A Beautiful Twisty

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?

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.

Giants

(ON THE DEATH OF A RELATIVE)

Majestic, uncaring

  

strange and beautiful

   

 

  The Sun is their eye

 

 

that lights all and sees all

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.  The details I'm going to leave to the reader's imagination, as they were graphically sexual, 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?  Well.., but then, why not?  You could always argue that encounters with ghosts happen in some sort of non-rational, alternate setting 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 her.

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 old Japanese movie Kwaidan -- based on a literary anthology of ghost stories of the same title, originally collected and published by Lafcadio Hearn, an American writer of Greek-Irish origin who settled in Japan and became a naturalized citizen in the 19th century -- which concerns a selfish samurai who abandons his wife and goes away to marry a rich lady;  years later he returns, having finally found his conscience and driven by remorse -- and is welcomed back by his wife, who seems not to have changed a bit, and is 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 made love to the moldering bones of his long-dead wife, in the rotting ruins of his old house.  And I was afraid that if I forced my eyes open and looked, I might see something along the same lines, like this upside-down 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 succuba 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____.  

One day I received a call from her, out of the blue.  It was completely unexpected;  it was long after our relationship had ended on a sour note and she and her husband had moved away.  We had not communicated since then.  It turned out that she was suffering from an advanced case of bowel cancer.  So.  She was making peace with me before the inevitable happened.  I was shocked, but I'm afraid that, in a misguided effort to encourage her to not lose hope and to keep fighting, I acted as if it weren't really that bad, that spontaneous remissions happened all the time, etc.  Thinking back, I'm sorry to realize she might well have found my reaction rather casual and uncaring.  If that were the case, it must have hurt her terribly to think I was cold to her even to the end.  It remains a weight on my heart.  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

A Very Sinful And Dissolute Light Pole Is Smote By A Bolt From The Blue

BULL'S EYE!

THE WAGES OF DISSIPATION

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.

Night Sun II

SYMBOLIST ART

This image left a deep impression on me.  I feel it encapsulates the spirit of 

the painting 'The Isle of the Dead' by Arnold Böcklin (one of several versions):

Or perhaps even more of the music of Edvard Grieg -- that very bleak photo could almost be an album cover for the Peer Gynt Suite (it just seems to shout 'Scandinavia!' to me -- not the modern healthy, happy welfare states known for efficiently simple 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 to the 'Death of Åse' section from the suite -- whenever I hear it I think of a screen that starts out pitch black,

then through the first half of the music as the pitch slowly rises the screen gradually brightens to reveal a stark hillscape with heavy snow falling;

both the music and the imagery continue the climb until they simultaneously climax at full height and brilliance,

then as the music slowly descends back to the base note, the screen also gradually sinks back into blackness.

Here is The Death of Åse -- picture the scene I just described as you listen:

EDIT:  For the original 'Night Sun' post, click here

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

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.

 

 

 

Helios II

PHAËTHON'S DOOM

Related Post:  Helios I

Helios I

THE TITAN'S CHARIOT

Related Post:  Helios II

The Strange Attraction Of The Moon

Today's Hummingbird Photos

Wow, I was NOT expecting to see any more of these fast-living little suckers this year!