I was pointed in the direction of a site called Ghost Town, a very interesting website chronicling a woman’s motorcycling adventures in the “dead zone” surrounding Chernobyl. I learned much from this site in my time reading it, from the fact that 1000 years will pass before people can live in this area, to the existance of a large stone egg sent from Germany that represents, as the author says,”LIFE that will break through, life that will survive through radiation.”

Life has indeed survived – and in fact thrived – in the Chernobyl area. Wolves, fox, wild boar and other animals are multiplying and taking back what other aspects of nature are as well. Humans can not survive well in the area surrounding Chernobyl. 3,500 residents refused to leave in 1986 or returned to live in the area in that year and today only 400 remain alive.

What strikes me most about this website are not these facinating facts, but the very human photos and accounts of this woman’s journeys. Her first language is obviously not English, but she is able to bring forth very strong emotions with her words. Her photos are even more powerful, capturing so much about this place filled with lives abandoned or ruined.

I highly recommend you take the journey this website offers. It’s profoundly moving and informative. I’d dare say it’s the most exciting website I have visited in the past year. It creates an atmosphere that doesn’t need the enhancement of a fancy layout or short-term gimmick to make it memorable. Its content will draw you in and have a far greater impact than most sites can offer.

While reading this site, I put on Strawberry’s “Kiev Trains”, a song about Chernobyl. Knowing the inspirations and histories behind the songs Deidre Smith (Strawberry, Brokehearts, Valley of the Giants, and The Squarewaves’ principle songwriter) has written adds an immense amount of understanding and enjoyment of her music for me. *(This song, however, was written by Scott, who let me know this. I should have checked the liner notes so I’d have known that. He said of the song, “There was an article in the newspaper describing cleanup after the accident. For that job workers were given subway tokens as compensation. This seemed bizarre and symptomatic of thoughtless governmental behaviour.”)* Especially having read this personal and informative account of Ghost Town, “Kiev Trains” stands as one of my all time favourite songs. I’m increasingly looking forward to hearing new material from The Squarewaves.

Since September I’ve been making my way through a book on mediation, dreams and spirit guides by Tara Ward titled Meditation & Dreamwork. It’s quite comprehensive in its dealings with its three focuses and their interaction, and generally structured in a way that is progressive but not overwhelming.

The first section, on meditation, I found to be quite well suited for my own learning path. It introduced concepts regularly and did so in a way that seemed natural. The book took little for granted, and allowed the reader to learn things he or she might not have known before about basic meditation, while introducing some rather advanced concepts carefully.

The lead up to chakra and aura exploration served me very well and taught me a lot about various techniques for meditaiton. There were chapters of this initial section that I would have liked to have seen switched around, but I think it was very well done. I didn’t feel that any important aspects of meditation were not represented well, and I definitely left those chapters feeling I had learned a great deal.

I admittedly had troubles with the “Tools for Deeper Mediation” chapter. Auras and chakras are concepts I understand quite well, but I was not able to put them into realized practice for quite some time. Now I feel fairly confident that I can work with chakras and discover their wealth of awareness over time. I still have trouble with auras, and I haven’t experienced them on any profound level. Sure, I can tell what others are feeling to some extent, but it seems to me that’s something everyone has, and largely due to physical clues.

The section on spiritual guides wasn’t one I was able to embrace well. I tried the meditations, but I did not have any sense of there being some other, tangible presence there. While explained well and quite in depth, this part of the book didn’t have the impact on me I would have liked. Perhaps in time it will prove to be otherwise, though.

Anyone who has known me for some time should know that I don’t often remember my dreams. They come very infrequently, but I’m always very interested in what they might mean when I do have them. The section on dreams in this book is rich in methods of interpretation of dreams, and should prove to be helpful to anyone wishing to fully explore their dreams as a vehicle for understanding themselves. Most of the exercises proved to be impossible for me to explore at this time because of my lack of memory of my dreams, but I can tell they will be rewarding if sometime in the future I can experience them.

The final section, on combining the three topics, was as elusive as can be expected having not been able to fully experience the second and third sections. However, it seemed as well written and informative as the rest of the book, so I imagine anyone who is able to learn the lessons of any two of the three topics would find it very interesting.

