hautrev

The truth is I am a fraud. I live on the surface in a family with children, with friends, with animals. Underneath the tumultuous world of hautrev is once again sucking me in. I find it hard to keep up my commitments whilst listening to ever increasing wailing and moaning. It's my own fault, I allowed hautrev in after many years without it, loving the feeling of hearing the sounds of other people's lives was comforting at first.

Was it because I was listening for something specific that I heard more, I heard everything. It could drive me insane, I know this, elderfem was very clear on this subject. She wanted me to hide it, harness it and then when the time was right use it for the destruction of the Charter system. It was she who arranged for my journey to Dromdrevc, my art was seen by some minor politabub at her request. Elderfem manipulated the whole deal, none of them saw it, those stupid men with their colours and gowns, none of them saw in me their endworld.

I am searching for more, I am looking for refugees from the wars of concavity, I am looking for my co-conspirators. How did I survive and they didn't? They could be on another planet, wider and wider I fling my mind open trying to catch a phrase, a word that means I have found them.

Hautrev appeared three years ago, I so wish it had come sooner. I have had inklings about certain people, in the media, singers, poets. We were a creative bunch. Piotreya was the inventor, creating vast circuitry, when a new, for earth innovation comes on-line I wonder if she was there. Japan would suit Piotreya, she loved the order in Dromdrevc, she seemed to like the rules, it contained her. Yandryl, sweet, little Yandryl, I read poetry extensively, just to see if I can find him. I imagine him placed in the wrong family on earth, suffering not only for his art but for his size and wit.

They didn't have hautrev, we could all mindspeak, but they couldn't hear thoughts, only the messages intended for them. Elderfem called it an irritation, she called me an irritation, something that had to have a purpose. She consulted with the wirdmal, man of many words, and he found the endworld vision. Elderfem interpreted it as me being the cause for the wars. She was wrong, Pio, Yan and I merely knew they were coming and made plans to escape, using the limited power of concavity.

People were banished from Zylmor using the pod system, Pio tweaked it a little so we went further and we went to specific, very specific places. She explained that the banished arrived on planets as minormals and fems but not as newborns of the species, they were found wandering in wastelands or forests and were questioned extensively. Using her skills she had us arrive as newborns into newborn facilities at appropriate times for the gestation period of the planet's fems. Sounded complicated to me, then, now as I look back on my earth life I am amazed at what she achieved.

My earthmother, the nurturer of my young body, knew I wasn't her baby. I didn't realise this until hautrev came upon me and I read her thoughts. All became clear to me, not matter what I did, she knew. Instinct, she must have had a honed instinct skill in those days, later after years of prescription mindblowing drugs she had little left. Pio had thought of everything except a mother's instincts.

Maybe if I had Pio's brain I could reign in hautrev, look in specific places, use the telecommunications on earth. I can't though and am left with wave after wave of weltschermz, the whole earth seems sad, depressed, dying. Sanity is hard to hold onto when the ebb is rising, I will try one more sweep then get on with my chores for the day.

