The Return To Innocence

'Reborn' by Laura Sava (anotherwanderer.deviantart.com/)
'Mirabella' by Rachel Anderson (www.silverstars.us/‎)

Two forms of my own story character, Asha Clara Night, my strongest, most individual, most personal fiction character.

These paintings. Completely different images that look almost exactly like incarnations of the same character of my own subconscious creation Women who look almost exactly like the dreamself I am becoming in my dreams and visions.






She was in my dreams last night and many nights before. I haven't decided exactly who she is yet, but in my dreams her name is Asha, meaning "desire, hope, hopeful; life; alive; she who lives." Which says so much, so so much.

She is another dreamself, not a spirit guardian, but much closer to my Self than my other characters (Alicia, Serena, Ananta: my spirit guardian coping mechanisms for epilepsy, memory loss, insomnia, sleep problems, [Alicia], chronic pain and fatigue, depression, anxiety, physical disabilities [Serena], neurology, neurodivergence, autism, total mind-body connection [Ananta].

Asha seems to represent many internal things about my emotions, my heart and mind, my rhyme and reason, my logic, my science, my creativeness and creativity, my power, my energy, my beauty. If she were to reveal herself as a guardian, she would be for emotional states, creative thoughts, desires, loves, patterns, ideas.
Asha is definitely powerful in a way I always wanted to be since childhood: Fae and and Elemental Mage and Neurodivergent and Autistic Witch and Quantum Magic Scientist and Story Crafter and Shape Shifter and Magic Librarian and Magic Keeper.

Asha seems to represent my deep, obsessive, compulsive wish and desire to be one of the psionic-mage superhumans in my stories, to take over for be when I feel failure and self-loathing and terror and panic. I think Asha may in fact be an actual entity, one who communicates outside instead of simply speaking into my visions, dreams, pain flare withdrawings, anxiety attacks.

All I know is that Asha was in every dream last night and throughout the past several sleeps, long detailed intense dreams, and she quoted Kosh. She spoke in a soprano version of my voice that could sing. She was always here She is always here. She has always been here.
I think she was with me since I was a baby. In different forms, in different species, with different names, in different imaginary beings, in different fictional characters. She was made of fire. She used to be a phoenix, a unicorn, a dragon, a star, a nebula. I know Asha. I know Asha in the way I hope to know myself.

The thing is, Asha has a fully active voice when I am completely conscious, aware, awake, functional, and stable. She didn't completely create herself, but she grew and evolved over my lifetime in her own way as a character in my subconscious. She took ideas I worked with and wove them into her personality, behavior, and mentality. My disabilities are hers. She stayed and changed and grew with me like a permanent piece of my spirit. Asha also represents my fluid sexuality - I often visit her in the place she calls home and we make love, representing my desires for love and orientation.

She lives with Alicia in the Wonderland cottage, but she freely moves about my brain more often. She shapeshifts into elemental energies, she moves around my hippocampus and amygdala and temporal lobes and cingulate gyrus and thalamus and auditory cortex and somatosensory cortex and parital lobe and the back of my brain.
She has altered the Wonderland cottage to be something else entirely, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two office rooms, a large entertainment living room, a large kitchen, a basement. The outside build would contain concrete, cement, hemp and limestone, bamboo, steel. The glass windows are shatterproof. The doors are hemp-lime and timber. That must say something about my mind's inner workings. Especially since the main reason for hemp being illegal is due to its threat to corporate patentable synthetic fibers and wood and paper product industries, while the medicinal drug potential became subject to false claims and fear mongering alarm campaigns until the original industrial potential became buried under the alarmist anti drug campaigns. Part of me probably knows how powerful this is. Medicine from nature itself and the human brain itself is usually denied and seen as worthless.

Asha represents that part of me that firmly supports the controversial balance of traditional pharmaceutical medicine and nontraditional botanical medicine.
Asha is my activism and advocacy. Asha is the fire that moves my belief in the combination of synthetic drugs and organic drugs. Asha is the phoenix in me that rises after every defeat, every failure, every attack, every oppression, every attack and assault on my truths and faiths.

Throughout many names, faces, back stories, lives, personalities, and individual growths... she has always been Asha Clara Night. And this is how she asked me to look so I could see that there is beauty deep and shining.

I must find and thank the artists for these images, since I found myself taking these pieces of artwork and subconsciously turning them into incarnations of my own fictional character.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151978626835684&l=17dde55bf4

Asha may well be the character in that second novel after all. It won't be this Asha, my Asha; just a version, a more humanized incarnation I can bring out to show the public. This excites me. She could help me write it, just by living in my mind.

