kaleidoscopic dreamscapes

Just read about Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus coming out on Christmas day. How could I have not heard about this film yet? It sounds like it'll be utterly delightful.

That's one of the more exciting moments I've had in the past few days.. yesterday I felt like shit - all day long. First it was intense uterine pains, which the ibuprofen eventually took care of, then extreme apathy for most of the day and complete lack of drive to do anything - a malaise I felt hadn't felt so acute in a long time - then it was a five-hour long bout of nausea, hot/cold sweats, and then more stomach pains. I finally went to bed at 6 am.

Looking forward to seeing the mister tonight, anyway. He'll be here in about an hour. I'm eager to see if the French dinner I made yesterday of Coq au vin and veggies with Bearnaise sauce dish will be good. I think it was all right, but I still like the salmon and beef stroganoff dishes I made last week a bit more; they were richer and more flavorful.

Well, I've been feeling much better since Wednesday night, after I talked with the mister and I was able to reassure myself that he did miss me (I was delighted when he said so himself) after all, and want to spend time together...he ended up getting Friday off work, and he already has off for Labor Day, so we've been enjoying the long weekend with each other, already with a number of memorable experiences. To think that four days of last week I masochistically brooded in anticipating the worst that could come of our relationship, as I'm wont to do.. (but at least when I do, I'm not dispirited upon coming to terms with the other person's disaffection and abandonment if it happens. Out of habit my propensity is not to let myself feel hopeful when it comes to the reciprocality of ardent emotions). I guess our relationship is quasi-romantic at this point - I hardly question there's still the underlying amorosity, yet we value our friendship and intimate bond enough not to risk debilitating it with our sexual desires.. at least for right now.

In all, I've experienced a significant sense of relief compared to how I've been feeling the past fortnight or so. The week before last I was dealing with a lot of anxiety, maybe a good portion was in fact psychosomatic, but I was making life difficult for myself and others around me.. which really only includes two others, since I've been pretty isolated - him and my grandfather back at home. I am actually starting to wonder (have already been wondering for a whille, I might amend) how much of my neurotic tendencies may be attributable to my rather consistent state of isolation? My therapist has said to me a few times, there's solitude and there's isolation.. I think I may have surpassed the point of enjoying solitude, slowly but steadily over a period of time, and am now hardly capable of seeing (from my myopic standpoint) how depressed and unmotivated I truly become when spending long periods of time without much human contact. If so, it's a disappointing relevation to be had, considering how well I thought I would get along having as much time to myself as possible and to accomplish the projects I've long awaited to get around to.

Anyway, it's past 6 AM and I'm still not a mite tired. My insomnia has intensified lately, without palpable causes.. I'm going to try reading more of this book (Age of Reason by Sartre); perchance after some of that I'll wax sleepy.

my heart's fucking broken because the romantic relationship I've been having with Hector ended last night. I was essentially the one to end it.. but ultimately, I still was really hoping he would try to placate a bit more concerning the things I was feeling gypped over, and be willing to compromise..

I don't want to try to meet anyone else if we can be together. I don't see having the depth of connection with anyone else more than I do with him.. that's what really matters to me. I can't possibly connect with someone as well as I have with him, in knowing him for 23 years..
part of me (even while mad at him) was still clinging to these diaphonous dreams of moving somewhere and being together, e.g. New Orleans, or somewhere in Europe like Portugal, the Netherlands, or Belgium.. as long as we're together, I feel like I could be with him anywhere, doing anything.. as long as our relationship was going well, that is...

I felt a bit better this morning when he sent me a simple text, "Hey - just wanted to say hi - hope you slept well - have a nice day :)" It helped assuage my worry that he isn't trying to avoid me, or act coldly toward me.

I'm not sure how to maneuver things so that what supervened this Saturday night doesn't cause a breach in our relationship. I do think I should wait until this weekend at the earliest to call him, unless he calls me first..

