Of Gem's Emet Cores

 The existence of unfathomable mindscapes is a matter that keeps me constantly puzzled. What are they made of? What is so special about them that a simple combination of gems can’t recreate any similar experience?

So one day I noticed mindscapes have some sort of central spine of their own, an element that was of fundamental importance in shaping the surrounding elements that were composing the experience.

For instance, there is this feeling of ominous clouds just before the storm (would be the spine of the mindscape), and it makes the wind and trees and everything have this different perception to them.

These spine elements I am going to call Emet Cores (as the ones that give the mindscape that special lifelikeness that usual composition of gems don’t work). Though I intend to see what would be those emet gems, there is already some existing gems, like Amethysts and Carnelian, Diamond and Quartzes

Reaching to the emet core of the gems is like reaching to the pure essence of something. As mindscapes are so often soundtracked, I think it's about reaching the essence of songs. Maybe mindscapes are about reaching the emet core of each gem, getting down to its marrow and seeing what it is beyond its surface.

For instance, there’s Brass, which is about the military, and I think its emet core is the feeling of dangers of war, the feeling that everything is now at risk and future is uncertain and probably it couldn’t even there be one.

This is one brand new characteristic to my theory of crests, and it's quite a bold one, so I'm slightly careful with accepting it. However, so far it has proven itself to be quite a nice employee, and its precepts are being proved valid so far. Either way, I'm around a nuclear trail of cause and effect, so this is quite probably the right path I must follow.

Of Q. IMG

 Understanding some processes of my mind is like charting roads and paths. Often I find connections that unexpectedly bring together completely unrelated areas, but it's also interesting how sometimes I see some of these paths as an one-way only road, and then I learn of how it can be explored backwards. Like a reverse engineering of sorts.

This is the interesting aspect about the Qmus, which is the music I get from life. I'm so constantly trying to figure out how these musical quintessences are born, that I've just recently fully realized how it can just work the opposite way. And it's not such a novelty for me, because I'm used to the concept of having pictures from music, especially in the moment of golden regurgitation.

Paying attention to the core of the music makes me sometimes feel images, an initial thalassic form that I keep adding details as I keep feeling the music. Like a forest, and I see a trail, and a wooden fence and a cottage and plants and herbs stored in jars, vases and vials. This has some very interesting applications, such as helping me create the dioramas for my world. See, Otyg has been a very rich source of inspiration for my Ersatz lands, weather and all.

And as I start paying attention to it, those are really, really astoundingly similar in the process, though Qmus is a much more delicate and difficult to handle than it is with images, which I already a very much large mental library. Fortunately, I am building a good library of music in my head too, as I even end up thinking of them as their own respective gems, such as songs for amethysts or zircon or ember, and then the connection happens more efficiently later when I think of these gems and the musical memory associated with it comes up as well.

Of Pelagic Counterreflux

 The most interesting, confusing and somewhat human things I feel, if I can use that as an adjective, lies in this pelagic state between the complete blurriness that is the thalassic state and the complete clarity I called the photic level. The transition that occurs between those two states, the pelagic stages have some very interesting things to call my attention because of that, and I've worded it here before, but it deserves more attention.

Initially it feels like there can be two concepts here: first, one of them would appear to be two things happening at the same. It can be when we feel both sad and happy. It's when life is going down and up at the same time – one side of our life is being successful while the other plummets... But I think the concept that I want to talk a little more is a dissidence from this one.

It is almost like a mindtrap, when something is confusing and can turn out to be the very opposite of what it seems. It could also be about a melody that seems to be ascending but it’s actually descending. Our life when it seems we're doing everything right and we're just ruining it all.

Tides and waves offer a nice analogy to these two almost overlapping ideas. For instance, there are certain situations when I see a confusion of waves that I can't tell apart wheter I see waves going up or being pushed back. See, that's the reason crashing of waves is so attractive to me. Vortexes make me feel I am represented by them sometimes in ways I can't consciously comprehend.

Of mosaic of remnants

 The gap between final 2012 days and current 2013 days is starting to be easily noticed. The blank of work is there and some ideas I’d consider recent are, wait, a year old alread! Thoughts from last november haven’t been given attention and I feel some sort of shame for it, but at the same time, I’m glad the same scourgers from last year didn’t return.

Anyway, there I have it, the idea of layers of remnants of time. Like in a city where old buildings survive and live along with modern constructions. Of these modern ones, few might or not be here for as much long, our lives are full of a similar pattern.

Day come and go and we face events, good or bad, that might just have lasting consequences for the next few seconds or the rest of our lives. Each day we meet new people, new stars in our skies, and that guy might just be my friend until I die or next month something could change and we’ll just lose contact forever. There's no plot to life as far as we can expect from it.

