Really?

That munchkin-sized door actually has a warning over it that says "Watch Your Head", complete with a figure hitting its head and "seeing stars"😆

Synchronized Goosing

 

 

Mommy Cloud's Hug

Aww...

That Terrifying But Familiar Glow

The moment I glimpsed that sinister red glow at the bottom of the stairwell, I realized I must have stumbled upon yet another magician's laboratory.  It may be that the same kind of occult practices were being carried out in this place;  it very much resembled the last one I found in another derelict building -- even the trail of burnt matter leading into the chamber was the same.

This is just too many times I have come across these places in recent years, to consider them to be coincidences.  Now I have to wonder if I haven't somehow become "contaminated" with the aurae of these occult labs and developed some sort of affinity for them.

 

Related post:  Yet Another Wizard's Laboratory

Surprising Find

I had just finished washing my hands in the men's room, and as I turned to the hand dryer, I found someone had placed these delightful-looking little pouches on it.  I was sorely tempted to unwrap one and find out what was inside, but held myself in check.  I wasn't worried about terrorist boobytraps or any such thing -- even among the developed countries South Korea is one of the very safest -- but even so, it's best not to handle random mysteries, especially ones deliberately left behind.  

But now, several days later, I'm still curious.

Not Quite Nova Yet

"We're doomed, doomed!  The Sun's on fire... oh, wait."

Old Memories Revisited

There actually was a time, long long ago, when I was just an innocent little... brat.

 

The Right Corner

 

Wonder if there was a warm updraft rising out of the grate.

Bumblebee

 

A Dragonfly Flying To The Moon, Watched By A Crow

Entr'acte

I made a bacon bookmark.

Warm Lighting

I hit jackpot again! In an alley in 4 Euljiro, amongst the hip drinking joints and next to posters advertising a drag queen show.  I like the bright friendly glow inside.  Looks like the true "warm place to $h!t".

Related posts:  Around A Random Corner;  Talk About A "Commanding View"

Errant Glove

On a wet afternoon.

Related posts:  Errant

More Mysteries

Related posts:  More Of Seoul Stairs;  Mysteries

More Dreams

This morning I had two short dreams.  One was about my mother, who passed away nearly a decade ago (funny, in my dreams I'm never aware that Mom is no longer living -- not explicitly, anyway;  the one exception, remarkable for the vividness of the dream, happened several years ago;  in that dream, I was at work or school when I was summoned by the principal/boss;  I was to be interviewed by a psychologist to help with some research project;  the psychologist asked me a series of questions, then directed me to go to a certain spot outside, because Mom had been brought back for the occasion;  I eagerly went to the place, rounded a corner -- and there was Mom, welcoming me with a big smile, gloriously radiant as if lit by a light stronger than daylight, full of health and vim, and looking just like she did in life before she became sick.  I was ever so glad to see her again, was grateful for the opportunity, and then the dream closed like an old iris shot in silent movies;  I like to think that this was in part a veridical dream, that Mom is in a place where she's happy and at peace, and that she really had come back for a visit to console me).  In the first dream of the morning Mom had to go away on a a trip.  She packed her suitcase and left (on a train I think) -- and never came back.  She was incommunicado and we were worried, not knowing where she was or what could have happened to her.  Then someone informed us that Mom was in "Alama" or some place that sounded like it.  I looked up that name and similar sounding variations later when awake -- just in case -- but nothing meaningful came up.  But it's interesting that Mom's death was metaphorically addressed as a case of a person who has gone away.

Actually, this sort of indirect reference in dream to Mom's death has been made before, when several years ago I dreamt I saw Mom lying asleep and inert in a dark room.  But what I think now is that my memory of Mom's death has somehow become adopted in my unconscious as a symbol of the "feminine" part of my soul, the anima, whose dark half has manifested itself from time to time over the years in forms that are literally dark, such as a black-haired woman wearing a black vinyl coat (a poetess from New York, at that), an Asian girl with long black tresses, literal black women on a few occasions, and once even as a black kitten.  I have named this persona simply The Dark Woman.

Then, in the second dream the opposite happened.  I was sitting next to the Dark Woman's counter-persona, the other half of my feminine soul, which I have named The Sunny Blonde, for that is just what it looks like -- as a literal light woman with bright blonde hair (although it also once appeared as a white kitten).  Interestingly, on this occasion it had taken on the likeness of an actual friend of mine, an alumna from USC and UCLA.  In the dream I was trying to engage her in sex, planting light little kisses on her face and lips, and she was responding in a playful, somewhat coy sort of way.  Whether I succeeded in seducing her or not, I cannot say, because I woke up with a full bladder before the conclusion of the seduction.

In retrospect the two dreams together seem to be a staging of some vaguely positive development in my unconscious.  My mother's image was cast in a dual role;  as a missing person, one who is "gone dark" because she is deceased in waking life, and also as a symbol of the negative aspects of my unconscious, the parts that are dark, untamed and unaddressed.  The "shadow", if you will.  Then I was embracing the Sunny Blonde and endeavoring to become intimate with her, just like those male and female deities embracing in carnal union in the Vajrayana Buddhist thangkas.  Acknowledgment of the dark, followed by working toward the light -- would you not say this is a wholesome, healthy sign, regardless of the specific message?

*Again, with apologies to C. G. Jung

I Invented A New Insult

And it is... "numb dumb crumb" -- or maybe "numbdumb crumb".  As in "Those numbdumb crumbs!"

Rather "rapful", no?

