I actually did get tagged, this time. As my last journal suggests, I've been ignoring my dA account, and I only just noticed that I got tagged by well before that journal entry, way back on my last birthday, even before I left for Hawaii.

I felt bad about having never even noticed the tag for this long....

Then I saw this part: "I went searching through deviantART, while on a library computer, and decided to look at my old account. I saw on my comments that I was tagged by a friend back in high school."

Cool. I feel much better now. ^_^

Okay, so let's sort out this tag business.

Last time I answered a tag meme, [link] I went on at great length about my sociological views on these chain-memes that ask each of us in turn to spread them to others they can ask for further distribution. I criticized the e-mails that prefer to be forwarded verbatim, encouraged people to add their own input before spreading on their memes to their friends, and I chose a tag-meme that asked questions and expected contributions from its carriers, and I took time out to answer each, most of them in a manner I thought clever. Still feeling clever, I chose a tag meme that hadn't tagged me, and in turn I didn't tag anyone with it.

I got a grand total of one (count 'em) comment on that one.

Mostly I'm not concerned with pageviews and statistical popularity, but it can be a little dispiriting when cleverness has no audience. Granted, that one comment was from someone very important to me, but still, a single comment in an expanse of emptiness is a bit akin to the classic chirping cricket trope.

Now, this meme I actually was tagged with calls for its carriers to spread it to eight people. The one who tagged me only spread it to four people. I never was much for following instructions, either, but it occurs to me that tagging people might, theoretically, increase the likelihood that anyone will notice or care that I'm writing any of this. I guess I'll try tagging twelve people, because that's just as disobedient as tagging four, and I'm a sucker for symmetry.

Unfortunately, the rest of the rules to this particular tag don't have much to offer.

The rules:
1. Post these rules.
2. Each person tagged must post 8 random (hopefully interesting) facts about themselves.
3. Tagged people should write a journal of these facts.
4. At the end of the post 8 more bloggers are tagged and named.
5. Go to their page and leave a comment telling them that they're tagged.

Eight random facts. As memes go, this one's a layer of saran wrap around however much or little contents each contributor cares to put into it. It really brings nothing to the table. Perhaps I could make it less random, and more interesting. What if I write eight facts about myself, each one of which must be thematically related to one of the eight elementals of the video game Secret of Mana?


Air: My sun sign is Libra. When I was a child, I was disappointed by my near miss - a week or so later, and I could have been a Scorpio. To a child who plays with Battle Beasts, a scorpion is a much more wicked cool, bad ass gloss sort of symbol to identify with than an inanimate object. And not even a cool-looking object, either. Scales. Who the heck wants to be scales?

I've grown up quite a bit, since then, and in due course my introspective nature brought me to the realization that my philosophy and my personality both bear all the earmarks of this airsign. I mentioned earlier in this very journal entry that I'm a sucker for symmetry. That's not the half of it. Let's just say my choice of the name "Twain" is no coincidence. I have grown into my balance, and I am proud.


Earth: In the last tag meme I answered, there was this question, and my reply:

"16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy?
A cathedral. Well, more precisely, the materials and services required to build one. If there's no limit on how multi- this millionaire can go, then the cathedral comes first, and spare no expense. Dedicate it to the wonder of the unknown, the mystery of self and other, and the belief in the fundamental understandability of all truth. And then, I'll proceed to use much of the building complex for day-to-day living, just because I really like the idea of having breakfast in a sunbeam strained through stained glass. Is that blasphemy? What is holiness? Money can't buy it, so we know what it's not."

I have given further thought to this answer, and I have decided that there are additional expenditures I would consider worthwhile, given unlimited funds. Specifically, I would acquire still more glass, build my cathedral outward in eight cardinal directions, and make each "wing" taper to a point, so that my cathedral resembles an eight-pointed star from above, with every other point much longer than the ones in between. All of the points would be greenhouse arboretums (arboreta?), each focusing on a different climate, with shades and water sprinklers to vary sunlight, heat, and humidity in accordance with the tolerance of the plants within. The four longer points would be temperate zone deciduous/coniferous forests from various parts of the world, and a circular ring would run around the perimeter of my cathedral, consisting of a central corridor and a profusion of rooms along it on both sides. The exterior of my cathedral, everywhere that wasn't glass, would be silver, polished as smooth and reflective as a mirror in great sweeping planes and curves. Overall, it would rather resemble my "Silver Star Avatar" devArt icon. Furthermore, the water sprinklers, and indeed all the plumbing system within the complex, would be interlinked and filtered for recycling purposes, and the structure would be constructed to be without exception airtight and pressure-sealed. I would even install airlocks in any entrance to the complex, and possibly emergency seals between the various sections. I would also ensure that the structural integrity of the complex was sufficient to withstand high stress, and that its surface was sufficient to withstand strong wind resistance.

