the texture of my feelings.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 18 17:32:28 1998]--
From: ()() And I hope you feel the same (steph)
Subject: Day One Hundred and Ninety One
There is no alternative.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Feb 18 21:35:08 1998]--
From: ()() Point of No Return (steph)
Subject: Is
So now you know. There was an alternative, of course. There always is, but we
are most afraid of the things which have hurt us most recently. Attempting to
avoid that pain by doing something I'd not normally have contemplated... may
have been a mistake. But once I'd walked out there there was no turning back.
So here I am. Waiting for the stars to come back.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 19 01:31:00 1998]--
From: Where do we go from here? (steph)
Subject: Was
As I left, it started to rain, and the stars that had been so visible before
were obscured by clouds.
Why was it easier the second time?
Anyway, thank you. You know who you are. *hugs*
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 19 15:02:25 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Nameline
There's a special effect associated with this nameline. I see the old one, with
a bright, bright light growing in the background, until it explodes softly,
leaving only my (S) glyph. What was there in the way of hopes is replaced by
what should always have been there: me. I am more than just my hopes, I am my
strengths and my weaknesses, and the sum of everything that has brought me to
this point. What's shining, what's always been shining had I only dared to see,
is me.
It's strange. That was the nameline I would have chosen, for entirely different
reasons, if things had turned out entirely differently.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 19 18:10:23 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
A long-standing friend of the family has cancer, and is not expected to live
more than a few months. This after his wife died a year or so back and he'd
managed to put his life back together again, see one of his sons married,
settled and happy, his daughter at University, and to find love once more.
It's not fair. It's just not fair.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 20 00:59:52 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
For most of today I could almost have been in a dream, observing myself do
things from a distance, even though it was always me in control. I remember
changing my nameline to its current form and seeing it appear at the top of the
Users On screen, and I remember the comment `what's happened to your nameline'
from one of my readers, but the overwhelming feeling was one of strangeness.
Like many, I suppose, I'd become used (attached?) to the form and convention I
had adopted. Changing it felt extremely odd, as if it didn't quite fit.
At various points during the day conversations were had and messages exchanged
that make everything as clear as it can be, which is good. The filling of the
minutes between them, though, is a very blurred memory.
People were helpful, people were friendly, people were as usual. It was
probably a good start. Having decided to write off this week as far as getting
major amounts of work done was concerned, I felt a bit better, and gladdened by
the fact that my boss had noticed that I was a little under the weather and not
pressed the issue.
I think during the day I was content, if a little emotionally fragile. It
explains my reaction to the news I heard on the phone when I rang my mother in
the evening. It was a shock to me; Terry has been someone I've known for as
long as I can remember, and it completely threw me to hear that after he'd
managed to rebuild everything, he had cancer and only a few months left. It
oughtn't to have affected me, but it did.
Thanks are due to Richard, Elizabeth, and Louise, who at various points in the
evening were prepared to hug me when I felt I needed it.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 20 01:11:48 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Sigils, symbols, and keys
With reference to a comment in another place, I've found this strange dreamlike
piece, which I wrote in early 1995. It's essentially an account of a walk I
made after a particularly disturbing and confusing dream, mixed in with what I
could remember at the time of the dream itself.
Interstices
(or, Looking for Nightmares)
It's a cold room, and the moon is shining through the curtains,
stained green by the glass, on to the two sleeping forms, and on to
the knife I'm holding.
I follow the sign to the village, walking along a straight path for
most of the way, until the sign peters out. I dither for a moment, but
anxious to press on, I turn right and carry on walking, thinking about
the strangeness of the place. Left, hesitantly, at the end.
It is a plaza, gleaming white, and there are very many steps, leading
up in a shallow "V" to the impossible height, where there are two
gleaming doors on the front of what looks like a shopping centre. To
my right, a cough. John is slumped there, pale and dying, but Emma
can't be far away; in any case, he hasn't seen me.
Are there others here? Myself, and them, but are there others? It
seems strange that I should be alone; it would not turn out so badly
if there were no others. There are others, just hovering on the
fringes of my vision like shadows or spectres.
We begin climbing the steps.
This must be the way to the motorway. Easy enough to follow by apathy,
if you start in the right place, and just carry on. It's a long trek,
though. I'm surprised he made it. Frightened, too, just a little. It's
too close for comfort. Thinking: Come on, time to go home. You need
sleep. And watching the bottle smash on the tarmac below.
The steps are polished white, or off-white, in two parts. The first
part, at the edge of the step, is smooth and slippery, but the second
part is rough, and holds little pools of water in which the sun
gleams, reflected off the building at the top of the steps. There is a
handrail down the centre of the steps, to our left. It seems strange
that noone should be going down.
"What's it like when you..."
Laughter.
"Never mind."
Smirks.
I keep to the handrail. The others (I am sure there are others - I
just don't see them) walk on, smiling and nodding in agreement about
something.
"...go in?"
"Find out for yourself."
I notice the strange necklace they're wearing, each of them. A
familiar geometry, sharply cut in bronze. I finger it. It's burning
hot, and I let it fall back. More laughter.
"Doesn't it hurt?"
"Not if you accept it."
"What is it?"
The whispered consultations echo around the plaza, reaching my ears in
a garbled wind of sibilants.
The cars swipe by under the bridge, passing the camera eyes that check
and control, whispering their incoherent whine. It's the way out, the
way to everywhere. And you have very little choice about where to go.
"Guess." It's the other.
"I don't want to guess."
"Then don't ask, if you won't guess."
"But I want to know."
"Then guess."
I think it will open the doors. I think maybe it has already opened
doors, doors that I know nothing about. I feel isolated. The others,
shadowy, crystallise, all engaged in doubling. I'm the odd number. I
keep climbing the steps, wondering and worrying about what's at the
top.
Some of the others take form, now, talking. Do I recognise them? They
seem familiar, but different. Amalgams of people. Talking as everyone
I know.
The steel is bright under the moon's glow, and my tears fall on the
blade, just a little, and then onto the barely carpeted floor. The
breaths are in tandem, and I add mine to the chorus, not thinking.
Asking questions in the dark of noone in particular, in the silence of
my mind. The answers seem clear enough, but their questions?
I'm beyond the bridge now. It's getting grassier and there's more
country all of a sudden. The motorway is a boundary line. Crossing is
the entry into another place, that's different to where I just came
from.
"Are you OK?"
"I'll be alright."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No. Yes."
Almost halfway now. Soon it won't be worth turning back; better to go
on than waste the time going back. Better turn back now, then. I
cough. It echoes splendidly throughout the plaza, whose bottom is now
almost beyond sight.
"What's the matter?"
"I don't want to go on."
"Why not?"
"I don't have your key."
"Make one."
So it is a key, but I think it means more than that. I think of mine,
but I cannot decide on the shape. I dare not copy what I don't
understand, so I have no key. Can I get in without a key?
"Yes - I was thinking that. It worries me that he doesn't have a key."
They're talking about me. I'm in two minds; do I eavesdrop or stay
paranoid, concerned?
"What was that about me?"
Laughter.
Disconcerted. "Do I need one?"
"Everyone needs one."
I follow the sign. Strangely, it leads to the village I lost a while
back. I've been the long way around, it seems. It's a pleasant
village, with fields, hedges, a church, a churchyard... I examine some
of the headstones. He only lived 30 years. That'd give me another 10.
More than I'd give some.
Concerned looks. He's moved away.
"Did you really think of killing me?"
Embarassed. Guilty. I choke, my throat dry. I nod.
A stinging slap. I'm left looking at the steps as the pain hits home.
They both move away again. The others have become shadows once more.
Is there more than this? Or do I just turn round and go back down?
It leads back over the motorway, back onto home ground by a different
means. A good journey, I think. But how many journeys will I have to
make before I can make it to the top?
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 20 11:28:36 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
I feel completely drained, queasy, and tired. I think I'll go and see if people
can cope without me for the afternoon...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 20 16:51:36 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
Sleeping for five hours or so appears to have made me feel a lot better.
Spontaneous afternoons off are indeed a Good Thing. It's only a shame I'm only
likely to get them when I'm feeling unwell.
I suppose what I could do is build up an afternoon's worth of excess hours
worked and then take an afternoon off next time things aren't very busy. Mm.
May be worth seeing if my boss would mind that...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 20 20:15:41 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
There's a CD on the mantelshelf which says: `This way to the Internet', through
which the cable connecting this computer to the outside world runs.
If the Internet is that way, then which way is real life? Can we hypothesise
that going through the hole the other way will get us to real life, and if so,
is it sensible to say that I'm stuck somewhere in that CD, half way between
real life and the all-encompassing (well, these days at least) ether?
Stuck in a CD. I wonder if I'll learn how to reflect rainbows.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 20 23:46:26 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: `Enjoy the sea for me.'
What a very strange thing for me to say to someone. Not that I didn't mean it,
or didn't know what I meant by it, just that it seems odd. Ah well. Enjoy it
anyway.
It is too long since I've seen the sea. The last time would have been in
September, and how things have changed since then.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Feb 21 10:57:35 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Sleep
I was planning to spend most of this morning in bed to make me at least a bit
more able to cope with eight hours at the Slimelight, but my body doesn't seem
to want to let me sleep. And yet I feel tired, so very tired.
Strange, how our orbits have come to collide so occasionally, so coincidentally
these days. My doing entirely, but not my wish... There was a time, briefly,
when everything was whole with us, the glory days were with us again, but that
had to pass as action and reaction brought distance again.
It's tempting to imagine that you will always be here, but without the effort
on my part it's more probable that the distancing will become complete.
It's just as tempting to say that it doesn't matter.
But I don't believe it one little bit.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Feb 21 11:29:53 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Hm
That managed to mislead one reader. Unfortunately there's no good way to say
who `you' isn't.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 22 09:52:34 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Slimelight
Fun. Certainly the only Slime I've ever managed to stay awake for the entire
eight hours, which is quite an achievement.
I did start feeling queasy and vaguely depressed at about 3:30am - maybe it was
just the return of the `Crap Music Hour' - but something brought me back up
from it. I don't know what.
There's a beauty to the place, even though it's dark and dismal; a calm, even
though it's the loudest place I've known. I like it.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Feb 22 16:11:15 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Hm
Five hours' sleep, just like that, but I ought to get up and do things to
de-screw my sleep cycle. Breakfast at 4:30? I think so.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 23 00:49:42 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
After dinner at home for what seems like the first time in quite a while, I
went to cavalr-2's. A pleasant evening; I remember bemoaning the lack of
objects to juggle, and finding contentment in a toy Cthulhu, a bouncy RSA Data
Security ball, and a mead cork. Later I pushed my Indiana Jones and the Fate of
Atlantis saved position a bit further too.
forsan et haec...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 23 00:57:44 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: The other diary
It appears to have grown by some 150 lines in just a summary of this week. It
is still much shorter than the equivalent diaries from 1994 and 1995, though:
total 805
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 7 May 2 1997 diary -> diary96
-rw-rw---- 1 osd1000 osd1000 243522 Dec 31 1994 diary94
-rw-rw---- 1 osd1000 osd1000 122317 Apr 10 1995 diary95
-rw-rw---- 1 osd1000 osd1000 26420 Feb 22 20:17 diary96
That's mostly down to my writing so much here, I think. (And yes, I know I'm
still writing the diary for 1996. I'll get around to rearranging things at some
point.)
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Feb 23 12:11:46 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
I remember a night of wonder, those years back, where we left the Colony and it
was snowing, quietly, softly, beautifully. I remember the pain and the joy, all
of it, and realise that forever has to be a very long time indeed if three
years feels this long.
Other people's reminiscences of recent times make me feel sometimes that I
arrived here too late, that I missed the best of times, days soaked in sunshine
laughter. Yet I remember where I would have been and realise that they were my
glory days too.
I remember a day of wonder, less than a year ago, where we played catch in the
sun, on the grass. I remember the unspoilt joy and wondered how long it would
last.
These little things, these big things...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 24 01:40:59 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Glory
I've not yet explained what I mean by this, even though it's a word I've been
using for quite a while now. The first reference I can find in the public diary
was in June last year.
Collins Pocket English Dictionary:
glory n., pl. -ries [<L. gloria]
1. a) great honour and admiration b) anything bringing this
2. worshipful adoration
3. the condition of highest achievement, prosperity, splendour, etc.
4. heaven or the bliss of heaven
5. a halo
vi. -ried, -rying to exult (with in)
in one's glory at one's best, happiest, etc.
If I had to take my pick of that little lot, I'd choose definition 3, but
that's not really what I mean by glory when I refer to it here.
What do I mean? It's a good question, since I've not really made it clear to
myself or seen any reason to examine the word until now. Let's work on the
implications of the word. It implies coping with things, for one thing; it's
a state in which I am able to deal with what the world is throwing at me
without collapsing. I suppose it also implies adversity of some sort, be that
fear of what's to come, unhappiness, depression, or whatever; a state of glory
(glory days, if it lasts for a while :-) ) is one in which I take all the joy I
can find to myself and live off it, being and showing the best I can.
That last's important. If I show a coping, joyful, exultant face to the world,
it might just treat me a little more kindly.
Sometimes I just find myself in a glorious state because the world is being
kind to me where I might not expect it to. At other times, I can try to bring
it on. `Glorying myself up' in this way (and the word `glorifying' doesn't
work, much though this preferred construction is very ugly) isn't always easy,
but it can be remarkably effective at bringing me up from downs.
None of this is making much sense, I suspect, and there are doubtless better
words I could have attached these concepts to, but this is the word I'm stuck
with now. Suffice it to say that mostly what I'm doing with my state isn't
obvious and doesn't really matter. Most people won't be able to distinguish it
from happiness / sadness / thoughtfulness anyway. If you do see me grinning
manically, though, and think you might just see traces of tears in my eyes,
that's probably glory.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 24 12:02:47 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Waiting
The suspense is killing me...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 24 12:35:03 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
I feel just like an impatient child...
I remember coming home from Sunday School one morning with my Grandmother, and
she said that there was a present for us when we got home. My brother and I
were guessing the whole journey to find out what it was: `can you eat it?'
`does it use batteries?' &c. It turned out to be a lovely black kitten.
(Apologies to the person who's already read this; I just thought it was so nice
that it belonged in here.)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 24 13:27:04 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
V\'u jh\-ad, d\-iv\'ujh\-ad, sw\-ajh\-ad.
It's the sort of thing that needs to be said now, while I don't know how easy
or hard it's going to be, while I'm unsure. The difficult paths are sometimes
the ones it is most necessary to walk, but perhaps the destinations are
worthwhile. And perhaps this difficult path is the path of least resistance
anyway.
(Thanks and *hugs* to mormegil for the Harathoni.)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 24 14:35:13 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: And the crystal shattered.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 24 22:48:15 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: ...enjoy the reflections in the kaleidoscope.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 24 22:49:24 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
Explanations will not be forthcoming, to anyone. Don't stress things by asking.
Thank you.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 26 10:03:17 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
Change and I have never got on particularly well. I've been wary of changes, in
the smallest and greatest things, for as long as I can remember, and afraid of
so very many. It has always seemed that what changes, breaks forever.
And yet the greatest threat is not change. The greatest threat is stagnation,
the feeling of being trapped on the wheel for yet another cycle, the feeling
that the story will never let go.
Change can be a weapon against that stagnation, can make things grow, not
break. Perhaps that realisation is the greatest glory of them all.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 26 10:55:36 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
[ minor edit to the above entry ]
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 26 14:00:50 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: The Archers
Well, that's cheerful. (No details, since there are some who won't hear last
night's episode until Sunday; I'll probably be writing to Feedback to complain
about the spoiler on Today this morning.)
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 26 15:36:56 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Privacy and web logs
I've just had a conversation that made me feel slightly uneasy. Is it an
invasion of people's privacy proactively to (attempt to) contact them for
marketing based solely on the fact that they have visited your web site?
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Feb 26 23:34:32 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
There's so much I could almost say here, about today, but I won't.
And now there's a weekend to look forward to.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 27 11:31:56 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
I was very tempted to stop writing this diary a few days ago, if only perhaps
for a little while, but I decided against it on the grounds that saying things
is usually better than not saying things in some respects, and general
undirected wibble is a Good Thing. Unfortunately I find there's nothing I want
to write here.
That last sentence could perhaps have been written as `there's nothing I can
write here', but that's not really the case. I'm sure I could muster all the
appropriately vague circumlocutions and euphemisms to make the supposedly
unsayable work here; after all, I've had enough practice in the past. I simply
don't feel like it.
It's not just this diary, either; the other one received a cursory update last
night, just sketching in details. Ten, maybe fifteen lines, where last week saw
huge edits of over a hundred.
For all that it means this diary is rather directionless and content-free at
the moment, it's probably a good sign.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Feb 27 22:47:03 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
Even though today was a holiday, I spent the first half of it at work, dealing
with all manner of disasters people had managed to contrive for me. I suspect I
was being a bit ratty at people, but that happens sometimes.
I made the mad dash from LSL to Corpus for lunch in about 25 minutes, by virtue
of a fortuitous bus. (There seem to have been quite a few of these of late;
maybe the Universe, or that part of it controlled by Cambus, is feeling kindly
disposed towards me.)
The afternoon was spent shopping, the evening doing not really very much, which
is good after a fashion, but there's a vague feeling of unease in me. Perhaps
it's just the headache, tiredness, or maybe I've caught another cold. An early
night would do me good, but I'm delaying doing anything about it because I
don't feel like (up to?) the walk home at the moment.
Another theory is that I'm still in a jittery state which doesn't fit with the
way things are just rolling along relatively calmly, day by day. Louise could
see me stressing the other night, and I'm still having to stop myself. At least
for this weekend there's nothing that can happen.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Feb 28 01:37:26 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
It rained on the walk home.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Feb 28 23:55:21 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
A good day. Lunch with people outside the Mill, coffee and tabl (which will
henceforth be my preferred spelling) in Corpus JCR, chat and silly music in
Trinity, then out of town for spider cuddling, computer fixing birthday
wishing, ginger eating, elderflower cordial tasting, fruitcake, and a good deal
of faff.
How do you give the flavour of laughter and puns in a diary edit like this?
There was lots. And how do you give the flavour of what I missed from the
paragraph above? You see, somewhere along the way, it started to snow. Earlier,
the city had looked almost bleached, pale... Afterwards, walking through
Queens' as the snow and hail fell around us, I felt so happy. It was wonderful,
simply wonderful.
The evening was Jon's pancake party, which was extremely full of people but
excellent. Ginger and Parma Violet pancake, anyone?
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Mar 1 00:01:33 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm letting myself worry and be stressed where there's no reason for it, which
isn't good, even if it may be understandable. On the current path, everything
will be alright. *hugs* to those who understand.
And, just so I have it written down somewhere, because it's a nice fit:
Delayed action reality-metaphor flux.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Mar 1 13:38:47 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: The Archers
John Archer died this week, in a simple, tragic accident. When his friend Roy
visited the spot where the tractor had overturned in the ditch there were
already some flowers there. He wished he had thought of that, but what flowers
do you get for a best mate?
Ambridge is still reeling from the shock, and will be for some while yet, but
as you'd expect in a community like that, everyone is rallying around to help.
Ambridge and John's parents Tony and Pat will recover, and life will go on.
But how did it all come to this point? `Where is the beginning of our acts?' So
easy to look back and say `Sharon Richards'. Too easy, since that betrayal of
Hayley which perhaps brought us to this moment was John's as well. But how can
we blame him, now?
It's not Sharon's fault, I know... But it's easy at this end of the fragile
link the radio provides between here and Ambridge to think like that. Real life
doesn't work like that, though. Real life is shades of grey, even if some of us
have to fight to see things in anything but black and white.
John Archer 1975-1998
Ambridge remembers.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Mar 1 16:53:21 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
I've done nothing but juggle, read the paper, and listen to music or the radio
today. This counts as a Good Thing.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 2 00:40:39 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was / Will Be
A first step was made to turn the reality back into something. Something
beautiful, perhaps, and certainly something different. Perhaps the same is true
of the metaphor...
It was no foresight, only whim. I'm glad I whimmed myself there.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 2 15:35:19 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Thoughts
So you're in a cave, sheltering for the night because it's freezing outside and
there's nowhere else to go. You've got a fire and you can sleep here; you've
done it before, after all. Yes, there are big scary monsters out there but if
you're asleep and calm they won't notice you, so you can pretend they're not
there. Pretend they don't exist.
Except, every now and then, you hear a noise. You can pretend it's not there,
and maybe that'll work for a little while, trying to convince yourself that
there are no big scary monsters, but you keep hearing the noises, keep seeing
the traces... So you creep out and look, heart beating hard, because deep down
you're sure the monsters have been.
And there's nothing, so you return to the cave and the fire, cosy in your
pretence once more that there are no big scary monsters.
Unless you choose to wonder what happens when one day you venture out and
actually find the big scary monster you've been pretending doesn't exist.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 2 20:17:54 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
Rain. I hadn't expected it to be raining. It's what I associate with
Cambridge, though: rain.
I remember, five years ago, visiting this place with a group from school,
looking around the city which was so completely unfamiliar that I can't now
work out where we went and visited. It was raining then.
It rained when I came here for interview, and when I first moved in, too. I
like to think it rained that Friday night late in 1994, but that's probably
just pathetic fallacy, my mind trying to paint the scene the way it feels even
from this distance.
It rained when I graduated, too, and now it rains again. Good old Cambridge,
driest place in England, reliably wet as ever. It's hard to think of leaving
this place, because in a way the sodden stonework and the water rushing in
torrents down the conduits are how it's always been, and anywhere else it
wouldn't be the same. Somewhere among these buildings, somewhere in this city,
there's something that keeps me here, wandering along deserted streets, feet
splashing in the puddles as the rain keeps falling.
Something that takes me back, perhaps? The future contains the past and all
hope, as I've said. Maybe it's no bad thing. Certainly no bad thing, after its
own fashion, that the future certainly contains rain.
Rain later. Moderate or good.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 2 20:18:23 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: I am not Michael Ghoti and you can't have your five pounds.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 2 23:15:24 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
*yawn* I should go to bed, but I've a suspicion it wouldn't do anything for the
tiredness or the stuff that's sloshing around parts of my brain.
TORVAX$ set def foreign_root:[archives]
TORVAX$ backup/rewind mka400:[owendtmp]*.tgz;* []
...is some consolation, I suppose, as is dragging one of Chris's HPs here to
run the NetBSD 1.3 those tarfiles contain.
Bedtime, anyway.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 3 09:54:33 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
phone rings
me 'Hello, Owen Dunn speaking.'
her 'Hello, is K---- there, please?'
me 'No, he's with an engineer.'
her 'Oh, can you... Oh it's OK I'll send him an email.'
I wonder how many conversations like this take place in the UK in one working
day, simply because for many people the telephone is still the default means of
communication even when others are available. How long will it take before
most people are able to look at the available means of communication and decide
which is the most appropriate for the situation before picking up the phone?
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 3 21:07:20 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
Day alif plus thirteen: reflection
I know what I want to do, but I don't know what I _ought_ to do, whether
staying here is too little or whether going there would be too much. What I'd
like, ideally, is for people to say what they want. But that requires asking.
Oh hell, I don't know. I'll make a decision sometime. If nothing else I need to
go and sort some food out and I can't see myself getting anything to eat here.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 3 22:16:29 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
I've now got some food, at least...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 3 22:21:57 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
I could do with something to drink, too, but I rather doubt the User Area's
coffee has got either cheaper or less bad since I last sampled it. There's the
coke machine, though...
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 4 00:14:22 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
Earlier, I was in the mood to destroy something. I was sitting here watching
a kernel compile scroll past and everything was going round and round in my
head, as if I was a hamster running round and round on its little wheel.
It got to the stage where I couldn't stand it any longer and so I left the
house before I destroyed any of it, preferring to destroy the air in front of
me as I walked into town. I ate a collapsing Gardies burger in the rain, and
then in a shop doorway, and then walked towards the New Museums Site.
At that point I didn't really know what to do. Tempted to visit Louise, or walk
to Coton, or stand on Castle Mound and scream into the darkness...
But I came here: Monochrome. Thank you for asking me to visit you, since you
were here. I was in the state where I wouldn't find anyone without invitation,
would barely talk to anyone without permission, where I was afraid to be any
value of me I'm even remotely proud of.
I calmed down a bit. Perhaps it was the food, perhaps the company. Whatever the
case, I'm going to try and write what I can of [stuff] here, to see if I can
make sense of any of it. And then, in a few days, I'm going away. Just for the
weekend, but I shall be away from here trying not to think or perhaps trying
harder than I can at these close quarters to think of what I can do to fix
things.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 4 00:25:51 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
Day alif: reality
Why did I bring all this silly dating into being anyway? Because I suppose it's
easier than saying `two weeks ago tomorrow', and I'm far too fond of symbols.
Damn. I shouldn't have said anything, should I? Then none of this would have
come to pass, or at least it would not have come to pass _now_, and things
would be peaceful and happy still. On the surface, at least. Yes, I would have
been going round and round wondering what to do, and the tension would have
showed perhaps (and I wouldn't have said anything, of course, because that
wouldn't have done, and I can be strong when I want to make myself hurt), and
in the long term things would have been potentially more explosive on all
sides - I'll admit all that - but things wouldn't be this way now, which is the
timescale we see most clearly.
There was one terrible silence, and one piece of broken reality. Somewhere in
between all of that there's how I feel, which is as stupidly simple as it
always is. But I can't do anything to change what I've said about that, now,
and perhaps it was the Right Thing after all. Things changed, though, and that
scares me.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 4 00:33:40 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
Day alif plus six: metaphor
And the crystal shattered. I don't remember crying so much for a long time. I
was going to elaborate, but it still feels too painful for this place.
Day alif plus thirteen: reflection
How unclear, how self-contradictory can one's emotions be?
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 4 00:39:09 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
That's enough, I think. No explanations forthcoming. I only hope writing it
here makes things clearer to me than reams of wibble in the other diary do.
The usefulness of this weekend rather depends on it.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 4 14:44:17 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
*sigh* I want to hide. I want the past two weeks not to have happened. I almost
want the past three months not to have happened. I suppose I want the past four
years not to have happened, really, too.
What is any of this for?
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 4 16:40:58 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Is
It's done.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 5 11:14:59 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Extremely dodgy box
>From a courier's form:
Number of Parcels : 1
Weight of Parcels : 10 Kg
Size : 0 x 0 x 0 cms
Eek.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 5 15:17:58 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Sad news
The family friend I mentioned on February the 19th died yesterday. His health
declined very quickly shortly after that point. If I can make it, I'll be going
to his funeral whenever that turns out to be; it seems right.
I'm OK about it; the wibbling on the 19th was sheerest disbelief on my part,
whereas this is the simple sad consequence that I knew was coming. It deserves
mentioning here nonetheless.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 5 15:20:52 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Happy news
I've managed to be nice to someone at just the right moment, entirely by
accident. Must be something about my shoulders being in the right place, or
something. :-)
I seem also to be recovering some of my sparkle. This is good.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 5 17:12:42 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Administrivia
This file is already growing larger than I like to keep it, so I'll be
truncating to the end of the Interlude (which takes us to early January) on
Monday. Archives will become available from the usual place, probably under the
title INTERLUDE; at the same time I'll be updating the namelines file and
making various other bits of appropriate writing available.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 5 23:21:02 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Was / Is / Will Not Be
I'm going to try to convince myself that I didn't think that this morning. It's
counter-productive.
Somewhere along the line we lost the script. And the new writers took over.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 6 01:32:28 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Is
I wish I could give a flavour here of the song of words, of all the things that
go through my head while I'm awake, doing other things or idling, walking from
here to there. There's so much, so many little fragments of a lyric sheet,
play, or crossword, that goes on like a perpetual background buzz. I remember
when I was young I couldn't believe that other people thought to themselves as
I did...
I was walking along a path tonight, thinking, and somehow I was able to look
far ahead of me at where I was walking and to feel that bit larger, greater
than my usual small, huddled self-image. It didn't last for very long, a few
tens of metres perhaps, but it was almost startling. In a way (and a mostly
non-metaphorical one at that, which is rare for both this diary and the life it
reflects at the moment), it was a loss of perspective which I wish I could
learn to bring about consciously. I find it very hard to walk along looking
straight ahead.
The same thing had happened in the other direction some moments beforehand,
too; in the light of some streetlight, I'd defocused my left eye enough that it
saw its own reflection in the lens of my glasses. Apart from the fact that they
give more shape to my face, the interesting special effects (particularly the
spangly patterns you get in the rain at night) you can get with spectacles make
them preferable to contact lenses too.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 6 11:46:05 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Is
I try to bring forth the happy memories, knowing that it is right to think of
the good times and know that they are why this is so hard. They bring me to the
sad memories, though, the pain and the feelings of utter loss, and I know that
they are why this is so necessary. I never thought of myself as strong, and yet
I have done so many strong, right, and good things over these past weeks that
I scarcely believe it was me. I hope there will be no harder things than this,
because I don't know how much strength I have left.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 6 15:50:49 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Odd
I wouldn't normally visit a URL like http://www.xxx-guide.com/free/xxxsex.htm,
expecially not from work, but when it results from a query of the form:
+"DECstation" +"Windows NT" +MIPS +RISC
...I just have to know why...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 6 15:52:15 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Hmm
And there appears to be absolutely no explanation... Bizarre.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Mar 7 00:30:57 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Is / Will Be
That, day alif _that_, is the easy part.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Mar 8 22:24:18 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Words from on holiday
Huge amounts of random drivel, recorded by means of a palmtop computer while I
was on holiday. I won't be doing this particularly often; for one thing, others
do it far better than I.
