Wednesday, December 28, 2011

A Strange Vision

MORE PAREIDOLIA

The other day I was out walking along the quiet back road near the office when suddenly I perceived a strange - and unsettling - spectral vision.  Without any warning the familiar, mundane scenery before me - the narrow sidewalk in the shadow of the trees, the freeway overpass ahead, and the hospital to which it led - disappeared, replaced by a long column of soldiers, fearsomely armed and armored in medieval fashion.  They were so numerous I could not see where the column began or where it ended.  All a-bristle with polearms, swords and banners, some mounted on horses and others leading pack animals, they marched in ominous silence toward their unknown destination against a red sky.

DRY LEAVES AND BLADES OF GRASS CAN BE BETTER THAN INK BLOTS

A Magician

A man with three floating objects about his head.


I like it when odd images are left unexplained.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Last Night

I made like Bob Cratchit, and now my stomach is paying for it.

RATHER MERRY

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Thursday, December 22, 2011

An Afterthought

Perhaps, if daimones could be assigned human faces, that lone individual might look like this?


An Early Arrival

Spotted today:  the first daimon of the winter!


So, one has made the return journey from wherever it is that daimones disappear to when they are not here;  but it's far too early for a proper return of the daimon population -- this individual is therefore something of an aberration.  Is it the daimonic equivalent of a misanthrope, preferring its own company to that of others of its kind?  Or does it simply possess a graver, more sensitive nature than its fellows, and find their discourse distracting?

Hanukkah Gelt

HAPPY 2nd DAY OF HANUKKAH, 2011!


I remember a comics series from back when I was a child still living in Korea.  It was called 'The Money Bug (돈벌레)' and it was both a monster fantasy and a morality play.  The titular character was a mean old miser who loved money so much that after he died he came back reincarnated as a giant centipede-like monster that ate money (coins, that is;  the story was set centuries in the past).  I reminisced about this while eating some of the chocolate coins that somebody brought to work today for Hanukkah.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The Growth And Maturation Of A Predatory Cloud

I LOVE IT WHEN A CLOUD STICKS AROUND (OR KEEPS COMING BACK)

Over the course of a couple of years this cloud, which I've christened 'Dinocloud' for its resemblance in the first photo to the smaller carnivorous dinosaurs, developed from a small, agile hunter to a giant mass of appetite -- too big and heavy to actively hunt any more, and so passively lying in wait for prey.  I hope it doesn't eventually turn into one of those cosmic monsters that keep trying to swallow the Sun or the Moon (see Here, Here and Here).


DINOCLOUD, April 2008


DINOCLOUD, May 2008


DINOCLOUD, Today


EDIT:  BTW, I can't be the only one who thinks that that other mass to the right of Dino in the last photo looks like King Kong...

Just An 'Amusing Trifle'...




Saturday, December 17, 2011

Yet Another Blustery Day


With a tree taking a breather.


Related posts:
   First Blustery Day:  Here
   Second Blustery Day:  Here

Another One Of Those Vaguely Sinister Images

Or maybe not so 'vaguely'.  I'd say this one is actually pretty obvious.



These days monsters don't seem to be taking as much care to conceal themselves from us as they used to...  why?

Do they know something we don't?

Moon Overlooking A Point


Thursday, December 15, 2011

Paper Crane Project Update

A seventh panel added.


I still haven't counted them, but I'm sure I'm still far short of a thousand birds.

Here's a close shot of the new panel:

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

And After A Rain... Pt. 2 (The Secret Language Of The Earth Pt. 9)




And After A Rain... (Pt. 1)


There are stranded worms on sidewalks and in parking lots.


Number of worms rescued so far:  34

[I did say at an earlier point that worm rescues would no longer be main post topics -- but hey, as Walt Whitman said, Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then I contradict myself;  I am large, I contain multitudes]

Monday, December 12, 2011

It's Raining

5th & BROADWAY, FROM MY 6th FLOOR WINDOW -- JUST NOW

Probably doesn't sound like much to most people, but in Los Angeles this is a fairly rare thing.  It rained most of the day today, and it's still raining now at 11:37 PM.


And I so LOVE the rain!

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Strange Dream

Of course, all dreams are strange.  But there's something about the dream I had this morning.  Many details are already forgotten, but the main parts remain clear.

