Dreampepper

This place feels familiar, I think, in the same way I connect to the silent gestures of the person who lives here. Ikea furniture, matching sheets, off the shelf living. Not quite anonymous, it all feels lived in, but only just, in that way where some apartments function as places to work and sleep but not to eat. I have only rarely been here, and never alone, but I understand. How it was chosen and created, how it came together - the underpinnings of decision, of an entire person, laid out in a cluttered blast. Like most living spaces, it is the best sort of map. Tech casual, male, young adult, somewhere in their thirties. Clever, dependable, very little struggle, not a lot of travel, but enough to have some stories. There are some framed prints leaning against the wall, (probably line art or something Japanese), but half buried behind papers and other detritus, and very few actual decorations.

And so, curious, I look around. I see. An instrument case under the kitchen table, thinly coated in a breathy envelope of neglect, and an electric piano, folded with a basic black stand, equally unused, translate into a desire to be musical, likely long passed. I pick up a book, one of the many casually piled next to the bed, (on the other side, an empty wine glass that I, for no particular reason, believe to have been left there by somebody else), and note that it has been read, but not dog-eared, which I like, because it's the precise observation I expected and it's sometimes nice to be right. The whole place is like that, down to the toiletries in the washroom, (the correct, responsible array, but with too much dust on the multivitamins, I'm sure the bottles are still full), and the programs on the laptop, (expensive, a macbook, no stickers).

It makes me comfortable, but wary. I wonder at the wisdom of this visit. I like these places. I like the people who live in them. But. There is a proposal here, an offer yet unspoken, dreadful and heavy, laced with a false, Proustian nostalgia for a life I never had a chance to lead, "where feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated". Not quite a lie, it rests in the back of my skull like an entertaining artifact from an imaginary era, something to dismantle and examine and potentially loathe.

We sit on the polished cement floor by the gas fireplace, turned on with a switch, click, and ignore the obvious question for more prosaic pursuits. I confirm my theories like dominoes, with only a few charming surprises, (which I also like), and gently offer too much history, the most toned down form of my best defense strategy: tragedy, violence, a childhood of poverty and occasional terror. Out of your league, it offers, a way to make a polite escape dipped in sad anecdotes of senseless destruction and death. An excuse for abdication, withdrawal without judgement. Usually this is the cue, exit stage left, pursued by bears, but instead it all diffused in the air, accepted.

I had wondered at myself while walking to meet him, why was I there? It's not like I had hope, even as I delighted in his company, but perhaps this was it, what I unconsciously expected: this gloriously uncomfortable acceptance. Superficial, possibly, and weak tea, but honest. Trust. Staying would hurt me, ruin me more, a proposition which under the circumstances I could not even pretend to accept, yet the visit was a feast. Within my boundaries, freedom. I woke up feeling absolutely amazing. All I needed was a break. There has been no one left alive to bear my weight.

[Poll #1463716]

"LANGUAGES divide the spectrum up in different ways. Welsh speakers use “gwyrdd” (pronounced “goo-irrrth”) as a general word for green. Yet “grass” literally translates as “blue straw”. That is because the Welsh word for blue (“glas”) can accommodate all shades of green. English-speaking anthropologists affectionately squish “green” and “blue” together to call Welsh an example of a “grue” language. A few of them think grue languages are spoken by societies that live up mountains or near the equator because ultraviolet radiation, which is stronger in such places, causes a progressive yellowing of the lens. This, the theory goes, makes the eye less sensitive to short wavelengths (those that correspond to the green and blue parts of the spectrum). Unfortunately, though the Welsh do live in a hilly country, it is hardly mountainous enough—let alone sunny enough—to qualify.

The ultraviolet theory, however, is just one idea among many in the debate about the psychology of colour. Like many debates in psychology, this one pits congenital, fundamentally genetic, explanations against explanations that rely on environmental determinism. Psychologists in the former camp think people are born with ingrained ideas about how hues are grouped. They believe the brain is preconditioned to pick out the six colours on a Rubik's cube whatever tongue it is taught to think in. The other camp, by contrast, thinks that the spectrum can be chopped into categories anywhere along its length. Moreover, they suspect that the language an individual learns from his parents is the main explanation for where that chopping takes place.

... There is a fundamental—presumably congenital—distinction, as shown by the fact that the non-linguistic side of the brain distinguishes between blue and green. But there is also a language-mediated one, as shown by the linguistic side's greater response."

article link from the clever lucaskrech, lighting engineer extraordinaire

I fell entirely in love with Lost In Translation, did you?

It's one of those strange little times, when you and I haven't spoken and we're left wondering. I'm reading the notes toward a paper of sexuality and it makes me laugh a little at how little I think about this sort of thing. I'm infatuated with history and mood and mythos, but the holiness of sex? It smacks of religion. Play as something apart from the self. I don't wax full of jesus metaphor when I think of my desires. Yes, I miss you. I think of my repairing self in terms of myth and archetype. Visions of archimedes screws, that's sexy. There's the pun and the history and the lovely lilting action. I think in quivering multi-layer presentations sliding past innocence into carefully arranged chaos.

In celebration of 50 years of spoken-word publishing, Caedmon has released "Dylan Thomas: The Caedmon Collection," available as audio cassettes and a beautifully designed 11 CD set. They are all available for free download here, at Salon. Non-subscribers, like me, have to wait through an advertisement. For such a treasure, it's a ridiculously cheap price. Dylan adds an unimaginable depth to his own work. It's a rare gift to find an author who can read as beautifully as he does. Even if you've never heard of Dylan Thomas, (and for damned shame, if you haven't, get out from under your weird rock), for the sake of decency, I demand you take this.

When someone today used the word dragon, I brought to mind more than fantasy and scales. It's no fun unless every meaning is evident at once. I supply large soaring creations of imagination, terrible art from the 80's, wicked claws that tore poets apart in medieval Japan and young mythical virgins who were really fucking the millers son, millers sons being all the rage back in the day. They were rich, you see? Not like you and I. We are pulling on opposite ends of a very similar rope. It's not the McEmployment but it's as close as pretending can be. Stability and the risk board, all those coloured squares mocking the agonies of war. Roll the dice to find out where you get to kiss me. I need out of my job as much as you're thinking about me when you shouldn't be. We only sell those dice to women and that bothers my personality. The western world irritates in it's persistent subservience to christendom.

I suspect there's a line between words that you're not delineating, but that I might be seeing when you're looking the other way.