T. B. A. S.

i started another entry last night about being inspired, but then guess what? i did one paragraph and then wandered off to draw and stuff. here is that paragraph:

inspiration: breathing blue-white smoke. holy, sacred. wild eye: pure silvery fluid like mercury swimming in my sockets. could also be influence of deities? does that mean that taming an animal reduces its connection to Spirit? i hope that's not true. maybe it just doesn't show as much. the pupils can still be silver, remember?

anyway. today.

crashed at 7 [felt like 8 because time change, the sun was fully up] after a looong night, got up at 12:30-1ish, hung out with bb for a while. we went to cici's and then he went to work. since then i've been looking at DCI stuff. i drew a couple references for corps uniforms [Spirit of Atlanta and Phantom Regiment, today] so i can use them later. i'm going to make sure and eat before work tonight, last night i neglected to and so i ran around hungry as heck for like an hour before i could get a break.

tonight should be ok, it's monday... i expect few problems. just wanna plow through seven hours and then i'm done for the week, i have a day off tomorrow. my first actual day off this week, since Friday was a sacred day and not just a day off.

ehhhhh don't really wanna hit work tonight tbh, after working friday saturday and sunday and being off monday and tuesday all week, it feels like my day off and i feel like i got cheated out of my other day off on thursday [bc i did... whatever i did it for tina]. BLEH. but on the plus side, hopefully they will have their shit together and the schedule will be ready for me tonight so i don't need to call.

BLEH yeah that's p much all that's on my mind. i need to eat, i need to pee, i don't wanna go to work, and headspace, particularly the Toy Soldier [and thus marching band/drum corps in general].

some more stuff about Toy Soldier: i realized with a start last night that... it seems so sacred and true and secret, i don't even want to speak it or type it for fear it will warp somehow by being told. but i think... he's my muse. the Toy Soldier. i think he might be, in whole or in part, the reincarnation of what was once Mezzoforte. my muse, the masked dragon beastie who first appeared to me a decade ago in 2004, and whom i haven't seen for probably four years or so. it made TOTAL sense when it occurred to me while talking to dale. mf was associated with music, too, and tied with marching band, as he appeared to me when i was first falling in love with the art form that changed my entire life.

other stuff that occurred to me during the extremely slow night last night, during strange half-verbal conversations with the Toy Soldier in the hole in the back of the store, making oatmeal... realizing that holding my hand to my chest a certain way deflected the angle of my breasts and helped give the illusion of flat-chestedness especially when wearing a lot of layers... and the whole "tick-tock" tangent that really touched me. his presence helps my artistic blood flow, feels like a rain to the years of drought that have been happening. i offhand referred to my heart as "my tick-tock" - we were talking about the possibility of leaving my moleskine open, the tiny one full of blank musical staves that we use as a pocket sketchbook since our music writing skills are even more blocked than others, and i said to the hypothetical reader, "just be aware, that's my tick-tock you're looking at... it gets a bit dark sometimes" and this warm, ghostly smile crossed the Toy Soldier's face as he caught my eye... god. he's so stoic and almost hollow all the time, when he smiles, it really touches the heart.
the clockwork reference combined with the time reference... heart magic. the heart as a clock, the heart as a timekeeping measure... or the heart counting seconds until there can be no more heartbeats. all those thoughts crossed my mind in the blink of an eye.
and at some point last night, or possibly this morning as i was falling asleep, there was imagery of pressing my head to his chest and hearing the metronome, the clock whirring and clicking that is the sound issuing from inside him, which i've heard before. i don't think there's any neato sci-fi explanation for what's going on in his chest... he's a spirit, a ghost, made of thought and willpower... his insides aren't exactly logical.

i don't know what's happened over this past fall [correction: this past marching season, what other time would he make himself so well known to me?] to bring the Toy Soldier into such a central position in my inner life, but it seems that's what i need right now. to get on with outer life, and much more importantly... to work on my charge. to get it out, get it down on paper or screen.

i feel him close beside me, or even under my skin, so often lately. it's really nice. i'm sure this time will pass and later he won't be so central anymore, but don't you dare feel silly or cringe reading this, future self. don't listen to that programming. it's not "an obsession", it's not something weird and incorrect that we need to look back on with embarassment. none of that. it's a moment in time and it's important to me now, and it should be important to you later, reading over this, knowing how it helped you grow into who you are now.


