Maebius Musings

I was typing up a short musing on the holiday spirit, and how to re-find it in hte midst of crazy work schedules and crass commercialized holiday culture-spam.

Then in the course of cleaning out my feed reader, I stumbled upon this bit of wisdom.

I’ll admit it stuck a nerve and I just sat in my desk here at home, closed my Warcraft game, and almost wept for …um.. joy? remorse? inspiration?    Not sure what emotion it drew out of me but it was such a profoundly cathartic thing, I had to share.

http://domesticwitch.blogspot.com/2008/12/santas-wisdom-to-pagans-author-unknown.html

Strange, isn’t it?   There’s no one phrase I can pick out of this posting that set me off, but after I read it, things just sloooowly clicked and rushed aside, like some sort of “Kundalini rising” energy movement.

Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!

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Imagine this setting:

A young boy is playing a video game, involving the usual slaughter of fantastic creatures and gaining more and more power.  The character portrayed assembles a collection of allies to help fight, including a tall dark-skinned desert-warrior with a staff, and a strange moon-creature with a machine gun.

In this game, the characters carry a supply of water, which slowly is reduced over the course of play, and can be refilled by stepping into clear puddles, or purchasing in-game bottles of water.

Consider the fact that when they first join the party, the Desert dweller has a moderate ‘water supply’ limit, and can hold a few quarts of water before any special items increase that maximum.   The moon creature can only hold a small bottle.  This means the moon creature must use some special items to increase this water-limit, or risk taking more damage (due to thirst) or carrying a lot of inventory bottles to refresh the small amount he holds.

The kid smiles as this last character joins the group, and excitedly turns to his parents to confide in a conspiratorial stage-whisper that “the Desert guy obviously had more water since in the desert you need to carry water a lot and there’s not much room in the moon suit, right? Right? Cool, huh!”

Multiple choice test for all you readers.  No right answers, but I’d like you to honestly consider and discuss WHY you may choose a particular result.  (and yes, it’s biased, but that is intentional)

What are your thoughts on the above situation?

A)  Why is a kid playing so many video games? Running around killing imaginary things is not good lessons to learn.  Go outside and play!

B) Why is a kid playing so many video games?  Yes, they are fun, but you could be doing crafts and other family oriented activities.

C) That’s nice, but now turn off that game, and lets hit the Library to research Desert peoples, and the scientific feasibility of actually living on the barren moon.

D) You know, the kid’s pretty bright, to have made such a connection at something like a simple Video Game.  Do you sit and play with him, or just let him do his own thing until he asks for help?

E) Nice observation! Lets talk about deserts and moons (see # C) tomorrow after school.

…

…

Your grade, according to the local community educational institution, is apparently the letter of the choice you made.    Need a re-test?   :/

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This weekend we attended a wedding reception for a good friend of my wife.   We unfortunately missed the actual wedding due to prior schedules for a cousin’s 4yr old twins’  birthday bash, and the horrid traffic which turned our hour drive between the events into a bit longer than we anticipated.  Le Sigh. 

The reception though, was awesome.   I’ll keep names out, since they really won’t matter to most of my readers, but the events were nice enough to blog about here.

We arrived and the kid immediately ran out of the car to go wrestle and run with a group of other young boys around 4-10 years old.  This was a nice change of pace, since usually our son tends to be shy and hover around us for the first 45 minutes of any party and only then gets the courage to interact more.   This time, he ran off, listened half-heartedly as we told him where We would be, then vanished among the woods and fields.

The weather was warm and sunny, perfect for outdoor festivities, and there was a local band setup under the pavilion tent.  Great music, gobs of smiling people, and kids running around on the outskirts of the party.  Couldn’t have asked for a better setup.

The happy couple, of course, were glowing and beautiful/handsome, and all the guests chatted easily, and snacked on the delicious TexMex Grill food.

We chatted quite a lot with some friends who we hadn’t seen for years, trading stories of recent life, and feasting “more than we needed to eat”.   The chatter eventually drifted toherbal studies, nature spirituality, and various sundry topic, and we traded blog addresses.  Shameless plug: Go visit the lovely Lisa and her herbal supplies over by Earth, Root, and Flower.

From time to time, our little one wandered near us to check in, ask for a snack/drink, or otherwise relate some story of adventure he was having with another boy, then dashed off to play again.  His clothes were rather grass-stained and muddy, but I wouldn’t have traded clean clothes for that smile in his eyes.  It was nice to see, and reminded me that we really do need to get out more and socialize with friendly kids outside of school.  The campouts and pagan-friendly festivals are nice, but local friends are important too.

