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Today I not only managed to sleep until almost 7am
I also had an excellent dream
that reminded awake me that if I can walk to the green bit I can also probably reach a shop that sells bread and stuff, and that one bus stop outside the sixth form.
which would be handy if bus was a thing again.
I dreamed I lived at the sixth form. Bought one building, a nice one that is all made of ground floor and library, just lived there while students got on with things in other buildings.
Which is obviously too much building for one person, but, I had had A Plan, it just hadnt been working out so far.
Magic school.
... see it's a whole other vibe if you put it in an actual school building built in the 20th century. ... probably the 20th, now I'm wondering...
checking the wiki I discover one of the actors in Harry Potter actually went there, so now there's a whole meta level of xover.
Also I discovered it has been folded back in to one of the high schools, no longer has its own wiki entry if it ever did, and if there's a page about the buildings history I did not find it. As a sixth form it goes back to 1977 but it was using older buildings.
ANYway. Tangent. From a dream.
Dreamt I lived there and had been shopping at the convenience store around the corner.
Which was where I met this actor called Chris.
... I watched Leverage yesterday.
He was all charm and probable smiles, and N95 mask so, you know, slightly difficult to check for sure. But I invited him back to my place.
The school.
Not sure that would work out well as first impressions.
But I was trying to impress him with my thousands of books in a well stocked library, so, accurate impressions is important too.
But first we found an actual student there, which isnt supposed to happen, even if it was raining outside. And meant it was not covid secure, woe and stress time. So that bit of the dream turned into the usual throwing people out and locking the doors and it never quite works. Ugh, boring.
But then there was the guy with a gun. Not boring, actually a bit too exciting, kicking him out and locking the door involved a teensy bit of telekinesis, because no version of grabbing the gun was going to go well for us.
... the telekinesis did not go well for him. The same force that can turn the tumblers in a lock is really nasty when applied within a skull.
But, he brought a gun to a magic fight, that... was not wise.
So we keep trying to secure the building, when the building was designed for ease of egress in a fire etc, and it's all breaky and annoying.
But then we got to the library and it was full of people
who were tearing the place apart
searching for books of magic.
Turned out Chris was in some way allied with them, but he was fed up at them too because he had been doing so much better at a plan that might actually work. Here they were breaking in to the place and they got nothing.
So I asked them what books they were looking for? White and Black books, of course. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet? Got a show of hands for all of those. Ultra violet? Only two hands up for that, I told them that wasn't wise, there's good stuff in there. Once you've learned how to read ultra violet it's hard being out in daylight, but, good stuff.
And everyone is getting more and more... gloaty. Like they're getting one over on me just by me admitting I've seen the whole rainbow of magic books. And I'm like, this is magic school, or it would be if I could get my act together, you want to be students?
And they're all, like, flexing, and just, no, we want you to hand the books over. Right now.
I eyeroll.
Like, have you even read one book?
Chris says, all portentous, they've read the Black book.
I raise an eyebrow, like yes, and?
"... they're evil."
Aaaand, no. Nope. I go off on a tangent, it's hard being evil if you've read the Black book, why would you think it's evil?
And they're like offended, breaking out little quotes or rotes they know from it, and I'm just not impressed. Like, okay, maybe you've read a page or two, but that was not the Black Book.
So they're getting angry now, and they're just like, stop messing around, where IS it?
"Where I found it, of course. ... if you dont know that, you dont know magic books."
So I ask if they've read The Dark is Rising. The Book of Gramarye. No? A Book of Magic, a real and true one, isn't flat words on a page, it's an Experience. You dont just read it, you live it. The journey is the point.
... and these guys, who have been tearing books and are not nice people, they are not impressed. They dont want to know. They're just like, give it, give it now.
So I'm like show of hands, who wants the White Book?
And only Chris does not raise a hand, which frankly makes him the smartest one there. He takes a step back, stays at my shoulder instead.
So I do a thing. A thing anyone who has read the White Book can do. I twist my hands like I'm opening a book, and show it to them.
... and one bright flash later, most of them are curled up on the floor, sick, sobbing, maybe staggering about and giving a thousand yard stare. A couple are actually taking swings at things, but the things arent there right now, so they're probably going to tip themselves over.
It is fair to say they are Not Okay.
Chris is like, what did you do?
Showed them the book.
After I read it it took dream me five years to get my head together. Regular appointments at the hospital years. Not my best years, basically.
So they want the book? They can have it. See what they'll do with it when they get back.
... and then the dream turned into, what exactly do you do with dozens of people in your library having the worst magic trip? Probably call the police and hope, really...
But I woke up around then and
I know what was in the books.
