So I went to Brazil this month – Rio de Janeiro in
particular. And oh my goodness… the experience is something I’m still thinking
about. I’d like to tell you that I found the love of my life, sipped lattes on
the sand, and had mind blowing sex in a very nice hotel room (Sex on the beach
is best in a glass, surrounded by pretty people and loud music. Sand is a pain
in the ass, literally, at least if you’re rolling around on it, being way more
interested in your partner(s) than you are in what you’re laying on). Alas, I
had mostly splashing on the beach and being silly, which really was fun, even
if not just as fun as great sex.
I learned lots of things while I was there. Some things I
really should have known to begin with, but didn’t pay enough attention to.
There are some great experiences to be had by ignoring
some of the important details, but I must tell you that going to Rio broke as
hell, is probably a bad idea, which I shall endeavor not to repeat. A hundred
bux is not enough to do Rio for ten days, even if some kind soul has paid for
your hotel room, especially if you’re gluten free by necessity, rather than
choice. Buses are about a 1.50 one way,
no transfers, but a Happy Meal at McDonalds is seven bux USD, give or take, and
yes, I’m a grown man and I eat Happy Meals. Usually they’re cheap, calorie
controlled, and they come with cool bits of plastic sometimes.
The beach is free. The sand is awesome. I got a lot of
emotional growth out of sitting on the beach. I’ve got a history with the ocean
too. As far as mother figures, the ocean is pretty good. It’s big, accepting,
necessary for life, and dangerous if you disrespect her.
In my Wiccan days, seeing Her as my mother came easy and
made sense.
That attachment carried forward into my current screaming
atheist days. Our shared ancestors swam around in Her. It’s easy for me to
imagine Her great being as a mix between a gentle womb and a great stir fry
pan, tossing life around until something useful learns to surf. It’s kind of
freaky to imagine how many orgasms and how much sex has happened in the ocean.
Happy, happy dolphins, oh my ☺
Ideas and life always swirl around, competing and trying
to gain resources. Sitting there on the beach, staring into the past with the
frothy waves (never going to see lattes the same… foam… dolphins… oh
my) an idea that was getting a lot of my mental resources
was the idea that we really need to break the blue wall… that great big,
completely not solid wall above us… to get out of the fish tank and into the
broader world. We come from the stars as much as we come from the ocean. The
Martian soil is related to us. Atoms in our being probably were configured with
atoms on Mars, IO, out in the Ort Cloud… even farther out… Getting to Mars is a
family reunion. So there I sat, thinking about how I’m going to get away with
building a serious multistage rocket in the back yard of my rented house in a
nice area of a polished little tech town, watching the past wash over my sandy
toes, watching up at the future, not knowing how I’m going to get there yet –
and I wondered if our very distant ancestors felt that way about coming out of
the ocean and onto the frightening land. I wonder if we, or our descendants,
will come to the edge of Earth and dip into the atmosphere, gliding through the
thicker air, swirling through clouds, because it’s a fantastic experience,
taking photos, and texting home about how they built castles in the clouds. I
built sand castles, by the way, a nifty rocket (I thought it was nifty), a
pyramid with construction wall and a village for the construction workers, and
the Sphinx with the Roman retaining walls.
It’s all a matter
of perspective, I guess.
The ocean though, She’s not my mother any more. She’s my
sister.
The world is still scary. The Blue Wall is still far
away, but so are all goals worth pursuing!
So what’s your Blue Wall? What do you want to achieve?
How would you like the future to look?
In the news today, there is a believable hope that we’ll
have lung cancer, melanoma, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer,
acute myeloid leukemia/myelodyspastic syndrome, and chronic lymphocytic
leukemia (blood cancers) solved. Longevity is going to come within a lot of our
expected life expectancies. If you could
live till you were two hundred, look the best you’ve ever looked or felt on the
day you die (say we wrap our vehicle around something solid and there’s no do
over, no respawn), what would you do with the time? Say you can learn to be
anything you want to be, what do you want to be?
Faith
Coming Soon:
Saving Lira
By Faith Luna
Her mother had been British. Her father was a Japanese
businessman with ties to the underworld.
She had been sheltered by private tutors, paid
companions. She’d been watched twenty-four-seven her entire eighteen years.
She’d been told for many years that she would likely be marrying the man who
would be prime minister of Japan. She was elegant, obedient, polite, and well
educated.
Fair skin, blue eyes, raven black hair that reached the
back of her knees when it was not drawn up, her makeup done flawlessly by her
maid, she sat at her desk, practicing her calligraphy. She wore a lavender
kimono that draped over her slender form like a silken cloud.
She was as oblivious to what day it was as to the fact
that her father had made a rather dreadful blunder - that she was going to pay
for.
Her maid, a smartly dressed middle-aged nurse entered
silently through the servant’s passage. “Lira.”
The girl looked up, smiled. “Good morning. I think my ink
is being very kind to me today.”
“Your father requests that you drink this tea,” Anne said
softly, a slight hint of sadness in her voice.
Lira set her brush down and reached with both hands for
the small tea cup. “Of course. I was hoping we might visit the horses today.”
“I would like that more than I can express,” her nurse
and caretaker said softly. “Please, drink the tea. It might be bitter.”
Obediently, she sipped the tea, wrinkled her nose, eyed
her nurse to make sure she had to drink it, then downed it in one swift gulp.
Almost immediately, the tea began to have an effect. “I
feel heavy,”
she said, her soft pink lips slightly parted, her voice
sleepy.
“Yes,” Anne agreed, taking the cup back and then helping
her unfortunate charge to stand. “Let’s lay down, my dear.”
“What’s happening? I’m frightened.” Lira tried to stay
awake as her nurse laid her down on the large four-poster bed. As the girl
slipped into a drugged sleep, her nurse loosened her kimono a little so that
the soft swell of untouched breasts showed through the V of the open garment.
She rested the Lira’s hands on her belly. She then withdrew, knowing that the
transporters would arrive to take her charge to her new master.
<><>
“Pick her up, Drake,” Dr. Alexander said firmly.
Her father, looking stricken as the strong young man
picked up his unconscious daughter, her kimono hiding her bare feet, her
shoulder resting against his shoulder, “You’re not going to … make her
unhappy?”
“It’s hardly time to think of that now,” Dr. Alexander
said, smirking.
“Your debt to the cabal is paid. Watch what you do in the
future. A child may not be sufficient payment if you ever make a similar
mistake.”
Drake held Lira in his arms, and he knew he was about to make his own mistake. He was
going to save her… somehow.
--
Hard as Teak by Margie Church