Meditation & Dreamwork is certainly a book worthy of reading if you have any interest in meditation, dreams or spirit guides. It has a gentle approach that would benefit anyone who may be sceptical about the processes. There may be parts you may not be comfortable with or able to accomplish right away, but the rewards of learning to meditate alone are immensely beneficial.

I believe my phone may be in its death-throws. It seems unable to charge its battery properly, and may thus become unusable quite soon. This is a terrible sign in my job hunting endeavours, because I’m expecting a call back to confirm that I get a job in the next week or two, and I also hope to have some job interviews in that time as well. With a dead phone I would be unable to have any of that happen.

I did a good deal of redesign to Frozen Truth . com this weekend. I began with a new script for Digital Knapsack and then created a brand new layout for the rest of my site. So far I’m liking it better. Full navigation to the archives isn’t available on each page, but navigation is more intuitive and more page space is dedicated to content.

Tonight I decided to try out a Linux Live C.D.’s. For those of you who might not know, a Live C.D. is a C.D. that contains an entire operating system (and often all the programs you need to use) that can be used as a bootable C.D. Windows runs from a hard drive, but a Live C.D. is entirely self sufficient. You generally don’t even need to have a hard drive at all to use one, and they can’t harm your system unintentionally.
Why did I decide to try out these Live CD’s myself? I mostly want to try out Linus OS’s to see if they can meet all my needs in an operating system. If so, I’ll likely end up choosing one of them as a permanent replacement for X.P. once I learn how to use it well.
I decided to start small in my Linux adventures and chose Feather Linux, a distribution that is only 64 m.b. After several tries, I finally had it running. Everything seemed to work well, except I was unable to access the internet with it. The problem is likely something I can figure out, but it was still rather discouraging.
I’m currently downloading Morphix Gnome, a much larger and more feature rich distribution. It seems like a much more likely replacement for XP, but I’ll have to test it out in the morning. Hopefully my next entry will be made while running Linux.

Tomorrow I plan to get out and do a lot of walking. I haven’t taken the time to explore the city in some time, so it’ll be nice to wander around some areas I haven’t been to. I might even try to get my cheap digital camera to work.

I’ve spent the last couple hours writing the newest installment of Project Whispers. “Sun: Two” continues the correspondence between Berit and Tainn found in “Sun: One” and “Moon: One“. Berit’s dream, much like Tainn’s account in the previous segment, reinvents an older story I wrote and shared in poem form. This time I took from my “Moon’s Voice” story and its two poems “Decay (A Grey Portrait)” and “Decay (Violence)“.

In this endevour I was aided by help from a continent away. My friend Rhianna, who resides in Brittish Columbia, sent her muse, who goes by the name Tiger Lilly, it seems, through the wires and on a winding digital trail to this cave. The muse seemed to be of some help. The advice Rhianna imparted about the making of tea was also beneficial.

I think it’s about time to sink into bed. I feel I’ve accomplished quite a lot today, and I hope I can keep up a writing schedule like I have begun today for a long time. Wish me luck and let me know what you think of my story.

Tainn,

I walked back to the park as soon as I woke up the day after I left this book there. I couldn’t bear anyone reading it and figuring out who I am. I really was, and maybe still am, sure I’m insane for thinking any of my dreams could be real. I was worried someone who knows me would come across it and have me committed. I thought maybe they should.

Before I awoke I was dreaming of the city again. I could see a vacant street with abandoned cars along its length. Broken glass lay in front of gaping store windows. The stores were dishevelled and picked over for anything useful. The scent of sewage burst into my attention erratically, choking me and then letting me inhale some of the less offencive air a wind provided.

I saw two figures, a man and a woman, walking down the center of the street. They were cleaner than most of the inhabitants of the city had been for months. Worn, but recently washed jackets and jeans kept the cold air from ripping into the two bodies. The way they carried themselves said far more than anything else, though. They seemed confident, but did not have the violent confidence the city’s gangs had. It was a gentle posture that I had not seen in these dreams. An aura of compassion seemed to radiate from them, and I was spellbound by these people who were in complete contrast with the dead city.

I came to realize I was watching the street from the third story window of a building on this street. I could see the two nearing an alley across from me. I saw movement in the alley and was stunned to see someone crouching there in the dark.