White is Time. Because if you put all of Time into one book, it's going to be Bright. And it isn't just time travel or time manipulation or whatever mastery of time you might be thinking of when you get desperate enough to chase a real magic book. No. It is all of Time, right here, in your head, for now and forever.
And this is the beginners book.
Frankly it is not a surprise that most people dont get around to true magic.
Time is flashbacks to dying in a previous life. Time is mortality, for yourself and your people and your civilisation. Time is knowing the entire human race is passing in the blink of a cosmic eye. And you know how it goes now. You know, some days, every little thing about how it goes, right down to the script.
How do you get yourself back together, after all of it?
What is the point of it all, when you already know how the story ends?
And of course Chris, the actor, has a whole different take on the free will issue than a writer would, or did. Sure you know the script, but it's what you bring to it that counts. You can say the same words over and over, night after night plus matinees, but what matters is the heart you give it. The truth you bring to it, and get from it. How it's going to reach people, even if that's only the people right there with you, who also know the script.
Honestly never being able to improvise would bug him, but the idea some days are on script doesnt, because he has a lot of those days, and there's a lot of ways to bring your humanity to it.
It's like understanding music as a singer instead of a listener, or dance as an experience. Sure you know these steps, but you still dance them.
And that is very heartening.
So okay, maybe he'd cope with the White Book better than me.
The Black book though, the Black Book is Space.
Because you put all of Space into a book, you might not even notice the sparkle.
The Black Book is the Total Perspective Vortex. It is understanding, utterly, how absolutely, near infinitely, small you are. You and your people and your whole world. In space as in time, we are Tiny.
Which is great! Exciting! Fascinating!
Because there is always so much more to see!
And it makes it very hard to be a Rule The World type. I mean, you could still want to, I guess, but you would understand on a visceral level that ruling the world and ruling your back yard just isnt very different, in the grand scheme of things. And also understand exactly how many square meters that is. And how much thought you could decote to any given meter.
Like, if you grid out your average garden and give it a minute a meter, you take up a whole huge chunk of day. But if you do that to a kingdom? Or a planet?
Perspective.
Why try and rule something you'd only give a seconds thought in such and so long?
Plus, also, too, Space includes the near infinitely *small*.
So you understand, fully, that any given square meter of the world consists of such complexity that you could easily devote your life to it and never exhaust your appreciation of its secrets.
The world is so little and so much!
Who could ever have both time and inclination to to rule it?
And of course, people will say they only wanted to be the boss of people.
Well yes, but, why do you need magic for that?
It's kind of too much, isnt it?
Either you're puppeting, and you have to do all the thinking, and you're back to the meters per second problem, or at least people per second times eight billion
Or you're really just talking to your team, who each talk to their team, who each talk to their team
and really, why do you need magic for that?
So people who think they're evil juet havent read any Magic Books.
Stands to reason.
... and okay, some people would be shown the exact scale of their significance in both Time and Space and get *really mad about it*
but the dream me did not find that likely.
I dont know what the whole rainbow of magic was about.
But I do know that all that game rule book stuff about different schools of magic is just rotes when you get down to it, tiny little effects that, sure, logically follow, but Divination is to the White Book as C A T is to the family felidae in all its detail and variety, only smaller.
... yes rotes comes from Mage the Ascension, but not much else. The scale problem and difference between Mage and wizard kind of resonates, but, none of that choose your house choose your reality stuff.
These Books are more like downloading the whole of one aspect of Truth into your head, and then seeing how much of you is left after enough dribbles out again to leave room for being a human.
And staying human was very much optional after you'd read enough books.
But you'd have a unique appreciation of how unique and wonderful a single human life is.
Which, again, more magic, less chance of doing evil, when you really understand it.
But, also, more magic, more difficulty with empathy, given how different your personal reality is from, like, everyone else.
The other thing in the dream though was being just as scared about the pandemic as everyone else. Because it was just as danger. And magic wasnt going to fix it.
... because while you do stay human, you are bound by human rules.
So I dont know in the end what this sort of magic was good for.
Having your mind blown and spending the rest of your life trying to put it back together just doesnt seem worth the fuss.
Had to be good for something.
But it would certainly account for magic being
both technically easy to learn
and still the kind of secret no one believes in.
... I guess I can see why dream me was stalling on opening a magic school.
Like they'd had the ability to acquire said school, but the further their eyes got opened to consequences, the harder they found it to figure out and take the next steps.
Would certainly account for famous wizards all being Old though. If it takes that long to get your head around it.
I mostly liked
one book is Time
the other is Space
now try and get your head around all that.
Got it?
Good.
Here's another eight
on the next most complicated stuff.
... lots of ambition goes in, not many takers comes out, I'm figuring.