ramblings from myspace

Written in 2004/6

Pootlesuzie's Blurbs

About me: Growing up slowly in Zylmor years. Have lived on your earth for 41 of your years Things I like INTP Heroes of Might and Magic Zuma Discworld Working Playing Computer Games Walking Running Jogging Trampoline Lancashire Sheffield Ireland Spain Jeeps Vimto Manning's Bakery Cinema Skipping Shuffling Through Autumn Leaves Reading Playing with Kids Cooking Logic Puzzles Lateral Thinking Puzzles Marmite and peanut butter and lemon juice on black bread Chickens Who I'd like to meet: any one else that survived the Zylmor genocide of Domdrevc. Concavity executioners General SPECIALIST SUBJECTS, Zylmor survival of the few after the genocide of Domdrevc, Zylmor - the historical context of the Wars of Concavity, Space Thinking, EARTH SPECIALTIES, travelling- will go anywhere anytime - madagascar or to see your latest spaceship, music, kids, trampolining, yoga, gaelic football, aerobics, gym, jogging,??? running, walking, reading, computer games - as if it needs to be said, little house on the prairie Music Girl Music, Female Music, Women Music, Dykemusic, but not ladymusic, Dixie Chicks, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Aerosmith, Queen, The Adverts, The Clash, The Ramones, The Beatles, Rush, The Specials, Garth Brooks, Pogues, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Damned, The Vapors, Shania Twain, PiL, Elvis Costello, Stiff Little Fingers, All Saints, The Jam, Billie Holliday, TLC, GBH, Stranglers, The Sawdoctors, UK Subs, Sham 69, Cockney Rejects, Chumbawumba, Angelic Upstarts, Bow Wow Wow, X-ray Specs, Lonestar, Generation X, The Slits, Hazel O'Connor, Sid Vicious, The Ruts, The Members, 999, Will You, Vice Squad, Kirsty MacColl, Ewan macColl, Oldham Tinkers, No Dice, Spizzenergi, Athletico Spizz 80, Notsensibles, Flogging Mary, Waterboys, Films Grease, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Carribean, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Die Hard,, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, To Sir with Love, Breaking Glass, The Jazz Singer, To Sir with Love 2, Television Little House on the Prairie, Seventh Heaven, Judging Amy, Grey's Anatomy, ER, The League of Gentlemen, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Desperate Housewives, Trap Door, Biederbecke Affair, Podge and Rodge, Berk, ANTM, the twins from BB - delicious, Books Harry Potter, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Jonathan Kellerman, Roald Dahl, James Patterson, Philip Pullman, Sue Grafton, Cook Books, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, The Bourne Supremacy, Jodi Picoult, Anne MacCaffrey, Sara Paretsky, Eoin Colfer, Val McDermid, Jamie Oliver, Agatha Raisin, Peter O'Donnell, Peter Robertson, J.K. Rowland, Diane Wynne Jones, Delia Smith, Elizabeth David, James Martin, Mine, Heroes The man that saved me from drowning 30 years ago, Hazel O'Connor, Sean Gallagher, Freda Kinmond, Alien Living Amongst Us ---- Yep I'm from Zylmor Female 46 years old Kerry Ireland

future perfect imploding stars

August 2008, on death and sanity and Talenkynic

i write about death dying and murder all the time, my nickname is slasher suzie among my writer type pals.

knowing i have always had the capicity for such a violent act, going back to the zylmor wars but on earth my world has been around peaceful movements, not rocking the boat and going with the flow, allowing violence to happen to me and those closest to me but without raising even a whimper of dissent. this has changed and i am finding little solace in my zylmor past. things i have not done for an age are becoming increasingly enticing.

i find myself in contemplative mood, haven't spoken to a single person in four days the tenous hold on my sanity is again ebbing away to the dark deep recesses i last experienced more than ten years ago.

some thirty years ago i was on the peripherary of a drug fuelled chaos that maintained itself in the house i resided. being younger than most involved i could have joined in but some hold kept me out, so i could record the bad trips, the fabulously outrageous voyages that those around me travelled on. now i wish for some oblivion, some unfeeling unseen calm that those in euphoria sensed, they say H is better than sex, but what is better than life. some of those that were there found out, blind pete who sold his sax for one more hit, angelina who chased her own demons across continents and now rests in peace.

others like ruth and simon survived in unique ways and neither remember the nights in fields above the village hounded by wolves snakes and spiders, revolving around space invaders playing kiss and tell with moon....but I remember and write.

home town living

This was written August 2008 and posted on Myspace.

Having lived in many towns and many cities, in many countries on many planets I find it strange to find a "home town". But within the archaic regime of rural Kerry life; drawing the water by hand at dawn, drawing in the turf on warm summer evenings, drawing a fire and sitting listening to pipe and fiddle I find a peaceful calm descend over even my most tumultuous thoughts. It is at this moment I feel at home, on Zylmor I was an hermetically sealed artist; I drew portraits of politicians and higher order fellows, I knew much of the impending war - they did not see the artist - a mere servant to their glowing pride. I was not allowed outside to feel rain on my face, the rush of wind whistling past my ears, I did not see the first blush of Spring, the dance of the satellite moons, I was not allowed to draw anything. Here in Kerry we draw everything but my abilities with a pencil have long since receded and I am left only to imagine how the sweep of charcoal on paper would show the willow bending double in this summer wind.

