Dark Hearts Love Too

Monday, December 24, 2018

Happy Xmahanukwanzyule 2018

Image copyright Annalise 1988

(This post was written on the Deliver Me blog and cross-posted)

Happy holidays if you celebrate them and best wishes for prosperity in the approaching year!

It has been an eventful and not terribly lucrative year here in the World of Nether, but many of our efforts are still in their infancy and I like to think that things are looking up and that perseverance still counts for something. To a degree, these are uncharted waters that we are navigating with the rise of the gig economy. So, what can we do to make this unprecedented situation work for us?

For my own part, I have a knack for speaking my mind, such as it is, and for telling it like it is from my point of view. This has tended to get me in trouble, but the older I get the less fucks I give.

However, I do not intend to use this so-called skill only to bitch about everything that pisses me off. I would also like to use it to help others.

For many years, I worked as a nurse's aide and then a nurse. I helped those who were too infirm to care for their own needs. This included the elderly and special needs children. However, my own constitution declined sharply in the past couple of years, and I can no longer do the physically demanding jobs that I had been doing since 1988.

My income declined sharply when I was no longer able to work as a nurse. Between 2015 and 2017, I was pulling up to $1000 per week if I worked 60 hour weeks. However, I was constantly exhausted and always in a mental fog working this many hours. In some ways I'm amazed that I never made any critical errors.

I am unable to work full time at this point, and my disabilities put me out of the running for most "normal" jobs. Because of my health issues, I need Medicaid. But if I make more than $1100 a month, I lose Medicaid. To me, it seems as if I'm being punished for being disabled. I think that punishing people for being disabled is one whole steaming load of crap. I also think that Charles Dickens would have a field day writing about the current political climate in the era of Lord Dampnut. In fairness, being British, he might be more inclined to write about Brexit and Lord Dampnut's British soul twin, Boris Johnson.

In any case, I am trying to piece together a life that works. Other than being broke and physically unable to do certain things that I used to be able to do without issue, there are many ways in which I like my life after disability better than my life before disability. I like not being enslaved by a time clock. I much prefer soft deadlines to Draconian ones.

Overall, I am a creative rather than a practical person. If I could, I would spend my days writing, learning to draw, engaging in Photoshop Phucquery, hand crocheting, loom knitting, woodworking, making soap and candles, and whatever other artsy fartsy crafty wafty pursuit happened to strike my fancy. I attempt to keep my artsy fartsy side separate from the Deliver Me blog, but there is inevitable bleed-through, and I'm not going to fight the tide too hard.

If you are interested in opportunities for writers or occasional shares of poetry and prose, visit the Horror Harridans Writing Sisterhood page.

If you are interested in WAH opportunities, recipes, and suggestions for saving money, visit the Deliver Me blog.

If you are interested in reading high quality Kindle smut, visit the Naughty Netherworld Press blog. This blog is safe for work, but some of the places it links to aren't.

If you are interested in obtaining a Tarot reading to help you kick-start the new year, click here.

May you and yours have a pleasant holiday if you celebrate, or a good day in general if you don't.

Best wishes,

Cie

This offer is valid through December 30, 2018

This offer is always in season

Thursday, November 1, 2018

I Am Grateful

As someone with a rather chaotic life, everything is catch as catch can. I've tried meditating, but I have trouble doing so. This video is brief enough that it allows me to focus fully on it and to help myself with the brief, encouraging, but not sappy affirmations.

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 31: What It Is

Love is an endless

Eternal infinity

Sharing our sorrow

Some patches of happiness

In our purgatory; life

~Cie~

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 30: Shrouded

So everyone dances

Swinging along the moon

Singing their joyful tune

Swaying to the rhythm

Sweethearts are so in love

Standing in the shadows

Shrouded figures grieving

~Cie~

Monday, October 29, 2018

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 29: Three of Swords

At the Beginning of the End Version 6

Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie

In unity were we well met

But that was before

My soul was crushed by the duality

Of everything and nothingness

When my soul was still filled with belief

In things spiritual and mystical

Now nothing is left but pain and sadness

Within this empty human life

You were perfection

I was lucky to find you

In a life full of suffering

You were a gift of great auspiciousness

I was destroyed when I lost you

And now all I have

Is loneliness

And nothingness

Eternally

Ondina Rvaga

Regent, Lost Zecor

Notes for Nerds:

This is one of the story poems for Team Netherworld's WIP, Fetch.

The story, at its core, is Cthulhu Mythos fan fiction combined with elements from an original Star Trek episode (The Lights of Zetar) which gave me nightmares from the time I first saw it at the age of ten years old.

