Conversation to the vulnerable

Love is not a cure all. It can’t paper over pain. Or fix what is broken. It can’t be the only thing in a relationship. Those tender quiet moments you share together, where love is allowed to be. Those are glorious. They lift you up. Make you whole.

But afterwards, at the breakfast table. Their casual cruelty. The silence. The important things you seek to share pissed on. Treated as less, for the sake of their ego. For the sake of their wounds.
Those few moments of feeling love. They are not enough.

Love can break barriers. It can shatter shells. It can make someone better. But they must choose that. They must use love as a place of strength to be more. To embrace vulnerability because in love they are safe.

It’s hard when you know the love is real. But who your partner is, is no partner. They think only of their pain. Their hurts. Their fear. And they dress it up as wrongs you’ve done. They have to be right, even when they are wrong. They have to dominate even when they display every reason they cannot be trusted.

Those moments when they are sorry. When they promise to never do it again. When they are so sweet. Those are the lies. The only real apology is changed behavior. And hard as it is, especially when you are vulnerable. When you are isolated. When you have abandoned friends for this relationship. When you have cut off family. When you are financially dependent. Even then, you must know.

Love is not enough.

And you deserve a relationship that gives strength.
That builds upon itself. And brings joy just by being.
It’s possible. If you build it. But…

Not with them. If they choose their anger, their fear. If they choose their trauma. Their pain. You can only show them that they are safe to heal. You can’t force them. And you can’t be their punching bag. Physical or mental.

It’s the hardest thing in the world to walk away. To be afraid. Of the maybe one day. Of how they might react. Because that’s what they do. They build a cage of fear. They enforce that fear with sudden and irrational violence. Then they promise never again. It may even last for a while. But they are just biding their time.

You deserve better than a cage of fear. A life of violence. Of lies.

It’s hard. It’s scary. But eventually they will go too far. They will break you. Kill you. Destroy your sense of self. And you deserve better than that. Your life is worth more than that.

You can be strong enough to do this. You can lean on old friends. Maybe old family. They likely don’t know what is happening. That person they were in the beginning, that joy and kindness you felt. That’s all they know. Tell them. If they support you lean on them. If they express doubt, believe their lies. Walk away from those. Don’t try to convince them. They aren’t real friends. The same for family.

Rebuild your network. And reach out to trauma centers and hotlines. Even emergency rooms. Firefighters, but not cops. The high level of domestic violence in the cop world has normalized trauma. They cannot be helpful when they are tacit offenders themselves.

You are not alone. You can do this. You can be safe. You deserve more than this.

Beyond the shores of Lethe

Sleep is the one thing in this world which seems genuinely good anymore
And it’s not that there are not elements of the waking world which I love
Rather it is the ecosystem of everything which surrounds us which is so perverse and broken that only in sleep do I feel free

I slide into bed and cool sheets greet me
The most comfortable pillow I’ve ever owned
Which I bought from a small local shop which I hope weathers this storm
Because I also get my beds from them
Beds that are called insidious
Because they are deceptively comfortable and lure you into deep sleep
I pull the blanket given to me by the woman I love across me, snuggling down in her distant embrace
And I slip from this abomination of a world into another
Perhaps just my own mind
Or perhaps a shard reality made real only for me
Still, sleep takes in another lost soul
Hoping that dreams become refuge for a weary heart
And when I wake
It is always with reluctance
For dreams and sleep
Is the last refuge we have

When an author dreams

Out past the fringes on a world run in partnership with embodied ai there is a threat coming which has already fought 3 galaxy class military cruisers. After a battle in which 2 of the ai’s ran rather than risk destruction the third sent a tightbeam containing the footage of the battle and the last backup they had to the nearest outpost. Unfortunately, at light speeds the message took 12 years to arrive and while the message was intact, the backup was incomplete. It was was clear though that the enemy had no desire to negotiate or speak and instead desired only destruction.

They spun the backup up but were disappointed to find that most of its memories of the journey out to the rim had been lost. So they had no idea what vector the threat was coming from. Central had received word from the 2 retreating ships but their telemetry was incomplete. The leader of their expedition was lost.

The leaders backup was embodied in a small vessel capable of space flight and left to its own devices. No longer relevant.

Years pass as the Ai and humans prepare for a battle they are unsure of

The little Ai is seen as an annoyance, a demenstration of the fallibility of even beings such as they.

6 years later the little ai receives a narrow beam which nearly fries his tesseract brain with an overlad of information. The remaining telemetry and backup containing a couple of years of captivity. The data is seen as suspect but they are required by law to allow the ai his memories. Now the ai is distrusted because it’s possible the memories have been tampered with

But the ai knows that what’s coming was contained in one of the tower ships commissioned by humanity to explore out beyond the fringes. Ships which came back strange and requiring human/clone crew which engage in bizzare behaviour to further some unknown goal.

