"Is that your happy face or your horny face?"

...I'll tell you later. Firefest was good. V. good. Will have pictures and movies posted soon. Jorath ripped part of my thumbnail off with a kendo stick shortly into the afternoon, which put an end to me sparring, but I wiped the blood off, put it back together, and cut my nail short to avoid snagging it, so now I'm more or less healed. They let me set off a couple of fireworks, big ones. Was exciting to do it, much enjoyment was had. But mostly, it was just the show and getting to see people I didn't know without my introvert kicking in...which it did about 2 or 3 AM, when I didn't want to be around people any more. So I made everyone go home. I'd warned them in advance. Pictures (I've resized them down to a more reasonable resolution, y'all) can be found here. Bri and Jefe went back on Sunday to help clean up and hang out. Angel and I went to see LXG (really not bad, and a lot of literary fun, not to mention the trailer for Haunted Mansion at the front) and have dinner, as he works 9-6 today and I work 2-10, and it's our anniversary. So we had a good time yesterday instead. Close enough. And I have plans to make later on this week, too. Got up this morning and scanned through my scrollback. Dash'd logged Nicholai and Andrique on. Felt a quiet twisting of frustration and jealousy that he only ever seems to want to RP with Lily any more, and that he has all of her characters tied up and unavailable, so I can't play. Hell, who am I kidding, I'm frustrated and annoyed as hell that the only people who seem to be around and want to roleplay there are Ryken and Angel. I'm tired of the same thing over and over, without variation. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl cocoon their characters - half the time all of them that exist - into a series of private little tete-a-tetes that tie up and eliminate any chance of involving anyone else. And then they stay there forever, and nothing ever happens. I'm exhausted by it, and if Arcana weren't the main means of communication for our group around here, I might just quit playing completely. It's not like anyone would actually miss me. I feel like a secondhand book today; something everyone just passes around to get it off their hands. Everyone's better for everyone else than me; all I do is get in the way, bitch and fight and feel sorry for myself. Nobody talks to me or looks for me for help - I've lost the empathy and the ability to say the right things somewhere along the way; when I lost my mysticism and my tangible, anchoring connection to the divine. I don't know where they went, somewhere along the way when I stopped writing and stopped reading and started studying all the fucking time. Somewhere along the way when I forgot to walk the shadow path that used to maintain me and stepped off into the daylight and the brightside. On either side the darkness flies One side is day, the other night And young I am In these Shadowlands The dawn and dusk at brilliance full Here life and death have even pulls When down I go Where Shadows know This twilight world is but a line The road I seek is faint and fine I walk at last The Shadowpath The nightside on my right is full Of haunting creatures, hunting ghouls I shy away From Shadows’ play The dayside on my left is rife With birdsong and the call of life I look to right Curse Shadowlight And tread the path the Shadows do ‘Tween dark and night where all is true And lonely stand In the Shadowlands. NsK 5-9-95 "Walking in the Shadowlands" I don't feel as real, as connected. I don't feel like I know anyone at all. It's funny, as I hear each one of my friends saying that they just feel tolerated...and I respond, and I deny it, and I know it's true because I need them so...and now I'm saying the same thing, and I'll get the same responses, and I won't believe them because I can't feel the connections, the philotic web, if you will, like I used to. And I don't like it. I want it back. I want to meet people and know them, because of the images that spring into my mind, patterns and colours and shapes that modulate with their voice and their actions but have never led me wrong and have always proved me true. I want to feel the soft touch of the divine taking over my voice and my hands, moving me - moving me - and never failing to give me reason to believe that I do not have to know what to say; it will be given to me. I used to. Where did it go? If this is growing up, I don't want to. I feel like Peter, not just losing the brilliance and the wonder, but forgetting it, forgetting how I achieved it and not knowing how to get back. And yet I know there is a way, as long as I know the Shadowlands, as long as I remember the feeling of that knife's edge between oblivion and despair. I know it. I know I was there, not so long ago, and I will find it again. But what do I do? Where do I go?