You can see where this is going.

The long and the short of it is, power-hungry, deceitful, and murderous governments have been grabbing every acre of real estate on this planet since time immemorial, and in consequence there just is no place left on Earth where I can truly feel free. Maybe it's Malcolm Reynolds got me thinking, or maybe it's just knowing that self-sustaining space colonies are possible with current technology, but I want off this rock. I'm ready to sail off into the black, and leave ol' Momma Terra behind, at least for a decade or two. Go live by rules that make sense, and keep people alive, and happy with each other. Turn my gardens sideways, spin up my ringstar villa for gravity, and never need to worry about who's launching pre-emptive strikes at whom or what axis of evil is in vogue this year. Maybe if I get the self-sustaining systems efficient enough that I can run on starlight and nebula dust, I could turn my little starworld into Terra's first interstellar slowboat colony ship. Wouldn't that be something? First emissary to a far star, and no government on Earth could claim me as their own. Well. I can dream, anyway.


Fire: I love campfires. I love the way they look when they're first being born, weak and thready and trickling up over the paper or pine needles and twigs. I love they way they look when they're strong and thriving, thickly saturated with orange and yellow light, distorting the air and making the glowing cracks between the ashen cinders seem to dance and shimmer. I love the way they look when they're old and dying, increasingly widespread sparks randomly scattered across a dark, irregular landscape, like city lights as seen from a jetplane on a clear night. I think it's neat that the ashen parts look black by the light of the fire, but white if you shine a flashlight on it. I love cooking with open flames, whether it be foil-wrapped potatoes, a cast iron pot of cobbler in the coals, or even just a marshmallow impaled on a stick and toasted carefully over the heat. I even love the smell of woodsmoke, as long as it's not blowing directly into my face.

Now, the smell of gunpowder smoke, on the other hand, I love even when it's a great cloud rolling across the field from a cannon and I'm completely submerged in it. I can't get enough of that scent!


Water: I'm a Reflectionist. There are many reasons for this. One of them is that among the external circumstances that have contributed to my spirituality, perhaps the most powerful has been sitting very still in a canoe, out on the middle of a lake, with water still as glass, and no lights anywhere in sight but the stars above and their reflections below. This is a beauty that must be experienced to be believed. Sadly, the lights of human civilization, pretty as they may be from the air, are increasingly prevalent o'er the land to the point where it is now a rare lake that doesn't have glaring sodium-arc orange blazing out across its waters, even at the most deserted of times.

Water has many other properties I appreciate, but most of them have to do with the reflection and refraction of light. I did used to be on a swim team when I was a kid, though, and I still have the lungpower to show for it.


Light: Now, obviously I've just been going on about reflection and refraction, so it should be pretty evident that I love optics. Silver my cathedral, silver my avatar, rave about the beauty of city lights as seen from the sky and campfire embers glowing through the ashes, glory in the glow. The inner sanctum of my cathedral would be an entirely enclosed space of mirrored walls, and when in space, it would be at the hub of the complex's spin. I would bring whatever light I please with me, enter that hub, and close myself in, meditating upon infinity with no gravity and endless reflections all around.

When I was a little kid, I once went to a summer course in astronomy at a local observatory. All the other students were kids, too. They gave each of us a lens, like the size of a magnifying lens, but without any sublens inset like magnifying glasses are so fond of, and without any frame or handle. Just a lens, simple, pure, and perfect. I wish I still had it. That lens was more a treasure to me than any pirate doubloon or thousand dollar bill, and it still would be today. I guess I should find myself a new one, one of these years. Or just put it on my wishlist, right under "amazing magical powers".


