Creation

When I was little I would sometimes think, "What if I was God?"

I grew up in a mormon household and given the nature of the doctrine it was something that crossed my mind a fair bit. What would I do if I have divine powers? How much would I change? Would there be magic? Would there be weasels running about in watermelon yachts? (I was a weird little kid)

It was one of the reasons I stayed mormon for as long as I did. The idea that someday I would get access to that manner of power was deeply enticing and many days was the only reason I got through Sunday school. In fact I remember doing a great deal of my writing and reading during the various meetings we would go to. I was not a very good mormon. Which in retrospect made me about on par with everybody else there.

But that idea of creating my own world. Of having the power to shape and manipulate it's growth and look, always always stuck with me. It's the one real pang of regret that I feel about leaving the faith. Well that and being effectively shunted out of the dating pool. But another day on that topic.

I wanted to be God. So I started writing. And I keep writing. Always less then I feel I should but more than some of my other friends who call themselves writers. I write and I seek to understand. The fastest way to understand the world is to try and recreate it. In creating you find all of the reasons and underlying logic of why things are the way they are. If you write for long enough you'll start to see the patterns. Though the best part for me is changing the rules then seeing what happens from there.

And so that's what I did. I've created a fantasy world. I've been working on it for years and years. I've had many friends come in and help with it. So many talented people have been working to make my little world it's own thing. I appreciate them more than I can say because in many ways the world of Desylinn is what I would create if I was God. I mean the king of the Gods is even loosely based off of me.

It gives me some small comfort. To wield the power of creation and destruction. It's one of the high points of my life. 

Endings

Look up to the sky. And look to the stars.

Each one is a beautiful bright point in a sky otherwise appearing black and lifeless. Each one is like our sun. Trapped forever in the battle between nuclear flame pushing outwards and the unimaginable intense gravity of the core. It is a conflict that we can only understand through metaphor and story because the sheer scope of these forces are things we could never hope to effect.

But despite the fact that these forces are so grand and intense they could make the gods themselves quake in fear there is a point we tiny mortals have in common with them.

They end.

The nuclear fire will die out and the gravity will tear the star apart. The star will die. Its corpse will be torn to innumerable pieces and scattered to the void...

Endings are always hard on some level. It's a shift from things we know to things we don't. Some deal with it well. Even crave the shifting nature of the world. Change is the only unchanging thing. And despite my chaotic nature I'm not one that tends to deal well with change. And recently I've had a lot of it hit me.

I've left a place I loved. The first job that I ever looked forward to going to. One where I felt like I had a true (if hesitant) place. But funding is tight and as a diabetic with mental health challenges, I need full time resources and insurance. Sad as it is I've had to depart from that place.

The other thing ending was the marvelous play I was a part of. That one was expected. It is the nature of the thing. Like beautiful drawings left to the sand, such is the way of theater. At it's best it is a profound thing and the only living art, because it exists solely in the moment it is happening. It is never like it was before or will be again. Theater exists within the unique magic of a moment. And it is remembered not replayed.

So that second end is perhaps a prettier thing.

But it doesn't make it any easier to let it go. So I look to the stars for guidance. Because it is in the crucible of a dying sun that the manifold particles of our creation come into being. All of life exists because of the end of a stars life cycle.

When everything feels like it's exploding, ending, and dying around you; remember that once it cools you'll have the stardust required to fashion your new world. Create something new.

It's all just stardust anyway. 

Outside

I've been in a play recently. It is far and away the the best comedic piece I've been in, and arguably one of the most rewarding theatre experiences I've yet had. I can't understate that. It has been amazing and I wouldn't change it for the world. However, I can't really say it's been entirely easy. The Director expects the best out of us and is unwilling to let us look bad. It's been a rough but I walked out the other side far better for the experience. And frankly it's not that point that I want to talk about.

I have only rarely felt like more of an outsider than I had with this group. It's not that I've been made to feel unwelcome, and in fact a few genuine efforts to include me have been made. They just haven't bridged that gap. I've tried as well, and through a few points of resonance have been found I remain looking in more than being a part.

It's nobody's fault really. I would work with any of these people again without any hesitation at all. And given the opportunity I would gladly break bread or drink wine with them all. They're fantastic and interesting people. Which is perhaps why my feelings are so mixed. I don't belong there. But would like to.

When I first got cast in this production, I felt that it was going to be something special. Like the first scent of rain on the wind I could feel it's importance in an almost palpable manner. In the days before our first rehearsal I even had a significant and intense dream regarding one of my cast mates, a person I had seen but had never met. For me, meeting this group had a strange electricity in the air. An electricity that at times became a wall. Less magnetic and more the balance created by gravitational events.

I'm used to feeling like an outsider. It's pretty much my natural state. So much so that when I find a group that accepts me without hesitation my first reactions are confusion followed by suspicion. It's not because of a lack of confidence. It simply stems from a full awareness of who I am. I'm a strange guy. I give odd impressions. I'm personable, but that's in spite of my persona not because of it. At least not initially. I'm an outsider.

It is the price of being a shaman. And also the price of being an artist. You stand outside of the world because it gives us the best view of how things really are. It's the lot of chosen. It's the price I've paid.

Sometimes it just takes you by surprise, when you get what you pay for.