... and i just realized his rune washed completely off my hand in the shower. that was an unpleasant shock, and i'm surprised that it shocked me at all. i guess that means i should bring along something to put it back on with if need be. eugh half an hour left. guess i better make the most of it.

sometimes it hits you like a freight train: the shape you unconsciously felt or projected inside or on yourself anytime you tried to call up or channel a headworld spirit. felt this rune shining in your own throat never even taking it for the symbol it is. the rune of the Toy Soldier.

it's shaped like an upside-down capital T, but it's the shape of stillness, focus, attuned to silence. the calm that must come before the storm of art. it's a single entity standing at attention on the field, surrounded by others yet perfectly alone.

i remember feeling that shape in my throat specifically, or my lungs, whenever the Toy Soldier possesses me to sing. when i sing and when he sings through me, those are two different things. each is good but i will never be able to surpass the glory of the Toy Soldier's song. when he does it, i feel somehow as if my vocal cords were forming that upside-down T shape to create a change in my voice. [i'm sure they weren't, but that was the imagery i kept getting. a shining golden, and burning pitch black, rune shape being held in my larynx.]

today we were heading home and clicking through the ipod the sound of a circuit-bent robot's voice came chanting through the speakers and a chill ran up my spine. that song has meant a lot to me in various ways since at least 2007, but since i've come to know the Toy Soldier, now i realize: that is literally his voice. or one of his voices. calling to me through the years before he was even manifested. like a bullet shot through time, from my subconscious to my conscious, from my past into my present.

i'm going to keep a gel pen with me at work tonight, the black-gold one, because the rune is black AND gold in color, shining gold and also pitch dark. and i'm going to inscribe that rune onto my hand every time i have to wash it off, or every time during the busy night i need to remind myself of silence, when my body is too full of stress and noise.

gonna keep him close. it's possible that i may get to leave early tonight, but i'll go in with the Toy Soldier's rune burning on my hand and in my chest, reminding me of the eternal stillness and calm that is always available to me underneath the fear and clatter.

in related headspace news: i realized either last night or early today that Nentor has a winter form where he sheds all his leaves and actually has skin and fur!?!? i've known him only in his fall leaf-covered black-skeleton form for years. but in his winter form he just looks like an enormous, monstrous weasel thing, for the most part. his mouth opens a little too wide. i haven't figured out if he has skin over his face/skull or not, though. and if he has a winter shape, he must have spring and summer forms, too, right? i wonder.

a little more info about Nentor: i'm pretty sure he is not quite an entity in his own right, although he is treated as such. he is sort of an avatar, or extension of Trolley. he belongs to her, in any right. i don't know if she reanimated him, or animated him in the first place from leaves or bones or clay or god knows what. he is what you call core-driven, meaning he is basically "operated" by a core lodged in the center of his chest/ribcage. the core is about the size of... this is gonna sound super nerdy, but the mini-sized Dragonballs. LOL. that's the first thing i can think of. i guess about the size of a softball or baseball, in a more physical world sense? dense, dark colored, hard, possibly made of metal or something Trolley refers to as "gunmetal wood" though i couldn't tell you the first thing about what that possibly means. it is disturbingly similar to the bullet found within the demon boar at the beginning of Princess Mononoke, but not, you know, evil or cursed or whathaveyou.
[i'm realizing this year what a WEIRDLY HUGE impact some of the Studio Ghibli films have made on my headworld in the seven or eight years since i watched my first ones, which were - guess what? - Spirited Away and then Princess Mononoke.]
he doesn't speak or even vocalize at all on his own - he opens his big jaws and Trolley's voice comes out if she needs to send a message - but he does seem to show his own 'emotions', affection, or aggression etc. basically everyone treats him with respect and as a "messenger", so basically as a person, even though we're not totally sure that he's a "real" entity with his own consciousness, or the spiritual/organic version of an A.I. program. [but let's be real: how many AI programs are there in headworld that are fully accepted as people? tons. so many. lookin' at you, Rook/Erin]
Trolley has been known to crawl up inside his ribcage and stay there sometimes for her own purposes, sometimes to heal if injured, sometimes to just act more directly as Nentor in a huge powerful form, or maybe just to sleep. i would be very surprised if he ever let anyone else do this, it's not likely he'd let anyone get so close to his core. if his core were removed from within his chest he would 'die', break, fall apart etc. immediately. it's possible that simply touching it would 'kill' him.
he is a HUGE thing, his skull is about equal to that of a bear's skull, but he seems to be a huge mustelid, like an otter or weasel.
also, his name: Nentor means "nine",  or "November" in slightly mangled Latin/Albanian. referring to the season in which i first found him, and also a nod to November [the] Labyrinth, a deity of another System which i have much respect for.

so i'm leaving shortly but i'm grateful because my head is CRAWLING with headworld stuff. the Order, the Book of Life [not the film, my Book of Life is years older] and its six parts... i really really need to get on that.

some notes for the six parts, briefly:

vol I: the Book of the Sea - sea spirits including cetaceans, pinnipeds, sharks, invertebrates, etc
vol II: the Book of the Dead - death, rules of the Dead, extinct spirits of land, sea and sky
vol III: the Book of the Green - earth and land spirits, mammals, reptiles. incl humans?
vol IV: the Book of the Myth - spirituality, self-deception as a tool, etc etc etc
vol V: the Book of the Sacred - misc? gods? headspace native deities and spirits?
vol VI: the Book of the Sky - sky spirits, birds, bats etc

my god, it's finally getting started and coming together in my head, i could cry with happiness. my subconscious/headspace charged me with creating these and bringing the six volumes of the Book of Life to be, years ago, but until now they've been the wispiest of ideas attached to a sacred-sounding set of names. but now after a couple of seemingly-unrelated years of research: IT ALL MAKES SUCH SENSE. gonna have to visit the library very soon.