Of death and relief

This is the end.

I didn't really think as much about this as I should. But I just realized it ought to happen and I find myself feeling okay with this. I would never want this to die and there was a time when I'd grieve terribly at hints of its demise, but this is now ripe for the moment. And I'm so honestly okay with this, because I'm feeling I'm close to coming with terms with myself and am much more peaceful now compared to the distressful days that brought this project a birth.

I feel to my heart my work here is, whilst incomplete, almost overdone. I can't stop feeling this isn't inspirational as it once was. I got used to a formula that is not fun anymore and I can't force it to come back the way it was. So before it starts necrosing into an unbearable sore, this will now become my past set to be remembered with fond. I'm proud of the effort I poured into this and I changed through these months and years, and I what I'm leaving behind is my past. But not a forsaken one. More like a museum.

I did accomplish a lot here, in almost three years. A big book-worth colleciton of thoughts with almost one thousand texts published. Not a single comment, but heh, whatever about that now. So, not fully, but I developed myself and improved my writing skills and ways of expressing myself more efficiently. It is with much more ease now that I can express my ideas and feelings... I used to get all confused and lost back then. From my initial expectation, there were ideals I didn't reach, some I did and reached others I wasn't expecting at all. For instance, glad of this huge lore that sprouted and flourished incidentally, naturally. And they are to keep evolving. There are quintessences to work, gems to collect, mindscapes to find, qmus to feel, dioramas to shape, scourgers to fight. Ideas to have. Worlds to create. This spirit will always go on with me. With me in future enterprises.

A story told short, I wasn't feeling the development no more and I need to cut the stagnation off. See, I said this before, but I need something new. I've just started using what I've learned here to do something at last. From here on, I'll see those things as actual intellectual property, so I have new challenges that I've started practicing. It's not entirely mindblowingly revolutionary, but makes me feel a long-forgotten thrill, which is always a good sign.

This is not a bad day. Because this is the end, but also a new beginning.

Checkpoint #33

 December was a month of reclaiming. Got back my health and confidence. Gaining weight, finally. Starting to waste less of my time. And a lot of misplaced and scattered traits as I rummaged through my innards in november seem safe and restored. I feel like I have close drawers again, and I feel walking around less clumsly. Interesting thing, life... this is just quite the very opposite of twelve checkpoints ago.

Can say I have all my flames back. The problems between Hrungnir and Zhu Rong through the year just switched, and now Zhu Rong is mostly with me, and Hrungnir just troubling me a few minutes every day, and that's amazing. Just maybe Hephaestus is going through a little process of renovation. A little annoying and tad bit dangerous I have to admit, but I know how to keep myself refreshingly inspired, and I can happily say the year got to its end with a beautiful positive note. A happy ending, which is strange, since secondines always bring in their ends the most aprehensive cliffhanger of the trilogy.

Though considered a year of failure, 2013 at least was special in some ways. In exchange of all the productivity, I had a year lived differently, and it brought some broadening to my spirit. This year I got some important social gains, as far as Hrungnir would let me. And now in 2014 however I need to work hard. Harder than ever. And with Zhu Rong, I am quite optimistic this will bring me a time of goldilocks.

As a resolution for this new year, I don't think I need to start changing. I already did in december. So I feel I mostly just need to extend it further. Regarding my texts, I've been thinking very hard about this, and I decided it's time for some changes here. I'm tired of this pace, sick of my voice. But I'm not giving up. I just need something new. I need a new challenge, a radical change, and a chance to do something I can be more proud of. I am not giving up on my eva engines, I just will try something new for a while, and keep the evas working in second plan. By the way, prize is up for Exoverses.

Also, this is the time for me to clean up my life from bad infections. Cleasing my life from all negative influence. Taking away from my life all that brings me down. All that brings me regret. All that makes me feel unworthy and insecure. I'll just do what is good for me, that and those which bring me learning and well-being.

It's hard to imagine what surprises stand veiled for the next twelve months, and that's such a great amount of time, and a lot of things can happen. Big things. Also good ones, I usually don't expect it that way. I just want to think I have what is needed to deal with the bad things. I'll work on making Ilium's walls stronger than ever, so to avoid scourgers entirely, or to make abscission arks safer.

