The Final Hour and Forbidden Desires

The Final Hour and Forbidden Desires

I survived Hurricane Sandy and got off fairly easily, all in all. My area (Pennsylvania) was strewn with downed trees that looked like fallen Colossi and my place lost power for 24 hours.  There are some lingering effects.  One of my guy’s co-workers had a non-hurricane-related medical emergency right when it was going on and her place is still out of power. She’s okay now on the medical front and I’m glad, but think her power situation sucks.  We cannot do our laundry because our Laundromat is still without power. (Okay, Word, why are you capitalizing “Laundromat?” Oh, well…).  It is not a fun situation when your undergarments are in a limited supply…  

I spent time during the power outage painting by candlelight.  Yes, I am that nuts.  When I have a personal art project and am on a tear about it, I will not be stopped, even if I’m ruining my eyes.  I listened to my MP3 player while I painted as the wind howled outside and “The Final Hour” music from the videogame “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask” came on, which as anyone who has ever played that game knows, is about the perfect tract to have playing when an apocalypse is raging outside your walls.  I went outside in it with my guy to check things out… very briefly because the wind-whipped trees were scaring me, though seeing the blue flashes of electricity in the air from blowing transformers, diffused in the clouds, was pretty cool.  And, the next day, with the power out, we took a drive and a walk to look at the amazing wasteland. 

I think it was somewhat appropriate that the project that I was working on (and am still working on) was one of my bone-art pieces.  A couple of days before the storm, I opened up my storage-boxes with miscellaneous leg-bones and jawbones from creatures I’ve found on walks and cleaned for later use and decided to make a mish-mosh sculpture project representing the equality found in death.  It’s appropriate in tone because at the time I was busily painting half of a carnivore’s jawbone, I was worried about trees crashing through the windows and walls… Just the unpredictability and impermanence of all things; and the triumph of indifferent Nature… All that which reminds us that we are small.  

In thinking about my project, I’d decided from the beginning to title it “Equity” and to write up a description for it regarding how I feel that death is the ultimate equality because it comes to rich and poor, successful and unsuccessful, smart and stupid, humans, dogs, cows and horses… If death is Oblivion, then… well, you really have no business being proud of being “smart enough to realize it” more than other people because you ultimately share the fate of the “superstitious.”  If death leads us all “back to God” in some kind of Universalism, the same kind of thing applies, perhaps in a happier way, depending upon your perspective… even if you believe in an afterlife that’s un-equal, with some going to Heaven, some to Hell, or some being reincarnated well and some poorly, it’s still equal in my mind because *the lives we live now will be over* when the Reaper comes.  I’m actually kind of hoping that when my time comes, whatever I experience (“all in my head” or otherwise) that my current “familiarity with death” will make it easy on me, help me to take it all in stride despite the fact that I am very aware of my basic animal-survival-instincts. (As far as I’m concerned, we all fear death, even if a lot of people like to lie about it - because we have instincts, dammit). 

At the same time, despite my easy attitude toward natural cycles, I realized (today, particularly) how much I really want to believe in the supernatural.  I’ve never had any blatantly supernatural experiences (and probably would worry about sanity-slippage if I did)… Considering I live next to an old graveyard and like decorating my home in animal skulls I’ve turned into art, I should be so freaking haunted – and I’m not.  The closest thing I get is the “cat curse” joke that goes on in my household centered on our cat. 

I’ve been reading many random blogs on Patheos lately.  I’ve ventured into the “Spirituality” section (I took a linked quiz on one to find out what my aura color was and I seem to be more of a “Lavender” than anything else, which basically means I’m a space-case. Accurate, I’d say… I like taking stupid online personality quizzes like that, they’re fun).  I was channel flipping and watched one of those “medium” shows today – that large blond lady who strikes me as a charming eccentric and utterly adorable even though I’m not ready see her as much more than a charming eccentric.   I’ve also been reading on the Progressive Christian channel (besides just Slacktivist, I’m a longtime Slacktivist-follower) and spent this evening reading post after post by “Exploring Our Matrix”…

I like a lot of that blogger’s ideas, I really do, particularly his defenses of science as a GOOD THING, but when I read a couple of posts of his where he talked of a monist worldview (no real “soul” apart from the intricate dance of our chemicals and physicality) and his view on Christianity being a type that seems more philosophical in nature and devoid of the supernatural elements, I felt mildly “betrayed” as I often do when I read such people – like I’m reading someone whom I relate to in a lot of ways, but who, if they met me, would metaphorically pat me on the head and think of me as childish and unequal/of less-worth than some for “still clinging” to certain ideas that are stuck in my personal psychology right now.

What I mean is… there is so much I agree with in these kind of progressive and world-focused religious views. They seem to be pragmatic, rational, and they hold this life to be of utter importance, which I think is good because too much focus on a hypothetical afterlife or “miraculous” things can make people forget to do the hard work of taking care of the lives they know they and fellow travelers have right now.  However, I *really, REALLY* want to believe in “something more” than the physicality or the monist view.  Sure, it’s rational, and it makes a believer seem really grounded, but something about it just rings… hollow… to me. 

The blog post I read about finding a “Transcendent Life” – that is a post in which he spoke of how the resurrection of Jesus could not be proven or dis-proven, but “does it matter?” because he definitely transcended history and how beyond worrying about or hoping for anything else we should hope to create a “transcendent life” by doing good stuff to be remembered for… well, I couldn’t help but go back to the perennial thought I have on this matter of “What if your life is broken and you *need* another one?”   

Transcendence in memory and a life well-lived are pretty ideas, yet I cannot help but think that very few achieve it.  I think most people wind up like those marked by tombstones in the cemetery across the street that are so weatherworn I cannot read the names and can barely make out the dates.  “1855” and so forth. Those people aren’t just dead, they’re DEAD, as in no one who remembers their voice, their smell, or conversations with them is still living by now and if anyone at all visits the graves, it’s probably for some kind of genealogy thing.  The tombstones remain weather-worn, un-cared for, never replaced because these people are *not* remembered.  Transcendence? What transcendence? Not for them, for Time has conquered them.

To quote/paraphrase a character a film I watched last night in which an idealistic character had died (or was actually just thought dead), “What good are all your ideals when the moment you die, they’re gone?”  - If you have followers, people who admired you, you might be “born posthumously” and “live” greater than ever, but if not… well… sucks to have been you. Goodbye.  

Hmm. Maybe my objections are more like the kind of “consistency and fun” arguments I’ll make in fandom.  It seems to me that a “Christianity without resurrection” or “Christianity without something beyond the material/ an almost-atheism-that likes some of Jesus’ pretty words but that’s it” is… no fun for me.  It’s like playing a “rationalized” “Legend of Zelda” game in which no magic or magical items exist – “What’s the point? I’ll play a different game if I want pragmatic themes!”  It’s not that such a thing is “bad” to have, it’s just… you know, some of what drew *me* to that particular “game” in the first place is something I want to continue to be a part of what I’m playing, even as it all progresses and evolves in scope / in my life.  

(Incidentally, I once co-wrote a long fan fiction for the “Legend of Zelda” series that did play with themes of “the magic going away,” the world’s canon three ur-Goddesses not being as divine as advertised and certain kinds of magic being technological in nature, but my co-creator and I *still* had some “real” magic and an all-encompassing magic/life-force as part of the story because it just didn’t feel right without it.  Even when writing a slightly more cynical “Zelda” world, you don’t destroy all the magic because it’s just *not right* for the setting).     

