Checkpoint #17

August was a month for an explosive recovery. Unlike past months when I didn’t bring many impediments about dark emotions dominating me, this month I decided to show my own interference. I was tired of feeling weak and I expelled them. I’ve made all I could to avoid them Scourgers and didn’t let them take one single day of me. This was a month for Hephaestus to erupt in its maximum glory.

I was so focused on this release that it helped me avoiding scorching feelings.  I like seeing that I’ve managed to accomplish that, because even as strong as I felt, I didn’t have it easy. I had some severe blows to my ego but I kept going, so I dare next generations claim I had the aid of a peaceful scenario. I think that if this had happened to me one year ago I’d have one very, very powerful depression.

The power of discipline is amazing. I’ve written one hundred texts in ten days. Also it’s so cool to have a remarkable feat like this in my profile. But I’m afraid that this will bring an Aftergoal Disillusion equivalent to the size of my efforts. Those big events scare me. I better keep this low.

Although I started with narrow expectations again, this was a great month for ideas. I made unexpected advances in understanding motifs and trances, even if the toll is making me feel some aversion to them again. I started the month with so few ideas, but the constancy of trances allowed me to find ideas constantly, and the analogous characteristic of motifs made it easier for me. This month I had these 4 new gems, then these handfuls of axioms and worldly lessons, which I felt like cheating to get to one hundred texts, but maybe the axioms were this generation’s amulets for the needed protection, so it’s excusable. Even if I like how vertices finally felt like fitting in my texts and the inquiries are helping my thinking, and that I’ve brought the first seed I’m calling sensors, the four ways of life are my discovery of the month because of its refreshing tone. And, believe it or not, I have still dozens of unwritten ideas.

As I am feeling the toll, I don’t want to think about writing and thinking again for months. But while I’m releasing one skill, the other two are reloading with the restraint. And now I want to practice drawing and also go back to playing songs and develop my listening skills. Some whirlpool exercises would be great too, as I need to start some reading matters.

Though it would be great to go throughout 2012 with relentless and disciplined writing, I think I’ve earned my right to rest in here. I’m terribly tired of this, but I can’t really rest, and I need to figure out a way to do that. September is going to be an attempt to try the restraint for the first time, after two releases. I really have to try not being desperate about not having ideas, and I want to witness the absence just once. Judging by this resistance I have the feeling that there will be something to feed my thoughts (except I don’t need to have my thoughts being fed). Something interesting is hidden there (I don't need to find it now). I just have to be careful so I don’t get too used to having my mind still, and so preventing me from ever coming back. I don’t mind. Adventure calls me.

But this is no time for adventures, I have to practice restraint (preferably a complete one) so I can rest and reinvigorate my energies. Apparently I have to be stronger than my sense of guilty obligation for that to happen.

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Now, I’m going to do something different, something I have always been afraid of doing. I want to ask something from my readers. There are not too many of them, but you are always here with me, albeit terribly silent. See, I know nothing about you. I don’t know your age, gender and your stories. I want to know which kind of people could possibly be interested in my ideas. So please, come and just say hi. I want to know you. I want and need to meet new people, and you are all from different countries. I’d love to start these new friendships. See, I’m not as much asking as I am even offering my own friendship. Please, don’t let it be denied.

Of starry nights (when deeds are done)

I spend so much time procrastinating and leaving all of my projects to be finalized in the last minute that I very rarely have the time to appreciate what it means to have free time after the work is done.

I usually have one or two days of relief at the beginning of each month before I start getting worried about the new mission ahead. And during most of the month there’s rarely this feeling of lightness inside me. Whenever I look at something pleasant like a beautiful landscape for me to taste, I feel the guilt that I should be doing my deeds first. It’s not exactly guilt until it’s really late, but rather that feeling similar to the thought that you shouldn’t be looking lustfully at other girls when you’re engaged already.

The immense feeling of joy when I have finally conquered my challenges can be felt longer if I’m more dedicated to have everything done earlier. But it’s usually only felt only after everything is already published. Although I have to persuade myself to have things done earlier in the month, I have to rationalize the fact that relief might be proportional to the risk and danger I feel. Having it done so sooner than the deadline wouldn’t have the same feeling.