Thing is, I know that can't happen. I won't feel happy and strong thoroughout the whole of the year. I will feel sad and desperate somewhen in there. But that's how life goes, I just will take my chance to deal with them decently. Usually I would feel anxious about stepping through the threshold, but since this is my chance to do all I couldn't in 2013. I have renewed dreams and hopes, and since now I can feel the STRENGTH...

Of Vesta's ceremony

 At the beginning of this year I was attempting to make this Vesta's year. It failed. I couldn't get the hang of myself and keep myself disciplined. Suffered from a health issue that made me extremely tired and indisposed. I'd sleep in pain and most of my time I'd be hanging around the internet aimlessly.

Instead of judging her guilty (and being so disappointed with myself), I looked inside and followed her steps. And I saw how her job is much more complex than it seems to be. It's like when we easily judge mayors and other administrator for some clear mismanagement but we don't see how their work is much more beyond that.

So I realized I got so used to being me that I sometimes forget what a silly pityful being I am, and in the outcome she just seems the most potent force inside me. Couldn't she destroy them dark feelings, but she did refrain all this hatred and frustration. And that's one amazing achievement. All this painful stream was mostly directed inwards. It doesn't affect others for I shut down to a self-destructive quietude.

Maybe this is all but a comforting lie I'm telling myself to get a peaceful night rest. It might be, but I don't care. In spite of all her mistakes, just when I think all she puts up with... I hope that would be my own notion of maturity, to bear with circumstances in spite of what they do with us inside. Just when thinking of all the troubles I avoid for knowing what they will bring me, that's one very wise act on my side.

Of Exoverses

 Finally I've got myself another refreshing branch of the innerverse concept. Unlike just unravelling my own inner world, this is about exploring life out there. It's about understanding how others behave, and how they perceive the world. Every one has got enemies, weakenesses and they all work with the same prime words, they just have different meanings to them, or place them around differently. Each person has their own weight to concepts. How is their notion of being tired or skilled. What means to them being in love, or what is an outrageous behavior.

And how would other people's feelings be stringed? Would they have one big monster chasing them? Would it be a very well protected city? Would they be constantly tormented day and night? Is it an empire built over a massive dungeon imprisoning one single apocalyptical monster miles below? Is it a place in a deep valley, walled by giant mountains that prevent sun from getting in? Or is it a gigantic empire over the hills, an impressive civilization, only though with hidden dirty under the rag? Maybe is it a very simple kingdom, however free of bellical conflicts and economical issues?

That's the point of this exostudy, for me to see how other people feel. How different it could be to string other people's lives, how refreshing that would be. How it would open my eyes... Like the search for exobiologic signs is based upon the premise it can expand our own knowledge about our own terrestrial life, my own exostudies can expand my self-knowledge.

Of Arterial Guidelines

 It feels slightly disturbing when I feel I am working with possible returning quintessences. It's like I am dealing with some potentially dangerous outlawed idea. Or then distressed, as if dealing with people who've gotten their share already, and came back hidden in disguise for another portion.

Right in front of me there's one lad I'm pretty sure has been mentioned here before, back to the days where I was building some artistic principles of mine. I haven't got time to check the files and documents, so I can't prove it has been already here before. Either way, there it goes another attempt to have it as a sealed quintessence.

This is one of the helping techniques to make solid designs. Whenever there's a messy confusion of lines or that there's nothing standing out clear in the composition, I've learned that I can use this that I've been calling Arterial Lines to show the most relevant aspect of the highlighted part of it. And not only that, it has an style to it that gives the image a very polished appeal to the shapes with outlines engrossed.

Apparently this helps the brain to understand and process the exposed image with more ease, which brings him joy. The thing is that it's very much present not only in images, but also in music, or in stories. I do feel the Arterial Guideline, very distintictively in these different modalities. It indeed is one nice tool to have around.  

Of Sealed Quintessences

 Though last month I had this needlework a little better wrought, with a story interwoven through the texts, the expression of the meaning of each thought of mine in there was sacrificed in exchange. By trying to make them fit in a storyline, I lost a lot in the terms of definition of these texts, like what I meant with fraud, jealousy or being uninspired.

I felt that it was so incomplete under this circumstance that I should even maybe rewrite them. They weren't unloaded effectively, and there were uncomfortable remainings of them. That is something that bothers me a lot, when a piece of work leave these traces behind.