Cool dream though.
I also had an excellent dream
that reminded awake me that if I can walk to the green bit I can also probably reach a shop that sells bread and stuff, and that one bus stop outside the sixth form.
which would be handy if bus was a thing again.
I dreamed I lived at the sixth form. Bought one building, a nice one that is all made of ground floor and library, just lived there while students got on with things in other buildings.
Which is obviously too much building for one person, but, I had had A Plan, it just hadnt been working out so far.
Magic school.
... see it's a whole other vibe if you put it in an actual school building built in the 20th century. ... probably the 20th, now I'm wondering...
checking the wiki I discover one of the actors in Harry Potter actually went there, so now there's a whole meta level of xover.
Also I discovered it has been folded back in to one of the high schools, no longer has its own wiki entry if it ever did, and if there's a page about the buildings history I did not find it. As a sixth form it goes back to 1977 but it was using older buildings.
ANYway. Tangent. From a dream.
Dreamt I lived there and had been shopping at the convenience store around the corner.
Which was where I met this actor called Chris.
... I watched Leverage yesterday.
He was all charm and probable smiles, and N95 mask so, you know, slightly difficult to check for sure. But I invited him back to my place.
The school.
Not sure that would work out well as first impressions.
But I was trying to impress him with my thousands of books in a well stocked library, so, accurate impressions is important too.
But first we found an actual student there, which isnt supposed to happen, even if it was raining outside. And meant it was not covid secure, woe and stress time. So that bit of the dream turned into the usual throwing people out and locking the doors and it never quite works. Ugh, boring.
But then there was the guy with a gun. Not boring, actually a bit too exciting, kicking him out and locking the door involved a teensy bit of telekinesis, because no version of grabbing the gun was going to go well for us.
... the telekinesis did not go well for him. The same force that can turn the tumblers in a lock is really nasty when applied within a skull.
But, he brought a gun to a magic fight, that... was not wise.
So we keep trying to secure the building, when the building was designed for ease of egress in a fire etc, and it's all breaky and annoying.
But then we got to the library and it was full of people
who were tearing the place apart
searching for books of magic.
Turned out Chris was in some way allied with them, but he was fed up at them too because he had been doing so much better at a plan that might actually work. Here they were breaking in to the place and they got nothing.
So I asked them what books they were looking for? White and Black books, of course. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet? Got a show of hands for all of those. Ultra violet? Only two hands up for that, I told them that wasn't wise, there's good stuff in there. Once you've learned how to read ultra violet it's hard being out in daylight, but, good stuff.
And everyone is getting more and more... gloaty. Like they're getting one over on me just by me admitting I've seen the whole rainbow of magic books. And I'm like, this is magic school, or it would be if I could get my act together, you want to be students?
And they're all, like, flexing, and just, no, we want you to hand the books over. Right now.
I eyeroll.
Like, have you even read one book?
Chris says, all portentous, they've read the Black book.
I raise an eyebrow, like yes, and?
"... they're evil."
Aaaand, no. Nope. I go off on a tangent, it's hard being evil if you've read the Black book, why would you think it's evil?
And they're like offended, breaking out little quotes or rotes they know from it, and I'm just not impressed. Like, okay, maybe you've read a page or two, but that was not the Black Book.
So they're getting angry now, and they're just like, stop messing around, where IS it?
"Where I found it, of course. ... if you dont know that, you dont know magic books."
So I ask if they've read The Dark is Rising. The Book of Gramarye. No? A Book of Magic, a real and true one, isn't flat words on a page, it's an Experience. You dont just read it, you live it. The journey is the point.
... and these guys, who have been tearing books and are not nice people, they are not impressed. They dont want to know. They're just like, give it, give it now.
So I'm like show of hands, who wants the White Book?
And only Chris does not raise a hand, which frankly makes him the smartest one there. He takes a step back, stays at my shoulder instead.
So I do a thing. A thing anyone who has read the White Book can do. I twist my hands like I'm opening a book, and show it to them.
... and one bright flash later, most of them are curled up on the floor, sick, sobbing, maybe staggering about and giving a thousand yard stare. A couple are actually taking swings at things, but the things arent there right now, so they're probably going to tip themselves over.
It is fair to say they are Not Okay.
Chris is like, what did you do?
Showed them the book.
After I read it it took dream me five years to get my head together. Regular appointments at the hospital years. Not my best years, basically.
So they want the book? They can have it. See what they'll do with it when they get back.
... and then the dream turned into, what exactly do you do with dozens of people in your library having the worst magic trip? Probably call the police and hope, really...
But I woke up around then and
I know what was in the books.