Cambridge Station, 10:10am, 7th March 1998
There's a very therapeutic effect to be gained by just wandering into
a shop and spending five hundred pounds. Now I have a Psion 5.
Waiting for the train to leave; first to Ely, thence to Norwich, and
ultimately to Great Yarmouth, from where I'm hoping to walk to
Lowestoft.
Hm. I'm writing this in some word processoralike at the moment... I
wonder if this thing has something that does plain text?
Ely Station, 11:24am, 7th March 1998
One of those maximally bad changes, where the train you next want to
catch leaves three minutes before you arrive, and there isn't another
one for an hour. Still, it gave me some time to walk into Ely and
back. The cathedral's wonderful, even if I only saw it from the
outside; they charge for admission now... It's sad. Perhaps I'll go in
on the return journey, tomorrow.
Thetford, 11:55am, 7th March 1998
Would I have noticed it if I hadn't just been looking at the map? The
train has just passed through Breckland, which is one of the places
Lanfear and I visited on the stone circling holiday back in
September. How things change...
Or rather, how things fail to change. That's the reason for this trip,
I suppose.
Acle, 12:55pm, 7th March 1998
Norwich saw the easiest change of trains I've ever made: off one and
straight onto another with no delay.
And Acle has a real working signalbox with levers, which control real
(proper old) signals. Wonderful
The Beach, Great Yarmouth, 1:50pm, 7th March 1998
It's just before two, and I'm sitting here watching the sea and eating
my lunch. It's strange; I don't feel alone, even tthough there's noone
else here. I shall alk off to Lowestoft now, I think, and lef the sea
be my company.
Hopton, 5:12pm, 7th March 1998
I had been planning to walk from Grea Yarmouth to Lowestoft, but made
the monumental cockup of failing to look closely enough at the map.
The result of this was that while I spent a pleasant three-quarters of
an hour walking away from Great Yarmouth, I then had to spend more
than that walking in almost the same direction I had just
walked. Through a dismal dockland industrial landscape, and when it
started ppouring with rain, I was ready to give up and go
home. Instead I found some shelter and cried.
I recovered a bit, though, and by the time I was back in Yarmouth I
resolved to walk as far as I could and then to take the bus to
Lowestoft.And so, after walking along the beach or seeafront for most
of the afternoon, here I am, on a bus for Lowestoft.
And I've just seen the most beautiful rainbow.
Tudor Seas Guest House, Lowestoft, 6:00pm 7th March 1998
I hadn't expected to find a room for the night quiite so easily, or
quite so cheaply, but I suppose it is only the beginning of March. Now
I have what is essentially a whole evening to do very little. I think
I shall examine the rest of the stuff which came with the Psion, find
somewhere to eat, and then go and talk to the sea for a while.
Tudor Seas Guest House, Lowestoft, 8:05am, 8th March 1998
Will have to decide what to do today; breakfast first though.
Lowestoft Station, 9:45am, 8th March 1998
Clare F was right: Lowestoft is much nicer than Yarmouth by a long
way. Yarmouth (even putting aside map-reading idiocies on my part) is
too industrial, too shabby. Lowestoft somehow manages to be a working
port and a pleasant place; walking on the beach last night was
wonderfully calm, and i needed that.
Visiting the beach again this mornning, I was able to find a small
rock, but there weren't any shops open to sell me a small piece of
rock. Hey ho.
Lordy, this train's noisy.
Norwich Castle grounds, 11:11am, Sunday 8th March
Nurgh. They saw fit to move the train I'd decided to take to Ely back
twenty-two minutes, so now I'm stuck in Norwich for three hours. I was
going to visit the Castle Museum here, but it doesn't open until
two. I'll see if any of the other museums on the map are open.
Norwich is completely dead on Sundays; the contrast with Cambridge is
amazing. On reflection I would have done better to stay in Lowestoft
for the morning, perhaps walking somewhere aound there before taking a
train.
Zuckerman's Cafe, Norwich, 12:10pm 8th March 1998
None of the museums in Norwich open until two. I have found a
wonderful old-style shopping arcade with a cafe and a Waterstones. I
shall have some lunch, browse a little, and then make my way to th
Cathedral, see if we can't wander around there a little.
Norwich Cathedral precincts, 1:25pm 8th March 1998
Fifty years. Fifty years it took to build this magnificent place. Who
would embark on such an enterprise these days? Who would lay a stone
knowing perhaps that they would not see the completed Cathedral?
Ely Station, 2:45pm 8th March 1998
It's now sufficiently late that I'm not going to stand a chance of
making it from here to Cambridge on foot, so I'll take a train to
Waterbeach instead, and walk in from there. It'll mean I'll be back in
Cambridge a little earlier than I'd planned, but that may not be such
a bad thing.
The Almonry Tea Rooms, Ely, 4:30pm 8th March 1998
Change of plan necessitated by the above meant I walked into Ely to
look at the Cathedral. There was a gorgeous tortoiseshell cat in the
porch, which I stroked, and it came to sit on my knees. It was just
what I needed at that point to calm my nerves. Then I listened to
Evensong inside the Cathedral.
Since I'm currently feeling excessively cold, I'm tempted to go
directly back to Cambridge.
Clayhithe, 5:30pm 8th March 1998
But I got off at Waterbeach instead. Next stop home.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Mar 8 22:35:28 1998]--
From: (S) This last and silent shadow-song (steph)
Subject: Is
The above account doesn't mention how I'm feeling, which isn't usual for this
diary. This was entirely deliberate; I wanted a record of what I'd done and
where I'd been. Obviously I spent a lot of time thinking; being on one's own
for long periods of time does that for you.
It doesn't matter what I thought about, or that the sea had the dubious
pleasure of listening to some truly industrial-strength wibbling.
What matters is that I'm back and that things (even though plans are changing
under my feet, so to speak) all seem a lot clearer now.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 9 14:02:37 1998]--
From: (S) Patient Shadow-walker (steph)
Subject: Argh
I've locked myself out of the house I live in. This is annoying more because
it's made my lunch break not very much of a lunch break than because of
anything else.
And there's the hassle of having to sort out getting back _in_. *sigh*
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 9 16:02:38 1998]--
From: (S) Patient Shadow-walker (steph)
Subject: Is
Clarity, the greatest most shining clarity: I must be here. The only other path
will take me to more self-destruction, and when I stare back at that chasm and
look forward into the daylight I know that the choice has already been made.
I simply don't understand any more, my piece just doen't fit in that jigsaw any
more, so I have to move on. I have to be here, and risk everything on the
premise that I am right, and that what must not be will not be.
There is no alternative. Perhaps there hasn't been since the afternoon I sat in
the sun on the grass, and found myself listening to the soft sound of my
illusions, shattering.
And so I walk out into the light.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 9 22:40:35 1998]--
From: (S) Patient Shadow-walker (steph)
Subject: Is
Bring this back to reality, away from the metaphor. Back to what I'm doing and
away from what I'm feeling. Leave it all up in the air, unsaid (because there's
nothing left to say but what I'm going to say anyway, and that's for another
day). But this diary doesn't brook that sort of distancing. The other one
certainly doesn't, and while the travelling one does, that's not going to be a
regular thing.
But anyway. I've become a bit more spective this evening. It's been a good
evening all told, with dinner, followed by cake and chatter. I shall return to
it now, I think.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 10 12:18:03 1998]--
From: (S) Patient Shadow-walker (steph)
Subject: Is
I've just turned my keyboard upside-down and shaken it. For a little while
there was a startling amount of gumf floating in the air towards my desk...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 10 12:55:35 1998]--
From: (S) Patient Shadow-walker (steph)
Subject: Sorry
I would trust you with all of this, but it needs to be over first, and
complete. Then, then we'll talk. *Hugs*, because you're more of a friend than I
deserve.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 11 09:17:27 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
Last night was _good_. I went to Downing to hear Mozart's Requiem, which was
superb, and then went back with a friend (who was singing in it) for coffee and
reading lots of her (and other people's) writings.
Fab.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 11 15:56:44 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Will Be
I sha'n't be around for much of tomorrow, as I'll be going to Terry's funeral.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 12 00:12:31 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Oh dear
I haven't done _that_ for a long while. Worrying.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 12 16:53:03 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Funeral
I wish I knew what words to put in here, but I'm not good at the right words
when it comes to things like this. Still...
The Bringing
I saw you on the other side when they brought him in,
Nodded a recognition, watched and wondered, then walked in
Myself. And how he'd brought them, family, friends.
`Last time we met was for Marie,' they said.
`It was all so sudden,' they said
And fell silent.
And how familiar this must all have been,
The last time was, two years ago, it would have been?
Because she brought them too, family, friends,
`And he still only looked forward,' they said,
`He'd found happiness again,' they said
And fell silent.
And I saw you on the other side when they ushered us out,
Almost didn't dare to speak, watched and wondered, paced about,
And how you'd brought us here, family, friends.
`I'm sorry, be well,' I said.
`Let yourself still look forward,' I thought.
And fell silent.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 13 12:48:23 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
Annoying. I can't get PPP going between my Psion and my Ultrix working. I'm
probably missing something, but it's nevertheless annoying, because every other
job I have on the boil at the moment is on hold. Fixing the ftp server is
waiting on the person who was having problems with it explaining what problems
he was having, fixing the connection to the US ofice is waiting on them to wake
up, and the backups are taking forever to run as they always do...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 13 15:30:08 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
Even more annoying. Our bridge keeps crashing and resetting itself, causing the
satellite nodes in the VMS cluster to fall over. Unfortunately this probably
isn't going to be fixed with any speed :-(
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Mar 14 01:39:37 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
I'd meant to say something about last night in here, but I couldn't make the
words fit or say what I wanted to say.
Now I want to say something about tonight in here, and the same thing's
happening.
These days the words don't come as easily as they used to. I used to be able to
write pages at the drop of a hat, and poems with as much ease. Now... Now I
find myself walking along, and I'll have a thought, realise the implications of
something that's been said or done, and I'll stop in mid-stride.
I'm trying to work out whether this is working, while relying on the hope that
it will. That's as close as I'll get _here_ to saying what I was feeling last
night and what I'm feeling this evening. That's mostly because of restraints
I've imposed on my own behaviour and words, and I find myself wondering whether
I could talk about any of this more precisely without risking breaking the
things which may or may not be working, and on which I am relying.
But then, we risked that already, didn't we? And we relied on it working, too.
It's not so different now.
Relax, Owen, relax. As long as you don't break any of the Rules, you're
allowed. Always allowed.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Mar 15 02:01:42 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
I still don't know the reasons why my emotional state troughed at the point I
wrote that entry last night. Someone said they thought they knew why, but had
forgotten by the time I asked. (It's clear what I was unhappy about once I was
in that state, but that doesn't tell me how I got there.) In any case, I came
out of it later in the evening.
Today was different and wonderful. An afternoon picnic in Richard's room,
followed by Gardies, a gathering in Trinity, and thence back to Richard's for
the rest of the evening. A day spent doing nothing in particular which was
wonderful.
I then came back here and managed to mesmerise several people by juggling above
them. Pick a juggler, and get them to juggle while you lie down and look up at
the balls. It's a really hoopy effect.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Mar 15 02:05:34 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
As before, so after. Knowledge. Calm. Joy.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 16 00:35:40 1998]--
From: (S) Now we can hear ourselves again (steph)
Subject: Is
`Failure to drink while enforcing a rule' says it all, I think.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 16 12:11:30 1998]--
From: (S) Now we can hear ourselves again (steph)
Subject: Is
I don't know that I believe in dreams come true. Just nightmares come false.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 16 15:17:45 1998]--
From: (S) Now we can hear ourselves again (steph)
Subject: Opal Fruits
Shock horror! They're no longer called Opal Fruits. Instead, someone's seen fit
to call them Starburst instead. *boggle* This is as daft as the
Marathon / Snickers thing...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 17 12:13:21 1998]--
From: (S) Now we can hear ourselves again (steph)
Subject: Is
Reflective and shining aren't the same thing, though it feels like they should
be. Maybe it says something about me that I didn't even notice the similarity
until it was pointed out to me. Then I just chuckled quietly to myself.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 17 14:54:53 1998]--
From: (S) Now we can hear ourselves again (steph)
Subject: Thoughts
I've been tidying up the installations of netscape 4 today on the systems here
at work, shuffling things around so that one copy of the platform-independent
data is shared between the installations for the different Unices, for example.
There's a nice bit of symbolism in that area of the filesystem. Different
systems see different versions of /tools/net/app, /tools/net/bin, and friends,
and there's only a comparatively small area of overlap in /tools/net/apps and
/tools/net/etc which all platforms see.
That's simple. The nice bit (well, from here anyway; YMMV) is being able to
step back and look on the server these filesystems are mounted from, getting
the whole picture of what's in /tools, but arranged differently.
Sometimes it's just as nice to step back from things in real life, just like
that. Perspective is lsla2a:/lslhome/foreign/foreign1 :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 18 09:23:23 1998]--
From: (S) Now we can hear ourselves again (steph)
Subject: Last night
I would not have asked that of you, and it makes both perfect sense and no
sense at all, depending on who I'm looking at, that you did it. *Hugs* to you
anyway.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 18 11:56:49 1998]--
From: (S) Now we can hear ourselves again (steph)
Subject: Day alif plus one month
It doesn't seem that long.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 18 19:19:27 1998]--
From: (S) Now we can hear ourselves again (steph)
Subject: Is
Grr. I fail to understand how it can be possible for Cambridge video stores
not to be able to come up with a copy of Labyrinth and Casablanca.
Have they no idea?
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 19 11:53:14 1998]--
From: (S) Now we can hear ourselves again (steph)
Subject: Is
Language is so full of overloads. There may be ways around this, but even if
everyone spoke the capital letters there would still be the overload, the
ambiguity.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 19 12:04:30 1998]--
From: (S) Now we can hear ourselves again (steph)
Subject: Was
I was able to take yesterday afternoon off, since I'll be working Saturday
morning (at least, and maybe some of the afternoon as well), and I had a
wonderful afternoon. Shopping with ceb, mostly, buying tapes (an NMA tape; I
also bought Pretty Hate Machine, which I've been meaning to get for a while
now) and T-shirts (I'm wearing the cool blue wolfy one at the moment; the ducks
one is just as excellent!), as well as sweets and chocolate. *bounce*
Also got tickets for the NMA concert in May, which will be excellent fun!
Then it was back to Corpus for food, eating strange jelly sweets and chocolate
buttons, and several attempts to find a video shop stocking both of Casablanca
and Layrinth. Failure on that score, alas, so we went and listened to music and
ate Parma Violets instead, which was Good.
It felt like a weekend in the middle of the week, which is great and has put a
real spring in my stride for today. *bounce*
Subject: Is
And on a different topic:
gcc -o exim accept.o child.o daemon.o dbfn.o debug.o deliver.o direct.o
directory.o drtables.o exim.o expand.o filter.o globals.o header.o host.o
log.o match.o moan.o os.o parse.o queue.o readconf.o retry.o rewrite.o
route.o search.o smtp_in.o spool_in.o spool_out.o store.o string.o tod.o
transport.o tree.o verify.o version.o \
libident/libident.a pcre/libpcre.a directors/directors.a \
routers/routers.a transports/transports.a \
-lsocket -lnsl -lkstat -lresolv
>>> exim binary built
Whee!
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 19 12:21:03 1998]--
From: (S) 1327: Hoe but no Carrot (steph)
Subject: Is
The time travel attachment on my swivel chair has broken. It's now apparently
1327 and some chappy with a hoe (but no carrot) is trying to worship my
monitor. More news as it happens...
Hm. Didn't know Pipex had a fat pipe to the fourteenth century.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 19 13:58:31 1998]--
From: (S) 1887: Cobbled Office (steph)
Subject: Ah
They've cobbled the office. This is so much more civilised than all that mud.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 19 16:12:08 1998]--
From: (S) 2372: Ashes (steph)
Subject: Will Be?
Returning from the Solaris 2.5.1 upgrade in the Test Group, I find my desk all
alone on a bleak plain. The ground appears to be ash. It's windy and cold, and
the ash is blowing in my face.
I don't like this game any more.
*fx: adjusts chair*
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 19 16:12:50 1998]--
From: (S) 1998: Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is again.
That's better.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 20 11:27:19 1998]--
From: (S) 1998: Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Erk
Flashy blotch headache bomb.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 20 12:36:36 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (noisy hamster?) (steph)
Subject: Hospital appointment
Strange how things have a tendency to pop out of the blue. I received a letter
from Addenbrooke's yesterday, telling me that I have reached the top of the
waiting list for Cognitive Analytical Therapy (16 Sessions), having been placed
on said list at the beginning of last year.
There've been a lot of changes since then, a lot of changes; I'm probably
rather stronger now than I was when I went on the waiting list. But on the
other hand I still tend towards a lot of bad thinking. Analysing and fixing
those bad habits might be a Good Thing, so I shall go along and see how it
goes.
But it's very odd.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 20 16:14:45 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (noisy hamster?) (steph)
Subject: Whee!
Received: from (relay.lsl.co.uk) [194.131.253.1]
by chiark.greenend.org.uk with smtp (Exim 1.82 #3)
id 0yG48N-00085d-00 (Debian); Fri, 20 Mar 1998 15:55:04 +0000
Received: from owend by relay.lsl.co.uk with local (Exim 1.82 #1)
id 0yG4E1-0004QW-00; Fri, 20 Mar 1998 16:01:06 +0000
My exim appears to be able to deliver mail. So far so good... Internally?
Received: from relay.lsl.co.uk by lsla3d.lsl.co.uk (MX V4.1 AXP) with SMTP;
Fri, 20 Mar 1998 16:11:45 BST
Received: from owend by relay.lsl.co.uk with local (Exim 1.82 #1) id
0yG4Rk-0004Vr-00; Fri, 20 Mar 1998 16:15:18 +0000
Yep, that's cool. Do I dare make it live this weekend and see what breaks? You
betcha.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Mar 21 21:52:56 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (noisy hamster?) (steph)
Subject: Is
However I didn't get the chance, as the supposedly entirely trivial upgrade to
the firmware on the hub took until 2pm to complete, and neither my boss or I
could be bothered to do any of the other things we'd planned to fix.
The afternoon was spent helping packing, the evening just gathering.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Mar 21 21:58:33 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (evil&lovely?) (steph)
Subject: Day alif plus one month and three days
It ought not to have taken so long for me to get from _there_ to _here_, but
that's circumstance.
But I'm here now, and it feels like a good beginning.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 23 00:47:13 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (little while?) (steph)
Subject: Week Ending
It has been a good weekend, in many many ways.
Friday evening saw pizza at Pizza Hut where anakin and bjh outate the rest of
the party by quite some way, followed by a gathering in Trinity. The presence
of catbells in Cambridge meant a game of Mao was almost inevitable, and with
the rules he introduced it was probably the strangest game I've yet played, and
probably wasn't made significantly more complicated by the addition of an
invisible player :-).
Later I did something I'd been meaning to do for some time, and spent the next
ten minutes or so working off the adrenaline with gratuitous application of
juggling balls and nargery.
Subject: Pondering Your Name
Saturday morning saw me going into work to fix a large number of things, first
of which was the bridge module on our hub, which had taken to crashing. Simple,
said the DEC man: replace the firmware, five minute job. It was two in the
afternoon before we had it fixed again.
Ambling into town I found ceb and bjh, and helped a bit in Owlstone with
packing, ferrying washing and rubbish, and eating cheese and skeletons.
Later at Simon's there was an amf, and a visiting ClareF, and a generally good
evening was had, including a good many games of Boggle on Nak.
The walk back here to GreenEnd that evening saw good conversations,
characterised by some interesting game-playing on what probably became too meta
a level, and the abandonment of same game-playing for simplicity's sake.
Subject: What Absence Makes
Today has seen so many answers to that question. Not all of them were mine.
Amf and I had arranged to meet ClareF and Richard at about ten to walk to
Grantchester, so managing to get there at about 10:15 wasn't bad. It was a good
walk, in (mostly) wonderful sunshine, and I felt an absence of worry, which was
good. We chattered about random things, and ate scones, tea, jam, and cream in
the Orchard in Grantchester.
After some juggling in Trinity (tennis is _fun_), and the return of Gareth from
Leeds, people left for Gardies, gathering Ben on the way. Then there was an
evening.
Term has gone and unexpectedly ended again, and many people are gone. It's odd
without them around, but the termly cycle of departures and arrivals is part of
things. They'll be back.
Absence makes many more and different things than the saying would have you
believe.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 24 12:17:09 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Thoughts
You need an angle for it to even be worthwhile. Otherwise you're always
turning, looking out of the corner of your eye, and you can tell that it goes
off to infinity, but you can't see beyond yourself, reflected huge in the
mirrors and getting in the way. Angle them slightly though, and you're not in
the way any more.
Or perhaps you're trying to watch yourself blink. You almost catch the effect
before the effect of the effect nullifies the effect, makes its observation
impossible.
Everyone's telling me that there's something on the edges of what would be
vision if you could see it, that there's something round the corner waiting for
us. This time, I can't see it. Or rather, I can't see that it's there to be
seen. That feels like a good sign.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 24 15:30:41 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Oh dear
I appear just to have misread /var/spool as /var/spod.
I'm doomed for sure.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 24 15:44:02 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: *Grrrr*
I have just had a headhunter (allegedly recommended by a friend of mine, though
I don't believe that for a moment) phone me and, rather than just politely
asking whether I was interested or not in various opportunities (I'm not) he
gave me the `hard sell' and tried to persuade me to consider them. When I said
I wasn't interested at the moment he said that he'd phone me every couple of
months; when I said I'd rather he didn't get back in touch with me he insulted
me and hung up the phone.
I dislike headhunters anyway - if I ever want to change jobs I'll make that
decision under my own steam for my own reasons - but someone that aggressive
and prepared to insult me over the phone I particularly dislike.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 24 18:08:58 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: *cries*
I try to log on downstairs. No networking to tacitus.
The network card on my computer has died. I turn on the monitor.
*fizz* The monitor dies. I connect something to the serial port.
No getty running.
ARGH!
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 24 19:41:39 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Better
Neither network card was dead, in fact. Someone had disconnected my computer
from the hub.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 25 00:00:43 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
Woo-hoo! I've managed to get the HP booting. Not very far, mind, but it's
better than I'd managed before yesterday, and it's really quite cheering after
all the kerfuffle with monitors and the like.
I'd been feeling a bit lonely earlier, too, and having something to do has
taken my mind off that fraction of things.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Mar 25 22:42:38 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
It feels like there should be more balance here, that I should probably allow
others whom this concerns the discretion I allow myself about the same matter.
Hell, it could hardly be said that I don't trust you enough, could it? ;-)
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 26 09:23:47 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Mornings
This morning so far has been one of those I could do without. I woke up late
(8:30am, which just goes to prove another diarist's point about everything
being relative, rather), wandered into the shower and then out of it again
remembering that the boiler is dead. One quick breakfast later and someone
reminded me that the shower upstairs uses electricity, but by then it was too
late.
And I've lost the map of Addenbrooke's telling me how to get to my appointment
this afternoon, and not only did the fifteen minutes spent searching for it
fail to turn it up, they also made me late for work. *sigh*
Time to go and get a coffee, I think.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 26 11:25:17 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Ooh
One of our developers has just popped into my office to say hello. And nothing
else. Not asking for anything, not complaining about anything, just saying
hello. That's really nice.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Mar 26 14:47:16 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
Well, that was a futile exercise...
Addenbrooke's Psychotherapy Portakabin, 1:20pm 26th March 1998
So where's Dr. Vourdas, then?
Addenbrooke's Food Court, 1:35pm 26th March 1998
Well, I'm not impressed. He'd forgotten that he had the appointment with me.
*grr*
Lunch now, then back to work.
...and so here I am, back at work. Nothing accomplished bar pushing my Curses
game a bit further while I was waiting for the therapist to appear.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 27 12:55:35 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
kosh 'See, as long as you're here, I'll always be here.'
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Mar 27 17:22:10 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: *cries*
One broken Psion.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Mar 28 00:34:24 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
kosh 'Reflection. Surprise. Terror. For the future.'
Ah, well. See you at the hour of scampering...
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Mar 28 14:15:22 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Hmph
The Psion, I am told, will cost about L80 to repair. Unless I find a repair
centre in or around Cambridge, I'll send it off to them and hope it isn't away
too long and that it doesn't lose any data while it's away. (I could use PsiWin
to copy all the files across to a PC, but for that you need to configure the
Psion to have `Remote Link' turned on. With the screen in its current broken
state I can't really turn anything on or off...)
*sigh* It's not going to break the bank, I guess.
I'm feeling completely energyless today. Various friends from old-home are
visiting Cambridge (not specifically to visit me), but I'm probably not going
to see them as I really don't feel like it. Interacting with people whose
contexts and habits are completely different to mine is a hard job and when I'm
feeling as generally flat (broken Psion, broken monitor, no energy, missing
people) as I am at the moment it'd just be too stressful for anyone's good.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Mar 29 00:40:20 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
What with one thing and another, there's been virtually nobody around today. We
did bump into Chris and Brian in Sayle's, but that was about it. The place
feels odd when there's so few people in town, and I don't think I've ever
experienced this before. There's a strange calm, a sense of general lethargy,
around me, which is good as long as I don't understand it the wrong way and
become (more?) unhappy.
Today's been a good day, though. Sunshine in the afternoon, and shopping;
buttons for my coat (which surprised me by their number being seven), eighteen
socks, some toothpaste, and three juggling frogs which I shall call Badger,
Bertie, and Lemur. And it would appear that I am being watched. *shivers*
Nobody at Gardies but bjh and myself, so the rest of the evening's been spent
between compiling ncurses and looking at Befunge and Intercal. Hello World in
24 bytes isn't bad :-). (That's the Befunge. Trying to write it in Intercal
doesn't bear thinking about!)
I wonder what could be done for the usual ways of thinking about the world that
parallels what Befunge (a two-dimensional programming language; see
http://www.cats-eye.com/funge/ for more details) does compared to traditional
programming languages...
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Mar 29 19:02:54 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
The time change to BST confused me. When I woke up I checked the clock on a
Unix system, which was right. When I got home, I looked at a clock on the wall,
which was wrong. Things eventually sorted themselves out, though.
Apart from an almost constant headache, it's been *shrug* a day. I've juggled,
watched the Grand Prix, and fiddled with NetBSD. I'm not unhappy. Just feeling
sort of flat.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 30 00:30:14 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Was
I was slipping a bit, perhaps sinking a bit, and I couldn't really tell why.
Subject: Is
*bounce*
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am pleased to tell you that you are due a repayment of income tax
for the year shown above. ...
A cheque for the sum of L468.64 is attached below.
Wow. :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 30 12:04:11 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
Looks like I'm going to need that cheque. Sayle's were out by about a hundred
poinds in their estimate of how much it would cost to fix my Psion. Apparently
the repair cost will be more like L175. Hell, that's nearly enough to buy a new
Series 3. *sighs*
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 30 12:32:22 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
All of this Psion kerfuffle is essentially a word of warning about the Series
5 as compared to the 3; there are a lot fewer places willing to repair them and
it'll cost a lot more. I don't know whether I was particularly unlucky or
particularly careless in knocking mine such that the screen broke, and it
hardly matters; having made the initial outlay to buy the thing, I have to
cough up to get it fixed.
It's still IMO a nice machine, and I certainly prefer its keyboard to that of
the Series 3, but non-warranty repairs for it are no fun at all.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 30 19:02:20 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
Modifying the settings on a Psion 5 with only a sixteenth of the screen working
is more feasible than it sounds. I can now send the poor beastie off to be
fixed with a less heavy heart (admittedly also a less heavy wallet, but hey),
as I have backups of all the files on its internal `disk'. This counts as good.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Mar 30 20:01:02 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Your author is an idiot.
I feel it only fair to point this out to people _before_ they fall victim to my
stupidity...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 31 00:09:20 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: The Tower
I'm sitting in the room again, among the candles, breathing in the silence. A
wise man once told me that there was a reason for the way the candles were
placed around the room. Light one, and the light is feeble, imbalanced, so you
have to light another, introducing yet more imbalance. And so you proceed,
candle by candle, until the room is perfectly lit. It is a foolish man, so I
was told, who tries just to snuff one candle, for he ends up following the
pattern, candle by candle, until he is in the dark.
The door to the outside is open now; I think perhaps Spring is finally here
(even here, the seasons can have their way), and to a place as used to Winter
as this that's particularly welcome. I run my hands over the flags, feeling
their smooth, cold contours. Sometimes they've seemed so very cold and
unforgiving, but now there's a feeling of comfort in the cool stone.
To think that I was prepared to snuff that candle...