Honestly, though I still consider myself a “Christian” (despite having not been to church in years, and being one of those wishy-washy Prog types who doesn’t much like the idea of a literal Hell anymore and doesn’t care if you’re gay),  I do have a bit of agnosticism sometimes, and moreover, I feel WEAK for my apparent need to believe in something supernatural – things like the possibility of an afterlife, or a soul that’s not *entirely* subject to our bodies, (and the whims of my wonky brain-chemicals that I know to be wonky!) or some kind of thing or force I can call “God” (or at least “The Force” if I’m feeling geeky).   I mean, some people only “believe” in all that they know *right now* - what they can see, touch, feel, smell and taste *without* being called crazy and that’s all they *need* to see meaning in life.  Meanwhile, I’m here, thinking about worn graves and how the world doesn’t care about you if you’re small and broken and inconsequential and how as a small person, I’m greedy and stupid and weak because I *want* more than that. 

Of course, maybe wanting it for everyone – for everyone to ultimately to find peace and get just what they want makes me less greedy, but probably not.  I worry that I really am just a stupid, worthless beast for even having these desires that are “forbidden” by the rational mind.  In the meantime, I shout in the dark, trying to assert “I exist!” to those who are not listening, which is probably why I’m brave enough to post my inmost thoughts on this blog. (Who reads this thing)? 

In the end, if a tree comes crashing through my window due to the next hurricane and gives me a fatal hit to the head, I doubt I’ll care what’s “real” and what’s not in that moment, and as much of a fool as I was in life, all those who are smarter than me will only be in the ground, too, eventually.  All will be equal. 

Graveyards and hurricanes remind us all that we are all small. 

  

Perhaps I should only speak in fiction anymore...

 Perhaps I should only speak in fiction anymore…

People seem to like the fiction that I write and the art that I create (particularly fan work)… it’s not perfect and I am glad for people who point out flaws and things that could be better.  (I have, at times, been smacked out of doing stuff that was really stupid when talking fiction-writing with people. It’s a good thing).  Yet, I seem to be increasingly aware of a hard truth in my life:  When I write a story – I get called a good writer.  When I actually express opinions and stray thoughts outside of fiction – on or offline the reaction is “Oh, my God, she’s crazy! Run away!” 

I’m serious.  I mean, I post stuff on this blog and hear crickets.  Okay, so some people do enjoy talking with me – they tend to be as crazy as I am, or even more nuts.  (Oh, the little stories my guy comes up with on drives when we see something interesting on the side of the road!  A recent trip involved “ice-cream disappointment!” and a fictional man who lived in a firehouse and refused to wear pants).  0_o  (It gets even weirder when my guy’s nephew is involved.  I love our car trips). As for more serious topics, hey, I occasionally chat with some longtime AIM-friends and on the shoutbox with folks at a fandom board… but, even there… I’ve learned to hold back.  I have learned to hold back because it seems like whenever I expose my heart to anyone or any group, it gets torn out and I walk away feeling myself devalued. 

I know it’s my own damn fault, too, even when I’m not entirely sure what I did wrong. When did I let a fart? Don’t hint at me. Tell me.

There was a serious spiritual-issues type blog that I went to for a very long time.  (Some of my few watchers were originally met on there).  I commented there, conversed there and felt very well at home – which probably should have been my sign: When I feel comfortable, I get a little too free with my expression and inevitably, well… “fart.”  When I found recently that all my commentary was moderated by default when it never had been before and no one else’s seemed to be moderated (to the point of  not only seeing contention but seeing a known troll getting through on recent threads)… I kind of decided to take the hint.  I know I said a couple of inflammatory things that annoyed the blogger a couple of times (not anything worse than I’ve seen other regulars give him in the ways of criticism or not “getting” something, IMHO), but I was pretty sure I’d long ago apologized and was forgiven…  Otherwise, I do think I know the problem:  It’s not something I do on purpose, it’s just probably my tendency to be verbose, to share a lot of personal stuff I should probably “leave at home” and the like.   

I think that some people, as nice and genuinely caring as they may be – do *not* know how to deal with me.  Things are like that for everybody.  If you were to ask me to watch a severely mentally challenged child or an elderly person with severe dementia for a day, I would be ringing my hands not knowing what to do.  I wouldn’t bear any ill-will, it’s just “I’m not trained for this and it’s outside of my experience.”  I’m like that for a lot of people with my… um… mental “hilarity.”  Something written in a bipolar depression of doomy-dooms or a mania of “I’m typing a mile a minute and cannot stop myself and ooh, there’s the send button!” – my two default states, even medicated – well, I’m sure I just outright *scare* a lot of people. 

Or maybe I really did something really wrong and “should” know what I did but am too damn stupid to. My brain… sucks.

I’m used to this kind of thing – or at least I should be.  My childhood-into-teenhood was filled with friends and cousins “growing away from me,” leaving me wondering why people with whom I used to have slumber parties seemingly-suddenly wanted nothing to do with me, even treating me like I was a stain on their new clothes… I had an online friend whom I haven’t spoken with in almost two years. The last I saw her she was having computer problems, but since she never got back to me and at the time I was being especially neurotic with her, I suspect she just cut me off.  I’d like to know if she’s alive… not to contact her, but just because I’ve been worried…

I am officially Disabled now… can’t keep a normal, job… this plays into it, too.   I’ve experienced job-place discrimination over issues I have with stress even when I’ve informed employers of them ahead of time, and of course, pre-diagnosis, I had a fast food job that I kept for a year where the new management that came after I was hired seemed to be “afraid to fire me” either because of my “seniority” or being afraid of seeing me get emotional, as everyone there knew I was “sensitive.” I, uh, took the hint when my hours were reduced to three hours one day a week that cost me more in gas and time to keep the job than to quit.  I only kept it in that state as long as I did (a couple of months on the low hours) because it was a college-job and I didn’t want to disappoint my parents by quitting instead of sticking it out until things got better.  Once my dad told me what he thought was happening and that he didn’t mind if I quit, I felt free to.

I don’t know. I sometimes feel like maybe I have no business being on this planet, in my species or in existence because it seems like I’m always doing something wrong and no one is willing or able to tell me what it is.  (Or they’re telling me and I’m too dumb and scatterbrained to get it). 

Eh, as for the blog I felt rejection from… I’m sad because the guy who runs it gives so much good advice to people who email him, with a lot of compassion and… now I feel like I will not be able to ask advice from him if I ever run into a situation when I might need it.  I’m pretty sure I’ve been labeled a “troll” or something worse in his mind.   

Everyone bothering to read this:  I don’t have a habit of trolling. I really *am* this crazy.

Posting this because: No one reads this blog – or hardly anyone.  I don’t think I’ve posted anything here that anyone can blackmail or betray me with. I hope not.   

  

To Join the Sea of Electrons...

I was poking around TV Tropes http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage  last night prompted not by boredom (as I usually am) but by someone giving me (and a blog I was on in general) a recommendation for a fan fiction for a fandom I'm not in but have read listed around the 'net.  (Apparently, it's pretty popular.  If I were a reader of the books it was based on and not just a casual watcher of the movies who forgets most of their content, I might give the fic a shot)...  Anyhow, since it's been Troped, I was clicking links from it about the author and such, as what happens when one browses TV Tropes, and wound up round-about reading about Transhumanism and the scientific quest for immortality...

... I remembered a PBS special I saw a long while ago that was narrated by astronomer/physicist Degrasse, I think... all about this thing and and shaking my head at one guy who was trying to extend his life by taking hundreds of vitamins and supplements every day to ward off aging and thinking "That guy's gonna get hit by a car."

Yes, I'm a stupid dumb-dumb non-scientist and a bit of a cynical bitch. Live with it.

Anyway, the special had all kinds of other physical immortality bids, including brain-uploading to software.  This very thing has been explored in some of the animes I've watched and loved. The title of this post is a reference to an episode of "Cowboy Bebop"   http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/CowboyBebop?from=Main.CowboyBebop  .  One I've seen that takes it to 11 is Kaiba http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/Kaiba?from=Main.Kaiba  (Linked from Tropes rather than main Wiki because I have the window open and it's handy). 

