Pritchard

How is it that people know what they know?

Is it based in touch, sight, sound? Is it based on the association of a thought with emotion? Is it a chemical process? Is it collective, based on an assimilation of an event with what others have said of the event? Is it individual, based purely on an experience had?

Is it something that can even be measured? Or quantified?

I still can't tie my bloody shoes. Oi.

( Private )

Oi, I hate being forced to a hospital bed.

( Warded to unspeakables, but the ward is shaky )

There are intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are excluded for lack of interpreters.

It's an odd concept, reality. And stranger still, when you've managed to remove yourself from it, or from the sense of it, for a space of time and return to see that things have shifted just slightly to the right. But, of course, reality is based in perception and it could simply be that my perceptions have changed.

( Private )

( Warded to Unspeakables )
( Warded to Friends )

It's remarkable, isn't it, that a body fished out of the Thames could automatically be supposed to belong to a colleague of mine, just by the virtue of being unknown? It says something, indeed, about the secrecy of our department that all crimes, victims, strange behaviour is instantly pinned on us because of the mystique of what we do.

I suspect we'll be working on a suit for slander in the morning.

( Privately warded )

"For it was the last couple of pages I read first, and I read them again at the end to make sure. It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved, when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love."

I was reading that book again tonight, while sitting here in hospital. Bendrix has always been a favored character of mine because, in some respects, I've always understood him better than most. And yet, now, he doesn't make sense. His anger towards Sarah, his inability to accept... I don't know. It's difficult to follow, perhaps because I don't quite feel as irreverent tonight as I have on other nights. It's almost possible, if I stare out this window, past the peeling paint and over the rooftops, to think that the universe doesn't end with the stars.

Almost possible, Dunstan. Not completely. Don't get your bloody hopes up.

The reason, I believe, that we place or consider faith in the context of God is that we define our belief in a higher deity largely by how we trust other people.

( ((Cut for ANGST so as to spare everyone's eyes, but this isn't warded... sorry)) )

Still alive.

( Warded to the Unspeakables at Altnaharra )

I can't sleep, as per usual, and I keep staring at this bottle as if it's going to magically distill into my brain but nothing appears to be happening.

Something that I distantly remember being spoken to of sparked reading on other topics tonight when I should have been focused on work. I've been considering the question of God/god and of faith and where I sit in relation to it all. I spoke of being an atheist, except that I don't know if that's strictly true. It's more that I don't want there to be a God, of any sort, whether that god takes the form of a man whose face we cannot see or if that god is as simple as force and air.

Muggles have their science for the disbelievers - what do we have? Is magic a substitute, truly, when so much of that depends on belief, rather than proof? Or am I misunderstanding what muggle science is, do I fail to perceive the rationality of it?

I read this passage as I was trying to wrap my mind around the subject, written by a man named Carl Sagan, an astronomer: "The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."

Aye. I think in a sense this is what I was told before. I've been pondering those words all night, to see if they fit and if there is the same meaning. The two worlds that speak of each concept are not ones I would marry and so I question whether I understood her at all.

( Private to Burke )

((Handwriting is slow, uneven and somewhat labored.))

A secret. The word's not long enough for all it contains.

( Warded to Unspeakables )
( Warded to Seren )

( Viewable by Unspeakables only )

Merlin. It's bloody near midnight and I still haven't got over this headache. Not to mention that I've no buggering clue who the bird in my bed is. I suspect she's connected to the blonde twat I was chatting up in the pub a couple hours ago, based on the fact that she elbowed her way into the conversation. Sophie? Aye, that's it or if not, it's close enough. They've generally all got names like Sophie, Susie, that sort of thing.

I've often wished birds sitting around pubs would wear a big bloody nametag. At least then you could peel it off the shirt on the floor and figure out who to call for eggs in the morning.

She's got the oddest snore. It's more like a bloody sneeze. It starts rumbling in the back of her throat, then it catches. Interesting. Oh, Circe, at least, I've got her name. Found it on her license in her wallet. Sarah. That should be easy enough to remember if I get a firecall in the morning.

( Private )

Correction: Congratulations, Sir Weasley.

( Privately warded to the Unspeakables )

Congratulations, Weasley.

( Privately warded )

"...and as I walked into the deep forests of Borneo, I could hear the mighty drums of the Booma Booma pounding their way into the back of my black-hearted skull. Calling my name with their devilish accents as the mists of forgetfulness drifted through the glistening violet of my eyes, the fearful expression on my face sparkling into their onyx orbs. I was at Death's door and my fingers were stuck to the bell..."

Brill, positively brill. I'm glad such remarkable writing will find its way into the annals of wizarding literature because of its writer's untimely demise. I keep watching the papers to see if anyone's made a portrait of the man. I think a copy'd really liven up the flat.

It's interesting how easily one reverts to trivialities when writing in a journal but more interesting how people respond to them. It's easier, I believe, to answer someone who's going on and on about losing their socks (oi, I can't believe someone noted that) than it is to put serious philosophical thought into the question of what God/god is and how the nature of such a being might relate to our own positions in the universe.

It's the innate nature of most people - or even, perhaps beings, I think - to seek to answer questions that have an answer or to find satisfaction in knowing that they can have that sense of closure. Or else they ask questions that have the same sense of closure but a closure that comes from the foreknowledge that they can never be closed. And so it's more likely that a trivial series of questions will result in a flood of response than to expect genuine comfort for the bleeding of a heart against an open page.

What an inane way to say that I haven't anything to say at all, mates.

"If my talking is going to shut you up," Graham glanced over his shoulder at her for a moment, the broom hovering just over the coastline. "Then that's hardly an incentive to tell you this story, is it?"

But he gathered the story in his mind, searching for the pieces of it as he warned, "It's not a good story and I don't tell things as well as you do, but here it is." He pushed the broom up higher, searching for a place on the cliff face to perch as he spoke, eyes straining ahead.

"Once, when we all lived in the forest, there was a boy who was born with a scar in the middle of his forehead. That scar was shaped like the crescent moon." They reached the cliff and he let the broom hover over the ledge, turning so that he was facing the woman. With a finger, he touched the middle of her forehead and said, "Right there, it was," before drawing away from her.

"Anyhow, he wasn't like anyone else. Oh, he could run and hunt and do all of the things that were expected of him but his heart wasn't in it. He belonged to the moon, you see- he wasn't made for the earth but for the air." A strange sort of longing crept into his voice as he spoke the words, an understanding. "And so, while the rest of the people clung to their bonfires and ran into the sea to celebrate their lives, to have their festivals, this boy searched. He searched for magic- oh, and not the kind of magic that the others practiced. He didn't want to change a frog into a prince or make beautiful music come from nowhere. No, he wanted to fly."

"So he worked at it. And he worked and he worked until he finally discovered that if he charmed a stick, he could call it to the air. And so the first flyer was made, this boy with a moon on his forehead." Graham scratched the back of his neck, wondering if he was boring her with all this talk, but forged ahead. "Some people say the story ends there but flyers have a different ending."

"Flight wasn't enough, you see. He longed... he longed for the stars. It was that moon on his forehead- I guess it cursed him because he never could escape that call in his blood." He leaned back on the broom, hands balancing against the handle. "And so he taught himself a new thing- he learned that by wanting and wishing a place hard enough, he could go there. He could Apparate."

"And so one day, he looked at the moon and he yearned for her. He wished it so hard that he... was gone." Graham glanced down at the rock they were hovering over, noticing how barren it was, dry as an imagined moonscape. "That's the flyer's death. To Apparate to the moon. To let her ( call you home. )