small hours

On the subject of dreams, mine are usually vivid and lucid, and often involve recurring elements. It's always raining in my dreams, and my field of vision is always massive, I can see storm clouds for miles. Sometimes I'm walking along the edge of a rocky crag overlooking a vast and tumultuous sea, the waves of which are crashing violently against the rocks far below me. Flashes of lightning connect briefly with the sea, as if they're passing secret messages to unseen synapses just below the surface of the waves.

During these dream excursions, I sometimes encounter through my explorations another traveler, always female, and always shrouded in mystery. Her face is either out of focus or silhouetted against the electric sky so that her features are darkened and indistinct. I've dreamt of her all my life. She's grown with me over the years. She sometimes appears as a woman, at other times she appears as an object of distinctly feminine characteristics. Sometimes she appears as the moon, peaking through the clouds of a rainy night, whispering her ancient secrets to me just beneath the breath of the storm.

I've pondered the meaning of these dreams at length, and I've come to the tentative conclusion that she is my muse, my inspiration, the reason I keep waking up from the dream world, the reason I continue to search the waking world for her. I may never find her, but I won't regret a moment of the search.

rotted octopus

If the good and decent folk at Merriam-Webster were looking to expand the definition of the word humanity, what could they learn by interviewing you? Based on a conversation, could they add a new, alternate definition under the word, or would your name be placed on the long list of duplicate entries?

While it's true that I'm in it for the conversation, that's not an open invitation to start hurling like rotted octopus any and all disposable trivia. I'm interested in learning about your dreams and passions. Tell me about your sins and virtues, those little adventures that are unique to you, that separate you from the multitude and bind you to the stars. Don't talk to me about your bowling night, or how your favorite sports team is fairing in the playoffs, or which antidepressant you're taking in order to kill your unique and interesting personality traits. And please don't stoop to the lowest form of communication by offering me a recap of what took place on your broadcast medium of choice the night before. Seriously. If I didn't care enough about [insert television or radio program] to tune in, why would I want to hear your abridged version of it? I don't give a tender shit.

Don't speak unless you can improve the silence. I'm busy trying to act as a catalyst to realign the world's paradigm of perception, don't talk to me about toothpaste. I ain't got that kinda time.

of vampires

Concerning the question of vampire fantasies, we might be wading into some deep psychological waters here, but bear with me. I'll try to keep this as short as possible, but as you may have guessed, brevity is something I rarely embrace when the topic is worthy of discussion.

The vampire mythos has captivated the human imagination for 6 centuries or more, at least since the time of Vlad III of Wallachia, who was born in 1431. Vlad had many names, like Vlad Tepeš (Vlad the Impaler), Vlad Draculea (Vlad Son of Dracul), or my favorite, Kazikli Voyvoda (Impaler Prince). The names Tepeš and Kazikli Voyvoda were given because of Vlad's favorite method of torture and execution, impalement. The name Draculea, which sounds ominous, he was given merely for being born the son of Vlad II Dracul of Wallachia. In modern Romanian, Dracul means "devil" but in the time of Vlad Tepeš, Dracul simply meant "dragon".

Before Vlad earned the title of Impaler for his horrendous actions, he was actually hailed as a hero of Wallachia, Transylvania, and Romania because he liberated those countries from the oppressive rule of the Ottoman Empire. During his later years however, it is believed that he became convinced that large numbers of his own countrymen were plotting to undermine his rule, and so he committed atrocities against them, atrocities which have been detailed extensively elsewhere, so I won't go into them here.

The history of Vlad Tepeš is well documented, and many scholars think that the famous Bram Stoker tale "Dracula" is based on the history of Vlad Tepeš as outlined in William Willinson's book "An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia". On the other hand, many scholars claim that "Dracula" was based on the story of history's most prolific female serial killer, Elizabeth Bathory, a 16th century Hungarian countess who murdered hundreds of her servants in an attempt to retain her youth.

While these two stories stand out in history as possible inspirational sources, it is important to remember that "Dracula" was not the first vampire tale, just the most famous. Folk tales of vampires and the undead were circulated long before Elizabeth Bathory or Vlad Tepeš. Tales of such stories were often heard by Europeans who traveled to Hungary and the Balkans. When these travelers returned to western Europe with frightening tales of blood-sucking, unholy creatures, suddenly western Europe was overrun with vampires. One might argue that the legends created the vampires. One might even argue that Elizabeth Bathory, upon hearing the legends of vampires brought back from eastern Europe, was inspired to explore the authenticity of the legends' claims of immortality. You be the judge.