As the sky darkened, the kids started to get closer to home-base, and a huge batch of sparklers appeared from some wise woman.    Suddenly, the backyard field was filled with swirling flames, glittering sparks, and a haze of blue-tinged smoke which held the band’s music and laughter of myriad kids and young-at-heart.   This particular moment struck me as powerful Magic.  Probably not intentionally, but I had to stop and smile in awe.  No better ritual of prosperity could have been formulated, than that group of happy kids and the hand-help fireworks.   Our kid loved it!

Eventually, the band played the “first dance” (by Jack Johnson, I forget the actual song), then struck up a rousing rendition of The Who’s “The Seeker”, and rolled onward from there.   Sadly, it was rather dark then, nad our little one was starting to stagger sleepily into us when he came over for another drink or snack.   We decided to call it a night.

On the way home, as we traveled down the Parkway, we saw more fireworks directly ahead of us.  We found a nice pull-over spot in the parking lot of a nearby business, close enough to see the shadow of the people with flares actually launching the rockets, which meant the aerial explosions were huge and overhead.   The kid hopped into the front seat of the car, we rolled down the windows, and gazed sleepily into the night sky.   Once the finale had boomed all around us, we started back home.  The kid was asleep before I even re-buckled him up from the firework display.

My wife and I smiled on the way home, sending happy wishes and firework awesomeness to the happy couple we had just left.    All in all, a great and festive day, full of love and joy and a bit of magic.

Ain’t life grand!?! 

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I’ve hesitated to keep this entry private, or post it for commentary, because it’s a bit more personal and still feels a bit scary for me.  Paradigm shifts are tough.     Forgive any rambling uncoordinated phrasing and paragraph structure. I’ve re-written it twice now since last Tuesday…    It’s a wall of text.

I’ve always loved fire circles.  Sitting around a campfire,whether roasting marshmallows with friends and family, or drumming and dancing for alchemical transformation, are soothing and soul-healing events in any flavour. Continue Reading »

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Saturday, we attended the spring Share Festival. Camping, bands, and cool people in a safe family-friendly park just hanging out and chilling for a time. Of course, unfortunately, the weather was a bit less than ideal for such outdoor adventures, so we spent most of the caravan trying to stay dry.

During the day it was a bit clearer, and I spent a good deal of time just laying in the bed and playing Pokemon Diamond on the shared DS system. My wife finished book 4 of Twilight, and we kept an eye on our son who spent a good 3 hours in the playground area of the park being a kid and enjoying time with other kids under minimal supervision. He absolutely LOVED the free range kid-time, and only wandered back to the campsite a few times for a snack or to ask us to help him in the porta-potties.

That evening, with the band jamming until 11 and the rain getting progressively more monsoon-like, we all retired to the caravan to sleep. I sat for a time in the front seat, just watching the trees sway in the darkness and listening to the pounding rain on the rooftop.

The wind grew, and the outside faded to a grey wall of vaguely shifting shadows. Buckets of water poured around us, and it was hard to hear myself even think, much less try to quietly meditate. Instead, I tried to just shut off my brain and lose myself in the white noise.

Branches peered out from the darkness, then were gone, then back again. The noise, at first a seemingly constant din of pounding drops,could be heard to ebb and flow, rise and fall in a complex pattern of wind and water. The car itself rocked and shuddered at each gust, resounding at times with a furious -CRACK- from the tarp tied over the back window for easier dark-sleeping.

I felt a primal exhilaration in the tempest, and released my mind to it. I danced among the storm-whipped treetops. I flashed with the thundering flashes of lightning, and I hovered, darting amidst the other campsites as some alien hummingbird seeking nectar from the tents around us.

For a time, not sure how long, having no clocks in this stormy darkness, I darted and played, mentally, in the wild energies around us, then returned my focus to the car-seat again, smiling like a fool, and giddy with the power raised and tingling in my fingers.

I found I had been unwinding a length of hemp twine that had been leftover from one of my son’s crafts earlier that day. I had unwoven it to single thin strand, and then knotted the strands together again into a long chain. This, I suddenly felt, would go around my wrist. Each knot typing up some of this wildness and empowering it as a potent charm. Wordlessly, I tied the finished bracelet around my wrist, knowing it was imbued with Potential, and would be worn as a reminder of the Charm until it fell off.