Above, later, and the bell still tolls, but it feels like a call from a distant
isle, far across the sea. I get up and sit on the doorstep, looking out at the
forest around. I can almost smell the sea water.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 31 00:11:37 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Will Be
Tomorrow I send my Psion off to be fixed.
And make a phone call.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 31 18:53:29 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
And I had one hell of a stressful day. The internal mail system fell over
rather spectacularly on the arrival of a large amount of spam, and what of the
day I didn't spend looking at broken Windows boxes was spent trying desperately
to bring mail back under control. There was a meeting, too, about something
actually quite interesting, which managed to be utterly dull by virtue of being
full of people using words like `synergy'.
The Psion was sent away, and the phone call was made. Both of these have made
me feel a lot cheerier than I've been for the past few days, particularly the
second. If truth be told, I'm actually feeling rather bouncy now :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 31 20:20:27 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is. (Later)
Lying down looking at the ceiling doesn't usually make me feel this out of it.
Everything is swimming ever so slightly in my field of vision, and I'm feeling
ever so slightly queasy. The sparkle of earlier appears to have worn off
somewhat, now, but I'm a little reluctant to follow my instinctive reaction to
this by going out to find company. Mostly because I said to myself that I'd
have an evening in, but partly too because people won't want me around all the
time...
In some ways that's one of the problems with living out here; it's always me
going to visit other people and always the niggling voice at the back of my
head that says that I'm imposing, taking advantage, being around too much. It
was good when I lived in the centre of town and people popped by, just because
they were passing.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Mar 31 22:44:48 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Hm
It is a quarter to eleven by tacitus's clock, and I appear to have spent the
best part of the evening reading old diary entries. Not what I'd planned, but
it seems to have woken me up a littlle and I'm not feeling as off-peak as I was
earlier.
In case you were wondering, I'm up to August 1996 now :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Apr 1 14:16:35 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
It became colder and the rain steadily heavier as I walked back from GreenEnd
to Laser-Scan, and my mood has become gloomier too. I've been daydreaming about
funerals again, which is a little disturbing. On the other hand I can probably
put both of these down to the headache I've also got, take some paracetamol,
and feel better by the end of the afternoon.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Apr 1 18:12:21 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
Feeling lonely. It'll pass.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Apr 2 01:04:37 1998]--
From: (S) What I love you for. (steph)
Subject: Later
And it did. Before it did, though, I combined a set of things whose
associations didn't belong together at all, and it worked beautifully. One was
a mug of hot chocolate, another a bowl of mushroom soup, and the third was
`Blue is the Colour' by the Beautiful South. That's where the nameline for this
entry (the real one being non-volatile for a little while yet) comes from. Not
because of any context, just because of the wonderful chord at that point.
Then I walked out into the rain, and took myself to Corpus and thence to
Gareth's for Bakewells. At both of these places there was a Chryisasmin being
cute at itself.
I'd perked up a bit by the end of the evening.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Apr 2 10:12:16 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: *bounces*
One repaired Psion.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Apr 2 15:33:03 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
Not entirely happy with the outcome of my session with Dr.Vourdas today.
Telling a complete stranger the [stuff] of the past few years is a very
uncomfortable thing, and apart from his thickly accented English (which I find
hard to understand at times) I had something of a feeling that he was judging
me... The short term effect, unfortunately, has been to make me generally less
happy than I was, but it's possible that future sessions will be more
productive; if they're not I can always stop.
These lines come to mind:
`I just cannot parse the language you speak,
And you'll never understand me...'
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Apr 2 17:39:32 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: SMTP dialogue...
You've seen HELO. You've witnessed EHLO. How long will it be before someone
introduces EHOH?
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 3 09:23:45 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Thoughts
One wonders: peril-sensitive sunglasses? Or mirrorshades?
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 3 15:49:56 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
A good sign, definitely. I'm a lot less jittery today than I was the last time.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 3 20:54:48 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: ...
And the contrast between the feeling now and the feeling then is echoed by the
feeling there and the feeling here. I don't know whether going there would have
been any good for me anyway - it's far better to have been able to get from
then to now without running from here to there - but there's a certain
something to have been a seed crystal. So I hope it helps.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Apr 4 17:40:16 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Ah
I would appear to have dome some useful shopping (soap and video tapes for
videoing B5) as well as some frivolous shopping (sweets from the sweet shop on
the market, and some juggling balls of my own). This counts as a good thing.
Then I came to Corpus, and coincidence had it that I was in the right place to
talk to ceb on the phone when she phoned, which definitely counts as a good
thing too.
I'm not good on the phone. There's something about it that makes me forget all
the things that I'd mention in conversation, or in a letter, and so instead I
find myself umming and ahhing a lot in an attempt to remember what I was going
to say. This isn't actually as much of a problem as it might seem, because
completely different conversations develop which might not otherwise have come
to mind. I've also noticed that after some amount of time spent regularly
communicating with someone on the phone, it all feels a lot more comfortable.
I guess my baseline is that I just don't like telephones, and that that dislike
is softened considerably by the way I'm cheered by the people I talk to or the
useful things that get accomplished.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 5 02:39:02 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
This afternoon was good, this evening less so. There aren't any reasons that I
can ascribe to that dimming of my mood, or at least none that I'm certain of
and that could be mentioned here; it certainly wasn't the pleasant gathering of
people in Richard's room that did it.
Could have done with saying something, actually, but there wasn't the time or
the place.
Cheered marginally by hearing from someone else I've been missing. There are
unpleasant extrapolations I could make from that, though. Not so good.
For some reason I'm vaguely uneasy, vaguely tense.
Nothing to do but sleep on it.
Think thoughts.
Hold myself tight and dream of towers.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 5 14:47:02 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Oh hell.
Not good. Not good at all. I didn't want to be here, but I didn't want to be
walking to Grantchester in the rain either. Now I'm ill at ease with myself.
Something's been underlying all of yesterday and today and I don't know what it
is; the best I've been able to do with it is mask it by being happy with the
external situation, and not being now happy with that at the moment, the
internals are showing through.
Lost. I wasn't meant to be feeling like this. And it's bringing on all the
usual guilt... Pull it together. Be what I need (am needed) to be. Otherwise
it'll be plain that none of this will have been for anything, and I'm not
prepared to admit that as a possibility.
I _can_ do this. This _can_ work. There is no alternative.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 5 19:02:04 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Diary archives
Archives of the Interlude and some of Part Two of this diary are now available
by sending a message with the body text GET INTERLUDE or GET PARTTWO to
diary@torvax.greenend.org.uk
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 5 22:46:07 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is, Later
A little better now, perhaps, and at least I know why I recovered a bit -
thanks are due to Ben for hugs - even if I didn't really know why I'd been down
in the first place. I left Simon's early; I'd managed to snap at one person,
and perhaps an early night will be good for me.
Tomorrow may see some things cheer me some more, or it may not.
I should perhaps point out that the snapping was justified, even if its manner
wasn't. I don't like my life being made hard, especially not in matters where
I'm trying to do something good and worthwhile for someone else.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 6 14:21:05 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: *bounce*
The familiar strains of that song chase round my head, probably to echo long
after I've put the Walkman to one side, and it's almost as if I'm there again,
safe, comfortable, and happy.
Almost...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 6 15:54:44 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Oh, and while I'm here
I was told this should go somewhere, so it'll go here:
Lloyds of London: The innocent have been changed to protect the names
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 6 16:44:53 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Strange devices
I've acquired a SCSI switcher, which apparently allows one to connect a SCSI
device to more than one machine at once, and a twisted pair junction box. This
latter puzzles me, as I'm not entirely sure what one might accomplish with such
a beast beyond joining two pieces of TP cable to form a longer connection. Yet
it has four sockets...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 6 16:51:03 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: More acquisitions
Mini reference guides for RSX-11M and RSX-11M-PLUS...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 6 18:50:32 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
It approaches time to leave the office, as I'll miss the Archers at 7pm
otherwise... I'm bouncy, having just written a letter and listened to a tape,
from which latter the Dr. Who theme is currently playing :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Apr 7 00:43:23 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Would have been
It was a snap decision. I could have wandered Corpus-wards, to join what
probably would have materialised as a gathering of some sort, but I chose
instead to visit another place. I'm glad of it, because some things are
necessary.
Some things are necessary, and some things are unfortunate. It would have been
better, perhaps, if alif and alif plus six hadn't happened and we hadn't come
to this point, but distance was both necessary and unfortunate. Distance does
not mean absence, however, and it was good that I felt able to make that plain
to myself.
The jitter is almost gone.
Today seems to have been full of confirmations, of alif, and of the
consequences of alif plus six. The sort of glory that just comes to one,
without effort, without tears.
Though perhaps I've already shed all the tears I'm going to about that.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Apr 7 11:49:29 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Strange device update
The junction box appears not to be for TP after all, but for what looks like
American-style phone jacks.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Apr 7 15:30:53 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm trying to find a PSU for an old Atari TT motherboard I've got, and when I
last investigated this I found a web page for a company which sold such things.
Unfortunately, I forgot to save the URL, so I trusted that AltaVista would be
my friend. It wasn't. It appears completely to have lost the plot over the past
year or so, to the extent that it's now rare that I get the information I want
from it. It can't really be that I'm asking for more esoteric things in my old
age, can it?
As it happens the EuroFerret <URL: http://www.euroferret.com/> was my friend
and got me the web page I found last time, which is progress, even if the
company aren't answering the phone this afternoon...
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Apr 8 09:52:27 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Curious Inversions
Reading a NetHack newsgroup, I notice that zorkmid is `Dim Kroz' backwards.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Apr 8 15:49:33 1998]--
From: (S) Boxes within boxes without boxes (steph)
Subject: New volatile nameline
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Apr 8 17:21:55 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: A life in the day
Some days I don't see the sky at all. I tend to get up at eight or so, and have
as leisurely a breakfast as I can manage; I'll have woken up to Radio 4 and
that's what I put on in the dining room for fifteen minutes while I wake up
some more. hen there's time for a shower. I tend to leave the house a bit after
a quarter o nine just as `Yesterday in Parliament' starts.
The walk to work takes about ten minutes but I tend not to notice the world
until I get there so the most I actually see is the tarmac of the pavement. I'm
not usually the first into the office, which is nice; my coworker Keith will
already have been here for an hour, so I get a picture as soon as I arrive of
what state the systems are in. Another coffee (or the first of the day if I've
woken up late) and then I get to work, rerunning any backups which failed
usually being the first job.
On busy days I won't stop until lunchtime, though I grab a sandwich
mid-morning, but I like to walk home at one for lunch there. It gives me a good
break in the day and a chance to listen to the radio a little and perhaps
practise my juggling; it was better when I could catch the repeat of `The
Archers' at 1:40, but they moved it in the new schedules.
By two I'm back at work. The afternoon is much the same as the morning, though
often slower; I'm certainly on my feet for less of it until I put in the
night's backup tapes at five and then leave at around half past. Sometimes I'll
stick around the office for a little while if there's something interesting I'm
doing for myself or as part of my job, but more often I like to get away
promptly, particularly if I've had a stressful day and want to run off before
someone else asks me something!
After that it'll either be off home or into town to meet friends; most days
there's something happening in the evening somewhere and it's good to see
people. I'll eat whatever's most convenient in the evening, which means I'll
get anything from a full cooked meal at home to a burger and chips from the van
on the Market Square.
I tend to get back home from town at any time between eleven and one, and I
usually go straight to bed after that. A lot of the time I fall asleep as soon
as my head hits the pillow.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Apr 9 23:46:51 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
A good phone call ends a somewhat grey day. Given what I remember most of the
latter is two taxi rides and lots of rain, a phone call can pretty much only be
good, I suppose.
The phone call poses a question, though...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 10 20:46:48 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm on hold within a state of being on hold, with nothing to hold me, so I've
been slipping all day.
Regrets where there should be none, fears of things that will not be, and
worries about things that can not be. Loneliness that... should be, I guess.
I'd be surprised if I weren't lonely.
I shine so dimly, so very dimly, when nobody can see...
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 12 22:52:20 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
steph watches the time pass, thinking of a million things he'd rather
do.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 13 23:46:25 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Was
Good things from this weekend:
* One mended coat.
* [Your score has just gone up by fifty points]
* Tidy room.
* Tax rebate paid into bank.
* Acquisition of `Garbage'.
* A start at four-ball juggling.
* Phone call to a friend.
Not-so-good things from this weekend:
* Loneliness. (At times, anyway; it's been OK most of the time.)
* Not getting any walking done. (I had planned to walk to Ely, but with the
weather being the way it has been it didn't seem a good plan.)
* Failure to write any code for nding.
* Worry about consequences of phone call to a friend.
Listed like this because I can't be bothered to string it all together into
paragraphs.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Apr 16 09:30:36 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Was
It's irritating when mono's down. While things get recorded in the other diary,
they're hard to convert into the descriptions of days that need to be recorded
here. Nevertheless...
The past two days have been characterised by one thing: lack of energy. It's
felt like the ground is pressing up and the sky pressing down on me, with the
result that I haven't got a great deal done at work over that time. My
inclination is to ascribe many of the other vague doubts and worries that have
characterised these days to that same feeling of energylessness. I just need to
make sure I eat more, and properly, I guess.
Tuesday evening was a good end to Tuesday proper. While other people were going
to Wake up Screaming, I didn't feel up to it, but ambled from GreenEnd to
Corpus, where Ben was unpacking things brought here from Plymouth. We were
briefly joined by Gareth and Simon before they went off to WuS.
Yesterday evening was good, too, after a fashion. I got round to making a phone
call, which was good and cheering. Had to wander into town later to get some
money from the bank, but nobody was around and visitable so I went back home
again and to bed.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Apr 16 17:05:44 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
Know that knowledge will change you, and know that you cannot unknow.
Understanding is a three-edged sword.
And it's sharp.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 17 01:30:11 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Was
It took one simple phrase from Lanfear to turn things around:
`It's amazing what you can do when your back's against the wall.'
Guess which half of that sentence I'd been preoccupied with. Today's
psychotherapy appointment with Dr. Vourdas was productive, too; by the evening
I was feeling generally bouncy and cheerful, and enjoyed a quiet NBI in Simon's
room with Ben, Alison, and Richard.
There's stuff that could do with being written while my head's in the useful
state it is. With luck and a following wind this will happen tomorrow.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 17 09:18:26 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: And Gareth...
(How did Gareth manage to get forgotten from that entry? I mean, how can you
forget Gareth?)
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 17 09:42:17 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Was
I was thinking on my way home last night of the second entry of Part One of
this diary:
> -------------------------------------------------[Thu Dec 19 21:32:36 1996]--
> From: Good Morning Balham (steph)
>
> Subject: What was
>
> So I ended up crying on a Friend in Oxford, rather than actually enjoying
> myself. Such is life.
>
> And now I'm feeling low again, while having to put up with a cold and the
> fact that my friends aren't around.
>
> Sorry; there was going to be some point to things here, but I don't have
> the courage to write what I need to write, or the gumption to write what I
> want to write. Maybe another day.
A long time ago, and yet I know exactly what I was crying about. Perhaps, as
was pointed out to me yesterday, I do have a good memory. It was hurting me
always to be walking in someone's shadow, even then. And this year, finally, I
walked out from under that shadow.
It's easy to say `I don't regret it', but in the dark, thinking, remembering,
sometimes I remember moments from the past few years. Fondly, often, and
perhaps I would rather that things had been different, but certain fundamentals
of personality and circumstance made that impossible. Regret? Of course there's
some, but just a little, now.
My world is spinning on a new axis, in a new orbit. Gods it's refreshing.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 17 16:03:36 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Is
Playing with 1/2" tape drives is _fun_ :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 17 22:33:42 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Cool!
Eraina Taverna
A plain but cheery taverna, fill of miserable and rather ashamed men who are
drinking retsina heavily. The day is dawning outside the north door, but they
strangely do not share your uplifted feeling at the sight.
Left untouched on one table is an Ekmek Special dessert.
Behind the bar, a depressed bartender polishes glasses.
>consult dictionary about eraina
The Ekmek Special is a delicacy still served to this day by the Eraina Taverna,
Free School Lane, Cambridge, England. Much prized by itinerant mathematicians.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Apr 18 21:01:08 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (HOLD) (steph)
Subject: Correlation One
20:59, after one at approximately 17:00 and one at approximately 20:00.
Subject: Prediction One
Thirty-two.
Subject: (...)
(...)
(...)
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 19 13:44:06 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Correlation Two
13:35, after one at 11:00. Tenuous.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 19 13:47:53 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
A lazy Sunday morning listening to the Archers mostly in bed, followed by
Babylon 5 at lunchtime.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 19 14:38:58 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
Apologies for cryptic entries here. To some extent they're there as markers to
me, so that I can work out whether something I believe might be happening is in
fact happening or not.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 19 20:55:00 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
steph rails against the idea that dinner happens at 9:30pm.
The problem with attempting to eat here is that dinner here isn't designed as a
meal you have before an evening of doing things. It seems to be a meal to be
eaten when you're not planning on doing anything else that night.
I wonder if I'm just being odd in wanting to go out of an evening.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 20 09:21:22 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Was
So I went to the pub instead. Although the evening started with me feeling
somewhat on the outside of things, standing effectively behind the group of
people gathered around the small table, things improved with the arrival of
ceb, bjh, and fumble and the consequent colonization of another table.
Afterwards, after an odd moment of indecision, I made it to Richard's for tea
and silly conversations.
Subject: Will Be
So here we are again. Reaffirmation. Glory.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Apr 21 14:38:01 1998]--
From: (S) I push the flowers aside. (steph)
Subject: Was
It would perhaps have been better if I'd been able to put some kind of
reasoning on it, but as it was it was just a darkness which gradually
crept upon me over the course of the evening until, at the last, I was
going to walk away to Coton. Noticing this, I panicked, ran, and found
people.
Two questions: Am I coping? No. What am I not coping with? If this is
just a random up and down then it's a very pronounced down, which is
worrying, so I really have to find a reason. All I can really come up
with is that it's a (hopefully short-lived) depression caused by stress
about him, leaving him, and the consequences of that.
If it is that, then that's OK. Panicking is not good, but if it's only
indicative of a natural and reasonable state of mind I can cope,
albeit perhaps with quite a lot of help from others. Thanks and *hugs*
are due to Ben and Clare for providing this by coping with me last
night.
What I'm somewhat afraid of, particularly because of the suddenness,
randomness, and depth of the depression and subsequent panic, is that
it's something more long-term that's been brought back into the light
by recent stress.
However, what I'm _hoping_, and what I in fact believe is most likely
the case, is that it was just a consequence of something short-term.
The other worry is Louise. She has plans to find someone for me, which
I like not one bit. On the immediate level, that's not a possibility
right now because my heart's busy elsewhere. On a more general level
it's not a good idea, because it runs so completely counter to my set
of ideals about love and relationships; I tend to think that these
things should be built on a foundation of friendship first. So I'm
going to have to squash that plan.
And then there's me, and a need to work out whether I can do what I'm
currently setting out to do. Can I in fact end up having everything I
want simply by moving the goalposts such that I already do have that?
If so, and sufficiently convincingly so to quash fears that I'm not
liked or wanted, I'm in a sustainable steady state and a good many of
the worries simply cease to exist.
We'll go with that, I think.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Apr 22 15:56:35 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Is
I have the beginnings of a cold, which is not good, and the PC a few metres to
my right is due to be decapitated if it doesn't start acknowledging my
existence to the extent of letting me log on.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Apr 22 18:54:44 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Eliot
I first came across the poetry of T.S. Eliot when Melika, a friend with whom
I'm sadly no longer in touch, gave me a copy of `The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock'. I loved it, for all its oddness and the complete impression of
a feeling of stuffiness. `Do I dare to eat a peach' or to `force the moment to
its crisis'?
Now I am discovering more. I'd looked only a little at `The Waste Land' in the
past, but the discovery that there was so much of it in Curses (the adventure
game in which I'm currently stuck) has brought me back to it, and it, too, is
wonderful.
Sometimes we overlook poetry, but there's power there.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Apr 23 01:26:35 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Was
Regret -> Joy -> Comfort -> Realisation -> Regret and No Regrets
Going to the pub and seeing people was good for me, and for my understanding of
people. Coming home, track eleven of `Ziggy Stardust' was playing in the living
room.
And now it's thundering outside.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Apr 23 17:15:39 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Is
I suppose I've had something of an easier time of it here for the past month or
so, without the possibility of certain things on Users On jittering me, but it
was still something of an unnerving surprise.
Any effects are of course going to be magnified manifold by the grotty feelings
caused by the cold I have at the moment.
Which reminds me: Lemsip time.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 24 00:19:13 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Paracetamol Logic
More Lemsip. It at least does something useful for the headache as well as
tasting mostly OK.
A good evening, although one overshadowed by my cold and fragments of [stuff]
from earlier. It turns out that Louise was (very successfully) winding me up
about things mentioned above, so I can feel foolish and breathe a sigh of
relief.
Saw Elizabeth earlier in the evening, too, which was a Good Thing.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Apr 24 23:03:39 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Was
I didn't go into work today, which was probably just as well given how grotty I
felt at various points during the day.
Finding people this evening seems to have been a good thing as well, since it's
brought me out of myself a little.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Apr 25 01:59:32 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Is
{ Over } perceptive and too { vague } thinking to work out what I'm actually
{ Under } { clear }
feeling and what's just a { manifestation } of the cold, I'm in an odd state.
{ creation }
[ ] Spective [ ] Reflective [ ] Depressive [ ] Irrepressible
[ ] Happy [ ] Content [ ] Perplexed [ ] Other
(tick all that apply, in black only)
There are altogether too many { memories } to be found around Cambridge
{ dreams }
sometimes.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 26 01:26:37 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Is
Cocktails Workshop... mmm...
James's Party... mmm...
Life... mmm...?
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 26 01:48:38 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Was (Is of Will Be, part two)
We will live by the heart. Always what we feel will move us, cause us to act.
You can see it, when you watch carefully who moves where, for we are all
mirrors, reflecting and reflecting and reflecting until reality is all lost
somewhere deep in a maze of images and the light of the reflections is all
there is to guide us.
We will die by the heart. We drive ourselves to impossible tasks, risking
destroying ourselves in the process, and we do not realise what we are doing.
We fail to see that we are much more important than our reflections in marks on
papers and numbers, that it all means nothing if we do not survive intact. But
we drive ourselves anyway, and the pain of failure reflects and reflects and
reflects until reality is all lost somewhere deep in a maze of images, and
our only guide can be the pain that brought us here.
Sometimes we need to fly free, to find new lands. For that we need home ground,
safe ground, contentment, and to provide them for others.
It all matters, yes, but let it not matter too much. Even freedom can become a
cage.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Apr 26 14:47:46 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Is
*ponders* *ponders* *ponders*
That'll be a `yes', then?
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 27 01:24:08 1998]--
From: (S) My favourite axe. (steph)
Subject: Sunlight, Cracks, and Fragments
That didn't work too well, did it? Distinct fear of a reality-metaphor shift
with no delay this time, hoping it wasn't. We walked in the sunlight, and yet,
and yet...
Damn. I should have asked, indeed should have gone back to ask. There are
places I should be. Or should have been. And yet... And yet...
Dinner with Brian and Abi, and later in Newnham, reading about the Tarot, and
then on Newnham roof (a wonderful place with a wonderful view), and then in the
pub. Good people, good company, and yet... and yet...
That alone, that regret alone, that shape of worry and knawing doubt, tells me
everything I need to know. Louise, I fear you were wrong.
Sorry.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 27 10:43:11 1998]--
From: (S) Tears... like grains of sand. (steph)
Subject: Was
That entry is bleaker than the `wonderful, but' that I had wanted to convey.
The fact that I was worrying about various people (not all of whom read this
diary, it should probably be pointed out) was most of it; the rest was certain
internal conflicts which I certainly don't want to go into here.
Anyway, to backtrack...
Friday was me being off work due to a cold, but I decided to do things in the
evening, and felt better for it. While the plan had been to collect Emily from
the station and then to return townwards, we instead ended up at Alison's and
failed to depart, tempted rather by tea and hippos and remote control mice.
(And `Blue is the Colour' playing: a CD which brings out a strange nostalgic
feel in me.)
Saturday saw shopping with Richard, Emily, Abi, and Simon (I'll only have gone
and forgotten someone completely unforgivably now, so apologies in advance to
whomever it is I've missed out) which was fun and saw me acquire new CDs
(`Salad Daze', the new Loreena McKennitt (which I didn't even know existed!),
and a strange CD from Whittard's *grin*). There was a brief visit to Corpus to
offload picture-rail CDs and then it was off to Simon's for the Gardiesmeet.
And thence to the CUSFS Cocktails Workshop for me, at least in part in the hope
that it would cheer someone else up. I think it did, to a degree. Much
silliness and many curdled drinks later, I went off to James's party for an
hour or so. Good fun, happy spod, was hug. (To steal and mangle a phrase.)
Sunday morning was radio and TV: the Archers, Babylon 5, and the San Marino
Grand Prix. Sunday afternoon was tea at Richard's (including Spectrum games,
which brought back a few memories), pizza for dinner with Brian and Abi, and
then a walk back to Newnham in the early evening. And wow. Newnham seen from
the roof is amazing. For that matter Cambridge seen from Newnham roof is, too.
It's wonderful being on top of the world like that.
The evening ended with the pub and then with more tea at Richard's, followed by
a pleasantly nargy walk home with James. A good weekend, I think.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 27 11:35:25 1998]--
From: (S) Tears... like grains of sand. (steph)
Subject: Thoughts
Well, it at least tells me that I'm as good a predictor of my own emotions as
ever. *sigh*
kosh 'It is not yet time.'
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 27 15:35:09 1998]--
From: (S) Tears... like grains of sand. (steph)
Subject: Is
Wacky plans. They could happen to anyone.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 27 15:42:23 1998]--
From: (S) Sense of humour failure :-( (steph)
Subject: Um
For some reason weirdo has decided to parody my nameline.
For some reason this annoys me.
I'm obviously suffering a complete failure of sense of humour today.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 27 17:13:08 1998]--
From: (S) Sense of humour failure :-( (steph)
Subject: *sigh*
PCs. Ingres. The assumption of infinite time.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Apr 27 21:55:19 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
mar_hare `Have some wine.'
alice `I don't see any wine.'
mar_hare `There isn't any.'
alice `Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it.'
mar_hare `It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited.'
steph takes the point.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Apr 28 11:35:38 1998]--
From: (S) Rather Right than Happy (steph)
Subject: Whatever happened to the power of glory?
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Apr 28 14:11:45 1998]--
From: (S) Rather Right than Happy (steph)
Subject: Is
If anyone comes up with a way to cheer me up, please let me know...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Apr 28 20:43:20 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: (no time)
Just as there are things I see as very clearly right or wrong, there are
things which I very clearly see as being things I do or don't do. It's not
clear why the boundaries lie where they do, and it's hard to define them, but
they are there.
And just as I try to do things which are `right', I try to do things which are
`me'. So when I do things I might not normally do, for whatever reason, there's
a crossing of a boundary line and consequent bad feelings.
So there isn't a great deal of space for newness in my life. Consider that what
I do tend to do is be unhappy, and there's a conclusion there: I will always be
like this.
There's another conclusion, too. However fervently we may say that the story
must not win, it's inescapably the fact that it will always win, because it
always has. The cycle will be repeated time after time after time, and each
time I will lose more, in the same ways. There's always just enough to keep
going, enough gained from the previous loop for us to have something to lose
again.
I am trapped, as it were, in the cage of self-image, and I like this idea not
at all.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Apr 28 20:57:26 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: (no time)
An inherent part of the cycle is dependency. Not dependency on any drug,
although I certainly have that in the form of caffeine without which I cope
very badly with the day, but a dependency on people. When I was younger it
never mattered that I was alone or that the only socialising I did was in idle
moments at school, but now it matters so much not to be alone.
On good days I can find things to occupy me. On bad days I'm almost scared of
my own company. Those are general truths. But at certain points in the cycle I
become more dependent on people to the extent that while I try not to, I
hassle people with my presence. The fear that I'm not wanted then becomes a
self-reinforcing one when they finally break and cease wanting to put up with
me.
And so, in the past, things tend to become tenser, more strained, more offhand,
and I regret what has been lost on this cycle, because it starts to be unclear
what it was all lost for.
The story of the cycle never tells that a year, maybe two, down the line,
things are almost good again. But that's the selective thinking of the
storyteller.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Apr 28 21:02:15 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Is
I seem to be spending more than my fair share of days with Brian on a roof at
sunset.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Apr 29 14:41:40 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Keycaps
I have obtained the letters O, W, E, and N from a coffeed keyboard. I want to
make something out of them. Suggestions as to what?
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Apr 29 20:11:44 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Is
Well, that's that cleared up, anyway. *sigh* I think I can put the
misinterpretation down to two people having had a bad day.
While it was only a small contribution to my general unhappiness, it's good to
have it cleared up. Whether the rest of it goes away remains to be seen,
though, and that'll depend a great deal on how this evening goes, I suspect.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Apr 29 20:19:49 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Was (awake and screaming)
(For the record, mine as much as yours, an impression of the thoughts that were
running through my head while I walked home last night.)
Damn. Before it was always, always, always, I don't ever remember a no not now.
