Thoughts

  1. Cue the Eerie Music

    While reading cultural anthropologist Loren Eisely's autobiography, All the Strange Hours, a book that had mysteriously appeared on my bookshelf years after I thought I had given it away or lost it I came upon this entry: "In the year 1975 twenty-one people died in a air crash at the Mayan religious center of Tikal in Guatemala. Strange, is it not, that twenty-one tourists born over a thousand years after the fall of the Mayan Empire, and only aware of it because of the archaeological...
  2. Awakening

    Awakening I don’t know where I came from, and I don’t know where I’m going when I die. But for this brief interlude, I am here. My body is my home. I have a sense of home in myself. Each day brings new learning. I awaken to being wrong, I awaken to being right, I awaken to dawning truths I had never considered. In sleep, there are limits. Blind spots in our perception. How can you answer the question – What if? – if your senses are not on alert, if you are not fully awake? Did you even...
  3. Murdering the world

    It's an amazingly beautiful day out, and I decided to take the bus up to Subway to get dinner. Walking across the parking lot on the way back, at first I was just thinking to myself in words and ignoring my surroundings, but I happened to glance down. In one sense, it's just a standard parking lot, but if you shut off the wordstream (essentially go into meditation) and allow yourself to experience the moment more purely, it's a vast expanse of incredible textures and colors (the picture...
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  4. Figuring Out My Relationship with God

    Figuring Out My Relationship with God Don’t know what’s got into me but I want to go back to church. I used to go to mass every Sunday with my mother and it felt like going home sitting beside her in the pew in the same church in which I was baptized, confirmed and got married. But then Covid hit and we stopped going. And then we entered the worst part of my husband’s battle with MS which ended with his death in September of 2021, and my faith was shook up bad. There was no God in what...
  5. Prose versus Story: The Great Divide

    In my first blog post I explained that, when reading literature, I value story over prose. I then compared my appraisal of those two facets of fiction with how I would prioritize a school’s campus against its student body and faculty — with the campus representing prose, and the students and faculty representing story. Using that analogy, I stated that while I care about campus quality, and believe I’m fully capable of appreciating beautifully and brilliantly constructed schoolhouses, the...
  6. In Praise of Imperfection

    In Praise of Imperfection Years ago, I read that, in some cultures, a vase that has been cracked and repaired is considered more beautiful than a perfect specimen. The imperfection tells a story of triumph. “I have suffered, but I have survived.” Battle scars are to be worn proudly. It’s the imperfection that adds depth to the piece. Imperfection is a lot more interesting than perfection. Otherwise, what would we gossip about? But seriously, what is perfectionism but an attempt to...
  7. True to Type

    I've been reading H.L. Mencken's A Choice of Days, selections from his autobiography that deal with his early adult life, culminating with his work as reporter and later city editor of the Baltimore Sun. Engaging, clever, sometimes painfully casually racist, but all in all a good read. But what I am most taken by at the moment is the cover photo of him as a young man, at a desk, corncob pipe in one hand, a stack of typed paper to one side of an old-fashioned typewriter, with his other hand...
  8. All I can do

    All I feel I do is endure. There is no way out of this thing, this experience of awareness. All the pain, and all the pleasure passing by while I watch it. Everything is happening in one space, and I don't even know where or what it is. What I am. The thoughts that come up are the same, I don't choose which ones arise, I only notice some of them as they do. Some are more viral than others, and the whispers of others often wiser. No wonder this idea of the angel and devil on the shoulder is...
  9. “Important” Supporting Characters

    According to the almighty Wikipedia, a supporting character is a character in a narrative that is not the focus of the primary storyline, but is important to the plot/protagonist, and appears or is mentioned in the story enough to be more than just a minor character or cameo appearance. That’s an adequate definition in my opinion. It does, though, beg a couple of questions. For starters, what is a reasonable standard or indicator for considering a character “important to the...
  10. Dreams/nightmares

    I really don't know what to call them any more, they start as dreams and develop into nightmares or something else in between? At first you could be in control and little by little you lose that control. You notice it, all you have to do now is see what happens and pray you wont feel anything that's coming. You feel the fear, the pain, all the feelings. I cannot run away from it anymore, or hide. I can only take a glimpse of what is to come. Just a glimpse. Since is not the first time any...
  11. Grimdark My Way

    What exactly is the grimdark genre, and why is it so awesome? Well, I imagine that once I answer the first question, the answer to the second will instantly become apparent. In case it needs to be stated, my conceptualization of the fabulously ferocious grimdark genre is merely that — mine. Others will disagree, and they’ll likely (hopefully) have thoughtful reasons for doing so. This disclaimer will hold true for most, if not all, of my blog posts going forward. With that out of the...
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  12. The real meaning of magic

    I was plunged into this by a random statement made by Ian Crossland on the Tim Pool podcast. Ian is not the brightest bulb on the tree, and often says things that seem ridiculous to me, but this one took me up short and launched a new line of inquiry for me. He said something to the effect that Words were originally magic spells, that's why they're spelled Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and even somebody who says a lot of ridiculous things also spits a lot of truth. I know...
  13. Questions and Statements

    We are born asking questions. My mother likes to tell the story of newborn me being placed in her arms for the very first time. The memory is engraved in her heart and in her mind, such a strong impression it made. The little bundle I was looked her right in the eye, asking, “Well, you’ve got me now. What are you going to do with me?” And ever since, I have been asking, “What does this mean?” Where do questions come from? A need to know and understand. Curiosity, surely. Riddle me this,...
  14. Decaying Mind

    Sometimes it feels like my mind is slipping. Too many universes to keep track of. Or perhaps my psychosis sickness is making itself heard... not literally. I just feel so stupid at times. Like my mind is really decaying. I recently comissioned two artists for illustrations outside their expertise. It only occurred to me to search for the right artists after I had comissioned the first two. What the hell, mind? What the hell is going on? Years ago, I would not have made that mistake. I seem...
  15. Visual Thinking

    I discovered Dr. Temple Grandin, who is an extremely visual thinker. She brings up some fascinating things in this video: I still haven't followed up on my earlier post about visual thinking, and I always intended to. This is getting me fired up about it again. I don't have the powerfully vivid imagery she seems to have, but I do get some visuals, and I can work with them in my mind, change them at will etc. I definitely do some of my thinking this way, probably especially when I'm drawing...
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