This home is hard work, back bent over stacking turf, fighting nature pulling weeds, fixing the genrator every other day but the rewards are tremendous; watching storm clouds gather, chasing foxes away from the hens, working with the dogs, laughing as the cats try to follow, rhythmically weaving the willow into ever more extravagant shapes, harvesting the first earlies. This is life, this is where we make or break, there is a power here that will never be found at the tip of a nuclear warhead, there is a bond of love with the land that binds a spell twisting and turning and making us return to this place we call home.

Time passes

I cannot believe it has been more than two years since I last posted on here.

I am going to NaBloPoMo for January to get me back in the habit. We have had such a dreadful broadband experience that all I have been able to do is check emails, sometimes send emails and check one discussion forum.

I did post an article at h2G2 on Zylmor, and a few at Divine Caroline on stuff, but that was done remotely in Costa.

Probably due to my usage alone Costa changed their WIFI policy and it cost way too much in coffee.

Also I haven't written this year, anything creatively, due to a major transformation in my life that means I am having trouble finding a balanced "voice".

pretty flowers

i love flowers, i am not very good at growing them, on Zylmor flowers were a luxury, single stemmed Gorzanik, a pretty silver delicate flower took three years to blossom and only stayed alive for five days, the stamen was used in a broth that would take an average earth person a lifetime to afford. It wasn't pleasant smelled like sewers and tasted like metallic mothballs.
in reference to: Willow City, Texas, Balcones Escarpment, 1998, Photo of the Day, Picture, Photography, Wallpapers - National Geographic (view on Google Sidewiki)

Talenkynic remembers Zylmor

The tension inside the bubble of Dromdrevc was exhilirating. After years of painting portraits of politicians and rulers I was alive. My natural artform of landscapes, based only on images created by others on Zylmor or still images captured by what you would think of as photographs but with more depth was despised in the city. My family lived on the far continent in the open, I communicated through mind-talk weekly, mother complained about the dust, father moaned about poverty and my sibs, Tessina and Zeuteronomy chatted about friends I had known, at the time of the genocide I had been exhiled from them for seven of your years and had grown from the child prodigy of eight to an almost fully developed female of fifteen. The last year had been particularly fraught with anxiety to escape as my time of captivity was over as soon as I reached sixteen. Credit-bars were delivered monthly to my life-parents as payment for the enslavement of their youngest child. As a small child Dromdrevc was awe-inspiring, a giant atmospheric bubble guarded against the elements, tall towers of housing units, business blocks and in the centre, a tower of shiny metal that reached up to the very tip of bubble, it was in here, the Royal Campus that I was to live and work. Work, I discovered was not to use my natural talent of reproducing vast canvases of landscsapes from memory or mythology, but was to catalogue an ever increasing number politabubs and the ruling charters. Charters were families who could prove their lineage back to the beginning of time, there were usually three or four clans living in the campus, they were a vain bunch, each portrait was proudly hung in the main concourse and because of their jealousy, repeats were frequent. One man-crown had a portrait booked every season, every colour found in Dromdrevc had been used in his costumes, each one more extravagant than the last as his girth also expanded. It was in his chamber I first heard about the Concavity, and the Galymonter people who yearned the power of Concavity. Galies as they were known had come from the neighbouring planet of Prusson, at first wanting to trade and as the polit-bubble was on seasonal break the Charters met with them and thrashed out a trade route between the peoples but their vanity made them show off the Concavity Orb, and exaggerated the properties of the laws of the index of refraction, with the wave velocities over-rated. I had never believed in the power of the concavity orb and had joined with other non-believers, we met in the concourse only three of us at a time and discussed possibilities. We were the brightest minds on all of Zylmor, punished we felt for being so intelligent by enslavement as children. We pondered on if this was to knock our inquisitive minds to an imaginary block as the tasks we were given numbed us. Piotreya, an inventor of vast electrical circuits spent her time making and changing light sources for the Charters and Yandryl was poet and playwright, he voice could lift you to the highest peak, he wrote ditties for the politabubs and their families so instead of being stirred by his words we slept by them. We had all completed our formal education in our early years while our sibs were still studying, attaining levels of expertise we had mastered at three or four. The Charters did not like us meeting together, so we kept the meeting light, with fake linguistics to suggest a frothy impromptu tryst rather than the reality of theoretical discussions on propulsion, experimentation and the politabubble. Each of my portraits contained a symbol of rebellion to inspire the unruly. Piotreya linked systems together until she had voyeuristic control over the whole subsystem within the bubble ans within each ditty that Yandryl created was one phrase that did not fit but was code for our mini rebellion.

