mokie | Reading

Every day- in the dawn- flocks of starlings fly through our air space, heading inland. Then in the evening they follow the same flight path back towards the sea. My guess is they spend the night roosting on- or rather under- the pier; all those struts and girders like a man-made forest.

We were talking about the sea at the lunch party on Saturday and I dug a quote from Swinburne from the memory banks. Yesterday I looked it up and found I'd misquoted.

Swinburne wrote:

"I will go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea"

And I had rememered it as

"I will go back to the great grey mother,
Mother of gods and men, the sea."

Actually I think my version is an improvement. The sea isn't "sweet", "grey" is much better- more evocative, and I think "mother of gods and men" has the edge over the original.....

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There were five of us- and two dogs- sitting round after a big lunch, and Jacky suggested me should all tell our life stories. It was like the set up for an Edwardian novel or short story collection- Conrad or Buchan- except that this wasn't happening in "The Club" but in our front room and we weren't "old Africa hands" but four gals and me- who, on these occasions, figure as an honorary gal. So, five mini-autobiographies. The dogs weren't called upon though Molly, who is a Roumanian rescue dog, would have had a tale to tell.

It took my mind off the war I'm expecting to break out any time now in the Middle-East between (initially) Iran, Israel and the USA.

And stopped me thinking about those photos of Prince Andrew (I refuse to pretend he's not a member of the Royal Family) down on all fours beside a young woman who is lying prone on the parquet floor of some horrible mansion- and the Epsteiny stuff about the Pres and Bill Gates-...

Or about the two dead in Minneapolis.....

By the way, have you heard Springsteen's protest song, Streets of Minneapolis? It's like a return to the glory days- the old lion awake and roaring.....

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Current Mood: busy

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Current Mood: busy

Hypnagogic images are the ones that come to you when you're falling asleep and hypopompic images are the ones that come when you're waking up. I just asked Google because I can never remember which is which.

I always enjoy them.

Sometimes you get snatches of dream action or conversation. Sometimes you get a mental picture that flashes up and is gone. They're very hard to catch hold of. Try too hard and you risk kicking yourself back into a fully waking state.

This morning I saw some town in the middle East as it would have been at some time in the past- just a few square white-washed buildings in a rocky valley. Then I saw it as it would be now, with the skyline beyond the valley full of high-rises. The whole vision lasted about a second- or less. It was unconnected to anything before or after.

Where on Earth- or out of the Earth- do these things come from?

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I believe we've had US presidents quite as wicked as the present one- perhaps wickeder- but we've never had one who was anything like as disreputable. Others lied but never this transparently, others waged war and overthrew foreign governments but generally either secretly or with plausible pretexts, others were quite as amoral but managed to keep their financial and sexual misbehaviour under wraps. No earlier president threw his weight around like a third world dictator. No earlier president was quite as stupid.....

And no earlier president did anything like as much damage to his country's image in the world. All the others either built or sustained the American Empire. This one has destroyed it.

I dreamed the black silhouette of a man identified as my father was trying to get in through the bedroom window. After which a wild black thing with claws leaped onto the bed. Oddly enough I wasn't scared. My thoughts were more "This is all very inconvenient." I assumed the thing with claws was the cat and I'd have to get up and sort him out. And then my waking brain told me that the thing with claws was very much bigger than the cat. Also silent- and Marlowe is one of the noisiest things on four legs. "O good," I concluded, "I don't have to do anything about any of this...."

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I like the story (which I believe is true though I don't insist on you believing me) about the traveller on the inner planes who met an ET and asked them if they'd ever had an incarnation on Earth- to which the ET replied "I wouldn't stoop so low."

Thiis sounds contemptuous but probably wasn't. The ET- insensitive to nuance because English is not their first language- would have done a mind meld and extracted the words they thought appropriate from the Earthling's memory banks- and all they were actually saying was they had no intention of undertaking such a difficult assignment. Earth is known through all the worlds as a particulary difficult planet- exceptionally low vibration, exceptionally low everything else apart from opportunities for learning and growth- and these are exceptionally high. The tougher the game the greater the reward- and those of us who come down here and submit to Earth conditions are acknowledged as stupidly brave....

