Uroboric

2010-11-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

So I've taken it upon myself to try out doing this NaNoWriMo thing that everyone's been talking about, and I just feel resentful and avoidant about the whole thing. See, I'm terrified of having people tromping around the tender meadows of my mindscape. Some might be the typical fears of not presenting things well, but at the same time, I think people just genuinely won't receive ME well.

My words are me. They're the filter through which my expression and communication flow.

Right now I'm trying not to look at my own words, think about structure, moderate or organize or present myself so much as just pour thought onto the page.

And I hate it, because there are people here. Maybe I should put up thorns to keep them out, snark and irreverence, abuse humor, terrible writing for self-preservation's sake. Maybe I should just write the whole novel in lolcat. Maybe I should just crumple paper and throw it at a wall and cry.

Strangely, perhaps, these are all elements that live in my mindscape: keeping intruders out of the mindscape using metaphorical barriers. Building a labyrinth, hiding personal secrets at the center. Not only do I have an excuse to write badly -- I have reasons. It could be a stylistic choice. I wonder if that would be a worthwhile ...

Meh. Get something down. Something anything whatever. I obviously can.

I ... why doesn't Blogspot have a word counter? I'd pretend this was the intro if I could, and claim to have some kind of word count. But I don't want to quibble around pretending that this is novel-worthy ranting if it's not automatic.

I don't even care. Don't look at me like that, I don't. I totally don't.

I hate talking in front of you people. You always have something to say, even if it's in silence. Always with the implications.

I could live in the mountains and write by myself without the implications. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear, does anyone care? I feel the same about writing. There might or might not be a sound but it doesn't matter. It's not an existential conundrum, it's just plain and simple; interpretive things don't matter without an interpretation. They still happen just fine, but they don't matter -- and the value of mattering is the most interpretive value of all.

I don't want to write my novel today. I want to write pages and pages of notes about it in which I'm tricking myself into writing when I don't think I'm actually writing but I actually am. I don't want anyone to know about it but I want a support network that gives me feedback. I feel ambivalent and I like critique but not judgment and everything in this world is prickly.

Why am I even telling you this?

2010-07-09T03:23:00.000-07:00

Things I want to tell you all:

Be kind to one another, for you are the most precious, ephemeral treasures in the universe -- not for being human, nor for being creation, but just for being. You understand this when looking on your children; now understand when you look on one another.

Each of your choices in style are simply looks. We have no interest in your genders or cultures or class ranks, only your aptitude in kindness.

Cruelty is unjustifiable. Malicious intent is unjustifiable. Rationalization is no excuse. Let it go and move on.

Guilt is unnecessary. Shame is unnecessary. Learn your lessons and move on.

Guidelines we give are based around simplifying kindness, and no value holds proper without application to other living beings.

Anger and frustration are unnecessary. You have little time: are these the last concepts you want to share? Love and move on. There is nothing greater than this.

2010-07-09T00:52:00.000-07:00

. . . Will matter then be destroyed or not?
22) The Savior said, All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots.
23) For the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its own nature alone.
24) He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
25) Peter said to him, Since you have explained everything to us, tell us this also: What is the sin of the world?
26) The Savior said There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called sin.
27) That is why the Good came into your midst, to the essence of every nature in order to restore it to its root.
28) Then He continued and said, That is why you become sick and die, for you are deprived of the one who can heal you.
29) He who has a mind to understand, let him understand.
30) Matter gave birth to a passion that has no equal, which proceeded from something contrary to nature. Then there arises a disturbance in its whole body.
31) That is why I said to you, Be of good courage, and if you are discouraged be encouraged in the presence of the different forms of nature.
32) He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
33) When the Blessed One had said this, He greeted them all,saying, Peace be with you. Receive my peace unto yourselves.
34) Beware that no one lead you astray saying Lo here or lo there! For the Son of Man is within you.
35) Follow after Him!
36) Those who seek Him will find Him.
37) Go then and preach the gospel of the Kingdom.
38) Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it.
39) When He said this He departed.

2010-01-02T04:13:00.000-08:00

Just below the Everyone aspect of archetype (the sweeping generality that is human consciousness) are the gender deities of old religious myth (the social and physical experience of being human) -- the God and Goddess who represent humanity in how we live, breed, and couple into a sort of buddy-system. Like the Everyone aspect, the God and Goddess are generally "human-ish," but void of specific personalities.

