Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Of Quartzes


Crests aren’t always made of special settings, but they can be an accumulation of certain experiences. For that reason, I’m trying to be very careful not to use Quartz as a place to put all those things that did not fit the others. But my main concern is to understand the events in the process of aging that had impact in me.

These are simple events that mark milestones in one’s life, and the way they were such a blast that to this day they reverberate as a crest inside me. These are crests I’ve made along the road, and with the people I’ve met.

It starts with a lot of tastes from my childhood, such as characters and songs from tv shows I used to watch and the artwork and soundtracks of games I used to play. It’s in the interests I’ve developed. The mechas and machineries. It’s the taste for World War II jeeps, tanks and airplanes. The joy of getting the toy I wanted or the failure in getting the last card to complete the book.

It is my silly childhood plays. It’s the imagination of my bedroom being african jungles in those rainy afternoons, or being awful at sports when I used to play with my first best friend, or the bike rides we used to do to explore the town around. It’s the things I used to do and that one day I realized it was in the past and I wasn’t doing them anymore.

It’s the friendships I’ve made, and every single people that has had direct and indirect influence in me. It’s in the bands I used to listen under my older brother’s influence, mainly punk rock, grunge bands. It’s in bands every one has recommended me during all my life. It’s in every taste that I’ve absorbed from others.

Quartzes are in the things that happened to me in my adolescence, that, no matter how simple they are, had a lot of impact. It’s the crushes and relationships, the first yes, the first kiss… the first reciprocal interest, the first contact with Amethysts. It’s in the nights of despair when I wasn’t prepared for the exam next day, or after a terrible romantic rejection. It’s the ecstasy of my first creative and intellectual success. It’s the first reprimand of an authority that is not coming from your parents (and aren’t doing it for your best).

It’s the lessons I learned, the responsibility that grows with age, the maturity I forced myself to earn. It’s the first time you find yourself alone and have to learn how to do it all by yourself. It’s the first time you have to make that choice that was hard to make, when you first notice your aging and you learn to enjoy your youth more.

Quartzes are in these feelings when life is analyzed, when it all comes together to the ending song when all themes are played. All the places I’ve been, all the tastes and spices I’ve known. The distant cityscapes at the horizons, the constellation of blinking night lights. The folklore tales and stories told by campfire or under streetlights with friends, or lonely walks in summer nights and cloudy winter days. All the light and dark feelings of love, all the nature to be enjoyed, all the pain for us to endure. Damn, that’s one powerful feeling. I can almost surely say it’s the longest musical quintessence I’ve felt.

Of Zircons


For most of my life I’ve lived in small cities. It’s only been in occasional visits and short-lived visits that I’ve witnessed the metropolitan life. It had all the requirements for the making of crests-through-absence, which is how a part of this crest had begun to take the current form. Now I’m living in the capital and I’m probably enjoying it more than those have always lived here.

As a crest-through-absence, I also feel almost like having memories from the 80s. That couldn’t be so unlikely as towards the countryside cities in this country there’s still this feeling, which is very nostalgic, but also saddening at the same time. But I know this feeling also bears crests of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which I never visited, but I was always watching on tv. I have crests of leaving school and coming home, though my education has always been in public schools of these smaller cities.

Zircons mean to me all those feelings related to cities, like the graffiti walls, the modern and the industrial, and… pollution? But I have prefixes to refer to main subcategories. Now I can think of five special kinds.The Grey Zircons, the Drizzle Zircons, Dusk Zircons, the Golden Zircon and Midnight Zircon. The first one is about how cities feel like in cloudy days, specially in Sunday mornings when streets are melancholic. Those ballads by thrash metal and grunge bands are what I once called the Sunday Gray Songs. I don’t really know how I got this taste for this setting, but I love it anyway.

The Drizzle Zircons mean to me the powerful effect rain can have in the urban scenario. It all increases with the Golden Zircon, which is the effect those yellowish streetlights have. It’s incredibly attractive to me the lights reflecting on the wet sidewalks, or the traffic flowing. In the average night, the Golden Zircon can represent these city lights that are so stunning and hypnotizing to me. God only knows how much time I’ve spent watching all these urban constellations. The Dusk Zircon is that time in-between day and night, when the sun is gone but there’s still sunlight. When everybody is moving about, coming home or going to college or going to enjoy the night or meet their significant others. Jazz or blues music throughout the evolving of nightness enables some interesting mindscapes. The Midnight Zircon is the emptiness of the late night. It’s peaceful with these golden lights, but in some places it feels creepy. It’s around this time that the night smells like mist.

Around this time it starts getting more intimate with Garnets, which Zircon shares a strange relationship. Maybe it’s about the architecture, or because when we first moved closer to the state capital our house was near this cemetery. Nowadays when I go around that neighborhood the Garnets start showing and I have the feeling of eeriness. When I lived there I had some friends who were all about playstation games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Castlevania.

Peridots also make an interesting combination with Zircons. Cities are very green around here, and in my mind I feel the effect they have, those huge, deep-looking trees that darken the streets. Also there are these imperial trees that represent the Portuguese colonization that are also one of the ways the Zircons and Peridots can be combined. Now, when I think of it, the Portuguese baroque architecture also seems to help this link between Zircons and Garnets.

Last but not least, this can’t be a generalization of the urban feelings. The sense of place or Genius Loci can’t be ignored. I admire profoundly the feeling I can breathe from each city, be it a metropolis like New York, Tokyo or São Paulo, or a littoraneous city like Florianópolis, or those smaller and smaller cities and villages, the way the square, the church and the hotel are placed around the main (or only avenue). So, yeah, the elements that draw together to form its identity. I use each city’s name or its category as a prefix to represent this kind of Zircon subcrests. It’s puzzling, though, how I’ve got this subcrest I’m calling Soviet Zircon.

