30 September 2003: Admiral Paisley Octopus & Other Stories

Last Saturday Dragon Lady and I went to Wonderboy and H-Bomb's house for Wonderboy's 29th birthday.  Ate lots of barbecued meat, drank Bass Ale, saw good people whom I haven't seen enough of lately: Wonderboy and H-Bomb themcharmingselves, of course, plus Gemrise, Stagewalker, Bonkydog, and Lsph (who's been cozied up with Bonky longer than I've been with Dragon Lady, but I've seen so little of either her or Bonky in that time that I still think of her as "Bonky's new girl").  Struck by how many of them are going through a period of accelerated change right now.  As am I, as you probably know if you've been reading this journal.  Struck also by how good it was to see them, how much I've missed them without consciously realizing it.

Late in the evening, when most folks had left, Argus and Wolfina showed up with their new puppy, which was unspeakably cute (an adopted canine-type puppy, not one that they gave birth to themselves).  And then the Khan and Speaks Like Silence showed up, and then, a short time later, the party dissolved into sleepytime, and The Khan and I (there being no sleepytime for the wicked) drove out to Oakland Airport to meet the Admiral Paisley Octopus, who was coming in on a 1:00 AM flight.

The last time I'd seen the Admiral was almost a dozen years ago, when the Khan and the Malachrist and I drove out to his home in backwoods Vermont for Thanksgiving dinner, three weeks before I moved to California.  Now the daughter who was too small to talk is a teenager, and the one who was too shy to talk is talking about where she's going to be going to college next September.  And the Admiral's wife is talking about moving to California in the next few years - though it won't be walking distance from me, since the Admiral still refuses to live in any town where the human population exceeds the deer population.

The Admiral's hair was jet black the last time I saw him; now it's grey going on white.  And he's wiser and happier, and fifteen pounds heavier, and his kindness has blossomed out to surround him in a tangible aura, a warm glow that is actually visible from certain angles, under the influence of good alcohol (which he was kind enough to provide for us).  And aside from that, he's much the same.  He's a wine expert now.  Professionally, I mean.  Came out to do six weeks in the Wine Lands up north of here.  I hope I'll be seeing him again during that time.

Monday through Friday I did my last full week of having a day job, for now... maybe for a very, very long time.

Friday night, potluck and salon at the home of Sherpa and Syrinx.  Roomful of charming people, most of whom I didn't know.  Sherpa started off conversation with an account of the high level of change in his life at the moment.  And then other people talked, and all of them had massive life changes to report.  All of them. 

Saturday, did my now month-old Saturday two-and-a-half-straight-hours-of-yoga routine, then I took the rest of the day off.  Napped, ate homemade curry, watched the first X-Men movie on TV with Dragon Lady, read the first two hundred pages of Declare (awesome... Tim Powers does a spot-on take on the John LeCarre Cold War spy genre... in the world of the Last Call trilogy). 

Rest is good.  I'm not going to wipe out this time... I learned my lesson back in early 2001: downtime is not a delay in the Work, it is what allows you to process the information that the Work generates... and some of the information that the Work generates is of the sort that must not be allowed to accrete unprocessed, because it can hatch into qliphoth, which will then eat into your brain like an earful of maggots...

(Note to self: when I write my book on the Work, I'm going to have to find a less gruesome analogy for that one...)

So, anyway, I'm sleeping a lot, and dreaming many complex and vivid dreams.

Sunday, aikido and yoga and more rest and more of Declare.  And today, my last full day at the day job, finishing up the last of the old paperwork, tying up loose ends.  I've got two students on Friday afternoons, and the occasional assessment (doing one this Wednesday, in fact), and that's it.  Thursday is my appointment with the Financial Aid Office.  (When I called a couple of weeks ago to make the appointment, the woman who answered the phone said, "The next opening we have is Friday the 3rd at 4:00."  I said, "What's the next one you've got at an earlier time of day?"  "Well," she said, "I've got one at 3:00 on Thursday the 2nd.")

Welcome back, Geminica.  Welcome back, Lexicat.  Welcome back, Bitter Pie.  (Random mental flash: three women... a recurrent motif lately... the Fates?  The Furies?)

It's two in the morning.  I've got a metric buttload of homework to do tomorrow (today).  I'm going to go crawl into bed next to that beautiful woman who fell asleep three hours ago while I was reading her The Hobbit.