Darkness: I still don't understand why emotional "darkness" is so popular. It doesn't elucidate anything to explain that it's "edgy", and appealing to its "realism" amounts to no more in my eyes than sheepishly admitting that we haven't been working hard enough to make reality as bright and wondrous as I know it can be. Darkness as imagery, I can dig. I like gargoyles and wrought iron gates and Kingdom Hearts antagonists and graveyards and the grim reaper and all that stuff. Why not? It's fun. But when it starts drawing blood, when it starts getting off on "pleasure spiked with pain", when it gets into the vampires and the murder mystery serial killers and the bondage fetishists and the fangirls who can't get enough of the evil bishounen - the eviler the better - I just don't see the draw. I find it positively disturbing how much people equate evil with sexy, and bishounen fans aren't the only ones. The dominatrix archetype is more vividly defined and fantasized over than any single masculine analogue. Maybe people see a role reversal when it's the woman that's in charge, especially in the bedroom, and believe me, nobody appreciates a good role reversal more than I do, but can't a woman be in charge, and still be good and gentle and sweet? I just don't get the darkness.


Life: A lot of people's expectations about philosophers center around the question "What is the meaning of life?" Philosophers are expected to grapple with this, stay up nights yearning to know, seek guidance from more enlightened philosophers until at last they achieve this elusive grail. There's some that believe no philosopher ever has, and if one does it will usher in a glorious utopian age. Well, sit up and take notes, because I've found it, and it was easy.

Your life means just what you mean by it.

I know, life is hard. You can't always live the way you want to. But think about it. If you complain about how hard life is, and how you don't have the things in life that you deserve, then your life ends up meaning that fulfillment is dependent on external circumstance, and can be denied you by a world that doesn't - however much you may protest - actually owe you anything. Your life means focusing on your own victimization by injustices grand or petty, and a shining spotlight falls upon the starlet of your story: pathos. If, on the other hand, you live your life working to make the world a better place for yourself at the expense of everyone around you, and indulging in whatever makes you happy with blithe disregard to any consequences you don't anticipate coming back to haunt you, then your life ends up meaning that people can win through competition, through aggression, through whatever means it takes to win. Your life is saying, in fine, might makes right. If, on the gripping hand, you live your life working to make the world a better place for everyone around you, even including yourself, and maybe you'll be the worse for it when people take advantage of you, but you still keep working to brighten people's lives, then what your life means is that doing good is important. So important that even if you get outcompeted by the egoists and liars and crooks, even if you end up no better off in assets and capital than the one whose life is complaining about injustice, it still makes a difference that you did something about that injustice. Your life means that's more important than winning.

I think the wall people kept running into is that they wanted to know the meaning of "life in general". As an individualist, I know there's no such thing. Your life is your own. Mean by it what you will, and that will show who you are.

Since this tag calls for me to say an interesting thing about myself, though, I suppose I should tell you folks what the meaning of my life is. That one's even easier. See my name? That's right, Fathom. My life means, to understand. It's why I philosophize, and why I sermonize too. Understanding grows, the more it's shared, and I love to teach as much as I love to learn, and I am as good at explaining as I am at listening. This is what I do with my life, when I should be out looking for high-paying jobs, promotions, and investment opportunities. Maybe I should compromise and try doing a little of both, but .....I don't know how much life I have left. I just know this is what I want my life to mean.


Luna: Long ago, there was a superstition that the moon could drive a person mad. Most of you folks probably already know that one, and about the related word roots of lunacy and looney. In more recent times, H. P. Lovecraft postulated the idea that a thing from some long-forgotten realm might someday walk the earth when the stars are right, and that its visage could be so horrible that even just to look upon it would drive a person mad. Personally, I'm inclined to doubt the validity of the supposition even as fiction. I grant readily that there are people whose psyches are fragile enough that sufficient trauma could break them, give them flashbacks and hallucinations, set them gibbering incoherently. I know these symptoms do exist in people who have had really awful experiences with war or LSD. Nevertheless, as an individualist (here I go again) I maintain adamantly and without hesitation that it is absurd to claim such a thing will happen to everyone who receives a given stimulus, however horrible and unprecedented it may be. At least the moon wasn't said to drive mad anyone who looked upon it. Even in those days, poets had been doing it safely for as long as anyone could remember. I'm a roleplayer, so I understand about setting and game mechanics, and I realize that if you play Call of Cthulhu, you're just going to have to accept that your character might go crazy if the DM exposes 'em to too much nightmare stuff. I figure that means I'll just have to wait until the stars actually are right, and Cthulhu actually does emerge from the deeps, if I want to demonstrate once and for all that I can stare that monster down and keep my wits intact.

........would you think I was crazy if I said sometimes I wish he really would, just so I could prove a point?





Alrighty, that covers all eight. Now, who should I tag? Eenie, meenie, larry, moe, curly, shemp, a cuppa joe. I chooooooooose....



There we go, an even dozen! Tag, you're it.