Why was that? Well, yes we knew we were valued but... Damn. Regret regret
regret regret, no no no this is all wrong. This is new. This is you. Sing-song
rhyming games, no morals no shame. Ha. Morals, that's the problem. Rather Right
than Happy, eh? Or is that just something you say? Rather Happy than Right? At
what cost, whose cost? What's the cost? And now we know the cost. There will be
war. Didn't know quite how bad. That's the cycle for you. Pedestrian crossing.
*accident* Pain, death. Pain. Tears. Hospital, tears, telephone. Do you mind if
I go to the funeral? Police car. Evening sky. Damn. Bad thinking, must stop it,
this is what winds me up, winds me up. I just want to RAGE. Explode. Try to
bring back the soft light exploding outwards *fwoomph* but it's always the
violent explosion *bang*, but we walk on and there's the traffic lights, and
there's the place where I had _that_ conversation. Pleased to meet you, Mr.
Past. Rattle. Keys. Keep my keys in pocket, all the time, why? Rattle. Keys.
And we're home.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Apr 30 10:32:00 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: A good evening
Corpus for food with Simon, Gareth, Oliver, and Alison (and then Ben and Clare
and Jacob), followed by tabl and crossword (I got at least three clues,
which cheered me somwheat), and thence to C4 with Simon to spod for a little
while while various ppl went off to work and Clare and Gareth went off to eat
Bakewells.
Thence to the Anchor where there were no people, and thence to the Fountain
where there were no people. So we got a very large sieve out and started
looking for octopuses :-). In the end we got Karen, Graham, Oliver, Simon,
Jacob, me, Abi and Brian. And when we went back to Richard's todrink tea,
Gareth, Clare, and Alison arrived shortly afterwards.
And after we left _there_, Gareth insisted on dragging us to Corpus to play
tabl again, even though it was 12:30 ;-)
A good evening, which cheered me up quite a bit, even if it did mean I woke up
at 8:45 and was late for work this morning...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 1 01:25:39 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Is
Notification of an urgent message, duly passed on. It's like an electric
current. Your heart rate goes up at the sense of urgency, and then it's gone
and you're left with an after-effect.
I worry about those around me.
Indeed, I worry about people you might not think I would.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 1 11:36:23 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Hmm
There's obviously still enough of the Arabist in me.
I see `tabl' and think of adding a definite article to it `at-tablu'. And then
I have a horrid feeling the T b l root already has a meaning that almost
certainly has nothing to do with plastic men with metal shafts through their
chests.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat May 2 00:37:28 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Is
(The time frame is misleading, but I left it, on the grounds that typing
[ESC]GMLYD and finding the `Is' already waiting for me at the head of the edit
is not only amusing, but also interesting; it suggests I've been trying to say
things all day.)
Last night saw a number of revelations, all of them about me. I've been given
the opportunity to see myself as others see me of late (in small limited ways)
and it's revealed a few things that I'd suspected for some time, but hadn't
been sure about. In some moods and under some circumstances, I'd find these
things terribly depressing, but I'm obviously in the right mood (happyish) and
the right circumstances (not wanting a great deal I don't have, and what I want
not mattering a great deal being the principal facets of these) to see value in
revelations for what they are.
Another revelation's been coming back to me again and again. It's not something
that's easily worded, but here goes. Imagine two faces, at the front-left and
front right corners of a square room, facing you, when you're standing at the
back. You're first startled by a similarity between the faces that you'd not
seen before, and then you notice that they're drawing closer to each other,
merging, and eventually that there's only the one face. This is normally the
stuff that dreams are made of, but the idea came to me while I was completely
sober and completely awake, so I'm keeping hold of it, playing with it to see
what it's useful for.
I'm glad it's a long weekend coming up. The past few days have been hectic at
work, due to various departments moving around the office. That's
short-sighted over-enthusiastic finance-grabbing sub-letting for you.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun May 3 18:14:11 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Saturday
Yesterday was a good day. I had an almost unheard-of lie-in until two, and then
spent the afternoon in random shopping, buying lots of books and sitting in a
cafe reading one of them (`City of the Mind' by Penelope Lively; the others
were a volume of Eliot and a book about the Tarot). In the evening there was a
Gardies meet, and a huge subsequent NBI, which was fun. Oddly, everyone
vanished somewhere around ten o'clock, but Simon, Jacob, Ben, and I stayed
around until a little later.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun May 3 18:18:20 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Argh
Mono is broken, messages aren't working, and given I don't know how to use the
talker, this makes conversations about a lack of communication rather
difficult :-(.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun May 3 22:17:18 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Is
It's none of it been this raw, this powerful, for ages. This is sheerest glory,
passive glory. Not a quick shot that'll get you through the evening, an almost
painful high with even more painful a down, but... euphoria, ecstacy...
The white light has been shining, pulsing, glowing all day, quietly and on the
fringes of my consciousness. It'd be scary if it didn't feel so good.
Subject: On the Flip Side
For those who don't care for metaphor and what it feels like:
I'm happy, I've had a good couple of days, with good people, and it feels good.
The tactic of modifying goals so that I've already achieved them appears to
have worked, which is surprising. Gratifying, too.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon May 4 14:33:34 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Was
A little while ago I was trying to correlate twinges of unhappiness and
paranoia with when I'd most recently drunk coffee. I've not noticed any more
significant ones than those that were mentioned here, so caffeine, modulo being
an addictive and destructive drug, is safe.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon May 4 14:44:58 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Is (Was (Will Be))
In dreams lurk all the reflections of all our days. We are shown whose stars
are ascending, whose are falling, what irks us and what would bring us joy. We
are shown what might be as a reflection of what is and what was, as we walk
under a sky that is reference without substance.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon May 4 17:38:28 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Is
The euphoric state seems to have subsided rather, which is a shame. I'm still
content though.
Even if very annoyed at my lack of progress in Curses, in which I
am completely stuck.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon May 4 22:37:52 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Is
And suddenly it's gone, a memory, as if it'd never been there.
Damn.
I'd like to attribute this to something useful or usual, something I can blame,
something I can get a handle on. But it just happened. Maybe it was entering
that room (so, is it getting a little weird when memories attack us that
strongly?) or something. Later, a definite feeling at Rocksoc that I do not
belong.
I do not belong.
I do not belong.
I do not belong.
So I left, and wish I hadn't, but wish I hadn't been there to leave, and hadn't
been in a state such that going would be a problem. What caused it? Why did I
suddenly slip downwards from euphoria to contentment, and then from contentment
to rage? (Repressing the urge to walk into the midst of the fair - another
failure on my part there - and scream at the top of my voice...) Why?
What the hell is wrong with me?
I've had this before, but that was depression and I don't believe that is the
case now. Or am unwilling to believe that that is the case now.
So what the hell is wrong with me?
Something set me thinking of The Land, perhaps, of a conversation with a
Messianic Jew in a Jerusalem youth hostel. That shouldn't affect me now,
though.
So what the hell is wrong with me?
Someone mentioned Alexandra, but I tend to be perfectly happy with talking
about that, can almost laugh at it, these days. None of these things are good
reasons for it all having collapsed. Damn. There's not even a memory of the
feeling of Sunday, and I don't have the energy to try and glory myself up. Go
to bed, Owen, go to bed. When morning comes, it will be morning. No more than
that.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon May 4 22:39:28 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Mm.
Either it's a memory or there is no memory. Make up your mind, Owen, make up
your mind.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon May 4 22:45:51 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Is
Dangerously close to the point where I change my mind, and create
something destructive, and by doing so destroy something creative.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon May 4 22:51:01 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: (attributes removed from some edits)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue May 5 09:13:38 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Is
They are all building, they are all finding.
I feel as it I'm walking alone through the middle of it, and I want to tear
their buildings down leaving nothing but rubble. I want to reveal their
discoveries for worthless trinkets.
Not actually true, of course. What I really want is to build and find myself.
But it sometimes feels as if mindless, jealous, dark destruction of good things
is a valid way of making the darkness seem less bad.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue May 5 09:41:52 1998]--
From: Whatever happened to Ozbas the Mauve? (steph)
Subject: Damn
Shouldn't have replied to that message, would have been better just to let it
be. Shouldn't go alienating what few friends I have...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue May 5 12:11:52 1998]--
From: (S) A non-localised phenomenon. (steph)
Subject: Help? Someone?
---------------------------------------------------[Wed May 6 01:01:24 1998]--
From: (S) A non-localised phenomenon. (steph)
Subject: A little b[ei]tter
Notice
*wiffling* is frowned upon.
Thank you.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed May 6 09:22:05 1998]--
From: (S) A non-localised phenomenon. (steph)
Subject: Today's priceless gem:
The stationary cupboard has moved downstairs next to Marketing.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed May 6 19:56:33 1998]--
From: (S) A non-localised phenomenon. (steph)
Subject: Is
I have spent over L200 on cheering myself up today. Unfortunately there won't
be any discernable effect (in the form of 32mb of Compact Flash for my Psion)
until Monday or thereabouts. But it's good. I think.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu May 7 17:31:30 1998]--
From: (S) A non-localised phenomenon. (steph)
Subject: Is
And I appear to have perked up considerably now. Which is very good.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 8 16:21:18 1998]--
From: (S) A non-localised phenomenon. (steph)
Subject: Is
An odd morning. I knew I was going to be busy from the beginning;
there's a training course happening next week, and I need to generate
six NT machines out of thin air. Or rather out of Unix machines; one
of the good things about Alphas is that they can run any of Unix, VMS,
or NT. Installing NT, IE4, and Visual C++ on a number of machines took
most of the morning, but because such jobs are mostly staring at
progress meters, it was quite relaxing.
Just before lunch I decided to take a proper break, and so spent a few
minutes reading amf's diary from 1996. There's a very peculiar quality
to the writing in those archives; it often seems almost ethereal,
conveys an immense feeling of calm, and makes for strangely compelling
reading. The style's very different in amf's diaries these days, which
is perhaps something of a pity. That's something I wonder about this
diary too; it's been described as `dreamy' and `a look at a beautiful
soul' in the past, neither of which seem to apply particularly well
these days.
It's hot outside, probably the first properly Summery day we've had
this year, and it's too hot in the office. The air conditioning broke
down a couple of days ago, and is not likely to be fixed
immediately. I'll have to find something to do in one of the cooler
parts of the building.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon May 11 09:23:16 1998]--
From: (S) A non-localised phenomenon. (steph)
Subject: Weekend
It's been an annoying weekend, spent mostly being ill, so now I'm back at work,
I don't feel particularly rested. Hey ho.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue May 12 16:16:55 1998]--
From: (S) We love to make the puns we hat (steph)
Subject: Is
I continue to be ill. Unable to eat a fraction of what I usually do, I feel
energyless and apathetic much of the time. (That's almost literally `too tired
to care', which is an interesting observation.) I haven't been anywhere other
than work and home since Saturday, which may only be two days but seems a lot
longer. In a way my world has shrunk.
There are a lot fewer worries when I feel like this. The physical dominates,
and there doesn't seem a great deal of point worrying about duty or betrayal,
love or anger. It's just waiting, waiting for this body to be able to carry me
again.
If things haven't improved by the end of tomorrow, I shall arrange to see a
doctor.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed May 13 09:08:53 1998]--
From: (S) We love to make the puns we hat (steph)
Subject: Was
capacitor.lsl.co.uk blew up last night. *sigh*
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 15 09:37:20 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Is
I awoke at 6am to extreme pain in the backs of both my legs, as if I'd somehow
managed suddenly to do something unpleasant to the muscles, and for a little
while I didn't think I'd be going anywhere today as I had some considerable
difficulty getting across the room from my bed. Some judicious stretching (ow!)
and rubbing seemed to make things better again, and I went back to sleep...
...and woke up again at 8:35, which is rather later than a working day which
starts at nine demands. Ah well. While there are still some remnants of the
strange leg pains, I think they're fading, so that's good.
Subject: Was
Last night was a fun CUSFS evening. The usual nargy gathering at the Grad Pad,
followed by the usual New Hall Bar meet, and a pleasant enough gathering
afterwards.
I'm a sad geek, so of course I showed off the new CompactFlash card, for one
thing because it's an extra 32Mb of storage for my Psion, and for another
because it's just _sooo_ cute and diddy...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 15 23:37:25 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Will Be
The observant will notice it approaching. Perhaps. If anyone cares but me about
such things.
Subject: Is
It's been too hot today, and it still is. If it had been observed that I'd
spent the afternoon doing little other than intermittently fall asleep,
gradually read an Oracle 8 manual, and read news, I would have murmured
something guiltily in agreement. But nobody asked, in part because there was
nobody around to do the asking.
I walked straight into town after work, and dinner in Queens' with Ben, Jacob,
Simon, and Ben's sister ensued. Thence to Jacobs and thence here to Simon's, at
no point acquiring a plan of any consequence or significance.
`In your heart,
In your soul,
Did you find peace there?'
Maybe. It's a kind of contentment, elseness, where nothing seems to matter a
great deal to me, while all the while meaning precisely as much as ever.
I have brought my past to this room, to these people; Loreena McKennitt plays
on the stereo, and there is a wealth of memories and history that go with that.
I remember, still, walking along Jesus Lane when Eleanor met me, noticed that
something was wrong. And then there's a chain of events that brings us through
us all changing, and everything we knew changing with it. It is good still to
be in touch with her.
I am not good at keeping in touch with old friends. Suddenly, as those around
me talk of punting, I am reminded of some of these friends, some of these
occasions It is of course worth making the effort, and so I shall.
Finally, I note with some interest my impression of Ben's sister, Georgina. For
little reason other than the way in which it is totally dominated by the fact
that she smokes. It says a lot about my prejudices, I suppose, but quite a bit
about the social circles I move in...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon May 18 11:21:18 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Saturday
A good afternoon's punting followed, even if assorted water-bombers, canoeists,
and swans proved minor annoyances. The first punting of the year, and it's
scary how fast time has flown; January seems only yesterday.
The evening saw a fairly full Gardies meet, followed by videos at James's (`The
Craft' and `Mars Attacks', both of which remind me of Oxford at various points
during 1997) and the relatively short walk home afterwards.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue May 19 20:01:14 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Sunday
Nothing really happened on Sunday, bar the visitation of my parents, which was
nice.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed May 20 11:27:23 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm falling behind in this diary. This wouldn't normally bother me, but my
state's been such over the past few days that it's worth paying attention to
how I react to situations while in that state. Oh well, I imagine I'll fill in
the gaps in due course.
Waking up at 8:45 isn't the best way to start a day, and missing breakfast as a
consequence is pretty bad, too, so I got to Laser-Scan fairly bleary-eyed and
grouchy. Two Picnic bars (which are lovely, by the way; it would be far too
possible to chain-eat them in the same way I've been known to chain-drink
coffee) later, and I'm almost human again. That's good, since I've been busy,
and the busy/grouchy combination brings out some of my worse aspects.
Looking forward to Friday's NMA concert. *bounce*
---------------------------------------------------[Thu May 21 01:13:58 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Was
So the experiment failed, or at least could be said to have failed to produce
any visible results. Designating a day as significant has not made it
significant, except perhaps for the fact that I have been looking for
significance all day and have failed to find it. That's significant enough.
Subject: Was, further in.
And further back, and closer to. Yes, after a fashion, it had happened before.
I had not realised though that that darkness still lies over them, had thought
it long dead. It is not. So I'm glad (should be glad, am afraid of being glad,
am too proud to be glad) there's something of a back door to the future. As
always, we're taking the long way home here. It's just not quite clear where
home is in this sense any more.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 22 01:57:34 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Is
Hm. Fairly crucial off-by-one error in the calculations there, which I should
really have seen.
Now, this is where the self-observation gets interesting, because there's
something we've not been watching for quite some months, and I have no real
idea how various pasts and past futures will interact.
Further, I have no real idea of the strength of my stability (or the mainstay
of the foundations of that stability), or whether I will bring back the rough
edge of need _there_. That will depend, but would be unfortunate; it means I
can't readily leave the door open to the future, and working on that is
something I've been quite pleased with of late.
Realisation: I have been here before. The wheel continues to turn, we're not
out of the woods yet, and there's every chance now that the story will win. As
always, in an unexpected way. There's still a battle to be fought, though.
Calculation: There is only actually one thing to lose here. So don't do that,
then.
Subject: Was
()()() became ()() because of what I wanted, or didn't want ()() became -
notionally, though not actually, since the namelines didn't track that bit of
reality with high enough granularity - () because of what we call the Rules.
I bound myself to these arbitrary rules of conduct to avoid certain situations,
but it feels rather as if that may have been a mistake.
I remember it even being suggested that the () should become what could
conveniently be written [], but there were good reasons even back then why that
was unacceptable, even assuming it were possible (which I don't know).
Subject: Will Be
If I were Richard, I'd probably grin evilly and say that it'll be fun. `I
always smile, except when I get quite depressed,' to (probably mis-)quote. That
doesn't tend to describe me very well, but there's no reason not to be smiling
at the moment.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 22 01:59:16 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: And...
...apologies for the entirely drivelsomely cryptic nature of the above edit :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 22 02:23:21 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Is
That's it, yes, mirages. We are all mirages.
And what if you see a mirage of a mirror?
Or a mirage in a mirror?
I rather suspect the mirage you see tells you more about yourself than the
shape of the desert, as do the mirage mirrors.
Still, I'm not the only one to do this.
Mirrors, yes. that's it. We are all mirrors.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 22 02:28:17 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Is
Erk. An entirely random bloke just wandered up our garden path and set off the
security light. I looked out the window at him, and he looked back and turned
away. I find this a mite worrying...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 22 10:28:02 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Is
Complete lack of energy, and a good deal of general unhappiness, the latter
probably a result of the former.
I could have done without this before this evening's NMA concert.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat May 23 00:16:52 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: NMA concert
And lo, it was good. Fun. Highlights for me included `Green and Grey' and `Here
comes the War' (or whatever the titles really are), though of course there was
lots of other good stuff that I recognised but couldn't name.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat May 23 16:12:57 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Is
It's been a pleasant non-day, during which I've done remarkably little, except
for a spot of gardening.
Actually gardening isn't quite the word for it. Not because the mess at the
front of the house is sufficiently beyond hope to be called a garden (some
might say it is), but because it seems a little pretentious to dignify half an
hour's worth of hacking away at shrubbery with the name `gardening'.
However, it is now possible to walk along the garden path without being
ambushed. Or amtreed. Or amhedged.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun May 24 00:08:53 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Is
For the record, this diary is a prolific spew of text intended to make up for
my shortcomings.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun May 24 00:26:32 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Is / Will Be (constant/wavering)
a a a was strong last night
steph 'I know. Don't remind me. There was a point where I would have
lit the candle and invited you in, given you a voice, even.'
a a a wonders if this isn't a voice, of sorts.
steph 'You don't exist if I don't call you by name. That was what was
tempting. To call it a `dark night of the soul', a Wake, and see
if by the end I had the strength _not_ to bring you into existence.'
a a a was not created, though, Was that strength or weakness?
steph 'Good question. When the lights go out, when the stars cannot be
seen, when there is no warmth; when there is no hope, joy, or
comfort; when I am truly alone, when I can no longer wish to
sleep, when to all extents and purposes you already exist... Then
I will create you.'
a a a is silent.
a a a stands in the shadows, waiting to be born.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun May 24 00:30:44 1998]--
From: (S) Meta Incognita (steph)
Subject: Is
nding laughs
steph doesn't know what you're laughing about, nding
nding exists
steph 'In a universe that doesn't. Cold comfort, I'd say.'
---------------------------------------------------[Tue May 26 21:03:01 1998]--
From: (S) Rumours of God (steph)
Subject: Weekend
A good weekend, by and large, but only really in that I didn't do a great deal.
I seem to have rediscovered my ability to enjoy my own company and be by
myself, which sits sometimes a little strangely beside the huge amount of time
I have tended to spend socialising of late.
Saturday saw mysteriously large amounts of gardening, and Gardies in the
evening, followed by a gathering at Simon's where Amf spent quite a while
interacting with MegaHAL. I remember juggling three Twixes, briefly looking at
Tarot cards, and the discovery of the Small Font of Doom. There were almost
certainly other things, too...
Sunday saw The Archers, as usual, B5 (as usual, though this week's episode was
better than many of this season's have been), and the Monaco Grand Prix. All
good stuff, followed by an evening which went from Corpus (food and tabl) via
the pub (beer and chat) to Simon's (tea). And so to bed.
With the bank holiday I did what could best be described as diddly squat. A
very quiet pizza meet in the evening followed by a small gathering in
Chesterton. I left a little suddenly, thinking it best to go...
`Thinking it best to go...' sums up this strange detached mood; in other times
that would have hit somehow as depression, and all the usual things like regret
and absence, fear and jealousy, love and anger, would have come to the fore. As
it was, I just thought it was best to go. The same things matter (or hurt, or
bring joy), and furthermore they matter just as much, but the reaction's
different somehow. That's as good an explanation as I can manage.
The difference is not of degree, it's of perspective.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu May 28 23:55:58 1998]--
From: (S) Rumours of God (steph)
Subject: And I almost miss it, you know?
I almost miss the sharp edge; I almost wish I were thrashing so much around in
my mind that I'm finding myself standing still in the street, shaking and ready
to scream. That way I'd perhaps feel justified in having felt bad and left and
better in having driven it out. But with this cushion around me, there's just
dull depression, and then it lifts a little.
That's two Thursdays in a row that've done this to me.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 29 00:01:20 1998]--
From: (S) Rumours of God (steph)
Subject: Earlier, a revelation
Something entirely surprising was put to me earlier today, in the therapy
session with Dr. Vourdas. He tells me that my internal code of behaviour, which
would have me repress my wishes and sacrifice things of value to me rather than
hurt friends, is no different to the general code of behaviour in society.
Can this really be so? Can those who told me differently really have been wrong
or deluded?
Have I in fact been in the right all along?
Food for thought.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 29 00:03:04 1998]--
From: (S) Rumours of God (steph)
Subject: Is
This monitor is dying. More gradually and perceptibly than the last one, I'll
grant, but its occasional loss of vertical hold and a tendency to display
everything in a shade of yellow are sure signs of impending death.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri May 29 00:24:47 1998]--
From: (S) Rumours of God (steph)
Subject: Is
And what would I not sacrifice to avoid hurting a friend?
And what counts as a friend for the purposes of this discussion anyway?
---------------------------------------------------[Sun May 31 21:06:10 1998]--
From: (S) The trick is to stop breeding. (steph)
Subject: Is
There's no light in this room except for that provided by the computer screen,
the light which comes through the curtains, and the little red power light on
the four-way gang socket under my desk.
I've studied that light for quite some time now, watching it because it is not
lit steadily. Rather, it blinks, at an almost but not quite predictable rate,
and sometimes it doesn't blink at all.
Perhaps it's failing. A light on a gand socket should, after all, indicate when
power is supplied, so when it's on you know there is power and when it's off
you know there's not. In this current mode it's possible that there might be
power but no light to reassure me of this. I prefer not to think of it as
failing, though, because I like it. It adds a little something to what's around
me.
And it always leaves me wondering: does it blink when I'm not looking?
Perhaps it's not failing, though. Perhaps it was designed to blink when there
is power. Perhaps there are more people than just me who like to watch little
red lights flicker on and off. It's possible.
Just then, d'you see? Was it steady just then?
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jun 1 00:08:24 1998]--
From: (S) The trick is to stop breeding. (steph)
Subject: Is
A day of - lunch with Martin and Aldabra, visiting from Bristol. It was good to
see them, and the conversation and food at the Druid's - shaking the towels
of small pieces of hair - was good too. Later we went punting, which was a very
mixed experience; fun, but there were too many thoughts in my mind of other
things, ideas that I should be elsewhere - staring at the stereo while my hair
was being cut (just split ends removal, and nothing too drastic, not that I
expect anyone particularly to care) by Wednesday, while Garbage v2.00 still
rang around my mind. Definitely a good CD; I haven't had time to play the CD
with Mozart's Requiem on it yet, unfortunately. Odd to have someone comment on
the band of colours I wear around my wrist - though I took a hand at punting
myself, once we'd backed out of a ridiculous reedy channel we'd somehow decided
to investigate. Monty Python's - Some very strange LiveTV; cable TV has gone
downhill since last I saw it several months ago - Flying - I care about my
friends, you know. *hugs* (Yeah, sometimes I have to care about me, too.) -
Circus was as good as I remember it, possibly better - fragments.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jun 1 00:25:02 1998]--
From: (S) The trick is to stop breeding. (steph)
Subject: Is
`So that people know it's still the case?' Perhaps. Sometimes we need to break
the rules.
Break as in shatter, destroy.
*smiles* It is good to be so sure of something, so safe in the knowledge of
something. (Of everything, after a fashion. We define the shape of our worlds.)
Yes, it is still the case.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jun 1 17:12:31 1998]--
From: (S) The trick is to stop breeding. (steph)
Subject: Will Be
I appear to have agreed to go to the thingy (WuS or Calling, I can't remember
which) tomorrow evening. It should be good, might be bad, but has to be risked.
Here goes...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jun 1 23:13:00 1998]--
From: (S) The trick is to stop breeding. (steph)
Subject: Is
Saturday's going to have to wait until tomorrow...
Something's happened in the past five minutes to see my mood decline. I have
that strange feeling that I'm breathing rarefied air, I feel panicky, and yet
five minutes ago, I was fine. As I said to obo's `How's you?'
> Fine; I've done very little other than watch TV this evening (Voyager, and
> some DS9 videos), so that's quite nice.
And now something's changed. Think of the therapy, think of the training: _why_
has this happened? Analyse it.
I have spent a pleasant evening in, watching television, enjoying it. I have
just talked to friends about their evenings elsewhere, and I perhaps wish I had
walked into town to join people. (?) I have been watching something I last
watched in the Summer of my first year, when I was a very different person,
before I went to Palestine, in brighter days. In better times, to plagiarise
partially. Something has reacted to that. (??) I am tired, perhaps, and need a
good night's sleep to clear my head of everything. (???) My mind is weighed
down with things I feel I ought to be doing: mailing people, organising
things...
Many possible reasons, none of them particularly satisfying.
Earlier, I said:
> Thinking of going for a little walk in a moment or two, enjoy the post-rain
> fresh air...
And I think now I shall do that, but because I need it rather than because I
want it. If that's a good thing, then it's a good thing for the wrong reasons,
and marred becase of it.
`You are the fifth keeper of the last house of my soul. Guard it well.' That's
been rattling through my mind for the past three years now, on and off. It
feels as if someone else should have said it, although the only one who'd come
up with such cryptic gibberish is me; I've no idea what it means, but it's
a focus for my attention when I'm in this kind of state, moved to go walking at
silly times of the night to `enjoy the post-rain fresh air'.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jun 3 12:09:15 1998]--
From: (S) The trick is to stop breeding. (steph)
Subject: Saturday
I lurked around the house until early afternoon, at which point I made my way
into town for some shopping. Having heard enough snippets of it to decide it
was a good thing, I bought Garbage v2.00. Other slightly less exciting
purchases included toothpaste and a variety of noxious substances to help with
the ongoing process of taming the garden.
I bumped into Gareth outside the bank, and it turned out that he was waiting
for Alison to appear from her last exam. I waited with him, and trundled around
town a bit with him, Clare (whose last exam it also was), and Alison. The
evening saw a pleasant gathering in Simon's room, complete with unexpected but
entirely welcome Amf.
He ended up crashing at GreenEnd. Unfortunately, it seems, in more ways than
one. By the time I woke the next morning he'd already gone.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jun 4 09:26:56 1998]--
From: (S) The trick is to stop breeding. (steph)
Subject: Is
Damn. I appear to have neglected to write any diary for Dr. Vourdas and today's
cognitive therapy session. Ah well.
The trouble with being asked to write a diary specifically for this is that
it's very hard to find the time. I write things here when I remember and have
time, and in my private diary when it's important to clarify things to myself.
Actually having to write a diary seems to be one of the greatest incentives not
to.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jun 4 23:57:39 1998]--
From: (S) The trick is to stop breeding. (steph)
Subject: Was
And just as I thought that there wouldn't be, there was much discussion of
precisely why I hadn't written a diary, why I felt guilty about this, and so on
and so forth...
This is one of the problems with psychotherapy: it deals with everyday
responses to things in life, but that includes the psychotherapy itself, with
the result that one ends up in drawn-out conversations that are in some way
about themselves.
That said, there are good things that have come out of it today. The
observation that too often I only consider myself and not the rest of the
system (set of interactions between a set of people, I suppose, here), for
example. The observations, too, that I am able to see and analyse my own
emotions, and that I have a sense of responsibility, neither of which are
apparently universal.
Subject: Is
It didn't help at CUSFS, though. For some reason I was feeling slightly unhappy
throughout, and always (physically) on the edge of the gathering. While a good
random conversation with Christi about Infocom games and Tarot cards (the
obvious connection between the two being Curses, and hence T.S. Eliot) was a
Good Thing, I ended up feeling less `right' there than I ought to have, and so
left a little early, opting to return here to Simon's and his post exam
gathering.
Unfortunately it had all but completely evaporated by the time I arrived.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jun 5 00:10:54 1998]--
From: (S) NPEMPSPS, the ADTG (steph)
Subject: Hmm
There are levels of understanding.