They represent every female and every male -- mother and father, sister and brother, parent and child, strangers, lovers, friends, etc. Their relationship is transcendental because it is so incredibly dynamic and all-consuming. The God and Goddess really are everything to eachother, because they are everything, and share every possible gender-mixed relationship possible, concurrently.

Being archetype, not characters, they are unbound by any one role-set, and much like the Everyone aspect, this causes a lot of emotional turmoil: this time about sex, gender, and social roles. In real society, it's generally conceived that certain roles above are not to be mixed, yet the God and Goddess necessitate the ability to mix all of these concepts at once. Furthermore, some details are realistically impossible, such as the God being his own Father.

Yet, as the representation of every man and every woman, and also that of each stage of life, each mood and experience that man and woman respectively face, they manage to bend these laws of realism and reasonability*.

They are why Freud was so confused.

*Yes, I made up a word. I don't care I don't care I don't I don't I don't. I told you this was going to break rules.

2010-01-02T00:44:00.000-08:00

As mentioned before, I live in a world of archetype -- sweeping generalizations of human personality, these are like blank templates for characters rather than characters in their own rite. They theme our mythos and our expectations of human behavior, and therefore live through us.

First off, these are only loosely meant to be seen as individuals, as their cookie-cutter shapes are customized to all sorts of different individual characters. However, they deserve a similar sense of reverence and responsibility as real human beings, because they are a fundamental filter to how we view real human beings, and furthermore, they have been created and are in some sense dependent upon us.

They are our reflections and our windows. If we do not care enough to keep these panes of perception clean and clear, we will be blind.

And like my idea of fantasy, archetypes are an essential aspect to the human experience -- very few human beings, if any, reflect one simple archetype. It is more likely that the archetypes are, in fact, a reflection of specific parts of the human experience, phases of life, emotions, momentary flickers of view and thought -- only even rarely clearly visible in action or character.

The archetypes are everyone.

Everyone contains all of the archetypes.

So there's the first overarching archetype, of sorts: Everyone. Unity. God. The Shared Consciousness. The Force. The Human Experience itself. In some sense, it's not even a person: it transcends gender and age, race and creed, eye color, hair color, sexuality, maturity, mood, religion -- personality itself -- all of the things we use to identify individuals.

However, it contains everything essential to being human. This one makes us feel melancholy and uneasy, for it is all that is important about us, and yet so intrinsically difficult to pin down.

This is the holy grail.

2009-12-11T02:28:00.000-08:00

I wept all the way from Dingwall to Glasgow; as I told my friends, there were no gasps or quaking shoulders, just streams of broken fable flowing down my face. You watched when I split myself open and pulled out the essence of my being: the good, the bad, thoughts and memories, metaphors and mythos.

I gave you everything in my being and I asked you to be gentle, and you told me that I was beautiful. I was worthwhile. I was smart and fun, valuable, even treasured. You wanted my heart, you wanted my life.

You were always witty, funny, eloquent. Technical. Fascinating. You looked at me with the most heart-rending smirk when you were joking with me, you looked into my soul when we conversed. I could give you nothing less than everything, and I watched you blossom from fragile vulnerability, tragic victimization, into a vital and confident man with each of what seemed like inconsequential reassurances.

You told me I was beautiful, down to my essence. Then you changed your mind.

You tore down all my faith and fable from the top down: I was unimportant, irrelevant, my thoughts and feelings were scorned. For two years my words bled out from my feet, left me weak and pale, gasping and asphyxiating like a fish, and still you tore further into my core to pull out my reason for remaining, my reason for being.

My ability to see unicorns.

I still always saw in you the gentle country boy who had stroked my hair, eased every hurt; the boy I'd helped mend and who had, slowly, built me up to believe that I was something. I always saw in you the promises I made and the values I held, the beauty that I wanted to give back a thousand fold, and I believed that he could simply no longer see the unicorn nature that I held as well, so I thought that if I tossed my head or pranced or hooved at the glass hard enough, he would also break through and take me in his arms and help me make everything alright.

You tore everything that was me away and let me limp off in broken disgrace, a failed wife and an ineffectual unicorn.

I lost three homes in one month for no bad behavior of my own; I smiled through it and swept the floor after being accused of being an uncaring, conniving daughter that did nothing to help her sick father. The only words I had to give were "Maybe if I leave grace in my wake, it will spread."