It looked a lot like a man, but he was coated in dust and grime. I saw orange as he lowered his head and his hair became visible. I swear it was rusted barbwire. It was jagged, brittle yet fluid and tangled down his back. As he shifted, the dust moved over him and I could see flakes of rust coated his muscular body and had been hidden underneath the filth. He coiled on the trash and ripped garage bags, raised his head and looked to the street with fiery eyes.

The couple stepped in front of the opening to the alley, unaware of the man waiting there. A sick screech ripped through the air, as did the rusted man. He leaped at the man in the couple and raked his hands across the man as he turned. The man fell backwards to the ground, with long lines across his chest leaking blood. Dust fell from the rusted man onto the fresh wounds, and the fallen man had to be in excruciating pain.

The rusted man looked to the woman and let out a low growl. He swung at her with his huge, orange and grey left arm, but she spun low out of the way. Her back was against the wall when the rusted man lunged again. She dashed into the alley and brick chips flew as claws raked down a building instead of flesh. The woman was trapped in the alley, with the large rust man blocking her way out. He charged at her, running low with his forearm aimed to pin her to the wall.

I don’t know how she managed it, but she raised her body high with her arms braced on the walls. As the rusted man reached her, she placed a foot on his shoulder, kicked of it and leaped to the ground beyond him. She tried to make it to the open street, but an arm crashed back into her with amazing speed. She collided with the brick wall and was hit by the full force of the rust man. The sound alone made my bones ache. She dropped to the ground and lay in a twisted, unnatural looking heap.

I saw the long orange hair-wire and the back of the attacker as he knelt down and seemed to be biting, tearing at her lower leg. I watched with only the barest hope as her companion rose to his feet. His pain filled the air around him, but not as much as the fury that burst forth when he saw the woman fallen and being torn at. He picked up a piece that was half buried in the refuse-covered alley and held it with a white-knuckled grip. He walked forward and brought the end of the wood into the back of the rust man’s head.

The board slipped from the man’s hands and fell to the floor while the rust man fell onto the woman. Scattering pieces of rust and a film of dust onto her. Having lost the board, the man slumped against the wall, his blood collecting beneath his feet.

The rust man rose from where he had fallen and glared. I noticed that a fire escape ladder was now gripped by the bleeding man just before the rust man began moving toward him. Even with the dripping wound, the man somehow swung himself on the ladder rung and brought his knee to the head of the rust man. The rusted man stumbled backwards, but otherwise seemed unfazed by the blow. He swatted his arm, sending the other man and a stream of blood toward the street.

The battered man landed in a pile of trash, breaking a broom stick in two. The rusted man approached slowly, scowling with a mouth lined with glass shards. He extended one arm toward the throat of the prone man, its jagged nails creeping closer to the jugular and death.

I seemed to be viewing the scene in slow motion. A desperate scream rippled through the air, filling me with deep dread. The man forced his arm up and I saw that it clutched a end of the broom stick. It inched toward the rust man’s face, sinking into the orange eyes. A thick red splattered out from the eye as the stick sunk deep and the rusted man dropped to the ground.

I watched as the bleeding man crawled to his partner, leaving a red trail behind him. He found her hand with his own and collapsed into the rubble.

The dreams had never been that bizarre. How could I not believe I was insane after seeing that rust man? I knew it was real. I just could not shake that sense that it was going to happen just as it had in my dream. I was helpless, so I pulled on some clothes and ran all the way to the park, trying to get away from the feeling I had in my room.

I took the book from under the bench I had left it under and held it in my hands as I cried over it while the sun rose. I could still see the blood and each blow repeating over and over in my mind. I sat there for over an hour, practically comatose.

Eventually, I collected myself and walked on to work. I hid the book under the counter and tried to keep my composure throughout the day. I didn’t do very well at that, as I had to excuse myself from customers several times and hid out in the back room. I ended up leaving the book under the counter for the following week.

In the following nights I returned to more typical dreams. I was in the dead city, but the rust man and those two people who had spellbound me did not reappear. I was thankful not to see that violence again, but to know those two people who had radiated goodness were dead hurt me more than it seems it should.

