dawrei

I believe that God exists

I believe humans have made religion and I believe Feuerbach is mostly right when he states that religion and God are a projection of our own best traits.

I believe that this is done in response of that deepest thing mankind has felt, which I call God.

I believe God is deeply immanent, but not limited to the inside – I believe God exists both inside as well as outside. I believe God is within (nearly) everything as well as an individual.

I believe that God has no gender

I believe that it is alright to perceive God as a male heavenly Father and a female great Mother

I believe that God has no gender but that it might be good for men to relate to God as a Father-god and for women to relate to God as a Mother-god, because differences in gender should not be downplayed. They are present and good.

I believe that the Christian idea of redemption is the best answer to break free from a circle of suffering and human darkness. I also believe that it isn’t as uncomplicated or as simplistic as it sounds.

I believe I want to reconcile nature-based faiths and Christianity.

The Doctor. Period.

 No matter how hard I try, I just can’t get the narrative of Het Eiland in de Mist right. In turns, it’s too stiff, too distant, too plain, not like the voice of a 15 year old. I keep wondering if I should make a major switch to first person narrative, but then I think maybe not, because it is possible to write a close-to-the-skin character without talking in I’s and Me’s. I just wish I could figure out how Nimue actually talks! I want it to be fresh and mature enough, but it just never feels quite right.
Maybe it’s that I can’t decide how dark I actually want it to be. I keep holding back because I think certain things are not appropriate for that age. But I know the real YA literature out there can handle dark themes and edgy language with no problem. So maybe I just can’t write it. I’m just stumbling over all my words, my sentences. Is it too fancy, is it too matter-of-factly? Do I even know what I want this to be?
I figured maybe it’s simply that I have forgotten what the voice of a young adult really sounds like. I’ve been 15, 16, of course, but oddly enough it’s hard to recall what I would talk like back then, or how exactly I’d think, in my head. So maybe my best bet is simply to search for things I wrote back then. My livejournal starts in 2003, so I was actually still around 15 then.
I scavenged the archive. Most of it is pretty dumb and useless and certainly not how I think Nimue (who really is more mature than I was at the time) should talk. But I found some bits and pieces where I tone in more serious and I thought I put them here to study them a bit.
These are not always my literal words, as I wrote them down back then. I altered some things, to see how well I could make such snippets fit as a ‘fictional’ narrative. So they are my own words, only sometimes somewhat changed.

….and something snapped in my head. I felt like I would go insane. Trembling all over, I took the scissors and cut in my arm. I was scared of the pain at first, but I did it anyway. I wanted to feel pain, I wanted to feel this instead of the emotions. So I cut two times, and the strange thing was that, after the second time, it didn't matter anymore. The pain, I mean. I was still feeling it, but no longer quite aware of it. I heard the sound of the steel on my skin very clearly. After four cuts I stopped. I wasn't bleeding yet, but knew that, with just one more cut, I would. And I think I actually wanted it to bleed, so I could go to my parents’ room and tell them: "Look! Do you see it? Do you see me now?" But I contained myself and stopped before that could happen. Why? I don't know, probably because I still had some sanity left. I was staring at the cuts and I didn't feel a thing – not shock, not surprise. I was just empty.

This is the oldest one, and I actually think it is pretty good. I don’t know if I would publish this in a novel, but it strikes me as raw, real and rather intimate. “I heard the sound of the steel on my skin very clearly”, is the observation that stands out most; this is what makes it so real to me. I can honestly understand what is happening here – the awkwardness of the situation, and yet the detachment from it all.

Ik word hier zo moe van. Ik denk echt dat ik niet veel meer kan of wil hebben. Als ik nu kon kiezen, zou ik het liefste heel ver weg rennen en haar nooit meer terug zien. God, dit zijn zulke gemene woorden. Ik hou echt veel van haar; te veel, denk ik soms, maar tegenwoordig ben ik helemaal leeg. Ik heb niks; geen woorden, geen goede dingen om te zeggen, gewoon niks. Alleen dat gevoel van wanhoop. Het verlangen om al die idiote ideeën eens uit haar te rammen. Maar ik moet voorzichtig met haar omgaan want ik heb het idee dat als ik iets verkeerds zeg, alles alleen maar erger wordt. Oh, ik ben soms zo bang. Maar vooral heel erg moe.