I also like the story (almost certainly true) about the four year old who told his mother, "I'm bored with this reality; I can't fly, I don't have X-ray vision, I can't read minds....."

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So I'm trying to add the Previous/Next links to my Navlinks Module using a code that was previously posted here, but I'm having issues with the Previous link showing up regardless of whether or not there's previous entries (I'm testing on this journal with public entries for reference).

The code I'm using in my theme layer is this:

# code by ninetydegrees/foxfirefey
function print_module_navlinks() {
 
  var Page p = get_page();
  var string prev_link;
  var string next_link;
  
  if ( $p isa EntryPage ) {
      var EntryPage ep = get_page() as EntryPage;
      var Entry e = $ep.entry;
      var Link prev = $e->get_link("nav_prev");
      $prev_link = """<a href="$prev.url">$prev.caption</a>""";
      var Link next = $e->get_link("nav_next");
      $next_link = """<a href="$next.url">$next.caption</a>""";
  } elseif ( $p isa DayPage ) {
      var DayPage dp = get_page() as DayPage;
      $prev_link = """<a href="$dp.prev_url">$*text_day_prev</a>""";
      $next_link = """<a href="$dp.next_url">$*text_day_next</a>""";
  } elseif ( $p isa RecentPage ) {
      var RecentPage rp = get_page() as RecentPage;
      if ( $rp.nav.backward_count > 0 ) { 
          $prev_link = """<a href="$rp.nav.backward_url">""" + get_plural_phrase( $rp.nav.backward_count, "text_skiplinks_back" ) + "</a>"; 
      }
      if ( $rp.nav.forward_count > 0 ) { 
          $next_link = """<a href="$rp.nav.forward_url">""" + get_plural_phrase( $rp.nav.forward_count, "text_skiplinks_forward" ) + "</a>"; 
      }
  } elseif ( $p isa MonthPage ) {
      var MonthPage mp = get_page() as MonthPage;
  	if ($mp.prev_url != "") { $prev_link = "<a href='$mp.prev_url'>Previous</a>"; }
  	if ($mp.next_url != "") { $next_link = "<a href='$mp.next_url'>Next</a>"; }
  }

var string[] navlinks_order = [];
  var string{} navlinks_urls = {};
  var string{} navlinks_text = {};
 
  $navlinks_order =
    [
        "entries",
        "archive",
        "read",
        "profile",
    ];
 
 $navlinks_urls =
    {   "profile" => "$p.base_url/profile",
        "entries" => "$p.base_url",  
        "archive" => "$p.base_url/archive",
        "read" => "$p.base_url/read",

};
 
 $navlinks_text =
    {   "profile" => "Profile",
        "archive" => "Archive",        
        "read" => "Read",        
        "entries" => "Recent",      
        
    };

open_module("navlinks", "", "");
    var string[] links = [];
    
    if ( $prev_link ) {
        $links[size $links] = $prev_link;
    }    
    
    foreach var string k ($navlinks_order) {
        if ($navlinks_urls{$k} != "") {
            var string css = """ class="$k" """;
            if ($p.view == $k) { $css = """ class="current $k" """; }
            $links[size $links] = """<a href="$navlinks_urls{$k}"$css>$navlinks_text{$k}</a>""";
        }
    }
    
    if ( $next_link ) {
        $links[size $links] = $next_link;
    }
     
    
    print_module_list($links);
    close_module();
}

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mokie

January 2025

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Base style: Abstractia by chiming
Theme: Black Lace by nornoriel

Page generated Monday, 2 February 2026 09:31 pm

About dream/reading tags

y-* tags categorize dreams.

For types: beyond the obvious, there are dreamlets (very short dreams), stubs (fragment/outline of a partially-lost dream), gnatter (residual impression of a lost dream).

For characters: there are roles (characters fitting an archetype), symbols (characters as symbols), and sigils (recurring figures with a significance bigger than a single dream's role/symbolism).

x-* tags categorize books.

Material is categorized primarily by structure, style and setting. If searching for a particular genre, look for the defining features of that genre, e.g. x-form:nonfic:bio, x-style:horror, x-setting:dystopian.

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January 2025

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