Alright, faithful reader, enough history. Let's get down to the meat of this: your fascination with vampires. From a psychological perspective, the fantasy is easily explained. For the same reason that sane people allow themselves to become addicted to drugs or alcohol, for the same reason that humanity has been captivated by books, music, movies, television, video games, the internet, etc., for the same reason that otherwise intelligent people waste their valuable time observing and discussing the lives of celebrities: in a word, escape.

The key to, and indeed the driving force behind, all of these fantasies, is the offer of escape. Escape from the ordinary, the mundane, the boring and monotonous ruts in which we humans often find ourselves. Routines are boring. Jobs are boring. Even relationships, if allowed to stagnate, can become boring. To combat the boredom, people turn to these seductive fantasies.

Unlike the previously mentioned fantasies, which are seductive in the sense that they offer a temporary escape in the form of entertainment, the legend of the vampire is also seductive in a different sense. Seductive is an appropriate adjective to use here because vampires, as I'm sure you know, are said to seduce their victims in much the same way that a person might seduce a potential lover. Captivating glances that hold hints of hypnosis, dim light combined with the sensual textures of velvet and silk, the image of an alpha persona, all powerful yet infinitely patient and gentle, the hint of controlled violence, soft and rhythmic voices that resonate within the primal recesses of the mind, the idea of slow and melodic sexual gratification which leads not just to orgasm but to eternal life.

*Whew, taking a breather...

Okay, so what does all of this mean in relation to your life? While this question can really only be answered with any degree of definity by you, constant reader, I can make an attempt. Given what I've learned about your life from our online interactions, and with the recommendation that you disregard what I'm about to say if it feels false to you, here it is. You're bored. You've become dissatisfied with some aspects of your life, although you are generally happy with most of it. You've reached the point in your life to which you've been led by family, friends, and society. You've tackled the school and college thing and succeeded. You've tackled the marriage thing and succeeded. You've tackled the raising-a-happy-and-healthy-family thing, and so far you've succeeded. You've faced down all of the challenges set in front of you, done all that was expected of you by your peers, and you're still alive to tell the tale. But here's the question you now face: what's next? What do you do with the rest of your life? You've grown into adulthood (and done so better than most, in my opinion), you've become the supportive spouse and nurturing parent, and you're good at it. So good at it, in fact, that your spouse is happy and your children will soon be independent and mature beyond their years. Now that you've reached this point in your life, with your spouse successful and your children fast approaching the time when they will need less care and nurturing, you're beginning to wonder what's next.

To pass the time, you dabble. Perhaps you toy around with the idea of starting a business, or perhaps you entertain the notion of having another child, or perhaps you take on a hobby or part-time job, knowing that it won't be forever, knowing that the next big challenge awaits you just up the road, although it's impossible to say how far. In the meantime, you dabble. You entertain your mind with dreams of world travel, of wealth and fame, of dangerous and exciting careers in motor sports. Of vampires.

The truth as I see it, patient reader, is that your mind thrives on adversity, on challenge. Your life is a fairy tale, some would say it is THE fairy tale, the tale to which all humans aspire. But I believe that your particular tale will not end here. I say this because you have the kind of determination upon which the foundations of empires are constructed, and armed only with that determination, you will meet any challenge with which you are faced.

In a sense, this description has been a sort of vampirization of your mind. While I was typing it, I tried to put myself in your place and imagine what it was about the details of vampire seduction that has so captivated you. You might say that I fed on your thoughts, so you see, the description is yours. I merely shaped it and taught it to breath.

So dream if you must, dream of breathtaking moonlit vistas, of vampires and Formula One races. You've certainly earned this temporary reprieve from the struggles of life, for there comes a time, as I'm sure you well know, when we must all "put away childish things." And on that day, when you're staring down the barrel of life and you realize you're not wearing your vest, just remember that it's okay, you never really needed it. The vest, like the vampire tale, is a placebo. We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.