I rode a three hour commute daily for a minimum wage job. I pulled up tiles for temporary housing. I told everyone that I was broken, but managing, and didn't need sympathy. I told everyone that the circumstances, while difficult, were manageable.

I moved, and I looked for unicorns, and I could see none.

Finally, I saw a good friend carted away for a crime he didn't commit and had already served the allotted time for. I called out for a temporary escape, and I was flown to Scotland.

I spoke to the only stable family I've ever had, and they said they'd keep me no matter what; they had me for dinner two nights in a row and looked at pictures of my new mate.

I cleaned out our honeymoon cottage for sale, requested the strike of the belt on my rear, and turned down cunnilingus.

And I wept all the way from Dingwall to Glasgow, no gasps or shaking shoulders, just tears streaming down my face as I reflected on how you took me away from myself.

2009-12-11T01:31:00.000-08:00

The Unicorn is representative of all that is mystical, fleeting, and ephemeral; a peripheral glimpse of glee and glory in the mist of memory; that sense of almost "getting it" just before whatever "it" was slips away; silent hopes and vows you know how to keep without speaking them.

She can be hunted, trapped -- forgotten -- she can even be killed if she leaves her forest, but she does not vanish.

She traipses through rain-slicked city streets in search of innocents to enchant, or perhaps which enchant her, as she knows that it is the touch of malice that cuts, not the touch of man. And perhaps enchanted, but perhaps with eternal knowledge and cunning, at some points, she falls from her Unicorn nature to lie with her head in the lap of flaw and chaos.

What happens, then, to the Unicorn who sacrifices her immortality to lie with a Prince who will later betray her and leave her as the walking dead, again traipsing the rain-slicked city streets, seeking nothing?

2009-12-11T00:35:00.000-08:00

I will now describe how I differentiate faith and suspension of disbelief.

I do not prescribe to any form of absolute faith or belief as it were; these terms suggest the preference of willful denial or ignorance in the face of contrary evidence, which is why these are not an alternate form of knowledge.

Faith is blind by nature, because it cannot continue to be faith if proven, and will not be believed if disproof is accepted. Proof creates knowledge, which trumps faith.

Science, while the only clearly reliable way to explain our world, is not a suitable way to express our experience of it. Thus the conundrum: how can we express ourselves without taking part in willful ignorance, denial, and dogma?

The only ways I have so far recognized are through various forms of mythos, symbolism, iconography. Fiction.

The thing is, fiction is true. Just not literal. Designed to express the experience -- values, feelings, perspectives, ideologies, cultural patterns and structures -- what some might, as I do, call "deeper truths" -- fiction is not to be believed literally, but to be absorbed with some level of suspension of disbelief.

With this entry, I request that readers suspend disbelief in following entries where I refer to fantasy themes in my painting of the deeper truths of the world I see. My assessments may be wrong, but I thoroughly believe that my symbols are suited to their purpose.

2009-11-26T21:33:00.000-08:00

Now, to cover the main principles of the universe I live in. And I really do live here -- though it is fiction, it is the perspective that permeates my everyday life. I truly live with unicorns, goddesses, beasts, and little mermaids; old magics, dharma, lyrical meaning in a mathematically structured universe.

Everything I see, do, and express is based on my appreciation, good or bad, of the world around me, of art and expression that isn't mine, of previous works or personal impressions I gain through people I interact with.

It's all fan-fiction.

Reality and fiction are symbiotic: as we watch our world, we interpret it, create symbols, create fiction in order to explain it. Others view our works and live differently based on new information. We review our own works and our ideas grow organically.

Ideas are alive. Ideas are life. We are ideas.

2009-11-26T21:16:00.000-08:00

See, the thing is, I have no idea how to tell you people this story. I guess it's lucky that I have a taste for discordant forms of storytelling that follow nigh-on none of the rules of order, structure, or forceful suspension of disbelief: you will have to suspend your own disbelief, since this story is based on irrevocable deeper truths that follow no rhyme or reason aside from the filter of our perception.

I will break the fourth wall.

I will tell instead of showing.

I will make wild and ridiculous claims and entirely eschew the principle of burden of proof.

I will wretchedly abuse the art of prose, and you will read it. Or you won't. And I'll try not to think about that part, except for when I do.

Ultimately, all I want to do here is lay down some ideas so that I don't forget.