I can understand [fuss] on one level, can imagine that I might well not be
particularly happy in that situation; indeed when there's been considerably
less to make being in a set of people important to me, I've been considerably
more upset. In fact that was _that_ weekend, and I don't particularly feel like
talking about it here.
But on another level I can't really empathise much at all. It smacks rather of
the general feelings of detachment and of distance that have characterised my
mental state for much of the past month or so.
I don't know which is preferable, or objectively `righter'. Being able to
empathise makes sympathising easier, and so is a Good Thing, but the detachment
is also a Good Thing. *shrugs* *hugs* to those that want them, anyway, for what
they're worth.
I suppose one particularly Good Thing is that I'm able to work things out and
write them down like this.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jun 5 01:13:34 1998]--
From: (S) NPEMPSPS, the ADTG (steph)
Subject: Descent
Oh hell.
Sleep.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jun 5 09:36:24 1998]--
From: (S) NPEMPSPS, the ADTG (steph)
Subject: Is
Slightly better this morning, and improving. Possibly set to do so further with
the introduction of coffee into the system.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jun 5 12:42:46 1998]--
From: (S) NPEMPSPS, the ADTG (steph)
Subject: Is
The nameline is something for people to guess at, by the way...
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jun 6 19:54:33 1998]--
From: (S) NPEMPSPS, the ADTG (steph)
Subject: Was, and Is
Tuesday saw the Calling, which was a Good Thing. It's something I'd been
avoiding for a couple of months for a number of reasons; the main one of these
is that last time I went, my mood crashed sufficiently to provoke a friend to
take me away to be hugged. This time, it was good, though. Juggling invisible
balls appears to be a thoroughly amusing way of dancing :-).
And this evening sees me going off to the Slimelight, for the first time since
the 21st February. It promises to be good, and marks something of a milestone.
Today's been good as a whole, in fact. I didn't wake up until midday, and
then made my way into town where a large gathering diffused through Strawberry
Fair. Notable acquisitions: fluffy juggling balls, a cool T-shirt, and a pair
of jeans.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jun 7 09:17:32 1998]--
From: (S) NPEMPSPS, the ADTG (steph)
Subject: Slimelight
Wonderful. Barring a predictable (and avoidable) reaction to dancing to
Dominion near the start, and some unhappiness on Catt's part some way through,
the evening started well and if anything got better as the night drew on.
Musical highlights included Pale Empress, copious quantities of Garbage, and
lots of other good stuff I've forgotten.
It was good for me, and I'm glad I went. There is something about the place...
Something undefinably special. Concentrated glory, perhaps, and that's powerful
stuff.
Above all, though, fun.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jun 7 09:25:29 1998]--
From: (S) NPEMPSPS, the ADTG (steph)
Subject: Is
And now the willows must scuttle carefully.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jun 7 20:09:17 1998]--
From: (S) NPEMPSPS, the ADTG (steph)
Subject: Is
Even though I didn't get a great deal of sleep, and nevertheless managed to
miss The Archers and Babylon 5, it's been a good day. Mostly spent so far
making daisy chains :-).
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jun 7 21:59:45 1998]--
From: (S) LJG, the NDQ (steph)
Subject: Old Nameline
Nine point eight metres per second per second, the acceleration due to gravity.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jun 9 02:28:09 1998]--
From: (S) LJG, the NDQ (steph)
Subject: The Tower (dreams, prophecies, and tears)
I was sitting here, writing, and occasionally looking out at the window at the
Autumn rain, thinking (as I have been for much of these past months) of how
close this place is becoming to where I want to be. Perhaps my attention
drifted to the leaves blowing off the trees outside, perhaps to the
neat-but-lapsing handwriting on the pages before me; either way I must have
fallen asleep. Waking now, some hours later, I remember in every detail the
dream I have just had and my face is running with tears.
It was as I was writing in my dream that there was a knock at the door below.
Taking with me a lamp I walked down the familiar stone steps and opened the
heavy door to let the visitor in; there was nobody there. I returned to my
study to find a young woman standing by the window, watching. Tall, dressed
entirely in white, and somehow out of place amidst this clutter of books,
papers, and mechanisms. I began to speak, but she turned first and spoke first.
`Learn.'
The world was on fire. In every direction there were flames, from all the
towers that were falling. In the forests, the wooden towers became infernos and
collapsed in on themselves, setting fire to the woodland around. In the towns
the stone towers died also, keeping the structure of their outermost shell
until nearly the end when they crumbled as the boards and beams inside burned.
On the hills, in the mountains, the outposts fell, and the watchtowers on the
sea slid into the waves. All that we had worked for was rubble and dust,
destroyed.
I tore my mind from the scene. `How? Why?' I asked. But she had already gone.
I cried in my dream, I think, for a long while before I awoke in tears. It's
hard to express quite how much that vision shook me, or quite how I feel now
I've stopped here to write it down. That it feels so definitely like a
prediction -- the Towers will fall -- is the most frightening thing of all.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jun 11 10:55:26 1998]--
From: (S) Teathing troubles (steph)
Subject: Old Nameline
Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Day Queen.
(More coming as and when I remember or think of them.)
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jun 13 00:49:01 1998]--
From: (S) Teathing troubles (steph)
Subject: Was
With Monochrome down last night, there wasn't the opportunity to write down the
things I was thinking as I walked home in the early hours of that tomorrow. As
I made my way across Midsummer Common the sky was already growing light over
the horizon and making the clouds that covered it that much more obvious. I
think I finally got to bed at about four.
That sort of timing's not particularly unusual for this week. I've been off
work since Friday and appear to have settled into a routine of getting up
somewhere between ten and eleven and getting to bed at anything between one and
four in the morning. For all that, yesterday somehow seemed a lot longer than
other of the days have been, and that's odd since I did a lot less yesterday
than on the previous Fitzwilliam-Museum-visiting, punting, Maoing, and
Slimelighting days.
It was pouring with rain when I woke up, and it hadn't let up by the time I
left the house to wait for a bus to take me to the city centre. It was no less
wet when I got there, as I waited for the bus to Addenbrooke's for the weekly
therapy session with Dr. Vourdas.
It would appear that it is possible to spod from Addenbrooke's advice centre.
Indeed, it would appear that someone already has, for the default host I was
offered when I started the telnet client was mu.mono.org. Unfortunately mono
was down, but it was a nice discovery.
I'm not at all sure where my purple nails fit into this account, so I'll put
them here.
Most of the afternoon was spent at Ben's, the evening first at Jacob's and then
at Clare's, until a ytalk from a drunken Quirka brought us to town for a van
and tea.
None of which says even remotely what I was thinking of saying when I returned
to GreenEnd a little before four this morning.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jun 13 01:00:07 1998]--
From: (S) Teathing troubles (steph)
Subject: Was
It was a day of redressing balances, after a fashion, and that was reassuring
in itself. That it was a day of balance in and of itself was special, too.
I don't know. Or rather, I do know.
But I don't have the words or the energy to write anything significant about it
here.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jun 13 16:45:07 1998]--
From: (S) Teathing troubles (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm getting behind in this diary again. It's very easy to put off writing
anything in favour of waiting for better words to express things, and very
very easy to put off anything at all in favour of sleep :-).
Yesterday was NetHack and Jon's pancake party, which was wonderful fun. I
vaguely remember some discussion of turning Michael Howard inside out, or
was that imprisoning Jack Straw inside Michael Howard? There was a brief
interval for some oddly (for me, anyway) energetic frisbee, and I left a little
before the rest of the party must have evaporated.
Today was the Tolkien Society puntmoot. Better weather would have been nice,
though, since it spent a large part of the morning pouring with rain. When it
started raining again a little after lunch on Grantchester Meadows, I decided
against feeling cold and miserable and opted to walk back into town instead.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jun 14 01:47:11 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Is
The evening saw the usual Gardiesing, followed by one of the better games of
Mao I've played. No doubt that was in large part due to catbells and his bomb
and Ben and his gun... It ended with a large number of games of Boggle. It
probably won't be long before Boggle becomes an established tradition for the
times catbells is around.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jun 14 02:00:28 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm happy. I should learn, as Clare says, not to be quite so surprised. More
importantly, I need to stop viewing everything in terms of how it will end, how
it will be destroyed, because that's a way of thinking that just creates
self-fulfilling prophecies. In part, I'm already doing the latter; it grew
apparent over the course of March that things were following a different path
after the events of February, and it might almost be true to say that the story
has not won.
The psychotherapy's helped a lot more than I give it credit for, too. It feels
like there's a lot more to be gained from that than I'd thought, so it's
definitely worthwhile keeping a diary for Dr. Vourdas.
It'd also be worthwhile expanding on Thursday night's conversation on Silver
Street. Perhaps.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jun 16 01:58:15 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Is
`That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant at all.'
-- T.S. Eliot, `The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'
The conversation was continued, but I would have preferred more pleasant
circumstances; a depression triggered perhaps by alcohol, manifesting itself
most strongly as anger at my pathological reactions to it, was hardly ideal.
Apologies are due to all those who were in Simon's room at that point.
The fireworks from Trinity May Ball were going off, so we watched those for a
while. Later we walked around the block.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jun 16 20:21:26 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Will Be
I'm Callinging this evening. Because. Because I can't let myself avoid it and
at the same time con myself into believing that I'm a free agent. Because
nobody should wield that degree of power over me unless I want them to. And
fundamentally because I want to.
What will be, will be. The present's good, I'm happy, and there are wonderful
things and wonderful people around to help keep it that way.
Subject: Puzzle
Name a thing whose loss, however inevitable and necessary, causes wounds that
last even into the good days.
(This _is_ a question to which I'd be interested to hear people's answers.)
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jun 17 03:54:03 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Was
Gosh. Cripes. Andy, my ex, was at the Calling. Wow. And other surprised,
bouncy, and happy noises. The music wasn't so good; perhaps they thought that
beginning with live Rome Burns meant they could get away with beepy stuff for
the rest of the evening.
And only one major glitch in my mood, and one at that which didn't have any
great lasting effects.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jun 17 03:56:07 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Answers
So far, we've had: innocence, sanity, freedom, an SO, and a plaster.
All interesting, and all surprising, although I should probably have expected
the plaster. More later.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jun 17 12:10:26 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Answers
Dreams, fantasies, your front teeth, and hope.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jun 17 16:38:00 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Hmm
\)*
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jun 17 16:44:05 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Argh!
One of my better NetHack games has just been abruptly terminated by falling
into a pit. At the bottom were fatally poisoned spikes :-(.
Shame, since it was a nice game (I don't often get to XP level 11, and I'd just
been given Mjollnir and stuff...)
Hey ho, eh?
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jun 18 02:51:03 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Dreams
Last night's dreams were odd. I remember being in a shop, with (I think) a
number of camspods, browsing the shelves. It was late at night, for it was dark
outside, and we believed the shop was Dutch even though examination of many of
the packets revealed that their labels were written in Hebrew.
Later, on a market square that is some combination of Cambridge's, Norwich's,
and Wellingborough's, a group of friends were parting. Perhaps we'd just eaten
from a van, though I can't really remember for sure, but I was saying goodbyes,
to some at greater length than to others. One friend walked off fairly briskly,
suspicious at a perceived closeness perhaps, and the gathering dispersed. I
tried to walk off to one corner of the square, but the statues of Egyptian
kings there became seven mummies who blocked the exit. Confused, I turned to
leave by the east side of the square, but a pale man stood in my way, hissing
only `Hitler' at me.
So I flew, and yet found I could not fly over the sacred ground of the church
to the north; it buffeted me away almost like a forcefield. Flying away by a
different route, I was noticed by the crowd around the burger van, and their
admiration (or my pride at it) made me waver and begin to fall...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jun 19 01:27:38 1998]--
From: (S) invisible intangible clogs (steph)
Subject: Day alif plus four months
It's hard to believe it's been that long. Or, to put it another way, hard to
believe it's only been four months.
And the day's been a good one. Lunch in Queens' with Jacob, followed by copious
NetHacking and then shopping (or perhaps better `narging while shopping was
accomplished' :-) ). In the evening I went to see a production of `Lord of the
Rings' in which large numbers of friends were acting; it was great, the only
real flaw being that it was rather too long and drawn out, due IMO to the large
number of shortish scenes.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jun 20 03:32:05 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
The ucam.chat garden parties, and Brian's party after that, were fun. That's
not important right now, though.
`I love you, for what it's worth.' Turn that, and swing it around through 180
degrees, so that I'm the one saying it. Then flip it over, so it's not what
it's worth to _them_ that I'm questioning, but what it's worth to _me_. That
one I can answer.
Love will see us through or tear us apart, I guess. The only thing to do is go
with the flow and see how it goes. Why does it always take bouncing what I
already know off people I trust for me to trust myself?
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jun 20 14:27:24 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Argh.
I hate having to do things, hate responsibility, but you can't really avoid
that in life. You can in a social life, though, and having to organise things
for this evening's Veizla (indeed, _going_ to this evening's Veizla) feels like
a chore that I can barely muster the energy to do.
What I suppose I'd prefer is a pleasant evening lounging around with friends,
quiet compared to yesterday evening. I imagine the Veizla'll be fun, but I
could do with less stress and more simple fun with people I'm comfortable
around.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jun 20 16:20:33 1998]--
From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
Subject: Is
It's too hot, I'm too tired, and I feel so very alone. What more is there to
say?
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jun 20 22:59:04 1998]--
From: (S) Distance is relative (steph)
Subject: Is
A good Veizla. But as the second throws words into the soup, I wish you (you
know who you are) were here to hold me, and wonder what the third in this
little story will inevitably say.
*sigh* *cries* So much. So much has happened to me these past years. I feel
lost, dwarfed by the enormity of it all. I remember explaining it all, the
length of Milton Road and more, as you hugged me and understood as I cried.
I remember Turkish Delight, later, and concentrating on every sign I saw as a
distraction on the long walk back home.
I don't know. It's all too late. All too late. I'm too weak, far too weak, to
put this all behind me, because it means so much. That I could define myself as
a new person, that my hopes were separate, new... That was special. That still
is special. Oh, I don't know. All I know is who I wish were here to hold me as
the tears roll down my cheeks.
I'm sorry. Nothing's the same any more. Or ever could be.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jun 21 00:36:39 1998]--
From: (S) Distance is relative (steph)
Subject: Is
Can one cry oneself to sleep?
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jun 21 16:58:57 1998]--
From: (S) Distance is relative (steph)
Subject: Was / Is
Apparently I can cry myself to sleep, although it was a fitful night at best,
what with excess heat and thinking. Still, in the cold sober light of day
things seem a little better. Not that I've done anything about them; the
problems are still there, but they're easier to ignore at the moment. Thanks
are due to Emily (scruple) for being fluffy and understanding even given
nothing to understand.
Today's been good. I left GreenEnd to sort out videoing Babylon 5 for me -- I
can watch it at some point later in the week, and it gets me out of the house
-- and had a largish lunch with Emily and Simon. Going via the bjhery we
acquired a Clare and a Ben. People are now throwing things around behind me,
which is by and large relaxing enough.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jun 22 00:46:45 1998]--
From: (S) Distance is relative (steph)
Subject: Is (Aftermath aftermath)
*sigh* Following last night's Veizla aftermath, grouchy noises are being made
at me by some of my housemates at the mess and my failure to clean it up. This
annoys me quite a lot, for a number of reasons:
1) I naturally feel that it is all my fault. It feels as if this is being
(unknowingly, I'm sure) played on.
2) I'm fairly certain I didn't offer GreenEnd for it.
3) I didn't organise it.
4) I wasn't present for very much of it at all. (I'd been sorely tempted to
quietly slip off after the Veizla and find a bunch of spods, as it happens,
and in view of the way the rest of the evening saw my emotions go, that
would have been a far better idea. As it was, I went to bed early.)
5) The fact that it's making me annoyed. All this ranks on my scale of
priorities somewhere alongside that chat with Elvis I've been meaning to
have, and I'd do better to save the emotional energy.
*sigh* I wish I could feel more constructive and reasonable about it, too,
rather than being really rather spiky.
On the plus side, I now have some clubs to juggle and I've had a good afternoon
and evening in pleasant company.
Subject: Will Be
I return to work tomorrow, after two weeks' holiday. Goodness knows what will
be broken and waiting for me to fix it. I need some sleep though, so that's
what I'll do now.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jun 23 00:35:41 1998]--
From: (S) Distance is relative (steph)
Subject: Is
Happy Spod. Will be crash into Coriolis station _again_.
And _again_.
And _again_.
And _again_.
Hey ho. Practice makes perfect, I suppose. I'd settle for less disastrously
imperfect, though...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jun 23 22:41:33 1998]--
From: (S) Distance is relative (steph)
Subject: Is
I get the strong feeling that a lot will be written in ~/text/.p/diary-ct
this evening. That's the file I print out for the meetings with Dr. Vourdas,
and tends to serve as my private diary more than the real one these days. A
lot's happened over the course of my two week holiday, a lot, and there's
precious little time left to ask and answer questions before I set things in
stone for a few months.
It's still hard to believe quite how different my world is now to the way it
was in September last year. I now spend most of my time with a completely
different set of friends, and the concept of balance I tried to keep to earlier
this year (whereby I'd try to spend roughly equal amounts of time with both
social groups, among other more subtle things I tried to balance within
myself and each social group) has completely evaporated. Most of that was due
in part to things that happened in late February and early March.
> --------------------------------------------------[Tue Feb 24 14:35:13 1998]-
> From: (S) Something's Shining (steph)
>
> Subject: And the crystal shattered.
Yeah, that.
A combination of thinking a lot about it these past four months and
psychotherapy has brought me to believe that that was something inevitable, the
result of huge stresses that had been tearing at my life for well over a year
before that point.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jun 23 23:46:34 1998]--
From: (S) Distance is relative (steph)
Subject: Is
My connection to Monochrome is far too slow to use at the moment, so further
remarks on the above subject will have to wait until another time.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jun 25 00:13:05 1998]--
From: (S) Distance is relative (steph)
Subject: Questions
The question I asked in here a few edits back:
> Name a thing whose loss, however inevitable and necessary, causes wounds that
> last even into the good days.
was intended to appear as if a particular answer were expected. The reasons for
this were simple: 1) I had a particular answer in mind, and 2) this appearance
would make people marginally more likely to say the thing it `had to be'.
And I got a good crop of answers. From innocence, sanity, freedom, an SO,
dreams, hope, and fantasies to a plaster, your front teeth, and spiders. (It's
probably not too hard to work out which answers I got from Gareth and James!)
They all fit the bill, and I can relate to them all (except perhaps for the
last three), and they all tell me a bit about the people who answered. More
importantly, though, they remind me of important answers to the question that
_weren't_ the one I had in mind.
In other words, they help give me a sense of perspective and remind me that
there are other things that are important.
And as for what my answer was going to be? *smile* Some other time, dear
reader, some other time. That's a promise.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jun 26 12:44:11 1998]--
From: (S) Distance is relative (steph)
Subject: Yesterday
Yesterday was a good day, I think. From the discovery
(rec.games.roguelike.nethack is a good thing) that someone had ported NetHack
to the Psion 5, it moved to another encouraging therapy session with Dr.
Vourdas. It seems to be easier to analyse situations these days and work out
how best to manage them, and there's a great benefit to being able to wibble
at someone without constraint every once in a while.
Addenbrooke's turned out to have Oreo cookies, too, which are lovely dark
biscuits with a creamy bit in. For no real reason, they came with an Oreo yoyo,
so I bought some.
The evening was good, too. While dinner in Corpus failed to happen, Jacob,
Clare, Ben, and I went to Sainsbury's and bought a great many things to eat in
Jacob's room instead. Lo! There was onion and garlic dip. amd lo! there were
scotch eggs. Much nargery, too; looking at the Map viewer my company's done for
AdHoc Guides (see http://www.adhoc-guides.com/), compiling NetHack for
jtn20.quns, and being pleasantly surprised at the portability of libefence.
I had a strange dream about dressing gowns.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jun 29 15:44:25 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Was
And so another term's over, and it feels as if everyone's leaving or moving
with various degrees of permanence.
Friday evening saw us say farewell to Clare for the next few months or so, and
as she and Ben wandered off to Owlstone for the night, the rest of a smallish
gathering ambled aimlessly around Cambridge in search of excitement, but found
Simon instead, so we went to sit in Pembroke and look at a marquee. The
attraction of that soon faded, and we ended up back at Richard's, drinking tea
there for the last time.
There's a lot of that sort of feeling: `for the last time'. We won't knock on
the window at Richard's old place again, or stare entranced at Cthugha there
again. Or of course drink tea again. And it seems unlikely there'll be the walk
out to Owlstone again, either. There'd be something to be said for walking out
there anyway, now, just because there was no need to. Things are changing, and,
well, I can be forgiven for feeling a bit sad as places pass out of use that
have rather defined the quality of the past six months for me.
Watching Brian and Richard play first speed Connect 4, then a zero-gravity
version (lie the board flat and push pieces in) was great fun.
The evening ended in an unexpectedly odd and unexpectedly pleasant way. I went
to Brian's to collect a copy of Frontier -- recent forays into the worlds of
Elite reminded me of its sequel -- and ended up staring at a glowy fibrey lamp
while listening to Pink Floyd and talking.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jun 30 01:13:30 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Was
Saturday saw the last of Alison we'll see for a little while, as well as seeing
Richard move into Elsworth Place. A six foot rack moved into Trinity's store
room (with some help, I'll admit) as its owner, Peter Maydell, moved out of his
room, where the rack and other such things had been stored on behalf of the
CU Computer Preservation Society for a time. I discovered a source of Parma
Violets in Cambridge, and it rained.
There was a smallish Gardies meet, but one which seemed rather subdued.
Sunday was a good day. An afternoon in the bjhery fiddling with my friends
script (which is a good thing to tinker with), followed by an evening in the
pub with Jacob, Ben, and Simon. Upstairs, with the window open, we had a
pleasant view over the Cam and watched punters trace sine waves.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jun 30 17:58:10 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm tired. I can't be bothered to haul myself into town to see people at the
moment, either, so I'm back at GreenEnd and unless I get lonely or develop an
urge to go to the Calling I'll stay here. Loneliness is likely, an urge to go
Callinging isn't.
I miss you, you know? From one perspective it was ten months for nothing, but
from another they were happy days. Glory days.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jun 30 23:02:58 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
An evening in, the first for weeks, and yet I've not spent it relaxing. Part of
the whole intent of the thing was to do some cleaning, and so now GreenEnd has
a marginally cleaner bathroom and I have hands that are shaking from the
exertion of scrubbing at the bath.
Tomorrow will feel odd, because I won't have `done something' this evening.
It was once asked of me `what do you do to relax?' and I didn't really have an
answer. Fundamentally, what I do to relax is sleep, and dream.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 2 09:24:08 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Striking out for a light and fluffy diary, here...
Cool. I've bought another computer. What shall I do with it, I wonder?
And Ben is clearly far too good at Lemmings.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 2 11:07:49 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Well, BIND 8 seems to be working happily on relay, so that's one horrendous
security hole plugged. Pleasantly easy to compile, install, and convert from
BIND 4, too; the only thing to do was to convert the one configuration file to
the new format, and there was a perl script supplied to do that.
And I appear to have walked back from the rest area throwing my sandwich up in
the air and then catching it again...
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 2 21:31:10 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Acquisitions
A 486, complete with unexpected CD drive. Yet another Last Best Hope for music
in my bedroom, that; every CD drive I've had to date has either died the death
or been extremely dodgy to start with, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed here!
Whatever, not at all bad for L100.
There's now the slight technical problem of getting the beast (and another I
bought for a friend currently in Bristol) home. Taxi, for sure, but
nevertheless...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jul 6 01:11:15 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
I would describe Abi's party, but I'm tired and there are other things to be
doing, like sleep. Something will get said here at some point, I don't doubt;
in the meantime there are other descriptions elsewhere.
Wrote a letter this afternoon; a strange beast, on re-reading it. Very
disjointed and stilted, and not something I'm proud of. I suppose it's what the
recipient thinks of it that's important.
Someone asked me a question this evening, one I had not expected to be asked.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jul 6 10:28:19 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
One letter sent off, one batch of washing placed in washing machine, one set of
keys left at home. Oops.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jul 7 01:30:58 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
We appear to have spent the evening installing NT. FuNTing Anakin, one might
say. I started out with some degree of confidence, since this is something I've
done manymany times at work; confidence dropped and amusement increased as boot
files got put in unpredictable locations, rewritten, and pointed at in a
surprising variety of ways. [1] The space bar being eaten would have taken the
biscuit, but we'd already finished those.
Fun. OS/2 next? ;-)
[1] Probably due to Simon's multiple-OS configuration, which makes the NT-only
setup I do at work seem a real picnic.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jul 7 13:59:43 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
I feel weary, possibly because of a late night and early morning, but whatever
the case it's eaten into my emotional state rather, not to mention my ability
to do useful things here at work.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jul 7 19:57:03 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Oh. I can't work out whether that's better now or not. Probably is. Less bad,
anyway.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jul 8 09:44:43 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Was
Yesterday evening was something of an uplift from the afternoon; it was spent
trying to add OS/2 to the collection of operating systems on anakin, and
failing. Once it had got to the stage of debugging bootsectors, I was rather
out of my depth, though, and since I was tired and the efforts didn't appear to
getting anywhere useful I went home.
I felt a lot less generally down by the end of the evening; thanks and *hugs*
to various people.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jul 8 11:55:54 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Voices
sinclair 'Nothing's the same any more.'
delenn 'There are always new battles to be fought against the darkness.'
gsten 'There's always hope...'
marcus 'After a while, a part of the heart goes dead. Best to leave it
that way.'
morden 'What do you want?'
gkar 'We will destroy them. Or they will destroy us. There is no in
between.'
kosh 'You have forgotten something.'
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jul 8 12:12:40 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Now that's a pleasant headhunter. One who didn't get uppity when I said I
wasn't interested, who wasn't rude, and who said goodbye in a pleasantly cheery
fashion at the end of the conversation.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 9 09:27:13 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Was
I'm getting much better at Elite; I only crash into the space station once
every three goes or so. The main problem seems now to be dangerous lunatics who
will insist on trying to make me and my ship one with the cosmos.
wight:~$ export LANG=Pig
wight:~$ ls funt
ls: funt: Onay uchsay ilefay orway irectoryday
wight:~$
NetBSD is very silly!
Ben, on the other hand, is clearly very sensible. Small polyhedra are being
created from bits of CDs, which is a bizarre and wonderful thing.
OK, so that was a _good_ evening, then...
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 9 12:23:10 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Spelling
I can't spell barbecue. Or rather, I can, now. I can't help but wonder what a
`
barbeque is, though.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jul 10 11:35:24 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Was
It's almost scary to go to a place and realise that the last time you were
there things were so completely different.
The last time I was in Elizabeth's room was the day we went to Hamley's. It can
only have been about eight months ago and yet it seems a lifetime ago; that
wasn't just my perspective, either. Things were very tangled and complicated
back then, for everyone concerned, and I think I'm glad those days are gone.
Things are certainly calmer now; it's no longer as if there's such a rush of
changes and events throwing me this way and that, and for that I'm grateful.
As I am grateful for the fact that out of nowhere, eight months ago or so, I
found a bunch of friends who are great fun to be with.
I'm not a nasty and evil person to have got here from where I was, but
sometimes I'm not so good at reminding myself of that, and need to let myself
be persuaded of it by friends, new and old.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jul 11 00:05:40 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
`Never give up,' it was said.
I don't think things would be any better if I could.
I don't think I can give up, even partially.
I think I need to explain why.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jul 11 11:12:06 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Dreams
It seems to have been a night for them. Principal and strangest among them was
that I was in a shopping centre, perhaps with my parents, and some girl was
starting to say something to someone I couldn't see. For some reason it then
became plain that she was talking to me, and she proffered me what initially
looked like a bunch of flowers but became two entwined metal twigs by the time
I held them.
I said hello, and she gave the thumbs-up to some crowd off to one side that I
couldn't see, who cheered. I think we went home after that to an extremely
sparse house where everything was white or translucent.
After that I don't remember anything except the image of a can of air
freshener on the floor, spraying a fine mist of autumn glade into the room
completely unaided.
Subject: Daydreams
These have been much more mundane, involving various unpleasant things
happening this afternoon. Mostly just a manifestation of the stress that fills
me when I try to organise something.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jul 11 14:05:30 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Much better.
A concerted musical attack on my vaguely unhappy mood of earlier seems to have
worked...
`You make me happy,
And I hope you feel the same.
You make me feel
Like a child, child again...'
`You're not alone...'
`I've had my share so I'll help you with
the pain...'
`You're wonderful...'
`And it's telling me to go forward and walk
under a brighter sky;
Every nerve glowing like a firefly...'
`Cast your eyes on the ocean,
Cast your soul to the sea.
When the dark night seems endless,
Please remember me...
Please remember me...'
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jul 12 01:30:43 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Vindicated
It's not often that all the worry and stress that I feed into a system proves
useful, but in the case of the barbecue I organised this evening, it was.
