#i've been living here all my life but when I travel to somewhere near sea level i come back dead

[whosname]

Soroche (altitude sickness) is real

[cthulhubert]

Alan Dean Foster's "Journeys of the Catechist" was a formative book series for young me. The main character, Ehomba, a diligent shepherd and sage, was directly inspirational. I think I read it when I was 16, so more than half my life ago (sits down dizzy with that realization).

It also stands out in my memories because it had a much more folkloric tone than most of the fantasy books I'd read around then.

I've had... mixed results on rereading books I loved when I was young (ditto watching shows etc). But I decided I might as well bite the bullet, see what new things I could spot.

Thankfully, this one was still good. Well. It had its flaws, but they were ones I recognized back then. The big one is that it... honestly maybe should've been condensed to one book. By the end of Carnivores of Light and Darkness, you've seen most of Foster's good ideas, so Into the Thinking Kingdoms and Triumph of Souls felt repetitive.

Spoilers:

A small handful of things I'd glossed over before stuck out to me. More women hit on Ehomba than I'd realized, and he briefly considers cheating with one before choosing not to.

Unlike most of the fantasy books I read around then, Catchist had no map. And the book is never explicit about this one, so it was fun to realize that the setting is, in fact, a parallel, or possibly future Earth. Ehomba starts his journey somewhere in Africa, crosses the Sahara and the Mediterranean, travels through the Iberian peninsula, and crosses the ocean to the Americas and travels there. I'd realized this in my first read through, actually. But it was neat to see it hold up. Can't give my past self too many points, because parallel or future post-apocalypse, or some mythological pseudo-past Earth was a really common fantasy trope in the late 80s through the 90s.

His swashbuckling rogue side kick was stupider than I remembered.

One of the things I really loved about the series was the ending. The whole series is because Ehomba has taken on the task of a dying knight who washed ashore near his village: to secure the return of a princess, kidnapped to become the bride of an evil sorcerer emperor across the sea. The twist is that once he gets there, she doesn't want to return! She's fallen in love with the evil emperor, and wants to stay. Unfortunately, says Ehomba, my mission isn't do what you want, it's get you home, and the mission is what I have sworn to do. So he counter-kidnaps her, drags her back to her people. Then, obviously, since this is a dick move, he re-anti-counter-kidnaps her and they adventure back to the empire where he drops her off before heading home.

Here's the biggest one I missed in my initial read through. I remembered her saying that she'd realized the emperor's virtue one day. She'd discovered that he was some other, highly discriminated against race (I read it as something like a neanderthal with stubby legs), constantly wearing armor to hide it. Somehow I'd come to an interpretation that he was actually a good guy but playing the role of a harsh ruler to get his people to work together. That "evil" was mostly propaganda.

NOPE. The man is vile. He visits a fate worse than death on a servant for dropping one of his plates. He spends large amounts of his kingdoms wealth on frivolous entertainments for himself. The thing that had been clearly written between the lines, that young me still missed? The princess has a fetish for his people. She is almost sweating when she talks about his "virtue". That's the reason she wants to stay. She gets hornt up for the protruding brow ridge.

(No idea where this one came from, but somehow I'd even remembered thinking that he didn't have much magic, that that was all showmanship to mislead people. But no, he's turning people into living furniture with a wave of his hand.)

Honestly, this revelation is even more in line with some of the themes of the book. He has an almost daoist attitude. Ehomba isn't out there to fix everyone's problems. He's not gonna defeat the evil emperor. Sure he'll extend a helping hand if it's on the way (a favorite memory was him giving a doll to a little girl who's been kicked out of her home by a sheriff of Nottingham type; who realizes the doll is special and steals it; the doll kills him that night). But undertaking his chosen burden is what's really important to him.

I also need to reiterate how dumb the swashbuckling rogue sidekick is. He asks, one last time, if Ehomba isn't really a wizard. Ehomba, having solved 95% of their problems with tools he mentions were given to him by his fellow villagers: "I promise you. I am no more a wizard than anybody in my village." That night he initiates his son into adulthood, taking him to the special cave where his people store their lost knowledge of magic on books with pages of carved ruby.

[mikimeiko]

Day 6 and 7 - intermission

I couldn't make the washing machine work, so I spent the morning living the cottage core life washing my clothes by hand XD.

Viareggio is a smallish city, and my uncle's house is close enough to the center, the station and the sea that every time I'm here I enjoy the life of the fully walkable city: walking to the supermarket! Going out just to get ice-cream! Walking to the beach! It's fun, though sometimes you would like the option not to walk but you can't because the buses don't cover everything.

I tried going to the sea for a swim in the afternoon, but it was full, FULL of seaweed so I walked for a bit on the beach trying to find a place with less seaweed, and the moment I found it and stepped into the water... I saw a giant* jellyfish ;_; so no swim for me ;_;

*The jellyfish was not, in fact, giant. But it wasn't small either and anyway who cares about the size I hate all jellyfish ;_; (I actually like jellyfish very much when there's no danger of contact XD)

I'm quite enjoying this pause from the intense travelling while still being somewhere that is not home. It's very hot (though luckily there's also a little bit of breeze), so I've been mostly staying inside near the fan, binge watching The Sandman (IT'S VERY GOOD) and reading. This morning I went for a walk to the pier (though I didn't reach the end because the sun was unforgiving and there's no shade on it).

