subterranean lake
Ξ Sunday, 16 Nov 2008 at 21:04 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Normal |
a calm, dark pool of utter blackness. no starlight penetrates the rock above, but there is luminescence down here, something welling up from the earth itself and lighting the otherwise-eternal night. it would be difficult to explore such places in real life, yet they do exist in the depths of caves. all I can do is fashion my own version with my mind, although there are accounts of such caves being extant.
tomorrow would have been my great-grandma’s 104th (or 103rd?) birthday. we weren’t quite sure whether she was born 17 Nov 1904 or 1905, since she was either 90 turning 91 or 91 turning 92 when she died in October 1996. may she continue to rest in peace.
we saw the last “100 years of queer theatre” play cycle tonight, and it was quite entertaining. one of the plays I’d seen before, and enjoyed, and it was better this time than it was before. I suppose that’s the way of things, progress and all, thankfully. Nicole and Jenn and I got dinner at Red Jade afterwards, which was excellent.
we saw Quantum of Solace last night and it was excellent as well, much better than Casino Royale (although I, unlike Nicole, liked the latter). And the night before we watched Iron Man since we had the DVD through Netflix. It was pretty fucking awesome. The ending left it wide open for a sequel, which I guess shouldn’t surprise me these days. The sad thing is I’d most likely see the sequel.
I told a fragment of one of my many dreams last night to Nicole. She and I were in a hotel lobby, and David Bowie was inexplicably working the front desk. This may have been triggered by my watching The Office last night before I slept, and it involving a concierge. In any case, Bowie was talking on the phone, calling someone, but he had it on speakerphone for some reason and we could all hear the call. Someone put him on hold, and the Muzak came on, and ironically enough it was a Bowie song, “Changes.” Bowie gave his forehead a slap (I guess they call it a facepalm or something of the like?), and sighed. We tried not to laugh, and I went up to him and said “Hey, I really like your music,” and pointing to Nicole, “and she’s a huge fan of yours.” He was friendly but I don’t remember exactly what he said. The funny part overall was that one of his songs came on as hold Muzak. When I told Nicole about it she thought it was hilarious.
the mind can take you incredible places, create whole cities for you, populate them with familiar faces or those wholly alien. so too can literature, and I find it amazing especially reading Homer and ancient Greek and Roman literature — I find it amazing how real all these stories feel. How real the world seems, however fantastic it may be — when we read these stories we feel a part of the world almost, able to see it in our minds and our imaginations. Just like I was saying before, how I feel like I’ve been living on the plain and shores of Troy for a long while now. those feelings are hard to shake, which is a blessing and a curse simultaneously.
I’m probably going to go listen to some music soon. I’m still working through the dark ambient (about 30 albums left?) music, and it’s getting better and better as I go along. it’s inspirational in a lot of ways, conjuring dark, occult images in my mind, fog and ash and ruin and death, among other things.
few things interest me more than things which were hidden and are subsequently uncovered — hence occult things (Lat. occulo, “to cover up, cover over”). there are a lot of secrets in this world, things lying hidden, and to find them, to possess even scraps of information on them is fascinating. A dark, foreboding wood, a wilderness full of the unknown. For we have a love/hate relationship with the unknown. We constantly try to make the unknown known, to negate and cancel out its current state, because we often fear it — yet we embrace the unknown in seeking to make it known. If no one gave it attention, we would know far less than the little we do know now.
Skotophobia is one of the most common fears — fear of the dark (σκότος, “darkness” + φόβος “fear”), likely stemming from another fear of the unknown. We could use either xenophobia or agnotophobia (in my opinion) for “fear of the unknown” (ξενοφοβία perhaps, or ἀγνωτοφοβία). In any case, I find myself just as perplexingly intrigued and repulsed by the unknown as most, I’d think. Yet as I said, I love learning about ‘hidden’ places or things, whether they be apocryphal or not. Interestingly enough, apocryphal comes from the Greek ἀπόκρυφος, “hidden,” the Greek precursor to the Latin occultus (in turn from the verb ἀποκρύπτω, “to hide away”).
so I’m losing steam. gonna go listen to some music. take care, everyone, and open your eyes and ears so as not to miss something important.