Actually, the "dumb crumb" part is inspired by a line that I remember from an episode of the old TV series The Outer Limits, titled "Soldier".  The titular character, named Qarlo Clobregnny (played by Michael Ansara, a very memorable-looking actor of Syrian origin), was a soldier in the future, who was caught in a cross-fire of energy beams in the midst of battle and accidentally time-slipped to 1960's America.  There he is taken into custody and at first he is confused and distrustful, and also no one is able to understand his language.  Then a philologist eventually makes a breakthrough and is able to communicate with him, and obtains permission to take him to stay with his family.  What struck me particularly was that the scholar's children come to adopt some of Qarlo's future vocabulary.  At one point the young son of the philologist reproaches Qarlo for an unwise move and says, "Yeah Qarlo, don't be crumdumb" (I could be misspelling the term).  And here's a selfie with a drunk lobster:

Related post:  I've Invented Two New Literary Devices

My One-Sided Love

Errant Cap

 

Related posts:  Errant

Attention Ho'

There's one in every bunch.  You know the one, that one clown that just has to stand out.

Related post:  Attention-Loving Pigeon

Once Again,

the Sun was swallowed up by a gigantic flying dinosaur.  If we never see another sunrise after this, you'll know whom to blame.

Related posts:  Yet Another Cosmic Monster;  A Monster Swallows The Sun;  The Growth And Maturation Of A Predatory Cloud;  Dinocloud Returns!

What The Buddha Saw

 

An old man

A sick man

A dead man

and

A monk

Misty Morning

Zooooming Past A Church

Or alternatively...

Godspeed! (drumroll).

"Thank you, thank you, I'll be performing here all week."

I, Too, Want

This image of denuded branches, seemingly reaching for the Moon, rang a bell.

I then quickly realized why -- it's reminiscent of William Blake's etching "I want! I want!", an observation on the boundless ambition, pride and longing of humanity.  It is part of The Gates of Paradise, a renowned collection of small but visionary images illustrating various states of the human condition.

Although, in purely visual terms, the print actually looks more similar to my own earlier post "Hold Me" from March 3.

Raven

What a magnificent bird the raven is!  Beauty and intelligence combined in one body, and they can even speak with the human voice!

And A Completely Random Bit From Today...

Today it rained more or less continuously all day.  So of course I had to go for a long walk in the rain.  And during the walk the word "Perpignan" popped into my head for some reason.  I knew it was a place in France, but that was all I knew, and I couldn't think of anything that would have made me think of it at that moment.  Couple hours later, I came home, changed into dry comfortable clothes, and picked up a book.  I sat down, opened the book at random, and there it was, the name "Perpignan" in the middle of the page.

I looked up a map of the Perpignan area, but didn't see anything unusual about it and still don't know why I happened to think of it when I did.  I do know though, that this would never happen with Lotto numbers...

Related post:  And Before The Day Is Over...

Just A Wee Bit Spooky

Those eye sockets...

More Of Seoul Stairs

Related posts:  stairs

A Butcher With A Sense Of Humor

I have to admit I was just a tad startled.

Another Mysterious Whatsis(?)

Back in 2018 I was living in a loft in a highrise in downtown Los Angeles.  This image was shot in March of that year from the sidewalk next to the building.  Evidently it had rained earlier in the evening, and once the rain was over I had decided to step out into the fresh night air and shoot some street views.

What is that colorful gleaming circle at top center right?  My first thought was it's an unusual lens flare, possibly caused by a drop of water on the camera lens.  This was an entirely reasonable suspicion, given that the air must still have been damp from the rain.  But then I looked up images of lens flares and raindrops on lenses, and they were not close matches at all;  the complexity of colorful internal detail present in the "flare" in my photograph was lacking in all of the internet images I found, and also the absence of any other similar artifacts in the photograph is suspicious, as misty wet air would naturally be full of water droplets, but all of the images I found on the internet search were of groups of water drops, not isolated lone drops.

Of course, a flare doesn't have to be caused by water on the lens, but compare the first photograph with this other one from the same set.  Very different, are they not?

Actually, all of the foregoing is just a lead-in to what I really wanted to talk about;  that it reminds me of the fictitious creatures known as "Vitons" in the novel Sinister Barrier by British writer Eric Frank Russell.  Vitons were described as living beings made of energy that resemble large floating spheres.  They share the earthly environment with humans, but normally they are invisible and imperceptible to human senses.  They are conceived as the true masters of this world, who raise humans as livestock, just as ranchers raise cattle, vampirizing humans by feeding on the electrochemical energy of human emotion.  Well, in the novel this discovery of their existence was supposedly made in 2015, and that year came and went without any such startling announcements, so I guess the novel was not meant to be prophetic and we're safe^.

[Eric Frank Russell was (1905-1978) a British writer who was influenced by Charles Hoy Fort (1874-1932), the American writer, anti-establishment-science iconoclast and cult favorite.  Fort said "I think we're property" (half seriously, one-quarter tongue-in-cheek;  that was Fort's style), and I think Russell was greatly inspired by it.  Russell's novel was originally serialized in the magazine Unknown in 1939 and published in book form in 1948]

(I do suspect that the light circle in the first shot really is an especially fancy sort of flare, despite its significant difference in appearance from the flares in the second shot -- due in no small part to its suspicious proximity to the same street light.  But still, who knows -- maybe the camera really did capture something that was invisible to the naked eye)

Related post:  Mysterious Floating/Flying Object