Of Peridots


I am very fortunate to taste this amazing nature I have around me. The diversity I can find in nature is something so marvelous that it brings me constant zephyrous winds. If it wasn’t for all these trees, plants and flowers in such variety I think life would be much, much less rewarding.

Peridots represent, very straightforwardly, all that is nature. It’s the fauna and flora that surrounds me. It represents the sound of crickets at night, or birds singing when the sun rises. It’s the early sun, the morning dew and smell of flowers. It’s in farm-like places, fields of grass and deep-looking lakes in sunny winter days.
But my main source of endearment are trees. I have such a relationship with them that their presence in the ambient changes the absolute wholeness of my reaction to the place. I have a preference for conifers. Cypresses, pine trees and araucaria trees, especially those dark, bitter-looking ones that if I’m to give it a name it’s going to be Eerie German Peridots. It represents the garnets of the countryside, while my taste for palm trees represent the aquamarines of the littoral cities.

Peridots are also one of the foundations of Áine. It is my love for diversity, and through this gem I can I have a connection with other cultures, specially those nature-adoring ones. It’s the reason I have so many mindscapes while listening to irish, celtic or slavic music. Peridots are in the sound of flutes and tribal-like instruments and can represent the more primitive side of us, the part of us that can feel whole and complete, being free from technology.

Of Aquamarines


Every gem has a trait that puts them apart from others. And the defining trait of Aquamarines is that it is made mainly of crests-through-absence, or crests whose call I don’t particularly like to attend. It represents some pressure to socialize, by going to beaches and going to parties. I particularly don’t like doing those things, but I must do it once in a while just to attend to this crest’s call.

As it represents beaches, it means where we find all the beautiful girls, and it’s summer time and carnival. It’s the brazilian culture that is forced into me, and that I can’t deny entirely. It’s where I should make myself more like a brazilian stereotype of sun-loving individual who’s sensual and has got the grip for dealing with women. I don’t have any of those qualities (except bearing a loving heart and loving food and some laughs), and maybe it’s the reason for my isolation.

It’s my crest of frustration. Even if it represents the summer, and that I like the freshness of summer nights. Aquamarines are related to Amethysts, these summer flings that never happened. Aquamarines and Zircons combined make to me the effect of parties and electronic music.

Of Opals


Although Garnets remind me of scary and frightening stuff, somehow it doesn’t feel entirely connected to this other heavy feeling of blackness. Of course, they are neighboring and it’s easy to connect them. But as creepy as Garnets are creepy, they can be classy. Black Opals are to represent the crest through which Trygve is born. It’s the disheveled and deformed. It’s pain in its most desperate and chaotic way.

It’s also the crest of roughness and weariness of the world. It is, in some ways, a notion of realism. It’s the undeniability of characteristics of the world, such as the poverty, illness, death and the dementia.

I don’t really know how it got to me like this. I have never been exposed to a murder scene, or even seen any grave accidents that would lead to fractured bones or wounds spilling blood out. I don’t know what experiences I’ve had to have it other than playing Silent Hill and watching other horror stuff and listening to black metal. Or maybe it’s a crest-through-absence, forcing myself to see the worst the world could show. I don’t think Dark Amethysts could have built this, although it has made me get acquainted with the feeling of hunger and pain. I don’t know, I just know it exists. In certain situations, when the crest is ready and calling, I can reach to it and it blackens my soul as I think of it. It’s the crest responsible for regurgitation of screams, blood and torn-out bodies. I can’t shut my eyes off to because it’s coming from inside me, my eyes already closed.

I think the origins of Opals are the Garnets gone extreme. After all, these regurgitations always happened since I was a child, when I was in bed and for some reason I said to myself not to think of scary stuff, and there were werewolves with their vicious eyes and bloodstained mouths - tombstones broken to pieces as the beast was digging and pulling the decomposed creature out from the grave.

The only problem is that, as a crest, it has its demands. It calls for being experienced, and once in a while I’ve got to attend to it. But I particularly don’t have any problems with it. I know it’s sick, and I know it’s even very unlike me as in real life I don’t really have the guts for gruesome accidents. But it’s something paradoxical as, through the crest satisfaction, I always feel so much lighter about life after getting in touch with it And then all other gems are suddenly so white-like, like Opals would purge and cleanse them from the black poignant stains.

Of Garnets


We all make mistakes, ok? Garnets was once what was going to become the Zephyr Winds, and now it feels ridiculous to have had that idea, but back then it felt right. But it’s not because it has failed as a name before that it must be treated like a cursed word, so I’m giving a second chance. As its common color is dark red, I have a good feeling about it.
Garnets represent to me all that is eerie. It is my taste for the spooky, creepy and scary. It’s my taste for ghost stories, legends and supernatural beings. It’s the excitement of the exploration of the darkness, the thrilling emotion of dealing with the unknown and forbidden.

For a long time, I’ve been calling this the Castlevania feeling, even if the game is more about action and adventure than actually a scary experience. One of those years I was playing the one for Super Nintendo and you start in this stable, and I remember back then there was a real horse stable near our house. The horse was neighing during the night. Since then, the thought had become excitingly eerie: Wehmut Process had made it into a crest.

Some Diablo II sessions also helped the shaping of this crest, but it was mostly because of the soundtrack by Matt Uelmen, which would create mindscapes with those lonely and bitter-looking trees in the vast fields around the region. Those trees had always attracted my attention as they were as if designed for a horror movie. The landscape around here can sometimes be very frightening, specially in a dark, cloudy day with whistling winds. And here and there we used to find those chapels and cemeteries. See, neighing horses at night can bring up sparkle quintessences of cursed creatures treading our lands.