Let's see.
Coffee, protein fruit smoothie, amazing yoga pants from Rugged Warehouse, comfy bra by Barely Breezies, massive pain drugs, brain sickness drugs, athletic socks, big librarian glasses, best couch in the world, cuddly cats, Netflix via PS3 on a 52-inch wall mounted flat screen TV, novel up and running, story outlines writing themselves, migraine weakly gasping for sustenance, me laughing sadistically.
This is a good Sunday.
Later, I will finish reading "Emperor Mollusk Versus The Sinister Brain" by A. Lee Martinez and then "Trance" by Kelly Meding, and then call my therapist to discuss some stupid OCD compulsions.
Oh, and also, I spent a few glorious minutes on the phone with the wonderful Rose with her sweet Celtic pixie princess voice, while she compared my voice to deeply rich wine-soaked chocolate cake. Speaking to friends is of course always an incredible mood lifter.
I still feel a shadow of depression, which is unfortunately dulling me so much that I need a mask to talk to family. But at least I have that sweet close relationship with my family, even though my mother is way too good at sensing my masks.
Also, I shall practice some magic healing self massage with a touch of physics and see how far that gets me.

They say social networking is all about chronicling our lives in increments that may or may not interest other people, so here is mine, condensed into a cube of thoughts and actions. Enjoy, I guess. <3

I have decided to list All The Books What Need Reading here, because oh gods there are too many what do I do first, etc.

-"Blackout" by Mira Grant
-"The Folded World" by Catherynne M. Valente
-"Emperor Mollusk Versus The Sinister Brain" by A. Lee Martinez
-"Twilight's Dawn" by Anne Bishop
-"Unbroken" by Rachel Caine
-"Dead Reckoning" by Charlaine Harris
-Something About Witches" by Joey W. Hill
-"Trance" by Kelly Meding
-"Serpent's Storm" by Amber Benson
-"How To Be Death" by Amber Benson
-"Bloodlines" by Richelle Mead
-"Born At Midnight" by CC Hunter
-"Taken At Dusk" by CC Hunter
-"The House of Discarded Dreams" by Ekaterina Sedia

Granted, I've nearly finished "Blackout" by Mira Grant with just over one hundred pages left, but soon enough Adam will have started reading "Feed" and he consumes books quickly, no matter how thick they are; he will soon be on "Deadline" and if I don't finish "Blackout" soon I will just give it up to him and finish it later. I already know how it ends, but it's the getting there that makes me happy.

And then, there is the list on my Kindle For PC:
-"The Witch Sea" by Sarah Diemer
-"Seven" by Jennifer Diemer
-"Sterling" by Dannika Dark
-"Twist" by Dannika Dark
-"2:32 AM" by Emily Ford
-"The Afterlife Series" by Mur Lafferty
-"The Intertwined Series" by Gena Showalter

And later, "Team Human" by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan and "Endlessly" by Kiersten White will be delivered to me next month once they debut, and I can wait, but I have to wonder how many on my list I can devour by the end of July or August? I may need to make it a personal challenge. I would employ my speedreading skills, but I want to savor these as meals. Most of them, anyway.

And now, of course, I want to dig out all my Ray Bradbury books. But I think if I do that I will collapse in a pile and start crying. I have so many books, and life still needs living in this reality.

Oh gods, three weeks until my disability hearing. No wonder I want to bury myself in books. I have no idea how I'm keeping my full sanity. I would like to thank the academy (I forget which), my husband, my parents, my cats, my friends, My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Futurama, Klonopin, Zoloft, Soma, codeine, valerian, magnolia extract, morniga tea, seabuckthorn oil, tamanu oil, coconut oil, pomegranate oil, mango butter, shea butter, helichrysum oil, frankincense oil, coffee, chocolate, cheese, and tea. And my friends on Livejournal. I love you.

I will blame all the spastic hypertonia, freakish pains, insane fatigue, muscle twitching, and mental fog on the cerebral palsy and fibromyalgia, and I will move on as usual. *fidgeting* *lip biting*

Recently, someone asked me how I could re-read books over and over. Wouldn't I get bored? How could I read the same story, the same words, over and over and over?

Simple: Reading over and over helps me keep the stories in my memory, so that I can pull parts of them out of my head and treasure them. Reading only once or twice makes that very difficult.

And all I have to say is... How could you not read the same story over and over? Don't you want to go back and keep hanging out with the characters? It's like never-ending parties with awesome friends that get more awesome the more you see them.

Reading came first. It always does.

Reading is the inhale, writing is the exhale.

http://moschus.livejournal.com/125101.html

Yes.

