Dear Diary,

Spent a lot of time thinking yesterday. Yeah, I've read all that shit about how meditation is supposed to be a state of 'non thought' or something like that, but I don't think I've ever hit that point while sitting still. Yeah, sometimes while moving, while doing, while pushing myself physically, but never while just passively sitting and trying to not think. Yes, I spent a non-trivial portion of my time yesterday thinking about thinking. I dunno whether that makes me some kind of amateur philosopher or just a dumb bitch whose brain won't shut up, but it is what it is.

I wound up thinking about shit I read about how some people don't have internal monologues, and some people don't visualize stuff inside their heads, and how all that's just part of the normal spectrum of human experience. I kinda wonder if maybe the entire 'be not' and 'Zen' thing got twisted because of that. Like, there was some dude whose jimmies were fundamentally unruffled because to have anxiety, you have to have some kind of inner visualization, and he just fuckin' didn't. So when people came to him and said, 'how to you stay so calm', he just described his natural state, and people have been chasing that ever since.

Which makes about as much sense as a woman trying to be a man, or a Sapphic chick tryna lubricate the love tunnel thinkin' about a dude, or, I dunno, the tragically unmelanated tryna avoid sunburn by being Black. Doesn't matter if you were born with a dick, if you're a woman you will never be fulfilled and happy bein' a man. If you're Sapphic you might, maybe, be able to think drippy thoughts about a really feminine dude, but even there you might get squicked if you look to close. And it does not matter how much you like soul food, you still need sunscreen.

So maybe the secret to inner peace is not, as the man said, 'not being'. Like, yeah, okay, for some folks maybe. If their natural state is a blank slate, and they manage to clear everything out, they've achieved that state they're supposed to be in, and they'll be happiest that way. But if their natural state is a constant flow of thought and motion, it's gonna take an endless supply of massage and orgasms to maintain that no thought state, and even then they're not gonna be their best selves. I've tried that. I'm not gonna say I can't alter my own brain chemistry with substances both natural and artificial until I have zero thoughts or desires for them. I can't even say I don't see the appeal. But I can say that I understand why the land of the lotus eaters was a fuckin' trap.

I would not be my best, most fulfilled self like that.

I still might want to try it now and then, kind of like it's fun to get drunk or high or spin in circles until I can't tell up from down and wind up flat on my ass with the world spinning around me. Which makes me wonder if I did that, would the world literally spin around me, because I've got some serious mass about my ass now. Junk enough to fill all the trunks. Badonkadonk with some extra donkadonkadonks.

I am of course talking about my M-Space self. My own personal ass remains angular and hard enough to potentially deflect bullets.

I guess my point, the takeaway I got from pondering while I tried to feel out the world through my tentacles, wound up being twofold.

First, while altered states can be just as fun as traveling or trying new cuisine, I think trying to be a fundamentally different person to who I am is ultimately a recipe for failure. I need to be my own best me, not somebody else's best them.

Second, since the natural spectrum of human cognition includes everything from full spectrum hallucinations indistinguishable from reality to a complete lack of inner world, and I know from personal experience that the headspace of Kraken are inherently plural in many ways, not to mention more focused on taste than scent, more focused on feel than sound, and more focused on color than depth, the natural headspace of a being made of tentacles and mouth who feels the natural curvature of the earth as a slight hill is gonna be way fuckin' different to my own.

After dinner and Bath, I dreamt about the ladies all taking notes on Kitten's lesson as they watched a highlight reel. Good production quality and everything, with slow motion and some interesting camera angles and everything. Weirdest thing, I'm almost certain there was somebody extra in there, but I couldn't for the life of me tell who or what or whatever. No bad vibes or anything, and I know my other Worshippers can show up there in their dreams as well, so I didn't sound the alarms or anything, but it was weird and persistent enough that I mentioned it to the ladies in the morning as we all got out of bed and ran the kids through their morning toilet in the water closet.

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"Anybody get the feeling that we had a visitor last night?"

Tallulah nodded. "They were obfuscated in some manner. It might have been proper Shaping, but it is very difficult to examine fine details like that in dreams."

