September 1st. The year has flown by. I suppose that is what happens as we get older. My birthday is a little over a month away. I always get reflective around this time of year. Who am I? Where am I going? What have I learned in the past year? Add a few dozen other questions at bare minimum, and that pretty much sums things up, I guess.

I wonder how many people can actually answer the question of who they are honestly. Perhaps in a generalization type scenario, but does that really get to the essence of who we are? Someone once confidently stated, and meant it as a compliment, that I become whoever the person in the room needs me to be. That has stuck with me for obvious reasons. My immediate gut reaction was that that was not true at all. Then I thought deeper about it.

I don't think it is so much that I become whoever the persons in the room need me to be as it is we are very multifaceted people, or at least I am. And different situations require different facets. I do like to make people comfortable because if a person is more comfortable with themselves they become more brave in pursuing their goals. I believe in lifting people up, but also being firm in my perspective of the truth. I believe in being buoyant and adaptable while standing firm. I'm pretty opinionated, but I do listen as well. I think that is more the key. Listening.

I no longer create as much as I have most of my adult life. Most of my life, really. It isn't that I don't want to, it is more that the state of the world and the expression of persons in my vicinity cause a deep lack of inspiration. That isn't exactly right either. I think that in some ways I find it pointless. Which I know isn't exactly true. Also, where I used to inspire others, I thought I just don't want to. Does this mean I have lost myself, or that I have evolved?

Perhaps, it means there are just too damn many hurdles these days and I no longer want to jump them. Or that I no longer have the energy to be jumping them. Maybe it means I just find the hurdle jumping completely ridiculous and I want no part of it. That is probably a big part of many things.

A conversation and a movie recently had me looking at when my grandparents passed away. As well as when one of my parents passed away. All five died of natural causes. One died slightly older than me. Two died younger than me. Two died about 15 years older than me, give or take. That has really got me to thinking.

The average life expectancy for a woman in the United States is 81.4 years old. That is roughly 26 years from now. 26 years passes in the blink of an eye. I want my golden years to be filled with joy and laughter. I want the type of communication that appears to be quite rare. Sometimes, I think I want the impossible. Other times, I think it's out there, but unavailable. Other times, I think I have such a mix of contradictions and likes that I'm a bit too complex for most people. Complex, yet extraordinarily simple.

I'm talking in circles without saying a lot. I'm working on a leap of faith, but I'm not sure that I have much faith in anything anymore. I'm not even sure what I think about faith in this moment. I'm certainly not talking in a religious sense. I respect people's right to have religious faith. I think it's a total crock of delusional shit, but stranger things have happened, I suppose. Faith in my fellow man, perhaps? Not really. Look at the world. Plus everybody's being groomed to be selfish as fuck, and I just find that very off-putting.

I guess I've circled back around to my dislike of people. I think dislike is a strong word there. It's doing too much work. Perhaps I should say I am unenamured. It is strange. Isn't it? To not really enjoy most people's company. It's not a lack of enjoyment exactly. It's boredom. Absolute boredom. Not that I'm particularly exciting. I am most certainly not. There's just a lack of inquisitiveness that crushes everything.

Am I changing because I'm changing, or am I changing because my environment is absolutely suffocating? At this point, I no longer know. I'm not completely sure I care. Perhaps I am just flummoxed with the doldrums, and it will eventually pass.

-— Before I could post this, I heard a kitten crying in the deep midnight hours. Upon opening the front door of my second story apartment, I was rushed by a tiny purrball. I've spent the last thirteen hours with her. Clearly abandoned, I'm very annoyed with whoever decided it a good idea to take a six week or so kitten, clearly raised indoors, whose eyes are still blue, and abandon her on a second floor in Summer heat that's over 100° each day. I would gladly introduce them to my claws for placing such innocence in harms way.

