ponderously

I love stories. I love stories so much that sometimes I can't tell whether my motivation has more to do with desiring to be involved in a good story, or whether it has to do with seeking happiness, healthiness, and fulfillment. Maybe there is no distinction. My explorations toward finding out are contained here.

[ponderously-blog]

Wakenalysis

Tonight in the aftermath of under and overcooking risotto ( anyone who has ever cooked risotto at home from a box in an arguably unsuitable pan will understand this ) and attempting to eat it, I decided to type out my impressions after devouring the first arc of The Wake. Fear not spoiler haters, the words contained herein will be overlarge and mostly conceptual.

I believe unabashedly that art is ultimately a study of self. What I refer to here is a sublime intersection where the study of self through an artful medium, be it drawing, writing, singing, or some alternate form, is couched in scholarly study. The result, at its best, creates profound resonance far beyond the mind of the artist alone.

I find The Wake to be one such divine convergence. It appeals to the primal mind through a growing sense of foreboding while gathering a collection of vibrant tropes in the form of myth from various cultures throughout human history. It deftly places places this collection in a story that shifts between a dystopian future, an allegorical current, and a divergently alien past.

Without giving too much away, the first five issues positively tear through a primary story in the near-now revolving around the discovery of a scientifically unknown, competitively intelligent, and devastatingly hostile mer-creature. Flashes of future and past create just enough context to instill a feverish itch which demands the immediate acquisition of the next issue.

In short: find The Wake. Read it. Think about it. Then read it again. For your humanity.

So as I ate my under and overcooked rice. I made a channel through it and imagined a massive, unknown, beautifully terrible sea creature swimming through the space. Devouring us all...or maybe just most of us. Either way, it has been some time since I've been so inspired by something so viscerally unsettling.

[explore-blog]

Breathtaking: Winners of the 2013 Astronomy Photographer of the Year.

Pair with how Maria Mitchell revolutionized astronomy. 

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Sometimes I'm mystified more of us don't spend the majority of our time just staring at the sky.

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Perspective

I recently stated the following (or something like it) in my facebook feed: 

"I don't believe in differences between people. I do believe in distinctions as to the way we perceive and distinctions in the way we express what we perceive."

I don't have the sense I succeeded in communicating what I wanted to say in an effective and palateable way.  With that in mind I've been mulling over the concept and I've decided to attempt to unpack the greater idea I was headed toward here on my uber wordy blog.  

On a basic level I feel that distinctions between humans (and other self aware entities) are effectively a matter of perspective.  What we point to and call difference is in essence a statement about self and how self perceives the world.  My perspective results from where I stand here, and yours results from where you stand there, between us lies the world.

What is amazing to me is our capacity to see and to construct a conceptual reality based upon perceived difference.  I begin seeing the human world as a congealed mass of self imposed confusion and kneejerk hatred.  While I hope we have the capacity for the type of unity I attempt to describe here, on a deep level I fear that we will ever remain distracted and caught in minute and repetitive posturings of self interest at the expense of others. 

Setting deeply ingrained fears aside for the moment...

As time goes on I find myself leaning more and more toward the idea that the profound potential of perspective to affect behavior speaks more to similarities than it does to distinctions between us. We are all entities responding to the world as the result of our unique experience from our positions here or there. We are in essence the sum of said experiences.

In my hyperactive mind 'progress' might appropriately be assessed by finding ways we may commune and relate to one another based upon actual similarity as opposed to perceived disimilarity. I believe seeking common experience, cultivating empathy, and working through perceptual media to construct conceptual bridges rather than create artificial barriers has the potential to produce net improvement in the whole of organic existence.  Regardless of the absolute philosophical truth (as if such a thing exists!) of any of these explorations, is it not more pragmatic to seek common ground and build rather than seek boundaries and tear down?  Educate and empathize.  Dig.

[xcyclopswasrightx]

[brianmichaelbendis]

Preview X-Men Battle of the Atom 1 Brian Michael Bendis | Frank Cho

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Anticipation overwhelming...

[darkermydesire]

[brianmichaelbendis]

X-23 by Mark Brooks 

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Dig

[gllitter-and-gold-deactivated20]

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Nostalgia to the face.

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[brianmichaelbendis]

X-Men 3 Kris Anka variant cover

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Love this.

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Not So Humble Opinions

It is my opinion that...