So what am I learning from this? 15 to 16-year olds have a strong ability to self-reflect and put their observations to words. This piece of narrative doesn’t waste time being fanciful, but it’s not without imagination either – ‘All I have left is a sense of despair’ doesn’t strike me as dramatically over the top, just a reflection of what emotions are left within oneself after a roller-coaster of events.

I'm alright. That is, as fine as you can be under these circumstances. I'm trying not to think of it. She keeps claiming that it is my responsibility. She says I'm responsible for the ones I decide to trust.

I might start to face it; the old times are over. That's the truth, but somehow I still refuse to believe it. I’d still rather believe that all of this will be over someday, like it never happened. As if it’s just going to go away. She's not family, but in every other way she feels like it - the only person I truly can tell "I love you" without being somewhat embarrassed. But I think it is only that love that binds us now.
(…)
There are so many reasons to wish that this would never happen. But on the other hand, I’m learning so much from it. I'm discovering my limits, how do I deal with situations like these, how loyal I am really, how much of myself can I sacrifice? She is like my mirror. Well, I suppose everything has its merits, hasn’t it? These days I sometimes feel like there no longer is a line separating right from wrong. Maybe not between life and death either. When I really think about it, the only difference is the body, which is a shell. Whatever we do with that shell is up to us, or isn’t it? I don’t know anyone who could claim authority over these matters, except God if exists. So why should it matter if we even end our own lives? Maybe in the end it doesn't matter, we just move on to different levels, nothing more and nothing less. 

What’s disturbing is that I get most interesting narratives from really depressing times in my life. I guess tragic life = good material still rings true, hahem. So for the sake of variety, and to reassure myself that my teen years really were not constantly bad, here’s a funnier bit about high school ‘romances’. True story.

I dropped into another classroom. One of the guys told me, “You look familiar”.
Well, I though, you do not. But then just during lunchtime, I ran into him in the canteen. "Your father is a Public Prosecutor, isn't he?", he said, and it wasn’t even a question, it was a statement.
I don't know the freakin' guy! How could he know anything about me or my family? I was so baffled that I could only manage a weak, "Uh, yeah. How d’you know?"
He didn't tell me.
I asked a teacher; she said she didn’t know how he could have known but she might ask around a bit. So my teacher asked the teacher of that guy if he could please drop by and properly explain himself to me, and possibly convince me that he hadn’t dug around private information because God knows what they keep in those poorly-protected files at that school. He didn't show up, of course, but when school was out, I spotted him. Grrr, the guts to confuse me like that and not show up! And yes, he was kind of handsome, in a mysterious, devil-may-care (about your secrets)-sort of way, but also in a gelly-sort-of-way. When I think about it, there’s probably more gel than mystery to him.

But all of these snippets are, of course, written in a first person narrative. I feel very comfortable with that, but the downside is that Nimue might just start to sound like everyone else I’ve written first person with – though they’re not full-fleshed characters, because I usually reserve the style for short stories only. The exceptions are Chandra, but she is ancient by now, and Rosen. I think Rosen was lovely, but he’s miles away from anything Nimue is ever going to be, not in the first place because he had a weenie instead of boobs. (The other reasons being that he was at least thirty and a convicted serial killer, but why am I more disturbed about me commenting on his genitals?)
Also, changing styles is going to be such a  drag. I’m near 100 pages, and I’d have to alter every. bloody. sentence to change Nimue’s voice into first person. And will it really solve the problem of finding a steady, fresh voice for her? And then I’m not even talking about my issues with the story’s pacing, or the way that plot points are linking into each other.
I find myself occasionally wondering, what would [enter admired YA-writer here] do? Lyra, for example, worked very well in third person narrative, she is extremely memorable, as is Jena from Wildwood Dancing, and even Mara from Exodus. But that’s just the point, isn’t it? It wouldn’t matter what Pullman or Marillier or Bertagna would do, because first person or third person, they’d pull it off just as well. And here I am, and though I have been rewriting for the better, it’s still not IT. I haven’t found my voice. Or rather: Nimue’s voice, because that’s what really matters.

 How Caer March should have been constructed

Because I am a geek. I’ve been scrutinizing the web for Iron Age hillfort reconstructions and have finally come to the conclusion that Caer March, the way we have portrayed it in the rp of The Vale of the White Horse, really isn’t right. At all.