Rainbows IV

My homeplace, my homestead was in an isolated area in the west of Dromdrevc. It took three days to travel to the capital in the pod, three days of looking out at the sidings go by. On Zylmor our transportation system used channels like earth canals with no water, during the night when it rained these channels were used to divert water for use in production of gas. transportation ceased in the evening, pods were raised to ground level during the night and the water rushing underneath was soothing. Those three days and nights were the only time I spent alone on Zylmor, I was escorted to and from lessons

rainbows III

We didn't have rainbows on Zylmor, it didn't rain during the day, the first time I remember experiencing rain on earth I thought the sky was falling in, it made no sense to me.
In Dromdrevc we were in a climate controlled bubble so we saw neither good or bad weather, the lights dimmed towards evening and brightened again in the early morning. To be honest it could have been any length of time, I don't recall days getting shorter or longer as they do on earth. in my homeplace it rained during the night, I would hear the pitter pat on the roof of the homestead, I call it a roof but it wasn't a separate structure like here, it was integral to the building. Days on Zylmor were bright but chilly, we could never have considered wearing as little as a t-shirt outside, we were always wrapped up and because of the air composition we had breathers on always. Inside the buildings piped gas kept us suitably aired. I don't remember playing out in the street as children in Kerry do, we went to lessons, came home and performed chores or homelessons. There was no time for play or chasing rainbows

Music and Madness

The music of earth is so diverse, people find music out of throwaway objects, they are inspired by everyday sounds, emotions, and people. Belting out a song of unrequited love is not unusual and the arrival of karaoke allowed ordinary humans to get up on stage with a microphone, sing off key and still get applause.
Conversely in Dromdrevc we did not applaud, if the Charters liked something you did, you stayed. I had no proof for years but I understood inherently that if I displeased the Charters with my art I would be disappeared. Amongst the slaves, because there was no bonding allowed we never knew who would be sitting with us to eat, we barely knew their names and at meal times not only mind speak but mouth speak was banned and dishes were served in silence. There was music in Dromdrevc, whilst we worked a beat was rhythmically sounded on drum, when it ended work ended. I often pondered on the slave who created the beat, were they capable of so much more, like the rest of us. Zilpanda, had music in her soul, she had an ethereal quality as if she was somewhere else. We mind spoke once in the outer shell of the politabubs chamber. She was a slave-sculptor and created statues of the Charters in shiny iridescent forms that moved in the winds of the corridors of power. These creations were beautiful but a sadness radiated from them as if a part of Zilpanda'ssoul leaked into them. She was pale, always pale, her hair was jet-black with three blue stripes running horizontal, it was her hair that first caught my eye and for months I waited for an opportunity to speak to her. Back home there was a boy with hair like Zilpanda's, a tall strapping youth who worked with the natural rock in the area creating furniture. His name, lost to me now, was often spoken, our people thought him mad. He sang to his rocks, a love song, a song so clear, so personal it was almost embarrassing to hear. I wanted to speak to Zilpanda, to see if she was a relafem of his, to chat about my homeplace. I wasn't often pining for home, I quickly realised that my family had dumped me, sold me like a shekwal of Iffoldo cheese, bound up and forgotten, but on seeing Zilpanda I started to dream of stanzas of my life before I was enslaved.
When wanting something so much, of course it stays just out of reach but eventually it happened that we were on the same corridor in one of the places that the dreaded shockwave could not dig through. The other thing about wanting something so badly is it invariably lets you down, and I was very let down by my convwesation with Zilpanda. she was mad, she sang to me of her madness, her undying love for rock. I knew of course that she was a relafem of the boy from my homeplace, they all must be different shades of madness, I also knew somehow she was slowly dying and then I began to hope, to hope that in her madness and her dying she make a dramatic exit, not just disappear. I refused to want it, but each night I proclaimed to myself that tomorrow would be the day that Zilpanda made her grand mad exit.