When I compose something that pretty much represents almost perfectly the feeling I am trying to express I am calling a Sealed Quintessence. It's when I name all these ideas and feelings, and in this name I try to have the essence concealed. Sometimes I can get it right, and sometimes I don't. When it doesn't work and the quintessence has leaked around, it's when returning quintessences happen.

My objective is to make transferrence occur without leaks. The better sealed it is, the chance of having returning quintessences and rq trials decreases. But quintessences do show different degrees of resistance against sealing. They might have different categories, like feelings that I can easily transform into gems.

But it also seems to depend on their depth of my oceanic perception of them. Ideas in thalassic level will show a higher probability of being inaccurately sealed. It's better to wait to fish them out only when they're lured close enough to photic surface. The biggest ideas, though, won't come so easily...

Of Thalassic Fishing

 While I feel I have lost my powers, I've been trying to understand what is it that I've been doing here all along. What kept me in here for more than two years? What is it that has moved me and kept making me having constant thoughts, enough to generate a full book worth of content?

Apparently it seems that what I do is to perceive those mostly neglected thoughts and bring them to surface. It's my job to feel those very faint signals of thoughts, and bring them up, where I can analyze and admire their beauty. Usually they bring secret treasures with them, as they make me understand little factual aspects of my daily life, in the most braudelian fashion possible.

This is how introspective incursions have helped me, by making me understand so much about myself. All these psychological theories I've got came from this, and later practical uses I've got from them that leaves people so impressed are a proof that this is a good job for me to have and to get better at.

The thing, though is that I require these sensitive sensors to be able to feel those things. The decreasing of my sensibility, even as slightly as it can get, already gets in the way of the productivity. It seems to be all that matters, so I must work to keep it as sharp as I possibly can.

Of living in sprints

 It's always been a very essential question to me, knowing whether I am beyond or behind (who knows). There's always evidence indicating me as someone awkwardly behind, at the same time here and there I get some comforting signs that I have my own worth. The question that remains is whether these are coexisting or followups of each other.

Though sharp reasoning tell the probability of coexistence as I tell of being behind in some aspects of my life (mostly of social nature, of course) while beyond in other areas, such as unbound creativity (with no evaluation of financial gain, of course). But I get some indications to the contrary. I can get behind on both, while I can also get beyond on both, and I don't know very well why.

My life is bland and uneventful, except for occasional outbursts of dense productivity or social participation. Rarely at the same time (and when it is it's goldilockingly amazing), but to each it's a sudden moment when I wake up and run and do lots of things, all to settle down to slumber again for another time. Yeah, that definitely sums up my life. I suddenly wake up, look at my watch and, realizing the grave danged of lateness, I run, run, run. Then I feel that was good enough, and as the despair wears off, I decide to rest a little.

What seems important for me to ponder here is why do I decide to rest a little. Is it just because I feel I've done enough not to be late? Is that all that moves me? Is it just the last-minute panic that will always scare me to move?

Of Capital People

 Those highly influential forces are very dangerous when hiding behind thalassic curtains. I have to uncover them, and understand thoroughly all these emotions and drives that move me. For instance, why do I seek the people I seek.

It's clear to me we all seek people who have life in them. We just have different assumptions on what having life means. I like those who have life around them, wherever they are. Whether it's intelligence or curiosity, their presence is vital to me, and I feel attracted to them, intellectually, or romantically sometimes as well.

It's like growing up in a place where people are all emptyheaded and, I'll be polite here, just plainly uninteresting with boring talk about beer and football and cars and women, and then you meet people with Ideas, and they seem to be aware of the big world beyond. They talk about international politics, music, science and world history. They might live in a very little town or a faroff house, but their presence and knowledge makes up for that. The opposite doesn't work for me.

And I like myself being like this, and it's a nice protection against solitude. It's also one of the factors that determine the way I string my life into the innerverse. It's one of these Gravity things that keep a rivalry between Ilium and Lazuria.

Of a slow march to death

What scares me about time isn't just how relentless it is when bringing us to death, it's how we start literally feeling it closer. In our weak bones, stiff muscles. It seems to exist simply to deter us from neglecting this inexorable fate, but to force us to acknowledge and face constantly that we are already dying.