In addition to that, I remember recently reading a couple of articles about this stuff  (half news, half opinion) on Huffington Post regarding scientists thinking we are on the very cusp of just this sort of thing.  It's a pretty interesting idea, but I can't say I'm not a bit suspicious of the "Singularity" just because I can see it being the domain of the privileged that leaves out the disadvantaged (This was a major theme in "Kaiba" listed above.  I recall there being a revolutionary group dedicated to killing the physical souls/memories of the dead that existed in that universe just to get rid of the inequality of the rich abusing the system.  Death may be a bitch, but at least it's equal). 

My thoughts on the subject of death are rather weird... I *do* want to live forever, in a way,  but I trust a divine hand/spiritual matters for that more than I'll ever trust even the smartest of humans or machines. Even if the divine/spiritual does not exist, mankind has hurt me too much to have a lot of trust for it (yes, if it came down to it, I can easily see myself trusting in Nothing more than Humanity, especially since I suspect "eternity" might be subjective/a matter of perception, anyway).. Machines, well... I can't even trust those with my art files:  http://shadsie.deviantart.com/#/d5d09x9 Also, yesterday, I accidentally overwrote my awesome maxed-out I-can-climb-the-impossible-tower! save-file on "Shadow of the Colossus" because I wasn't paying attention, so.... trust my consciousness to a computer or to people running one?  Urgh!   Anyway, I probably don't deserve to live forever,  anyway.  I'm one of those cracked/insane people they'd weed out of the program real early...

That said, if I ever get the IQ-boost I need to write a decent fiction story on such a complex and genius-philosophy subject, I'm tempted to write something in which we're all minds uploaded into a massive computer-database or free-floating on the Internet or in the "sea of electrons"  and since we're all immortal and cannot kill each other anymore, we've achieved an unprecedented level of peace until... 

A million-year-long flamewar breaks out about whether or not Smurfs lay eggs. 

Or people's entertainment preferences. 

Or people get so bored that the collective computer consciousness starts increasingly becoming composed of  people doing nothing but sharing videos of cats and the occasional cat-brain that's been uploaded interrupting peoples' free-floating philosophy-sessions with plaintive cries of "Tuna!" or "Ear itchy! Scratch now!" (It doesn't matter if the cat has no body and no ears anymore... cats are cats).  



... Yeah. I'm too dumb and nuts to deserve to have my mind live forever in the material / electronic world. I sometimes think even self-awareness itself for me may be more of a curse than a blessing. 

Stories to Never Tell

I guess that every writer is like me in that the ideas one gets for stories vs. the stories that actually get written constitute a far greater number than anyone on the outside would guess.  We all know that some ideas just aren't very good, and then there are those that just kind of stick with you for a while and whine at your brain that maybe you should write them, but you refuse for whatever reason. 

I actually have an idea that's been with me for years that I might write - if I get into a close enough relationship with the right people and get their support. As it is, I'm actually afraid of hurting people with my ignorance if I attempt it.  It deals with sexuality and religion (but moreover about personal sacrifice and how it can backfire) and I think you know right with those words why it's been on the back burner of my brain for the last five or six years now, never actually penned. This is the "never-written story" that's stayed with me the longest, which means it might get written if I ever luck into what I feel would be the proper research needed for it to live. 

A story idea that I've come up with more recently is even trickier:  It deals with my love of fantasy - of impossible things, of wonders happening to people, whether they want them to or not.  If you read the stories posted on my blog, you know my predilections.  The idea was first sparked when I was thinking about The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.  It's, to date, the most recent game in the Legend of Zelda game series - a 25-years strong videogaming franchise that will never die, but I don't want it to because I'm in mad love with these games... I was thinking of making a post on one of the message boards for the series I go to about the "discovery of impossible" things that run through this series. 

Skyward Sword has something of a joke on an earlier title, Twilight Princess in that TP had a researcher character who was scoffed at by his peers for his belief in a City in the Sky, which you *find* in the game.  Skyward Sword is the reverse of that:  A prequel in the ur-mythology of the series that has Link (player character) having been born and raised in a city in the sky and the Surface, even as it plays a role in the society's religious mythology, is seen as something only eccentric people believe in.  They still believe in their patron Goddess, but fail to believe in a key part of their origin myth because no one has seen it and it seems impossible to them that anything might exist beneath the Sea of Clouds...  Thinking about this bit of interesting mythos, something in my brain went "Hey! Link discovering the Surface in his world is kind of like if someone in our world found out that Ken Ham was right!" 

Just an utterly impossible thing.  After getting into a conversation-thread Slacktivist about Ken Ham and Young Earth Creationism (for those of you who don't know who Ken Ham is - look him up... or don't.  He's a vocal advocate for trying to force science into an absolutely literal reading of the first chapters of the Bible).... After that and after viewing today a video by Bill Nye (The Science Guy)* telling Creationist parents to please not pass their beliefs onto their children and quietly die off (okay, so he didn't say it so harshly and he was stressing the importance of evolution to an understanding of life-science for our future doctors and inventors), well... it brought up my fantasy idea again. 

I think polls about American attitudes are skewed on this subject, or, at least there are probably more people who believe in mainstream science who say they don't because they don't want to be kicked out of their churches... Do pollsters ambush people as services are letting out or something?  I flirted with the YEC thing myself when I was teen-aged and stupid, convinced by elders and TV people (but strangely enough, not my parents) that I had to give up science and sense to follow what my heart wanted to follow.  That was all I'd ever heard: "If you want to follow Jesus / believe in Christianity / not go to Hell, you have to believe God created the world in six days."  I believed in "God" before - in a sort of "something out there," but not within a specific religious structure before. Thankfully, my teen / adult Sunday School teacher was a Theistic Evolutionist and that put a crack in the idea of un-science and brought me full-circle into a person who doesn't think having spiritual beliefs means one abandons science.  He didn't "preach" though - to the YECs in the church. He figured "We're all brothers/sisters here" and felt no need to preach his ideas on God and science to them.  I don't know if he was being gracious and polite, or if this was unbelievably sad.

In any case, just like the guy in the Zelda game who tells you to pray for good luck and protection a one of the bird-shrines around the sky-island (it's a game-save system), and clearly hopes the Goddess is smiling upon him -- who later jaws on about how he's never believed in the Surface... There are tons of people who believe the "substance of the myths" without believing them literally when it comes to popular religion.  Therefore...

I think writing a fantasy tale about someone discovering something that proves the YECs right just to shake up and screw with the brains of everyone in the world would be a neat thing to write.  As a fantasy.  An archaeologist discovers dinosaur-saddles or something.  Time-travel happens and people go to the past and see stupid stuff.  The crazy stuff that not even a lot of religious people who treasure the myths believe in anymore being true? WTF?  Whoa!  Part of me wants to get my research on and get out a pen and just scrawl down weirdness, but... no...

No, just no.

There is *no way* I could write a wild fantasy like this without it being mistaken for propaganda even if I go out of my way to *make fun.* 

You see, a fantasy author can write a story about a bunch of kids discovering a dragon in our world, or a forest full of unicorns, or real and present practical magic.  I vaguely remember a film from my childhood that was about a family adopting a Bigfoot.  You can do stuff like that in fantasy - people discovering impossible things. 

But other things that would make for awesome fantasy?  It doesn't seem like such ideas *can* come without politics and other damaging things. 

I find it sad to find my creative spirit hobbled like this, but maybe stupidity is as good a restraining bolt as any to keep stupid things from being created.

Anyone brave or foolish enough to want to try to co-write an extremely controversial fantasy novel with me?



*I grew up watching Bill Nye.  It is a tragedy that his show is no longer on the air. It was quirky, funny, and man, I learned stuff from it!  I learned about rods and cones in the eye from that show and about the mesosphere... I may not have become an important scientist or engineer, but common-knowledge is always good and I'm sure the show inspired people to get into science careers.  I remember it as one of the best kidutainment shows ever.   