I brought the book home on Monday and let it sit on the floor by my bed until tonight. I decided to read what I had written for no reason I can come up with. It was then that I noticed what you had written, Tainn.

It has given me comfort and hope to know that I might be able to stop these dreams, and that I’m not alone. Can you help me stop them? Can you tell me what I need to do? Can wee meet to talk about the dreams? Please. I know we don’t know each other, but I need to talk to someone who might understand some of this. I’ll leave the book under the bench again tomorrow night. I pray you’ll find it and reply.

A hopeful sunset soul,

Berit

I believe the interview yesterday went well. I’m sure I didn’t give perfect answers, but I did as best I could. I’m sure I have a shot at the job, at least. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I know I’ll be wishin’ and hopin’.
In other upcoming changes, my roommate Greg will be moving out as of May 1st. He’s hoping to sublet his room, so I’m helping him look for people who might be interested. I’d certainly like someone I know as a roommate, or at least someone I can get along with. If you know anyone interested in having the room for the summer (and possibly renewing the lease with us for September), or are interested yourself, please let me know. You can read an ad Greg placed here and see where we are on a map here.
I haven’t had the chance to get out and be social much lately. Other than the nice Monday I spent with April and Wanda, I haven’t been out to do anything not related to getting a job, and it’s becoming quite tiresome. I need to get out just for the sake of getting out, and possibly meet up with some people for conversation. Is anyone interested in hang out during this week or the coming weekend? I have enough change for some coffee or apple juice, so excitement will surely abound. Perhaps one or two of you would like to visit for an evening of Risk and midnight street tag. I need some socialization either way.
I should break out my guitar soon. It’s been gathering dust while I’ve been focused on getting a job. I really do want to learn to play it. I don’t know why I’ve neglected it so much this year. I don’t want to be another of those folks who give learning to play an instrument a half-hearted try and then allow it to collect dust. I’ll tune when I finish writing.
Evolution is a beautiful thing. I’ve been rereading some old journal entries I made nearly a year ago, and I can see I’ve changed more than I had realized. I’m most thankful that I’ve been able to commit to sustained change as much as I have. Usually, I would see changes in myself in small bursts when I gave myself time to reflect (usually in those lazy summers I lived during my high school days). Now I see slower, but more measured and profound, change in my thinking, actions and awareness. I welcome the challenge of a lifetime of growth now more than I ever have.

I’m back in the city after my retreat to the rural confines of Dean. It was a pleasant weekend at my parents’ home, filled with reading, relazation and good, home cooked foods. I feel refreshed now, and ready for the job interview I have tomorrow.
I can’t say I’m free of anxiety about tomorrow. I feel confident I’m qualified for the job, though, and I know I have plenty of related experience. I do have varying degrees of anxiety when I’m in situations such as that were I feel I’m being judged. I know it’s an irrational reaction, and I know it’s a problem. I have been working on it for some time, and I think I’ve made real progress. Meditation has helped that and just about every aspect of my life, and I’m thankful I finally have been able to employ it in my life. I intend to continue to improve until I am fully comfortable in any situation I’ll face, but I know it will take a good deal of time.

I’ve decided to tackle Robert Holdstock‘s Lavondyss as my next book to read. I remember reading and very much enjoying the novella version of his Mythago Wood. In “The Mythago Process“, Holdstock told of the three Mythago novels he has written (Lavondyss is the second of three published so far), their inspiration and the process he endured in writing them. Having read his view of his own works, I am even more enthusiastic about delving into Lavondyss. It seems to be quite a remarkable and challenging work, and I am intrigued, as always, by the roots and archetypes of stories.

The webs of friendships I’ve been blessed with facinates me. New friendships, lapsed friendships and constant friendships all have a lot of value to me. I am blessed to know remarkable people from many places, and I learn a great deal from everyone I interact with in friendship. What I long for, however, is a sense of true community between the people I know. We all have so much we could share with each other and benefit our world with, but somehow we remain strikingly solitary spiritually and emotionally, no matter how gregarious we may appear to the outer world. If there is one thing I believe this world needs to discover, it is that sincere sense of community that would be our cultural salvation.

Ursula Le Guin’s short story collection The Compass Rose was a surprising book. It was not surprising in quality or voice, but rather in its diversity. As the title may suggest, the stories contained between its covers scatter in all directions. There is a coherency in this, however, as the stories are grouped into six sets, Nadir, North, East, West, South and Zenith.