 

I dreamt that I had to drive to a destination located off Wilshire Boulevard.  I parked (in the dream I was driving my old pickup truck) in what seemed to be a small loading dock in a narrow alley off the main road (the setting seemed to be an echo of the alley behind the apartment building where I lived many years ago).  Once I got out of the truck though, it started to roll forward and down; I realized there was a slope, quickly jumped back in and re-parked in a more stable position.

Next thing I remember, there was a big to-do over this big spiderweb hanging in midair --  there was a bat caught in it.  At first I thought it was dead, but then it started to struggle, trying to free itself.  I grabbed my camera and took aim, but I was shooting through the truck's cab and this annoying idiot (a frat-rat type individual, that is) on the other side of the truck was inserting himself into the frame, posing mischievously in the window and spoiling the shot.  He was quickly joined by some of his buddies and I became impatient.  I finally lost my temper and yelled something like "Get outta there, you assholes!" -- and rather to my pleasant surprise, they all sheepishly obeyed me instantly.

Then I was playing with my cat Blood* (it's worth noting that over the years since Blood** died his image in my dreams has been steadily eroding, becoming more and more of a generic-cat with each appearance;  however, in this dream he looked exactly as he did in life -- what a welcome development).  I put him in the truck and closed the door while I had to do something else.  When I came back I was concerned that he might run out when I opened the door and become lost, but to my relief he stayed put.  Once I got in and sat down though, I realized Blood*** had climbed up under the dash (he actually did this sometimes) and I became concerned that he might chew on a wire or something in there, so I reached under there and pulled him out.  When I did, his face had become thin and he looked just as he did when he was sick, just before I had to have him euthanized.

I began the return drive home, but in the meantime some people had been moving house and the alley had become clogged with all kinds of furniture and assorted debris.  Grumbling impatiently, I got out of the truck and began to clear the road.  Some of the people began to help, and a young woman heard me complaining and smilingly said "What, you thought this was an ordinary lane?".

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Happy Face And Real Face

Today at work I doodled this:



Even though I was actually feeling like this:


Sunday, December 4, 2011

A Thing

I'M AFRAID OF MY OWN CREATION

It's wearable as a brooch.  But now that I see it like this it's vaguely sinister, like some deep-sea monster...


On the other hand, I do tend to regard a lot of things as vaguely sinister.

Still More Iridescence

Not to be irreverent, but this undeniably beautiful image makes me think of those kitschy illustrated Bibles.


A Silent Explosion

MY MIND PLAYING TRICKS ON ME


I once read about a study that found that a surprisingly high proportion of the 'normal' population reports having heard voices at least once.  Not inside their heads, but 'actual' voices, seemingly heard with the ears.  This is entirely credible, as it's happened to me, too -- and not once but a few times, as I remember.  Not conversations or sentences, and certainly not commands to pick up a heavy blunt object and nail the nearest person with it,^^ but just single, incomprehensible syllables shouted close to my ear, almost like a bark.  Just once though, I thought I heard my name spoken.

Then there was this other episode.  I don't know if it belongs in the same category as hearing voices, but anyway it was memorably strange.  I was lying in bed.  Whether waiting to fall asleep or just waking from sleep, I don't remember, but suddenly there was an explosion;  an intense blue-white light flashed, dazzling my eyes;  I was thrown like a rag doll, perhaps a couple of feet straight up into the air, fell back onto the bed, bounced, and fell back again.  There was a kind of throbbing sensation as I lay there, and I felt the bed waving and vibrating under me.  All without any noise whatsoever;  that's how I knew it was a subjective experience, not an actual disaster -- but what an odd hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucination, if that's what it was.  Oh, and that old man image (Doctor Lao?^) is from one of my own paintings.

EDIT (March 4, 2012):  Actually, something like this has been written about before.  I don't know why I didn't remember it when I first wrote this post, but Robert A. Monroe, in chapter 12 of his autobiographical classic of occult literature, Journeys Out of the Body (1971), describes an incident that sounds very much like this.  He wrote that right after he lay down in bed, an explosion took place that hurled him clear across the room and left him tingling all over as if he'd been shocked with electricity.  Without a sound.  At first he thought there had been a real accident in the house, but then he looked up, saw himself still quietly lying in bed, and realized it had happened to his 'astral body',

Friday, December 2, 2011

Yet Another Scary Cloud





Looks like a vast, one-eyed, spidery/amoeba-y monster poised to descend and engulf everything like some evil god.