The Isolated Mind

Very often, I think I just live in a different world than other people. 

Physically, I share space with the physical things of this world, including other people, but my mind feels…isolated.  I am pretty sure that no one thinks exactly like I do, and instead of meaning that in a fluffy “Mr. Rodgers” you-are-special-for-just-being-you way, I mean it in a “I’m just crazy,” way. 

Today, I commented on a favorite blog only to come back later and see my comment deleted without explanation.  It’s happened a few times there.  I have no idea if the blog’s owner thinks I’ve been insulting him somehow – I certainly didn’t mean to – but I do know I went way off topic.  He posted a cute story with a lesson, and I go off on a (happy) tangent about the usage of certain elements in fiction.  I’m pretty sure “way off topic” was the reason for the deletion and that it was nothing personal, but, the fact is that I seem to do that *all the time* and not just to this blogger… (I’ve been talking casually to friends about ideas I have and whatnot only to have them go “Huh?” at me. Yes, even online friends of mine who’d describe themselves as “weird.”) 

I wonder if this is common to people who enjoy writing speculative fiction as a hobby, or if it’s a problem that people who are creative in general face (oftentimes, even in talking with other creative people).  Then again, I do live with a man who was, through our creative-joking sessions, was largely responsible for the “Princess Poo-Poo” entry, so maybe I’m not as isolated as I think. 

We saw the film “Paranorman” the other evening.  We’re both grown-ups who like “kid’s movies,” especially ones with beautiful animation.  I found the protagonist particularly relatable… he’s a kid who can see ghosts and everyone in his town treats him as a freak for it (except his buddy, who’s teased for being fat).  In the end, it is one of those many films with a fantasy-flavor and an important message that I know is going to get largely ignored just because I grew up on film after film where “respecting difference” was the main message and the protagonists were “freaks” and never enjoyed the respect or even reprieve of my peers who saw the same films.  Sometimes, I think fiction can tell great truths, but sometimes, I don’t think those truths stick. 

In any case, I related to the protagonist because, even though I do not see spirits or anything (it seems, as emotionally-nutty as I am, my senses are firmly trapped in material reality), I thought to how the kid’s perceptions made him live in an entirely different world than the rest of the people around him.  A lot of people think that they’re “different” without knowing how popular and basically normal they are.  I know I wasn’t as bullied growing up as a lot of people and that I have it better than a lot of people. I know I’m saner than some unfortunates out there who have worse conditions than I am.  I still feel like I’m in a different world, though.  The manic-style thoughts, the running off on tangents, thinking of things that no one apparently thinks of and / or thinks are strange…Living in that all the time…  

Sure, my “weirdness” gives me the ability to think up stories about a man trying to live “life as a litch” after waking up from ten years gone, a person living happily in a world where everyone has vanished, or a selectively cannibalistic culture of otherworld vulture-people, but my mind is something that apparently offends people if I don’t keep it in check or tell it to shut up every once in a while. 

World, I’m sorry I’m not like you, but in the end, I’m not sure I want to be.  I’ll probably just be quieter from now on.  That seems to be my reaction… just getting quieter and quieter, choosing to largely speak in fiction.   

Skulls and Bones as Perfect Things

Skulls and Bones as Perfect Things

Cross-posted to my personal blog, Sparrowmilk.  http://www.sparrowmilk.blogspot.com and my Deivant Art journal http://shadsie.deviantart.com

Today, I got chosen for the August Feature of one of the skull/bone art clubs I’m in on Deviant Art.

http://skull-painting.deviantart.com/

I got to thinking maybe I ought to talk about just why I am so interested in bones and skulls and all things skeletal.  Why do I feel slightly bad “killing” Stalfos in the Legend of Zelda? Why are there so colorful many former animals on my walls? 

Some may wonder if I am obsessed with death.  Let me set the record straight: I AM. I find it difficult *not* to be obsessed with inevitable things, doctor appointments and road trips get my anxiety all up (more in the good ways with the happier things but anxiety can still be a problem).  When I was a child, I was obsessed with growing up like most children are – enjoying being a kid but wondering who and what I was going to be (I had plans… only as an adult did I learn that dreams die, too).  As it was, growing up kind of snuck up on me.  I still feel like a kid inside, but my body grew up and the world changed without my permission.  It was inevitable, and I suspect that death will be like that for me, even if I end up in a position where I can see it coming…  I figure I’ll only *know* when I’m dead if there is an actual afterlife of some kind for “ethereal-me” to register ‘cause I’m pretty sure the good ol’ meat-brain can’t.

A walk in the cemetery or looking/working with a skull… It’s a reminder of the inevitable and the essential equality that we all share – in this if in nothing else. Someday, I’ll never annoy or be a burden on anyone again.  Someday, people will never hope to see a new beautiful work by me again and those who like my voice will no longer get to hear it.  I wonder what the lives of deer were like as I paint them, what they might have felt and smelled – how they experienced the world.  What were things like for a sick or wounded fawn as it laid down?  What was it like for the scavenging creatures for which this was a life-sustaining windfall? All before I found the delicate little jawbones that ended up as one of my favorite necklaces…

http://shadsie.deviantart.com/gallery/6553783#/dm3rq0

There’s a more “life” reason why I love bones.  They are *evidence of life.* Sure, they are only life that was, but growing up and discovering my love for them in the desert of the rural part of Arizona in which I lived, I saw finding a bone as evidence that “there is life here” in a land where most of the life is sparse and thorny. A lot of what I found was livestock-dumping from the local people who butchered the fatted calf or who lost the young dairy calves and just got rid of them in a place where the police wouldn’t find them.  (In hindsight, I’m overjoyed that I didn’t find any human remains out there… phew)!  When I found bones that I knew belonged to actual wildlife (like the time I found a javelina / peccary skull) I was very excited, because it meant that “Javelina still live in my area, cool!”  (I still have that skull, unpainted.  I painted another of the same species that a hunter-uncle gave me).   In my life in Pennsylvania… sure, fishing the skull from a groundhog that had died under the porch of my former residence was nasty, but, it was remains of a sort of unwanted “pet” of ours – a real character that ate the garden pumpkins that year. (It became a piece I sold… I’m sure the owner of it appreciates the affection I put into painting it because I’d felt some affection for the old animal while it was still living).

I love bones, perhaps, most of all, because they are very sculptural.  I have the same kind of attraction to them I suspect Georgia O’ Keefe had.  The “lively” shapes, the smooth beauty of something that was a part of the support structure of a living creature.  The “living sculpture” that is bone makes purely human-created sculptures in stone or bronze seem a little “dead” to me.  Bones are what remain of the cells and the calcium and the proteins that were once used by a vibrant being.  If some scientist in the future ever studies my bones, fossil or otherwise, perhaps their trained eyes will catch that little rebuilt-bit of the radial-neck fracture I suffered in my right arm one time, or can tell by their growth patterns that I was a well-fed, overstuffed American of my time.  My teeth alone would interesting – all the fillings and a little bit of cosmetic-work.   Bones are sculpture – sculpted by life. 

Skeletons, in addition to all, are structure – the underlying structure of a vertebrate animal, like the scaffold of a building or the outline of a novel.  I’m fascinated by that, too. 

So, there you go - My obsession with a thing that I love that loads of people find creepy and others also find beautiful.