Worry over Tomorrow

Of course sleep evaded me, each time I dipped towards a wave of slowing pulse and regular breathing a thought would pop up causing my heart to race and my stomach to turn. Anxiety is your word for it. I would often get it in Dromdrevc, my mind-speak was of the level hautrev a higher level than the average proponent, although I kept it a secret it meant sometimes I would inadvertently listen to others speaking. I discovered that this wasn't punished making me suspect the Charters and politabub did not know or understand hautrev, the Charters could only mouth speak and the politabubs were suck ups.
It wasn't an easy thing to control, when it first started I still lived with my parents, I was about four and one morning awoke to screeching in my head, simultaneously I heard a boy crying and my parentfem telling her lifemal she was having another baby. Wow what a lot to hear, I also heard that elderfem was coming so I hastened to be dressed and brushed ready to be berated for not being smart/pretty/long/short/thin/fat but at least I would be hygenifresh and in clean clothes. I was having a new sibling, oh and my sibmal was in trouble I had better go and sort him and get him ready for the elderfem barbs.
On a subsequent visit, elderfem told me I had the gift of hautrev. We had gone for a walk along the dust channel near my homeplace. The whirring swirling patterns of the dust at it traveled to the collection point were mesmerising me when elderfem stopped me looked deep in my blue eyes and started to mind-speak whilst watching for my reaction. "You hear things, things you shouldn't, important and non important you hear everything. It will be time soon for your naming and I want you to take the name Talenkynic, it is an ancient word, so ancient that only a few of us know the meaning. It is not used often, but it will be yours"
"Does it mean something, elderfem"
"An irritation, minorfems are an irritation, especially a bright one like you. It's meaning is found in the creation of Zylmor, it means end of world."
"Thank you, well I don't mean thank you but at least I have a name even if it means I endworld"
"Listen to me, you will be going from here one day, an opportunity will form there, but for now that is of no consequence. You need to control the hautrev or you will get caught out, crying over a sib that did not breathe when you weren't told, and getting ready for my arrival these things will find you out. Your talent, Talenkynic needs to be hidden, from everyone, try to ignore the mundane, the tame animals, stupid fools and minormals and fems. We will not talk of this again, you need to implant the name Talenkynic into parentmal's mind, it will be a test - pass it and I will reward you, now go be a minorfem while you can"
Our words on Zylmor were shorter with less meaning than on earth but this was a translation close to the truth because I was there but fantasy too because my mind as everyone's warps over time making the "me" a goody and everyone else baddies. Making us look good when we really should hide in shame.
I think the hautrev is coming back I am getting waves of feelings, not my own, but others, sad people, lost and found people, as I think more on this I don't seem to get many waves of happiness. Earthpeople are a miserable bunch.