I see something braudelian in here, as these impacting events could be the factual first level of everyday events that could be important enough to go all the way down to the structural level in the third level and change it.

Of Martin's Maelstrom

 Art imitates life and I don't think there's the other way around. I mean, there is but it's more of a complex cognitive theory. But it's in reproducing life that art always becomes strongest. Artists that can always bring to their work this mirroring of life is what I will appreciate the most.

This is what makes Game of Thrones such an interesting series to me. It's raw like life. It seems so brutal in its lack of classical structures of heroes and villains. George Martin's narrative is amazing at picturing the unexpected and unpredictable turns that we will always keep seeing.

One apparently evil-looking person will turn out to be your most loyal friend. The worst problem will be solved instantly and the alliance that you’ve made will turn out to be your actual nightmares. All the plot that's been invested on might change in the blink of an eye. The bad guy won't be punished. There's no karma system.

Life is chaotic and in a way there's simply no hero's journey or other simplified structures. It's hardly romanticized and recently in the turns that my life has been going through, I've been developing a great attachment to this kind of narrative, as it's the best way to express how I'm feeling about myself and world right now.

Of those who came from the lowest

Some of the most vicious and harmful habits I keep is to compare myself with others constantly. Being so insecure the comparison always aggravates every situation. Though it's hard to end a vice like that, I know I just need to focus on my own story and accepting myself. I can't expect no one to come and help and deus-ex-machina-ishly heal me.

Albeit bearing so many regrets and still having a lot of difficulties, I can't really say my life is stagnated. Slowly, but my life is actually improving. That can’t be denied. Though I might not be very far already by most standards (and here I am comparing myself with others without even noticing), I can feel I am already much more different than the one I was just two years ago, let alone ten years ago.

I came from down below. From nowhere. I was an absolute nobody, I had nothing remarkable about me, I had few people who would stay by my side. I was the Wallflower no one pays attention to. I can’t even say the situation has changed 100%, maybe just about 20% but that’s already something for me. I already have some accomplishments and nice memories to keep. And it keeps improving, expanding. Unlike people who have the best part of their lives early on, I am going the opposite way, I am learning more from and about life as time goes by. But hey, that's a comparison still!

I think it shouldn't matter where we are coming from, but where we are going to. Though I have so many basic stuff I can't deal properly to live an actually healthy adult life, either way I should be proud of where I am now, compared to whom I was.

I can just think of everybody being just so developed and mature by their teens when I just started blooming really when I got into my twenties. And then again, I feel even today I am first finding out about things I should’ve learned in my teen years. But to the hell with those comparisons! Considering my own change rate, I'll be very far ten years from now. I know the tendency seems to be to slow down progressively as I grow older and have less time and energy and disposition to change, but at least my blooming is constant and never-ending.

Of first bricks

Starting things is always difficult. Specially for me as I’m so stubborn that when I get an idea fixed in my head I’ll insist upon it until the end, even if I have no idea what I should be supposed to be doing. But starting and making me actually get into that thickheaded disposition is the tricky part.

It all has to do with my inability to just rationalize my own actions but having to somehow convince my own quintessences by transforming the words into q. spells. It’s because of this that I can have such a scary discipline to some things and be completely careless others (or then having it changing in relation to the very same subject).

I can get so addicted and blind to my vices that getting rid of them takes much more effort than just doing it once for the start, though. It isn’t trying to impose this first step and expecting I’ll follow it. It's very hard to get Vesta's orders in practice and make her plans work. They never go as intended, and it's frustrating.

Instead, it’s necessary the realization that this first brick is the beginning of a new accomplishment. And when I think of it like an actual building, I am almost working on Skinner’s Box logic, but this makes the discipline to recovery a little more rewarding.

Of Trygve's Fire (revisited)

 Having lost contact with my Trygve essence almost completely in the last months, I was getting convinced he would be gone for good. The memories I had of it were just a long past and I felt that I just could’t have it anymore. It sounds to me like something that was only able to exist in a certain moment of my history. But some recent experiences have shown me that maybe I just lost track of what Trygve actually is meant to be.

It seems to me it’s a bond with Hephaestus, as I could have such a joy in living that even pain was something to be pleasured. Having the acute coldness of the wind severing my skin or then hurting myself thoughtlessly with the because I just got too excited with doing my things.

It also could have some negative aspects from my essence, though. For instance that today I might be suffering the consequences of living in such a careless manner, of being cool with being hungry because I'm too busy studying. So I am seriously suspicious that Hrungnir might have been part of this.