I hate feeling the death coming closer to my body through the agency of time. It sounds so rude to say such a thing, but then I can't really tell if this is right or wrong to be said, but there it goes: aging is a disease that can't be healed. We get weaker and everything starts malfunctioning. We lose power and energy. We get trapped in sad, boring routines in order to treat our health well.

And the dreadful part of it all is that we adapt. We get used to living to it. We adapt to this condition. And that's not beautiful or reassuring. On the contrary, it's scary. We forget what we used to have. In order to survive, we supress memories of great experiences from the past.

We die, little by little, day by day. Each day when we get to read one less page, we're already tired. Each day we learn one less thing for being too worried about others things. We become less sentient, we become more like zombies. It's like slowly drowsing away, without noticing our belongings and traits taken from us, one by one.

Of Trygve's Roar

 Since his return, I've been paying attention to him, this Trygve guy. It's a power that I was sort of able to reclaim, and then I have been trying to understand him again so I could get better at summoning him. Or finding him again when he is going to get lost again in the woods.

Some of these traits of his essence I was aware before, and some I learned right when he came back. But then there seems always be some other unperceived notions to this strange, mysterious and always surprising character, and it's the essence of unsheltered courage.

That's about how to deal with life, how to adapt to it. Somehow turning the refuse down and accepting it makes the pain much less affecting. So if life gives you heat, bring it in. When you have scorching cold, open your chest towards it. Be willing to accept with open arms what is given to bring you down.

When life roars at you, you roar back.

Of Lifeframes (Zombie Period)

 There are siderooms full of unfinished and unexplored projects I've initiated through the existence of this blog. One of them I barely touched after I got the first woven thread was this one about Lifeframes. There I called it the Goldilocks period of life, when everything is so sweet and we keep routines we love to remember as an unchronological stream.

This new one, similar in several aspects to Goldilocks, is more of a downer. I call it the Zombie period. It's when our life is just going in an automatic mode. Day after day, we aren't driven by any passions. We just get out of bed, do our deeds, head back home, hang around something until time is up to go sleep again.

This is the result of a lack of motivation, a lack of reason to live. No self-steem to feel worthy of being passionate. Being passionate, we constantly are being taught, leads to suffering. This moment in life seems to usually happen after we fall from some metaphorical ladders, and is constant in stages of depression.

It feels like being trapped in the Samsara, so it's a terrible fate for someone to be living in this routine. Imagine lingering in this doomed state for years. Imagine that a good chunk of the world population live through this for most of their lives...

Of Pavlovian detour of judgement

 Wondering about life is one weird exercise. There are some strange twisting points in there, when things reveal themselves in queer manners. It's hard to explain but, for instance, there are certain moments when I notice that there these things that we assume we know about life are so far how others tell them to be. But them we get on the battlefield, and we see several more stuff we can't understand how no one ever told us about.

One of these things I'm learning by myself is about how life tries to push us away from ourselves. And it's made so by some complex conditioning combinations that lead us to close our tolerance towards some stuff and locking ourselves from others, all because by several reasons we can feel threatened by the world around us.

What I am trying to say is that apparently innocence can leave us wiser in reasoning. By scarring ourselves through life, we get so easily biased by all associations we make towards things that we become grumpy old fellas, with rancorous assumptions and being obnoxiously opnionated.

We can't, however, remain innocent through life, for we won't meet life. But we can't let ourselves be scarred by everything, and let wounds to get deep enough to damage our natural opinions about some matter to be stained by an external agent, and start hating a group of people for the sake of one person, or generalize a whole genre of experiences due to one bad experience. We can't let our judgement on the world suffer such detours.

Of solipsistic abandon

 No one ever wishes to feel lonely. Solitude is something entirely else. I like being in solitude with my emotions. But when I feel there's no other to whom I can relate those feelings, this is what makes me feel pretty miserably lonely.

I feel I am the only one having difficulties, doubts and insecurities. I hate when people don't admit facing difficulty, or opening their troubles to me. Even when they are so... lonely. They get so annoyed when I am suffering with a brokenheart or any other frustration, that I think they never felt it themselves. It seems only I feel emotions.

Here comes one big thalassic island coming to surface. Those very boiled down emotions that I have that are hard to express, as complex as they are, so forgive me if I am not really able to explain it minutely. But god, it makes feel less empathy towards others, it makes me feel they don't feel the world or sit around it with wonderings like mine. So much they don't express their struggle or their humanity, I naturally start not being able to see it. I see them as empty wanderers.