The Ever-Changing Narrative (Sex and Violence Edition)

Today, I cruised by the Slacktivist blog to check up on a thread/topic I'd viewed last night - one of Mr. Clark's linkspams to interesting stories found online (the "Smart People Saying Smart Things" series). I rarely, if ever click on all the links in those, but sometimes I click through a few and find interesting stuff.  Want to cringe and horrible puns? Check the "Christian T-Shirt Fails."   (I think it's a good measure of how changed or "backslidden" I've become when I look at stuff like that and remember the church I went too as a teen and how such things were popular... except, somehow, I remember the quality of the shirts and messages as being so much *better* than today.  I had a "Love All, Worship One" shirt once with a stylish fish-symbol done in a sponge-paint style... cheesy? Sure, but not nearly as bad as a Jesus-Staples Easy Button).  Face. Palm.

I once had a job service try to get me a job as a graphic designer at one of those places. After browsing the online shirt message selection, I had a "Run away!" reaction and emailed my job coach with what essentially amounted to a Big Nooooo! (That place's offerings were even worse than bad puns.  A shirt that read "God loves homosexuals" on the front - sweet - until you see the back "He loves people looking for love in all the wrong places."  - I wanted to smack people upside the head with a rolled up newspaper for sheer rudeness if nothing else)! 

Speaking of that... One of the other links on the linkspam was to a story on an LGBT site about an overlooked old church Saint... A Saint who was a bearded lady.  (According to the story, she didn't want to be married off to a pagan king, so she prayed about it and God gave her a beard to make her ugly so she wouldn't have to marry. Then her dad murdered her over it).  The site speculated that perhaps (if she existed) she was a lesbian who was blessed with the beard or an intersex individual and has become a Saint that some in the LGBT community latch onto as patron.  (She's officially a patron of difficult marriages, I think... I just took a glance at the article).  Anyway, today, on the comments to the linkspam, I saw someone complaining about how this person "automatically" is branded "lesbian" rather than "perhaps heterosexual but just didn't want to marry" or "perhaps asexual." 

The commentator was an asexual who is tired of being ignored. 

I can relate.  I mean, though I'm in a technically heterosexual relationship, sex just isn't a part of it - and I'm happy with it. I mean, what do you call a 33-year-old-virgin without any overwhelming desire to "correct" that particular life-state even though I've had no problems "landing" a partner?  I'm pretty sure I'm asexual, or something close to it.  - Now, it only seems to weird people out when I share it (I'm weirding you out right now, aren't I)? And I run the risk of getting accusations of everything from "prude who's going to tell me I'm evil and going to Hell for having sex" to "stupid, pitiable child who just doesn't KNOW life yet because the big "O" is magical" to "What the Hell is WRONG with you?"  (To which I reply - yes. I do have something "wrong" with me. Want me to go into detail about a health condition)?  By the way, if you want to have sex, no skin off my bum - but if you don't know your partner(s) well, use protection so you don't get sick, okay? I care about you.  

I was struck with the thought reading the commentator of "Yeah, it's kind of annoying to have the possibility of my existence ignored again, but... so what?"  I think the LGBT community is in need of Saints and heroes (mythic as well as the confirmed-real) because historically, not a lot of those have been "allowed" to them by greater society.  As an "asexual" I don't feel particularly persecuted - on the grounds of "What's the point of a unicorn hunt?"   I'm content to be a "unicorn" if it helps other people, people who really need the solace.

So, I guess I'm saying, my attitude right now is if, someway, somehow, I become a Saint or a hero of some sort and people in the future want to look to my lack of obvious sexuality as a sign that I can be a hero to their own - go right ahead.

I'm thinking about this because I have a short story in mind dealing with the “change in narratives” regarding life and people that I'm dawdling on.  It’s just one of my possibly-meaningless stories to post on the blog that I'll probably never make money or fame from - about a man who is resurrected after ten years of being dead.  Just spontaneously resurrected - I'm not going to try to explain it with science though the scientists in the story's world will.  Despite the obvious "religious" connotations to what happened to him, I don't want it to be a religious story. In fact, the "victim" as it were doesn't remember an afterlife (yet, he does not dismiss the possibility that there is one and he just doesn't remember it).  He gets people angry at him from both sides because he's unwilling to take one - also, some will be angry at his general existence, because face it, some people would be because it seems like whenever something that’s “not supposed to happen” does, sometimes even for “good,” some people get angry because “The world does not work that way!” 

Anyway, the main meat of the story (if I ever get it written) is that the hapless man finds that people’s memories of him have shifted.  His family and friends all make assumptions about him and “what he’d want” and are made to feel very strange when he corrects them, or chooses something different.  – I want the story to be about how we go through our lives essentially seeing other people as fictional characters a lot of the time – we have our own images of them, our own ideas about them, sometimes even the people we are closest to.  In other words, the story-idea is a play on “Don’t speak ill of the dead” and “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”   When the dead cannot speak, we make myths around them – good or bad, depending upon what we thought of the person and whether we personally knew them or if they’re just a historical figure. 

The weirdest thing – when first getting the budding ideas for this story, I was pretty sure I wanted my resurrect-character to die in a public shooting (so I could play with the idea of “the martyrs we make – whether or not they ever wanted to be”).  Then, well, news happened…  Okay, if someone shoots up a grocery store anytime soon, consider me one really freaked out writing-prophetess.  I was thinking gas-station-store, that kind of thing, just because robberies there are common… that evolved into a grocer somehow… And if anyone actually does that, even though I’m not sure I believe in an “eternal Hell” anymore, I hope there’s some kind of a “hell” for them.  I hate to be one of those “hangin’s too good” types, but sometimes, I honestly am when I look at all the shit that goes on in the world.

Speaking of violence – here’s another thing I’ve been wondering at for a while in regards to values dissonance and how history looks upon things… I keep thinking that the very “progressive” people of today might be seen as monsters in the future, not for the things they are progressive about, but for side-things.  I keep thinking, for instance, that one day, maybe vegetarianism will win out as the grand moral dietary choice – as is, I have respect for vegetarians, even though I’m a meat-loving butcher’s daughter and well, when it comes to some of the flesh I eat – a stone-killer.  I went fishing yesterday at a nearby creek. I caught four lovely sunfish (they’re small and bony, but I enjoy eating them) and brought ‘em home, beheaded them, gutted them and fried ‘em up with some bacon and garlic.  I am capable of doing that without thinking too much about the fish (I do try to minimize suffering, but they are pretty primitive-brained, so I’m never going to think of them the same way I do people, or even the mammals I also enjoy eating).   I can’t help but think that even as I grow “progressively” on various issues of politics, society, human rights and even spirituality, that history may just look back on me / those like me as horrid because we ate things with faces and / or looked into the faces of what we ate. 

I’m unrepentant, though.  Fish are delish.  Fish aren’t friends! They’re food!

Long Walks in the Graveyard at Night

Long Walks in the Graveyard at Night

Here’s where I confess to something that may have you thinking I’m a Goth or something of that nature, or, at least weird – (but you already knew that, right)? 

I live across the street from a cemetery – an old but continuous cemetery, as in, it is still in use – fresh plots are dug there and there are many modern memorial markers (ranging from, in my opinion, the tasteful to the g-awful.  Who invented the idea of colorizing headstones)? There’s this one poor girl who died young (sixteen, seventeen, I think), whose parents decided to put every hoo-haw known to man on her grave, including a big, plaster Uncle Sam. 

If you do that to me, I am coming back to haunt you.  I don’t care if it turns out that the people who don’t believe in life after death turn out to be right, I will *find a way.*

Then again, I don’t think my family’s too keen on my “Dig up my skeleton and make art out of my bones!” idea. (I know they’d rather Uncle Sam me… Urg).

There are some graves there for the Civil War days, though… faded/worn out limestone where names are barely visible if at all.  They make me very sad because with such long-ago dates, I know that the people who knew those people, buried them and probably used to visit are dead now, too.  If anyone comes to these graves anymore, they’re historians and people making genealogy records – no one who actually knew the people buried there – their smile, their eyes, their voice, their scent… And now even their names are faded on forgotten stones. 

