Of Chrysoberyls

I never get tired of the effect naming can make. Interesting is how being aware of this kind of feeling now suddenly makes it feel more frequent. And Chrysoberyl is a crest gemstone that suddenly made me realize connections I never did before.

This is a feeling now I remember feeling in diverse parts of my life. I remember them in videogames, such as that level in the Hook game for Genesis, or then RPGs and soundtracks by Nobuo Uematsu. It’s in high fantasy stories like the Discworld series or other medieval-themed stories like Conan the Barbarian, because of how simple-fashioned these adventures were.

I also feel it in music like in that riff in Gamma Ray’s Afterlife, a later part of Sublime’s Garden Grove, or the use of synthetizers in Ayreon songs (mainly in The Dream Sequencer), or in songs by The Flower Kings (now when I think of it, there’s the reason why it felt so fitting for listening while reading Discworld novels!). The songs by The Black Mages are from the Final Fantasy soundtracks and define this feeling. The Battle Scene main melody is the hymn to this crest.

It’s in the part of my life where I taste the world, one of the ways it feels most appealing to me. Chrysoberyls mean to me the feeling of high skies. It’s the longing for the distant horizons, the tasting of vast land views and the chilliness of autumnal atmosphere, the changing of colors in the sky during sunsetting process. It’s about winds, breezes and mountainscapes, but also plains that stretch to the distance - the surroundings of the cities I’ve lived in.

I have childhood memories of collecting these cards about space, and I have the clear memory of heading home, opening the chocolate wrappings and finding this one card showing a full moon out of the blue sky. I looked to the blue sky above and I’ve found the moon displayed in daylight too. And then it has always been a meaningful sight for me. Astronomy-wise, the blue sky sometimes carries as much meaning for me as a starry night, because that moon made me feel more aware of how planets and stars and other huge chunks of stone and fire floating around keep existing, just outside this blueish atmosphere. Invisible to us except when the closest fireball is away and no longer outshining these other sources of light from the outer space.

Now when I think of it, this feeling comes mostly from my childhood and consequently from the entertainment of the 80’s and early 90’s as it’s also the crest where most of my nerd side is found. It’s interesting and strange, as there’s something about Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Back to the Future in it too. Probably because when younger I used to watch this kind of movies indoors during my afternoons, when the day was still bright out there. Also because there’s this early scene in the Last Crusade where they’re crossing a desert and the blue sky makes a hard contrast to the red landscape. You see, even westerns are involved (as the third bttf movie also happens in this old west scenario). It might not be a major crest in itself, or separately, but the way it’s just about everywhere makes me immensely fond of tasting it.