Of course, a ‘hillfort’ is way too deceiving in the first place, because I rather think of a castle-like fort on the top of the hill. At least we’ve still got the hill-part correct. The way I see it, we have constructed Caer March like this:
Coming up the hill, there’s an entrance gate – probably not the only one but definitely the biggest – leading into a courtyard which may be square or round. Left and right are several smaller buildings; there’s a granary, stables, the round washing room, a smithy and at least a few workshops, one of which is now Morcant’s for wood. But this is a small and rather desolate place, so it wouldn’t have much more than the bare necessities and I cannot think of anything else there might be in the closest vicinity of the actual home. So then there is the entrance into the caer itself. First, a hallway, leading up to different parts of the interior, the main route probably going straight to the Great Hall, which has a higher platform with several tables for dining, then a lower part for lounging and conferencing. This would be were the tapestries hang, where Marcus Iulius usurped Tudwrig’s stool and where Rufus didn’t but still usurped his power.
Of the next greatest importance are Briallen’s and Tudwrig’s rooms or the “family quarters”, even though they are quite a bit apart from each other. Tudwrig’s tower would be on the far end, looking over the figure of the white horse below. Some other parts are described as well, like the private room close to the Great Hall, the kitchen, a room where Braegne stored the linen and some minor outside places like the garden beneath Briallen’s chambers.
Some unmentioned but assumed places are the pastures and fields just outside the caer, perhaps on the other side of the settlement, where they keep their livestock and crops.
If not a castle, this is at least the layout of a keep. But this is probably far too medieval and we’re talking about an Iron Age construction here.
Well. Technically, the celtic Iron Age ended with the Roman invasion, or that’s what read yesterday. So technically, this might be considered the very, very early stages of the Dark Ages, however – it’s only been a few years since the Romans really got as far as Dobunni territory, even though the Dobunni surrendered to them even before they actually arrived.
So below is a construction of what I think Caer March should initially have looked like. But there are complications, of course. I read about Iron Age settlements that finally were deserted once a Roman town was built in close vicinity. And in sub-Roman Britain, there were plenty of rich villa’s spread around. Is or isn’t this the Romano-British culture we’re writing about?
It is, of course, in the strictest sense, especially considering the Dobunni who adapted to Romano-British style as soon as the first Roman stepped over the hills. And yet it is obviously not, since things are only starting to get moving towards that change and Caer March has really been around since the Bronze Age.
Another impossibility is the initial lack of settlement around the caer. Or well, I suppose it is possible, but strange if you look at the layout below. No wonder Briallen thought it was spooky – it must have looked like a ghost town.

Roundhouses obviously, but only a few, since Uffington Castle / Caer March is a relatively small place. I’ve seen reconstructions of Maiden Castle, which is the biggest hillfort in Great Britain and you can obviously see that it harboured a large community.
Only one rampart surrounding the whole thing, as opposed to some other hillforts that seemed to have had several trenches and ditches, as well as palisade walls. I don’t know if there’s any evidence of palisade walls on the rampart of Uffington Castle, but for the sake of the story I’m just assuming they’re there, at least when the Roman settlement grows.



1. The chieftain’s roundhouse. I’ve seen an example of a hillfort with a smaller, round place within, like an extra-secluded or fortified place and it seemed to have a rather largish roundhouse surrounded by smaller ones. Taking this example, this should be Tudwrig’s large house, big enough to accommodate several family members (should he have them). The smaller buildings around would be workshops, maybe stables for the livestock or even the houses of his few servants and their own families. Studying roundhouse interiors, it’s obvious that there were hardly any separate rooms, let alone a tower for Tudwrig to hide away in. Briallen’s survival chances just went down to zero, unless one of the smaller houses would have been her own private accommodation.
2. The north east entrance, probably with a gate on the inside of the wall, so that the passage would be through a sort of narrow mouth. Palisade walls seem likely. This is actually a lot closer to the White Horse figure than we seem to assume in the story. Either way, the road here is called the Ridgeway and leads to the hill figure.
3. The dark green shape is actually supposed to be a rampart with a deepish trench. I made them dark green, but in reality there would have been an absence of grass, quite like the horse figure, and the white chalk lines would have been a prominent sight in the landscape.
4. A few roundhouses, each large enough to harbour a family. Roundhouses usually seemed to have had drainage trenches around them, and maybe even a garden. But, in the case of Caer March, they were probably unoccupied. Or maybe there weren’t there at all until the Romans came.
5. Fields. Most hillforts seemed to have been made up largely from fields. Especially in the case of the Dobunni, who were farmers and craftsmen, agriculture would have been the main source of living. But again, most of these would probably have been hardly more than wasteland upon Briallen’s arrival.
6. Livestock, cattle. There would have been some, as mentioned in the story. Probably cows, oxen, sheep, chickens and swines. There were definitely some dogs around and also horses. No cats.

