Lucid Dreaming

The slight itchiness of grass. The softness of clovers. the prickly, knee-jarring warmth of concrete. The blinding brightness of blue skies. All nailed in my dream.

The call is gentle, a slight burning
Prickly, a quiet yearning
The flicker of your eyes,
Removed of every disguise
I hold my tongue, you hold my heart
Gentle stroking, only inches apart

Aimless?

It’s 3am. I’m starting a new sketch. I ignored art for a long while. Coming back to it, I don’t feel the same animosity. I’m working on a project, but until it gets closer, I suppose it will remain fairly underground. I’m just drafting some concepts, but it definitely gives me something to work towards–to look forward to.

Foggy Glasses

Sometimes I struggle to find the correlation between the behavior of Christians, and the behavior of Jesus Christ. Yea? Yes. To break it down, Christian literally means “little Christ”. Often, I wonder if I am anywhere close to this ideal. Honestly, there are very, very few who indeed fit the mark. Jesus was nothing less than a radical guy. Most Christians that I have been around seem to resemble Pharisees. Others seem mostly non-committal, and wear the religion as nothing more than a badge.

Personally, I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum. I was raised in a Christian home. Growing up, I HATED church. I hated everything to do with it. I just wanted to sleep or draw during the service. I threw fits on Sunday mornings, making it difficult for my parents to get me ready. I was bitter that my parents made me wear skirts to church. It seemed pretty useless to me.

However, I held on to Christian values. The moral code stuck with me, and I rarely questioned it. I never really thought that gay people should burn in hell, or that whole civilizations should be wiped out, but those were questions that kept being posited, and I eventually discovered the answers to those difficult questions, and it isn’t the easiest thing to grasp.

After going through bouts of depression, attempted suicide, and the usual routine of “high school”, I began asking more questions.

I think asking questions is what really saved me.

I don’t think anyone should feel comfortable or safe in anything. “Religion” is something false to hold onto. However, a “relationship” with another being is something that constantly evolves and progresses. So goes the same with my relationship with God.

I’ve come to to the point where I don’t just look at other people’s religion, and be like, “yours is wrong!” Sure, I thought that as a younger self, but upon further investigation, I came to the conclusion, or rather, I developed a theory that other “religions” aren’t merely nothing, but are definitely something that should not be leaned upon. I strongly believe other “religions” are valid, but they are wrong. Why? Because I believe the beings that are backing up these “religions” aren’t for what’s best for humanity. These beings are those other than God, and could be anything. I don’t know what they are. Demons, angels, ghosts, chimeras.

What am I getting at? Well, all these are just tiny snippets of the thoughts actually growing inside my mind, but what they really go to say is: many people are close-minded about “religion”, both those who participate and those who refuse. There is much to be explored.

——————————————————-

All my life, I’ve been afraid to try,
Until you opened my eyes, and told me,
“Daughter, now’s your time to shine”
Though I’ve closed them many times,
You’ve been the gentle guide
Unfailingly slipping your hand through mine

Named

Multiple souls have told me that I’m judgmental. Perhaps I have been in the past, but now? No. What I really mean to say is: I don’t think any less of anyone because of things they do. All people are just people in my eyes. However, I do have my thoughts about things. I know that the greatest men of the Bible had their bouts of straying. Solomon was the wisest man…ever. Yet, he had over 500 wives. That doesn’t exactly align with the whole, “no adultery” thing. Paul was a murderer. There are countless examples of people doing what they shouldn’t be doing. I don’t think any less of these people, but I DO still think they shouldn’t do it. I do stupid things…way too much.

Consolation Through Organization

Since the dawn of their existence, humans have obsessed over the use of simple, geometric shapes. Nature could easily be broken down into these shapes; trees were triangles, rocks were circles, and humans were rectangles. The epitome of early art are the cave paintings of Lascaux, where animals dash about the elaborately winding walls, and still withhold the beauty of when they were first created. Although humans progressed to learn how to capture the essence of organic shapes and expand their repertoire of artistic skills, the most important shape they have ever discovered was a three-dimensional one: the cube. Almost every single house is modeled off the shape of a cube. Cars are shaped like cubes. Newspaper dispensers, toasters, beds, and bath tubs are shaped like cubes, or perhaps rectangular prisms. However, the most important device ever devised was the box.

Boxes fill the role of holding “things,” containing “things,” storing “things.” Humans tend to favor organizing their possessions into boxes, and lining these boxes on shelves, rather than allowing these possessions to haplessly pile everywhere. Humans love to order and categorize, and therefore: organization.

Attics and basements often find themselves cluttered with boxes neatly stacked upon each other, some of them half-filled, with useless items aesthetically and partially drooping over the boundaries of the box. The contents of these boxes are deftly described with the quick strokes of a permanent marker. Just as these relics of the past are quickly forgotten, aspects of the mind—such as thoughts, memories, and dreams—can easily occupy a box or two, and fill the deepest recesses of our minds.

Although the fact that humans tend to forget things, or rather, willfully allow things to depart from the forefront of their minds, would seem to be a bad thing, it is really quite useful. Often, humans like to shed their former skins, and allow the ghosts of their pasts to quickly bury themselves away from conscious thought, as if to be at peace with the people they have been. In fact, the less that humanity has to fret over, the happier it tends to be. Humans have great difficulty combating the great beast, Stress.

Ever since humans invented the box, they’ve found clever ways to sneak various “things” into boxes. Governments discovered that by putting the minds of their citizens into the box labeled “fear,” they gain a lot of control over the actions of these citizens, for they don’t realize that their perception is skewed by four cardboard walls, excessively taped and stapled together. Thus, we see that boxes serve a greater, less benign purpose than simply organizing physical items. Boxes are being used to categorize that which is not meant to be categorized.