Still, my usage of time would be optimized if I have everything done in time. The burdenlessness might not make me feel happy, but it can let makes me enjoy other tasks without guilt. I miss having time to look at the starry sky for hours into the night without having worries. I want the chance to feel  the silent wind teasing the trees before the thrill of the next match.

Of the (four) ways of life

I feel the stains of vices now when I am talking about something that ranges outside this focus on introspective research and skill development. But I always kept an eye for the surroundings and for the ways of life. All the way life grows, reproduce and then die, and all those cycles and also the feeble viruses that we are.

So I ended up thinking of these components that keep making life simply strive. Strange to think I’ve thought of it all by myself. Seems the result can be entertaining, and at least can be the food for thought, despite being only mere fantasies of my mind

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The first idea I had was about waterways, and then I tried to see if I could do it with the remaining elements, and it’s interesting how I’m talking about life through four lifeless elements. It’s impossible to really keep them four concepts really apart, as they grow deep bounds among them.

Waterways:  it’s the polishing factor. It’s the force that makes the bodies grow to become agile. It’s what makes things look for the shortest path. It’s the natural selection of saving effort. It makes sense, as the life being that can do more things with less energy is going to survive longer in harsh times. One can see the idea of waterways when there’s an ill-planned sidewalk that had no practical route. People will tread the one that is more suitable for their water-like needs.

Sandways: It’s the search for refuge and safe paths for development. It’s the idea of life trying out every path, like grains of sand sticking to all corners they can slip in. It’s about trial and error, but lingering around shapes that offer safety. And life can survive in several ways. The elephants, monkeys and beetles are just the same grains of life that have found their own ways through evolution.

Lavaways: it’s the survival instinct to stay alive. It’s the sacrifices we can make in order to maintain the life and our lineage. It sounds so obvious, but I find it intriguing how life can act so desperate in order to remain alive. What’s so important about it?

Windways: It’s about reproduction and dominance. Life strives for taking over it’s almost virulent. If the ambient has the right conditions, life dominates the ambient. It might sound beautiful when we think of colorful gardens, but there’s something scary about it too.

WA are connected to SA as the development through mutation. WA to LA as polished bodies that can defend and attack with more effectiveness. WA to WI as life can resist the world and still proliferate. SA to LA as life seeks to find safety. SA to WI as trying to dominate by trying every possible path. LA to WI as the perseverance to keep going.

As human beings being so dominant over the world, are we the successful grains? Life tried with us the vertice of sentiency, and it proved to be one breached nuclear shell. However, it’s not like life can be so smart, it’s just shooting around randomly. It’s just one brainless force in the universe being so desperate and relentless in its quest, and there’s no sign it has really made us the epitome of its ways to dominance. Sentiency might have been a flawed vertice, and being made greedier than wise might cause our own extinction. Maybe life had it right with trees and plants, or just those simple microbes.

Mindscape #10

There was a golden moon hovering above the lake. Little boats were anchored right below it, their masts dancing. The wind was blowing and there was a palm tree tasting cheerfully the early spring night. There was a short bridge connecting the land masses where the modernity of cars was striking the contrast against the humble fishermen being busy with their duties right below.

My grandfather was recovering from a surgery and I was going to visit him. My father started having the first signs of heart attacks for he never stops drinking and smoking (and not even this keeps him from it). Here you start feeling the weight of time. This seems to be this moment in life when your generation starts taking the reins of the world.

It wasn’t a mindscape like the usual ones I have. It was a really impacting one, because of all these quartzes, and it represented one moment of transition in my personal life.

There was this beautiful violin song that felt like an ending theme while I was thinking about people surrounding me. Some important decisions were being made in my romantic life and some other things to think about my job. All these vertices around me made it the whole experience to be one of the most intense I’ve ever felt.

Of division methods

As I keep trying to keep my groups of ideas whole by having quintessential marbles that are encompassing all the possibilities, I’ve been wondering on the right division method. The five-member ensemble seems complete, but why is that there are four elements, a quartet?

It makes me think of the reason why there are no concise divisions. Sometimes the trinity seems to be the complete division, while other times its just the simple duality, while there are moments when it’s complete in octagonal formations.