...the lucky person who receives my indubitably excellent A positive blood when I donate is irretrievably improved and probably influenced on some atomic level by my awesomeness.

...in the words of the opportunely intuitive Henry Miller: "I realized that I had never had the least interest in living, but only in this which I am doing now, something which is parallel to life, of it at the same time. and beyond it."

...anyone who states that comic books and/or graphic novels are adolescent, or a waste of time, or somehow inferior to novels both has not done their reseach and is missing out on a colorful, joyful, profound, magic, innovative, beautiful, ancient, and viscerally enriching form of storytelling.

...a populace that does not revere and listen to the lessons of history from various perspectives is fundamentally flawed and ultimately doomed.  Further, the death of reading for leisure and pleasure will be humanity's first step toward outright annihilation.  I am aware this is a cliche and I don't care.  I'll stop harping on it when we start doing something about it...or when I am no longer capable of coherent thought.

...wizardry is the way of the future but instead of letting our beards grow long and wielding magic staves, we'll let our hair grow long and wield knowledge like a club, beating ignorance and apathy back toward the fringes of the collective psyche.

[ponderously-blog]

Love in the Collective

All that jazz in my preceding post about future writings not being personal is turning out to be a pack of lies. I will not beg forgiveness though, multitudes and all that. 

There are circumstances--usually instigated by insecurity and a resulting sort of morbid focus--in which I feel I become a walking exhibition of the archetypical traits I detest about humanness.  The base, mindless, purely physically driven beast lurking beneath guises of enlightenment and intelligence. It slobbers while mumbling incomprehensibly and gropes greedily, angrily, and ultimately impotently at the conceived embodiment of its desire. Conscious of the potential in me to become caught in the trappings of such deluded hyper-focus, I am in a process of seeking to understand my desires and to inch closer toward what I actually want.  

I have the sense we are all connected by invisible strings of emotion and shared experience. Both to other humans and to the natural systems of the world. Fundamentally my mind and body seek resonance, seek story, and seek to pluck those connecting strings to see what will happen. Deeply I am interested in the goings on inside other heads and deeply I desire that other heads be interested in the goings on in mine. The story of emotions and how they interact with the physical provides the fuel that feeds my desire to be near others. For me such desires extend profoundly above and beyond the physical while still including it. I seek to resonate with those I am close to the way a chord rings when it's deliciously tuned. I want that resonance to hit the frequency of the barriers between us and shatter them.  I want each pluck of the string to take us to new and interesting places where value may be measured in experience and progress is not only up but sideways, backwards, and every other direction.  These desires are the stuff of myself.  I've sought said resonance for as long as I can recall though I  have not always known, and still don't truly know, how to ask for it nor how to express the magnitude of the concept. Accepting such confusion while still seeking to explore the way through it is a fundamental part of intimacy as I understand it.

With all that in mind, the love I desire encompasses the potential of minds and bodies to enhance one another in ongoing progression and expression upon an infinite sea of challenging--but ultimately inspiring--questions.

[ponderously-blog]

Triumphant Returns

I get sick whenever the seasons change.  It’s a thing.  Usually a mild cold and fever are enough to appease whatever deity requires this, but occasionally I am struck with a plague that lingers and torments for weeks.  I suspect in this case it will be the former.  In my stricken state I am feeling a compulsion to write here for the first time in ages.

This first re-entry will be personal, future posts when they occur will be less so.  For 7 years now I have been sprinting through relationships, friendships, stimuli, media, and ideas in an attempt to find, perhaps even to create, limits.  A wise friend of mine told me awhile ago that time only speeds up as we age.  I am inclined to agree, and in agreement, I have slowed enough to begin questioning my eagerness seek the end of, or a change in things instead of allowing them space and time to happen on their own. 

Encompassed in the accelerated activities mentioned above are the acts of assuming as opposed to asking, being presumptive rather than perceptive, and controlling rather than collaborative.  I am now forcibly seeking to slow down, and be aware enough of self and impulse to expand my life rather than contract it.

I am in the process of moving. Both in mind and in residence.  An effect of this process is the confrontation of history as I sift through artifacts from the past thirty years. I find myself handling things I haven't seen in many moons and time traveling as a result.  This morning I found an old Italian Aria I last sang in 2007. Without thinking I began running through it.  Softly at first and then with more confidence as I realized it is still as present as it ever was, still suits me as well as it did then, and still gives me delightful shivers even as I type about it now. 