Aside from that, I've been very [unintentionally] flaky with my friends, mostly due to my involvement in the relationship.. the summer's practically over, and some people I haven't talked to since the beginning of the summer. I just feel so listless and unsociable. Not because I don't -want- my friends around, just uncapable of being good company right now.

Going to try to work on that getting a job soon. I have thousands of dollars of student loans to pay off, and I still hope to have a chance of going back to Hood for a Master's in the Humanities.. I should try to get ahold of my former adviser and talk to her about it, because if things sound promising than I can plan to take the GRE and start trying to save money for grad school.

..and perhaps for future reference..? Some of these names I can see being considered a bit too high falutin - more so the male ones - so it's likely they wouldn't be used, even if I rather fancy them:

Potential female baby names:

Alexis
Annalie/Annalina
Astrid
Celestine
Clairene
Claudia
Euphemia
Genevieve
Guinevere
Hazel
Hedwig
Innogen
Lexie
Lydia
Lyra
Marion
Maxine
Meadow
Meredith
Morgan/Morgaine
Victoria


Males names:

Alexander
Alistair
Alvar
Ambrosius
Anton
Augustyn
Llewellyn (boy or girl)
Sebastian
Xavier

Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil:

In the human being, creature and creator are united: the human being is matter, fragment, excess, clay, filth, nonsense, chaos; but the human being is also creator, sculptor, hammer-hardness, observer-divinity, and the Seventh Day - do you understand this opposition? (225).

Perhaps what I have said about a 'fundamental will of the spirit' will not be immediately transparent: permit me to explain. That imperious something that the common people call 'spirit' wants to be the master, in itself and around itself, and to feel its mastery: it has the will to go from multiplicity to simplicity, a will that binds together, subdues, a tyrannical and truly masterful will. In this regard, its needs and capacities are the same as those the physiologists claim for everything that lives, grows, and reproduces. The spirit's energy in appropriating what is foreign to it is revealed by its strong tendency to make the new resemble the old, to simplify multiplicity, to overlook or reject whatever is completely contradictory; the spirit likewise arbitrarily underlines, emphasizes, or distorts certain qualities and contours in everything that is foreign to it or of the 'outer world.' Its intention in doing so is to incorporate new 'experiences', to fit new things into old orders - to grow, then; and more specifically, to feel growth, to feel an increase in strength. This same will is served by an apparently opposite instinct of the spirit: a sudden decision for ignorance, for arbitrary conclusions, a closing of the shutter, inwardly saying No to this thing or that, a refusal to let things draw near, a kind of defensive posture against much potential knowledge, being content with darkness, with a limited horizon, saying Yes to ignorance and affirming it; all this activity is necessary according to the degree of the spirit's appropriating energy, its digestive energy, to keep to the same metaphor -- and indeed the 'spirit' really resembles nothing so much as a stomach. Likewise relevant here is the spirit's occasional will to allow itself to be deceived, accompanied perhaps by the mischievous intuition that things are not this way or that, that we are just allowing them to be taken this way or that; a joy in every uncertainty and ambivalence; an exulting self-satisfaction in the arbitrary confinement and privacy of a nook, in things that are all too close, in foreground things, in what has been enlarged, reduced, slanted, prettified; a self-satisfaction in the arbitrariness of all these expressions of power. Also relevant here, finally, is the spirit's not inconsiderable readiness to deceive other spirits and go among them in disguises, that constant pressure and stress of a creating, shaping, transforming energy; it enables the spirit to enjoy its multiple masks and slynesses, and and also in feelings of security -- its Protean arts are just what defend and hide it best! This will to appearance, to simplification, to masks, to cloaks, in short, to the surface (for every surface is a cloak) is countered by the sublime tendency of the man in search of knowledge to take and to want to take things deeply, multifariously, profoundly, as a kind of cruelty of intellectual conscience and aesthetic taste that every courageous thinker will recognize in himself, if he has spent an appropriate amount of time in tempering and sharpening his self-critical eye and if he is accustomed both to severe discipline and to severe words (230).

Your result for The Beginner's Philosophy Triangle Test...