Siobhan, who'd already achieved Hailee snuggles, piped up with, "whoever it was didn't seem aggressive or even ill intentioned. Possibly a Worshipper who dreamt themselves there?"

Saffron just nodded. "Should they arrive again or should anything arouse my suspicions, I may have someone follow up, unless they were there by your invite, love?"

I thought about that for a bit. "Orla hasn't finished her Trials yet, has she?"

Marie shook her head as she sent Daya into the water closet and helped Isadora into a jumper. "Hasn't Started."

"Is something wrong?" Marie just shrugged, followed shortly by the others. Karen?

Yes, Goddess?

Has Orla arrived at the Phileo Temple for her Trials?

Is that what she's here for then?

Things fell into place, at least a little. She and I had a talk a Revel or two ago down in Calverton. She seemed kinda tentative, but interested enough that I sent her.

Should I press the issue?

I thought about that, then sighed, both mentally and physically. No. Not yet. Then I got the worst idea in the world. "Kitten? When's the next Tentacle going to be ready?"

She frowned, an adorable moue that I would absolutely not tell her how adorable I found it. "The first was a prototype, a proof of concept that worked well enough she's still in service despite a few rough edges. The second, a test to be sure all the prototype issues had been resolved. The remaining three are the production model, but," she winced the tiniest bit. "We may have been too eager. More issues showed up, so we'd paused construction on the remaining hulls until we had those worked out." She sighed. "Thankfully there were material delays for the final two hulls."

I thought about it for a second. "Would finishing one of the two give you more useful info?"

She paused, shrugged. "I suppose, although I'm loathe to work via trial and error on projects of that size." After a few moments she tilted her head and looked at me. "Why do you ask?"

"Orla's looking to take the Trials."

She snorted, then laughed as she figured out my totally stupid idea. "Oh, I see. Yes, well. I suppose along with the Holy Garb and the Doctrine and Concordance, each of your High Priestesses will have their own Tentacle."

Yeah, that put some really, uh, specific images in my head. Apparently loudly enough that every one of my ladies turned to look at me, surprise drifting into sly grins as we all worked to ready the kids for their day. Okay, most of the kids. More than half, anyhow, because the four biggest and Menace all pretty much got themselves ready now. The rest didn't so much need to be dressed as some help getting stuff on, assistance tying knots or doing up buttons, that kind of thing.

Today was more of the same as yesterday, although I thought I'd gotten a little better remote sensing with my tentacles. Hard to tell with not too many ways to check my feedback. I mean, at one point I pulled one of my Co-Located selves out of the water where I'd been swimming east looking for some particular shit. Which let me know that I can in fact hold human sized objects with minimal damage. Okay, I think it does. Even as a human sized object I'm not exactly fragile at this point. Kinda wish I knew what my Endurance was. Also kinda suspect that my actual Endurance is whatever it shows as un-Blended, since I show all kinds of aches and pains and bruises and breaks as if my Endurance was what my Blended Status says it is, but I don't actually fall over from damage until I've taken enough hurt to make my un-Blended Endurance feel shit.

Weird thing. The Kraken, both Great and small, have congregated in two places. First, most of them have moved into a kind of long line to the east, more or less right at the edge of the continental shelf. A smaller group are not too far off the coast northeast of Boltophsberg. I'm not sure what they're doing up there, because when I poked a little, I got a motion-image from one of them asking me very politely but very firmly to respect their privacy. Okay, I'm not sure that's exactly what it was, but they were sort of... Embarrassed? I'm not sure, but that's what it felt like. Not like they'd done anything wrong, but something they didn't want me to see.

Fuck, I've got no idea if they're having the annual spawning convention, they're hiding my Yule present, or they've got some kind of really chuuni shrine to me or something there. Either way, they've saved my ass more than once. Not gonna start distrusting them now. Yeah, now I want it to be the first one, and I want to get ring side seats, just to see how freaky Saffron and I got when we got it on as Great Kraken. Seriously, I would not engage in continuous bean polishing the entire event.

Once, maybe twice at most.

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