Perceptions

As much as this is a blog, as you gentle reader are in fact reading it, this is much more a journal. Not of the various details of my day to day life, as that would be quite boring and make me sound even more self-absorbed than I fear this blog already makes me, but of my thoughts, and sometimes even my feelings. Feelings which despite my best efforts, I still have. Ones that sincerely seem to cause more problems than they solve in my life. But this isn't about my one man war against my own capacity to feel things. No. This is about perception. And how it can vary so wildly from reality.

I have, it has been argued, an over concern with romantic entanglement. I am coming to terms with that. But in that coming to terms with it, it has lead me to a point of interest. Depending on which side of thing you are seeing, your belief in what it is will wildly vary.

There's an old story. The one about four (or three or five depending on the telling) blind men and an elephant. Each man comes at the creature from a different angle and finds different things. The one touching the leg declares it a tree. The one touching the side declares it an albeit fleshy wall. The tail is a rope and the truck is a snake. It's a really good little story to illustrate how our perspectives can shape perceptions and therefore our assumptions.

Now I strive to understand. As I talked about in my post on Entireties. I strive to understand everything and that includes myself. So when somebody tells me something about me that I hadn't considered, or looks at my actions through a lens I hadn't I take it all the more seriously. Because to know yourself and your own limitations and perspectives is to be able to make yourself the best person you can possibly be.

This whole line of reasoning came up when somebody told me that I came off as desperate. Linking back to the over concern with romantic entanglement. That I was showing "interest" in so many people that it never allowed any of them to feel special. And so saying it out loud was cheapening it, and making me seem to want it enough that it was creepy.

I can't deny it. One of the things that I want more than anything else is a good match with a romantic partner. And someday, I can't emphasize this enough, Someday, to be a father. And there's a certain amount of hunger associated with the idea. But at least in my mind this talk of desperation doesn't fill mesh with the reality.

On paper it must be right. By the standards of the community I should be desperate. I should be shaking down trees trying to find a "bride" and "mother for my childrens". I'm a white male living in his parents basement who plays Dungeons and Dragons regularly and watches cartoons. I've not travelled out side of the country except once for about an hour going into Mexico. I'm prone to powerful (sometimes nonsensical) attractions and gains a beautifully bittersweet joy around children. These could all add up to a compelling argument for desperation.

But I don't think of myself or in fact feel desperate. My seeing everyone as special is in fact an honest and sincere attempt at trying to see the good and unique datapoints within everyone I met. I want to get to know everyone (or at least most people) well enough to say that I truly know them. Well enough that I could not be surprised by their actions. Having a basic understanding of the fundamentals of character.  If you couple this with my current inability to be anything but awkward around persons I find attractive and yes... I can see where the perception comes from.

And eventually I hope to change it. But that's probably going to take counseling and a serious rebuilding of my confidence. Because there's just enough truth in these perceptions that means it's something I need to work on.

Or at the very lest something to consider in my next character rebuild.

Attraction

This is something that should always be simple, but never really is. At least in my experience. I've always had difficultly when dealing with attraction. When I was younger I had a severe phobia of girls. I was socially awkward and possessed of a really powerful desire for romantic entanglement. For some reason as a child I put a great deal of emotional and psychological importance with the idea of romantic entanglement.

I went over my thoughts (and various pains) regarding Love months ago, but attraction is something different. To put it in it's most primal phrasing this is a matter of lust. The quick and powerful magnetic draw to another person.

It's something that is so much more then just visual aesthetics. A pretty face or shapely form can draw the eye but attraction taps into something chemical, something profound and sometimes nonsensical. They creep into your thoughts without rhyme or reason and despite your most valiant efforts they build a little home there. Their scent burns itself into your mind and because a new and exciting mode of thought. There is a potential for anything to happen with that kind of strong attraction.

Usually anyway. If that magnetism is mutual, it becomes something profound and magical. It's those first amazing steps towards something truly special. Or sometimes it will remain a delicate and delightful fantasy. Something to play the what if game too.

Now I'm fully aware that this next bit is going to self-indulgent. But it's a personal blog. So what the hell else were you expecting?

I meet people sometimes. Lady people. And when I'm near them I feel an electricity that I can't fully describe. They tiptoe across my thoughts enough that I feel the need to fight against it. Because I'm aware of how it can look. I've spent much of my life being a little off, a little weird. And that puts people on edge. Unless there is a significant reason to overlook that or somebody they trust to vouch for me, I seem to give off the "lock you in the basement vibe". I don't mean to or try to, but there it is.

I've always said that I have a fungal charm. It takes time for my worth and charms to come out. But in our microwave, youtube world that's not really enough. We dont' trust people and the only ones who are generally willing to trust that sort of primal attraction are those that are a little off, or a little scary.

Which leaves me waving my "freak flag" as it were. Though I'd rather is just have a little bit of reciprocation. I just want to be comfortable with myself and that seems to me that I'm not freaky enough for the freaks but so far from the passable that I'm pretty well blown off by both sides. Leaves me in the horrible postion of striving for or pining after folk that have no interest, or being pursued by those that I don't really feel anything significant for.

It's not a pleasant place, I wish I could change it. But to tie it back to my earlier ramblings it's a chemical process. A point of biology that can't really be easily modified. But such is the way of life is it not? Magnets and chemicals... and trying to fill in the blanks with whatever psychological fixes we can find.

Puppets of Meat and Bone chasing forever after the scents of our desires.