My landlord doesn't allow pets. I've been given until the weekend to find her a good home. I'm very glad he agreed. I swiftly acquired everything I needed even before asking. She's litter-trained, etc. She is stunning, both in personality, intelligence, and visuals. I am absolutely smitten. She could easily be my familiar's daughter. It is going to be rough to say goodbye, but I'm very happy to be blessed to keep her safe, and well-loved in the interim. I really can't stand to see kittens taken from their mothers when so young.

She is currently sound asleep, smiling, flopped over on her back and curled into the crook of my arm. She has completely claimed me as hers. I must admit to finding a long-missed peace in her presence. Perhaps, we needed each other in this moment. She needs me for safety and an abundance of love and transitional education and security, and I need her to remind me of what has been absent in my life. What will one day be again, and the absolute beauty of a trusting heart.

I do not yet know where her forever home may be, but I'm going to make damn sure she's placed in hands that will do all they can to ensure she goes to a caring, responsible home, and not just the home of someone who finds a long-haired, calico powderpuff the perfect want.

My familiar was a rescue who had to learn to survive before our paths crossed. My heart breaks as I imagine what that had to take while I observe this innocent cutie. She had to have been abandoned by one of my upstairs neighbors. It would behoove them for me not to find out which one.

Her little heart patters strong against my own as she holds my hand against her. I regret that she is also going to know the loss of me. I hate my landlord and manager a bit for the unnecessary pain their intolerant rules cause, but I will make sure she knows love and confidence, and I will hope she finds a forever home worthy of her magnificence.

I am truly blessed to know her. She is Phoebe GlimmerSoul — radiant, magical, and destined to share in the love of a home who will value her for the priceless gift of life that she is.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

The full moon has been shining big on the sky all week, infusing me with Lupine radiance. Today, however, the moon was only 80% full. Ironically its shine was the strongest one of all.

That’s a comforting thought, I think

I can’t believe how lucky I am with all of these things I have got going for me, how loved I am and what a meaningful (by my own measure) life I live

And yet at the same time, I’m really struggling

It doesn’t make no sense

To say I’m not clever enough to grasp it all may be true, but I’m not going to use that as an excuse not to try

Sometimes I think it’s cowardice standing in my way of making sense of this life, you know

How uncomfortable it can be to look into the mirror and

And sometimes other people too

Sometimes they aren’t what you think

Sometimes you know this I know this, and at the same time not

But also have some self compassion

Where is my self compassion

Where did I put it

I’m confused now, because I just discovered it and I’m still not sure

How to use it

#poetry

The A's vs the Rangers at 7:05 PM CDT tonight will send me off to sleep. Their MLB game last night at the same time worked just fine. I started with the Rangers pregame show about half an hour before the opening pitch and lasted through the 4th inning before I had to put head to pillow. I slept well, and the Rangers won their game. Hoping for a repeat performance tonight on both fronts..

And the adventure continues.

The first time I wrote about this dragon I described it like this: the snarling little face on the tail, the missing hind legs, the human eye set among the plumage. I want to come back to it, because since then the cipher has told us something the picture alone cannot. The book's first sentence does not merely show a dragon: it names it.

Deciphered, that sentence reads: La Magie Sainte, révélée à Moyse, retrouvée dans un monument Egyptien & précieusement conservée en Asie sous la devise d'un dragon ailé — “Holy Magic, revealed to Moses, found in an Egyptian monument, and carefully preserved in Asia under the device of a winged dragon.” The word is devise: a device, an emblem, a badge. The creature on the front is the book's own coat of arms.

Where would a French author of the period get the idea of an Asian magic kept “under the device of a winged dragon”? He would get it in print. In 1735 the Jesuit Du Halde, in the standard French account of China, calls the imperial Chinese dragon la devise de la Chine (“the device of China”) and explains that only the emperor may draw it with five claws; everyone below him is held to four, on pain of punishment. Two years later a French flag-book, La Connoissance des pavillons (1737), pictures the emperor's own banner and blazons the beast on it:

Il est jaune, chargé d'un Dragon de sable, à la queuë de Basilic de même, à cinq Griffes à chaque patte, & la tête tournée en dehors — “It is yellow, charged with a dragon sable, with a basilisk's tail, five claws on each foot, and its head turned outward.”

