Who I was before

[desperance]

Thanks to drhoz, I have now discovered who I was in my past life. Apparently it was some time ago; where on earth have I been in the meantime?

Your past life diagnosis:
I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Borneo around the year 575. Your profession was that of a librarian, priest or keeper of tribal relics.

See now, that I can handle. Librarian, priest, museum-keeper: all options I can see for myself, even in this life.

Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
Seeker of truth and wisdom. You could have seen your future lives. Others perceived you as an idealist illuminating path to future.

Ah, well. Nothing lasts, does it? I don't believe I ever illuminated anything, 'cept when I go up into the roofspace with a torch. Unless people used to follow the glow of my cigarette-end, back when I used to smoke.

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
Your lesson is to develop a kind attitude towards people, and to acquire the gift of understanding and compassion.

Still learnin', then. School's not out.

Comments

[crossthebar.livejournal.com]

Of course had to go and play.

Eerily cool to read. I can relate.

[jeremy-m.livejournal.com]

> You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Borneo around the year 575. Your profession was that of a librarian

Isn't Borneo the place with over eight hundred languages, even now when they've been a bit culled by Berlitzkrieg? Libraries there must have been really big in 575, especially if they needed room to display the heads of all the people who didn't stay quiet when shushed. It almost makes me wonder whether there's an element of inaccuracy in this research.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

No, never say that! Next you'll be telling me the internets isn't reliable...

And they use the heads as a teaching tool, how to shape all 800 languages in your mouth...

(And I still love 'Berlitzkrieg' - is it your own coining?)

[jeremy-m.livejournal.com]

> And I still love 'Berlitzkrieg' - is it your own coining?

As far as I know, yes. It was going to be a chapter heading in my Big Book on Language, in which I use language (human and computer) to explain human origins, beards, homosexuality, mathematics and, you know, everything.

All that's really holding it up is the Curse of Google (finding out that other people have already had most of my ideas (except the one about beards, curiously)), and my not yet having actually written it down in, like, words.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with 'Beards: an omnium gatherum' by Reginald Reynolds? I only ask because it is my favourite book in the universe, and I thought I was the only person who had ever read it, until I was holding forth about its wonders at a dinner party and a guy across the table said "Oh, yes, that was in my college library; everybody in my year read it..."

(It is, as it sounds, a social history of the beard: by one of those classic British academics, obsessed but self-aware. It has moments of happy humour, which are clearly deliberate, and is scaldingly funny otherwise because it clearly doesn't intend to be.)

[jeremy-m.livejournal.com]

Alas, no, my beardy studies are woefully few.

I don't suppose the learned Mr Reynolds tackles the key problem of the beard, in the apparent impossibility of it evolving? Here's a short proof:

It's not for warmth, or those with the highest surface area to volume would have it, children and to some extent women. The fact only adult males have it suggests it relates to female mate choice.

Yet the main point of female mate choice is to get a man with a low mutation load, for which facial symmetry is a good measure as it takes a lot of genes to get right, whereas a beard is fairly easy to make. So females would always choose a pretty smooth-faced male over a hairy-faced one rather than take the chance he has a light under his bushel.

I'll leave the solution as an exercise for the reader.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

You could forsee your future and you still chose to be a novelist. Hmmm.