Tomorrow Came Early

I slept through the night until a dream interrupted me, it was so vivid, cartoon style glimpse of the future.
I was going to visit a gravel pit, not sure why or how I got there but when I did there were huge towers hundreds and hundreds of feet tall and not very wide or deep. Fast forward to me leaving the gravel pit and I was on the upper most floor, although floor is a misnomer, it was a vehicle park but the vehicles were packed so tight I had to manually swing my vehicle out tip toeing on the precipice and pulling the air-vehicle out (low tech meets hi-tech, I guess) and then I flew off along the "road". In the vehicle there was a map, a 3-D representational image of the terrain and at what level I was to travel. The controls were mostly automatic, calling out destination and I arrived.
When today arrived and I woke up I contemplated how this dream related to this life or my previous life on Zylmor. I could find no parallel, on this world the most advanced vehicles and mapping would not compare and car parking there is no way I would manually drive out of a space with my feet outside the car it would make no sense. Equally on Zylmor we were very advanced as a species, mind-talk and the evolution of order but the workings, the nuts and bolts of Dromdrevc were low key, buildings were not seen to be built they just were. Maybe because I was much younger then everything seemed new and exciting, but we didn't have teleporters or other Star Trek gadgets, even the orb of concavity was not surrounded by hi-tech computer banks but a clear wall similar to earth perspex, a complex polymer that bounced if touched but stood erect and solid as if a pane of earth glass.
No, this was a new dimension, this vehicle park tower, and why a gravel pit, even here on earth if I need gravel I ring a man who can and he goes and brings me gravel. Why would I travel to a gravel pit? As with all dreams the detail is lost and only these few glimpses remain. What could it possibly be alluding to: a new tomorrow, a new planet, a person from Zylmor in mind-think with me. I will sleep on it again this evening and ponder the wisdom of the night

What if I was not from Zylmor....

I was born into a family that didn’t want me, this can be said to a lot of babies but not all are constantly told this. Not only by the parents, married, I was their third, but also by the siblings; a girl and boy aged three and four years respectively when I was born, grandparents; two on one side and a Grandpa on the other – he actually provided proof I was genetically connected to this aloof intellectual people, we both have webbed feet. Various distant aunts and uncles took it upon themselves to tell me how unwanted I was and expected me to be grateful for their candid tale. Not only did they consider me an unfortunate accident but denied any family (the word that means alike) . Admittedly being blond and ball-like in a family of tall, dark, skinny, freaky people it would be difficult to say I took after them, the only one they have ever said I was alike, the dead grandmother who one of them thought was the inspiration for The Snow Queen. She was also well known for putting it about with American Air Officers during World War Two. This was retold to me by my father who on reaching puberty French kissed his sister and cut all her hair off so she’d go to the nuns and ran away.
Not a great start to life and even without the filling in the sandwich you can see why this particular eleven year old thought it best to be dead

Commitment

When I was 6 my parents committed me to the prison of Dromdrevc, for which they were paid enough to live comfortably. Before I left I thought I was doing a brave thing for the good of my family, in hindsight I see that I was brainwashed during the years of six to eight to accept my imprisonment passively and it worked. On my eighth birthday instead of going to loca lesson with my siblings I was dressed in a outside suit that had been prepared for me over many months, my hair was pulled up and pushed through hoops in a formal design and I was given a pair of foot sleeves, my very first pair. I thought I was important. The outside suit was a little tight around the ankle and wrist as I had grown in the last month. Finally the natural brown of my skin was powdered white and my lips were coloured blue to match my eyes and hair. I was ready, I proudly clambered into the suction pod, waving to my parents and mind-speaking goodbye. Dad was clipped in his reply, I thought it was because he was going to miss me but now I think he just wanted to walk away and get on with his life without me in it for eight years.
Everything in Domdrevc looked so shiny and new it took me weeks to realise I was imprisoned. The shocks I received for unauthorised mind-speak, we, all the prisoners, were taught to mouth speak and that was the only authorised language. It was much later I discovered the Charters could only speak through their mouths and wanted to control us so we couldn't rebel.
When I was fourteen a Charter minor-sib decided I was to be his lifefem, I was given no options, no choices. Jaydabin who I had an attachment with through the underground was disgusted assuming I had somehow encouraged the alliance. Having lived on earth for forty years I have been through this again and again and now I have words for it, jealousy, anger and envy. Back then I had no idea and took to my room except for work and food. The commitment came to nothing and I lost contact with Jaydabin during the Wars of Concavity.
I smile now that we, the underground were ultimately responsible for the losing of the war, the only thing that went wrong, for me was the suction pod that didn't take me home but to earth and in a bizarre and weird twist, recreated me as a human baby. Then a catalogue of mishaps and intervention I was placed in a dead baby's crib in a hospital in Northern England. My brain was functioning as a partially grown Zylesian so I knew there were people on the earth from Zylmor, how else could I have been placed. They had a commitment to ensure new arrivees were settled into a placement family.

