Could be... an ax murderer, perhaps..? Yes, a serial ax murderer! Now old and locked away in an insane asylum, recalling his heyday with fond satisfaction.
Selected related posts: Madman Scowling; Made-Up Character 1; Made-Up Character 2; Another Aimless Made-Up Face Drawing; Bunch Of Characters In Search Of A Story; Sour Expression; Ugliness Abounds; Haven't Done One Of These For A While
After a long hiatus, I just randomly started drawing a face and finished it just now in a couple of minutes. As is usually the case, I started out without any particular ideas in mind as to what sort of expression it should bear, other than "big round eyes". Now it reminds me of the preta. Oh boy.
[In Buddhist cosmology the preta are the unfortunate beings who are reincarnated -- possibly from prior lives as human beings -- into a life of unrequited desire and longing, typically for nourishment (hence their other name of "hungry ghosts"), but more broadly, the objects of their desire can be anything, including such repellent things as corpses and feces]
Found a 100 Korean won coin on the subway stairs yesterday.
Now I'm 7 cents richer.
Number of worms rescued so far: 76
Yesterday the weather forecast predicted light rain for today, but if rain there actually was, it must have been very light and taken place very early in the morning hours because by the time I got up (admittedly late) there was no trace of it. I had decided to go and buy art supplies today so I went down to the subway station and took the train to the HongDae neighborhood; it should have been a reasonably short trip, but whaddayaknow, I'd forgotten that this particular subway line splits partway down and the two branches lead to widely divergent areas -- and I only belatedly realized that I'd boarded the wrong train. So I got off at the next stop -- to a station that was completely empty and actually had a desolate feel about it (decidedly rare in Seoul; if tumbleweeds grew in Korea they would have been rolling over the tracks to a melancholy harmonica tune playing in the background), and only after consulting the subway map on my phone did I realize that, by an odd coincidence, this station bore the same name as another, very busy station in central Seoul and I had mistaken this little-used and underserved station in the suburbs for that other station. After over an hour the train finally came and took me back to the diverging point, where I gratefully boarded the right train that took me to HongDae. All in all, the (would-be)simple trip took over three and a half mortal Irish hours.
O.K., now for the main part of the story. So I came home, and as I trudged up the pathway toward my apartment I encountered an unusual sight ahead: a large earthworm (one of the extra-large kind they've got here in Korea) on the path, slowly and laboriously crawling along the cement surface. It was obviously exhausted, and worse, it was dangerously exposed there in the middle of the paved path -- from both the desiccating air and the humans walking by -- and I didn't know how it came to be there, as there was no sign of recent sprinkler activity, and yet its "head" was covered with muddy soil, but the rest of its body was quite naked. But in any case, my first thought was to moisten its drying-out body; fortunately, this was just steps from the strip mall in the apartment complex, so I picked it up (unlike last time, I managed to overcome a certain amount of aversion to do this, as this worm was extra large as I said), nestled it in my cupped hands and hurried over to the restroom in the strip mall, where I gave it a (probably welcome) splash of water from the faucet. The worm actually reacted fairly vigorously, writhing and partly crawling up my hand, which was a positive sign of reserve strength. Then I came back to the spot where I picked it up and looked around for a place to return it to the soil. A lady came by just then, and seeing the little passenger in my hands, she asked me -- without a trace of revulsion -- what "that thing" was. I told her it was an earthworm, and she said "Ah, you're saving the worm!", then she asked where I'd caught it, bless her! I told her I just happened to find it there on the pathway, and she smiled and went on her way.
The surface of the flowerbed by the path looked fairly dry, but as I dug a little shallow hole with my finger I reached wet soil underneath, so I let the worm down in it and partly covered it up with debris. I hope it was able to dig its way back in.
Related post: Worm Rescue Update
Came across this pretty teahouse while wending my way through the back lanes of the older neighborhoods in central Seoul.
The big sign in the restaurant parking lot says "Hœ" (raw beef or fish -- the Korean counterpart of Japan's sashimi), so perhaps the clock is there to tell customers c'mon in, you're already late to dinner -- except this clock seems to have broken down.
The mirror says "If you're looking good, you're drunk" (note the twisty squiggly font). Seen outside a tavern in a Seoul alley.
The name of the joint is at the bottom and is translatable as "The Hornblower Jackass" -- hence the donkey drinking from the bottle.
And it isn't just a random piece of junk thrown out in a back alley; it actually keeps correct time!