The Other Week's Thrift Shop Purchase

It's a box disguised as a book!  I've always loved these ever since I was a tot.  Along with the mysterious cabinets of wonder made out of cardboard boxes.  Why?  Probably has something to do with the unexpected and unknown made real.  Like the mermaid piece here.




Tuesday, November 29, 2011

More Iridescence


STAY OFF THE INTERNET WHEN YOU'RE DRUNK 

Because when read back later, everything you wrote will be drivel.


Another lovely
Rainbow Eye

Beautiful
Celestial
So pristine
So longed for

So high
So far

Untouchable
Impalpable

Far away
Unapproachable

Far away
Unattainable

Do I truly
hate rainbows?



Sunday, November 27, 2011

Going Home


Evening conceals

Evening intensifies

Evening saddens

Evening is beautiful


AND OF COURSE, THIS BLOG IS EVENING-COLORED

I remember some years ago -- it was late summer, I think --  I drove my mother to Loehmann's on La Cienega.  The place was pretty packed, and we had to park on the roof.  When we came out after shopping the hour was growing late and afternoon was folding into evening.  An unexpected breeze full of cool dampness was blowing, and a light, very light, misty rain began to fall.  It was wonderfully revivifying after the stuffiness of the store below.  I felt the chill and the wetness on my face and arms, perceived the lowering of the light over the world, and the orange and purple hues beginning to appear in the sky, and all of a sudden I was filled with a strange excitement, sourceless joy and -- I don't know what to call it... wonderment? immanence? ions in the atmosphere..? -- and I wanted to tell and shout and scream, jump up and down and run around right there on the roof of the parking structure.  I didn't actually do any of that, and the feeling passed after some moments, but I remember telling mom that I hoped my afterlife would resemble this.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Giants


(ON THE DEATH OF A RELATIVE)


Majestic, uncaring


  

strange and beautiful

   
 

  The Sun is their eye
 

 

that lights all and sees all

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Speaking Of Ghosts

MORE OF SAM'S OLD ART

I may have received 3 visits -- that I recall -- from a ghostly visitor or visitors.  Either that, or I have experienced three extraordinarily vivid and realistic hypnagogic hallucinations about ghostly visits.


[Henceforth I will use the term 'ghost' to refer to disembodied spirits in general]

According to my dream log, the first incident occurred in April, 1998.  The third incident was in June, 2008.  Oddly, I could not find any record of the second, but as I remember all three 'visits' were fairly similar in nature.  I am not going to describe them in detail, except to say that even though each incident commenced while I was in bed and in a near-sleep state, while it was happening I was completely alert (so it seemed to me) and aware of what was going on.  When the 'ghost' touched me it was absolutely real;  I felt the mattress sag under its weight (ironically, I suppose this detail could actually argue against it being a real ghost -- would a ghost have weight? -- although you could always cover it by supposing encounters with ghosts happen in some sort of non-rational, alternate reality where inner mind and external reality blur into each other^).

The first visit was briefly alluded to in a previous entry as an example of consciousness maintained into the hypnagogic stage (more happened than that little detail in the description, however).  And after the second visit I actually considered the possibility that I had really been visited by the ghost of someone with whom I had had a relationship some years before, and whom I knew to have died recently of illness.  But after reflecting on the details of the incident I eventually decided if it really was a ghost, it probably was not that person.

One thing that I will mention is the fact that throughout the duration of all of the incidents I kept my eyes closed, even thought I was dying of curiosity.  Why did I not open my eyes and look, and prove to myself whether there really was a ghost there or not?  Because of the sheer reality of the situation -- it all felt so real that I was actually afraid to look! Specifically, I was thinking of one of the episodes in the Japanese movie 'Kwaidan' -- an anthology of ghost stories originally collected and published by Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-Irishman who settled in Japan and became a naturalized citizen in the 19th century -- which concerns a selfish husband who abandons his wife and goes away to marry a rich lady;  some years later he returns and is welcomed back by his wife, who seems strangely glad to see him despite his disgraceful treatment of her.  They spend a night of passion together, and in the morning he awakens to find -- that he had slept with the moldering skeleton of his wife, in the rotting ruins of his old house.  And I was afraid that if I forced open my eyes and looked, I might see something along the same lines, like this detail from a painting I did in graduate school (the skull is actually copied from a photograph of a ceremonial object used in Tibetan Buddhism):