Now read that caption with our dragon in front of you. It carries five claws on each foot (in the finer of the two copies), its head is turned outward, and the whole thing is offered, in the book's own word, as a devise. The banner even gives its dragon “a basilisk's tail,” and ours ends in that strange second little face. The vocabulary of the emperor's dragon is sitting on the title page of a French grimoire.

And then you look at the flag itself... and the comparison spell breaks. The engraved dragon on the banner is a plain four-legged creature with a single curled tail. It looks little like ours, which has no hind legs at all, bat wings, and a body built to a European heraldic pattern. So the book did not copy the picture. But it copied the words. Its author drew an ordinary European wyvern and dressed it in the Chinese emperor's blazon: the five claws, the turned head, the devise of Asia, lifted off the page and painted onto a creature that was never Chinese to begin with.

That leaves one unexplained feature. Among the coloured feathers sits a human eye, modelled like a portrait miniature. Another animal on the same leaf was given an ordinary round eye, so this was no accident. French heraldry even has a name for the type, a dragon à face humaine (“a dragon with a human face”). The badge is borrowed. The eye looking out of it is the painter's own.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.

Daisy, Daisy and her Misty green light—
 Fog drifting with

The current of time,
 Slick upon the dock,
 Boots wet with dew and delusion.

As moth to verdant flame,
 Pulses and throbs
 At the speed of the board.

Not a beacon,
 Not a promise— 
It is a dream,

Made in seven moves,
 For love of an idea, 
A perfect vision.

A green window, 
Pierced and gazed through
 To see a soul.

Or maybe just The shape of his own Reflected back.

On Thursday a vinyl copy of All Night Session! Vol. 1 by the Hampton Hawes Quartet arrived in the post. I’d happened to find copies of Vol. 3 and Vol. 2 about fifty yards and six months apart at different shops in Chepstow. A few years have elapsed since then, without any sighting of Vol. 1 in the wild, so I resorted to ordering a copy from a Discogs seller to complete my set. The All Night Session itself took place in Los Angeles on November 12th-13th 1956. It was an unconventional recording date for its time: a nocturnal affair with no second takes and with all tracks ultimately appearing on the records in the order in which they were recorded. Nearly two hours of music were captured and pressed on to three LPs, which were first issued in 1958.

Pianist Hampton Hawes led the proceedings, accompanied by Jim Hall on guitar, Red Mitchell on bass and Bruz Freeman on drums. It was clearly a relaxed and freewheeling affair, with all concerned sounding like they had a great time. Hawes was quoted in 1958 as saying:

It’s hard to put into words how good it feels to play jazz when it's really swinging... I’ve reached a point where the music fills you up so much emotionally that you feel like shouting hallelujah — like people do in church when they’re converted to God. That’s the way I was feeling the night we recorded All Night Session!

The material is a mix of be-bop numbers, ballads, and extended blues-based improvisations summoned out of thin air that night. ‘Hampton’s Pulpit’, for instance, which closes Vol. 1, is one of the best of the album's spontaneous compositions.

---

I had no plan to buy any more wax seal stamps, but then I saw (on ebay) a Victorian stamp with a monogram comprising my initials, which seemed too good an opportunity to let pass. Over the weekend I used it in earnest for the first time (Fig. 36). The letters in the monogram are stylized with elaborated serifs in a way I’d seen before in Victorian lettering. The ebay seller suggested that the stamp may date as far back as the 1860s, and associated its style with the Gothic Revival. Unconvinced as to its Gothic-ness, I did a bit of on-line searching & learned that Tuscan was the usual descriptor for typefaces with ornamental bifurcated (or trifurcated) serifs. I think an 1860s origin is still a possibility, but it could equally well be later. See for example a page (Fig. 37) of decidedly florid Tuscan monogram designs from an 1890s sample book in my possession.

