Metaphors that feel more right

I just read a fic which, perfectly in character, had a character going to America thinking that men go west and then they go to the stars. Like, the immigrant American expansion is why humans eventually go to the stars, straight line.
And that feels wrong. Really, gut level, wrong.
Not just for the obvious - if we go out to the stars and find neighbours and treat them like they did the original inhabitants in far too many places I'm applying to be a new species.
But it's also not my history, and that's not my future. In that straight line I'm left way, way behind.

Space is like the sea, not the other shore. Like going out fishing. Some people take a boat out every morning, some of them go out for months, but it's going out somewhere actually empty of people and dreaming of mermaids and coming home again. I know space (probably) has a shortage of your actual fish. So maybe it's more like the mining platforms, going out there and going deep for what can't be found elsewhere. Or maybe we'll find better ways that don't run out, like the constant attempts to turn the waves into whatever power we need. Still, it's going out and staying a long while and missing home but making a new one with your crew, and coming home.

And maybe we'll find other shores full of other people, and maybe it'll be like it has been around here with those across the water, pretty much a long fight with intervals, though we're doing pretty good just lately. Maybe it'll be vikings to the stars or maybe it'll be privateers, or perhaps we'll try merchant adventuring.

But this is space to me, this is the next frontier, the one that rolls right up to our shores and we've always been dealing with on the edges.

I think about home, little island place where the sea feels important even if I haven't got around to seeing it since, hmmm, out the window at a Buffy convention I think, from the wrong side so the sun was backwards.

I think about America, which seems from here to be mostly made of earth, huge great going everywhere place.

I think about how metaphor is geographic.

Today: not exactly smooth

Today was for Buddhism and Wolverine.
... because these things are mixy, yes.
Started with hunting down the Buddhist center. Helper person was Entirely Confident she could find. And eventually we did indeed find. In the 'no this looks wrong' street. After trying to take a short cut through a garden that actually went up a hill in the wrong direction. In the rain.
So that was fun.
The bloke at the Buddhist center... I feel there must have been failure to communicate. What the conversation looked like from my point of view:

Him: Hi! You could do Yoga, or Meditate!
Me: I wish to know more of Buddhism.
Him: Most people start with Meditation!
Me: I see you have many books on the subject. I have this one. And this. And these classic texts like 'the sayings of the Buddha'. And this by the Dalai Lama.
Him: You could meditate.
Me: I recognise all these Buddhas and bodhisatvas and colorful people in the pictures here. I have studied them.
Him: You could do meditation.
Me: I wish to learn more of the central debates in Buddhism.
Him: We do meditation every lunch time. And an Introduction to Buddhism course, later, sometimes.

... I wonder what it looked like from his point of view.
So, I looked at their book collection, which is interesting, and may go back if I remember and want to spend £12 on something that on a quick flick through looked kind of familiar.
I'm sure meditation is cool too. But I do that. With mantras. Mostly when I get worried rather than regular though.
Maybe it's like google and you need keywords.

So after that we went back to the mall to go to the cinema. The idea with mall parking was to avoid getting rained on. This, er, didn't work so good. We walked back, shoes were slippy, there was slow, we went to Inanna's Festival and I found some gorgeous blank paper books that just need something really cool to fill them in with... so I haven't bought one yet... or anything else this time. My hands started hurting. They do this sometimes in there. I wonder if all those crystals are set to 'send' or something.

When we got to the mall we split up so I got food and pocketed it until we were in the cinema. I bought the ticket and sat down to wait.
... she got lost. We missed the trailers. It was close.
But hey, got there, was okay.

I stank up the cinema with sandwich that was mostly onion. But as far as I can tell there were 4 of us in there, and the others were half the cinema away.

Wolverine is... ( Read more... )

So it wasn't much fun.
Which is why I saw other films quicker.

In the trailers was Terminator Salvation. The ad still gives that ooooh shiny tingle.
But I tried to count number of women in the ad. Was there one?
I like Sarah Connor Chronicles. That has women.

... my recorder box has been consistent fail at recording TSCC so I'll have to wait on DVDs, but I liked what I saw.

Now I'm vaguely grumpy and still haven't done my assignment.
urgh.

(no subject)

I have rediscovered onions.
Onions are good. I like onions. They go with the quorn and make it taste like something other than the same quorn.
I don't use knives due to Extreme Clumsy. Are there still ways to get onion? Other than buying something at Subway and getting Lots of Onion and putting most of it away for later.
... weird, but practical.
Maybe the salad bar at supermarkets has a Lots Of Onion box. I haven't really looked. Maybe salad could be more interesting if I thought of it as sandwich filling without the fake meat parts.

... now my mouth tastes of chocolate and onion.
... I don't think that one's ever going to really catch on...