While there are wounds that don't heal and I am afraid of dealing with them, diving right into them and feeling the pain extensively is, if done carefully, the most cathartic action I can do. Trygve is about this kind of catharsis, of stretching my limits, living in the border, walking the edge of what I can stand. The pleasure I know I'm not avoiding the limits of comfort zone, but facing my limits head on. So he's the one to deal with my abscission arks.

That's the difference between Trygve's filtered catharsis and plain self-destruction. That's how Trygve differs from Raseri. The latter is hate towards the others (and Vesta can't work well with the consequent hypocrisy). Trygve is an extrapolation of Hephaestus, as the joy from all things include the painful, and seeing meaning in that. So Trygve is perfectly possible to exist with Aine, as she is meant to prevent me from unleashing my own Ersatz problems out of this province.

Of stringed protest and isolation

 The feeling of unbelongingness I'm constantly dealing with has to be stringed properly into this world. So I feel like Ilium could be like some sort of isolated city, resisting to change against some rules of the world. And it can be seen in the way Ilium feels very small and unattractive.

This represents my aspect to resist the change, just because Lazuria could be making demands that Ilium refuses to attend. Or it just can’t, because of Ersatz that limits it, filling the place with dams. As these exigencies aren’t attended, I’m left out of the league, and ignored behind.

The flames could be responsible for that. Resisting to let go of Áine (and a bit of her essence is part of Hephaestus too) is responsible for that, and so I think her role is getting a little more clear. As I refuse to be part of a society that is demanding uncollectiveness and lacking of care for the other, I am losing the game, because my sensibility makes me weaker. (at the same time, I am growing to become coldhearted and bothersome without noticing it)

I just hope I’m not doing it for pride. I just don’t want to say “no” to myself. Although I might hate myself for feeling left behind and being me as the main cause to it and at the heat of the moment I’d love saying no to myself with the loudest scream, I can’t help but just keep being me, which does makes me feel hurt, but...

I'm not sure whether the avoidance of change is saving my essence or preventing me from evolving.

Of thalassic-to-photic maps

 I’ve been trying once again to define some geographies for my places. As I need Ilium and Ersatz in the same place, it could be the same place for them for being mostly one entity. But all in all I have this very strongly defined: Ilium lies to the east, close to the shore. Ersatz is over west side maybe a little down south, while Lazurian perils are up to the north.

This is almost a literal definition of actual places in my life, which is not very recommended as it needs to be stringed more than just inspired. But it can still go through some digestive process recalling dioramic regurgitation and turn out to work on its own.

Been thinking as well about this distance between me and the world, which could be shown as a bay standing between this Ilium peninsula and Sfayi and Qareen palace would be seen in northern shores. Northwards, from Lazurian view, the peninsula looks bland and boring, which makes a terrible sense to me, because Ilium and Ersatz lie behind some of hills right at the shore. Most of it isn't ever seen, just some of Ilium towers can be seen by some lazurian citizens.

The problem is, suddenly this went from thalassic to photic and it’s got me scared of having it so quickly defined. I’m seeing it as some kind of C-shaped map which doesn’t appeal to me at all (I guess if it did, it wouldn’t really frighten me), not even if I just break the shape in different ways to make up for that disturbing appearance, but I don’t think that works.

Anyway, some elements from this proposal do ring some bells, so I’ll still keep it, as it can be used along with other proposals I’ll still come up with, like Ilium and Ersatz being actually an island instead of peninsula, and displayed in a complex diagonality so it won't feel too straight to the point.

Of Zerstor Ruins and Ifrit's Prophecy

 The zerstor problem I have is quite a delicate issue for me, and so, it's another very important matter to be stringed. And so here I have this... hereditary problem of sorts. It's how I feel it's in my blood to be troubled like this. All this instability and anxiety and difficulty to deal with my emotions. It's the dooming prophecy that Ilium's destiny is to end like its ancestors.

Not sure if Zerstor is a nice choice now I'm using it like this, but it's the working name until I find something better for it. Either way, I'm going to start off considering it a previous civilization, a pre-Ilium attempt to overcome Ersatz. It failed, though, and its attempts to recreate gravity failed terribly.

Ushag lives near these ruins, and a lot of the strength of ersatz, or maybe their arguments, come from these ruins. They linger around it, constantly and menacingly reminding me of how rotten I actually am, how fruitless it is to try.

But also Ifrit is related to this. It is that lazurian agent that declares this very solid perception that I have that there’s nothing I can do about to get things I want. It’s a very sad feeling to see that I’ve did my best, but the rail I’m on is already on a defined track of fate. I am so baffled and troubled by seeing a relationship with a great potential to ruin so soon and so sudden, or that I keep making stupid mistakes and seeing everything crumble again.

