It seems to have been a busy couple of weeks. Been a lot of fun though. And a few things resurfaced while I was 'spring cleaning' (=turfing out my intrays)...
I found this - Ken scribbled it in 1993 (In case you can't read it, it says, in my scrawl: Joules - arrow pointing up to pic - "What's that?" Ken - "It's a starship, what do you think it is?") I showed it to him this evening and we had the same conversation, but in reverse (K: "What's that?" J: "It's a starship, what do you think it is?" K: "Do you think it'll fly...?")
Then there was this - scrawled back when we were at the Totterdown flat before we bought the house...
On Lammas Eve we headed out -
Burgers and beans
Blankets and beers
Acoustic guitars
Some cider in jars -
To party in the field where the magic mushrooms grow.
As far as I remember it was originally going to be a song, sort of. (There actually is a field where magic mushrooms grow, not far from us.)
Then there were the quotes from the journeys to and from the
Professionals con. Carol's were best!
Joules is hallucinating double-glazed spiders. (No, sorry, I can't remember what that was all about!)
Oooh - I've never been this wrong way before!
And another from Ken:
Is the opposite of a metaphor a metagainst?
Then there were the notes for a short story I'd obviously been planning, in which the lines, "Sorry I killed you off..." "S'OK, I can live with it." figured largely. Hm. Might use that somewhere, one day.
The publisher has OKed us saying what the new book is about, so Ken's prepared a page for
Crystal Home on the website. No cover pic yet, but it gives a rough idea of the content.
We originally started writing this sort of book to counter the 'crystal mystics' who make the most outrageous claims for crystals with no more evidence than 'chanelling' or intuition (their imagination, in other words). Let me be quite clear about this - I'm not saying that crystals
don't have innate energy and abilities, just that there is currently no proof that they do, and until I am satisfied that such is the case, I won't reinforce other people's spurious assertions. Indeed, some of these books are positively hazardous to your health: I've seen one recently where the author gives no warning whatsoever for cinnabar, which is the primary ore of mercury and potentially extremely toxic, and only warns about not taking galena internally (galena is 86% lead and poisonous), while insisting that malachite (a minor ore of copper, safely used in jewellery and carvings for centuries) is highly toxic and should be handled with care. It annoys me when people don't bother to get their facts right.
The way we suggest using crystals is talismanic - many minerals, as we point out, have been used in this way for millennia - and draws on the individual's own willpower and energy to operate (humans being what they are, able to convince themselves to believe
anything, especially if they think it will be beneficial to them!) I use them talismanically: it wasn't until I started wearing jade about ten years ago that I was able to be disciplined enough to finish projects (any project in any field, that is!) - but that's because to
me, and not because of any innate power, jade is a grounding mineral, helping to stop my mind from haring off after the 'shiny sparklies' as Lutra puts it. (OK, so I am still distracted, quite often, but I do still complete most of the projects I start! And the distractions might be due to my also, these days, wearing facetted peridot as well as jade: it's a bright, witty, sparkling crystal that I find very inspirational.)
And that's quite enough wittering from me. I've finished
Free, my next
Dystopia chapter: it's uploaded but not available to read yet, as chronologically Lutra's next chapter comes first. She's nearly finished it - hopefully I can code and upload in the next few hours.
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 6:35 pm
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