---

On Wednesday I finished reading Makenna Goodman’s novel Helen of Nowhere. I could say it’s my favourite of the current batch of Booker Prize longlist nominees, but that would only mean I liked it better than M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything: I’ve not read any of the others. It’s a striking and unusual tale, somewhat in the shape of a play, with a list of personae up-front and then six ‘scenes’ largely comprising dialogue and/or internal monologue. I had to work to stay interested in the university office politics which set up the scenario of a disgraced academic seeking an off-grid life in the country. The stranger turn taken in the book’s second half intrigued me rather more. It didn’t quite score as a direct hit, but I enjoyed it overall: a favourable impression consolidated by an ending that struck me as both satisfying & amusing.

Inbetweeners Part 11- The Shadow of Torm

Initially, the Alltemple door, a purple hued door attached to the Grey Room would take the players to the god or religion of whichever holy symbol they held up to it. I left it open ended intentionally... the idea was that players could decide which gods they wanted to interact with and I would let the narrative involve from there. After the Desecrated Temple battle, they went to the Temple of Torm (or possibly before, I can't remember for sure it has been a few years). Once they were regularly interacting with the followers of Torm, I had the purple door just go directly to that temple. The followers of Torm had a dilemma though... the player characters were by no means “good” or aligned with the principals of their church. Torm is the Faerûnian patron deity of paladins and the god of duty, loyalty, righteousness, obedience, law and valor. The players didn't really represent any of these virtues. By traveling between disparate locations, they were insulated from the consequences of their actions and acted in a far more opportunistic manner. Think like Time Bandits but mercenaries. Still, they had done a great good by liberating the desecrated temple, and the followers of Torm had bought their ruse regarding the knight they gave over to the Interloper. So ultimately, what was the authority in Torm supposed to do with the group. They certainly couldn't anoint them as paladins, but the groups ability to travel non-linearly and aptitude for killing fiends made them too good not to work for. Enter, the Shadow of Torm.

Centuries ago, a splinter faction among the followers of Torm emerged. Certain zealots felt that the church had lost its way, and that it focused too much on righteousness and duty to the point where they were allowing fiends to run rampant on the Material Plane. They felt that it was necessary to act within certain grey areas to achieve success, that always acting with moral surety within a strict framework tied their hands against the fiends. They been using more extreme measures to track down devils, yugoloths, demons, undead and their servants throughout the material. Threats, “advanced interrogation”, and execution of those working with fiends rather than fiends themselves were all on the table. Trials and the due process of criminal justice took too long, and that time allowed more evil to spread, so they instead became judge, jury and executioner. Of course, this did not go over well with leadership. The rift grew, as some paladins and clerics agreed a more aggressive approach needed to be taken, while others said it made them no better than the fiends. The conflict came to a head and ultimately these splinter faction members were exiled from the church of Torm. They became known as the “Shadow of Torm.” Officially, leadership had no connection with this group, but over the coming decades they developed backchannels and would contact the shadow to deal with particularly dangerous opponents or threats that required expedience. This backchanneling intensified as infernal activity increased on the material plane. The members of the Shadow of Torm saw themselves as making the ultimate sacrifice, living in exile in order to keep the world safe. And this implicit arrangement held.

Enter the players. Initially they were arriving in Temple of Everlasting Justice, the premier temple of Torm on the material. I created a few characters there but not sure if I ever took notes on them. The leaders decided the players' talents could best be used by the Shadow of Torm, and said they would send them along to a faction that shared a more similiar... moral outlook. The issue here is that the way traveling by the doors worked, the players couldn't simply go to the headquarters of the Shadow of Torm. The Shadow was forbidden from entering any normal Temple of Torm. What they could do, however, was force a door to a new location. Using their most competent wizards, they rigged up a portal, lined with potent magical crystals and arcane devices, such that when the players went through the purple door, they ended up in the headquarters of the Shadow of Torm—a secret underground meeting room. Here was the description of the new room:

“The chamber is vast, hewn from ancient stone with walls lined by torches that do not seem to flicker, emit smoke or generate heat. The floor is worn smooth from countless years of tread, with intricate symbols carved into the rock. Towering along the walls are racks and displays of gleaming weapons—swords, axes, spears, and hammers—each meticulously crafted and inscribed with prunes. The weapons range from simple, sturdy iron blades to gilded, rune-covered relics that hum with latent divine power.