Because it is meant to fall off, probably within the next week, as the strands are thin and already frayed. If the weather reports are to be believed, it will be sunny and much warmer than when it was created.
The storm will have passed. It will be free.

((good luck B, this one’s for you))

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Back when I was younger, one of my more fond memories was hanging out with my dad (and sometimes uncle) and coming up with all manner of philosophical discussions on the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything. (yes, also inspired by that book).

One of our more persistant ‘theories’ from back in… I don’t even know how long ago, but think it was around 1990-ish..was that of Dark Suckers. While going through the attic to clean out some stuff, my father found this ancient manuscript, reproduced here for your amusement!

DARK SUCKERS

For years it has been believed that electric bulbs emitted light. However, recent information has proven otherwise. Electric bulbs don’t emit light,…….they suck Dark. Thus we should call these bulbs Dark suckers. The dark sucker theory proves the existence of Dark, that Dark has mass heavier than light, and that Dark is faster than light.

The basis of the Dark sucker theory is that electric bulbs suck Dark. Take for example, the Dark suckers in the room where you are. There is much less Dark right next to them than there is elsewhere. The larger the Dark sucker, the greater it’s ability to suck Dark. Dark suckers in a parking lot have a much greater capacity than the ones in this room. As with all things, Dark suckers don’t last forever. Once they are full of Dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the black spot[s] on a full Dark sucker. A candle is a primitive Dark sucker. A new candle has a white wick. You will notice after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the Dark which has been sucked into it. If you hold a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, the tip will turn black because it got in the way of the Dark flowing into the candle. Unfortunately, these primitive Dark suckers have a very limited range. There are also portable Dark suckers. The bulbs in these can’t handle all the Dark by themselves, and must be aided to a Dark storage unit [batteries]. When the Dark storage unit is full, it must be replaced before the portable Dark sucker can operate again.

Dark has mass. When Dark goes into a Dark sucker, friction from this mass generates heat. Thus it is not wise to touch an operating Dark sucker. Candles represent a special problem, as the Dark must travel into a solid wick instead of through clear glass. This generates a great amount of heat, thus it can be very dangerous to touch an operating candle. Dark is also heavier than light. If you swim just below the surface of a lake, you see a lot of light. If you slowly swim deeper and deeper, you notice it getting darker and darker. When you reach a depth of about 50 feet, you are in total darkness. This is because the heavier Dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats to the top. The immense power Dark can be utilized to man’s advantage. The deeper the body of water, the more Dark is stored, and the more potential can be derived from it. We can collect the Dark that has settled to the bottom of lakes and push it through a turbine, which generates electricity and helps move the Dark to the ocean, where it can be safely stored. Prior to turbines, it was much more difficult to get the Dark from the rivers and lakes to the ocean.

The Indians recognized this problem and tried to solve it, as they were well-attuned with the natural world. When on a river, in a canoe, traveling in the same direction as the flow of Dark, they paddled slowly, so as not to stop the flow of Dark. When they traveled against the flow of Dark, they paddled quickly, so as to help push the Dark along it’s way.

Finally we must prove that Dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in an illuminated room in front of a closed Dark closet, then slowly open the closet door, you will see the light slowly enter the closet. But, since Dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the Dark leave the closet.

In conclusion, I would like to say that Dark suckers make all our lives much easier. So the next time you look at an electric bulb, remember that it is indeed a Dark sucker.

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The Sprogling, my 5yr old, and I were making up stories the other day, and at the request of his teacher I encouraged him to write down at least a few lines himself (though I was available to finish things if he got too wordy).

The following is thus, a story by my son. Unedited, and translated from ink to electrons for your enjoyment, entirely in his own words! (Sorry, I don’t have the camera to scan the page as an image for here.)

One day there was a tillion frogs and they all turned into polywogs again. The polywogs played with the other Polywogs in the pond.

All the polywogs liked playing with the other polywogs, so they played some more.

But then, a big frog-eating bird came, but they were too fast. It could not catch them so they escaped.

The end.

I’m going to try and convince him to illustrate the story at some point, maybe this weekend, so we can make a little booklet to save and.or give away as gifts to family (I know Grandma would love one!)