I have an immense tendency to stress about things I'm organising, a feeling
that they must be just right and that I'm responsible for it if it's not.
Somehow I managed to fight that off to a degree. I'd like to think that's the
psychotherapy at work.
It was a fun evening. A barbecue in slight rain which nevertheless worked, and
a slouchbijoupartyette afterwards which I enjoyed, even if a few people left
earlier for whatever reasons.
On a longer-term scale, certain emotions expressed in the diary edit of [Fri
Jan 23 01:11:59 1998] are repeated here. What have we learned? That healing
will always take time.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jul 13 00:30:07 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Was
I made an early move back towards Chesterton from town; I was feeling tired and
Ben, Jacob, and Clare were all making to leave as well.
My usual route back home from the centre of town takes me through the graveyard
of St. Andrew's Church, and I've often cast glances at some of the headstones
there on my way. Today I found myself with the time, in the light of early
evening, to take a proper look.
This is where the stories are kept. I could have wandered among the headstones
for hours, reading the names and inscriptions, wading through long grass to the
most untended corners of the graveyard; I don't really know how long I actually
spent there. So many lives are recorded here, and so many deaths. So many ways
of saying the same thing... `Resting.' `Finally at Peace.' `Safe in the arms of
Jesus.' `Passed away peacefully.'
Even though it's one of those fundamentals, we've never quite got the hang of
death. It's something we still tend to euphemise quietly out of the way, and I
suppose I understand why. Terry's funeral earlier this year affected me more
than I really expected and so I can understand that it makes a sort of twisted
sense to try to ignore something that causes such grief.
So many people, important to so many other people. Couples who loved each
other (or didn't - the headstones wouldn't say), buried in the same grave, with
their children's passing marked on a small slab below the main headstone. So
many funeral tears. So many expressions of belief in God.
Sometimes what I most crave is comfort. It would be good to believe that some
of these hundreds of people whose names are recorded in the graveyard truly did
believe in God and gained comfort from that belief... That's not a belief I can
share in, though. My comforts are earthly, physical, derived from the hope that
I am important to at least some people some of the time, from joy I see around
me, or from such simple pleasures as wandering through a graveyard early on a
Sunday evening.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jul 13 16:40:18 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
I've just spent a happy while translating a letter from a French customer of
ours into English for my boss. It was really fun, and quite pleasing, since
I've not translated any French since I did it for A-level five or six years
ago. The actual letter was really very boring, just the usual stuff about Y2K
compliance, but nevertheless...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jul 14 00:04:21 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Izzarding and PlayStationing, followed by an Annoyance.
Subject: Annoyance
I said goodbye to the party from Gareth's, about to turn down Victoria Road to
go home. Since we were right by the Tex, and I was hungry, I was tempted to go
in and get something to eat. Then Simon suggested to the rest of the party that
they do that, so they did.
And I didn't, because of an old fear in me: that I might be accused of
`copying'.
Subject: Guilt
Apparently I didn't clear up properly after the party on Saturday. This is both
news to me and makes me feel dreadful since it was clearly my responsibility.
What makes it _worse_ is that I made an effort to clear the living room on the
Sunday morning, to clean all the glasses, and to generally tidy things up, and
that this wasn't enough. Worse still is that I can't think of much more I could
have done. The only thing I can actually blame on someone other than me is that
nobody thought to tell me that I'd not done enough before I left the house on
the Sunday.
Makes me wonder two things: whether organising such events is worth the hassle
if I'm going to end up feeling guilty like this afterwards, and whether I
wouldn't perhaps be better off in a house on my own where there wasn't anyone
else around to make me feel guilty.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jul 14 10:21:28 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm completely fed up. That's about it, really.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jul 14 13:45:11 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: And so it begins.
Within the next few months, apparently, one of my housemates will be moving
out. It feels like the beginning of the end for this place, somehow. Maybe
that's just my reaction to change, magnified through today's depression, or
perhaps it's a realisation that without the one GreenEndian I know well, this
place might not feel quite so comfortable.
I'm happy for them; they're building something. But there is always a price.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jul 15 17:31:45 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Will Be
Argh! Don't you just hate coincidences? I find out about a London meet that
some people I know around here but haven't met are going to, and when does it
turn out to be happening? The one weekend I'm definitely not going to be able
to make it. :-(
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jul 15 20:10:26 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Well, my desk just became more excessively technological. Probably
over-burdened, too... The new PC (well, I say `new', but it's actually an old
486 DX2-66) is happily running Win95, playing CDs, and being as good a thing as
something that slow can be when running Win95 (which, to be frank, it isn't
really up to doing.)
Now if only it'd let me browse the network...
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 16 11:07:34 1998]--
From: (S) I think I'm (not) paranoid... (steph)
Subject: Is
This is the darkness I hadn't dared to fear. Let me be wrong, please? Or, well,
I'm stuffed.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 16 14:31:29 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Oh, OK.
I was wrong.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 16 16:04:54 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
But somehow I don't feel any better for it. Perhaps it's just the heat, the
headache, and piles of old PC hardware that won't work properly, perhaps it's
the fact that for the past two weeks I've not had the chance to talk without
constraint to anyone, perhaps it's fear...
death
walker 'Like us? You will become us.'
...of something I cannot let happen.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 16 20:47:37 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Better again. Stability? Me? Apparently not.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jul 17 00:37:02 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
How do you stop missing someone?
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jul 17 12:51:57 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Depression
I can't see any cause for the way I've felt this week, really. There have been
some problems, true, but I've sorted some of those out, and I don't think
they've been the root cause of all this. I don't think there is a root cause.
It's like seeing everything through a cloud of fog. Nothing's clear,
everything's a problem, an obstacle. You worry about where you're going and
what you're doing because you can't see clearly, and so you stumble, and stop.
The will to do anything vanishes and you catch yourself staring into space,
mind unfocused, but nevertheless desperately unhappy.
You see all the regrets, ghosts, and shadows and none of the joys, friends, and
loves. Every hope you cast away to one side, embracing only fear as your mind
sees only disaster, pain, and loss. Lost in the fog, you forget who you are.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jul 18 15:31:43 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
The little bracelet which I've worn for the past few months has just
disintegrated :-(. It feels really weird, it not being there... But it will be
made again.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Jul 18 15:35:34 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
On the plus side, I'm spodding from an X session, displayed on my Win95 box
through the wonders of VNC. And the Win95 box _isn't_swapping_. No surprise,
you may think; being a geek, he'll have a whizzy dual Pentium II with more RAM
than you can shake a ewe at. Be told: it's a 486 with 8Mb.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jul 19 02:01:11 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Was
Last night did me some good, I think. Some combination of a delicious steak
dinner, tinkering with Windows and Samba, and a long phone call helped me to
see things a little more clearly and positively. There's more to think about
there, but that's what long wibbly letters are for.
Subject: Is
I wondered, after Gareth and Alison had disappeared off and the
remaining Gardies gathering of Jacob, Ben, Richard, Catt, James, and me had
ended up on Erasmus roof in Queens', whether the evening would fizzle off into
nothing. Then I saw the croquet lawn. Fun :-).
After a quick pint in the pub, and saying farewell to Ben, we watched the
`Summer in the City' fireworks on Parker's Piece and ended up at Elsworth Place
with some pizza.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jul 20 20:45:35 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: (no time)
I wonder, always, if any of you have the slightest idea what it's like to be
me.
Of course you don't. Of course you do.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jul 21 00:22:25 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Simple, really. *smile*
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Jul 21 09:20:10 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
After a pleasant evening spent prodding and nattering about the MicroVAX II
I'd rescued, there was an equally pleasant walk home in the rain, and before I
went to bed I set off some Dhrystone tests for Simon on my machine.
I remember waking up just before 6am, feeling strangely disturbed as if
something terrible had happened or was happening, the precise nature of which
eluded me. Unable to figure out what it was, I poked my computer to confirm
that the Dhrystone tests had indeed frozen the machine as they had yesterday
evening; rebooting it and wondering why it had crashed gave me something more
useful to worry about before I fell asleep for another two hours.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jul 22 00:47:30 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Sometimes I find myself drifting, as if I'm hovering on the edges of a scene
without actually being present. This evening's game of Twilight Imperium was a
little like that. Constantly losing and regaining focus on the game and what
was happening. I may have been doing quite well; it didn't seem clear to me.
I was jolted at the end, heart rate high, jittering, pacing, but I think that
demon has been slain. No hesitation, like the arrow that springs from the bow.
Subject: Was
I remember my mind drifting, as if I was hovering on the edges of a different
scene without actually being present. But that evening's game of Twilight
Imperium was one I wasn't even there for.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jul 22 10:04:19 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
My Psion seems not to be in the mood to turn on. I hope this is just battery
conservation; I'll try it with a fresh set (and the power supply) come
lunchtime.
*fingers crossed*
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 23 00:09:26 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
It turned out to be the Psion being eminently sensible, and refusing to turn on
when there was no oomph left in the main batteries. Replacing them fixed it.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 23 11:56:15 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: *blip*
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Jul 23 12:09:24 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: *sigh*
Random downness attack, fear of the future, apathy, an inclination to hide or
seek more comfort than I may...
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jul 24 00:31:36 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Better again
Or at least a little. Thanks due to Simon for providing some nargery to
distract my mind from its own internal workings and some biscuits to distract
my stomach from the fact that I haven't eaten properly this evening.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jul 24 15:40:38 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
And so it's off to Newcastle. We'll have to see how I get on... *shrug* All I
have to lose is the cost of the train fare and the time.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jul 26 16:42:27 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
What's happening to me?
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jul 26 17:51:27 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: White noise.
And if I was Why do you say that Leave me alone Help me I wish you would Please
No Why I don't deserve I'm sorry It's It's It's It's just I don't know The
words form but You see? Nothing makes any sort of Somehow it just That was
perhaps the most depressing I used to promise myself that I'd keep going until
the end of B5 and now as that I should never have gone I knew I would be I
don't know Help me Someone Help me There must be someone There are no answers
but What's wrong with me? Why can't I explain this this It's like nothing works
any more Please understand This isn't about you or What am I doing here? I I I
don't I don't know Just let me I don't know Just I shouldn't It's an imposition
Nobody likes a depressed person Who gives a...
Me. And I wish I knew what sort of help would do any good at all.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jul 27 00:11:11 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Back from the edge again. It's been like that - there and back, there and back
- for much of the past week, and particularly noticeably this weekend. (I hope
to write a breakdown of quite when the changes occurred, but not tonight as I
could do with a proper night's sleep.) If this persists I intend to see a
doctor about it, as it's something that's far too familiar from the cycles of
depression we saw a little over two years ago.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jul 27 22:59:56 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Was
The weekend was... I don't know how it was. I hadn't been sure on the Thursday
whether I wanted to go or not, afraid that I'd feel over the weekend in company
what I had felt in my own little world at work that day. I took the Friday
afternoon off work anyway as I was feeling vaguely better. I enjoyed the train
journey, I enjoyed getting to Newcastle and meeting people, and I enjoyed the
evening in the Mayfair, until...
...something flipped, something changed. Even not knowing or liking a great
deal of the music, you can enjoy such places. All humanity, one might fancy, is
there. Something disappeared, and I was filled with a feeling I can't describe.
That scared me, a lot. It still does; there've been echoes of that feeling
intermittently since.
Saturday was glorious. Meeting Alison at the station, and then going to do
touristy things... It was wonderful fun, and I laughed and smiled and ran and
took photos. And then...
...something flipped, something changed. Tired? Perhaps, but anyway a feeling
that I wanted to get out, but I couldn't because the last train was too soon to
catch. I gloried myself up, a lot. So things were fun; we sat there drinking
flavoured vodka (mmm!) and laughed until we were far too zonked to do anything
more so we slouched in front of Asterix and...
...something flipped, something changed. Some combination of panic, fear,
anger, and a constrast with the glories of earlier, I don't know. Apologies
(again, but this time in public) for how that happened.
I left Newcastle early on Sunday morning.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jul 27 23:04:20 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Amazing what you miss by being away. In as many senses as you like.
Gradually. Slowly. Imperceptibly.
Your time will come.
And then mine.
Somehow.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Jul 27 23:10:11 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Love and Anger
I remember the weekend I first bought this CD. It was the weekend I last gave
up loving someone.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jul 29 01:38:09 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me || (steph)
Subject: Is
Sometimes there are only questions, whirling around my mind. And then all the
doubts are dispelled.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jul 29 12:04:33 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me |> (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm convinced my eyesight has deteriorated rapidly, at least over the course of
the past year and a half while I've been working with computers, and possibly
more specifically in the past few months. I didn't notice it until quite
recently when I found that my corrected eyesight was significantly worse than
Ben's uncorrected vision, at least testing this with the terminal on his desk.
In the last week, things have felt a lot worse, though. Looking at my monitor
for significant amounts of time makes my eyes feel tired and wibbly, and I end
up with a headache. Looks as if I'm going to have to go and see an optician,
and soon; this is getting in the way of my work.
In the meantime, it's 10x20 fonts all round...
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Jul 29 22:20:06 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me |> (steph)
Subject: Is
Gods, it _is_ bad. I'm noticing it more and more; even a brief amount of time
spent here or in Another Place has given me a headache and I'm finding I have
to peer at the screen even though the font I'm using is a comfortably large
one.
*sigh* I think the best thing to do at this point would be to go home, getting
some fresh air and thinking time on the way. I've got the usual appointment
with Dr. Vourdas tomorrow and I was given the unusual task last week of writing
down what I consider to be my good points. Not a particularly easy exercise,
and one best done with a trusted friend; the last time I did this was quite
some time ago with Lanfear, and it was a surprisingly uplifting exercise
compared to the more usual analysis of character flaws.
There's not time for that sort of discussion now, though, so I'll just have to
keep my tendencies to belittle myself in check by myself.
Subject: Is
I'm happy. I don't know if things are as they should be, or as they were, or as
I want them to be, but hey.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Jul 31 15:54:16 1998]--
From: (S) Please remember me |> (steph)
Subject: Yay!
Solaris is upgrading itself over the network and hasn't yet asked me a single
question! *bounce* All going well, I can customise the installation to make
things a bit saner (removing Solaris lp in favour of LPRng or something, frex),
and then upgrade a pile of Suns with no difficulty some weekend or other.
Today's productivity in getting this working alone makes up for the vague
uselessness of the rest of the week.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Aug 2 14:37:06 1998]--
From: (S) Nelson, the tap-dancing spider. (steph)
Subject: 8:00pm Saturday 1st August, `The Gallery'
Simon's been showing Clare, Ben, Jacob, and me around his new house. It's odd,
pleasantly so, and possibly the closest likely to be found to the wishes and
personalities of the inhabitants-to-be.
I like it, in its way, but at the same time I feel somehow differently to
what's expressed by Clare's continual `wow, this is a cool house' noises. I'm
vaguely jealous (maybe because GreenEnd is such a tip), but at the same time I
can see why I wouldn't want to live here.
I suppose it's a part of the future, and will become as much a part of the
furniture of my life as its inhabitants will become of it.
And then the wheel will turn again, and it'll be all change once more.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Aug 2 14:45:19 1998]--
From: (S) Nelson, the tap-dancing spider. (steph)
Subject: Was
That was also written at least in part so that I could be the first to write a
diary entry from the Gallery. :-)
It's been a good few days. Starting from the success with Solaris on Friday,
things continued well as Clare, Ben, Jacob and I retired to GreenEnd in the
evening and ended up playing StarCraft quite a bit. Various of my housemates
have been playing this for the past month or so, but I'd resisted playing it
until now. Summary: it's fun. Anyone who played WarCraft II will recognise the
gameplay - the basis of that hasn't changed a lot - but the beauty of it rests
in the differences between the races you can play: the organic Zerg,
robotic/psionic Protoss, and the good old Terrans.
Friday's play continued until about 5am on Saturday morning; was it entirely
predictable that we'd end up playing it again last night? Probably :-).
Oh, and another plus point to my life recently is that I've bought Casablanca
on video.
Meanwhile, Babylon 5 becomes compelling, tragic, and depressing as the end of
the series nears. We won't get the rest of it, I'm told, until November,
though.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Aug 2 14:48:31 1998]--
From: (S) Nelson, the tap-dancing spider. (steph)
Subject: Is
`Look into my eyes, and tell me what I see.'
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Aug 3 00:03:40 1998]--
From: (S) Nelson, the tap-dancing spider. (steph)
Subject: Ooooooooooh
Richard and LNR bought me a cuddly swan from their weekend down in Dorset. It's
soooooooooo cute, and a wonderful thing and makes me want to go `awwwwwwwww'
lots :-).
It needs a name...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Aug 3 23:12:25 1998]--
From: (S) Nelson, the tap-dancing spider. (steph)
Subject: Before
God-sent, understood, she walked the water
Knowing no darkness and fearing no harm.
We brought her gifts and riches
>From the palaces of our kings,
But she did not take them.
`I am rich enough, god-sent,
That this water is mine
That this world is mine
That you are mine.'
So we left her to walk the water.
Seven days later we returned
And found the gifts we had brought.
We took them back to our homes
And gave them to our children
And waited for her to speak.
`I am wise enough, god-sent,
That this kindness is mine
That this purpose is mine
That you are mine.'
So we left her to walk the water.
We grew dismayed, and some grew bitter
And harboured evil in their hearts.
They moved on her at night,
While the moon was full
And stabbed her with their blades.
`So poor was I, god-sent,
That such innocence was mine
That such purity was mine
That I believed.'
And we watched as she left the water
And left the world forever
As if, finally, she understood.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Aug 5 11:45:59 1998]--
From: (S) Nelson, the tap-dancing spider. (steph)
Subject: Is
I was tired yesterday evening. A sensible thing would have been to get an early
night; I would have if I hadn't ended up reconfiguring the TCP/IP software on
all my machines to reflect the changes to GreenEnd's networking arrangements.
Still, I got to bed a little before midnight, which is better than the time I
would have got to bed if I'd gone to Wake up Screaming; I don't think I'd have
had the energy to enjoy that.
I'm tired again today, though. If it's my eyesight, that should be fixed when I
go to the optician's next Thursday afternoon.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Aug 5 16:37:23 1998]--
From: (S) Nelson, the tap-dancing spider. (steph)
Subject: Is
OK, so now that's CDE being automatically installed as well. All we need to do
now is to work out where to put it if there isn't any space on /usr.
Then we can see about replacing lp with LPRng and sendmail with exim, and we
might end up with a Solaris 2.5.1 installation that's actually sensible.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Aug 5 17:17:22 1998]--
From: (S) Nelson, the tap-dancing spider. (steph)
Subject: Pink and yellow and orange and green...
I think I like highlighter pens. I can make dull bits of paper glow
meaningfully.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Aug 6 11:04:04 1998]--
From: (S) Nelson, the tap-dancing spider. (steph)
Subject: Is
JumpStart isn't jumpstarting, and I'm tired again. Hey ho.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Aug 6 17:19:02 1998]--
From: (S) Nelson, the tap-dancing spider. (steph)
Subject: Argh!
I'm Diary of the Hour! (More to the point, I've just seen the little summary
doobrie, and it's cringeworthily pretentious, not to mention rather
inaccurate.)
Ah well. *waves* to any passing readers...
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Aug 8 19:43:17 1998]--
From: (S) My other chocolate's a Ferrero (steph)
Subject: Was
Played StarCraft again last night. Any surprises?
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Aug 9 04:45:51 1998]--
From: (S) My other chocolate's a Ferrero (steph)
Subject: Is
There are times when the brain simply doesn't work properly. Times like these,
in fact. An alarm was sounding somewhere outside, although it took several
minutes to notice that it was a two-tone beep rather than a single intermittent
one. I wandered downstairs in my dressing gown, and opened the front door; I'm
not really sure what I hoped to see, but the alarm had gone and there was
nothing unusual about. It was beautifully cool, and far too tempting to go and
walk down by the river. I didn't though.
I looked at the microwave for the time and mulled over the significance of `0',
stared at the body in the living room until I could work out who it was, and
came back up here to bed.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Aug 9 23:07:42 1998]--
From: (S) My other chocolate's a Ferrero (steph)
Subject: Was
I was truly happy, that's all you need to know.
Subject: Is
It's been a good day. Caught all of The Archers omnibus this morning, and spent
a pleasant few hours reading about the IRA and occasionally chatting to Dan,
who happens to have been the body on the living room floor. In the afternoon I
went to see Godzilla. Large lizard, many slightly smaller lizards. Some stuff
went boom and crunch.
Evening with people in the pub, good fun, but I'm tired.
Subject: Will Be
...?
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Aug 12 09:26:21 1998]--
From: (S) My other chocolate's a Ferrero (steph)
Subject: Last night
It would have been just too hot to join various people at the Calling last
night; I would have melted and been unhappy and it wouldn't have been fun.
Ben's suggestion of StarCraft was an excellent alternative. He and I held our
own against Rjk's Zerg for a little while before being steamrollered, which was
heartening given how much more practice he's had at the game.
Then there came the question: just how do you defend against the Protoss tactic
of building up a force very early and going in to trash the enemy base? Even
building up fast and restricting construction to barracks and bunkers doesn't
seem to be very effective, and while more firebats and a lot more practice are
probably what's required it's hard to see quite how to get a sensible defence
working. The upshot of all this was that my Terrans were roundly trounced by
Ben's Protoss, twice in quick succession. Hey ho :-)
Afterwards, we fiddled a bit with the really quite wonderful campaign editor. A
pleasant evening, all told.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Aug 12 12:23:43 1998]--
From: (S) My other chocolate's a Ferrero (steph)
Subject: Is
Oh, jolly good, the sun's gone away.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Aug 13 17:46:06 1998]--
From: (S) My other chocolate's a Ferrero (steph)
Subject: Was
Yesterday evening was good too. It'd become cooler with the advent of a bit
more wind and a few more clouds, so doing something other than collapsing in a
heap was suddenly an option. Consequently, Jacob, Simon, Ben, Clare, and I went
out to Leckhampton and played croquet. All good fun, even if I am
insufficiently vicious-minded for the game; posting someone is all well and
good, and highly amusing, but one oughtn't to feel remorse afterwards :-)
After Ben and I had gone out of the game, we wandered around Leckhampton
gardens. It's a particularly lovely place, complete with bits of woodland, a
long avenue that goes from nowhere to nowhere, and a swimming pool. (And of
course, a croquet lawn, but you'd gathered that...)
When I got back to GreenEnd later, people were watching some silly episodes of
DS9, so I joined them.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Aug 13 18:16:45 1998]--
From: (S) My other chocolate's a Ferrero (steph)
Subject: Is
Today's fun included a trip to the optician's. It turns out that while my
long-distance vision hasn't got much worse over the time I've been working for
Laser-Scan, a collection of other problems with my eyes have caused other
problems. For one thing, I'm essentially lacking sensible binocular vision,
because my left eye is so much weaker than my right. For another, my eyes have
trouble adjusting between the focus needed for short-range work and normal
distance stuff, so my distance vision becomes screwy if I've been doing any
significant amount of near-work (like, say, my job).
The outcome of all this is a second pair of glasses for working with computers
and reading, which will be a hassle to carry around and to remember to switch
to and from, but probably a worthwhile one.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Aug 15 12:32:32 1998]--
From: (S) After all we've been through... (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm tired and worn out, and the words I'd write here won't come. Ah well. I
shall consume lots of sugar and feel better as a result.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Aug 15 23:51:01 1998]--
From: (S) After all we've been through... (steph)
Subject: Is
A good evening's party. Take a bunch of friends from different groups, stir
lightly. Add alcohol, food, music, and games. Serve with a smile. Enjoy.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Aug 17 23:03:43 1998]--
From: (S) After all we've been through... (steph)
Subject: Was
I've had a headache all day today, and hence haven't been at work. With any
luck I'll be better tomorrow...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Aug 18 10:21:53 1998]--
From: (S) After all we've been through... (steph)
Subject: Conversations
me 'Hello, I'm ringing to enquire about our Technet subscription. We
were having some problems with it a little while ago, so I'm a bit
concerned that this month's CD hasn't arrived.'
numbers are exchanged.
microsft 'You haven't paid.'
me 'What do you mean we haven't paid? We paid over a year ago; we've
been receiving CDs from you at least some of the time.'
microsft 'Those would have been free.'
me blinks
me wonders what we paid for, in that case.
microsft 'I'm afraid I can find no record of you having paid. If you can
provide us with proof that you have paid...'
So, we've paid Microsoft some money (for something which, it appears, they give
out free, but hey), and because they've lost the information that we've paid
them they're not sending us what we've paid for until we've proved to them
again that we have indeed paid.
I despair of these people, I honestly do...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Aug 18 14:14:22 1998]--
From: (S) After all we've been through... (steph)
Subject: Is
Further to the above, just to be entirely fair to Microsoft... We did pay them,
and we paid the bank L18 for the privilege of getting the money directly into
their account. They then paid the bank L18 to send the money back to our
account... Not that they told us or anything. The phrases `yellow' and `beware
of the leopard' spring to mind.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Aug 18 23:01:28 1998]--
From: (S) After all we've been through... (steph)
Subject: Is
This diary has been pruned a little, to an appropriate point. How much this
truncation removes from the size of the actual file is not particularly
significant; as with everything else, it's the thought that counts.
Subject: Is
The bookshelf in front of me in this, my bedroom at home, is full of books
which have been known to inspire me. To mark that inspiration, not least
because I am lacking it at the moment, here are some thoughts from those
volumes.
`A license unit is the basic measurement that Digital uses to specify how much
product use a license provides. Digital gives each license intended to be used
with LMF a size, specified in license units. For example, a license can be a
50-unit license, a 200-unit license, or a 700-unit license.'
-- `VMS License Management Utility Manual'
`The corner of a stone slab was sticking out of the trench wall a little way
above the floor. A piece of the slab had broken off, making a hole three inches
wide; that was all. Susan took a pebble, and dropped it through the gap. A
second later there was a resonant "plunk" as it hit water.'
-- Alan Garner, `The Moon of Gomrath'
`If there is poison round the lips do not use mouth-to-mouth ventilation... use
the Holger Nielsen method (page 20). Remove to hospital immediately (send any
samples of vomit or empty containers with the casualty).'
-- `The Essentials of First Aid'
`In a typical type of funerary description - which we can term
self-presentation - the owner presents himself (rarely, herself) according to
the ethical values of Middle Kingdom elite society and in terms of success and
achievement, particularly in royal service. In order to describe the activities
which the official participated in, the tasks he accomplished, and his ethical
behaviour, the past tense is generally used.'
-- Mark Collier & Bill Manley, `How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs'
`The Morden extension was opened [1926] by Col. J.T. Moore-Brabazon MP,
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport. He drove the special
train from Clapham South to Morden. There was the usual official lunch - held
in the car sheds where the tables were decorated with red and white
carnations... To encourage travel on the new line 15,000 free tickets were
issued to people living near each station'
-- `Lines on the Underground' (Northern Line)
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Aug 19 15:29:55 1998]--
From: (S) After all we've been through... (steph)
Subject: Is
For no good reason I have decided to review the chocolate bars I buy from the
snack machine here at work.
Subject: Toffee Crisp
Made by Nestle, so it's definitely out for people who don't do that sort of
thing, it comes in an eye-catching bright orange wrapper. The words `Toffee
Crisp' have small `motion-lines' around them, suggesting the chocolate bar
inside is vibrant and energetic. Let's see... Turning to unwrap the bar, I
encounter the slogan `The lightness and crispiness of Toffee Crisp is enhanced
by Nestle's proud chocolate heritage.' A heritage made of chocolate? The mind,
she boggles. Anyway, inside is a chocolate bar consisting of a thin layer of
Twix-like caramel substance, and a thick wodge of what taste like
chocolate-coated Rice Krispies. I'm not overly impressed with this chocolate
bar; it's too sickly and not as chewy as I'd expect from something claiming to
be toffee.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Aug 21 00:11:08 1998]--
From: (S) proud chocolate herring (steph)
Subject: Is
>From one perspective, it's an evening wasted in front of the goggle box,
devouring mass-market entertainment. From another, it's a relaxing evening
spent at home watching old episodes of Deep Space 9. (It also let my eyes focus
for prolonged periods of time on something that wasn't a few inches away from
them, which was made me feel a lot more clear-headed.)
Today saw the last session of my therapy with Dr. Vourdas. I had imagined that
perhaps this therapy would change my personality in some fundamental way, had
feared that it would make me somehow less `me', but that wasn't a realistic
expectation. What has instead happened is that my ways of thinking have been
eased gently away from their usual directions. Almost imperceptibly, too; I
noticed that my mind had gradually changed rather than that it was gradually
changing.
It was sheerest coincidence that the therapy came when it did, when I most
needed it. I'm glad it did.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Aug 21 16:35:45 1998]--
From: (S) proud chocolate herring (steph)
Subject: Mars
Made by Mars. Everyone knows what a Mars bar is: a sticky chocolatey mess full
of energy. I doubt this one will be any different. I've heard tales that Mars
Bars have been getting smaller, but for the record this one (weighing in at a
big bad 65g) seems as large as they've always been. Fairly unassuming brown
wrapper, with `Mars' writ large in red, shadowed with gold. `Milk chocolate
with soft nougat and caramel centre,' it claims. Let's see. The chocolate is
reasonably thick, which is nice. The rest... Well, there's the soft light brown
squishy stuff, which tastes sweet, light brown and squishy, and the caramel
layer which is a little (admittedly not much) chewier than Toffee Crisp's.