There’s this Eastern Europe eeriness that appeal to me as well. I think it’s from the Ukrainian and Polish immigrants that strongly spiced the culture of the city I grew in. It could also be those gypsy people we used to see in the circus that visited the town, and that used to have this strange and curious lifestyle, and having this aura of mystery to them. Or maybe it’s this Dracula-scented taste that makes me like the Transylvanian region. There is also the account of these scary tales from the Slavic countryside folklore that are creepy as fuck.

Garnets are in stormy nights surrounding towering castles with stone walls or long corridors. It’s in the claustrophobic dark rooms and chambers lit merely by torch fires. It’s in candles, bells and crosses. Abandoned buildings, mansions and theaters also have this feeling to it. It seems there’s this luxury that somehow connects well with the tone. Gothic architecture has the heavy tone to it that appeals to me as well, just like most gothic-related things.

Here’s something interesting. It’s in baroque art and architecture too. It’s in classical music, or opera-like staging. It’s a strange relationship, but maybe it’s because of how dramatic and gloomy it can be. Classical music can be bombastic and heavy to our soul that it might have reached this level of sublimation.

Of Ambers


Luxury is something I can’t get comfortable with. It has always, always felt like cheating, for some reason. Maybe because I don’t think we need so much comfort as society says we need. Or maybe it’s the Opals holding me back. Or, and I suspect of it, I don’t like feeling better than others, bearing a level of comfort above others’ standards. Could it be Áine doing that?

But still, I’ve got this taste for warmth. It’s the coziness of our home sweet home. Although I like the experience of getting my jackets off in an extremely cold day, mostly to test my endurance (though sometimes it’s to attend Opal’s Call), I am usually going for the comfort of warm clothes in the slightest breeze.

For activities that require concentration, having my skin warmed up is something almost like necessary. I think it’s the reason hot showers help me so much in getting into trances. Ambers might mean the taste for the security. It’s the comfort of safety.

Ambers can easily be found in those scents that reminds us of home. Those nice smells of bed clothing that was exposed under the sun direct heat, or the smell of steam iron’s vapor. And also the smell of food, which could be the dinner’s being made, the fried onions and garlic and the addition of spices and sauces. Or maybe the early smell of coffee being made, with the sound of boiling water while the tv plays the morning news’ anthem.

It’s also the taste for rustic settings. The warm colors, the varnished wood and brown, orange and dark red colors. A well-fed fire and distracting crackles also make part of this crest. In places like this I seem to feel really at home.

Of new LAZ, AMT and CHR definitions


Before getting the gemstones together in my reliquary box, the first gemstones weren’t polished to behave along the others. They were independent and I didn’t have the pretense to do what I’m doing with them now. So now it’s something I need to do, to sharpen their edges. They need some burnish to adapt to all these neighboring matters.

The Lazulites were very poorly described in my first attempt. But the main word to describe it has already been said. It represents certain things that feel magical to me. Lazulites can also represent the ethereal and mysterious. It was strongly influenced by how fanatic I was about Harry Potter when I was a kid. This Lazulite feeling can also be seen in my fascination with lights. It requires the darkness of the night for the city lights or the stars up above. It’s in beautiful piano lullabies and fairy tales (such as Arabian Nights, or that certain magic of Disney movies). It can also be the tonality of colors, like most deep colors (as magical as the golden scars in the deep blueness of the Lapis Lazuli feel to me), or in deep voice of string instruments, like soaring cellos. It is also in certain lines and shapes that I’m yet to explore further. It’s about colors and shapes that I feel so connected with it makes me feel home. It neighbors Ambers in this feeling of comfort. It also goes unexpectedly well with Garnets, but maybe it is not such a surprise, as they share the taste for the mystery, though with different approaches.

The Amethysts are the feeling of love. It represents the connections that deep romantic relationships have embedded in me. The love for the feminity that I once attributed to Áine now feels more fitting in here. It’s the love for silk clothing and lacework lingeries, and the beloved one’s soft lips and gentle skin. It’s her attractive shyness and delicacy and her stunning hidden wilderness. But the frustrations also have their place in here, and they are the Dark Amethysts, the haunting memories and fears that misadventures can bring. Amethysts have peculiar ability to mend deeply with all other gems through the fusion of meanings (considering how unbounded crests can be). But they have a natural connection with Ambers, but also with the interesting mysteriousness of Lazulites. Grey Zircons also are somehow strongly connected with Dark Amethysts.

Chrysoberyls have already been well defined, but I later noticed how inherently present it is in the air and the sky. It’s in opened fields, it’s where winds blow. It’s in the mountains of white clouds. It’s in the weighing of proportions, in the length of distances. It’s in the joy of travels and explorations and the sight of little things far towards the horizon. It has interesting combinations with Peridots, Zircons and Aquamarines, whenever the wind breezes and the sky greets us. The ethereality of Lazulites is also one of the vertices through which both can neighbor.

Of Gemstones


Less than one year ago, in a stream of thought beginning on the post about cobwebs and that was to become my crest theory I had the intention to find all the most appealing things to me. When I had in it an official mission, I didn’t know how I was going to do it. And yet, here I am, with my crests condensed to ten major ones, and the way it is being presented is something I couldn’t even dream back then.

One’s got to notice how some gemstones represent characteristics of my Flames. I guess it’s a returning quintessence because the Fire Ensemble didn’t seem to explain everything, and so my mind would still need a materialization that would grasp minor subtleties that I didn’t the first time.

The problem is that I don’t think this attempt will make this match happen. This system I’ve developed is very simplified, and very flawed. Very, very flawed. I’m lucky if these gems I’ve chosen can hold 75% of my experiences... There are much more subtle experiences that I can’t find to fit in there.