There happens to exist a box delicately labeled “science.” Its locale is in the near vicinity of another box labeled “religion.” These two boxes are similar because of this: people like to put hopes, fears, insecurities, and faith into these boxes indiscriminately. Humans have put limits on these two infinitely broad subjects, and have allowed them to be at war with each other, when, in reality, they are two very different matters.  The benefit of hiding away these scary, very human thoughts in science and religion is that humans no longer have to consider what to think, but to hide behind a label that denotes some greater purpose, or intellect. Humans don’t feel the need to discover, but to assume that there are facts, and those facts are, well, facts.

If one were to look at the way the dictionary defines science, one will discover that there isn’t but one definition listed. Some of these entries, dare I say, are oversimplified and list science as “knowledge” (Collins). Other entries like to include that this knowledge was gained from observation and experimentation, which is much closer to the truth of what science is. However, the entry that most catches my eye is “skill or technique” (Collins).  This last entry most accurately describes exactly what science is: a skill or technique used to discover our world. Science is not, and should not be something that people can put faith into, and therefore limit science from what it’s meant to do: explore the world. Science was never meant to disprove the existence of religion, though it is being used that way. Science is the simple, rewarding route to discovery, and if it so happens to make people reconsider their views of the planet, than that is by chance. Science is not changing the way the world works, it’s observing the way the world works, and therefore aids in human creation; modern medicine is constantly evolving with new discoveries made by science. Science doesn’t disprove or prove why the universe is what it is, but rather the fact that the universe is, and broadening our understanding of exactly what that means.

If humans had been too stubborn to rethink their views on the world being flat, or that everything revolves around the earth, astronomy would be even farther behind than it is now, and astronomy, really, is not very far along. Our understanding of the stars and planets is close to nothing in comparison to how much there is to learn. Humans need to keep an open mind when considering science, for it is just a process. We barely understand our world, and opposition to the discovery of our planet is unnecessarily hindering the gain of knowledge from simple observation and experimentation. If humanity is not ready to accept controversial experimentation, such as stem cell research, then science needs to find a new subject to experiment on, for there are countless opportunities. Perhaps later generations will accept such experimentation. The simple truth is: science is too large to be held back by silly arguments, and should be versatile enough to study different areas.

Although humans like to order, categorize, and thus organize, we should never limit great endeavors because we are afraid of what we may find. Insecurities and doubts are tools for discovery of not only ourselves, but each other, and the world we inhabit, and should never hinder our ability to learn.

Convoluted.

I really wish I could keep a steady journal going. I write everything down in my mind, but I can’t quite go back on it as readily as a physical copy. Hm, I wonder how safe it is to share all my thoughts online? I suppose that allowing people to have personal information about myself could be dangerous… Really, who would want to ever do me harm? Where’s the point in that?

 

I’ve been thinking about music a lot. I guess that’s normal. I have been thinking about my future a lot.  I’m kind of wondering when I’ll get married. I guess it’s something I’ve been wondering since forever, since it’s kind of what I’ve been looking forward to since I ever…existed.

Hmm…eyes.

It’s funny, all I can think of right now is this man I came across: he had one green eye, and one brown eye. I’ve never seen this in a human before him. My father has one green eye, and one blue eye, but the contrast isn’t so extreme.

 

I fell in love for a minute.

Time, where have you gone?

So. I really have meant to update this more often. The fact that my blog has no sense of direction really got to me. I got annoyed with how meaningless, and dysfunctional my blog seemed to be. However, I have recently rethought my perspective on myself.

——————————-

Don’t hold back your words, they’re the only thing we have to keep us close and intact

‘Cause even when we hold each other close, we are never really touching

There will always be dead air and dead space, and anything else that can find its way in between our skin

We try to interlace our souls

But it hurts to keep pushing

That needle through

Time and time again

I can’t deny that you were the one to invade my mind

Do you remember submersing yourself in my dreams?

I turn my eyes away, I close off my ear canals

I recede, but you still remain in the recesses of my brain

So, what’s the conclusion that we come to? I can’t really say

I’m chewing on my thumbnail, I can’t really complain

This is sweet refrain, like candy rotting my brain

———————————-

An ode to unhappy endings.

Mew.

Dear Mew,

You’ve been my musical inspiration for years now. How did you survive so long as musicians? I’m guessing you weren’t so popular until more recently. I’m just making a guess, considering you’re not popular in the USA at all. No one I’ve talked to knows about your music. I mean, you’ve guys have been around forever. So, did you have to deal with everyone not liking your music?

Sincerely,

Natasha

I guess I’m pretending to write a letter to Mew because I’m sort of at a crossroads. I was in the same position with my art a bit ago, and I bailed. Not that I don’t do art anymore, I’m just not going to be doing it professionally. I want to do music professionally, it’s been a guilty pleasure sort of dream of mine for years now.  I just don’t know where the line is as far as being delusional. You know, you think your music is good, and you have potential, but you don’t want to be ignorant to the possibility that you may actually suck, and you should do something else. You know. I’m not one to get arrogant, but it’s difficult to keep your head up, and keep working towards something, because where you’re at isn’t good enough.

I want to have the confidence to say that I make good music, but I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. It scares me, but I guess I just have to decide whether or not I want to keep working at it or bail. I thought about this, and I had to remind myself that I don’t want a free ticket to fame and fortune. If this is going to be good, it’s going to be hard. I just wish there was something reassuring that I could hold onto, because this could all cave in.