Overall, probably better value than the Toffee Crisp for the 35p that the
machine charged me for it. And yes, it was all of sticky, chocolatey, and
messy.
A moment or two later, and there's an unpleasant `sharp' feeling at the back of
my throat. I knew there was a good reason I didn't buy Mars bars.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Aug 23 00:19:51 1998]--
From: (S) proud chocolate herring (steph)
Subject: Is
I could have stayed longer at the Elsworth Place party; something tells me I've
missed something (delayed something, says an inner voice (since we're thinking
of inner voices)) by not being there, but anything I might have missed can be
caught up on later. Why didn't I stay? I wasn't unhappy or anything, just
tired, not in the mood, lacking in the energy, whatever.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Aug 24 00:20:34 1998]--
From: (S) proud chocolate herring (steph)
Subject: Is
Today has been almost entirely wasted. The conversion of GREENEND from a
workgroup to a domain for the house's Windows boxes was one accomplishment,
admittedly, but a very unsatisfying one since it was mostly a question of black
magic and luck.
In the evening, a group of people watched The Avengers. Contrary to any
negative reviews you might have read it's a wonderfully silly film, complete
with teddy bears, Eddie Izzard, and a fair few Star Wars references (among
others). Good fun.
Subject: Was
Emotions doing odd things there.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Aug 24 09:51:31 1998]--
From: (S) proud chocolate herring (steph)
Subject: Was of Is
Source: <MLYD> "Diary for steph "
> Subject: Is
>
> kosh 'Reflection. Surprise. Terror. For the future.'
>
> Ah, well. See you at the hour of scampering...
You're a canny one, Kosh baby, and no mistake.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Aug 24 16:38:57 1998]--
From: (S) A distinctly non-zero chance. (steph)
Subject: Aero
Although this bar says `10% more', I'm convinced Aeros used to be thicker than
this. Anyway, this is a very traditional way of selling people less chocolate
and advertising it as a benefit. Nestle (for it is they, again; it'd be
interesting to know how many of their products are ex-Rowntree and how many are
`native' Nestle) even go as far as to point out that the light chocolate
bubbles are part of that proud chocolate heritage they keep bleating on about.
It tastes rather artificial and when you bite into it it feels rather
insubstantial, which isn't surprising since it's mostly air. Cadbury's Wispa
was a later imitation, and a much nicer one at that.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Aug 25 00:19:43 1998]--
From: (S) A distinctly non-zero chance. (steph)
Subject: Is
The day, apart from being quiet with both my coworker and boss away, was good.
Chasing up bits of paperwork and encountering bits of contractual wrangling
with suppliers was a fun way to pass the morning, and fixing various bits and
pieces around the place filled most of the afternoon. While the evening started
less well - the bus into town failed to turn up so I missed dinner with Ben and
Jacob - it improved as I went to the Gallery to visit Simon and Gareth, and
after the eating of sausages and waffles, to watch the start of DS9's sixth
season with Gareth.
I've been in a peculiar mood, with emotions rather unsteady yet enthusiasm and
energy at something of a peak. Monitoring the flow of the best things, worst
things, and words, it seems I've started admitting certain things as
possibilities. There's even a chance of some of those possibilities coming to
light. A distinctly non-zero chance.
As I write there is no way of knowing whether that is good or bad. Or both.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Aug 25 17:12:09 1998]--
From: (S) A distinctly non-zero chance. (steph)
Subject: Is
While it was great to receive a letter this lunchtime - it would be cruel to
say `at last' had the writer herself not said the same - something from it has
just sprung to mind which implies something not at all good. Something I may
actually have to do something about, which (I fear) will make it all too plain
exactly where my loyalties lie.
There are precious few things he and I agree on, these days, but they are
precisely that: precious.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Aug 25 23:51:19 1998]--
From: (S) A distinctly non-zero chance. (steph)
Subject: Will Be
steph 'You were wrong, you know.'
steph 'I know.'
steph 'If you'd listened we would have got here a lot sooner.'
steph 'Doubtless.'
steph 'So why didn't you listen?'
steph 'What, and deprive you of the opportunity to be smug?'
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Aug 25 23:58:44 1998]--
From: (S) A distinctly non-zero chance. (steph)
Subject: Is
Pay attention, Owen. It's all in the detail, and getting that sort of thing
wrong can be costly. No harm done this time, though.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Aug 26 09:11:33 1998]--
From: (S) A distinctly non-zero chance. (steph)
Subject: Is
That's hideous failure number one: I've left my VDU/reading glasses at home :-(
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Aug 27 14:49:08 1998]--
From: (S) A distinctly non-zero chance. (steph)
Subject: Last night
When I left work yesterday I was feeling distinctly tired and energyless, and
very tempted to go straight home. While I did in the end go into town to see
people (which was a good thing, for Clare is back in town _again_) I think they
were feeling pretty much as tired as I was. After frobbing Frontier for
interesting star systems for a little while, I wandered off home.
I planned to watch `Trials and Tribble-ations', but the game of StarCraft I got
involved in while waiting for Steve to finish putting his computer back
together took forever to end, so that particularly silly episode of DS9 will
have to wait for another time.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Aug 29 18:35:47 1998]--
From: (S) A distinctly non-zero chance. (steph)
Subject: Is
Argh, for want of a better word. I do not like feeling uncomfortable in my own
home.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Aug 30 17:52:15 1998]--
From: (S) Agent Jackson, UBI (steph)
Subject: Is
The question, more or less, is `what do you do about someone you barely know
who turns up on your doorstep whenever he's bored?'. I wouldn't mind, perhaps,
if it were a good friend we were talking about, or if he came specifically to
visit _someone_, but none of the residents of the house know him as anything
more than a passing acquaintance and he seems to come here simply to find
people. It makes me feel uncomfortable, it's an imposition, and sooner or later
the far too vast reserves of tact that GreenEnd seems to possess will run out.
That, as of Tuesday, I'll have to work with this guy is perhaps a problem, but
I don't really care.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Aug 30 18:05:52 1998]--
From: (S) Agent Jackson, UBI (steph)
Subject: Was
My parents visited yesterday. Pleasant, after a fashion, but I kept finding
that I didn't really have a great deal to say to them. My life isn't wildly
exciting at the moment, and I suspect any way in which it might be exciting or
interesting would be something I wouldn't be prepared to talk to my parents
about. Still, there was a good lunch, and we wandered around various bookshops.
Having said earlier in the day that I didn't habitually spend much money I
proceeded to buy quite a lot of books... It was good to have some news of
my old home: my brother has moved out, and is now living and working in a pub
near Wembley. `Starting afresh,' apparently.
The previous two evenings have been spent playing StarCraft, and I think that
perhaps I'm getting a _little_ better at it. Not much, but a little. I'm still
prepared to leave open the question of whether it's just lack of practice or
lack of some innate strategic tactical ability that makes me poor at this
sort of game.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Aug 30 18:19:17 1998]--
From: (S) Agent Jackson, UBI (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm in the movies, in a pleasingly limited way. The chap who did the Lord of
the Rings play has written a script for a short SF film, and so I'm playing a
Union Bureau of Investigation agent called Jackson. Really quite fun, and it
has advantages over a play in being short and not requiring a very few definite
performances. Certainly adds variety to life...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Sep 1 00:05:56 1998]--
From: (S) Agent Jackson, UBI (steph)
Subject: Is
If you look into the shape of the darkness, you see light. (Or if you look into
the shape of the light, you see darkness. Of course.) If you will go casting
spells, make sure you know what you're casting. (Before this edit goes any
further, don't worry, it's chain of thought (or thought of chains)).
Like when I was a field-mouse, looking up at the sky full of skulls tailing off
into infinity, you wonder how far back it all goes. You look into the darkness
of the society, discover new darknesses, and the further into the dark places
you go, the more darkness there is to discover. How far back does it go? You
look into the darkness in their eyes, the pain and the madness, and you wonder:
how far back does it go?
Even these words, how far back do they go? There's an eerie feeling to that
sort of distant history. Less unsettling, sometimes, to ponder the future or
the present.
Subject: Notes on the passage of time.
This time last year I was in Oxford.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Sep 1 11:23:55 1998]--
From: (S) Agent Jackson, UBI (steph)
Subject: Was
I spent the Bank Holiday afternoon playing another strange space board game,
this one called `Merchant of Venus'. It's a good little game, quite similar to
the trading side of Elite, and has two advantages over Twilight Imperium:
firstly, it's shorter, and secondly, it's a much less brutal game; in TE it's
very possible for one player to be wiped out quite early, whereas MoV is rather
more genteel.
MoV is also quite silly; I played a race called the Eeep, from planet Eeepeeep.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Sep 4 09:27:35 1998]--
From: (S) Agent Jackson, UBI (steph)
Subject: Is
Autumn is coming. I can feel it, just around the corner, lurking in wait as
September drifts on into October and the days get shorter, the evenings darker.
It's odd that I didn't notice the longest day; that's the sort of thing I've
tended to observe in recent times.
Always Autumn. Historically, Autumn is a bad time of year for me. It's when
things begin to go wrong after Summer's long haul, when all the pieces are
shuffled around the board to set the scene for the next year, when there's a
distinct transition between the old and the new, but in spite of all that it
will always be my favourite time of year. The gradual growth of the dark, the
mists, and the rain: these things I love. I can't remember it ever having been
different.
Always Autumn.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Sep 14 09:45:45 1998]--
From: (S) Agent Jackson, UBI (steph)
Subject: Is
Always Autumn.
Mono's been down for a little under ten days, then. It feels like more, even
though I haven't really missed it much. What I have missed is this diary, in
which I have become accustomed to writing a little each day, and in which I
would, given the chance, have recorded the onset of the familiar minor chord,
the sensation of being lost and alone, the arrival of Autumn.
Odd that I should so willingly embrace a time of year that seems to be good at
causing me pain, that I should prefer this season of darkness and rain (`mists
and mellow fruitfulness' is entirely too golden an image, I'm afraid), but
there it is: of all the seasons, I love Autumn most of all. While my mind
mixes all the old disasters in new recipes, I look at what I hold dear and
think that perhaps this time things will be different, because of who I have
become and how I got here, and because of those who helped me reach this point.
Autumn. Hello, old friend.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Sep 14 12:38:15 1998]--
From: (S) Silence and now (steph)
Subject: Will Be
You always have to see people in other people's eyes. To understand, see?
And I wish I knew, after all this time, what people see when they look at me.
Because then I might be able to value what I mean to them for what it is,
rather than as some crude reflected impression of what they mean to me.
A little while ago, someone told me who I was. It is high time to live that
name, and prove wrong the little part of me that says it is all a lie.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Sep 15 17:22:30 1998]--
From: (S) Silence and now (steph)
Subject: Is
What colour is fear? Can you play the yellows on a trombone? How does the
distort pedal work on the reality organ? Does the sky sing? Are birds
inferred? How is black?
a) It is time for the walls to become the cathedral.
b) Nothing Man has built will last.
c) The roof is broken, and the rain comes in at night.
d) Mend the tap, mend the tap, mend the tap, Alice.
i) `I don't see any tap'
ii) `There isn't any tap'
e) A smile is an expensive thing, when you lose it.
i) Nobody ever featured the Misunderstood Hatter.
ii) You can see the grin, but not the blade.
1) Be careful
2) Be carefree
3) Be.
f) Watch your back.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Sep 16 00:00:27 1998]--
From: (S) Silence and now (steph)
Subject: Is
Erm, yeah. More later.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Sep 16 00:01:13 1998]--
From: (S) Silence and now (steph)
Subject: (meta-)Is
What a multiplicity of appropriatenesses my nameline has at the moment...
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Sep 16 09:11:36 1998]--
From: (S) Silence and now (steph)
Subject: Is
Yet another housemate is moving out. It seems to be the season for it. I don't
like this sort of change, and the uncertainty it introduces; I don't know how
well the house (the `community', if you like) will work with someone else, and
I'm a bit daunted by the prospect of it all. I know Steve will try and get
someone who's agreeable to us all and a Good Thing, but that doesn't really
help. The fact is that the GreenEnd of this Autumn, from about the start of
October, will be a very different place to the GreenEnd of the past two years.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Sep 17 17:44:33 1998]--
From: (S) Silence and now (steph)
Subject: Is
Anakin's right. It's quiet, almost too quiet to comment on in some ways. Still,
I feel I should make some sort of effort, so: what's been going on recently?
Saturday saw the party at Karen and Kirsten's (no better name for it that I can
think of, even though I'm aware there are other people living there). I didn't
really enjoy myself, at least in part because I had a cold, but partly for
other more complicated reasons too.
Sunday was the last of the filming for `A World by the Tale'. Even though I
missed the Grand Prix as a result, it was quite a fun afternoon, and I bimbled
over to the Gallery in the evening, played Gravity Wars, and turned Windows
green. And there was an Amf, who is now back in town after a lengthy exile in
darkest Ipswich. I've never known Amf while he's been living in Cambridge - we
met in the Mond Room many years ago, but that was it until last November - and
so it'll be interesting to observe how this change, along with all the people
we've seen moving houses, affects these social circles.
Monday evening was the new B5 movie: `Thirdspace'. I don't think it was
particularly wonderful, but it wasn't too bad either. That it provoked a
lengthy discussion that continued long after I went to bed is probably a good
indication, though; there hasn't been nearly as much of that with 5th season
episodes as there was in previous years. (I remember the vast wodges of
speculation about what the Shadows actually _wanted_ throughout Season 3.)
More later. Now it's time to go home.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Sep 17 23:38:12 1998]--
From: (S) Silence and now (steph)
Subject: (continued)
Tuesday evening started out a bad thing and ended up a good thing. So that's
good. Wednesday was really quite fun. We went straight from dinner at Corpus to
Robert Sayle's, where Clare was ludicrously enthusiastic about lots of things
(including the new iMac, which I agree is very cute indeed) and where Ben was
enthused at to the tune of two cushions. I went straight into soft furnishings
mode. Just as well we went to the Gallery to try out their new sofa, then.
I'm quite envious; the Gallery looks very civilised and cosy now, with its
proper living room...
People played with my Psion, marking their houses on the map, and later on I
learned the joys of playing Micro Machines. I wasn't _hideously_ out-classed
with Amf as my opponent, even if I did have a horrible tendency to steer the
wrong way by accident.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Sep 17 23:39:00 1998]--
From: (S) Silence and now (steph)
Subject: Is
A quiet CUSFS this evening.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Sep 18 15:58:45 1998]--
From: (S) Silence and now (steph)
Subject: Is
A typical end-of-week feeling, although an entirely atypical way of dealing
with it. I've gratuitously tidied my work area, but the nature of the beast is
that it won't look particularly wonderful even when my desk is completely
clear, all documentation is in its rightful place, and my shelves are sane and
tiday. Hardly satisfactory, then, but what would be at four o'clock on a Friday
afternoon?
The worst thing about it is that I feel guilty about spending my time tidying
my desk (rather than doing `real' work), when I should feel pleasantly
virtuous. Ah well.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Sep 19 17:28:51 1998]--
From: (S) Silence and now (steph)
Subject: Is
Rather unfortunate, really. I was bored and vaguely unsettled, but that would
have been OK. But [reality here shudders into a slightly different pattern]
(reference {sorry, you don't understand, for the reasons behind the consequence
of the referent} {sorrier to You, because; no idea if You understand, and
circumstances, \[Yy\]ou know?}) and I made a decision.
I stood by the entrance to Mulberry Close for some time, staring at a hedge
while I thought. It seemed to me that I was running away and that therefore I
should go back, but it also seemed to me that I should be able to do what I
wanted and go home if I wanted and that was nobody's business but mine. I knew
I wanted to be away, and home is good for that. I also knew I wanted to be with
people, because being away from people when there _are_ people {a gathering of
people, doing something; I like being around people} hurts. There are multiple
possible reasons why it hurts.
One is simple: I like being around friends. The others are slightly more
involved, though possibly just elaborations on the first. Two: the facts
underlying the reasons behind the consequence of the referent. Three: the
referent itself.
All of which is (a) unclear, (b) unhelpful, and (c) self-contradictory and
inconsistent. Sorry. {Sorry} {Sorry}
[Reality resumes its previous pattern.] I shall get something to eat and decide
on a course of action.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Sep 20 21:44:46 1998]--
From: (S) You are me and I control you. (steph)
Subject: Was
And the course of action, after some food, was to return to Kirsten's, and I'm
by and large glad I did. Amf and Jacob had gone, for reasons of their own, but
other people were there and I started the whole being-sociable-with-people
thing once again. I also ended up embarking on an effort to tidy the Mulberry
Close living room and kitchen; while I didn't get very far there was a
pleasingly palpable improvement.
Amf returned to the fold in black, and we (Kirsten, Ben, Brian, Amf, Jon, and
I) had dinner by candlelight with wine. The after-dinner conversation was fun
for a while, consisting of amusing games of second-guessing,
reverse-psychologising, and encryption, but I never really grasped what was
going on, so it was a rather futile and irritating exercise.
There was another conversation, too, whose significance I am still pondering.
I got back to GreenEnd at about eleven, but completely shattered. I would have
stuck around the dining room watching Steve, David, and Wednesday play Twilight
Imperium, but I needed the sleep.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Sep 20 21:56:39 1998]--
From: (S) You are me and I control you. (steph)
Subject: Is
I dreamed of wind and snow in the rest area at Laser-Scan, and of an unknown
blonde woman breaking my Psion so that the dictation buttons were on the top of
the case and it swivelled where it shouldn't. The keyboard also appeared to be
a Series 3 keyboard instead of the usual S5 one. Beyond that, though, I can't
remember. I woke up at about eight this morning, feeling ludicrously hungry. I
listened to the Morning Service programme on the radio for a little while (some
horrendously colloquial service in an accent somewhere between Cockney and
Australian) and then made my way downstairs for an early breakfast and a read
of the paper. Good to have a chance to read the paper properly for a change.
The afternoon was spent at Amf's new flat, talking about various things past
and present, browsing through various interesting things, and playing around to
some interesting effect with Tarot cards. I feel further investigation of such
things may be merited. I shall certainly try to wangle a year's sample of
shipping forecasts from the Met Office to produce a `Shipping Deck'; this would
be so very me as a means of divination/introspection, not to mention a
wonderful curio.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Sep 21 10:09:56 1998]--
From: (S) You are me and I control you. (steph)
Subject: Is
My dreams are getting stranger again, whatever that may mean. Last night saw me
visiting several swimming pools, and then taking part in a competition to make
the most pleasing music out of a collection of pieces of wood and cargo
netting. It was rather like a climbing frame, and thus possibly not the most
ideal of musical instruments, but in fact the cargo netting was like a harp,
and truly beautiful music resulted.
This dream also featured a Psion, this time something which could well have
been a 3c `upgraded' to a 5 by someone with a very twisted mind. The Series 5
keyboard slid out of the case at an angle, however, and the resulting box
(through some of the holes in which one could see an original Series 3 button
bar!) was about twice as thick as a normal Series 5...
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Sep 22 12:59:14 1998]--
From: (S) You are me and I control you. (steph)
Subject: Is
Urgh. Tired, as I have been for much of the past few days. I wish I knew why,
really. It's what's stopped me writing a couple of entries here, roughly on the
subjects of responsibility and the Official Secrets Act. Maybe some other time.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Sep 24 12:37:26 1998]--
From: (S) You are me and I control you. (steph)
Subject: Was
I lurked at home for the early part of Tuesday evening, glad for the chance to
lie down. I didn't feel like going to the Calling, so I was quite glad of an
offer of tea at Richard's. Unfortunately, I dozed off and failed to leave
myself time to eat, so I was quite hungry as I wandered towards Queens' to drop
off some disks with Clare.
One van later, and I wasn't quite so hungry, so I sat around at Clare's for a
while watching a game of Snail Trek (I cannot help but feel that there should
be a port of qmanim to the Series 5), trying to install Debian (and failing due
to a dodgy floppy disk), and reading `Maranello - the F1 soap opera'
(http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/maranello).
Rather later than planned, we made it to Richard's where there was tea, Chris
Timms, and a flashy light device that told me I was lying. A good evening.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Sep 25 00:05:24 1998]--
From: (S) The moon is actionable. (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm drunk, and so see darkness at every turn. There are reasons why, these
days, I prefer not to drink so much.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Sep 25 12:02:04 1998]--
From: (S) The moon is actionable. (steph)
Subject: Was
Wednesday saw a number of silly games; it's hard to see what could be sillier
than Gravity Wars with invisible point masses and a mirror. Except being taught
to rap by a two-dimensional mustachioed onion, that is.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Sep 26 10:38:07 1998]--
From: (S) The moon is actionable. (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm at work on a Saturday, because systems need upgrading while all the people
who might use them are safely out of the blast radius. Two filesystems so far
transferred to AdvFS from UFS, and only one reboot. So far.
On the VMS side, we've got a full backup of the system disk and we've upgraded
the firmware, and on the NT side, we've shuffled a few things around quite
happily.
It's not necessarily the most fun thing in the world to have to be working on a
weekend, but there's a very different atmosphere to it; my boss is in jeans and
T-shirt, and there's nobody to interrupt us while we get things done. And the
snack machines are still there :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Sep 26 15:08:51 1998]--
From: (S) The moon is actionable. (steph)
Subject: Is
Argh. Take back what I said about it being fun; it's kind of worn off. I'm
having to reboot every Unix box in the building :-/. I've been saying `amd
would be a good thing' for the past year and a half I've been here. Maybe I
ought to get around to doing something about it...
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Sep 27 15:10:50 1998]--
From: (S) The moon is actionable. (steph)
Subject: Is
*hugs*, whatever that may be worth.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Sep 28 19:42:28 1998]--
From: (S) The moon is actionable. (steph)
Subject: Was
We never did copy the filesystem we had hoped to copy across on Saturday.
Although the destination was a couple of hundred megabytes larger than the
source, we got a `No space left on device' error. No great shakes, I suppose,
but it means I'll have to work another weekend at some point.
Ben and Clare came round to GreenEnd in the evening, so most of the evening was
spent playing computer games: Bubble Bobble on MAME (which I've just
discovered), and Starcraft. Even playing Starcraft was slightly different to
the usual, as there were some `silly' maps hidden away in the installation;
investigation revealed PacMan (Wakka-Wakka, actually, but...) and `Zergling
Round-Up', which involved pushing zerglings around with flamethrowers.
Later, when everyone had gone, it rained.
My room has a flat roof and so I notice when it rains, particularly when it
rains heavily. The gentle drumming above is somehow soothing, comfortable. I
like the rain.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Sep 29 12:13:48 1998]--
From: (S) The moon is actionable. (steph)
Subject: Was
Sunday started quite normally. Well, even. I managed to catch all of The
Archers, and got downstairs to find a sofa had arrived, so I slouched in that
and watched the Luxembourg Grand Prix. I lurked around GreenEnd for the rest of
the afternoon, and after dinner went to Kirsten's, to join Clare, Ben, and
later Jon in eating various puddings. A good evening.
I've missed out the slightly odd bit of Sunday. That's left as an exercise to
the reader :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Sep 29 15:21:29 1998]--
From: (S) The moon is actionable. (steph)
Subject: Is
I've taken the afternoon off, as part of what I'm owed in return for the work
on Saturday. I probably _could_ have claimed it as illness, given that I'm
feeling headachey and tired, but I'd then have felt guilty about doing anything
other than lying in bed looking after myself. As it is, I lounged in the comfy
chair in the lounge and listened to The Archers followed by `E-love', a radio
play about people `meeting' each other online. It was corny and entirely
predictable, of course (woman gets chatted up by bloke from US, goes to US, his
online persona turns out to be a fraud, woman gets upset, etc.) but a pleasant
diversion.
I then thought for a moment and realised that I know at least two transatlantic
couples who met electronically...
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Oct 1 01:02:59 1998]--
From: (S) But me no buts. (steph)
Subject: Is
Why is life suddenly being so _nice_ to me? Could it be, perhaps, because I've
learned to be nice to me? And that as a consequence I'm more prepared to accept
and notice that others are being nice to me too?
Quite possibly.
`Sometimes I think of you, when I'm alone...'
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Oct 2 01:50:41 1998]--
From: (S) But me no buts. (steph)
Subject: Is
Darkness creeps into the edges of my consciousness as I sit in my room thinking
of this evening. A good one, by and large, but not flawless. While I was at
times noticing my good points, indeed having them noticed (for I was paid a
great compliment), I spent other parts of the evening realising just how flawed
some of my interactions with people were. I doubt it matters much, in the long
term. A term which is just beginning, and which sees friends returning to
repopulate the Cambridge of my mind just as the real Cambridge becomes full of
thousands of vague entities I have very little knowledge of or interest in.
It's odd how darkness and light collide, overlap. My heart says there are no
blacks and whites, only infinite shades of grey, but then my heart says a lot
of things that I probably ought never to have learned to listen to. My head
says I should stay well away from the shore, and to an extent I do. But I'm
always close enough to see the darkness and the light flowing back and forth,
and maybe that's why it's dark on the edges of my consciousness now. Could be
worse, of course. We've drowned in here before now. Now we just notice that the
water is deep and the currents strong.
As I write this entry, there is a parallel development. I say what I can, offer
what I can, hope that what I say will do some good, or at least no harm. I
remind myself of what anniversaries are coming up, of how the beginning of the
end of one story came into being, and I cry. It's good to cry, no matter how
bad it might be to have to...
So, that'll be October, then.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Oct 2 15:54:01 1998]--
From: (S) But me no buts. (steph)
Subject: Will Be
My new computer is scheduled to be delivered on Monday or Tuesday, which is
nice. The downside is that the video card I ordered (Matrox Millennium II) has
been discontinued, so they're sending me a G200 instead; there isn't an XFree86
X server for this latter yet, so Linux will have to be console only until then.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Oct 2 15:58:55 1998]--
From: (S) But me no buts. (steph)
Subject: Sometimes...
mory & printerhewlett packard 2624 B w/ extra memory &
printerBxterm|vs100|xterm
terminal emulator (X11R6 Window System)xtermBibmpcx|xenix|ibmx|IBM PC xenix
con
sole displayibmx
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Oct 3 17:44:21 1998]--
From: (S) But me no buts. (steph)
Subject: Is
So, that's one housemate moved out; without all his (rather messy) gubbins, the
computer room is scarily empty, not to mention scarily tidy, and it feels a bit
odd around the house. I'm vaguely sad, actually. Dickon's lived there for a
couple of years, and you get used to people being around; it'll be different
when he's gone, just as it will be when Richard leaves. Oddly, I'm more
comfortable with the idea of Richard leaving. Odd, since I've known him a good
deal longer.
Still, things are coalescing into new forms. Peter will be moving in tomorrow,
at a guess, and the networking arrangements for Richard's departure and the
loss of our IP address range are almost completely in place. The house has
bought a new printer to replace the one that Dickon's taken away, and my new
machine arrives on Monday or Tuesday to start repopulating the computer room.
In a week's time, I move rooms temporarily so that mine can be redecorated.
Good things, probably, once the dust has settled. I'm not very good at changes,
though, so it might take a little while to adapt.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Oct 4 02:49:52 1998]--
From: (S) But me no buts. (steph)
Subject: Is (Was)
Some ideas are hard to get used to.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Oct 4 22:52:04 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
> So, that'll be October, then.
I would really, really, like to have been wrong with all the dark foreboding
waffle. But history seems to suggest that I'm better at being right than I'd
like to admit.
Hey ho, such is life.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Oct 4 23:01:54 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
Last night saw a pleasant gathering at Alison's for Gardies with Chris,
Yasmin, Simon, Amf, James, Gareth, Brian, Jacob, Richard, Ben, and (of course)
Alison. This included much fiddling with lights and optical fibres, and at the
last several games of Twenty Questions. A smaller group went on to watch `Lock,
Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels', which is good fun: a sort of British Pulp
Fiction, if you will.
Today Peter began moving into Dickon's old room, and although I helped with a
bit of the unloading, I wandered off at some point in the afternoon to visit
Kirsten, who is still virtually immobile :-(.
A relaxing Sunday.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Oct 5 15:23:30 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
My job title, as some of you may know, is `Unix Systems Support Engineer', and
keeping the Unix systems running here at work is what I like to consider the
mainstay of my job and what I'm best at. Sure, I do a bit of work with the VMS
systems, and a fair bit with the NT systems, but I'm primarily a Unix person.
I'd object if they tried to remove the word `Unix' from my job title, put it
that way. It was a bit disturbing, then, to hear someone describe my job title
as `not right' because it `didn't fit' and I `spend most of my time working on
NT'. Nobody important, just a user, but it does call into question what I'm
doing here. If I am spending most of my time with NT systems, should I be?