Also, there’s the thing about how I didn’t settle for a standard for them. Take the names, and they weren’t chosen for the same reasons. Some for the color, others because of the meaning, and a few more on how cool the name sounded like. I’m afraid one of them could fall and bring the rest down. The fact I’ve rounded it up to ten also means some parts were made more fragile with the tension of the stretching.

I wonder on the side effects. What will be my life like with this? Will it help me keep Iis and Frosq away and by this breach I could conquer over the hordes of the Dark Army? Or will this have a negative impact, such as making me paranoid to analyse the gems in every vortex I find? Or, worse, will I limit myself to them? Perhaps I should make for a quest to find the 11th Gem (it sounds amazing, actually).

But it’s not like I can say there’s absolutely no hint of pride when I stare at my job. I like how it felt working, and they truly felt like emanating these feelings when I was spell-thinking of them. So I’m going to release it anyway, and I’ll be considering this just the first version. However, I plan on not working on it again. If I let it do the way it wants, my mind will keep on working on it, and I think I deserve a break from it.

Of crests-through-absence


It seems crests aren’t formed only out of things we live. They can also be created from our inner longings. It’s in our dreams and things we desire to experience. It can also be created from impositions or as a response to all other negative experiences.

This is something that becomes less of a psychological matter and more of a social one. I find it dangerous how some social constructs can lead to the installation of painful crests. I talk about them being painful as the desires installed in us force us to fit ourselves in shapes that we find difficult to.

The emptiness and distress we go through seem to be in our incapability to meet some of these crests-through absence. One can’t feel satisfied as the crests call and we can’t attend the demand. It occurs with much more subtlety than I’m making it to be, though. Some crests are making their work from a peripheral position, from where they make indirect influence that is hard to be perceived.

Of unbounded connections


Increasing introspective efforts allow deeper excursions. It seems that there are moments when I’m getting to the centre of my mind where everything, every crest is in this lava sea of experiences blended together. Alright, to be honest it’s hardly like that, sorry to burst the romantic notion.

However, I believe in this deeper level when things get grouped in bigger marbles, though the existence of One Marble to rule them all is a mere guess, even if there are hints to that. This is all but a hypothesis, though it happens in some levels when I think of experiences that are no longer memories but became feelings that shared connections.

It’s this somewhat complex idea that when experiences share some crests, this crest can surface to both, which makes elements from one showing in the other one. I think this is how dreams are made of. I believe that this is when the level of dementia reaches a level when crests surface everywhere uncontrollably.

There’s one example for this complex mixture and resurfacing. I think of the girls who shared my romantic affections and then I find them having crossed this division veil where they lose their personal identity. There their identity is all but the part of a bigger one. It’s the Amethyst marble, probably.

The thing that fascinates me the most about this concept is that, as these girls share these crests, it can surface to other ones. If there’s one girl whom I love like I never did, she can even take these other crests to her only. It strengths my passion for her, as these fusions between, say, Rose Amethysts with Lazulite Art from one girl, or Orchid Amethysts with Gray Zircons from the other one, build together to one marble, and all those other crests also belong to her. That is, the girl who rules the amethysts can possess the fused crests encrusted into the amethysts made by other girls. If I think well about it, it’s as if she was in every of my ten gems.

Love is complex. But all I want to say is: I can only think of her all the time, and I feel her everywhere. At least now I understand it, even if through an almost mathematical explanation.

Of absorption and contamination


One of my perennial abilities is this natural process of contamination with the world. I’m constantly noticing how I’m absorbing other’s expressions and gestures and idiosyncracies. Sometimes I feel I’m starting to smile like that guy, or even stuttering in my sentences like that girl. It’s true it can be so faintly perceivable, and even then it might only be perceived by myself, but that’s the sign of crests’ subtlety.

My mind absorbs everything, and it regurgitates them. There are some short-lived crests that only linger in my mind for a little time. But they represent stamped experiences nonetheless. And they reflect behind my eyes when I stop my life for a moment.

So here’s the Ivy Girl. She’s always quietly arranging the books on shelves. She looks so attractively introspective. She’s got freckles and an inexpressive, observing face that sometimes brights up with such a honest and beautiful smile. And one day I’ve found this smile of her was one of those frames that my mind captured. Did the passion start before I realized it?

These common crests from the first level of the braudelian structure are often, and they are the place from where I can study why mind selects some experiences and stamps them to become crests. Plus, as the vast resource I am granted, it’s also to be used for me to begin to study of these subtleties.

Of Crest’s Call


Spending my time in introspective exploits has granted me more sensibility in listening to my mind. Its longings and fears can get clearer and clearer the more towards it. And by listening to its desires and giving what it wants is an engagement to get nuclear rewards.

Somehow, crests have this tendency to reverberate inside my mind and call for being reexperienced. It’s tricky and difficult to spot what crest is the one that is making the real call, but if I have the luck to find it, the satisfaction that shows lightens my mind immensely.

There are moments when I feel an apathy that is like nothing can be appealing to me. The emptiness I feel can’t be undone. But that can be a mischievous misconception. My mind is always eager for something. And although it’s an imperfect work, I think gemstones could cover my crests, and I think I can use of it to fool Iis’ Eclipse.

Of stamping selection


My tastes are much beyond my own control. The things that have impact are frequently puzzling, as I don’t know what has caused them. I don’t mean usual things like enjoying songs or movies. This is about more subtle experiences, the ones that appear in dreams and in regurgitations.

I’ve got no solution for the case, but I have the right question for the dilemma. Why does my mind select experiences and stamps them to be crests just as if it was randomly?

There must be a reason for the way my mind does the things it does. Maybe it is mainly a matter of low perception skills that make the thing look like a stunning puzzle.

Of positive Wehmut


The Outsider Complex is dangerous to me not only because it makes me feel inferior to others, but it also makes me feel inferior to my previous generations. I’ve always felt my previous selves were pathetic and in a way I still feel that, but now I’m getting the feeling that I’ve already been so much more productive and so much more skilled.

