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.  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

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

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

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!