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Oct 6 00:19:25 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
A friend has got her fellowship at Trinity, which is excellent news. I shall
partake of the opportunity to walk on the grass by invitation as soon as is
practical :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Oct 6 10:29:20 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
Bleeearrrgh. As if waking up at 9:15 wasn't bad enough, I discover as I make it
to work that I have a horrendous cold and feel dreadful. Not Good.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Oct 6 18:13:05 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
My new computer arrived today, joy, rapture. I've just set about putting it
together and it seems (though I'm waiting for a second opinion) that they've
sent me the wrong kind of case. So no computer for me until they send me the
right one :-(
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Oct 6 22:55:38 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Was
Walking home last night from Kirsten's, there was the strangest of feelings:
that of invulnerability. Somehow in the cold and the rain I felt as if nothing
could harm me, as if (I suppose) the universe would interpret harm to me as
damage and route around it preemptively. Dangerous, no doubt, had I chosen to
put it to the test, but as it was I merely noticed things moving to avoid me,
and tried to pay more attention. I failed, being wrapped up in rather too many
things, but it didn't seem to make much difference.
I've discovered an odd little bit of grassland between here and Mulberry Close,
and I've taken to using it as a shortcut for that reason. It was rather muddy
on the way back home last night, and it felt unfamiliar in the dark, approached
from the other direction. Feelings of invulnerability rather evaporated at that
point, although I did make it home without falling over.
Subject: Is
I'm almost tempted to go out now, actually, for a brief walk. Lanfear says
there's something different (something magical?) about this season, and I'm
inclined to agree. Many others would, too. On a mundane level, it's as if
there's a lot going on, a lot to worry about: people to care for, new
situations to cope with, changes... But in a way I can't describe adequately,
there's a vague feeling of tension in and around me, a slightly prickly,
possibly oppressive feeling. Unease. Perhaps it would be good to go and wallow
in it alone, in the dark, for a while.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Oct 7 01:47:00 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
But Steve came home, and investigated my new computer's case a little more. It
was in fact an ATX case, but probably capable of being an AT one as well; a
little vigorous prodding with a hammer was all that was needed :-). So now I
have a computer. Still needs much work, but yay!
And now, sleeeeep.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Oct 8 12:28:40 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Was
I felt dreadful yesterday, but I'm always reluctant to take time off work, so I
went in in the morning in spite of the headache, sore throat, and sniffles.
While I did get something useful done in the form of a wonderful little perl
script to turn the company telephone list into web pages and LDAP databases, by
lunchtime it was as if I was wading through mud, so I took the afternoon off
and spent it in bed. I dozed until about four, dreams fading in and out of the
general background babble of Radio 4, and felt rather better for it by the end
of the evening. Which meant, happily, that I had a chance to prod my new PC a
bit more :-).
Today I feel a hell of a lot better, such that I've been positively bounding
through the unfinished jobs on my whiteboard, and getting the sort of kick from
work that makes me really appreciate it. What with one thing and another, I've
not had that for a while.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Oct 8 17:38:28 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Galaxy Caramel
I've not reviewed a chocolate bar for a little while, and since the chocolate
machine has just been restocked, I thought it was time for a tea break.
Wrapped in bright yellow plastic, with hints of the Galaxy `smooth, quality'
image on the edges, this claims to be `Milk Chocolate with a _Soft_ Caramel
Filling' and comes courtesy of Mars. Given my preference for chewy caramel,
this may turn out to be nothing special. Having now tasted it, I'd say that's
true: it isn't the best chocolate bar under the sun. The caramel's rather too
soft for me, but the chocolate is definitely Galaxy and that's a Good Thing.
Their advertising (`smooth and creamy') is accurate for once. Slight
aftertaste, but not nearly as bad as that of a Mars Bar.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Oct 8 23:37:46 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
Ah hell, look, I got depressed in the pub and ran, OK? Just one of those
things. I certainly shouldn't be making edits here while I'm drunk like this,
however. It's a _very_ bad idea.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Oct 9 21:14:20 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
Sometimes you'll look at a corner, of a room for example, and through some
accident, some lack of attention, your mind will get the perspective wrong and
give the impression that the corner is sticking out towards you rather than
being a normal corner. You notice this, and your brain pays attention and
resolves the corner to its normal state: boring and indented. Curious at this,
you pay extreme attention to the corner until at some point, perhaps by the
lapsing of said extreme attention, you see it with inverted perspective once
more. A few minutes practice at this and you will be able to switch between the
indented and the inverted view of the corner at will.
This can be a lot more useful than you might think.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Oct 10 00:02:50 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
Consider also when you wake up from a dream, such that the fabric of dreams and
the fabric of reality have merged, and for a very little while after you have
awoken you can see the substance of your dream in something real. A curtain is
a pillar, the plaster whirls on the ceiling are clouds, and then your brain
catches up and resolves the pillar and the clouds into curtains and whirls and
the illusion fades. If you concentrate on the curtains and whirls you can
glimpse the edges of why they appeared to be pillars and clouds. There's the
tantalising prospect of being able to see the pillars and clouds at will, but I
suspect that takes a _lot_ of practice.
Subject: And on a slightly more mundane note
The bus that goes from the City Centre to GreenEnd is due to be renumbered 7.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Oct 10 16:49:15 1998]--
From: (S) And so it begins. Again. (steph)
Subject: Is
And now Richard has moved out, or almost, anyway, and the house is already a
very different place. A free bookcase in the living room enables us to move it
to the computer room and use it for books, and there's a very different
atmosphere to this room as Steve plays the piano behind me. It's almost
civilised ;-).
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Oct 12 17:21:08 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Is
It's probably boring worky stuff to the rest of you, but to me it's a Good
Thing that's made me really quite cheerful: I now have a little script which
automagically turns the company personnel database into plaintext and HTML
telephone lists, as well as generating a database of the same information which
can be searched by LDAP. It's the sort of little thing I really enjoy putting
effort into, because when it works, a lot of people's lives are made a lot
easier; it's the sort of thing I really enjoy about this job.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Oct 13 09:37:41 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Relativity
I went after pizza last night to visit Relativity, which is what some friends
and my ex-housemate Richard have dubbed their new house on Gilbert Road. I
can't really explain what comes next. I walked into the hall, and had the
strangest feeling of claustrophobia. That's probably not an accurate word,
since I'm sure it was nothing compared to what real claustrophobics feel in
confined places, but it's the best word I can come up with. I felt horribly
enclosed, and yet it's a huge house so I've no idea why. Even in the spacious
living room as Ian sorted his books I felt rather uncomfortable and pressed
upon. In the end I left, slightly worried.
I can only conclude that there is something weird about either (a) me or (b)
the house, either (a) specific to that occasion, or (b) a general effect. I
suppose I shall just have to wait and see.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Oct 14 22:37:42 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Was
Last night saw me go to Amf's with Brian, which was a Good Thing, and made me
feel really quite cheery. Contrast this with today's tired, grumpy, unhappy
feelings, and the inescapable sensation that I don't really fit anywhere at the
moment. So many people are moving around, so many things have changed, and I
don't feel properly at home with any of it at the moment, no matter how thin I
may have spread myself in an effort to try.
This place, home, feels less lively, too, now that Richard and Dickon have
gone. In a strange fashion that's probably just tiredness and depression, I'm
lonely.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Oct 16 01:15:59 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Is
When it feels as if there's a problem, when everyone has an axe to grind, when
everyone is involved, when there are no neutral parties to talk to, what do you
do?
Darkness. I see patterns, suspect things (no, dammit, _know_ things), and I
can't push things back into place, can't make things as they should be.
Fundamentally I don't know how things should be any more, even less how I want
things to be. I don't know what I want because I trained myself not to think
too much about what I want, and so now I only know what I don't want. It's as
if I'm playing real-life Tetris.
Darkness. So lonely everywhere, now. Even in company, even in the best company.
I spread myself thinly to keep track of all the changes, all the moves, all the
people, and begin to feel distanced from everyone. Lonely. Make it go away.
Make it go away, at least until the next time. Close your eyes and let the
Towers burn.
Not so fixed, eh, Alice? Being broken is the price of being fixed.
There's always a price.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Oct 16 12:53:47 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Alice
I wonder where Alice came from. One minute she was a character in some rather
good books, the next she's cropping up in diary entries here. Most odd.
In other news, I managed to upset one of the directors this morning. I suspect
he'd've done well to wait until I'd had some more coffee. That and avoiding
implying that I didn't know what I was talking about...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Oct 19 14:54:44 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Weekend
Curious how mono being down tends to coincide with unhappiness on my part. The
inability to record it here soon after it happens is likely to mean that it
won't get recorded at all. The specifics of depressive dips are very fluid
things to try and track, and a few hours afterwards you might not even remember
what the problems felt like.
I was glad for the week to be finished on Friday evening, and after eating at
Queens' and fiddling a bit with Clare's computer, she, Ben and I went to
GreenEnd to play StarCraft. Rather more slowly than usual, it might be said,
because of Clare's acquisition of a bicycle. It was a good evening, and with
Austin out at the pub there were still enough computers for three people to
play StarCraft. I even won one game, which makes something of a change.
Getting to bed at 4am that night after a long and tiring week wasn't
necessarily the best of ideas, and I slept until 3pm the next day. With a lot
of the great plans I had had for doing useful things on Saturday, it was rather
a shame that so much of it had gone. As it was there was just time to go into
town and buy myself a couple of books (`Calendar' by David Ewing Duncan and
`Legend' by David Rohl) and my own copy of StarCraft before going to visit Ben
and thence go to the Gardies meet at Alison's.
I don't really know what went wrong with my mood after that. I remember being
vaguely apprehensive of the Brianparty, vaguely afraid that I might not enjoy
it and get unhappy. I shrugged it off as groundless and made my way there in
the cold wind - I'm glad the weather has since got slightly warmer - with a
number of other people. The house was packed when we got there, and I had an
instant feeling that perhaps I didn't want to be there. Although I ignored this
at first, it grew as the evening went on, and eventually I simply left.
It wasn't just the feeling that the place was crowded, of course; I'd be a fool
to believe that, or expect anyone else to. It was a lot of other things too,
probably best described as somewhere between [stuff] and general stress. It is,
after all, the time of year for it.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Oct 20 00:17:32 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Is
(Something of a parenthesis, a time-skip, as I do intend to document Sunday at
some point.)
Why does it seem so odd to find that there is someone whose ways of thinking I
can identify with quite so much? It seems as if I've become so used to being
battered down by those who would see things only ever in terms of what is
rational and logical, that I've discounted the possibility that there are
indeed others prepared to see other sides to the story. I feel there is more to
be said on this at some other time.
In other news, Louise has had her hair cut. It is a very odd thing. She looks
somehow much more serious and studious now, however much she may grin.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Oct 20 12:31:55 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Sunday
Sunday was good, I think. I managed to wake up in time for The Archers, which
is always a good thing, and spent the rest of the morning finishing a book I've
been slowly reading about the history of the Provisional IRA. It at least
proves to me that I can still read books, much though the fact that read very
few in the past few years may suggest otherwise. I also started on David Rohl's
`Legend', which is something of an archaeological journey into the Biblical
past. As always with such things, reading of the distant past has a slightly
eerie (and thoroughly gripping) feel to it.
The afternoon passed with me doing various bits and pieces, notably rescuing my
long-neglected bike from the inspection pit in the garage and printing out a
chiark form for Alison, and the evening saw a pleasant enough gathering in the
Maypole. Although the things that had been bothering me the previous evening
were still there to some extent I felt rather above it all in some way and thus
was able to enjoy the evening. There were some thoroughly silly conversations
involving shoes, too.
A brief excursion to Richard's new place on Alpha Road for tea before wandering
off to GreenEnd to get some sleep.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Oct 21 16:43:52 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: I could really do with a lot of hugs and probably a shoulder to
collapse on. Our secondary server crashed today due to a CPU failure, and its
root filesystem has been trashed. Since this filesystem contains the
information about the layout of the filesystems on the rest of the machine, and
we do not have a reliable backup of the root filesystem, the entire machine is
effectively lost.
I'm trying as hard as I can to look at this calmly, coolly, `professionally'.
I've appeared unemotional and businesslike. I'm not.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Oct 22 16:04:05 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Coming back to life
`I took a heartstopping grind through our filedomains,
I knew the config had survived;
With etc saved,
We're coming back to life.' (with apologies to Pink Floyd)
While more filesystems were damaged than I had feared, most of / and /usr has
turned out to be salvageable, so the long haul towards a fully working system
has begun. I felt dreadful yesterday when it became apparent what had happened,
and great thanks are due to Ben and Clare for being wonderful yesterday evening
and cheering me up. Today, things feel calmer, and we now have a clear plan for
restoring the system to full service.
Such is the life of a sysadmin.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Oct 23 09:27:10 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Is
It's not fair. It simply isn't fair. After all the time spent getting lsla1a
back on its feet again on Wednesday and yesterday, it crashed during the night
and trashed the data on its disks once more.
It's unclear to me how much more of this I can take.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Oct 23 10:16:46 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Is
Except it didn't actually trash its disks, merely appeared to have on first
glance. There's definitely something wonky with the machine, but it is still
all there...
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Oct 26 00:17:18 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Is
Um, a weekend. A Friday evening spent with Ben frobbing web pages and then at
the Gallery putting together a computer and listening to (and sometimes dozing
through) James, Simon, and Ben talking about processors among other things. A
Saturday spent first at Elizabeth's party and then with ucam.chat. A Sunday
spent installing Linux on my new PC, reading some more of `Legend', and in
the pub with Simon, James, and Richard.
---------------------------------------------------[Mon Oct 26 12:18:43 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Thoughts
It is a sadly amusing thing to watch myself sacrifice my own interests on the
altar of doing the Right Thing, to listen to the impartial words which are
completely at odds with what I actually want. It is sometimes all I can do to
stop myself chuckling.
But that's what I do, what I have always tried to do: the Right Thing. I think,
somewhere in all of the complexity of codes and rules by which I try to live,
there's a possibility that this might one day coincide with my interests but in
a sense I won't be surprised if it never does. That might be a good thing, too;
I wonder if the only reason I live by these rules is that I'm scared of what
I'd be without them.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Oct 27 12:07:14 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Is
People say I should change, and I wonder, once the nitty-gritty of discussion
and elaboration is done with, whether I will. It has to be said that I'm not
usually very good at it. We shall see.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Oct 27 23:42:07 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Is (of Was and Will Be?)
`Shower the people you love, with love;
Show them the way you feel.
Things are gonna be much better
If you only will.'
I ought at least to agree with that little bit of signature-quote advice from a
friend.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Oct 28 09:42:44 1998]--
From: (S) Prince of the torn apart. (steph)
Subject: Meta
Interesting to note how those last three edits fit together rather more
strongly than the usual course of narrative in this diary. We start with a
description of some of the ways I behave now, and a slight chuckle at the weird
rules that have grown from my code of conscience. Then a friend says to me that
I should discard the rules, live as me, unfiltered, so we have the second edit:
can I, do I want to, change in this way. And then we have the third edit, which
points out that I've probably been being given similar advice for quite some
time.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Oct 30 01:43:05 1998]--
From: (S) Beeps. Fire Alarms. Ham Sandwich. (steph)
Subject: Is
I've been failing to record things in here. Not that I care much.
I'm afraid. Because there are some things that can't be said, and without
saying those things I really can't change as certain of you have persuaded me
would be a good thing. What do you do when you can't do what you have to do? I
almost suspect it would require some Event to persuade me, and I'm as afraid of
that as of anything else, because there niggles at the back of my mind the
Event which persuaded you of this same thing.
The problem, such as it is (and that's not clear, since I'm happier these days
than I have been for much of the past few years), is that I don't really know
what I want. I see things I might want, people I feel an awful lot for, and yet
it all comes down to the simple question of who I'd prefer to spend my time
with. To that question there is, it appears, only one answer at the moment.
Still, and after all this time, only one answer. Sorry. I guess I'm just odd
like that.
So it doesn't actually matter what is said elsewhere, and so it hurts nobody
but me to hide what I actually feel there.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Oct 30 23:01:08 1998]--
From: (S) Things seem peaceful. (steph)
Subject: Is
So where are Clare and Ben, then? They left me to walk on here ahead, so that
they could catch up on bike, but with their not having arrived and no news, it
rather looks as if this evening's StarCrafting isn't going to happen. :-(
*sigh* It was something that would have been good for me, too.
---------------------------------------------------[Sat Oct 31 16:53:58 1998]--
From: (S) Things seem peaceful. (steph)
Subject: Was
But they arrived, just as I was about to give up, having been delayed by the
fact that Clare is still a little new to cycling. And a good evening's
StarCrafting (until about 5am!) was had.
And now I've woken up at 3pm today, but somehow still managed to get my desk
collected from Robert Sayle. Good things, yeah :-)
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Nov 1 14:33:18 1998]--
From: (S) Things seem peaceful. (steph)
Subject: All Hallow's Eve, Halloween, Samhain
Call it what you will, I don't mind one way or the other. Most of the day it
poured with rain and was grey, but with John's help (my landlord's sister's
fiance) I was able to collect my new desk from Robert Sayle. It's currently
sitting in bits begging to be assembled, but I'm in rather too introspective a
mood for flatpack furniture.
Another lift got me into town to find Ben and Clare, and after, variously,
nargy conversation about Ben's progress with NetBSD/arm26, retrieval of bikes,
playing of my new Loreena McKennitt CD, Clare washing her hair, and other such
stuff, we made our way to the Gallery for their party. It was a good evening,
which I enjoyed a lot more for the fact that it was a smallish gathering; at
Brian's most recent party I felt very crowded and unhappy. After alcohol and a
small selection of party games up above in the gallery, we watched `From Dusk
till Dawn'. I have something of a problem with this film. It annoyed me
intensely the first time I saw it because its bipartite nature so totally
defeated my expectations. (Perhaps it's that the first half of the film puts me
in one sort of mood and then the second half is inappropriate for that mood.)
That's an excuse you can only have with a film once, however, and thus I was
able to watch it this time with the expectation of it going completely screwy
half way through. Which made it a lot more enjoyable. Which in turn rather
defeats the film's point of defeating expectations, but never mind.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Nov 3 00:13:05 1998]--
From: (S) Things seem peaceful. (steph)
Subject: Is
So... I've moved most of my life by twelve feet, vertically.
Things still don't feel quite right, though :-/
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Nov 3 12:12:07 1998]--
From: (S) Things seem peaceful. (steph)
Subject: Was
Two things of interest recently. Firstly, I had a dream a couple of nights ago,
where I was running in some sort of big shiny white city to a house I
considered safe. There was someone with me, but I can't remember who it was. We
got to the house, and locked the door behind us so that we were safe inside,
but then some children who had been hassling us threw a spanner at the window
and the glass shattered. Later, though, the guilty child was crying with
remorse.
The other thing was the acquisition of a wonderful small book from Dillons just
before dinner last night. It's an abridged translation of Farid al-Din Attar's
`Memorial of the Saints', and has lots of wonderful little tales and vignettes
about the deeds and sayings of various Muslim saints and mystics.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Nov 3 17:20:44 1998]--
From: (S) Things seem peaceful. (steph)
Subject: Is
I'm feeling vaguely ill, quite lonely, and I don't have the money with me for
the bus fare into town. So I either try to walk it in spite of the fact I've
got no energy, or go home and do nothing about the loneliness.
Neither sounds appealing.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Nov 3 22:53:28 1998]--
From: (S) Things seem peaceful. (steph)
Subject: Is
Walking around in the dark, trying to work out what's wrong. Showing someone
far too used to it by now the shape of my brokenness. The trouble is that I
want something I'm never going to get from anyone but me, namely answers, and
part of the question is where to get the answers from.
Subject: Is
Try again. I feel so lonely so much of the time these days, even though I try
my hardest to surround myself with people in my spare time. There are those who
will hug me, hold me, and listen for a little while, and it's always a good
thing, and I'm always grateful. But sometimes, when I feel like this, it's not
really enough somehow, and when I leave as I have to I wish I'd never had to
leave. For someone to be there for as long as it took for everything to go
away; I suspect that's what I want, and I know just as well that treating
people as comfort-on-tap is no sound basis for anything.
It's been suggested that I should make time for myself, but it's very hard to
find the time when there are people to see and things to do.
It's been suggested that I should abandon the silly rules that restrict a lot
of how I behave towards other people, and (in particular) appraise those people
of whom I'm very fond of my feelings towards them. But I find that I can't, for
some reason, and that's depressing. When I find I can't act on advice I find to
be sensible, that's not good, and I feel rather lacking in willpower.
It's been suggested that I should work out...
Subject: What I want
Which is a simple enough question, and I can think of lots of answers.
Stability. To be able to think clearly. To live a `good' life. To be the best
Owen I can be to those I encounter, and to appear as that through doing useful
things with my spare time. Mostly, to feel safe and unthreatened, and sure in
the knowledge that I'm special to someone who is special to me.
But perhaps those are the wrong answers, so it has also been suggested that I
should work out...
Subject: Who I am
I don't understand the question. You say it's how I tend to react to things,
how I feel about things, what moves me, what leaves me cold; I know all of
these things already to an extent. They don't answer the question, though. They
tell me about the broken person that is Owen, but they don't tell me who he is.
Try observing things about myself? Again, I don't see what you mean. Maybe it's
something I can't understand when I'm feeling confused and lonely like this, or
maybe it's something I just can't do.
Subject: Is
Sitting in my temporary room, in the cold, with a familiar tape playing on the
stereo, typing this. People are elsewhere, and I'm missing them. On the other
hand, I know just as well that if I had gone to the Calling I'd have felt
unhappy and ended up moping quietly in a corner, and that would have been no
fun for anyone. No fun for me I can cope with - life seems rather to have lost
its joy in large part these days after all - but I would prefer not to spoil
other people's times as well. There are other reasons I don't go to the Calling
much these days, too, but they're rather more complicated, and have become
slightly more confused over time. They're to do with...
Subject: The Nature of the Catastrophe
But I'm too afraid to describe that in a public forum.
Damn.
Maybe what I really want is for someone to run my life for me so that I don't
have to make any decisions. I'd much rather observe someone running things for
me than run things myself, it sometimes seems. Curiously, on the occasions I
imagine killing myself, I'm always observing it from the outside and I continue
observing it from the outside. Real life, or indeed real death, is rather
different, of course.
I suspect this is where some people slot `religion'. I suspect also that if I
tried to slot `religion' there at the moment, I'd be a lot less happy (very
possible, much though it often seems not to be). Established religion (and it
would have to be an external thing I adopted rather than the coalescence of
beliefs from within, because I don't have the courage to stick by something of
my own invention) involves, after all, just another arbitrary set of rules to
bolt on top of my moral core, and I've had enough trouble trying to deal with
my own arbitrary rules of late, let alone anybody else's.
It doesn't help that I feel in some way that I'm supposed to be `sorted' in
some way; I've been on anti-depressants and come off them, I've been through
counselling, and therapy. The darkness still won't go away.
Yes, we've had light. We've had a lot of light, especially this year. We're
quickly approaching the anniversary of my meeting a completely different social
circle, and I've had a lot of happiness as a result of that over the past year.
It's rather revealing to note that the most identifiable sources of unhappiness
over the past year have been from the `older' social circle, which still means
a lot to me, and with which (after some initial necessary distancing) I still
associate. On the other hand, that could be just coincidence, me trying to
cheer myself up by looking on the `bright side'.
`Change for the better, change what you feel inside.' It's curious what you
hear from the stereo apparently out of the blue.
Hmm. Rather a lot of completely useless rubbish written there, but stet. Always
stet. I think I'll get myself a drink now. I probably oughtn't to drink alone
but it won't hurt and it'll probably help me sleep a bit better.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Nov 4 09:47:59 1998]--
From: (S) Things seem peaceful. (steph)
Subject: Is
I woke up twice this morning. Once at about five, and once at a quarter to
nine. I might once have rushed everything to try to get to work as soon as
possible, might have rung to let them know I'd be late, but now I can't really
be bothered and so got in for a ludicrously late 9:30.
I'm not entirely convinced I'm going to get useful things done today, though.
---------------------------------------------------[Wed Nov 4 22:19:02 1998]--
From: (S) How I wish, how I wish you were here (steph)
Subject: Is
I didn't either, and some combination of physical and emotional unwellness led
me to decide to take the afternoon off. As is my wont when I think I'm
sufficiently ill not to be working, I went back to bed for a few hours, and I
think it did me a world of good. Although I still have a slight headache, I'm
feeling a lot more emotionally bright, and possibly as a consequence (possibly
as a cause!) I've got some useful things done after all. I've got a working X
server for my Matrox G200 card, I've written a cheque actually to pay for the
computer, and I've fixed up the old Science Fiction society library web search
scripts so that they work again. A good end to a middling day.
Subject: Will Be
Tomorrow I'm off to London for a seminar on Solaris 2.7 (or Solaris 7, as Sun
are apparently bent on calling it), which will be at least an interesting
diversion. Then I'll get back to Cambridge to watch the fireworks.
Now there's something of a glitch. I've tried to be organised on lots of
people's behalfs here, so that people will know where to meet and when and
where to go afterwards. And I did it some way in advance, so that people would
know. Now, guess what? People start expressing dissension _the_day_before_.
That annoys me a little... Ah well.
---------------------------------------------------[Thu Nov 5 22:21:52 1998]--
From: (S) Seven (steph)
Subject: Is
Today has been a day of Seven. Or possibly, of Two Point Seven, or maybe even
of Five Point Seven. But the greatest of these is Seven. You will only find it
on the box and in /etc/release, they tell me, but it is most definitely Seven.
Not Seven Eleven/Ninety-Eight or Seven Aitch Double-You One, but pure and
simple Seven. Until Seven Queue You One, that is.
I got up at six this morning to go to a seminar on the new Solaris release in
London. Although this was ludicrously early, it did mean I was taking a day out
of work to do something both interesting and at the same time useful to work. I
caught the 7:45 train from Cambridge and got to London King's Cross at a
quarter to nine, getting to the Conference Forum in Aldgate in plenty of time
for registration and coffee. At first I thought I'd be rather out of place, as
the other people who had got there early were all management types wearing
suits, but it wasn't long before all the real sysadmins appeared, in a lot of
cases wearing jeans just as I was.
I won't go through the details of the whole day, although I probably shall
write something somewhere about it all at some point, except to note quite how
useless I am at starting social interactions with people I don't know. I was
quite alone in the tea and lunch breaks and stood around munching biscuits,
drinking more coffee than perhaps I should, and reading various pieces of
conference literature. It is, I suppose, possible that all the other people
there knew each other beforehand, but I doubt it. It was nevertheless
interesting to watch how people joined small circles of conversation, or moved
independently around.
I got back to Corpus in time for food, and after finding Ben fiddling with the
innards of an SJ Econet fileserver, and locating a Clare, we had dinner. Later,
there were fireworks on Midsummer Common and although my well-laid plans seem
to have come to naught, at least some people arrived at the right time and
place, and fireworks were watched. Nice. I went off to New Hall Bar briefly for
a pint and then left, not wanting to spoil the rest of the evening with what I
suspected might be a mood downturn caused by tiredness having been up since
six. So I came here to Queens' to spod a little before returning home to
GreenEnd.
Unfortunately, I've forgotten to give Ian the cheque for the money I owe him to
pay for my new computer, so I suspect I shall have to go back via New Hall
(where I hope he still is) to sort this out, as I've already been dilatory
enough in this matter and he needs the money to avoid scary bouncing of direct
debits.
---------------------------------------------------[Fri Nov 6 00:06:51 1998]--
From: (S) Seven (steph)
Subject: Is
November the Fifth. You know I said that November the Fifth was traditionally
when bad things happened to me? Well, we hoped this year would be different. I
went back to New Hall, though. And ever the traditionalist, the Universe did
it's little best to break me.
What remains is post mortem and damage limitation.
Strangely I'm not particularly distraught or anything. I just feel kind of
worn, because this is all too familiar.
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Nov 8 14:32:07 1998]--
From: (S) Seven (steph)
Subject: Is
In moving room so that my old one can be redecorated, I'm discovering that it
is no different from moving house in the most important respect: how it makes
me feel. There is something unutterably depressing about moving, something that
makes me want to give up and spend the rest of the afternoon staring at the
ceiling or something. Maybe it's the enormity of the task, or perhaps it's that
I find far too much past in my possessions, and am reminded so much of what
used to be.
An old bunch of papers, probably not touched for two or three years now, remind
me of someone I once knew. This poem (in both Russian and English, but I can
only render the English here) stands out:
`I loved you once, nor has that love entirely
Within my heart, perhaps, yet died away;
But let its memory trouble you no longer;
I would not wish you sad in any way.
I loved in silence, hopelessly I loved you,
Tormented now by shyness, now as jealous feelings can;
I loved you, so sincere a love, so tender
As may God grant you from another man.'
And so it will get filed away, to bring back memories some more years hence.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Nov 10 09:39:37 1998]--
From: (S) Seven (steph)
Subject: The End
`It was the end of the Earth year 2260 and the war had paused, suddenly and
unexpectedly. All around us it was as if the universe were holding its
breath... waiting. All of life can be broken down into moments of transition
or moments of revelation. This had the feeling of both.
G'Quan wrote, "There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the
darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against
powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the
death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril
we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of
transition to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of
that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born
in pain".'
-- Closing Monologue, Babylon 5 Series 3.
---------------------------------------------------[Tue Nov 10 09:42:47 1998]--
From: (S) Seven (steph)
Subject:
E N D O F P A R T T W O