Anyway, there is no gate on this cemetery.  My area is a nice little town and doesn’t have vandalism problems.  Even if it had gates on the road-entrances, the “wall” is a hedge. And, no, not a hedge made of ninjas for you fellow fans of “The Tick” comics.  I’ve been walking in it at night. I even got a surprise when I once saw a cop car rolling through during the twilight hour, but I wasn’t stopped from walking, which surprised me.  The other night, I was on the paths and saw this incredible moon – a hairline sliver that was red… pinkish actually, but this creepy red moon… It’s pretty neat to walk in a cemetery on a summer night with the fireflies flitting about and a creepy moon.  It’s quiet, peaceful, and at my cemetery, there are lots of very pretty lights people put on the graves – solar-powered lights that charge during the day to hold a little vigil at night.  At least one of the graves has an actual candle that someone continually lights and replenishes. 

It’s sobering to think that this is where we all end up.  I mean, I got to thinking that the other night, under the sliver-moon about how these were people of all kinds of different persuasions and beliefs here (it’s an eclectic cemetery – a walk in the daytime reveals all kinds of symbols, poetry and languages)… and like it or not, whether we believe there is anything “after” or not (or like me, hope there’s something “after” but suspect that there might be a “your mind makes it real” thing that goes on in its final throes )… we all end up headed toward the same essential destination. 

I mean, I think of it this way – If there is something after, you’re going to be different than who and what you are now.  I can’t imagine that anything is in a static-state.  Wherever you wind up, the life you live in the now is the only chance you have to live that life, because if there is another side, things are going to be different there. This is why it’s tragic when people who are selfish and cruel do not change in life (because even if they get some kind of awakening or comeuppance in the hereafter, it’s too late for the now).  I don’t even know if I’m making any sense.  In any case, I think a graveyard should be especially humbling for anyone who doesn’t think in “cosmic” terms, because, in the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re better, harder, faster, stronger, or smarter than anyone else – the genius and the idiot, the strong, brave person and the weakling all find their “reward” in rot.  Are you really “better?”  You cannot control what people think of you after you’re gone, after all.  Today’s heroes may be tomorrow’s villains, or just… forgotten. 

Run the race, but the finish line is just about the same when it comes down to it. You don’t get first place if everyone’s participation ribbons are the same thing as the first place ribbon. Sometimes, I think the meaning of life is death just because with the same finish line, we have to think about how we’re running the race.  In the end, don’t get too proud.  “Winning” at life is an illusion.   

About a year or two ago was when I first ventured into to the graveyard at night. Upon coming home from places and driving past the lot to get home, my man Bob and I grew curious about the weird lights we saw there.  I went outside in the dark, looking over my shoulder for cops and nosy neighbors, and stole into the cemetery to find, that, yes, indeed, people were leaving solar lights on some of the graves.  I told an online AIM friend I had about it, a friend who was atheist-leaning agnostic and she thought I was brave for that and wouldn’t do it alone like I did because “graveyards are spooky.”  I was all “Huh?  Okay, you’re a rational skeptic. You don’t think there’s anything in a cemetery but stones and bodies buried deep. What would you have to be afraid of?  I’M the slightly-superstitious person / person who has some religious beliefs / believes in the possibility of a spirit world and, though I don’t think there’s anything in that cemetery but stones and bodies, either, the remote possibility of getting haunted for disturbing the dead does actually register with me –  and I’m not scared at all!”

(Maybe it’s because I disturb the bones of found dead wild animals for art all the time I haven’t felt any curses…) Unless…said curse is my life… 

I just thought that was funny.  I’m out of touch with said friend – she had some computer problems long ago and failed to get back to me. It’s been about a year… I’m worried she might have grown apart from me as some friends of mine do.  I was putting a lot of my psychodrama on her unfairly.  In a way, I think I may have experienced death a few times without actually dying, because I know what it is to have friends “grow out of me” and forget me, and I know what it’s like to lose touch with family.  It is change, is all…

I remember one night last year or sometime before that, I decided to show Bob the grave-lights and we would up traipsing around the graveyard at night, making discoveries (like the over-decorated Uncle Sam grave in the back).  Bob had been playing “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” out of sheer unemployed-at-the-time boredom and he Zelda-ized our little tromp.  “We’re hunting Poes!” he exclaimed. I laughed so hard. 

(For those not familiar with the Legend of Zelda games, Poes are malevolent ghosts found on the fields and in the graveyards at night and are, in most games, shown holding lanterns.  In “Ocarina of Time,” you can catch them in a bottle and drink the things to boost (or sometimes harm) your health!!! In “Twilight Princess,” they’re demonic entities that stole pieces of a man’s soul and you have to, in your alternate wolf-form, attack and literally rip the soul out of them to help the cursed man in exchange for rewards). 

In any case, if you visit me and stays on a summer evening, I might just walk you across the street and take you “Poe-hunting” beneath a spooky moon.  

An Internet Pet Peeve

A quick glance at something reminded me of a pet peeve of mine on the Internet.  I don’t know if it’s a writer’s peeve or just an argument-style peeve. 

I hate it when people seem to think quoting someone and leaving means they’ve won the argument. 

Quotes from famous, admired people are just fine and dandy – when used at the head of an essay or as a *part* of an argument, but when you simply *quote famous dead guy here* and don’t add any of your *own* thoughts to it or explain why this agrees with you or supports what you want to say and use it to say everything, isn’t that what we’d call an Appeal to Authority?

Or at least uncreative. 

The same applies to the quoting of scripture for me – unless you’re answering a question about history or the work itself, if you’re using it to apply to some modern, real world argument, in my opinion, you should back up what you want to say by actually saying something yourself. 

To use a hypothetical example for something that’s not too real-world controversial, say I get into a fandom argument over the Legend of Zelda series.  Maybe it’s a Timeline argument and I’ve decided “I think the current official Timeline is bunk.**”  I could look up one of the many quotes by Nintendo officials about how they consider gameplay more important than story, but if I simply listed a favorable quote, then walked away and didn’t back it up with my own opinions, I’d feel like I’d not made a good argument.  If I use a quote not-from-me as a “You’re stupid!” or “everyone should agree with me right the hell now!” weapon, it’s even worse if I appeal to authority without saying anything of my own.  

Maybe the originator of the quote would see what I was doing and come along and say “You’re out of line, I didn’t mean it that way!” or “Yeah, I did mean it like that, but you’re using it like a club is soooo dull,”   - which, perhaps, is why so many people in serious arguments favor the words of the dead…  

So, if you’re going to whine and moan online about the existence of things, people or ideas you just wish were dead, gone or changed, or you want to call someone stupid, don’t quote some dead guy or some block of literature and think you’ve “won” because you’re so creatively dull or empty-headed that you have nothing of your own to say.

If anyone ever gets into a habit of quoting me after I’m long dead (like that would ever happen), remember, you will be doing a disservice to my memory if you depend solely on me. Use your own words to back yourself up! 

(** Zelda Timeline for those interested in my opinions on it… I kind of do think the above and don’t at the same time.  I’m willing to go with the current canon, and it has inspired some fanwork from me, but I kind of think it was an ass-pull, just because Nintendo never set out to have 16+ games when they made the first few).

ADS REMOVED FROM SITE!!!

I was thinking of taking the AdSense off, anyway - I had it on in hopes that I could actually make a little bit of money by blogging, and at the insistence of my guy, who's pretty deseprate for us to get some kind of income from our creative work - no matter how much I tell him I'm just not popular and it just ain't happening...

I went to the blog to fetch something today to link to someone and lo and behold, what do I see on my lovely little blog? A POLITICAL AD.  It wasn't an ad for a candidate, it was an abortion-related ad and, frankly, I feel so ambigious about the whole thing I don't want people to think I'm on one side or the other.  This crap does NOT belong on a blog where I am trying to showcase experimental short story writing.  I do rant on political/religious-faith related things and other contentious issues sometimes - and also videogames - but I don't need people advertising their adgendas on here! At least not unless your agenda is to actually sell a physical something to someone. 