Against one wall stands a collection of shimmering shields and breastplates emblazoned with sacred iconography: radiant suns, crossed swords, and the symbols of various crusader orders. Nearby, smaller alcoves contain specialized gear, such as silver-tipped arrows, vials of holy water, relics said to repel the undead, and crystals pulsing with holy light.

In the center of the chamber is a massive stone table where paladins gather planning their crusade in hushed, fervent tones. Maps of the realms, marked with hotspots of evil activity, lie spread across it. A older man of average size with a large scar across his face regards the group, seemingly expecting them.”

The man they met was Taric Hellbane. The leader of the shadow of Torm, he was “ gruff, tired, cynical, but competent, devoted and deadly.” A veteran of many conflicts, his kill count and resume fighting fiends and undead put him near the top of mortals on the Material. The way I envisioned Taric is absolutely fixated on the mission. Everyone was a potential asset, and every asset should be leveraged to destroy fiends, the more powerful the better. The players' ability to travel non-linearly piqued his interest. The players could access locations inaccessible to the shadow, and as a result ambush fiends that were otherwise completely insulated. Their means of travel did not appear limited to the Material, so there was no reason the players could facilitate the Shadow striking directly into the lower planes. The players liberation of the desecrated Temple plus their later slaying of a vrock engaged in mass murder upon the material (more on that in a later post) demonstrated their value to Taric. They were officially labeled “atypical adjuncts” because their was nothing in the organization that fit their role. The relationship would be transactional, Taric would give them weapons, armor, magical equipment, gold or favors in return for killing fiends or information that enabled the Shadow to take out fiends. The bigger the fish, the bigger the prize. He even offered resurrection spells if the players delivered.

From the players perspective, this was the first reliable faction they could get quests and bounties from that would provide rewards. Mobius Torrent provided a quest, but that was a singular long term target. These guys they just needed to bring some demon heads. Unlike the Interloper, these rewards lacked drawbacks. They were normal magical weapons and equipment from the 5e standard rules. This was a relief for them, because while the Interloper's items and spells were incredibly powerful and rule breaking, they came with unanticipated and substantial drawbacks. Also, it gave them an alternate means of resurrection since the Interloper sometimes brought things back... wrong. Not intentionally, but he was still refining his understanding of 3 dimensional beings. So the players had mixed feelings morally about the Shadow of Torm, but they couldn't deny it was nice to have another place to pick up goodies. I think Uzo the Hobgoblin referred to them as the “cops” and didn't trust their motives, something that became more apparent as Zariel entered the plot.

On that note, as soon as Taric discovered that the group had been in contact with Zariel he immediately dropped all other projects and became obsessed with capturing/killing her. The headquarters was immediately evacuated except for barebones staff and materials needed to keep working with the players, in case Zariel found her way there. His plan was to have the players lure Zariel to a location where she would be ambushed by the full force of the Shadow of Torm. Killing an archdevil, the leader of one of the nine hells, would eclipse anything the Shadow had ever achieved before. It would be such a phenomenal triumph that they may be reintegrated into the church of Torm in a leadership role. Taric was aware of how dangerous this gambit was, Zariel was a god tier combatant, but this did not deter him. He would gladly give his life to bring her down. I'll get into the ambush of Zariel in another post, there are a few more pieces I have to place on the board for context, but Taric's fixation on defeating Zariel ultimately plants the seeds for his downfall. In a way, she became his white whale.