Food - Zylmor and Earth

I travel around the earth and love to see different foods available. In Dromdrevc the food was rich, each new politabub or Charter wanted a signature dish that was more indulgent than the last. Some of the food was so delectable I could barely use language to describe it but I tired of the richness of the food and longed for the simple dishes of my early childhood.
Arriving on the earth I had the blandness of bottlemilk for many months until the human teeth came through. Then human babyfood from little tins and jars again it was very bland but luckily my earth parentfem enjoyed eating half of what I had to endure.
I am not sure my journey with earth food was as a result of being an artprisoner in Dromdrevc or perhaps my mentality had a fissure of imbalance due to shift to earth but I noticed quite quickly that my earth body had no interest in trying new foods. In my second and third earth years I ate dry cornflakes for breakfast, mid morning snack was slices of apple without peel, lunch was a concoction of cheese and beetroot encased in a bread item called a barmcake and then for high tea, a piece of chop meat and tomato. I refused to eat anything else and no doubt caused the mother great anxiety. I was not speaking, I did not trust my accent or that I would suddenly speak Zylese. My concerns were amplified by the mother who seemed to be having a meltdown of some kind and the way she spoke to me in private was harsh and monosyllabic, in public she was effusively chatty, the frowns would disappear and smiles take their place.
My earthsibs also seemed to have issues with me, it seemed there was some huge problem around my birth that no one spoke of because they all knew it. My mind-talk was faulty, I discovered I could mind-listen people who were empathetic to me but I was five in earth years before I met an empathetic person. For a person who had spent many years in prison, unable to mind-speak or speak freely it was not a hardship for me but it was lonely. I developed rituals around food, each different food on my plate had to be seperate and single ingredients only. vegetables had to be raw, no sauce of any kind. Looking back from now I see that I was trying to find some control in my life, something that only I could control.
It took me a long time to come out of the control of food and to begin to appreciate the simple pleasure of food and eating. Living on my own again in Cork during the week I find that I am buying the same foods each week, my lunches are the same and my dinners are based on the same items, raw vegetables, beans and tomato - am I regressing? I am monitoring myself and attempting to try different foods again

Routine

I have signed up to write about routine every day in July. This is a routine in itself, I am attempting to feel the lethargy I had on Zylmor as a pampered prisoner, allowed to paint but only what we were allowed to piant, to speak but only to people on our allowed list. We were fed beautiful foods and drank delightful wines and fruit cordials but the tastes of these spectacular dishes were tainted - we were confined to quarters and unable to discuss the lingering scent of felicia blossom tempura as it danced across the tastebuds whilst Jenkul chillies flirted with the tongue's heat tolerance and sugary sweet fondant fluff encompassed the cheeks and jaws. What is point of eating without sharing it with others, at first i would transmit to my birth parents but the scanners inflicted a shock if even this form of communication was used inappropriately.

The sun shone hot beams across Tralee Bay, warm fuzzies were flowing through me when I spotted these delightful dandelions. Much maligned in modern west Earth, to me they are like little suns reflecting and wallowing in the power of the sun.
Back on Zylmor child slaves created flowers from fragile polymers in a variety of shades of red, with green stems, to look at earth flowers in all colours of the rainbow I always smile. Once a long time ago in Earth years I thought I met another survivor from the Wars of Concavity.
I was sitting in my attic room of my Earth parent listening to the space between each radio station when I heard a song, "Flowers are red young man, green leaves are green" This was back before internet and by the time I found someonewho had heard of the song and found out the artist, he was dead. Harry Chapin died in a mysterious car crash days before I had his publishers telephone number. On his headstone I later discovered,

"Oh if a man tried

To take his time on Earth

And prove before he died

What one man's life could be worth

I wonder what would happen

to this world"

I became obsessed with his lyrics, feeling somewhere in every song was a little of Dromdrevc.