I don't usually make a lot of stupid things because of that, because I know how it works so I don't trust my feelings. No, the worst consequence is that I feel that it is unnatural to go through these hardships. I feel it is my fault if it's hard for me. I feel it is my fault something doesn't seem to happen.

Strange then it becomes to me, unwillingly belonging to a solipsistic isolation, when I see things that I feel just mine being expressed by others. Strange when dreams and fears of mine are shown by others. Depending on the circumstances, I can feel either relief or... jealousy. It's a delicate issue to me.

Of lost trance powers

Though I am feeling safe and, in a way, whole again, one thing I wasn't still able to claim back. I had powers that are now gone. Still gone. This is, clearly, what I used to call the Trances. I knew I had to understand what made them happen, and my sad fate is that I lost it before I could really understand.

I get sparkles of it sometimes, but it's just so faint. I don't know how my mojo worked for trances to happen as they used to, but sure they were utmost essential to creation of content. I don't know if it's the weariness of the journey, or the pressure of life out there squashing my peace and sensitivity, or if I am changing into something else, someone else. Not evolving, or changing it for a new self with new perks, I am afraid. Maybe it was a finite resource, like fossil oil running short and dry.

In the hero's journey, this would be the frame of the story when characters must fight on without their special weapon. We managed to get here with the aid of this powerful ally, now you've got to prove you can go on by yourself, or be strong enough to resist attacks without it. So where did it go, or why was it taken, I don't know. It's just not here and there's a feeling of powerlessness trying to conquer me, but I won't bend down.

My belief that I had been hanging around too much with people, trying to understand their amazing solving skills and their social skills. Is it really that trances don't coexist with a developed social life? Well, I've been having little time for me to dig in and lay baits with my introspective incursions. If that's that, I can just relearn it again, or find new reserves. If it was just a momentary consequence, a fortunate side effect of the nerd and isolate life I have been living, absorbing and learning and absorbing and internalizing everything to a point where I just exploded them thoughts out of me, I just need to remake these steps. Movies, books, music, games, thousands of them. Artists to inspire me, landscapes to sooth me. All alone if I must to.

But... and the doors that social network have opened for me? I have to decide what is most important to me in this moment.

Of creative block

 It took me some time in my life, but I started finally made sense of all my ramblings and saw a common theme through it all. I like the creation, the instinctive composition, the inventive distortion, the evolving fluidity. I'd like to understand how the popping of a new idea happens, and what are the circumstances involved.

But I keep talking about it and I want to be creative myself. I try to show myself creative through these exercises, but recently I am feeling ashamed about how I fail to meet those standards. Even to keep up with ideas I used to have, I can't create content like I used to do.

When asking some friends how do they get to be creative, they see nothing to be talked about, for everything is just handled to them. There's just no struggle for them. They've got no trances of absurd geniality where they can seem to enter a bonus stage and harvest as many ideas as they can. Strange. It seems to happen only to me.

I wonder if it's just a passing phase, or if this is not my thing. I feel like giving up with the frustration that it is the ridiculous balance between effort and time invested and ideas, creations and products squeezed out. I have to find out somehow. And reverse the results if negative.

Of honest disentitlement

 I like things fair. Just like I don't enjoy underestimation, I don't appreciate much overestimation either. I often assume people consider me some sort of autist idiot, which is kind of true, but some come to me with a strange acknowledgement of some skills of mine. It feels fishy even if it's good to feel that I have some prestige, but I don't like how it's given to me. I feel most credits I get I don't really deserve.

I don't consider myself intelligent or bearer of any great talent. Yet, people insist so, which is very unfair to them. Why do they get impressed by my ordinary deeds when there's much more impressive accomplishments out there, oftenly achiedved by themselves?

I find it highly unfair that people consider me blessed with intelligence. Really, just because I know the meaning of enantiodromia, distopia and I know how to use irony correctly? Or because english or know some precise historical date or eventually by luck my drawings look good? What about people who handle real world problems and got quick and efficient sollutions for these problems? What about people who are effectively communicative and get great friendships? Those people can enjoy life and they have figured out the safe way through it. I am particularly stupid in these matters, I stumble around like I am blind fool, so I value these abilities immensely.