One such ship resides in the ai’s system and it flies out to it after seeking the assistance of a human. Since human thoughtforms are strange and since this human was willing to listen.

They arrive and find a massive interior dedicated to some kind of game in which the humans gather some kind of power to themselves and go on a journey. Gathering more and more power until they can win the ‘game’. Everything on the ship is a game and even death is impermanent. As a new clone will be grown and the consciousness embodied there. So many deaths has resulted in a kind of memory fatigue which means it’s inhabitamts no longer realize what they were trying to win

And the most frightening thing is, this ship type was what attacked the ai fringes those many years ago

The blade draws its sigil

Skip time
Nightmare to nightmare
Hour to hour
Waking up to an empty bed
Staring at the clock
Each hour sliding past
Waking again and again
Each moment furthering from you
That nightmare which makes waking seem paradise
Confessions made to the empty air
Tears shed in agony
Refuge broken
Sleep fades
Time to get up
Time to cast against the wheel
Made to love
Made to break

When dreams teach(lucid dreams are weird)

At first the dream was like playing a video game. Like a really immersive rpg. I was rolling through completing objectives when I came to a fire level and I cast a ultra powerful blizzard spell which froze the entire world. This was all taken from bits and pieces of my last couple of days. For instance, the blizzard was something I saw on a TV show.

This is where it takes a turn, but still(I’m reading a detective story) consistent. I’m now a sheriff in a small town in the middle of a blizzard but I can still cast spells.

I think all of this is just framework until she steps into frame. I can’t describe her because she’s always been there, if that makes sense. We are working on a case and at some point we begin joking and we are forced to go on the run. But before that I mention burial rituals of South American indigenous people having similarities to what we were doing (burying her uncle so that he mummified, I don’t know…dreams) and she looks at me, like really looks and I see her and only her and I exist. We walk off the dig site and it is several months later and we are in a mall or gallery? There are kiosks but also it’s a college campus? Anyway, she pulls me into a kiss then asks who this woman down the way is who is looking at us in horror and tears.
I turn around and it’s an ex of mine. Actually someone I had almost married. (all of which knowledge seems to burst into my mind, having not known it before the moment I needed to)

I say that’s my ex, and I’m kinda pissed because the way she’s acting it’s like I betrayed her when she’s the one who left me. I say, She dumped me pretty quickly when she found out that I don’t want kids.

And I looks at this woman I’m now dating and I see the disappointment in her eyes. Then there is shooting and we are running again and I’m explaining while we run my reasons and she says, can we just put that discussion on pause until the crisis is over? We will figure it out together.
All the while I’m babbling that I might change my mind but I’ve never heard an argument which would counter my own beliefs and she looks at me with a wicked smile and says no worries, I already have kids and I was just worried you would reject me because of that, and I’m baffled because, the answer is of course that doesn’t bother me.

And it just clicked, like duh, this is what is needed. Someone willing to fight for us, who wants to explore and learn and change. Not someone who leaves at the first sign of trouble. Someone willing and wanting to have these discussions even though we are both vulnerable and maybe going to be hurt.

Then we hop in a gunship and flying out of there while under fire and I send someone whose been with us for awhile but in the background to man the .50 cal.

Then I wake up

Distant song waking, into silence

Shifting against
Nude body splayed over
Head on shoulder
Hand captured
Fingers in mouth
Eyes rise
Electric connection
Desire and love blossom
Straddle and guide
Hand firm
Souls and bodies entwine
Heat
Lush
Lips devour
Tasting her
Her hand over heart
Pressing
Draping
Pulse spreads
Inside
Draws ragged gasps
Soft sound

Startled I wake
Eyes open
Scent of her lingers on still air
But I know she’s distant
Never was
Maybe never be
Still
Dreams and hearts
Connected
Desirous
Distance
Of little consequence
A choice away
Wishing I knew
What path lead to you

Seeing with soft eyes and open heart

If it were a year ago, I would be without reservation. I would be full ahead, all in, how to get from here to there hardcore planning and presentation. It is the unfortunate case that the me of a year ago is gone. He had a bit more faith, a bit more naivete(if that term can be applied to someone as old hat as I).
Truthfully, I miss him. He would have stormed the gates of heaven for the hint of what now may be.

That’s not to say that I’m not overwhelmingly intrigued and even hopeful. Just that now, I’m cautious. People have burned me on hoping before. And while I don’t think that will happen here, it may not work out. That would be disappointing but little would change, I think.