genocide of Dromdrevc

The tension inside the bubble of Dromdrevc was exhilirating. After years of painting portraits of politicians and rulers I was alive. My natural artform of landscapes, based only on images created by others on Zylmor or still images captured by what you would think of as photographs but with more depth was despised in the city. My family lived on the far continent in the open, I communicated through mind-talk weekly, mother complained about the dust, father moaned about poverty and my sibs, Tessina and Zeuteronomy chatted about friends I had known, at the time of the genocide I had been exhiled from them for seven of your years and had grown from the child prodigy of eight to an almost fully developed female of fifteen. The last year had been particularly fraught with anxiety to escape as my time of captivity was over as soon as I reached sixteen. Credit-bars were delivered monthly to my life-parents as payment for the enslavement of their youngest child. As a small child Dromdrevc was awe-inspiring, a giant atmospheric bubble guarded against the elements, tall towers of housing units, business blocks and in the centre, a tower of shiny metal that reached up to the very tip of bubble, it was in here, the Royal Campus that I was to live and work. Work, I discovered was not to use my natural talent of reproducing vast canvases of landscsapes from memory or mythology, but was to catalogue an ever increasing number politabubs and the ruling charters. Charters were families who could prove their lineage back to the beginning of time, there were usually three or four clans living in the campus, they were a vain bunch, each portrait was proudly hung in the main concourse and because of their jealousy, repeats were frequent. One man-crown had a portrait booked every season, every colour found in Dromdrevc had been used in his costumes, each one more extravagant than the last as his girth also expanded. It was in his chamber I first heard about the Concavity, and the Galymonter people who yearned the power of Concavity. Galies as they were known had come from the neighbouring planet of Prusson, at first wanting to trade and as the polit-bubble was on seasonal break the Charters met with them and thrashed out a trade route between the peoples but their vanity made them show off the Concavity Orb, and exaggerated the properties of the laws of the index of refraction, with the wave velocities over-rated. I had never believed in the power of the concavity orb and had joined with other non-believers, we met in the concourse only three of us at a time and discussed possibilities. We were the brightest minds on all of Zylmor, punished we felt for being so intelligent by enslavement as children. We pondered on if this was to knock our inquisitive minds to an imaginary block as the tasks we were given numbed us. Piotreya, an inventor of vast electrical circuits spent her time making and changing light sources for the Charters and Yandryl was poet and playwright, he voice could lift you to the highest peak, he wrote ditties for the politabubs and their families so instead of being stirred by his words we slept by them. We had all completed our formal education in our early years while our sibs were still studying, attaining levels of expertise we had mastered at three or four. The Charters did not like us meeting together, so we kept the meeting light, with fake linguistics to suggest a frothy impromptu tryst rather than the reality of theoretical discussions on propulsion, experimentation and the politabubble. Each of my portraits contained a symbol of rebellion to inspire the unruly. Piotreya linked systems together until she had voyeuristic control over the whole subsystem within the bubble ans within each ditty that Yandryl created was one phrase that did not fit but was code for our mini rebellion.

Zylmor rambling 1

Having lived in many towns and many cities, in many countries on many planets I find it strange to find a "home town". But within the archaic regime of rural Kerry life; drawing the water by hand at dawn, drawing in the turf on warm summer evenings, drawing a fire and sitting listening to pipe and fiddle I find a peaceful calm descend over even my most tumultuous thoughts. It is at this moment I feel at home, on Zylmor I was an hermitically sealed artist; I drew portraits of politicians and higher order fellows, I knew much of the impending war - they did not see the artist - a mere servant to their glowing pride. I was not allowed outside to feel rain on my face, the rush of wind whistling past my ears, I did not see the first blush of Spring, the dance of the satellite moons, I was not allowed to draw anything. Here in Kerry we draw everything but my abilities with a pencil have long since receded and I am left only to imagine how the sweep of charcoal on paper would show the willow bending double in this summer wind.

This home is hard work, back bent over stacking turf, fighting nature pulling weeds, fixing the genrator every other day but the rewards are tremendous; watching storm clouds gather, chasing foxes away from the hens, working with the dogs, laughing as the cats try to follow, rhythmically weaving the willow into ever more extravagant shapes, harvesting the first earlies. This is life, this is where we make or break, there is a power here that will never be found at the tip of a nuclear warhead, there is a bond of love with the land that binds a spell twisting and turning and making us return to this place we call home.