Sell soap on my site?  Yeah, fine. Cut me in if anyone clicks. Advertising a writer's conference? I might even be annoyed that I'm not allowed to click my own ads because I'd be interetsted.  Sell a political agenda?  Bye-bye ads.

I asked my guy "If I put adware on my site, I won't be getting porn ads or anything, right?" and he said no - just product stuff. Well, political ads are just as offensive to me as porn.  I won't peddle!

Emotion = Weakness?

Something I've been thinking about for a bit, but really hit home today so, I thought I'd ask the Internet - the web-denizens who may respond in a civil manner on my "safe space" here.  Well, if anybody actually read this...

I'm wondering at what point in Western or World society that "emotion" became "weakness?"  

I've been thinking about a personal choice (well, not wholly a choice) I've made in my life that I know is based a good part upon what appeals to me emotionally, rather than straight robo-logic.  I know that if I were to talk about it at certain places, or even possibly talk about it in detail here, that I would be condemned for my "weakness" in chosing to favor something because I find it emotionally favorable, filling to emotional needs.  You know, because only logic counts for anything according to most of the world.

People might even say that because on one level, I emote and choose an emotional answer, that it means I'm *incapable* of logic and have brains made of pudding.

A part of me wonders if this "emotion = weakness" thing is the result of a patriarical society that's tradtionally viewed emotion as a "woman thing."  I know that having an "overage of emotion" and having a hard time controlling it out in the real world is what I know keenly as a "mental illness" thing. 

I feel like it's to the point where one cannot be honest about emotion - particularly about favoring something in the way of a worldview out of emotional need. 

In other news, I'm writing up a little story that's different than the rest of what I have here - a little break, a delve into really *stupid* humor - something I may make into a comic at some point.

Health Stuff that No One Cares About

It is probably one of the reasons why I haven't been doing as much original writing as I'd like to lately. (I have been prolific with fanfics, though).  If it's not one thing it's another, right?  If I'm not distracted by videogames, it's something else...

My health hasn't been great lately.  It's been going off and on for months, but I've been having stomach problems.  The first two times I went to my doctor, he dismissed me with just having a virus that was going around and gave me some anti-nasuea pills.  The last time I went to him with "Yo, this is NOT a friggin' cold! They don't last for months!" and he finally drew up some stuff for me to get tested.  I have some tests in process and another I have to arrange via phone tag. To get a GI doctor is even more of a hassle because the one the doctor gave me a name and number to doesn't take my state-sponsored poor-people insurance. 

I like to say that in my perfect world, people wouldn't care about things like money and insurance - we'd all just take care of each other, people with skills would take care of those of us without and, in turn, I can do art for you or something but it's all done out of a love for one another.  However I'll only see such a world the day I start farting rainbows and sparkles - or maybe after I'm dead if Heaven is a real thing, but when I'm dead I won't have a need for a GI doctor.   Until then, I get to deal with beauracracy, yay!

I'm getting sick a lot - nasuea, throwing up, severe burning and lurching stomach- pain. I think I might have ulcers, but I do not know. 

All I know is that it's getting worse of late and that it's cutting into work.  I've been taking a lot of days off.  Tonight, since everything was going fine today until it went south on me at the last minute, my guy (who has worked all day at his job) has decided to go in to cover for me - this is the second time he's had to do that.  Mine's a job with a lot of leeway, but not one where I can call out an hour before work unless I'm literally in the hospital because... it's a job taking care of animals.  It is expected that *someone* is going to be there to give them food and water at least.   That's what happens when I'm afraid I'm not going to get to work without spewing all over the car.  I've gone to work and spewed at work and kept on....

This is just... annoying. Pissing me off.  I want to know what's wrong with me and I want it taken care of. 

Wondering if I should comment on blogs anymore...

The more I think about it, the more it seems that I'm just as awkward online as I am in real life. I'm a total hermit in real life, maybe I should be online as well - observing, never opining, and just putting fiction and art out there because people seem to accept that.

Man, people can accept some weird art from me, too... I've noticed I can get away with an awful lot when I'm just creating and putting stuff out there without it being a *conversation.*

Not so much in opining, though.  I'm opining here, but this is my little space and few people ever comment. I'm not sure anyone is even reading. 

I've just noticed something with me and the blogs of others when it comes to the commentary.  It seems whenever I try to join a "community" I wind up being the odd person out or sooner or later screwing it up for myself in some way.  I've noticed online, as well as in real life, whenever I feel "too safe" I'll let thoughts spill that I probably shouldn't.  Random thoughts, whatever comes to mind.  Poor impulse control.  No matter how safe and "loved" I feel among any set of people, sooner or later, I fart and I stand alone (to borrow a line from a T-shirt). 

Sometimes, it's just the nature of the community - a lot of online communities and blogs, if they have a large number of people on them, get contentious.  Each community has its own little culture that one must take a while to get to know. 

I stopped posting and even trying to ingratiate myself to the community on one blog I regularly read for instance, because while I enjoy that blog, I found the comments-box atmosphere to be very serious.  It does make sense as the place seems to have a problem with trolls sometimes and discusses intellectual/societal things, but I've found that making a misstep to find myself laid out and have my brain handed to me somehow more painful than the usual online contentions.  I didn't feel particularly "singled out" in regards to that blog, though - the "I will lay you out and show you your brain before you die!" seems to happen to everyone there, even the regulars when they argue with each other. I just found it a high-tension community that requires both brains and emotional toughness to participate in.  (Notice I'm not naming blogs here).  I've always been too soft-hearted to deal with high tension, even if it stimulates the gray matter.  It's just my "I was always an alien there and could never fit in" makes me sad because of the gray matter discussions.  

This post was prompted by what's going on for me right now in another community / single-person blog with a semi-large following that I follow.  The problem I have right now regarding feeling a bit hurt is that I *felt like I was a part of the community there.*  I wasn't just a lurker, I've been following and commenting for quite some time and I've met some budding online buddies there.  The place was kind of like my online "church" in absence of my going to a meatspace church.  I felt a lot of spiritual fulfillment talking to other oddballs-like-me there.  I feel like I've been tip-toeing there for a while, too, though.  I've made a couple of impulsive stupid-crap-off-the-top-of-my-head comments/posts there that have gotten deleted before, and ever since then I've wondered if the blog's owner has been *watching me VERY closely.*  I'm not like his trolls, though - he gets some very nasty trolls that come along to harass and condemn him and people on the blog community. I think he knows I'm not one of those -- but is also mindful that I'm kind of insane.  I probably scare the guy.  (Again, I'm not naming blogs).  

I noticed the last time I posted a comment, (today) it was "under moderation" which usually doesn't happen, comments are usually just trusted and open - I have no idea if it's because the comment area had reached past-200 posts and that's standard or if it's because the threadlet I was in *was* getting off-topic, or if the blog owner decided "Yeah, she's getting insane again, time to watch her."   I might be reading-in with the last bit, but, seeing as I've gotten that feeling from people before, I'm kind of keyed-into it and/or paranoid.

I am very mindful that I am a creature of impulse when it comes to sharing my thoughts and I am very mindful that in regards to most of the human race, I seem to think like an alien.  It's how I've always felt, anyway - just awkward whenever there's a conversation, even online, when I feel freer. There's a danger in that, you know, the freedom of being behind a screen.  It can make a person even more awkward.  After all, here, in text, I do not get the visual cues such as a groan or a withering look. 

I welcome comments on this blog, though - because, well, I post random fiction here and I'd really like feedback on my writing.  Otherwise, I don't know. Maybe I should "lurk moar" wherever I go online.  Maybe I shouldn't expect welcome or community.  Maybe those things are just not for me because I'm just never going to know how to act in regards to communities.