There might be a logic behind each of these systems that makes the whole and complete division always vary this much. Still, it brings me the doubt of recognizing those systems, which seems to be the harder part of the equation. It’s very complicated to know which kind of division is the right one, and then how many modules I would need. Should I split in two or four or six composing vertices?

Of Subtle Shapes

When I started my sketchbook in April I’ve noticed a leap in my drawing skills, but recently it’s been stagnating. I feel that there are certain essences I can’t capture. Even when I’m getting the shapes closer to the original, it’s still never the same thing.

I think it requires a level of perception and mastery of my skills for the lines to fit in the subtlety that changes the whole identity of the image. These shapes so subtle are in the most beautiful things, and are much harder to achieve. They are in female curves, all the womanly beauty in their faces, lips and eyes. It’s in hairlines that require only one different shade of pressure or different angle for the whole thing to change. The vertices that show their nuclear identity are well-hidden.

I’ve been obsessed with making perfect straight lines with no rules or any other equipment besides the pencils scrabbling the paper. It’s the striving for perfection that makes me stop drawing things and just doing lines and lines. I wished to see how close I could get one from the other without them touching, or seeing how lengthy over the paper it could be before the faltering, and then trying making them several and parallel. Someday I have it the way I want to do it, but it’s the realization that the real challenge is in curvy lines. It’s much harder, and that my skills are more challenged.

Of Q. Glossary

As complex as the concept of the quintessences can grow, I find there are certain elements about them that become frequent and used constantly. The following terms are some components that I’m dealing with in a daily basis. Their names is not how I’m usually referring to them in my mind, and I’m mostly creating several names now.

It’s a certain level of perception of them that changes as I pay more attention to them. So although I can feel them happening with frequency, they become more important after I make this kind of dissection.

Loaded quintessence: means when there’s something to be felt about something. It’s the song that still captivates me and makes me able to feel it.

Drained quintessence: means the lack of emotional response towards something. When I listen to a song too much, it becomes dull.

Stained quintessence: means the feeling that is poisoned with memories of something else. I wish to feel them for what they are, but they have crusts over them.

Released quintessence: means the tasting of the emotion. It can’t be overused, as the draining of the quintessence is the toll. I tell myself cautionary tales about dead quintessences so I will leave them addictive quintessences in peace.

Restrained quintessence: means the avoidance of the feeling, just so it can be reloaded. Sometimes it takes months for a song to feel reloaded, and few listens to be drained again, so it’s one of the issues I’ve been going through. It feels like they’re being more dead than alive already, though extremely dead quintessences are just old legends!

Ignited quintessence: means the action that stir up the emotions inside me. It doesn’t happen when the quintessence is drained. I’m finding it necessary for trances to happen, because of vortexes and the gusto effect. Intensity is also one of the keys for ignition.

Driven quintessence: means the ignited quintessence that can be manipulated. It can be the exploration of neighbor quintessences, and, through spells, for instance, I can bring Trygve from Ushag, or Noekk from Frosq and then drive it to Áine or Hephaestus. However, this description makes it too extraordinary, as I hardly can do that. Yet.

Returning quintessence: means when the force behind the idea comes back to me. It is an issue because I can’t perceive it has been with me before. Maybe one of the reasons for that would be me being too focused on the worded idea that when the force returns it is first perceived as something new.

Neighboring quintessence: mean the proximity of feelings that makes them hard to be distinguished. Even apparently opposite emotions like hate and love can neighbor through this intense reaction we have towards something (and it explains the enantiodromical shifts in our mind). 

Marble quintessence: means the main characteristic of the quintessence that is to have several elements gathered in one emotion. As the concept evolved, tasks had to be assigned to submotifs. It’s known that there are no rules for what elements can gather into a marble, even apparently opposite emotions (and unrelated experiences, which explains mysterious and non-sensical happenings in my dreams).

Gathered quintessence: means the elements being brought together to this condensed marble that is the quintessence. It doesn’t need only materialization to be disassembled, as being exposed to mental tasting makes elements surface by themselves. Some memories seem to be retrieved this way.

Materialized quintessence: means the personal emotion or idea turned real, be it words, images or sounds, so others can see and feel it too. It is one of the ways to invert the process of Q. Gathering, though it will gather back in the next mind exposed to it (it is the natural state in our mind).

