And these, our thoughts, wander as they may...

I have finally read Neil Gaiman's Sandman, from the beginning to the end, or beginning to new beginning, as you'll have it. And I dance along where the master storyteller wills me, and loose a good week's worth of work, or ought to have...but it seems that I sent things out, finished designs, in a kind of disconnected reality, waking dream. And it would be odd and fannish and overindulgent for me to take this odd mood as coming from a book, even from a masterpiece, if I could not explain that this happens to me all the time. Sandman, in particular, is meant to make one think about stories, and I mused on their effect on me. Not all stories. Not told, not acted...written. Written and drawn, they pull me into an odd world, and I lose time, and have remind myself that I have other sense than sight, that tomorrow I will go to work, that the world is real. Is this imagination? It doesn't happen when I am the creator. When I write, or draw, or scheme, then it is the fast fever of creation, and I have trouble sitting still. When I read, I'm pulled down onto chair or bed, and everything becomes so slow...save when I take a break and pace, trapped. It's almost dangerous, to become pulled into the mood of a story. So I finish the series, and water my plants, and talk to my neighbor, and talk to my plants. I do not water the neighbor. The neighbor has a sprinkler, and has watered himself.

Bits of wisdom have come my way, mostly from when westrider and I interutped whatever the other was reading. These, I shall reveal to you:

The word and state 'bedraggled' has in it's nature innocence. Thus lettuces, bunnies, and small children can be bedraggled. You can not have a bedraggled warship, or watermelon (watermelons, being as they are known for tendances to vampirism, are not as innocent as they first appear).

Morpheus' hair owes something to David Bowie in Labyrinth, me thinks.

If you set out to write a tale, and you set your tale in a tiny village, thinking to save yourself some trouble, your tale will come to greif. In the small village, everything is defined and known and clear - that is where we get lettuces. That is where the bunny meat comes from. He is the smith, and the only so in town. The system of the sewer, the groceries, and the whereabouts of the town sot are all transparent. Those who place their tale in a big city, a bigger world, know that they need not explain the groceries and the refuse - it's all dealt with around the corner, just out of the way, in someplace the story hasn't ventured yet, and will not venture. It's easier, writing in a big world - there are more places for things to hide in.

None of this would be called wisdom, except that I am in an odd mood, and I must either call it wisdom or admit it is trite.

Also, I have finished my cheese.