I’m cautiously optimistic. I think we have a good shot. But slowly and coming into each other’s lives, not the headlong rush that has been so destructive in the past. In a way, I’m just talking myself into slow. Because the gods know, I’m much more comfortable with jumping.

This as a possibility I would never have guessed. Amazing. The world is still a beautiful surprise.

A familiar dream

I had a dream that I worked for Elon Musk directly. The work was infiltrating and inspecting companies that he owns or has partial stake in. I had parted ways with him amicably to go work for another company but was now bored with that work. I had mastered all of the pieces of a pretty complicated system after a few years and was bored again. I’d stopped working for Musk partially because the work had become too dangerous. But in my current state of boredom it made sense to call him up and see if he had any piece work he needed done. He did. There is a company that was building a underground cargo hauling business. Not underground in the illegal sense but literally underground. They were 200 feet down carving through the bedrock a network of tunnels to haul goods without having to mess about with terrain features, other people, weather issues, speed limits and other problems. It was a huge outlay of time and resources with no immediate or short to mid term profit prospects and it was amazing. He needed me to get into the tunnels and make sure the workers were motivated and that management was not intentionally dragging its feet. I got in and found that the delay was that they had found jade and fossils. They had already routed around the fossils and were looking for a route around the jade. I broke into the office and was going through the paper work when the owner of this company broke through the locked door before I could make good my escape through the side tunnels; He knew me from years before and knew that he was being audited. On the verge of a breakdown he asked what he was doing wrong; what he could fix. I assured him that there was nothing wrong. This was a inspection and they happen at all of Musk’s companies. He doesn’t go in for sending in corporate teams. “Give people time to prepare and even if they don’t mean to, they will end up lying to you,” is what Elon always says. The fossils and the jade are good things. We can route a side tunnel to the fossils and bring in archeologists and that will bring some good publicity should we need it. Plus advancing knowledge is what Elon is all about. The jade is just good business, we mine that and use the profits to offset the costs. Plus with the markets in jade cut off right now due to political unrest we will basically own the market. This venture will see profits for a few quarters which will please the money men that Elon is working with.

Of course, I’m highlighting here, the dream included things like the feel of the tunnels; the steam and the heat, and the infiltration was more harrowing than I am writing but in the dream it was something I had done many times before. Including a backdoor escape route that involved a hidden egress point that the miners did not know about that led to a natural cave system that allowed retreat. But that all felt like old hat. Something that I had done before and not really worth mentioning.

I counseled the owner and calmed him down then left in the normal way. On getting back to my car I find Mr. Musk’s general troubleshooter waiting at the car with a job offer. I was to infiltrate and gain access to something. I say something because I don’t recall what it was. Just that it was important and that I had a plan to get in. I invited some friends in the business. Quasilegal inspection teams being something that does occur at the levels we were playing in. Part infiltration expert, part forensic accountant, part engineer, we were rare but not unknown and the work was always interesting. I was setting up the job and infiltrating a secondary target with the team to find out how we worked together. Then I woke up.

I just had the worst dream I’ve ever had.

I just had the worst dream I’ve ever had.
I was in my home city but it was as if everything had become run down and shady. All of the apartments buildings were crackhouses and drug dens. The businesses were pawn shops and thinly disguised brothels. I was at one of the apartments retrieving my cat Dylan (Thomas not Bob). I was walking to my car when I was interfered with. A group of mobsters were around me and were trying to extort me regarding some other piece of business. They escalated to a physical confrontation. I pulled my blade and cut them to ribbons. I was going for the last and most dangerous and somehow a person I love got between me and my quarry as I was delivering a killing blow. I saw the look of surprise on her face and then her throat parted. Everything in the dream came to a full stop. I screamed for minutes, for hours, for eternity. Holding her in my arms. The cops showed up, too late, and with her dead in my arms, I went after the cops hoping they would kill me. They didn’t. I was kept alive for some reason. I was trying to taunt them into taking the shot when I woke. I felt the pain in my heart as if it had been ripped out. My throat felt like I had been screaming but people in the house say no. Even now, I’m haunted by the image. I would do anything to make it not happen. Even though it was ‘only’ a dream.

Hopes fruition…

Slip awake to distant dream
From feel of warmth and skin to skin
To this cold remembering

This desperate touch of dream
Of eyes held
Of hands clasped fingertips
Of silence pressed out
Thin on the edge of shattering

The heat of our bodies
Mismatched
But minds touching
Quantum entanglement
The spark originates
Then traverses this bridge
Bound eternal in our spinning

The sound of breathing
The rise and fall
You sleep on.

And seeing
Feeling you
Know stability amongst chaos