Since it was so hot I waited till late in the afternoon to go out again. I went for a walk in the pineta (the pine tree public park), a strange mix of Italian summer party (the central part, with bouncy castles, trampolines, bikes for hire and cafés) and quiet tranquility (on the sides, where you almost feel like you're in proper nature).

Tomorrow morning very, very early I'll be on the road again :D

Intro | Go back to Day 1 | Continue to Day 8

[daydreaming-in-daisies]

just me complaining/venting about my burnout under the cut feel free to read lol

it's become pretty obvious that i need some sort of significant change in my life. let me just first highlight all of the things that are bothering me at the moment:

1. my full time job consuming damn near all of my time during the week. it was especially busy this week, leaving me exhausted and not wanting to do other things. it's work from home, which is better than having to go to some depressing ass cubicle. but i literally can't leave my house for most of the day, it sucks. especially since it's summer and i want to go out and take walks, get groceries, eat out, etc. i get pretty bad seasonal depression during winter, so during summer there's a pretty noticeable difference in my mood. however, it's a bit different this year given all the stuff i'm doing right now. this is literally an entry level customer service job, why the fuck do i need to be doing this bullshit all day?

2. the fact that i haven't graduated college yet. i know it's now pretty common to take more than 4 years to graduate college (most of my friends took or are taking like 5-8 years), but it just all feels so tedious now. i feel i've been in school for too long and i also really dislike my major, so i just feel tired of it all. im really hoping i'll be able to graduate by the end of this year and that my mental health, having to take additional credits, etc wont get in the way of that.

3. i've started marketing for my business and even though i literally just started a few weeks ago, i feel shitty about the fact that the account isn't getting much engagement. apparently, the IG algorithm has changed recently and now favors accounts that are spending money on ads. i'm gonna test out some other methods, but i just hate the fact that i'm not getting the results i was expecting. i know i sound mad impatient lol. i just really want this to work because i genuinely don't know what else i want to do as a career for now. tbh, i dont even know if i care to have a "career" in this shitty capitalist system.

4. i'm kind of over living in the state that i do. the quality of life is here is great and i do like it when it's warm out. but the thing is, it's cold as shit most of the year and i've been here for over a decade at this point. i didn't even choose to live here either lol. i don't know for sure if i just need to travel more often after i graduate or if i just need to straight up leave, but i have a feeling im gonna have to move out sometime fairly soon (in the next few years, i mean). i want to live somewhere warm, i was looking at san diego, santa monica, and carmel-by-the-sea (all in CA). though it's pretty expensive over there. moving is also contingent on how much money i have, which is why i'm so stressed out about my business. the other alternative would just be to move into my own place and travel as often as i can.

5. i'm just now coming to terms with the fact that i spent all of my teenage years and early 20s in a cult and didn't even realize it until recently. i can't give much detail as to what kind of cult it was, otherwise my identity will be super obvious to anyone who might potentially know me reading this. i can say that i officially left in december 2021, but i essentially ignored the ways in which it traumatized me for months and i actually cried while talking about it to a therapist a few days ago. i try to move on from things that no longer serve me fairly quickly, so i just ignored it for months. but it was essentially a cult of toxic positivity mixed in with pseudoscientific bullshit, gaslighting, victim blaming, spiritual "hustle culture", and conspiracies (depending on who you talk to). its super popular now and you've probably heard of it, like i cant even go online without seeing something about it. it's not like i get severely triggered whenever i see it. i don't start crying or hyperventilating or anything like that, but i do flinch a little or make a face of annoyance or disgust, maybe even roll my eyes a bit. when people talk about it around me in person, i can't help but to get a little annoyed. if you go through my blog a little you might be able to figure out what it is. but it affected how i make friends, how i view people, how i view the world, and just about every other aspect of my life. now that its no longer a part of my life, i feel pretty hopeless without it. i genuinely thought i could do anything with my life when i was part of that cult, but now, i have certain anxieties that didnt exist before. whats funny is that the cult is pretty much the reason why i was depressed and anxious for so long. i don't feel as bad now that i've left, but i do still feel anxious and sad, but it's a different kind of anxiousness and sadness.

6. even though i've been trying to go out and make friends these past few months, i feel like i dont connect with the people i'm meeting. granted, this is just one group of girls and tbh our group chat has kind of died down. i'm trying to see if i can go to a different meetup tomorrow and hang out with some of the people there. we're just gonna go for a walk, which is much needed after feeling alone and isolated all this week. i really hope i can find some genuine, best girl friends who are similar to me. i do have good friends, but i dont see them very often. i'd like someone who i can see more consistently who i have things in common with. i've actually had a "best friend" before and would really love to have that.

7. i haven't been eating as much or as well as i should be since i tend to not eat a lot when im stressed and/or generally feeling shitty. i've also been breaking out a bit due to stress and period hormones from this past week. so yeah, i kinda look and feel like shit rn lmao.

8. capitalism and just the general state of the world and the US rn. honestly at this point im fucking tired of people doing things that aren't actually productive or helpful, like calling for random, unorganized strikes or having these lame ass protests. not trying to incite anything for legal reasons, but a whole revolution needs to happen and i don't think we're ready for that rn. it'll probably happen again, just not now. i know this issue is way bigger than me, but the cult i was in was always preaching about money being easy to get and how if you're poor it's your fault. since leaving, i've educated myself more on how fucked up capitalism is and how it really is the root of like 99% of the problems we face on earth. so yeah, fuck capitalism and fuck that cult i was in and anybody who subscribes to either of those ideas. thanks for coming to my ted talk ✨