It's gotten rather late as I've written this. You're probably dreaming of dark alleys and lips stained crimson. I hope you embrace these fantasies, whimsical reader, because life can sometimes be all too real. It's been a pleasure. G'night.

tryst

I have an ongoing love affair with the written word. Exchanging ideas with you in this way, constant reader, reminds me of the solitary lives of Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft, my favorite American authors. Due to their respective mental disorders, they were veritable shut-ins who rarely ventured out into society, and connected to the outside world only through extensive letters written to distant friends. While that sort of life may sound empty and unfulfilling to some, a person equipped with a vivid imagination would find great satisfaction in the idea of envisioning the outside world solely through the descriptive power of words. It's romantic, in a way, to think that a person can connect so deeply with a friend that mere words on a page conjure visions of a different world. The thought makes me smile =]

be(muse)ed

As he lay awake, shrouded in darkness except for the tiny orange tip of his cigarette, he allowed his mind to embrace the empty space around him, to mold the darkness into familiar, discernable shapes, into living, breathing entities, until the void surrounding him overflowed with laughter and life and love. There, in the darkness, his pupils tightened as he imagined a world full of light; his ears twitched slightly as he filled them with music of his mind's devising. He moved his mind effortlessly, surveying the world he had built, stopping here and there to inspect his creation, over high mountains, down steep cliffs, above seas accented white with foam, between towering structures built of metal and glass as testaments to the sky, across vast plains of farmland and desert, through the canopies of thick, luscious jungles. In that moment, his mind existed everywhere, and yet existed nowhere outside of his head.

As his cigarette's soft, orange glow crept slowly toward his fingers, he slowed his mind, slowed his breathing, and concentrated on the details. Synapses flashed imperceptibly and electricity lit the lobes of his mind like lightning flashes within a storm cloud as he searched here and there for his inspiration. Logic, he soon discovered, makes a poor leader, so he released logic, and instead embraced his intuition.

Intuition led him to a vast, steel grey sea, the waves of which licked and lapped the rocky shore seductively. There, sitting alone atop a sharp outcrop, was his inspiration. She smiled demurely, although her face gave away nothing; the smile resided within her eyes. He approached her slowly, with cautious confidence, and crossed what seemed like miles between them as he loved her with his eyes. She sat quietly, patiently, her smooth, graceful legs folded beneath her, and a delicate hint of laughter played around the corners of her mouth. She raised her right hand as he approached her, and with his right, he lifted her to her feet. As she stood before him, he moved his gaze over her, admiring her form as the euphoric scent of her, deluded as it was by the salty sea air, reached his nostrils, making him feel light-headed.

Still clasping her right hand in his, he slid his left hand from her wrist to her shoulder, trailing his fingers lightly over her smooth skin, and rested his fingers at the nape of her neck. She lifted her eyes to meet his, and what she saw there pleased her. As the sea's gentle waves sprayed tendrils of fine mist around them, he moved to her ear, parted his lips and whispered, "Thank you, for all of this. I love you." She kissed him then, and he was lost.

His eyes opened, pupils adjusting to the sudden darkness, and he felt the warmth between his fingers. He moved his hand to the ashtray and extinguished the cigarette, then pulled the blanket around him like a shroud. As he drifted off to sleep, he could still smell the salty sea lingering in the air, could still taste her on his lips.

equilibrium

Standing in a vast field, I peer up into the storm-blackened sky and observe the trajectory of millions of falling raindrops. It doesn't occur to me to wonder where I am, or how I came to be here; instead, I stand transfixed as children of the storm dance the electric slide down my skin, simultaneously warming me and chilling me to the marrow. The rain leaves no part of me untouched; the moisture seeps in, permeates my clothes, my skin, my soul.

During a time in which seconds stretch out to days, I slowly begin to realize, like the dawning of understanding, that the air around me is moving. It starts almost imperceptibly, but increases by slight degrees until the atmosphere in close proximity is veritably singing with excitement, with anticipation of something to come. I can feel every tiny hair on my body reaching out expectantly, although what they expect I do not yet know. I momentarily avert my eyes from the raging storm above to glance at the tiny blonde hairs growing from the back of my left hand (which are defined in great detail, as if I'm observing them through a magnifying lens) and see that they are all pulling in different directions, seemingly in an attempt to abandon a sinking ship. As I watch, flashes of lightning from above throw my hand into sharp relief, and the fading light leaves negative afterimages behind my field of vision.

