The Mandelbear's Musings - Amethyst Rose: 18

11:13 pm - Amethyst Rose: 18

Subject: TOAST: Amethyst Rose: 18
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Date: 04 Aug 2008 23:07:35 -0700

"Hello, Bear," Mike says, reacheing for the dusty ceramic bottle of
Dutch gin.  "Haven't seen you in the Place since last year."

The Mandelbear nods as he puts a dollar on the counter.  "Been a busy
year, and fixing my news spool hasn't really been a high priority.
Neither has starting the next CD, I'm afraid."

"But you got your older daughter married off, I hear.  That's something.
Congratulations!"

"That and a couple of new songs, and new projects.  You can congratulate
me again if I ever figure out how to pay for the wedding.  Ouch!  And
yet..."  The ageing fractal slowly shakes what passes for its head, and
sighs deeply.  "Our middle daughter would have turned 18 today.  Getting
ready for college in the fall.  I can't help wondering, you know..."

He sips his gin quietly, and walks up to the chalk line; the Light of
Reality reveals an ageing hacker; his beard still neatly trimmed five
months after the wedding.

"To Amethyst Rose!" he says, punctuating the words with the crash of the
glass in the fireplace.


At table 28X, where the AIs and robots like to sit, he opens a battered
guitar case that seems to have acquired a few extra stickers since the
previous year.  "Hi, Lady!  So you've decided to stick with the AI
persona?"

A sparkle of soprano laughter.  "Been getting out and around a little,
too.  You should try it.  Now sit down and teach me all your new stuff.
Sounds like you've been writing more this year."

"Been trying a few new things."


As he sings, a rarely-used X window opens on a little clearing in a
forest of stone trees.  The rosebush, unchanged since the year before,
stands on the left-hand side, its obsidian thorns and single deep-purple
blossom gleaming softly in the perpetual twilight.

The girl who seems to live there, hard to see as always, gazes in
silence from where she stands among the trees.  At last she nods as if
in satisfaction, and turns away, her cloak the color of twilight and
shadow swirling around her.  Or was it the wind stirring the fallen
leaves?


"I don't think I'm up for setting this one to music," the Bear says on
his way out, "but it's been on my mind of late."  He leaves a sheet of
paper on the bar.

	He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

    Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,   
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,  
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths         
    Of night and light and the half light,   
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;  
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;         
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. 

	            William Butler Yeats, 1899

I'll be OK. I am OK. Going to go snuggle my Cat now. Thanks for listening.