Ondina Rvaga is a reluctant princess of Western Zecor on the planet Zetar 6. She spends her time working in a laboratory, using her empathic gifts to heal the victims of her violent and sadistic brother King Qweh if she can, compassionately dispatching them to the realm of spirit if she cannot.

The people of West Zecor love the Princess Ondina and know her to be kind, but they also realize that she does not have much power to help them. Her brother is extremely powerful and controls the armies of West Zecor. Brutal soldiers happily do his bidding.

Ondina is miserable in her existence. She does not expect to find love. She had been expected to marry her twenty-four-year-old half-brother, Prince Qweh, when she was twelve years old. She was resigned to her fate, believing herself blessed until she discovered Qweh's true, brutal nature. At that point, she used her healing gifts in reverse and destroyed her reproductive organs so she could never conceive an heir for the corrupt regime.

Qweh knew that Ondina loved her people and couldn't bear to see them in pain. Over the years, he reveled in watching her suffer as she attempted to heal those devastated by the brutal attacks of his armies.

After Qweh groped her during a scouting mission, Ondina attempted to commit suicide by jumping from a precipice. She was encouraged by the spirit of Serab's twin brother Joub to repair her injuries. He promised her that someone who would bring the love that she could never have imagined was about to enter her life.

Days later, Serab was apprehended by King Qweh's lackeys and brought to Ondina as a joke. The king laughingly postulated that the tiny Serab, who stood approximately five feet three inches tall, replace Ondina's previous bodyguard, who had been slain by Qweh in a fit of rage. Ondina, however, did not see the suggestion as a joke. She claimed Serab as her bodyguard and assistant and treated him with a compassion which he had not thought possible from a member of West Zecor's wicked royal family.

Serab and Ondina were smitten with each other from the start but initially attempted to keep their feelings in check.

When the ill-advised sorcery of King Qweh under the direction of Yadira, High Priestess of Nyarlathotep, caused the demon sultan Azathoth to trigger the small sun in Zetar's binary star system to begin consuming the large sun, the majority of Zecor's residents fled to other worlds. Ondina, Serab, and Ondina's longtime friend and caretaker Xegran along with Qweh and his most devoted lackeys were still on the planet when the gamma rays rendered their spaceships useless.

Ondina had planned all along to take herself, Serab, and Xegran through a gate to "the realm of the Yellow Sun," a peaceful, primitive world many light years away. Qweh demanded that Ondina bring himself and his toadies along as well. When she refused, he beheaded Xegran and brutalized Ondina. Serab was slain when he stepped in to defend his beloved. In spite of his protests, Ondina dispatched his spirit and that of Xegran to the Realm of the Yellow Sun.

Although Qweh and his lackeys were unable to invade the new world, they were not doomed to an inevitable death. Utilizing scientific and mystical abilities taught to him by the powerful High Priestess Yadira, Qweh caused the astral bodies of himself and his companions to form a community of pure energy; for all intents and purposes, a giant, malevolent brain. The hive entity sped away from the doomed world, leaving Ondina to her fate.

The traumatized Ondina believed herself to be at fault for the death of her old friend and her beloved. She tenderly lay each of their bodies in state beside her and spent the next six hours dying with only her regrets for company. She resolved to stay well away from Serab forever so that Qweh would not punish her by harming him in future lifetimes.

The heartbroken Serab never forgot Ondina. In lifetime after lifetime, he attempted to find her, although he forgot the exact nature of his original purpose.

Serab was reunited with Ondina during his most recent lifetime, although they did not encounter each other in the flesh. He was, for all intents and purposes, part of the spirit world. Although his body still lived, he was no longer able to function properly through it. Gerry was a Fetch, an Irish term essentially describing a ghost which has a body that still lives but through which it is temporarily or permanently unable to interface.
Ondina had reincarnated as Pepper Baiij, a troubled woman with strong mediumistic abilities which she tended to write off as delusion. Pepper knew who Gerry was. Along with his brother, Paul, he was a well-known musician whose work she admired.
Pepper was the only person who could help Gerry, who was being pursued by Yadira Root. This left Gerry in a precarious position. On a good day, Pepper believed strongly in her abilities and in Gerry's affection for her. On a bad day, her self-deprecation caused her to believe that she was merely insane, and/or that Gerry was yet another cad who would use her to get what he wanted and then leave her high and dry.

The story is far from finished, although it has, sadly, had to be back-burnered recently. These story-poems are, I feel, a valid form of keeping it viable.