It feels to me that past generations were always so much satisfied about themselves. It’s a true sensation I have, but I know there is something wrong as I have the memories of feeling so lonely and down so frequently. I barely have memories of being happy for the length of one day, so the thought of being like that for one week or even a month which is how long generations could last, is absurd to me.

But I’m feeling my memories from May becoming like I was being the king of the world. Indeed I was first learning of the lasting happiness, but it just takes me the reading of things I had written to remember of the problems I used to have.

However, I don’t think the negative impacts are ignored. Oh no, my mind wouldn’t be this kind. They seem to go under the carpet and mine my feelings and ideas from there, until they rise with the emancipation of the Scourgers (which they seem to feed).

Of memory-making


It has always been unsettling to me to read and listen to stories of youth told by elders when they are told including every minor detail. My mind never worked that way. My memories of details are commonly dispersed and unconnected and it increases with the distance from my current self. Only more recent memories, from one or even maybe two years ago I can recall with details, though I’m meaning more mundane events, and not impacting experiences (but even those lose details).

The process of losing the details is something that happens when crests are being formed. It’s the crossing of the mysterious veil as these details are slowly being condensed into a quintessence. Recalling memories sometimes happen when I breach a crest quintessence I possess, the unshaped memories they are, and I can make them cross their way back to a more defined existence.

As the crests are this amalgam of experiences, the combination of resurfaced elements can be a combination that was never made. That is simply to say I can feel memories I never had. But it’s much, much more subtle than it seems. The way it happens is more like a frustrating realization that this feeling I know wasn’t actually created from an actual experience. It seems some feelings I have are just quintessences transferred from songs I listen… my life seems so poor by realizing that.

That’s how frustrating it can be when the crests-through-absence are also in the equation. Considering my theory that they are born from things we are supposed to feel, mostly social pressures, some crests are mere idealizations of experiences. But erasing them is impossible, for now. And they might even have their importance that I think I should reconsider the prospect of building the power to deleting them from my mind.

However, there’s something interesting about this idea. Even though I don’t want to try any attempt in fabrication of memories, it has story-telling potential as it will power the quintessential rule. That is, they can power my imagination as I use my actual experiences and crests they’ve created to make my interpretation of fictional experiences.

Of unrestrained crests


There seems to be something in the mind working to prevent crests from running wild. It’s some braking system that goes loose when we sleep, or when sanity withers.

I’ve first noticed this when I was watching a movie and I fell asleep. But, as the division veil between being awake and asleep is so faint, there was this moment when the things I was watching and things I was dreaming were blending together. Soon when I woke up and noticed the weirdest things I was experiencing were regurgitated short-term crests. Some character from a book and the artstyle from somewhere else were brought up for some reason.

As it seems this explains how dreams can always be so nonsensical, sometimes I also think that could also be related to dementia. Now, I don’t know much about psychic illnesses, and honestly it’s not even my main interest, but this time I’m interested about it.

It’s as if one would control of his mind like one loses control of his bladder, and crests run completely crazy. Paranoia and schizophrenia would be triggered by this failed braking system…

Of mindscapes and recalled crests


There’s a very easy connection between mindscapes and crests, as the experiences are influential to the next ones. But this influence is usually something very, very subtle. That makes it often and difficult for me to know when I’m actually tasting a mindscape or recalling a past crest.

But there’s a degree to the influence one crest can have over the current mindscape.
As far as I can tell, recalling crests is mostly a nostalgic travel, maybe a delta experience. There are some characteristics of recalled crests I can use to identify it. For instance, when recalling is happening, lost memories arise by smells or sights or the overall experience.

On the other hand, mindscapes expand the experience the crest has enabled. It is done with Combined Mindscapes, as it is usually music and the landscape, or the smell and landscape, or the emotional mindscape combined with smells and music. Not sure about it, but maybe it could be said it would be the combination of two crests.

But the actual sign that differs the mindscape from a recalled crest is by being able to notice when the Wehmut Process is triggered. It only seems to happen from mindscapes. Recalled crests are just the tasting of memories, and mindscapes are the beginning of actual new experiences (though a night well-spent in deep recalling of crests can, weirdly, be a mindscape, as the surroundings become part of the thing).

Of mysterious crest formations


I have in my mind one image I don’t remember where it’s from. It’s like one of those dreams people have throughout their lives, but mine doesn’t show up in my dreams, but I feel it around when I’m my introspective travels.

It’s in quintessential shape, so it’s not exactly an image. It’s the feeling of an image, that when I pay attention to it, the details appear in an interesting way. So, it’s an image of a house. It’s a german-like house in a farm-like place. When I wander closer to the building, in a mindwalking-like way, I feel the painting wearing off from the wooden walls.

It’s surrounded by dense and dark trees, and there might be a lake or pond of some sort nearby. If I get close to it, I feel it has rained recently. The illumination of the scene gives it that special tone. The whole thing build in me a comforting and at the same time melancholic feeling to it.

It has a feeling like it belonged to my grandmother, but I’m sure they never had a house like this, so for this reason I’m almost sure this isn’t a completely real place. I think there might be this one house out there that has had a major influence on this image, but sometimes I can feel other memories adding their spices to it.

I have visited places like this in the city I grew up in. It was a place with german, polish and ucranian colonies and as immigrants as they were, they would emanate a strong sense of culture (so much the place feels like being those countries). It’s no wonder why I got this Scandinavian and Slavic crests influencing me.

Of Crests (revisited)


Keeping track of my thoughts has one very interesting side effect to it. As my interest towards a seed of thought grows and I keep studying and studying it, the whole process is being recorded. This is what happened to crests, since its first true hint appeared in the posts about cobwebs, and they were still confused with actual mindscapes, then going to undertones to finally being crest, which is a name that has survived time.

