Amethyst Qu
Bio
Seeker, traveler, birder, crystal collector, photographer. I sometimes visit the mysterious side of life. Author of "The Moldavite Message" and "Crystal Magick, Meditation, and Manifestation."
https://linktr.ee/amethystqu
Stories (116/0)
The Rage of Stupid People
As I like to say on Twitter, we’re living in a slow-rolling zombie novel. If you think people are getting dumber, you’re probably right. Research suggests that, as carbon dioxide levels rise in our atmosphere, people will lose intelligence because they can’t think as clearly.
By Amethyst Qu2 years ago in Horror
How Your Belief That “Great Artists Steal” Cripples Your Creativity
In olden times, a popular urban legend told us that Pablo Picasso said, “Great artists steal.” Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t, but at least he was an artist. Today, we’re told over and over that Steve Jobs said it. And we’re told this not to discourage theft but to encourage it.
By Amethyst Qu2 years ago in Journal
A Secret Sand Dune in a Green World
When we turned in the direction of the sun and sand, a gust of wind blew two startled Burrowing Owls across the road in front of us. How we laughed to see their wide eyes as they tumbled head over heels before they caught themselves to fly back into the trees. Then the road opened, and our eyes went just as wide, albeit with a different kind of wonder.
By Amethyst Qu2 years ago in Wander
Write a 50,000-Word Pulp Novel Before Breakfast
To kick start my self-publishing business, I wrote a novel a month for three years. That doesn’t make me special. Lots of people do the same thing. Writing a novel a month is a very common business model for full-time author/publishers.
By Amethyst Qu2 years ago in Journal
- Top Story - November 2021
What a Cockatiel Teaches Me About Life, Love, and NeedinessTop Story - November 2021
My white-faced cockatiel Boobear has turned 25, and he’s still going strong. The normal life expectancy of these small domestic parrots is roughly 15 to 25 years, but some senior birds live into their thirties. I have high hopes this chubby little character will do the same.
By Amethyst Qu2 years ago in Petlife
The Year Without a Sky
Meteor watching is the best part of August. Even August 2020. One night of humanity's most-hated year found me stretched out in the backyard at around 3:30 in the morning looking up. It was dark enough or had to be. A light-polluting orange streetlight stands directly across from my house, ruling out my front yard as the kind of place where you’d sprawl on your back to watch for meteors.
By Amethyst Qu3 years ago in Futurism
Some Things I Remember About the Cedar Fire
That time it was the biggest fire in California history. That time the guy stood in the popcorn room of the refugee hotel. (In October 2003, we were still called refugees.) That stunned look on his face I already knew too well. That awkward elbow-out way he held the phone at his ear because we still thought you had to hold your cell phone to your head. What he said: “My house is gone, my folks’ house in San Bernardino is gone, I can’t get them on the phone, I’m done with southern California, that’s it, it’s over.” What my friend’s voice shouted from my phone: “Mom’s great-uncle is in San Bernardino. We can’t find out if he’s alive or dead. You’re closer, you can get through, can you please call him, he’s blind, he just made a hundred.” Yes, two fires at the same time. More than two, come to that. But the Cedar Fire and whatever they called the one in San Berdoo are the only two I remember now. At this hotel, the refugees were allowed to bring their pets. Most were floof dogs, big-eyed and curious and a little hushed as they looked up and down the check-in line. One woman held an Amazon parrot. You couldn’t go outside because of the smoke. But everyone spilled out of the popcorn room with their plastic cups of complimentary wine because the popcorn room was too confining, too red and yellow, too bright somehow. And also it felt rude to sit there while this guy called everyone he knew who still had service. So into the lobby and across to the lounge where there was a seventies-style glass patio door overlooking the famous pool. It had a heavy plastic cover on it. The guy was stuck on repeat, something I’d noticed before from victims of shock: “I didn’t even have time to get my wallet. My house is gone, my folks’ house in San Bernardino is gone, I can’t get them on the phone.” A woman somehow out there in a jogging costume. Ponytail jaunty. A pink sweatband. Pink sweat shorts. White running shoes. She thought she was doing something healthy. The look on the man’s face before he went out too: “Somebody has to tell her to get inside.” The way he pulled his shirt up high to cover his nose and mouth. All the times a robot voice picked up when I called the great-uncle: “That number is not in service.” Eyes dazed, phone out of battery, the guy told me the same story in the same words: “My house is gone, my folks’ house…” Had I repeated myself like this when my little house was crushed under 20,000 pounds of red pin oak? I must have. The sense of looking in a mirror was too strong. That time a few weeks later when I read they had more fire trucks in low-income New Orleans than wealthy San Diego. There was public corruption somehow somewhere. There would be an investigation. Although maybe it was Orleans Parish that was corrupt, and somebody was putting relatives in all those jobs. Who remembers that part now? I don’t. That time later yet in the open-air bar near Villa Tunari, Bolivia. Wet and green and who knows how many thousand miles away. Here I sat, drinking wine with the old frenemy who still lived in San Diego after all that. Well, I was drinking it. He said Bolivian wine was undrinkable, and anyway he didn’t need to drink to share his endless yarns about the endless fires, and finally I said, “We were stuck downtown during the Cedar Fire,” and he paused for a beat, and then he said, “Hmm. The Cedar Fire? I don’t remember that one.” By then, there had been too many. It was October 2009.
By Amethyst Qu3 years ago in Earth
The Mental Game of Photography
If you seek to catch magic in a bottle, know that magic doesn't feel obliged to make it easy. A few years ago, I was on a tour with a wealthy man in his seventies who was trying to take up the sport of photographing birds in flight. At first glance, he had everything he needed. Money for the best equipment and guides. The time and health to travel anywhere in the world.
By Amethyst Qu3 years ago in Humans
The Scarlet Macaw's Secret
Before dawn, we find a spot on the bridge between two likely patches of forest. It's a good place to watch for the Scarlet Macaws flying from one area of good habitat in the Chiquibul National Park to the other. Or, rather, it will be a good place when the fog clears.
By Amethyst Qu3 years ago in Earth