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I’m on a spring cleaning kick this week at work, putting all my pens and associated junk from the desk drawers into a big box inside the drawers. Thus, not really arranging anything except a tossing out of ink-less pens, but now enabling me to clean my desk on some future job-leaving-date by simply pulling out the big boxes and going home to unpack. Quick, efficient, and surprisingly lowered my stress level a bit. (I’ve been worried about being fired, or more accurately, wanting to quit for quite some months now).

I have not moved this energetic sorting to my home yet, due mainly to evenings being “TAX TIME” with the wife, and thus any scrap of horizontal surface not covered by client receipts or paperwork is still sacrosanct “For Future Use” by Mrs Maebius.

On a particularly randomly related topic, I was amazed in my online computer game last night, how the changing dynamic of a group can severely alter the experience of said group. NOTE: Jargon ahead. I want to record this for posterity here, so you non-gamers may want to skip the rest of this post.

Continue Reading »

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Continued from the epic tale of The Warrior Brothers…

In the southern lands of Lititz, Pennsylvania, the sprogling named Gatorade played happily with his cousin. The pretense of names had been dropped since last weekend, as kids tend to do, but there was still great adventures in the backyard of my parents place, involving zombie squirrels and bat-men attacks.

When we were all hanging around outside, my father asked about the Crystal Dino Bone, and if the kid was still talking about it. I asked the sprogling, and was told that the kids were now after a LightSword shaped like a crystal bone. Fair enough, I figured….

Unbeknownst to me, my father took the the original Warrior Brother story to heart, and had located “an ancient bottle” buried in the yard while he was digging his garden, many many years ago. Inside this bottle was a rolled up scrap of parchment (click image for details) that appeared to be some sort of map!

The young cousins unrolled the map, and quickly realized it showed the very backyard they were playing in, with a great mysterious X near the creek at the corner of the property.

Collecting the grown ups (who, other than my father had no clue that this adventure was pre-planned) we traced out the steps of the map.

From the porch, around the small shed, then turning sharply to circle dangerously close to the water behind the large forsythia bushes. After navigating the treacherous muddy cliffs, we returned to the center of the yard, made a loop, and began our walk towards the little side fence-row garden. Zig-Zagging next to the maple tree, we then stepped sideways around a small lilac transplanted here from Everthorn Farms. Once this was done, we were mere paces away from the final destination marked on this aging scroll.

The ground around the X was overgrown with high weeds and dusty overflow-debris from the creek. At first, it appeared we might need a shovel, but the young adventurers bravely picked through the grasses until a glint of sunlight was spotted through the weeds.

The Crystal Dinosaur Bone LightSword had been found at last!

One of the boys, made the quote of the day in an almost breathless awe: “It really does exist!” after what was initially just an imaginary play-prop.

It was a fun adventure, and the finding of an actual “crystal bone” (Plexiglass) made this geek-dad smile. My father, or should I say “Pap Da Dad”, is so cool!

The rest of the day, my sprogling and his cousin carried that sword around, having quests too numerous to recount here. The LightSword gained powers in the sun, lost energy in the dirt, and had edges SO SHARP they could cut through anything that was not specially enchanted to be “lightsword proof”.

So far, I myself am not lightsword proof, so am unable to even touch the treasure. Only my wife, the sprogling, and my oldest nephew are able to do so. And even then, they must recharge their lightsword proof ability every morning after breakfast, but the details of this process are a secret to those uninitiated.

And so, the Lightsword sits now, in a special location in the kid’s play area. The map has been discarded (I pulled it back out of the trash after the kid tossed it) now that the treasure was found. He got it out this morning before school, to defeat some creature in the bathroom where I took the picture posted above.

The adventure awaiting us on next trip to Lititz? Only time will tell….

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This weekend, we visited some friends of ours (and did taxes, of course). A really fun little situation-game presented itself while myself, the kid, my friend, and his 3yr old son were out at the local park running off some energy before “nap time”.

The Sprogling’s been very into making up stories recently, and games where he has an alter-ego. In the past, he’s said he was some character, but still was himself, and merely seemed to change his name. Now, he is developing entire characters, with special abilities and actual limitations,as opposed to his prior make-up-new-power-for-every-obstacle play. Of course, me as proud GeekDad is tending to encourage this RPG appreciation. We even started playing with a big 20-sided die plus some regular 6-siders in various strategic wargames. It won’t be long now until he’s ready to tabletop some classic pen-and-paper games! MwaHaHahaHa

Lately though, he is developing a world of “Warrior Brothers”. In this world of pseudo-native-american meets high-fantasy, giant rocks become monsters, trees (known as Windgazers) are spirit allies, and us human males are all a tribe of Warrior Brothers, equipped with either spell-like powers, or fun tool/weapons to use in defeating the rock-monsters. Only boys are able to be Warrior Brothers, and girls (like mom) must either stay home and be safe, or sometimes are powerful ’sorcerer princesses’ that can defeat anything with their magic, though this changes on a minute-by-minute basis it seems.