Today as I continue to sort through the physical evidence of my life, I feel better than I have some great time. So, I suppose this is the point where the unconscious collective dictates a point, or a moral, maybe even a lesson be presented.  My lesson is: facing the past in the interest of proceeding to the future is both necessary and rewarding...if also occasionally gutwrenching and hard. 

It is rare my monumental ego finds someone else's words accurate enough to express what I am feeling (<--this is both massively true and massively not) but today this song by Anaïs Mitchell and Rachel Ries (I'm assuming--possibly dangerously--that one or both of them wrote it) is ringing so true I cannot help but quote unabashedly:  

"Autumn's ashes summer's embers, suddenly I can't remember any lessons learned. Now that I'm a migrant picker, trouble minded tin can kicker, I wish my skin was thicker. The air has turned. I can live alone I said. I can make my lonesome bed.  I don't need a hole in my head. I don't need a lover. But he took me by surprise. I fell down and saw him rise. Till he was larger in my eyes than any other. How suddenly the summer died. I couldn't bring it back to life. I couldn't sing it back to life. But I tried"

Do forgive how mega-sad that all sounds, I was actually exuberant as I typed it and as I said above, I have learned a lot. Contradiction you say? Well maybe, but that is the way of me.

[cg-is-lying-in-wait-blog]

Best part of my Game of Thrones reading last night (Red Wedding)

Before going to bed, I told my boyfriend what chapter of the book I was on. He inhaled loudly and said: “I’ll be sitting right here when you’re finished. If you want to talk. Or anything.”

After I was done screaming and crying I came downstairs and he had already poured me a small scotch in my favorite glass. “Martin sure is an asshole, isn’t he?” 

Bonding over GoT. Good stuff.

[ponderously-blog]

Been there.

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Zombie Blog

                                                                  Like a brains-deprived zombie this self-affirming outlet for random whim was lying immobile in an alley, staring blankly up at the surrounding concrete wasteland until a plump, scrumptious, and (most importantly) breathing idea happened by for it to feast upon.  In homage to the scene common in so many zombie-ly apocalyptic films, ponderously now lifts itself...ponderously...off the cold hard cement in search of additional slow moving (unlife affirming) and respirating concepts.

...yep that was just the intro...

If you want to read the post that reinvigorated this sad excuse for a weekly blog I highly suggest you click the read more button (and if you like what you read, like/follow me--this shouldn't be too hard, the whole thing moves pretty slow ' )

One of my favorite reads as an 18 year old was James Clavell's Noble House.  A detail from that epic (and excellent!) read which is sticking to me still is the screaming tree.  In the fictional family around which the book revolves, when a child is born a tree is planted in the rear of the property.  As the child matures and is predictably frustrated by the trials and tribulations of existence, she or he is directed to the tree where said frustrations may be voiced (literally!) at great length and extreme volume.

Since the triumphant moment when I completed the aforementioned tome (actually I was a bit bummed when it ended) the concept of the screaming tree has been on my mind.  In honor of the impact Clavell's creation (or appropriation) has had on my brainspace I will occasionally (notice I am no longer making promises about the precise interval between posts) relay relevant portions of these screamings via this ever miraculous and mostly anonymous medium.  

Thanks for visiting as I make my ponderous way.  In the coming weeks this zombie will be up and about, seeking more food for thought ' )

[ponderously-blog]

The star of our 'giving feast and friends

[raccoonology]

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A Heliamphora flowering. This South American beauty attracts flies and other unsuspecting prey into its those hollow stocks where they become trapped and are slowly consumed.  Flesh-eating flora are figuratively and literally close to my heart.

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The Return

In the sense of reappearing in the tumblrsphere, not the Apple equivalent of an 'enter' key.

Back to pondering after a three-ish week unintentional hiatus, my the time flies in this brave new world we're occupying...

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Belated Random Pairings

If you'll recall, this absurd practice was meant to occur each week.  Three for the price of one this week to attempt recompense (MTG themed this week as that's where my mind is today):

Drafting blue green in Inni pairs wonderfully with winning games, best topped off at the end of the night with a grin (or a smirk, as you please).

The 2009 Byron Santa Barbara County Pinot Noir pairs exquisitely with a red plastic drink cup.

Geist of Saint Traft is a perfect companion to a few Gideon's Lawkeepers and a Curse of Stalked Prey (if RWU is a way you like to roll).