Thrift Stores

Not-fiction again.  Don't worry, I am plodding along on a new story and hoping the parts that are writer's blocked will be chewed away by writer's termites as the story flows.

Today, I was on my way to a doctor's appointment that got delayed.  In making use of the delay, Bob (my guy) and I payed a visit to a thrift store we'd been to before. 

I love second-hand stores.  I really do.  They're the best places for me to get pants for work (which are going to be worn out pretty quickly by me, considering what I do).  It's great to spend five bucks on a pair of jeans than twenty.  One finds funny stuff in thrift stores, too - like jeans that have velvet fuzz all over them.

I also like just looking around thrift-shops for the kitsch, history and nostalgia.  It seems like I'm always finding stuff there that I remember seeing in my grandmother's house.  Some of the stuff is old craft items and things that show the wear of having once been loved.  That's neat, that's real neat. 

And old computer stuff for those who still enjoy using obsolete computers, or are nostalgic for the components thereof... It almost makes me want kids because I could point and say "Oh, this is an old modem" or "This is an electric typewriter, I used to use one to write school reports."

Of course, in the dressing rooms, the are signs everywhere "No Shoplifting / Shoplifters Will Be Prosecuted."  This prompted me to wonder just how pathetic or desperate someone has to be to shoplift from a thrift-shop.  My mind imagined a sad scenario involving people too poor to even afford cheap second-hand goods, but too proud to ask the store's charities for help.  I started thinking back to the year I worked for a KFC and the difference between the guy scrounging in the restaurant dumpster for "bones for his dog" and the destitute couple that came in one time when I was at register who bravely asked if we could spare them a meal.  (Our manager allowed it, if he hadn't, I would have bought something for them out of my own pocket).  

Then, I also thought back to the time when I was a child when my mother worked for a Salvation Army store.  She worked in the drop-off truck sorting out the good from the bad regarding what was to go in the store.  (Some people do try to give actual *junk* to thrift stores, which is why there are people to sort.  Contrary to a popular Weird Al song, Goodwill does not take donations of second-hand underwear).  My mom got little me free toys all the time - on the grounds that "people were tossing this anyway."  I found out later that she wasn't really supposed to do that... Most of the items got re-gifted to SA in the end, anyway, when I grew out of them.   I also remember days when I had no school and my sister couldn't watch me when I'd spend the day with mom at work and I'd spend all day in the back of that truck playing with the toys - regardless of whether or not I took them home.  I guess what I'm saying is that early on, I developed a love for scavenging. 

Most of my clothes were hand-me-downs, anyway, being the youngest child of the family...

Another funny thing is that I didn't realize that "Salvation Army" was religiously-connected until I was a teenager, I think.  I remember as a kid, I thought the "salvation" part was because they salvaged old stuff.  Seriously. 

Er, anyway, for under thirty dollars today, I got a good haul at Impact - four pairs of sturdy pants, a "new" coat and a couple of jewelry-chains to dissect for my jewelry-making.  And a look back through time, back into the distant 1980s and 1990s.  Ooh. *Waggles fingers.*  

Thoughts Focused Skyward

Aplogies for lack of fiction posting lately. I've not only been doing edits on one of my novels, I've also been rather ill and I've been off playing hero in the mystical land of Hyrule.  Yeah, I'm going to be kind of off until I finish "The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword."  I had a marathon session of it today - it was helping me forget my body aches and stomach pain. 

Today, I ran into a cutscene that struck me as weirdly theological.  o_0

I mean, the Legend of Zelda games are secular in nature - they do borrow imagery and ideas from world religions and mythology, but Hyrule and surrouding territories, worlds and eras all have their own gods and demons and so forth, but playing today something struck me as being relatable to some of the theology disscussions I've been in online. Weird, I know. 

If you know anything about gaming, you know the Legend of Zelda series is a very popular series that defined and defines a lot of the tropes of fantasy-adventure videogames.  Not the absolute first - there's an Atari 2600 game called "Adventure" I can recommend to uber-retro gaming geeks who don't mind their protagonist being a (literal) square and can find a working 2600 or the Atari Gallery disc for PS2. (There are places online to play it, too).  Anyway, the Legend of Zelda -- if you've had a Nintendo system, you've probably played at least one of the games of the series - not as ubiqutious as Super Mario Bros., but most would say a lot deeper in storylines.  In any given game, you play a protagonist (officially) named Link who must help/save/rescue a girl named Zelda and keep the world from falling into darkness.  (Some exceptions - Majora's Mask, for example, puts Link in another world that he has to save from a falling moon and Zelda isn't involved except in a flashback).   Diffrent games in the series cover different eras with protagonists that are technically different people (unless you subscribe to "they're reincarnates"). 

There are other things that are common to the series, too, such as the Triforce - which is the cosmic keystone of the series - a set of three golden triangles that form a whole, representing Courage, Wisdom and Power in balance.  Various games in the series have explained them as a sort of residue of the divine - that which was left by the Three Golden Goddesses who created their world/universe. 

Zelda is actually a very religious series - but with its own religion. 

The Triforce, through the series, is something that, if whole, a person can touch and it will shape the world to their wishes.  Technically, it is a neutral entity, granting both good and evil wishes (but it seems like people with evil hearts never have hearts balanced enough to touch it without it fragmenting). 

Anyway, "Skyward Sword" is a "prequel to everything in the series so far" game that attempts to explain parts of the mythology of the land of Hyrule (where the series is set).  The game is mostly about the forging of the Master Sword (the ur-holy weapon of the series mythology).  Today, playing Link, I met up with Zelda during a cutscene that's kind of a spoiler (heard 'round the world in the fandom, so I probably wouldn't spoil anything by explaining it, anyway).  Zelda explained some mythological goings-on and the Triforce and how it has the power to bend reality and shape the world, an then she talked about how "The old gods created a device they could not use to give hope to mortals." 

And I had the thought:  "The gods (Goddesses) of Hyrule purposely left the Triforce in the hands of mortals to shape their own destiny - they themselves cannot use it.  Cool!" 

Which brings me to the theology disscussions I've read and sometimes gotten my dumb self into online.  I've met some people online who's "solution," as it were, to the "problem with pain" - is simply "What are YOU doing to help people?"  In other words, "What are you doing,  mortal, to shape reality?" 

A lot of people in certain circles talk about how in Judeo-Christian thought, God created Free Will and gave it to us to do with as we will (Free Will, after all) and how he cannot interfere with it / does not override it because while he could create a world without pain - it would make us all automotons unable to experience any actual courage, wisdom, power....

Something he himself (or her, herself, it, itself, however you define "God" ) created for mortals to use that he cannot interfere with....     

I'm not trying to get into a theological throw-down here.  Believe or don't believe what you want.  I'm merely saying that I saw a superficial resonance to discussions I see go on back and forth all the time online to the mythology of a videogame.  If I'm saying anything, I'm saying that the people at Nintendo either really do their homework when it comes to crafting mythology for this particular series and/or the writers stumbled upon something profound by accident.  (Probably the latter, or my reading "coolness" into where I want to read "coolness"). 

Or I've been in too many online disscussions about certain things and I'm spending way too much time with a Wiimote in my hand.  *Shrug.*    

Benevolence

Mulling over some things in my mind - from reading forums and blogs and having conversations.... I was struck with this random thought while doing the dishes.  I think I may put it in the mouth of a character someday, but I just wanted to capture it before it was lost and for some strange reason, I thought it was interesting enough to put on the Internet.

"A person is at their best when they are being more benevolent to others than they are to them.  Since we're mere mortals and hopelessly human, even the best of us tends to be very bad at this, but during those rare moments when we are practicing undeserved benevolence, we shine."