I consider myself a fraud, because people think I know so much, and I know nothing. I am highly selective about things I show, and this seems to convice people (or then they convince me to be convinced). I don't even know if that's would be a socreatean sign of intelligence, but I don't care, I don't feel worthy of that. The things I know aren't of much use. They don't bring people warmth or ease their hunger. These skills don't even help me out in the first place.

I wonder if what I call ordinary is extraordinary to them. But it makes no sense, I am much left behind in most things, in very basically ordinary things, like cleaning the house or using the ATM. There's something strangely fishy about their judgement. It just doesn't weigh out well, and sometimes I get paranoid about that.

Checkpoint #32

November turned my own foundations upside down. All judged, questioned, at stake. I needed time to understand all this cluttered confusion, like one of those glasses, with several liquids naturally separated in perfect layers due to their different density, that gets shaken and slowly gets them restabilized and separated again. What are my motivations? What I seek in life? What even is my identity? All that I am, is that enough maturity to be in a romantic relationship? Am I enough to be a functional member of this society? Do I have enough to be a person?

And I found myself trying to be what I am not. Trying to be more than what I can be. One part of me was too desperate to change, the other one too proud to change, but in the end I just unable to anyway. Be it a glad or sad thing, I'm back on track. I just hope there has been a good lesson learned in my heart to be worth the trouble, but I'm feeling more comfortable now, and that makes me a better person too, more amiable and friendly. Just don't step on my wounded toe.

After all, there's no hurrying things ahead of their time. I had plenty of things written for this month, but suddenly life twists around and most of what I had written doesn't make sense anymore. I was reading the checkpoint text I had ready from some ten days ago and it felt half-year old already. I think this saturday and sunday alone I got three (almost four) of my major abscission issues resolved, and I'm feeling so good about myself in this moment right now. It's almost unbelievable. Having such a light chest now so sudden. So good.

Wasn't able to write much, that's still hard for me to try writing as much as I used to, and I can't even say I had any idea at all, for I was too troubled with these abscission ghosts haunting me. I can't even say I had all these demons captured like I hint in the texts, but I think almost everything is in there. No wonder, for the texts this month are almost entirely about me opening my heart, and I wouldn't even recommend anyone to read them.

Except that, at the last minute I had a great idea, and as I've managed to chain the texts in order to make my usual story, when I saw it I decided to tell a stringed story about Ilium and Raseri and Vesta and their friends. Somehow the way I had it first chained before layering the characters, it was all ready for that. I quite enjoyed that, making those texts to be encounters with the abscission demons. I was in need to create something like that (is one of the three abscission issues). I wish I could work more on it, though. There are enough loose ends to craft an interesting, closed-in-itself plot from these events from november.

That would be something I am proud of, but I usually feel like awarding some specific idea as it's my tradition. So I have something to be mentioned here. Finally I had the 7^th version of the flames ready, now with astounding seventy-eight gems (!), and I'm enjoying what I called the trilogy of quartz. These Carbon/Coal/Calcium gems are some that have been in my mind for some months now, and I finally got them out of my mind, and I glad how they came out like this. Oh, the Chrysalis was interesting too, I long to see its future implications.

Now, another month is over, and I'll see what I can arrange for december, the very last month of this very strange year of 2013. I have an idea already, I just hope I can work it out.

Of Gems v7.0

 After a long time, and with some reconsiderations about how new gems should occur, since lots of them were really feeling like some rather specific dioramas already made of composed gems, rather than an unique feeling of its own (a prime requisite for new gems to be coined), I present the seventh update on the subject and here are the ones I accepted as new members of the gem brotherhood.

Starting with one I had to decide whether I would make it a dissidence from Onyx. And I decided I wanted to, so Argonite is going to be about übernerd things. It's about playing rpg with friends, and having some deep discussions about rather irrelevant characteristics of movies and series and books and games. It's something about the hint of medieval (and sometimes sci-fi) tone and grittiness that differs it from Onyx, which in a way is still the more cartoon-like entertainments. In a way, Argonite and Onyx would represent the adult nerd and child one. Also, Argonite feels a bit more western somehow. I'm sorry, Nintendo, I'm sorry Japan.