All this time the concept has been growing very consistently. It’s relation with quintessences, mindscapes, and the wehmut process gives it a solid look, I think. And as frequent as it is in my life, I’m very often wondering on it, as it gives me enough material to think about. This time I’ll try to expand a little more the concept by analyzing more complex effects they have in my mind, as well as trying to face some subtleties that I’ve ignored the first time around.

Though the basic idea behind crests are quite simple, I like how it was pivotal for the new way I’m understanding the way my mind works. And for one who is doing this barely with introspective skills as studying tool, I’ve got a secret pride for learning this much already. However, they are representing such a significant discovery that is bringing me so many answers that I am starting to find it very suspicious. But I will wait for another time for a true inquiry.

Of Q. Wisdom


There are choices and actions I do that seem to be done in a burst of luck and inspiration that makes those moments so divided from my usual manual thoughts. It’s as if my instinct was far more wise than my reasoned habits.

One of the characteristics of this instinctive knowledge is that later analysis show depth we weren’t even aware the first time. For instance, it’s in the making of the Fire Ensemble, or the title of this blog that came natural to me. It came from one of these moments, and only later I would understand. And yet, it seems those things don’t need to be bestened.

It’s an idea related to automatic behavior, such as how I going just by following the winds. I have this fear that this thing in my spirit that is taking me could one day just disappear. The blackouts happen when this inner strength I have is gone and it’s all pointless.

Sometimes it also happens I realize the things I am doing, and this fire vanishes as I think of how stupidly bold I am to be attempting doing this. And then, all this dedication and discipline would be gone. After all, I’m going more like I had a gun pointed at my head.

Of Q. Marbles


The exercise I’ve once done with the Fire Ensemble has been having a repeated effect again now with the gemstones. It’s the idea of putting meaning into this condensed mass to represent all those minor things.

Most of the time this process, contrary to the Q. Gathering, was natural. Only in a few occasions I’ve found myself trying to cram in these marbles more meaning that it would be wise to. They are like artificial creations, and lack the depth that true creations have.

It’s interesting to note all the combinations that compose a Q. Marble. For instance, in spite of having those gemstones that are marbles in themselves, there’s also this one marble that is the combination of three of them, this mix of Peridots, Garnets and Zircons.

This could be a ridiculous returning quintessence as it is basically the main point of what a quintessence was in the first place. But then the overall meaning of the concept can get so large that I think it serves the purpose of letting this interesting characteristic clear.

Of Q. Materialization


The process of making a quintessence can also be reversed. That is, the quintessence can be disassembled back into the pieces and cogs that made it. For instance, the chrysoberyl quintessence I once dismantled into a whole lot of little memories that added to how the crest would feel.

It’s possible through the process of crossing the Division Veil back to the solid shapes. It’s the inverted process of the Gathering. It goes towards the unamalgamation of the quintessence. It’s the exercise of materialization of recalling the quintessence that is the crest and bringing the ingredients back to the shapes of their own.

However, in the bigger scheme, Quintessential Materialization represents my efforts to bring all those things I feel up to surface reality. When making a composition, one is trying to materialize the idea they have up in their heads, and by so they analyze their work and this little portion of color added to that spot, or that little guitar fill in between the verses…

Of Q. Gathering


My mind is made of very solid events that become elements converging into ingredients that create a quintessence. It’s the concept of the experiences and its components being merged together into one single mass of a feeling that is what the quintessence is basically all about.

The effect of the Quintessential Gathering can be perceived when I see people trying to describe the elements that made the experience special to them. In a way this idea doesn’t seem so strong as it has already been talked about. This is basically a returning quintessence of the vortexes and undercurrents.

It’s unfortunately a returning quintessence of the vortexes and undercurrents, but applicable to the mental process (and here it works as a motif and equation). By understanding this it can be brought to several artistic systems. Sequentiality studies, once divided from non-sequential arts, are now belonging together thanks to this. It’s important for the Alphabetical Impressions, as a name creates a gather of letters that form the overall impression of the word.

Life is scary under this realization of gathered ingredients. After all, every little experience is an added pixel to the whole of the picture. And I’m finding myself analyzing what experiences I’m going to have. But they can be seen as opportunities for building up the next generations in a positive way.

Of Musical Quintessences


I think that, by listening to music as a way to let my feelings flow, they got well fused with bashing chords, soothing base lines and mourning cellos. Maybe it’s the reason sometimes they feel like these water-like emotions of mine.

It’s been getting more frequent now, though I definitely don’t want to mean that I’m getting more significantly closer to them. They are still short-lived one-note long songs or even shorter. I fear it’s just something I’m pretending to believe I could use, but the truth is that I think it’s one of those things that will never come to be shaped in reality.

Those moments I felt the musical quintessences, they were all with strong emotions. There’s this special dandelion song I feel once in a while and that, despite being created from this intense feeling, it is just so distant yet. I wonder what it takes to materialize it. Does it take just my sensibility and awareness, and notes, chords and arrangements will come?

Also, what if those songs require other instruments, like a violin? I can’t still barely play the guitar and play from it the sounds I like. I’d be lucky if I could make one hook melody out of this musical feeling. And there’s also the Creator’s Paradox. I don’t want it to become something different on its own. I want it to be exactly like I feel it. I think it’s cheating not to try going for the difficult challenge.

Of my water-like emotions


My creations have a drawback to them as they become different from what they actually are. It’s something close, but not entirely related to Creator’s Paradox.

Once I am talking about my emotions in a way that they even create characters, it’s as if they were that spiceful and defined. However, when I’m paying attention to them, they much less colorful. As I feel them, they’re much like a body of heated-up water.