Later, we will get into the transformation of the Shadow Torm into the Judgement of Torm, and eventually the Judgement of Lurian. The faction became more important, not less, as the story unfolded. But for now, I think that gives enough background on the “Shadow” phase.

Most of my days are spent thinking about, investigating, researching, and journaling the various aspects of my ongoing atopic experiences and the underlying circumstances. I once thought the experiences themselves were the hardest part. They're not — though that's not to say they're getting any easier either.

No, not hardly.

And I’m now finding the silence that follows a vision or encounter to often be more difficult than the experience itself.

How do you tell the people around you about something you can barely find words for, let alone fully explain, when it keeps happening?

I really don’t know.

For nearly nine months now, I’ve been struggling with that very question. I’m not seeking attention, but I do need a way to release the pressure that builds from being unable to speak about my experiences.

How do you say, “I’ve seen some very strange things,” without slipping into rationalizing, defending, and defining something that you haven’t found the definitions to describe accurately?

How do you say, “Oh, I’m just an average guy with an average life, until I randomly and uncontrollably slip into a liminality that defies conventional wisdom and explanation.” That’s one hell of an icebreaker line for a networking party, but I won’t be using it anytime soon.

Even among people who better understand it or have had similar experiences, I find it hard to fully share. And that’s because, even among the experienced, there can be biases and misunderstandings. Everyone expects my experiences to align with their own. Some want my encounters to fit their own cosmologies. Others want my encounters to match their own. Even my own enthusiasm often works against me; I get ahead of myself and impose too much on those kind enough to listen and share in kind.

There’s no guidebook or roadmap for this juggling of realities, which is really a single reality, but I’ll deal with that another day. Today I’m just trying to remain functional at work while turning the deeper questions over and over in my mind: What is her true nature? What will it mean? What will be the implications? That last question gives me chills and fills me with trepidation.

But I don’t know what I don’t know.

I’m just writing my own guidebook as I go.

Not ideal—though it could be far, far worse.

there is always good to be found, sometimes we don’t wanna look

Too early / golden orb

Trash truck / trash truck

Hot days / good sweats

Tired afternoons/ soft naps

Look for the silver linings in every condition. Some are harder to find than others.

Some are easier.

I think of this at night before I drift off. The good, I mean. I close my eyes and that’s when I’m in control Of my dreams.

And think of all of the possible. All of the good.

Like moonrise. August moons are the best moons. Harvest, I think they call them. Always brightest at dawn.

I stopped the car last night and got out to give the moon my full attention. When it is low on the horizon, it looks like a planet. It’s when you can step into the portal and travel anywhere. Oh! The places I would go.

Huge and beautiful. What a gift the moon is. The faithful companion. Doorway to dreams.

Hey, diddle diddle….

I can see it starting to drift south.

Winter is coming.

But first, my favorite time of year: fall.

When I was a small child, I loved watching ‘Its great pumpkin Charlie Brown’.

Not that I am, nor have ever been into Halloween. I just loved the energy of young friends spending time together. Good times. And challenges. Sometimes they loved one another and sometimes it was a struggle.

Poor Charlie Brown. We are all Charlie Brown sometimes. Pining for little red-haired girls, trees eating our kites, footballs being pulled away, rocks in our bags.

This program always spoke to me.

First: fall.

Idk why it’s my favorite time of year. Cooler weather. The smell of fires in fireplaces. Dry air. The beauty of the trees.

Of course, piles of leaves with green soft grass beneath them.

The bugs diminish, and we can lay in the tall crunchy Johnson grass and watch the clouds drift by, like herds of elephants languidly on their way to other places.

Autumn is that time of year where we say goodbye to the carefree days of summer and accept that winter comes too quickly.

Life is like this. And as I enter the autumn of life, it means more than ever.

And so Great Pumpkin is linked emotionally to this favored time.