The story assumed that the Romans decided to build a settlement so close that it brushed against the hillfort and the White Horse. This seems fairly reasonably within the setting of an actual castle, but seeing as this hillfort-structure is nothing but a fortified settlement in its own right, I’m thinking it would have made more sense for them to start building inside the walls. Then again, Maiden Castle grew uninhabited when a nearby Roman town was build.
Anyway, the Roman settlement should have looked somewhat like this:




Again, a palisade wall (though with no obvious entrances, but that’s just my fault), so close to the White Horse that Briallen rightly remarked that they had no permission to build even an inch closer because that was holy ground.
On a whole, it looks like a nonsensical construction to me.
1. The Dobunni quarter, or the roundhouses in Celtic Iron Age style, generally huddling close to the wall. This is, of course, where Essylt and Morcant have made their new home, close to the exit of 2.
2. The entrance/exit of the Roman settlement, though probably one less often used. It leads directly up the hill and to the White Horse, the Blowing Stone. After that, the hill grows into the forest where Essylt and Morcant initially emerged from. The road to Wayland’s Smithy, by the way, is in the opposite direction, so Briallen and Tudwrig crossing the White Horse on their way to it makes no sense at all.
3. The red blots are the Roman villa’s, which are so alien to Briallen. And really, I have no idea how the Roman settlers would have built their houses, or in what shape and order they may have been constructed. The largest blot – that is, house – directly underneath the number 3, is Rufus’ own villa, or so I imagine.
4. The story mentioned a market square, where Rhywallon spotted Marcus Iulius in the early stages of the building of the settlement, and where Essylt first saw a glimple of Udd Wyll. I dunno, logic tells me it would probably have been somewhere in the middle, but who knows? I’m thinking that workshops might be build there rather than the villa’s.
5. This is the Stuff Outside the Settlement and I don’t really know. Likely another entrance here. Maybe this is where Higueid trapped Gwenllian (and Higueid was trapped by Rufus), though my instincts tell me that was actually closer to the original rampart of the hillfort. And even then, dragging the whole body across the hill of the White Horse, to burn it at the endge of the forest, seems inefficient and illogical. And since that does not describe Rhywallon at all, this is yet another hint that the whole construction is faulty. Damn.

Sometimes, the smallest things can feel like a knife through your heart.
This was definitely one of those sharper moments.

I think a horse, or a large cat. But probably a horse - they're so earthy and grounded.

Forgiveness increases in power when the other is slave to old grudges and unforgiving thoughts – in the end, they turn into bitter, lonely persons.
But if in such a way you wield it as a weapon, is it still the right thing to do?

I don't know what to say. Don't know what to think. Wish I could be angry, but mostly I feel betrayed and hurt.

I think I will try to update more to LJ and do less with Facebook, because Facebook is pretty annoying, actually.
It's not that I have deep secrets to divulge, but I think I like it more that I can write in a place that is solely mine and I can write whatever I want.

We need to change

I watched the National Geographic documentary, called A world without oil. It was rather a doomsday scenario and not quite realistic, but it showed some good points. And it got me very interested. So I started to look into this stuff a bit more; you know, from Low Impact Houses (Aardehuizen in Dutch) to other informative movies about Peakoil and global warming, mass consumption and so-called Transition Towns, which is also being realized in Groningen. This is stuff about changing the way, the underlying scheme, of today’s society and economy. And of our lives. Because, I have this feeling that the biggest problem isn’t that we don’t have alternative solutions…it’s that we are so dead afraid to switch from one lifestyle to another. We think we can’t live without the luxuries we’ve obtained these past 150 years. But why? We’ve been living on this earth for thousands of years without all that stuff. I wouldn’t say that all was fine all the time, but the thing is – we don’t have to go back to Iron Age living. Or medieval times. There are sustainable energy sources that are clean. We just never got around investing enough in it to make it really…a full alternative. But in The Story of Stuff – or rather, on the website of the Story of Stuff, but another video, the woman said this:

You can only compromise to a point, before a solution isn’t really a solution. […] This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. We can’t solve it with the mindset that got us into this mess. We need something new. It won’t be easy, but it’s time we dream bigger. It’s time to design a climate solution that will really work.

It’s time we actually stop being afraid for something that doesn’t have to hurt us at all. As a matter of fact, I believe it will strongly benefit us. Make us healthier. And happier. So what’s NOT to like?