Each of the stories were memorable and well crafted, but some held special significance to me during this reading. I found Mrs. Le Guin’s stories touched on other stories and experiences that have been on my mind lately, from my reading of Natural Man to a song from my favourite album, “Whaling Tale” by Valley of the Giants. I always try to notice such parallels.

“The Author of the Acacia Seeds” began the book with a humourous work detailing the emergence of a future science of Throlinguistics, the study of animal communication, language and art. It was a novel idea that we might someday find conscious art in the actions of animals. Penguin poetry was especially interesting, and long with the last story of the book, led to the link to “Whaling Tale”.

“The New Atlantis”, which followed, was a 1984-like story of facism combined with a sinking sense of doom as North America is flooded by rising waters. Despite this, the enthusasm of invention in the midst of such cultural and natural disasters was highlighted in a striking way. Even so, the continent would sink, perhaps an inevidible reclaimation by the earth.

The intervening stories held much of interest as well, though, as I said before, some hold on more strongly to my memory. “Two Delays on the North Line” was a look at death. “SQ” was a look at the complicated issue of sanity and its enforcement. “The Diary of the Rose” again looked at both sanity and facism as they disturbingly wove together. “The Pathways of Desire” looked at the notion of human-created worlds with the world of natural humans on another planet being learned of by Earthlings.

“Sur”, the final story of the collection chronicles an expedition to the Antarctic in 1909 that served both to spotlight human drive to achieve and test ourselves and as a feminist revision (or perhaps uncovering) of history. Le Guin told of a group of women who sailed to the Antarctic from South America and succeded in reaching its highest peak years before the first men would do so. At the end, the story climaxed with one woman giving birth to a child, placing emphasis on the point that women can be strong, independant and all things feminism promotes, but also hold high the positive natural and traditional aspects such as bearing children without compromising either.

The Compass Rose introduced me to a different sides of Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing than did Planet of Exile. I was quite impressed by her use of political allegories, realism and surrealism in addition to the fantasy and science fiction that I had come to expect from her after reading one novel and learning of her works from others. Certainly, her excellence multi-genre execution and voice are things I aspire for in my own writings, and show her mastery of her craft.

One of the books I’ve read while here in Dean was Robert Allen’s Natural Man, part of a series called The Living Earth. It was published nearly thirty years ago and is thus quite outdated, but it shared much information about historical and modern hunter-gathers and other “natural” humans. The sincerity and respect for so-called natual man presented in the book inpressed me a great deal.

The book dealt with the lives of natural man quite extensively, especially impressive for a book with fewer than one hundred and fifty pages. I respected the coverage of the whole lives of such natural people with honesty and insight into how well formed the societal dynamics are in groups some would consider primitive.

The book began with an evolutionary account of man’s departure from other primates. This section of the book was most dated, with many recent archaeological having shed much light on our evolutionary past, but was still a very interesting part of the book. The focus on our similarities with other primates and probable causes for our changes were presented in a convincing way.

The next section was a case study of the !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari (the exclamation mark represents the clicking sound made with a tongue on the roof of the mouth). This group of natural humans lived remarkably well. They eat far better than most European and North Americans. The men and women average just two to three hours each day gaining food through hunting and gathering, and the rest of the day is reserved for repairing tools, communal work and recreation. The !Kung have a wonderful structure of sharing that promotes nearly absolute egalitatianism. No one goes hungry or is in want of any need, with absolutely all goods shared, and the society is almost exclusively free of violence. Population control is carried out within the society, with contraceptions and other birth control being woven into the fabric of tribal life. Social importance relies on who shares more willingly, who can laugh and tell jokes best, and who can get along with his or her fellows most readily. All this sounds very utopian, like a very advanced civilization, but is in fact a very natural and effective human state. One can assume then, that our own societies are the ones with flaws and abborations that cause many of our hardships.

Mr. Allen moved on to cover natural humanity’s interaction with its environment, the social structure of of natural humanity and the interaction between urban and natural man in the following sections. Each was filled with vivid examples and well grounded explainations for the behaviour and social structure that had been developed.