A stroboscopic flash illuminates the sky, and a faint scent of searing flesh mixes with the hint of ozone on the wind. Blinding light, accompanied by a sizzling, crackling sound, consumes the air around my body, and I'm filled with a sense of peace, a sense of balance. This is followed by a mind-shattering thunderclap, like the crack of doom, and, suddenly, I'm awake, sitting up in my bed, trying to shake off the quagmire of dream as I survey my surroundings. As the real world (?) slowly begins to filter in through the blanket of sleep, I hear raindrops steadily falling outside my window, the slight sound of trickling rivulets meandering down the glass. I inhale deeply, get out of bed, and start the morning's journey to the shower.

According to DreamMoods.com:

To see lightning in your dream, signifies sudden awareness, insight, and purification. Alternatively, lightning may imply a shocking turn of events. It suggests the many forces governing your life may be beyond your control. To dream that you are struck by lightning, symbolizes irreversible changes occurring in your life. It is a transformation of sorts.

As for my own interpretation, I believe the feelings of peace and balance that I experienced in the dream are significant. The arcing of electricity, both on a large scale (such as lightning) and on a small scale (such as static electricity), is a natural occurrence that serves to balance the distribution of electrical charge between one object or place and another. This exchange of electricity between places or objects, caused by the buildup of positive or negative charges, transfers a sufficient amount of electrical charge so that the electrical charges of both objects or places are equal. Perhaps my subconscious mind is trying to inform me of the balancing of some previously uneven situation.

Any thoughts?

fulcrum

Consider the distinct difference between the ideas of potential reality (the future) and actual reality (the past), potential reality being the existence of all possible realities simultaneously, and actual reality being the reality that we, collectively, choose for ourselves at any given moment. The act of choosing transforms potential reality into something concrete; the act of choosing turns future into past using the present as a medium. The present is merely the transition of future (potential reality) into past (actual reality).

Once potential reality has been solidified by choice into actual reality, it cannot be changed (at least insofar as humanity has yet to understand how to live backwards in time). If this be the case, then choice becomes a thing of great importance; choice becomes the pivotal fulcrum upon which human history rests. Naturally, then, it follows that a narrow field of vision does not a wise choice make. If we, as a species, are to write human history to the best of our collective ability, then we must not limit ourselves. It is vital that we become conscious of potential reality before choosing our actual reality. Since we do not, as of yet, possess the knowledge to convert actual reality back into potential reality, convert past back into future, the responsibility lies with each of us to broaden our scope enough to embrace all possible realities, and therefore leave a legacy of actual reality that all will be proud of and none will regret.

I probably fall into the 'apocalyptically stubborn' category (credit goes to Krismas for coining that phrase) because I believe that there exists a rational, although not necessarily scientific, explanation for everything. Whether or not humanity has evolved enough to grasp those explanations is not the fault or failure of the phenomena itself, but of humanity.

contrast

Think about love in terms of the light wave spectrum. Light behaves as a wave (also a particle, but that part is not necessary for this analogy), and what we perceive as color is merely light viewed at different wave lengths. Blue light has a slightly longer wave length than, say, red light.

Now think about what you know of visible light. We can discern red light from other visible colors because of its contrast to other visible colors, right? When we see something red (the object is not actually made of red light, it merely reflects more light of the red wave length than other wave lengths), our minds label it as red through a process of elimination, id est, our minds know that the object is not blue, or yellow, or green, or whatever, because the object does not fit into our minds' definition of those other colors, so we deduce that it must be red.

But think about this: if we went through our lives having never experienced the color blue, how would our minds behave then? Would we label as red any and all objects that are red or blue? If our minds don't know what blue is, and we encounter a blue object, would our minds not assume that the object was red since our minds don't possess any prior experience to use in labeling the object?

Speculation notwithstanding, let's try to prove it. The invisible parts of the light wave spectrum, the parts that are undetectable by the human eye, are made up of waves of different lengths. This light is as real as the colored light we can see, right? In the absence of all visible light, we would see black, right? For us, seeing black means seeing no light. But what about the light that exists on the invisible parts of the spectrum? We see black, but that invisible (to us) light may still be there, reflecting upon us like anything. We call it black, but were we equipped with the necessary optics to detect this invisible light, we would cease to call it black because the term black would lose its meaning. We would no longer be able to say that an object was black, because we would then be able to see the heretofore 'invisible' light reflecting from the object. We would no longer be able to define invisible light waves as black, because we would now see them.