Translated quintessence: means the rematerialization of the image into words, or sounds into images. A detailed and intense study of semiotics and its modalities is needed.

Converted quintessence: means the absorption of new emotions and ideas from the experiences we have, through which they gather into marbles. They come together with other experiences that made the mind absorb similar emotions. Getting in touch with different systems enrich our analogous knowledge.

Transferred quintessence: means the process of having a quintessence passed on to another soul. It is more about emotions, feelings and sensations than the Q. Conversion. It can also be known as art.

Of Q. Sparkles

One of the most annoying mistakes I’ve made in here was when I tried getting those sparkle posts last year around July. Luckily I was quick to realize the mistake and stopped it in time (though numbered mindscapes are still around). However, the main concept regarding Sparkles has too much potential to be forgotten. For this reason, I decide to retrieve it with my delta squad.

Sparkles are the fleeting and momentary ideas. They are this feeling that a whole world just came in, and I explore its possibilities. They come in form of stories, images or even ideas, but the problem is that they last short. The feeling that these sparkles are just silly daydreaming is frequent, but I think the problem is because the excitement is also gone as it withers away. Sparkles are like seeds, though usually seeds can grow into motifs, but these sparkles of inspiration are more like wasted cosmic chances.

It can be brought to my current thoughts as belonging to the quintessential thoughts. It can be the way one sparkle of idea that comes to my mind and I see it all instantaneously. I should try finding a way to keep it in my head enough for it to be materialized, or at least one brief, even awkward, description.

If I manage to have the source of the sparkle intact and I can go back to it and keep studying and planning of ways to materialize them, probably I’d be more productive. All I need to do is to set the reverse for the gathered mass of elements and stretch them into a sequency that can gather together in another mind, making then the transference complete.

Of QMUS and RMUS

Lately I’ve been thinking of the ways my mind reproduces music. Sometimes it’s a reverberation from listening to the song one hour ago. Sometimes it’s in my regurgitating time, and there’s a style of music playing in my head that’s only similar to the songs I’ve been listening.

Basically, this is something that is much more productive for me in music-making terms than the Musical Quintessences. I’ve been downgrading it lately, as I feel it has been too mystified as the magical song that my heart sings. I’ve been too eager towards it as it would feel like my most wonderful ability. People would admire me for it.

No, I don’t think there’s nothing too special about it. It seems so rare and sudden that my study is based mostly on the lasting impression. But now, thinking of it, it would probably be no more than some special kind of regurgitation. It seems probably the way melodies from several generations past can gather into a marble quintessence and somehow the emotion I feel gets in touch with that marble.

Apparently my soul recognizes the emotional response I had to the song as something similar to the feeling I’m having. The experiences share similar crests and, in a similar fashion to how unexpected crests surface in dreams, my mind brings up the association. And then this echoing wail makes the quintessence be slightly disassembled and makes me feel the hint of music from this amalgam of songs that once gathered in the marble.

The quintessential song, now thought like a regurgitated song, now can, interestingly, help me understand the regurgitation itself. As emotions are so much easier to be perceived, they are easier to understand than those unconscious manifestation and complex associations my minds makes about mundane things. Now I know there’s a logic behind the random event that is dreaming and regurgitation, and it triggers my hunger to understand it. But I must be careful about it. This is indeed one tremendous ambition.

Of my height-loving heart

It calls to me the want of going to a high place. The idea of having a panoramic view opened before me is terribly captivating to my soul. When investigating my mind around this crest, it seems to contain some sunset chrysoberyls and peaceful zircons.

Usually when I’m looking at my surroundings, I find myself deciding that the higher place is where I belong. There’s always a bookcase, a mountain or a tower that calls my attention. Even when I’m on the apartment window or the top of some tower the vortexes are things that stand up from the ground level, like tall cypresses and lonely buildings.

Maybe there’s a reason behind this taste. Perhaps the reason I feel comfortable is because of the strategic advantage to it that seem to make my mind feel sort of activated. It’s a similar feeling to being the one holding a map opened on his table. I’ve never made that connection before, the way my taste for heights could be similar to my taste for maps. Now that’s something that future trances could be exploring more.