Speaking of ages, I'm proud to announce one of my main gems, and I'm calling it Carbon. It's about the aging process. We feel carbon when we feel the different phases of life. We feel one kind of carbon when we're close to a kindergarten school, another one near high schools and college, company buildings and retirement houses. Instead of carving one for each stage, I actually noticed there is a similar feeling to each of them, and its marrow essence that bonds them is what I'm calling Carbon. This is a dissidence of Quartz, which was bearing a too broad significance.

And since we're talking about ages, there's one specific about teenager years. I'm calling Coal this representation of the rapture of youth. It's got several other gems related to it, like sapphire, ruby, carnelian, energite, ilite, pearl, nephrite and howlite (classic rock, metal and grunge – Pearl Jam in specific brings me intense Coal feelings and memories). It's a quite coarse atmosphere, with the smell of damp and slouchness in their basement studio, with conversations about bands, porn and alcohol. It's the time of enjoyment of the rapture of their youth, a time of dares and discoveries, of going totally rad, dud. It's when the foundations of one's personality start to sprout (usually but not exactly my case), so I guess it makes sense to have this related to the gem of diamond.

One of the components of last gem is speed. I call this the Spinel gem to be the thrilling attempts to go through risk and danger to feel lawless and free. It could be so bewitching as it happens when we make exercises, when we run and we pump blood through our muscles. It breaks us free from the safe plaster routines. Spinel seems to be in the wind blazing by (and so this one could explain how winds help making such great mindscapes). Boys pull their heads out the window and scream, girls laugh in between sips of their bottles. They're feeling alive, having the time of their lives.

And I keep exploring these defining years of our personalities because they do have some poignant catchiness to them. One of the most remarkable memories everybody has from these years are their relationships. Both friendships and romantic engagements, it's when we go to a bar and see groups of friends, all possibilities of bonds and friendships, and there's jokes, there's flirting, there's serious discussion about their dreams and their visionary and passionate political debates. The gem is called Calcium. The guy slips his body back into the car, and he looks at the girls, and one of them looks at him with a smile of secrecy. It burns but will also hurt. This is a response to the beautiful days of amethyst, but rather than being just dark amethysts, it's the whole spectrum of the progression of the relationships in real life. Friends argue, they feel betrayed, bonds are broken. There's jealousy towards the new people our friends are hanging out. There's cry and sorrow too that is part of the cementing of our character. Something about this gem is what makes some 80s bands like The Cure, The Smiths, Joy Division and the brazilian Legião Urbana so popular. It's not even about the lyrics, the atmosphere of the songs give this feeling to me.

But now, changing the subject, and considering we've just been through october, there's a gem for halloween, and I'm calling it Oolite. Rather than being just garnet and opal, this is something cultural too. It isn't just the ruby/carnelian events, but the spooky essence of it too that is usually shown or used as amusement (it's quite good for humor sketches). Ghost stories by the campfire also are a recreative use of Oolite. So that's a way to differentiate it from garnet and opal which are more serious stuff, specially opal. Mercury is more about wizardry while Oolite is about amusing eeriness. But I remember some twilight hours with incoming storms darkening the skies when I've felt that spooky night indeed felt like some wicked moment for witches, demons and zombies to be astray in our world, so Oolite could have that use as well.

Since this halloween thing isn't much disseminated in my country, it is still an american tradition that is seen around mostly in language schools. I'm going to give a gem called Hafnium for the american culture imposed over my own culture. So brazilian roots and imported american culture are shown with Brazilianite and Hafnium. American movies, american fast food. It's quite a hypocrisy to complain about once I write in english here in the internet, and I have this gem because I've had me some several english classes, but my reservations about globalization is what I call the Sterilization Factor. Any landscape with the same Coca-cola ads and (this is the good thing about gems) other hafnium elements, like a highly technological and practical culture ends up feeling too lifeless and featureless to me sometimes.

Now I'm going with a dissidence from tv (phosphide). I'll use Phosphate for cinema. It started making sense in my mind when I noticed how far different the moods are for watching tv and watching a movie. It's a different experience all around. Here you're paying attention to whole craft: the photography entwined with the plot, the soundtrack entangled with the dialogues. And then there's the movie theathers as well, which also bear some other implications that a tv room can't imitate (though that's not saying that makes movies better).