The point I'm trying to make is that, in the absence of contrast, it is impossible to define correlating ideas. Take pleasure and pain, for example. Without the contrast of pain, pleasure loses all meaning, and vice versa. For the human mind to recognize pleasure, it must first have experienced pain. This is vital for our minds to recognize ideas through the process of elimination. This also accounts for why people seem to grow wiser with experience, rather than with age. A young person who has experienced much may be far wiser than an old person who has experienced little, due simply to the accumulation of experience. Experience in life gives our minds the tools they need to define our worlds. Without these experiences, our minds must do the best they can, which often leads to the enigmatic answer, "I don't know."

burning inside

A spark becomes an ember becomes a flame becomes a fire becomes a blazing inferno becomes a dark cloud of billowing smoke and ashes upon the ground. Every spark has the potential to give birth to a blazing inferno, given the right supporting conditions (i.e., fuel & oxygen). If something as small as a spark can generate enough kinetic energy to decimate a building, enough energy to end life, but also enough energy to clear away the dead to make way for new life, if a spark can result in all of these things, then why are some people so miserable?

The human mind is fueled by synapses firing off electric sparks by the billions. Have you ever seen lightning bolts flashing within a storm cloud? Picture the storm cloud as the human brain. If thought is electricity, and electricity is a constant stream of electrical impulses, or sparks, what does this reveal about the potential energy hidden within the human mind? Do we not each possess the mental equivalent of an atomic bomb, no, a supernova? Do we not each possess enough potential energy to bring about the destruction or creation of life, if given the right supporting conditions?

One of the constants of energy is that, when presented with a choice of alternative paths, energy will always choose the path of least resistance (there are a few exceptions, but for the purposes of this blog, that statement will suffice). This constant can be observed by following storm clouds as they move from high-pressure areas to areas with lower barometric pressure. Water being pulled downhill by gravity will travel around rocks and trees rather than through them. The reason that electric wires are coated in rubber has nothing to due with the fact that rubber does not conduct electricity; most materials conduct electricity at a high enough voltage level. No, electric wires are coated with rubber because rubber is much more resistant to the flow of electricity than the metal wire, and since electricity always takes the path of least resistance, the electric current remains isolated within the wire.

So what, if anything, should the deterministic nature of energy indicate to us about why a spark fails to become a blazing inferno, fails to transform its potential energy into kinetic energy? Should we take this to mean that some sort of resistance is impeding the evolution of the spark? If so, what is the source of that resistance? What is impeding the spark's progress? Do we, as humans, create supporting conditions for our sparks such that our sparks find the path to failure less resistant than the path to success? Do we allow our individual fears, superstitions, and childhood angst, as well as the restrictions and boundaries which society attempts to place upon us, do we allow all of these things to erect walls of impedance that prevent our sparks from ever realizing their full potential? Do we confine our mental sparks to a hostile environment of our own devising? Why all the resistance?

double negative

We are all guilty of negativity, pessimism, and cynical thought. It seems that while we use negativity to shield ourselves from the potential failures of our hopes and dreams (e.g., "I really hope this happens, but it probably won't", or "It has always been my dream to do this, but I'll probably never get the chance"), we are unwittingly turning our hopes and dreams into self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. I'm of the humble opinion that the acts of living, hoping, dreaming are hard enough; they don't need any help to fail. Yet we, as human beings, constantly assist their failure by reminding ourselves how unlikely we are to actually succeed. Why? Why limit ourselves to failure? Why give up on our hopes before giving them a chance to sprout wings and fly?

Is it simple human nature? Is it a primitive defense mechanism to prevent our lives from being shattered by the unrealization of something for which we hope? Or is it a coward's excuse? Are we so afraid that the subjects and objects of our individual desires will become reality that we sabotage our own efforts? Or is it a different variety of defence? By subverting our dreams, from what are we attempting to protect ourselves? An imagined eventual failure or disappointment? Possibly. But is it also possible that our subconscious minds know what's best for us? Could it be that the parts of our minds that remain hidden from us use negativity to prevent us from attaining that which is bad for us, that which we don't really need, that which is trivial and superficial, that which would prove to be more of a burden than a benefit?

Whatever the reason, it has become increasingly apparent to me, through conversations and events in my own life as well as my interactions with others, that the power of suggestion, the so-called power of mind over matter, this self-imposed and self-deprecating cynicism that we humans occasionally adopt is a very effective tool by which we keep ourselves perpetually martyred.