Anyway, if these events were all subjective experiences with no supernatural input, I can well see how back in the days of the witch hunts people could become convinced of the most farfetched things.  If one of these visits had happened to, say, a peasant farmer in Germany in the early 1600's, he would absolutely have believed that he had had a real encounter with a succubus or some such demon.  He would have told someone, word would have spread, suspicion of commerce with the Devil would have been aroused, and before he knew it he would have been clapped in irons and carted off to the witch prison in Bamburg.  Or perhaps a country parson in 18th century Ireland, told of a similar visit by a girl in confession, might have taken a kinder view of things and told her it might have been one of the 'Good Folk' who had taken a fancy to her or something -- alarming, and still unholy, but at least not a capital offense like being a witch.  And of course, a 21st century UFO conspiracy theorist might well believe that he had been abducted by space aliens, who did unspeakable things to him before returning him to his bed, with his memory incompletely erased.

I am sorry, though, to have concluded that these 'visits' probably had nothing to do with my poor J___e,  It would have gladdened me to believe that her ghost had come to visit me.

Little Ghost In The Parking Lot

I noticed this little puddle in the parking lot at work and couldn't resist.  It makes such a cute ghost^^

ORIGINAL


BOO

Sunday, November 13, 2011

The Secret Language Of Clouds

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

What could these mysterious figures mean?  Someone must have the code key...







For related posts you might want to check out this, this, this and this, among others.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Night Sun II

SHADES OF BÖCKLIN--




--as in the painting 'The Isle of the Dead' below (one of several versions).  Or perhaps Grieg -- this bleak photo could almost be an album cover for the Peer Gynt Suite (it just seems to shout 'Scandinavia!' to me -- not the healthy, happy modern welfare states of efficient design, bland cuisine and no sexual hangups, but the old mythic Scandinavia of grim, dour peasantry, frost giants and pagan mysteries).  I think it would make a nice visual counterpart for 'Death of Åse' -- whenever I hear it I think of a still, snowy landscape that starts off pitch dark, gradually brightening through the first half of the music as the pitch rises, until it climaxes at full, white brilliance, then gradually returns to blackness as the music descends back to the base note.  In any case, this photo seems very Symbolist-like.

EDIT #1:  For the original 'Night Sun', click here.

EDIT #2:  I am not posting a link to a recording of 'Death of Åse' here.  I realize it's common practice for bloggers to post links to music files, but I am trying to minimize the amount of material here that is dependent on other people's uploads on other sites -- such links could go dead at some future date, and I do not want to carry dead links.  Readers who already know the music don't need to be directed to a recording, and those who are curious, can easily find it on YouTube.


 'THE ISLE OF THE DEAD' by ARNOLD BÖCKLIN

Another Amazing Tree

Another one of those shot-firing trees.




I'm very curious to know what it is they're shooting, and what they are shooting at.

Bisection Of An Arc



Sunday, November 6, 2011

OC Man


 
A PORTRAIT OF PANIC

Not for Orange County, California, but for Obsessive-Compulsive disorder.  I had a bad case of it at age 10.  All of a sudden, I couldn't bear the thought that my thoughts, once they passed from my mind, would be lost forever without anyone in the world ever having known they once existed.  The loneliness and anxiety of that realization hit me like a thick, echo-swallowing black curtain of oblivion.  So, in order to keep panic at bay I went around literally thinking out loud, voicing every thought, so that there would be some kind of external trace of my mind moment-to-moment.  There were other symptoms, too, of course, the usual ones like having to add up all the numbers I saw and checking things over and over, but the constant mumbling got on people's nerves.  Everybody knew I was being weird and bothersome, but whether anyone had an inkling that I was mentally ill, I have no idea.  I certainly didn't.  Only much later, while reading the big medical encyclopedia in the family library did I accidentally come across a description of my symptoms in the mental illness section.

A Straight One And A Twisty One


Dandelion Seed

No reason for this post except I like dandelions and miss seeing the seeds dispersing in the wind like a deluge of tiny parachutes.  For now, there is this one.