Related posts: The Oddest Place To Put A Clock; Unexpected And Unforgettable
While taking a shower earlier, I suddenly thought of that sad song whose lyrics include the phrases "...felt that old familiar pain" and "...the snow turned into rain". I was pretty sure it was by Dan Fogelberg, but decided to look it up later (I did, and it was). Then by the 80's association I started to muse about the song with the words "Maybe we're near the end" (turned out to be a case of the old mondegreens -- it's "Baby we're near the end"), but I couldn't think of the singer's name. I knew he was big in the 70's and 80's, and I could see him in my mind's eye, performing the song on video, but his name escaped me. Then, after a few wet and sudsy moments it partially came to me: Kenny ____. I still couldn't recall his last name -- but I felt that it had something to do with trees. Kenny Wood? Kenny Trunk? Kenny Branch? Then came Kenny Log... and of course, Kenny Loggins! Hah!
I've read somewhere that as a person grows older and mental faculties begin to deteriorate, one of the first things to go is a memory for nouns, including names. Well, I've always been Very forgetful of names and faces anyway, so no worries there (another Hah! but with more self-deprecatory irony^) -- there have actually been embarrassing occasions in the past when someone greeted me in the street and I couldn't remember who they were.
Still, sometimes I worry just a tiny bit that, at some far-off point in the future, the day may come when I won't be able to tell the difference between this:
and this:
EDIT: Why was I able to remember that Loggins' name had something to do with trees (not even logging specifically, remember -- it wasn't a case of "it sounded like..."), but not the name itself? Or more generally, why is it that we remember mnemonic devices for specific things, but not the things themselves? I've always had trouble recalling the word "mulberry", but ever since I linked it with the Dr. Seuss classic "And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street", it became easier to remember. Why would that be? Why remember to remember the story, but not the word in the title of the story? Also with the word "infantry"; it became easier to remember it once I started to link it to "babies". And I would not be able to remember all the groupings of taxonomy without "Drunk Kings Play Cards On Fat Girls' Stomachs" (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species). O.K., so that last one is a sentence that makes sense, so it's easy to remember (that seems to be the prevailing opinion on the matter, which makes sense), but what about vague feelings like "I think it had something to do with ___"? Sylvan Muldoon mentioned in his classic of spiritualist literature The Projection of the Astral Body that every time he passed a certain spot near his house he would be reminded of a circus. He didn't know why, it just happened to him. There must have been some sensory link that connected that spot to the memory of a circus that he'd seen in the past; and surely the vague feeling of "it had something to do with..." must have something similar at work, even if we cannot specifically identify it.
Then this was a startling shout. I almost stepped on it on the trail and took a shocked step back, thinking it was the decaying, denuded carcass of some animal.
I very rarely see earthworms these days. Back in SoCal it was pretty much a certainty that after (or during) a rain you'd encounter a worm or five on the sidewalk, but for some reason here in Korea worms are a rarity, at least in the city, and when you do come across them they must be different species because some of them are huge compared to the ones in the U.S. Today we had some light rain in the morning, and I thought that was it, but then in the afternoon it began to rain again, and soon it turned into a heavy downpour, complete with thunder and lightning worthy of the summer monsoons. Well, I happen to love rain -- the heavier the better -- so I broke out my underused raincoat, put on the wide-brimmed safari hat and the trusty old wellingtons and set out. And on the way out I came upon a worm crawling down the sidewalk. It was one of the bigger ones and I was actually a little scared to pick it up with my fingers -- it was almost like a tiny snake, plus slimy and slippery -- so I used a twig to pick it up and move it to the verge. The soil was wet and softened from the rain so I think it would have made it home O.K.
Then on the way back I encountered another worm on the sidewalk -- a smaller one this time -- and when I picked it up it didn't put up any resistance so it must have been exhausted. I put it down on the soil and covered it up with some plant debris. I hope it was able to dig its way back in.
Number of worms rescued: 75
Give a man with obsessive-compulsive disorder a camera, and this is what he shoots.
With pinstripes.
I keep coming across all kinds of "errant" items everywhere, but I guess finding a discarded winning lottery ticket is too much to hope for.
Related posts: Errant
Theodora and Theodosius Smith were fraternal twins who dearly loved horses. Together they owned five horses, and among these horses there was a beautiful female horse named Christabel. That is, she would have been (conventionally) beautiful, except for the unfortunate fact that she was born with a genetic mutation that made her body completely bald except for her mane, which was unusually long and silky, grew thick and rich, and was indeed beautiful to see. Perhaps because of her deformity, the Smith twins loved Christabel the most of all their horses, and took particular care to make sure her beautiful mane was always kept clean and well-groomed. They took to affixing various pretty accessories and doodads to her mane, just as a woman might adorn her hair with colorful clips and ribbons. These horse accessories became quite popular, and eventually Theodora and Theodosius opened a shop devoted to selling ornaments for horse manes, which became trendy must-haves for horse lovers everywhere. The twins became known as two of the most successful and famous operators of a small business, or as those in the know came to refer to them, the Bare Mare Hair Care Ware Lair Pair.
of these afternoon clouds against the lowering sun. Their form recalls the scary photos of monstrous deep-sea creatures I saw as a child that left me with a lifelong case of thalassophobia. But that's part of their fascination -- after all, my motto for this blog is "Forever Seeking Beauty and Terror in All Things Everywhere".
