Hey everyone! Just a quick update from me.
I'm planning on returning to this website somewhat soon, as I sometimes generate a lot of ideas that, though interesting, don't fit anywhere else with what I'm working on. Those ideas can find a nice home here where maybe they do the work I wanted them to in the first place, which is just inspiring others. This website is just sorta low-pressure, so it's nice to share little art & magic things and not worry about making such a big deal about them.
Anyway, some personal things. I finally started actually working on this novel that I've been lightly playing with for like 2 years, and I'm finding the process to be actually kinda fun when I stop worrying about getting my "point" across so much. I know the story I want to tell, but if the story that I end up telling turns out different than I intended, that'll be okay too. I've made some incredible strides in learning about structuring a story in the micro in just the past month since I started actually writing and not thinking about writing. All I can hope for is that it turns out good and not like garbage haha (★≧▽^))★☆
The novel's about a girl trying to move past a bad case of adult adolescence, with a lot of magical realist elements that hopefully border enough on the fantastical without breaking suspension of disbelief too much. We'll see if I'm talented to manage such a feat. For now I'm just working on an introductory arc where she starts teaching at university and has some trouble and also investigates rumors of a huge wild animal roaming around campus at night. The only ideas I have for the arc's end is that she quits teaching and convinces one of her adult students that she's romantically involved with to try a 12 step program for addiction, but other than that, not sure where it's gonna go. Isn't that what's fun about writing though?
Personal stuff. I'm thinking I should read the Azoetia and Chumbley's essays a bit more closely. I've dabbled a bit with some of the ideas, though his flavor is a bit too "secret historical pagan witch cult" for my tastes and a bit too "tries to make Christian liturgy sound edgy," but some of it is truly and inspired (and inspiring). I made obeisance to Avalokitesvara and got the sense that it was time I worked on my attachment to and craving for sleep in all of its forms. There's an idea in occult spaces that the crossroads are a hieroglyph indicating a trance state (I think this is a little dramatic, the real answer is just that trance is a kind of crossroads from a certain point of view, and of course conscious experience is a crossroads from another; like 清凉澄观 (Chengguan, Disciple of the 3rd Huayan Patriarch Fazang) said in his preface to the Avatamsaka Sutra, "Going and returning with no border, movement and stillness have one source;"), but I think sleep follows us everywhere, so this isn't what I'm talking about. Sleep runs as an undercurrent connecting language, experience, mental formations. Maybe it's another name for Difference and Repetition's passive synthesis, or imagination? Regardless, I've been asked to divest attention from it, which will be difficult. Probably the tallest order I've received spiritually, though I think to be overly attached to dreams is to let them consume you. It's easy if you're attached to dreams to confuse others' dreams for yours. Even disregarding that, the "self" being othered from itself can be consumed by its own dreams as though they were its own. Just some thoughts.
Starting school soon. My friend started a little artists' circle of their friends which is mostly just an outlet for them to reproduce some of the structure of theater school now that they've just graduated. The first meeting where we actually discuss art is happening on Sunday, and they asked me to use a poem I wrote to figure out what the critiquing process should look like. I imagine they asked me and not someone who writes not-poetry because they don't respect that a poem might actually require a lot of critiquing. That's fine though, although I'm preparing myself to be disappointed by lukewarm engagement. Maybe my poetry's just bad and no one will ever understand it. I guess that would be okay.
A girl I had a brief fling with and huge crush on that really suddenly grew distant reached out to me a few days ago. She won't admit this, but I think she was wary of potentially running into my roommate (they'd had some brief uncomfortable interactions and my roommate is kinda canceled in the local trans scene). My only evidence is that the day she got really distant and stopped making an effort to hang out with me was the same day I name-dropped my roommate, who was in rehab at the time. Though, in fairness, I might've been coming on a little too strong with the whole wanting to date her thing and that also could've freaked her out. Idk. I've lost interest in her as a romantic partner anyway after being mildly strung along like that, but I'd still really like to be friends with her, because she's super cool otherwise. Also, if it was the former, she would've learned really quickly that my roommate never actually moved back in with me and I haven't been living with them for like 3 months. The thing that prompted her to reach out to me was actually me saying that I was moving out. So I guess it could've been about her keeping her distance from me on account of my roommate, or maybe she was just testing the waters to see if I would move in with her since it seems like maybe she's looking for roommates (although she didn't actually say as much to me, now that I think about it. shocker lol). ahhh, the games we play with ourselves to keep busy.
Anyway, that's all from me.