I fall into the second group. My obsession with reading and books impeded my social life quite severely when I was younger. Hell, it still might, if not for the fact that all my friends are also voracious readers.


(Justine is the author of Bloodangel and Lord of Bones, two of my favorite books.)


Also, my writing has taken such a dark turn that I am currently scared of it.

The sun is shining, the weather is warm and ideal, and when I take the bus home, I'll get off at a stop farther away and walk an extra thirty minutes. I smell like Gaia Facial Oil and Psyche Lotion. Coworkers are telling me that they love my perfume, and look surprised when I say it's not perfume but lotion and oil. (Hey Vicki, what are the essential oils in the Gaia Oil? I forget.) My skin is soft, my joints and muscles are soothed, my mind is calm, and I'm sipping a bottle of Mix 1 Mix Berry juice for breakfast. For lunch today I'll have an Amy's Kitchen Organic Cheese Pizza In A Pocket sandwich. I feel healthy. Or healthier.

In my purse is a copy of Anne Bishop's Belladonna. After I finish reading that, I'm taking a chance on Karen Chance's Touch The Dark and its sequels, which have gotten mixed reviews. We'll see.

I just made dinner and am waiting for it to cool: Organic whole wheat penne with extra virgin olive oil, grapeseed oil, balsamic vinegar, Smart Balance butter, large black olives, garlic powder, and oregano.
The book in my purse now is PC Cast's Divine By Blood. I hope it's as awesome as people say it is.
I had completely forgotten that I had bought Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith two months ago and had stored in in my dresser. I wonder if I should find the books that come before it first?
After I am done with the PC Cast book, I'll go back to Rachel Caine and reread Firestorm and Thin Air, because the new book in the Weather Warden series, Gale Force, will be out in June. I can only hope things get better for Joanne and David and Lewis. I mean, really. Come on, Rachel, don't go all Terry Goodkind on us and start beating up your heroes in every book.
I have more Nature's Path Acai Apple Granola and Zola Acai Pineapple Juice. I am so in love. But better to be obsessed with a three dollar bottle of exotic fruit juice than a bottle of Mountain Dew *looks at husband*.
The penultimate episode of Smallville's seventh season is tonight. Excited girl is excited.
Excited girl is also excited about tomorrow's Battlestar Galactica. Grr. Argh. I love this show. Rrgh. So frustrating, so excruciating, so beautiful.

I finished Richelle Mead's Frostbite (Vampire Academy Book 2) and I'm chomping at the bit now for the third book. Best modern YA series I have read since I was a teenager.
On that note, I really disliked Stephanie Meyers' Twilight. I can see why rabid fans of the series love it, but I found it sort of awful. To me, the characters felt irritating, dull, and selfish, and I thought the relationship between Bella and Edward was obsessive and abusive. I'm sure Meyers didn't mean it that way, and I'm sure her future books will be more appealing to me. But I just do not get the screaming fangirl reactions. I agree with most of Amazon's negative reviews, especially this one and this one (they're very harsh, so if you are a fan, be warned). But those who dislike the book are in a minority. The book is doing really well in the market. It's becoming a movie, even. It's great that teenagers love the book and its sequels, and I really can see the appeal, but it's just not for me.
Good news about Sherrilyn Kenyon is that she's gotten better in her narrations. When I was at Charlotte's, I read one of the newest Dark-Hunter books, and it no longer felt like I was reading a book that treated me like a simpleton. I like the books better now.
I found out that CE Murphy's fourth book in the Walker Papers series will be out next year. It made me squee. I love that series so much.

I'm running out of new fiction books to put in my purse. Time to peruse the shelves.

http://community.livejournal.com/metaquotes/5997967.html
Except that I'd have to admit I have a book problem. Which I don't. No. Not at all. The eleven million books all over my house say I don't. I'm not addicted to reading, damn you.
Shut up, I have to finish this chapter. Yes, I know my lunch hour is over.

You know it's bad when the one thing you must absolutely have in your purse is a paperback book -- and you only buy purses that will accomodate paperback books of any size regardless of anything else, and if you don't have a book with you at all times, you feel sad and lonely and wonder what you're going to do while waiting for the bus/train/friend's car. Once, Adam and some friends took me out to a bar, and I spent the whole time sitting on a stool in a far corner, reading a science fiction novel. In high school, I was "the girl with the paperback fiction book in her backpack" or sitting in the library for hours. I get depressed without a book nearby.
When I was a kid, my mother made me stop buying so many books and tried to get me to actually socialize instead of bringing a book along with me to places.
But I do NOT have a problem.
Nope.