Pastries in the shape of smiling little piggies! With custard filling inside and bearing the letter 복 (pronounced "bok", and it means good fortune) on their backs. Seen at an underground shopping mall in central Seoul.
Tunnel slides
are a common sight in Seoul. Korean toddlers enjoy them in apartment complex playgrounds just like their American counterparts do at McDonald's.
Every time I pass by one of these, though, I cannot help but recall to mind the art of H.R. Giger, the Swiss artist who revolutionized the face of science fiction cinema by designing the monster in the movie Alien back in 1979. He is famous for the unique style of his paintings, which manage to combine the grotesque, yet somehow sleek and erotic, with quasi-mechanical imagery. While I know absolutely nothing about his private life and proclivities, it seems to me that Giger must have been a partisan of his countryman C.G. Jung, the great Swiss psychologist who popularized, among other things, the concept of the Shadow, the repressed negative aspects of the mind that are largely locked away in the unconscious and that Jung believed needed to be recognized and integrated in order to round out a mature personality. Clearly, Giger was familiar with the basic principles behind the Shadow. But of course, Giger the Artist loaded a whole lot of other baggage onto that framework to work out his visual œuvre, such as Freudian sexuality, vagina dentata, the Devouring Mother, rotting babies, and just plain pervy obsession with body parts.
But anyway, what strikes me visually about the tunnel slides is that dark opening/exit that looks disturbingly like a wide-open mouth (good thing the one pictured here is blue, but I have seen RED ones). Which tends to remind one (me, that is) of bodily orifices, sexuality and genitalia, whose literal and figurative depictions abound in Giger's art (and that's an understatement), and it was easy enough for me to find a particularly apt sample online:
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And of course, I couldn't resist the impulse to manipulate my slide photo to "Giger-ify" it (naturally). I rather like the result -- in fact, I'm proud to note that for a brief moment I actually mistook its thumbnail for one of Giger's own. Think of it as a droll but earnest tribute to the master from one of his fans.
In the dream, Blood was being kept in a closet or locker, and I went to feed him, only to realize that I was out of cat food (this actually is the case almost every time Blood shows up in my dreams; typically, he simply appears at some point and I suddenly realize that I had not fed him in a very long time; this most likely indicates that an aspect of myself is going hungry -- that is, being neglected/unheeded; I have a fair candidate as to what this aspect is, but I cannot be certain). He broke out of the closet/locker and disappeared, and I went through the neighborhood searching for him, as well as for a store that sold cat food.
While I was crossing what may have been a school playground, a woman ran up and collided into me. It turned out to be Lana, a former colleague from the days when I was working for the County of Los Angeles; we fell, she laughed brightly and said something flattering/encouraging to me (this actually is a good fit with the real-life Lana's personality; she often reads my Facebook posts and leaves positive comments; I wish I could remember specifically what it was she said -- oh, well).
I continued on with the search, now accompanied by Andrea, another colleague and my girlfriend before I moved to Korea; I don't know what L.A. County's policy is on intra-departmental dating, but in any case I don't think anyone knew we were dating anyway. In waking life Andrea always had been a shy, introverted girl to begin with, but in the dream this trait was exaggerated to the point where she was quite dark (not literally, this time -- I'm talking about her demeanor) and uncommunicative. Then we were stopped by a bunch of thuggish-seeming dudes challenging us. Andrea said something defiant to them and so did I, even as I felt inwardly that this was not the best way to handle it, and the leader of the gang said angrily that they had already had to do it twice (what it was they had been obliged to do, I don't remember -- but it may have been something to do with the search for Blood). Trying somewhat belatedly to defuse the situation, I said soothingly to Andrea that they had done it twice already, and that was plenty. That's where either the dream faded, or I began to wake up. I never did manage to find Blood or cat food.
The light and dark female figures have been discussed already in previous dream posts. As for the threatening, angry men, they may have been a representation of some unsatisfied/frustrated desires or unexpressed tendencies given a generic, undifferentiated form, hence the anonymous grouping. The fact that within the dream I inwardly felt that I was not handling it wisely even as I spoke rashly to them is significant. Perhaps it's related to the reason Blood was both hungry and missing.
Related post: More Dreams
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