I always wanted a gang like Peanuts. But, I suppose it was too much of an ideal. The kids where I grew up were troubled and traumatized. Preoccupied with violence mostly. Later it was girls. And eventually, drugs.

Maybe peanuts is of a time when children could just be children. Hi jinx and baseball.

Regardless, there was little more appealing to my young mind than Linus’ unflappable belief and hope in there great pumpkin.

I adored his faith in something no one else thought possible. This is a long-running theme in my life: things hoped for, though not yet beheld.

And his eagerness became infectious. Sally became a believer along side the object of her affection.

Linus was SO absolutely clueless.

Adorable.

Of course the kind of conviction Linus held WAS infectious. Especially for a young heart in love. Hearts in love are especially blind.

It’s why we should never make life-altering decisions when high on love. If you do, you’ll find yourself sitting in a pumpkin patch on Halloween instead of getting free candy.

Then again, that’s not so bad.

But Sally always felt otherwise.

There has always been a charm to Charles Schultz’s writing. He was raised in a simpler time when adults and children alike desired less and were more easily content.

Advertising, lowering cultural standards, and unseen pressure has made us into malcontents. What used to make us happy is now considered old fashioned.

Like sitting in a field and watching the moon come up.

I have dreamed of seeing new worlds and making friends who are not yet born. To laugh with them and cry of needed. To roll in the grass and fly kites no tree will consume. Chase fireflies and sit on the ocean’s edge and be mesmerized by the waves.

These are the things that make man’s heart full.

Thank you, Chuck and Lucy’s and Linus and you all. You represent a world that probably never existed, but one day just might.

Lately, I haven’t posted on schedule. Due to walking up earlier in the mornings to drop my son off to school, spending time with the younger one, and working on my recent projects I won’t post as often as I once did. I apologize for not keeping in touch with you. And I’ll try to post whenever I can.

#writing #break #schedule

Outside, the whole day, rain has been falling from a monochromatic gray smudge which is both a fog rising from the ground and the clouds overhead.

And there are brown dirt roads with puddled pot holes. Brown slugs are crawling up on the furniture, litter bins and whatever is left lying on the ground

And I only did sleep for three hours, my mind thoughts spinning out of control throughout the night

But then, a big rainbow and a big yellow sun

Green almost yellow illuminated grass

And my friend came visiting with his girlfriend and a small baby child they’d made.

And he was tall just like me with gray streaked beard just like me, long hair in a ponytail and round glasses, just like me

But he’d made these big earrings, you know, and he’s got some tattoos too, and today he was wearing a Slayer t shirt. It’s never been my taste, slayer.

So objectively he was a little bit cooler with this wild style, some would say

And then, as it turns out, we were both running Manjaro Linux

And then they left

There are some people you’ve not talked much for years but it’s still the same when you meet, you know? He’s like that

I think

Thank you for your time

JOURNAL 1er septembre 2026

Je fais une pause. On a eu hier plusieurs inscriptions nouvelles au kendo d'élèves anciens de to sensei qui le suivent, c'est bien ça. Pas mal de nouvelles inscriptions aussi pour notre côté, il faut que je restructure tous les groupes et notamment les débutants. C’est très chouette quand même.

Et puis aujourd'hui j'ai eu la surprise de voir arriver mon Américain, cette fois s'exprimant dans un japonais très correct malgré son foutu accent de Boston. Il a commencé à me remercier de l'avoir forcé à travailler la langue, il est comme ça en règle avec les nouvelles exigences des cinglés de takaichi. Il a bien assimilé les formules de politesse à employer avec un sensei. 😆 Bref il me demande si je suis toujours ok pour le prendre comme élève. Je tiens toujours mes promesses, je l'ai donc inscrit dans un groupe débutant. Pour les cours particuliers on verra après, je peux pas le prendre à son niveau. Voilà donc inscrit Mr Elijah qui se fait appeler Tom en japonais, c’est vrai c’est plus simple 😅. On verra

#dojo