Going back to the eerie, there's also the ominous and sacred, and that's another paired feeling I need to divide (like I just did with Oolite and Hafnium). These are two feelings of felt dimensions, so they belong to the Chryso series (sometimes I think dunite, as dealing with degrees of light and shade, should be a chrysogem). So forgive me if I start using organicals now just for the sake of their chryso- names. I hope it's the only exception I can make for going out of the mineral/chemical world, though.

The first one is about the ominous and powerful. It's about something so epic, bearing such grandiosity and power it's scary. The gem for this sublime feeling is going to be called Chrysophyllum. It doesn't need to be scary in the sense it's evil power, just something dangerously powerful, and should not be taken lightly. The mushroom effect of an atomic explosion gives me a feeling I'm callying chrysophyllum, because... holy mother of god, that is some serious shit. But it is also in music, especially classical songs, those bombastic symphonies. O Fortuna, for instance, has this epic feeling to it, with choirs and a sense of intense grandiosity. I remember this song used to fit so well when I was imagining the dragon Smaug flying from the insides of the Lonely Mountain, and it seems that it's because both experiences have chrysophyllum in them.. f I like trying to describe this feeling of things so powerful they could bring an End, for making me think of examples and my creativity feels very inspired by it.

The second one, and last one, I'm going to call it Chrysalis. At the beginning this is the feeling of holy divinity inspired by religion. Unlike marble, which is about the melancholic veil of mortality, this would be a sense of inner peace. There's something similar to hope, the belief of something beyond. And that's the point I wanted to get at, the beyond. It's the longing we have for this transcendental... this... I don't know, this is why I'm using chrysalis to express something several people call god. But it's everywhere where there's both of these characteristics: the transcendental and the beyond. Music and art are transcendental, and the sideral space has this mysterious feeling of wondering what's beyond, and so I think that's how I feel chrysalis so easily found in art and space. The problem is that it's a sylvan being that escapes definitions, and the fun to chase chrysalis is what makes it fun. I wonder whether Chrysalis can survive in being my definitive nomenclature for this, but I don't want it to replace other chases. I just don't want it to be disputated by other gem (except maybe Lazulite or Chrysophyllum or some other now, but they would be more like archangels).

And I think that's enough for now. Last time I had sixty-eight, and I've just added ten more. Got 78 now. Argonite, Carbon, Coal, Calcium, Spinel, Oolite, Hafnium, Phosphate, Chrysophyllum and Chrysalis. It's been a long, long time since the last update, so this time I'm almost in doubt if I didn't repeat myself with choices. I think not, but this time I've noticed I had a harder time differentiating gems that are now getting very, very, very similar.

Of suburban stages (sparkles employed)

 Though they may increase in frequency depending on still unknown factors, my creative endeavours kind of happen by themselves. And though I don't quite consider these to be as important as actual, planned creations (even if qmus do have something in common with sparkles) and I never really bother capturing them, I've been realizing they would be very much welcome in this world of mine.

Sparkles come to me in all shapes, but I never get them developed any further. I 'd like to start practicing them, for I miss and need to go back the feeling of seeing the tip of my fingers creating and recreating beauty and strength and fragility and Life.

The dark arab warrior walks under heavy apocalyptic skies. The company founder who is leaving his office and has a tearjerker realization of all his dreams he acchieved. The sensual dancer wearing her exuberant tropical-colored dress fancies her abilities. The long-forsaken castle ruins, once a place for all glory, war and heated discussions and passionated meetings is now but covered with gentle autumn leaves of reddened and golden color. The two girls could after a while track their friend, who's playing his harp, sitting on a stone and watching the sea and sun setting on the horizon, and singing a song of deep solitude, sadness and beauty (hint: they're flary).

So this world offers them the chance to be real, without being actually lost in the stream of my wonderings. I don't want them to be abandoned shackles in the moors, but collective hamlets of independent sparks.

There are several stories I'd like to tell, and that have nothing to do with the main play. I like having them being placed in the same place, for several reasons. One of them is that I can have a little more control over my stories. The other advantage is that it is a much careless thing, as I just don’t need to worry about actual stringing, I'll just handle the purest creative flow. This is where I can make stories independent from all major purposes of this exercise.

However, the main reason, or the most appealing one, would be all the new tonalities they would bring to the world. I want it to be a breathing one – an alive one. All different ideas in all shapes and forms, displayed as beacon, a call for dry creatives to find inspiration and seek to keep having their minds craving to see and build, absorb and construct and create.