It’s the punch in my ego when I think I’m doing everything alright and then suddenly it’s revealed all wrong inside. Every failure that leads me precisely to this future I dread makes Ifrit's prophecy to be fulfilled. Every confirmation of such a fear is a terrible sign for me.

Of Red Gravity

 In different degrees of perception, I've always felt I lack something to be human. I just rarely ever feel as if I was just like any other human being. I just don't feel belonging and being part of the world most of the time. And I feel other people just notice that, in different degrees of perception.

There's one text I've never written, about being the only active force in the world. Somehow people are always just distancing themselves from me, and I'm always trying to hold them close. And at the same time it seems to depend entirely on me, it's part of what makes me feel so powerless and hopeless when I lose yet another friend for this reason I can't understand.

I see people with friends orbiting around with a great stability. And so, they seem to have this attraction that pushes people closer to them. It might just be the feeling of liveliness that, being such a quiet and reserved person, is what I lack, this Red Gravity.

Sfayi and Qareen hold this artefact of insane value to Ilium that gives them this strange power. It’s one of the resolved aspects of my story, the reason my flames are always going after them.

But then again, my own attraction should be my own creation. That is, Ilium's power is in its industrial capabilities, and the synthetization of its machinery capable of creating such gravity. It's deep inside its underground facilities, built by Hephaestus, a shining object that could recreate the Red Gravity, and to prove its own worth. Not sure though, it the motivations are valid and solid...

Now, of course, it all has to do with developing such extremist introspectiveness... No wonder extroverts possess the Red Gravity in such a satisfying level. However, should I change who I am? How much of that is the death of transformation and when it becomes the death of my essence?

Of innerverse's cosmogony

The bond and rivalry between Ilium and Ersatz is of tremendous importance to all that I am dealing with today. And so I need to stablish the origin for them, of how their relationship became as it is today. One of the ideas that I have is that all has to do with my insistence to maintain those fiery qualities of mine.

One conjecture I have is that Ersatz would have these useless lands for themselves and so when the Ilium resistance came to be, it was the beacon of light in these forsaken lands. The Ersatz felt menaced. The Fire Ensemble shed a light that made ersatz shadows upset. They wouldn’t tolerate anything taking their lands from them.

Or then, I would believe at the beginning there was nothing. No good and no evil. No land and no skies. Everything was one and only the same thing. It was when Ilium came to be that Ersatz also first existed. As some state of being numb, I'd have it all inside of me, but latent. There was really not much of Ushag before Hephaestus. When one shape started existing, the other one, its opposite one became a very defined shape as well. Pain only came into existence when delight and passion also began existing.

The jungian psychological concept of enantiodromia never ceases to amaze me as to its constant relevance, and I think I can still use that to understand how in these last few years I've been feeling torn between this struggle between those two forces as when I started focusing so much on developing my qualities. Before that I've always been quite more balanced.

Of diorama landscaping and weather

While building the landscapes of my world, I've been noticing the most influential aspects of Ilium and Ersatz lands aren't the geography or even the vegetation themselves, but rather the weather are how it changes my mood. See, fog and rain are what make me feel ersatz feelings, and spring-like sunny days are what remind me of Ilium

Clearly, Ersatz is mostly about cloud days, rain and fog, while Ilium ends up being more about sunny, windy, fresh days. Despite loving cloudy days, lately these years I’ve begun taking part of those majority of people that feels emotionally weakened by melancholic rainy days. Maybe that has to do with some wanning flame I’ve been having, as if my own essence and personality are changing. Some things don’t appeal to me as easily as they did before. I don’t know if there’s anything I could do or just let it all go and let new things come in – or risk it all disappear.

Ersatz feels like wastelands filled with smoke and mist and silent emptiness. It makes me think of an old game I used to play called Tlön: A Misty Story, which had those sad swamp villages and abandoned ruins where monsters lurked. I can also feel I am influenced by Diablo and the same feeling of forsakenness from it. As a string of my actual world, it’s those small Brazilian cities, lost in time, forgotten by the world. Farms littered with rusted pieces of useless machinery, houses made of wood and eaten by termites, fixed very poorly with wooden boards. Now, those are the inspiration, and dioramas have to come naturally and originally. This German House diorama actually could be a transition from ersatz to ilium.

Ilium, in one of the fantasy-like renderings, then sits on fields of green. Its front gate are sided by some pine trees. Long roads are also sided by cypresses leading to other small but quaintly organized villages. Colorful orchards and plantations are part of the surrounding scenario, and we see palm trees dancing with sea wind as we get closer to the shore and see the ports of Ilium.