It’s as if what made the emotions different, even those felt-thoughts, was like they’re syntonized frequencies of this boiling up process. I think maybe trances happen more easily when my feelings and my sensibility to them are reaching this boiling state.

It reminds me of this band, Riverside. I once wasn’t able to get into them because it felt so untasteful, but nowadays the taste I feel from them is very comforting. As if I was listening to how my emotions feel more like. The ideas I express seem to be some form of materializations that crests of mine take a chance to let some influence in.

Of Vesta’s Spell


This relation between thinking with spells and thinking with words is sometimes too troublesome to be taken seriously. Sometimes just saying words to myself doesn’t work, but if I’m getting to control myself with words, what harm can it be?

All it takes is for words to work is to have them bearing meaning. If I use words that I know that can have effect inside of me, then a spell is being done. It’s mostly an artificial spell, but I don’t think it is impossible to be made.

Vesta’s Spell once worked in her month back in March, when I allowed myself some pride, which helped me to get to the prosperity of May. It was a worded decision that worked in changing my feelings.

Of paradoxical spells


While spells are these chest motions or these instant resolves that seem to work more efficiently with my issues, sometimes a good line of thought, like a password of some sorts can be equally effective. That is, as long as the word is carried with a meaning, which is interesting, because it is exactly what the name of spells has became.

Some of the spells I’ve given a name now can happen because of the words that compose the name of the spell (though there seems to be an actual spell of command that makes me think of that). And when I think “Spell of Elemental Focus”, like I’m wearing a colored colant before the finishing blow, I’ve got the chance of making the change happen.

I wonder if there’s any point in having the spells wordless if it’s all working. To be honest, this is a conflict between my own experience of this all and the way I’m talking about it on the blog, as I’m almost involuntarily naming everything I see.

Of Book of Spells


Here I got listed some experiences that I could identify, or at least relate with the idea of spells. They’re mostly hypothetical, as they happened once, or were automatic, or then were passive spells. They are quite useless, to be honest. Shouldn’t be taken really seriously. I just done them to satisfy the demands of creativity, but they serve the purpose of helping my understanding the idea better.

Spell of Realization (Update): Sometimes mind is locked in a time frame while the world is advancing relentlessly. It’s by noticing I follow things people older than me have taught me, but realizing those people were my cousins five years older than me, being they were fifteen at the time. When I seek to realize those things, sometimes the spell of update works.

Spell of Realization (Delete): My mind is filled up with unspoken thoughts and discarded choices and names. Again, the realization that I’ve never said things I wish I had said or that I’m dealing with ideas like I was carrying their whole history makes the burden vanish somehow, but only sometimes.
Spell of Independence: This is a felt thought that erases the Outsider Complex and makes my life easier as I feel life as I want it. It is necessary for Trances. It used to be easier before Ushag and Csillag started chasing it down.

Spell of Reloaded Resilience: When I feel my energy is going down, I can do the Passive Spell of Gritted Teeth, or then do the actual spell that fills me up with energy to take a few extra blows. It’s weird, I think it borrows the energy from somewhere, and it would be actually damaging to my resilience as I’m sure there must be a price for it.

Spell of Absorption: although this is an active spell, it’s also an automatic and subtle one. It’s when I see a vortex and I find myself trying to understand it. When I see a picture that attracts me, the Spell of Absorption is dealing with Gusto Effect, and as it becomes a little crest, it is going to influence me in the future.

Spell of Closed/Opened Gates: This seems to be a mix of active and passive spells. It’s for the transition between activities. Sensibility is vital for introspective excursions, but the increase of perception makes me more easily irritated. There are moments when I need to get more logical and less emotional, as when I go to the bank or deal with other bureaucracies. There are moments when trances or dissection and naming shouldn’t happen, at the same time they should help me getting me that vibe on when trances are wanted.

Spell of Purge: it’s the effect Trygve has when I attend the call of Black Opals. When there’s this pain that seems harvestable, the immersion in it, instead of aversion, helps me get clean, somehow. It’s the spell for lightening of the soul.

Spell of Elemental Focus: When people are all around me asking things, or when there’s too much chaos surrounding me, this is a spell I can do sometimes to get myself on track. When I get myself focused, I can answer questions more appropriately or find the fittest choices. The “calm down” movement with my hands while moving my lips with the command also helps this spell.

Spell of You-Can-Do-Better-Than-That: My drawings always start lame and they just get better the more layers I add. The quality of my drawings is always a simple matter of how much layers I can do before I get tired. This is a thought I have that makes me challenged to keep going and doing a better work, mainly when I see I mistake and I can’t pretend to ignore it. This automatic active spell is for Vesta. (and, actually, I think it’s her source from when I first thought of something that would be called Vesta).

Of spell battles


As recently I’ve been trying to understand Ushag, it’s been gathering a strength that has been doing me great harm. But the feeling of being such a worm-like ball of pathetic stupidity has been bringing the revolt of one who hadn’t been truly strong in a long time.

As Ushag has been dominant for most of my life and probably the reason why I’ve woke up so late for my dreams, Trygve is the one who can face him. After all, even before the Sour Fuel was noticed, it was from the rage and distress that this place was born. It is a very fortunate discovery, to see that invincible scourger having one enemy destroying his plans.

It’s still quite rare, but now and then I’ve done this chest action of turning Trygve against Ushag, making the bastard flee cowardly, terrorized by Trygve’s berserk attitude, and he ransacks the abandoned resources. He harvests it as strength. From the little breach in the weakness Ushag brings me, Zhu Rong can use that energy for guarding Hephaestus. Together they start charging my way to a powerful trance. But the Lead Warrior can’t always be blocked off, especially if there’s that mysterious saboteer by his side making Hephaestus’ spells to weaken and die away.

