I have decided that this journal needs a more specific purpose than the one I have given it. At any rate, I don't seem to be using it very much at present. I hope that will change.

I'm going to make this a place to talk about dreams and story ideas. As I'm rather protective of my ideas, I'm going to have to lock this journal. All entries after this one will only be viewable to people on my friends list. I hope to publish some of my work one day, and I don't want it to get stolen before I get the chance. If you aren't on my friends list and are interested in reading my crazy writer's musings, let me know.

If you are on my friends list...uh, please don't steal my ideas.

I may go back through red_wyvern and move some stuff that pertains to this topic.

I just came across this link on a Pagan/Wiccan forum I recently began to frequent.

http://wicca.com/celtic/wicca/christian.htm

Wow. I was impressed. Somebody out there gets it, and realizes they don't have to compromise what they believe in order to get it.

I am currently working on a story with a villain that I love and hate almost as much as my heroine does, and I, as a writer, know that the story does not permit me to redeem him. To this end I have been reading back through every Dragonlance book I have that deals with Raistlin Majere (my villain is partially based on his character). The italicized words come from said books. I have been studying Raistlin's downfall and figuring out why his authors were able to save him in the end. I've always had a fondness for Raistlin, even though I still don't think I quite understand him. Unfortunately as I writer I need to, and discover the moment where he could have fallen permanently into darkness without destroying the world in the process...if there was such a moment for him (I admit, there may not have been). Such will be a fine line to walk, but my heroine will not grow as she needs to if she is permitted Crysania's comfort in knowing that her love sacrificed himself for the world in the end. Such writing and reading dredges up all kinds of emotion in me, most of which (I hope) gets channeled back into the writing. However, I find I am awash in nostalgia these last few days. It is disturbing, sometimes, to know that you are happy where you are but still miss where you've been.

This is the tragedy of change. This is why my heart breaks when the elves leave Middle Earth. This is why I don't often look through yearbooks. This is life, this is time: an ever-evolving tragedy of losing moments you can't get back. If you cut yourself free from those moments you go numb...but if you don't, they trail along behind you, rushing back to haunt you in the quiet minutes between life's demands.

thy time is thy own,
though across it you travel.

Everyone misses the old days. I miss days I've never seen with my waking eyes. I miss my high school and I miss the gleaming walls of Shallam. These I have lost, not to war or disaster or any mistakes on my part...but simply to the passing of time. This is the tragedy of life and love. Nothing lasts. You can't freeze moments. God made us creatures of connection, of love and then put us in a world where nothing lasts and nothing stays the same? No. My heart may be used to melancholy but I cannot believe that it is a natural condition of humanity.

its expanses you see,
whirling through forever.

My soul grows too big for my body to contain. My thoughts string out like molten gold, in song, in memory, in story...and I lose track of the threads. I write to keep myself sane and to keep all the people in my mind occupied. I've lived nearly two hundred years as a woman who only exists in cyberspace...and in my heart. I sound insane to myself when I say things like that, but it's true all the same. I have loved and lost, loved and forgotten the name of the one person who ever took me seriously, and I have died by my own hands. I believe that just because I sit here and write these words does not mean that these events never happened to me.

obstruct not its flow.

Nostalgia is a potent force for the person who deals in the fantasy realm. I feel regret and loss from every character I've ever played and ever wrote. I construct their pain, I force them to grow, I test their mettle...and my heart aches through every second of it. Is this what God feels like? I make them stumble over their flaws and they hate me for it...I hate me for it...after all, everyone admires and wants to be the superhero. He is invincible, invulnerable, safe. He rides in on his white horse and makes everything okay. Nothing can touch him. But real people are dangerous. Real people force us to look at ourselves and say "this is not who I should be". I see myself in all my characters...I wince at their weaknesses because I know that on some level, they are also my own.

grasp firmly the end and the beginning,

What is it that we feel when we fall in love? That aching, fearful poignancy of emotion that every person craves...and fears. It is a longing not just of body but of soul, and it is not always triggered by a person. Newly awakened romantic sensibilities are perhaps the most common source, but power, dreams, battle...and I'm discovering in the fantasy realm, magic...all these can stir it up.  But what exactly is it that the soul is longing for? Not love...because, as any mature person can tell you, that feeling is fickle, unpredictable, and that love, real love, the kind that lasts, cannot be built upon it. But it is love, at the same time, the "feeling" of love, as it were. Can we really say that ache is juvenile, or dismissed as something unimportant in the grand scheme of things. It is in that feeling that we feel truly alive...like superheros ourselves. We crave that thrill...why? It comes with a price, a sadness, because almost the moment you begin to feel it it starts to slip through your fingers, taking all joy and happiness with it. Then it is gone, you hurt for half a second and the familiar numbness sets back in. You try to remember it and all you dredge up is...nostalgia.

turn them back upon themselves, and

We are not designed to endure heartache. Pain fades from the body but not from the soul. We deny it, laugh at it, cover it up, bury it, escape it, lock it away from us, pretend it doesn't exist or simply stay busy enough to ignore it. Why don't we just face it? I have tried. I can't. It's like trying to keep your finger on a burning stove. You have to pull away or you burn away all feeling in that  finger. We are not equipped to simply absorb the pain and keep moving...it won't meld with us, it doesn't integrate with what we are. That is why it keeps hurting...it remains a foreign, toxic substance inside of us. Therefore I must conclude that when God designed us, he did not intend for us to experience pain...or he would have better prepared us for it. Pain may be a natural condition of this world...but it is a profoundly unnatural condition for the human heart.

all that is loose shall be secure.

And quite honestly, this one realization gives me more hope than anything I've ever heard in a church.

destiny be over your own head.

from darkness to darkness
my voice echoes in the emptiness.
from this world to the next
my voice cries with life.
from darkness to darkness i shout
beneath my feet, all is made firm.
time that flows
hold in your course.
because by fate even the gods are cast down.
weep ye all with me.

Raistlin's spell to open the Portal into the Abyss. Never noticed how poetic it was. Kudos to the Dragonlance authors.

Okay, I have finally added everyone to my friends list that I thought might be interested in keeping up with this journal. If I missed anybody, let me know.

Namaste.

We have a pair of rabbit ears sitting on top of our TV, which provide us with a few stations. We basically get the news, PBS, a couple of Spanish stations, a couple of Christian stations, and some odds and ends. PBS is having an audio mix-up of some kind right now, so I was flipping around looking for something else. I happened across a fellow on one of the Christian stations who was bashing abortion...no big surprise there. But he kept using the term "family planning" to describe abortions, which made me wonder: Is it just abortion he doesn't like, or is ALL family planning (pills, condoms, etc.) bad in his eyes?

You see, I always viewed "family planning" as measures taken to prevent pregnancy before it happens...not the same as abortion at all. I was pretty sure it was only some sects of Catholicism that had problems with all birth control. So...are abortion and family planning equal (and equally wrong) in Christian eyes, or is that only a Catholic thing? Do you think the guy on TV was just mixing up the terms out of ignorance or carelessness, or because he was trying to imply something?

Personally I think family planning is just plain good sense. I cannot see God wanting a family to have eight children and not be able to take care of them all just because He told the Jews many thousands of years ago to "be fruitful and multiply".

Or rather, a needed separation of matters spiritual and mundane. This is an area dedicated solely to philosophical and theological musings and questions, while red_wyvern will be a record of more day-to-day affairs, like babies and husbands and bad traffic.

If religious ranting bothers you, feel free to visit my other journal.

If you get tired of hearing about what cute noise my two year old son made today, stick to this journal.

That is all.

Namaste.