Semi-Subjectivism

Take The Beginner's Philosophy Triangle Test at HelloQuizzy

I got my BPAL order, and though I really should be more frugal considering the pittance I get for a paycheck these days, I decided to make another order because Carnavale Diobolique is leaving soon. Of the ones I got, I enjoyed Sugar Skull probably the most, but Schwarzer Mond, Samhain, and Mama-Ji were all right too. I expected to like Mama-Ji a lot more, though; it's more flowery than spicy and is more light and fades quicker than I like. I also liked my imps of Bengal and Centzon Tototchtin.

For my next order, I want:

Death Adder
Pickled Imp? (though it seems it may be too much like Chimera, which is nice but not one of my favourites)
Hand of Glory (concept just sounds too weird & interesting to pass up :D)
Urd
Bengal

Imps of:
Goblin
Troll?

So, Natalie and I are having our date on Thursday. I am really feelin' giddy and excited about it. The notion still seems a bit surreal to me; for three and a half years now I would have dreamed of this.
More to come; I'm too giddy and impatient to write about it right now...

Wikipedia entries:

Godel, Escher, and Bach -
-Strange loops: involve self-reference and paradox; tangled hierarchy systems (heterarchy).
-Hofstadter points to Bach's Canon per Tonos, M. C. Escher's drawings Waterfall, Drawing Hands, Ascending and Descending, the liar paradox and the proof of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem as examples of strange loops.

13 plates, a goblet, and we're bleeding from the wrists.
J said 'Go ahead, have one more for the road'-
it came to this.
and one by one we knelt before him,
one by one we kissed him on the mouth.
Our eyes averted as if it was the last time
But hey, it's 1999 and J has lawyers in the fold,
and J's accountant can recite
the greatest story ever told.

There is no need to walk the mean streets
patching wounds and saving souls,
Because just like midas
everything we touch is turning gold -
Just like it did the last time.

Type http:/ you're chosen, broke
But closing in on Satan with a stun-gun,
sweeping demons from the screen.

This is your entrance to the kingdom,
use your fingers just for him -
and be quite certain your reward is lying
deep within - just like it did the last time.

And if I kick him hard enough, now will I see him fly?
If I stare hard at that bastard will he shrivel up and die?
And will I walk the waves and carve my name on tablets in the sky?
Will they remember me with reverence, until they pull the plug on time?
Now back again and forwards - shift a bouncing ball - two facing walls.
Now back gain and forwards -
It's just a game, eh, J? (hit delete)

holy fucking shit no.
I can't believe he fell through.. stupid fucking dumbass; I was willing to skip IV and everything just to drive out there, and then I find out he has work tonight. Goddammit.. I should just buy the shit myself. I really need to do something now, after getting so worked up about it. I may just go out and buy a bottle of 'tussin; I'm desperate right now.

"Good Morning, Great Moloch" by Current 93

Good morning, great Moloch,
Bright nothing, sunflower;
selling your peacocks at the corner of sight.
Good evening, bloodmother - far-off and broken
a nexus, a typhon, a walker on stilts.
Shipdreaming and arctic, a polar explorer; a seagull and seahorse, crossbred and unborn.
Good morning, great Moloch
great silence, burnt river;
driving home darkness at the end of the day.
Good evening, bloodfather;
smudged by the twilight...made iridescent by the tongue of the sea
Quicksleeping equator; a patchwork of terrors..
Bound up in brightness from swallowing gold.

..This song is gorgeous - both the melody and the lyrics.

it seems like every time I check the clock, it's 7 o'clock.
except 7 o'clock will be over very soon.
I'll be myself again in a few hours, I think. I still wish I could find my cell phone.
I feel stupid for crying like a fool a while ago. But I was veritably afraid; and thought I was losing my mind. I'm still extremely disoriented, but I guess that's to be expected.

I think I'm coming down, now. Everything still looks a bit blurry and I feel a little dizzy when I walk around, but I feel more cognizant and serious again. I don't like feeling serious; I was feeling quite manic-loopy for a bit there, but I love the feeling.
I may do this again tomorrow.