Touching The Dragon's Veins

I just watched the fourth episode of the anime Doomed Megalopolis. One of the best pieces of storytelling I ever followed, from the Great Anime Influx of the Nineties. It brought me to tears, as always.

This anime, based on 帝都物語 Teitō Monogatari, came out in the early Nineties, around the time of the launch of Mage: The Ascension - the 1st Edition, the Grandaddy of the modern Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition roleplaying game. Around that time, Mage called out to me so much. I carried the book around with me everywhere. Magic was alive, and I was pulsating with it.

No, I wasn't on drugs. I think that if people licked me, they'd have become stoned on my exocrine secretions. For a time, I thought I was drugs. I knew what the Prime Sphere was. I could feel it; see it. Touch it.

Then I saw Doomed Meg, with its depictions of the Eastern geomancer's Art of feng shui, and I knew, back then, what I wanted to do when I grew up. Actually, twenty years on, still playing Jean Michel Jarre's Chronologie (I got the CD on my 30th, just a little over twenty years ago, and I've never stopped playing Chronologie 2 and 6), I still want to do this when I grow up - which should be any day now. Really.

And tonight, I want to go out there, barefoot, caress the nighted soil with the soles of my feet, feel the air stir about me, and sense the deep, golden pulse of light of Prime coursing through the dragon's veins below my feet.

And yes, I am still drugs.