White is Time. Because if you put all of Time into one book, it's going to be Bright. And it isn't just time travel or time manipulation or whatever mastery of time you might be thinking of when you get desperate enough to chase a real magic book. No. It is all of Time, right here, in your head, for now and forever.
And this is the beginners book.
Frankly it is not a surprise that most people dont get around to true magic.
Time is flashbacks to dying in a previous life. Time is mortality, for yourself and your people and your civilisation. Time is knowing the entire human race is passing in the blink of a cosmic eye. And you know how it goes now. You know, some days, every little thing about how it goes, right down to the script.
How do you get yourself back together, after all of it?
What is the point of it all, when you already know how the story ends?
And of course Chris, the actor, has a whole different take on the free will issue than a writer would, or did. Sure you know the script, but it's what you bring to it that counts. You can say the same words over and over, night after night plus matinees, but what matters is the heart you give it. The truth you bring to it, and get from it. How it's going to reach people, even if that's only the people right there with you, who also know the script.
Honestly never being able to improvise would bug him, but the idea some days are on script doesnt, because he has a lot of those days, and there's a lot of ways to bring your humanity to it.
It's like understanding music as a singer instead of a listener, or dance as an experience. Sure you know these steps, but you still dance them.
And that is very heartening.
So okay, maybe he'd cope with the White Book better than me.
The Black book though, the Black Book is Space.
Because you put all of Space into a book, you might not even notice the sparkle.
The Black Book is the Total Perspective Vortex. It is understanding, utterly, how absolutely, near infinitely, small you are. You and your people and your whole world. In space as in time, we are Tiny.
Which is great! Exciting! Fascinating!
Because there is always so much more to see!
And it makes it very hard to be a Rule The World type. I mean, you could still want to, I guess, but you would understand on a visceral level that ruling the world and ruling your back yard just isnt very different, in the grand scheme of things. And also understand exactly how many square meters that is. And how much thought you could decote to any given meter.
Like, if you grid out your average garden and give it a minute a meter, you take up a whole huge chunk of day. But if you do that to a kingdom? Or a planet?
Perspective.
Why try and rule something you'd only give a seconds thought in such and so long?
Plus, also, too, Space includes the near infinitely *small*.
So you understand, fully, that any given square meter of the world consists of such complexity that you could easily devote your life to it and never exhaust your appreciation of its secrets.
The world is so little and so much!
Who could ever have both time and inclination to to rule it?
And of course, people will say they only wanted to be the boss of people.
Well yes, but, why do you need magic for that?
It's kind of too much, isnt it?
Either you're puppeting, and you have to do all the thinking, and you're back to the meters per second problem, or at least people per second times eight billion
Or you're really just talking to your team, who each talk to their team, who each talk to their team
and really, why do you need magic for that?
So people who think they're evil juet havent read any Magic Books.
Stands to reason.
... and okay, some people would be shown the exact scale of their significance in both Time and Space and get *really mad about it*
but the dream me did not find that likely.
I dont know what the whole rainbow of magic was about.
But I do know that all that game rule book stuff about different schools of magic is just rotes when you get down to it, tiny little effects that, sure, logically follow, but Divination is to the White Book as C A T is to the family felidae in all its detail and variety, only smaller.
... yes rotes comes from Mage the Ascension, but not much else. The scale problem and difference between Mage and wizard kind of resonates, but, none of that choose your house choose your reality stuff.
These Books are more like downloading the whole of one aspect of Truth into your head, and then seeing how much of you is left after enough dribbles out again to leave room for being a human.
And staying human was very much optional after you'd read enough books.
But you'd have a unique appreciation of how unique and wonderful a single human life is.
Which, again, more magic, less chance of doing evil, when you really understand it.
But, also, more magic, more difficulty with empathy, given how different your personal reality is from, like, everyone else.
The other thing in the dream though was being just as scared about the pandemic as everyone else. Because it was just as danger. And magic wasnt going to fix it.
... because while you do stay human, you are bound by human rules.
So I dont know in the end what this sort of magic was good for.
Having your mind blown and spending the rest of your life trying to put it back together just doesnt seem worth the fuss.
Had to be good for something.
But it would certainly account for magic being
both technically easy to learn
and still the kind of secret no one believes in.
... I guess I can see why dream me was stalling on opening a magic school.
Like they'd had the ability to acquire said school, but the further their eyes got opened to consequences, the harder they found it to figure out and take the next steps.
Would certainly account for famous wizards all being Old though. If it takes that long to get your head around it.
I mostly liked
one book is Time
the other is Space
now try and get your head around all that.
Got it?
Good.
Here's another eight
on the next most complicated stuff.
... lots of ambition goes in, not many takers comes out, I'm figuring.
Cool dream though.