The final section, “Natural Man Meets Urban Man”, was quite troubling. It’s obvious that our own cultures and ancestors have abused the natural people we have encountered, be they native Americans, tribal Africans or other groups, but it’s easy to ignore the terrible conditions we’ve created for these people that continue to this day. This section highlighted the crimes committed to this day by our governments in dealing with natural peoples. The examples given about the American government’s actions were most haneous, because of the deceit, abuse and murderousness committed in isolating and killing native Americans.

Natural people possess a great deal of knowledge and social richness that we can learn so much from. We need to work to allow these people the freedom to live their lives as they wish, and to unobtrusively learn from them. Natural Man may not have introduced these facts to me, but it certainly helped to enhance my awareness of these people I admire and wish to emulate in many ways.

Last night I dreamed of deer. I don’t remember a great deal about the dream, to be honest, but the images of the deer stayed with me. The dream was set during an overcast night, with the outside lights of the house providing the only illumination. The lawn was green, so it was obviously not happening now, because the lawn is completely snow-covered.

The first of the deer I can remeber is a yearling stag on the front lawn of my parents’ home. It was running and scared for some reason, raging in a circle in search of escape. I was standing on the edge of the lawn as this sequence opened, and barely missed the cicrling deer as it passed. I eventually was chased by the deer to the entrance to the house, where he raced on into the trees behind the house.

The dream moved ahead in time and I was standing again at the entrance of the house. Past me moved a fawn in a motion both graceful and clumsy. It moved down the side of the lane towards the road alone. I began looking for the mother of the fawn, but could not spot a doe. I had a sense that the fawn might be in danger and was in need of its absent mother. The fawn made its way further and further from me towards the road. I had debated whether I should go to help it when the doe walked slowly in front of me. Mother and child moved out of my vision and I awoke.

It was before eight when I made my way up the stairs to the main level of the house. My parents were up already and preparing to leave for Truro, where they had an appointment to have their car inspected. I talked with them for a while before they left and then had some breakfast.

I crawled online and saw to my usual routine. I’m still adjusting to the complication of dial-up, but I really don’t mind as much now. I talked with Mandy for a while about books, weather and jobs before dropping offline to eat an early lunch.

When my parents returned in the afternoon they awoke me from a nap I’d been having and I was asked by my father to clear some snow with him. I happily did so, clearing my parents’ rather lengthy lane. When I was done I leaped a snow bank and headed into the woods behind the house.

I wrote before of the clear cutting that has been taking place in the forest behind my parents’ home. It was deeply troubling to me to see so much beautiful land made ugly and bare so needlessly, and it likely will be all my life. I love the beauty and life of forests greatly, and I feel very strongly about the need to preserve them and use their resources responsibly. Clear cutting does the exact opposite of what I believe, and I find it ugly.

When I broke from the path to where the forest used to be, I was met with a vast, empty, snow-covered field. It was a heartbreaking to see all of the forest gone, where some stands of trees had remained three months ago. I scanned the barren landscape and then noticed one tree was still standing ahead of me.

You may recall the great tree from that earlier entry about it and the clear cutting. It was a massive birch with branches the size of most other trees around it stretching out into the air. It was a beautiuful and holy tree that I loved from my early childhood. I remember it as strong and magical even when I last saw it standing amid other trees, an old beacon of natural life.

Today it stood lonely with many of its branches fallen and broken in a circle around it. Those dead limbs were half covered by white, white snow. However, it still had some limbs reaching upward to the sky, fingers reaching up to the moon to be rescued from the human tide. When I approached this tree, I noticed that the branches were actually covered in fresh buds. My life tree will stand and survive another season, whether because the clear cutters sensed its holiness, or because of some more mundane reason. It’s a resiliant tree, and I hope it will keep root for many years, as a beacon of defiance against all that is wrong with our abuse of this world.

After witnessing that uplifting discovery in the middle of terrible waste and ugliness, I thought of the deer in my dream. They would have been displaced by the clear cutting that had displaced hope in myself, and been made homeless by the destruction. How terrible it would be to lose a home in such a way. The deer of my dream may have been a warning, or perhaps a sign of hope. Maybe they were both. Looking back at the tree as I left, I thought I saw teeth marks on a low, half-budded branch.