reverancepavane | a babbling stream of something (Reply)

I made a big mistake. I'll have to see how big a mistake I made tomorrow, when the painkillers I have just taken wear off, but at the moment it seems considerable. Owwwwww.

Considering my bad health earlier in the week I debated going to Spiral Dance last night, but finally decided that I would. I suppose since URGA is in abeyance whilst molokov_au is at his friend's wedding I was kind of starved for human company. Admittedly I get more hugs at a Spiral gig, but it's that kind of crowd. I lasted two-thirds of the gig before crashing, but managed to do Burning Times at the end [appropriate really]. I don't know what sort of energy I added to the crowd but it was probably rather maniac. I know I was babbling a bit at the end there and probably said stuff I shouldn't have if I had of had a functioning mind at the time.

Getting home was an exercise in acute pain control, but I don't think I invited another attack.

Lots of interesting interpersonal problems among the attendees, and I'm saddened that I no longer have the resources to help some of them. Oh well. They are doing the sensible thing anyway, but I wish there was something realistically that I could do. But most of the people who might do have been able to help are from a lifetime ago.

Hmmmmm.

There was an early Sector General short story by James White. I'd tell you it's name except that would mean getting up and finding it. Anyway it was the first appearance of Dr Conway, as a newly minted intern just assigned to the hospital, and he had to take an educator tape of a VTXM [I think] life form. Now for those who don't know the basis of Sector General, it's a massive interspecies hospital on the edge of the galaxy. All the "interesting" cases get taken there. As an aid to treating the patients the doctors can take an Educator tape which impresses the medical knowledge of a renowned medical expert of that race on their brain. Unfortunately it also impresses the personality and phobias of a highly stressed professional. As long as you are thinking on the job at hand it's OK. It's just if you have to have the imprinted knowledge for any length of time (or multiple implanted knowledges) you can run into problems, Now, for reasons I won't get into, Dr Conway didn't erase the tape after solving the patients problem. Now the four letter code refers to the type of life form. V indicates a telepathic lifeform and the TXM indicates a high radiation high temperature environment. In this case a telepathic hive mind creature that eats hard radiation. So to cut a short story even shorter, Dr Conway went around making physical contact with as many people as possible as an approximation of telepathic contact, and ended up being pulled away from a bank of UV sterilizers by a quick-thinking orderly who thought there was something peculiar about the actions of this DBDG from Earth. Well, I kind of feel like Dr Conway at the moment, except without the need for a high radiation environment.

Although...

Which is weird because I rather dislike Dr Conway's character, and much prefer to empathise with Major O'Mara, the hospital's Chief Psychologist (and hence a Very Important Sentient [classification DBDG - Earth Human]), or Senior Diagnostician in Charge of Pathology Thornaster [FGLI - Tralthan]. The former because I like his personality [although I really dislike the reason given in the very last book (Mind Healer) as to why he had his rather curious bedside manner - I would have prefered it to be something natural to him, because it was all so human], and the later because I somehow empathise with a giant six-legged elephant that has to be careful where it steps to avoid crushing smaller life forms.

<ahem>

I do enjoy the series a lot and reccommend it heavily. Actually the short story title was Sector General I believe, collected in Hospital Station. And the series is far older than I am, believe it or not. Wow. The first stories were hand-inscribed cuneiform, obviously.

Ah goody. The painkillers are starting to have an effect. I no longer hurt so much and can start lowering the nerve blocks and hopefully get some sleep.

Oh yeah. The gig was otherwise lots of fun, although I didn't really feel like handing out much chocolate, so not many people got any, but those that did got the good stuff.

There was a new song about the summer solstice that was taken out for a test drive, featuring lots of mention of Robin Goodfellow (aka Puck) and the Green Knight, but I didn't really get a sense of the theme as I wasn't tracking too well by then.

I was tempted to go visit Dandelion Wine and give them chocolate frogs but Adrienne talked me into staying for Burning Times. With small circles in close proximity the inner circle has to move rapidly to create the appropriate effects, so I think I was pulling the inner circle around a lot. And the outer circle was taking up the Goddess Chant a bit too soon methinks, but that is my preference to seed the outer circle from the inner protected core. People said it had good energy but people weren't as dazed at the end as normal. I think we might be taking it all a bit for granted.

And I'm probably going to have to redo a lot of dance lessons. Most of my muscle memory is for extremely talented dancers of a particular height with which I had a near total rapport, and I'm not adjusting well to the difference. Either that or it was so long ago and I've forgotten. [I'm not sure, did I learn the tango before or after we discovered fire?] But I really want to do Zavulon's wedding tango. So coool!

And on the way home all I had running through my head was Tripod's The Wheel, which was kind of appropriate for cycling home. And now Flash in the Pan's Hey St Peter is trapped in my head, desperately wanting to get out. And I left my trepanning chisel at work.

Maybe this revision to 1970's music means my brain is melting down again.