I am actually in the process of writing these ideas down in a complete LARP-style handbook, since the setting is becoming quite involved, and remains coherent across over two full weeks of playing this game when we go outside. Sticks are either wands, clubs, or ‘power staffs’ [sic]. Pinecones are bombs of various powers, depending on size. Snow and ice are harmful environmental effects that either trap you or drain your power. Patches of grass or composting piles of leaves become lava (which can heal some types of Warrior Brother), or random landscapes (ie: one particular bare spot in the yard is a pool of poison). Of particular note, oniongrass, or ‘yard chives‘ are useful as healing snacks or poison attacks depending on the target. When our mint starts to sprout in the garden, he already knows that can be brewed into a strong tea to put enemies to sleep, or “to help WindGazers grow after they are cut down”.

All details provided below are as described by my kid. We each named ourselves in a whim, and he crafted full character biographies and the list of powers and limitations each person had. He acted as DM and leader of this rag-tag band of adventurers, while we offered suggestions to how we reacted against our enemies.

(It was actually kinda neat seeing how empowering him to compromise on certain situations we refused to be railroaded into, could be used to develop social skills in the real world. Good mental note to help him work through some school-play issues.. Hmm…)

My kid is ‘Gatorade‘, who never gets thirsty, and uses a stick like a magic wand to heal, or to shoot fire. He can also use a longer walking staff as a weapon to crack open the ground and make lava explode on impact.

I am ‘IvyLeague‘, a scientist Warrior Brother with the power to control poison ivy and other plants. I can shoot vines from my hands to wrap up enemies, and use poison thorn-attacks from my own [raspberry-branch] wand. Otherwise, I’m kinda weak and rely on Gatorade for those times when big-guns are needed. (He’s so cute!)

Our friend Nate, down in PA, is known now as ‘Cheerio‘, (yes, like the cereal), who can make lightning strikes, and is able to walk on snow without getting trapped. No known weaknesses, other than being afraid of bombs, and doesn’t like Chives or mint (see above).

The 3yr old son of Cheerio, apparently keeps changing his name. It’s either Ted-Fu, or Teddi-Go-Cha, or lately, Tedichi (ted-EE-chee). He is invincible, but can’t attack anyone because he’s too small.

Our latest adventure, in the large fitness park, was to defeat a series of 4 giant rock monsters (those landscaping rocks that have little flower-gardens and mulch encircling them in a field). The first was a bomb monster, so our pinecones healed it. Eventually, it was defeated by the pine-tree windgazer nearby dropping ‘a tillion‘ needles on the monster, which pinned it to the ground so it could be smacked with Gatorade’s Staff.

Next was a poison monster surrounded by lava, so I could not use my own powers against it. This was defeated by throwing a snowball at the lava to freeze it, and once again, got smacked by Gatorade’s Staff.

Thirdly, was an ice-monster who was immune to Gatorade’s Staff, and needed to be struck by Lightning and Poison thorns at the exact same time, or it would regenerate instantly. This one took quite a few tries to defeat.

Lastly, was a giagantic dragon rock (mostly submerged, so all we saw was the fin on his back sticking up from the ground). He was immune or otherwise unaffected by all our attacks, but eventually defeated when we used a handful of crab-grass and a pidgeon feather to tickle it. This weakened it enough that Gatorade was able to find a small 2lb rock nearby that was charged with SunGazer energy (small friendly river-rocks are SunGazers). We put the small rock on top of the giant rock back, which drained all his power and turned it to inert stone. Whew, just in time too, since then it was time to leave and return home, so the Warrior Brothers could get hot cocoa.

We took the feather home, and Tedichi got to keep it in his treasure box. All in all, a really fun adventure, and one that I hope my friend completely enjoyed.

-fin-

PS: This coming weekend, The Warrior Brothers are traveling to the far-away land of Lititz, where I grew up, in search of a fabled Crystal Dinosaur Bone. Not sure how into this my nephews will be, but if such an adventure takes place, I’ll be sure to blog about it here…. I can’t wait!

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