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.