This way the Scourgers return. Csillag builds in me the regret for doing what I am not, while Qareen is distant watching the scene, grinning disdainfully. Following the blowing horns, Ushag returns, escorted by Wormtongue.

One other wordless spell that I’m discovering is to summon Áine. It’s the easiest summoning of all, though sometimes I don’t have enough sensibility that can make her quintessence burn inside me. Her rain washes the lands and, just like Professor Quirrell, the Scourgers scream in pain with her love. The trance that can enable Áine’s Floods heal Hephaestus when he’s so wounded he couldn’t get up. She’s got the power to make him at least stand up and head to a safer place.

From there, the war can be brought to a halt by Vesta’s Spell while I’m standing in shock, as I’m usually is when Scourgers are this close to the victory in their attempts to kill Hephaestus. But Hephaestus is determined too, and he’s soon outside, foolish as he is to walk to see the world he loves, with his wounds far from being healed. Vesta sighs.

Spells happen lightspeedly fast, so when I had these battle sequences, they lasted for a few seconds, which is faster than my thoughts would think. And yet, I could follow the speed and by slowing it down I could tell the characters apart. I still can’t summon my flames when I want them (and I think I can’t summon Hephaestus without all the preparation), but maybe that is a matter of time.

Also, I hate having hypothetical dreaming that have no use (here it is, the mysterious saboteer), but I also wonder if I could do some Extension Spell and keep the part where my flames are with the advantage…

Of Spells (revisited)


Since I’ve first talked about Spells, I’ve been sticking to the idea of this wordless inner stream of emotions that I could handle around and do everything more effectively as I was using a nuclear language. As excited as I became with it and the things I could do with it, I think I lost sight of how to deal with it.

The matter at hand is that, fortunately, it is something real. It seems to exist and isn’t just some brilliantly stupid idea. It’s very hard to be aware against it, as the state of mind that seems to make it decreases the awareness or something. This state of mind might very well be the trance, which is a state in which my thoughts are instinctive, and something around 500mt my thoughts seem to become more quintessential. Too fast for words to follow.

The most recent realization I had about spells is how they are resembling of the lightspeed scanning and the instant resolve. That is, as spells are quintessential works, they happen very fast. If spells need trances, and trances give strength to my flames, spells can be used to protect me.

Defensive spells are the ones I experiment more frequently. It could be that twisting thing I once used to feel very often around September or October last year, characterized by the transformation of the fear into sparkles of stories. In more recent generations, it’s been Trygve and Zhu Rong acting like my military defense. The incoming lead attack is repelled by this barrier.

All those other things I’ve been acknowledging as spells are just these chest motions that happen, and that I wish to replicate as they would have some potential.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Checkpoint #15

June was a month of failures. Almost nothing went as planned. No wonder I got to this obsession to foresee my reactions. My sieging efforts didn’t really work, the fall I intended to have wasn’t like the one that happened,and  also I didn’t read the books I wanted to read when I had the chance.

My plans were to force myself not to have ideas, and as it happened through unexpected means I think I also went too far as unexperienced as I was. I got scared and had to bring myself to my normal state just to see if everything was still ok. So although I lost some time without the power of the trance, and I kept having this feeling of unproductiveness, there were quite a bunch of interesting ideas (as automatic sieging followed). I am particularly proud of Causal Adherence, though I like how Chrysoberyls played out. Those two fears now called Ushag and Qareen also made my soul more protected in some moments last month, so together these would define my main discoveries in June. There was also this foreseeing thing that sounds like a mission with lots of potential (though Scourgers had me started in the Alphabetical Impression mission already -no problemo, the gemstone crests are halfway done and the slot is almost vacant).

But Procrastinator came back with full strenght to my writing exercises again. I think I shouldn’t think things like this could be defeated this easily. Maybe I had a low guard as I had him humiliated last month, or because Restraint’s Toll made him unleashed again as I lost control of things. I had to use some tricks I've found on blogspot to let the posts be shown in June, because I actually borrowed some hours of July to have it a little closer to what I wanted (could I hope it would mean I'm more exigent as I'd rather take more time than releasing things all halfassed?). As I got to a new dangerous edge in my commitment , I’m foreseeing my revengeful reaction this month. I wish to see what would happen if I try to ruin the act, just to see what would happen, but I think I’ll not take that risk yet.

The strength I’m having  I’m already planning to use for new confronts with Ushag. Hardly I’ll vanquish him, but I’ll need to do more reconnaissance advances in order to study a strategy to overcome him (and if he terrorizes me too much, maybe I can use my witnessing of the quintessence for making the character more defined, so far creative endeavours have been a good weapon to make Scourgers retreat). However, before I even know what to do with him, I have to learn how to bring him in to begin with. As I need to understand how this fear could even be summoned through my command, I need to keep trying sieging exercises. Although it didn’t really work in June, I’m no Wile E. Coyote, dismissing his ACME strategies because they’ve failed the first time. I’ll keep on trying the sieging exercises to see if they can really help my stances get more solid. It’s still quite unfeasible, but I have hints that I can make my dives, fallings and risings controllable (I've managed to ward Hephaestosis off after an extended trance today with this thing that felt like an active spell).  

I like thinking without the compromise of not having ideas being written down to add up the counter. It has been causing in my mind a certain feeling of distress when I’m having an idea and moving on without unloading it on paper (and here I’ve felt the slight proximity of Causal Adherence’s neighbor).  Thinking like this really makes it less burdensome and makes my inspiration healthier. So it’ll converge the advantages of my choice to use next month as a chance to force myself to finish some things I’ve been postponing. This way I'll have the discoveries in July being charged up until August, when I'm planning for a yet bigger release. Heh, I'm liking to see how I'm getting able to make longer plans ahead.