Curiously, as I used to prefer a cold rainy day that a sunny beach, now I'm feeling the opposite. Not like I like going to beaches like a social thing, it's just that it gives me more peace of mind, gives me tranquility and recharges me. Somehow it would have to do with this allegorical interpretations that we have with storms being problems and sun being the radiance of life. The more we face sorrow, the more we long for sunny days...

Of the bond between Ilium and Ersatz

It gets frustating at times when I get around thinking about the same issue for longer than a year and I still can get no satisfying conclusion for it. There are moments when all that makes sense is that I should let it go and move on, and that would be reasonable, sane and healthy. For some reason, though, I can't, and so I keep investing my time on this string thing.

The strange relationship between Ilium and Ersatz keeps tormenting me and I don't usually have much time to think about this in the level of trance that is required to find suitable answers. But one thing I know. I know that Ilium and Ersatz have a much deeper and intimate relationship than I would at first expect.

My resolution is that I am not just Ilium. I am both Ilium and Ersatz. Them two represent me, so if there’s any piece of land where I’ve been thinking of landing Ilium upon it, there shall have Ersatz just along. And I am everything there, from all roadwork to monuments but also ruins, poverty and some devastated places.

This struggle between them shows what I am... I am wreck and ruin, but I am also hope and passion. I can't hide all the destruction that has already happened inside me, all the conflict inside of me that alreadys make me always quiet and isolated and introspective, but I can't just pretend I'm made only of regret and guilt. Beautiful landscapes could be found at the most unexpected places. Roses are born amidst forsaken grounds.

As Ilium and Ersatz are the same, I think there’s just a confusing entwinement of both worlds in the same place. And just like this could mean landscapes changing frequently reflecting the internal battles, weather could define this other way I think of Ilium and Ersatz: Zephyr Winds and Haze Clouds (and there’s also gamma and sigma).

Of stars-to-be

 My whole world has to be timming with meaning. I don’t want anything to be shown just randomly. Every little piece of decoration I want to set and locate diligently and minutely just so that it won’t ever be seen as a lazy piece of work.

For instance, I’ve just came up with an idea for my night skies. All these starts, they’re going to be people I’ve known, people from my past. They’re stars up in the sky. But also I’m not making them simple stars, but constellations and even some pretty nebulae for groups of people.

Every little dot is for someone I could recall somehow, and they’re going to be there. Maybe over a thousand yes, since I want it to be literally everybody I can remember, and it shouldn’t be such an impossible task since I’m dividing it into cities, places and groups.

Also, the brightness of starts is going to be taken in consideration. I’ll have some of the brighter ones for people still active in my life, while people that I’ve seen just one day of my life are understandably not going to shine so much (there are exceptions, of course). Each new person is a new dot appearing in the skies, and I hope I can still have a lot of bright stars in my sky in the future.

It's going to be a hell of work, and I have already a thousand other things that are earlier on queue and also more relevant, so this is a project that will just linger around the corner of my mind and that I'd bring progress just eventually, but I like this so much, for some reason. Probably because I need to have refreshing ideas like this once in a while that will beautify my work immensely.

Checkpoint #30

September had the release I had been expecting. Pretty much the opposite of August and September’s role last year. Unfortunately, I had been dreaming to write a lot more, but life got its frequent trick to fuck me up again. Hrungnir had been seized, but then it returned with such a power that I’ve lost several great opportunities as I’ve been beaten by it like a dog yet once again.

However, despite all losses, I could finally write the minimum amount of texts I’ve been trying to maintain in here, and that’s a great achievement. Of course, it means nothing compared to last year, but this is my new reality. Back then I was trying to see how far I could get, but now I am being forced to see how much I can resist the adversities and obstacles.

Keeping a writing pad by my side and writing down every little stupid thought has been one of the first and most important acts of discipline I’ve been restoring. And that has been helping me working with ideas, since I’ve been loving just writing for the sake of feeling my handwriting, so now I can also use it to jot down important things as well!

I had some great ideas this month. Well, a lot of ideas that could be great if I were to keep working on it, which is something I never do really well. I am still a hunter of ideas, but am not doing a great job at turning them into real things. Anyway, the idea of this month was the gem glyphs. I also included the August’s main idea which was diorama landscaping. And July had the character-o-rama, while June had these ideas about crime and corruption of Ilium (which I didn’t really write about but roughly included it somewhere in there).

And now, I am really interested in trying to work with some of these late great ideas, developing the landscapes, thinking of calligraphy of my gems, or then just seeing what I can unveil from these ‘o-ramas. There’s a lot to develop over them… they could even become a new tankobon/eva engine themselves.