It's End of the Weekend
And I feel fine. Ran all over town, did some shopping. Nobody in this damned place sells shoes my size unless they are completely white. I don't want white shoes, they will look like shit after one week of my usual walking cycles. Bloody 'ell.
Offed some of my huge bucket o' soup on a couple of friends this evening. We traded. I gave soup, they gave chicken and cornbread, and we made a meal out of it. The adored the soup, and insisted that I make it again. Now there's a compliment I can beam over. We watched Spirited Away while we ate. Great movie, but for some reason, the whole train ride sequence really hits me hard. The imagery of faceless, half-real passengers, the view of the mirrored water all the way to the horizon, the lack of civilization except for the train itself, and the station platforms... it touches a corny place in me, but it really means something to me, but I am not sure what.
I'm not fond of any religious concepts, as religion, to me, is a concerted drive towards extinction. However, some part of me wants to see an afterlife, not of "Heaven" or "Hell", but of some stranger less ordered but more peaceful place. Every now and then, I see some imagery that reminds me of this same concept of a sort of "non-created" after-world.
Usually, it involves a constructed or somehow artificial place, such as a building or other structure, but always devoid of normal, interactive people, if there are other beings in it at all. Typically, the place is brightly lit, usually white, perhaps blue or some other colors, but never yellow or red or orange. Even though the place may have been built for a purpose, the purpose is never visible, and oftentimes, it seems a contradictory thing, such as, in Spirited Away, the train platforms with no visible buildings or any surrounding signs of habitation. Just miles and miles of crystalline waters. Another example, to me, was the ending of 2001, when Dave Bowman is in the strange white rooms the aliens created for him to live in. Or the peculiar "white" levels of the Half-Life mod, "Peaces Like US". Often, I think, the tendancy of such scenery to be white, quiet and peaceful usually suggests to most that the place is Heaven of some sort. It means nothing of God, or christian souls, or Cities of Gold to me. I feel that any afterlife that exists would, ideally, anyway, be a sort of dreamlike state. Without a body to order the pulses of a mind, what else could such a place be?
Such an anachronistic place may be little more than a monument, or might be a vast, complicated structure. It always seems to suggest, though, a sort of not-alone isolation, sort of like a solitary contemplative retreat, where, through strange perturbations in the fabric of the after-reality, one might contact other planes of understanding, or even other beings, high and low, of other existances. Being in the afterlife, I imagine, would be sort of like being outside of life and existance, and occasionally, one might find a window they could bang on or try to shout through, perhaps even open from the outside. Whatever the situation, the passed anima is allowed free reign over its new realm, with only its wits to discern how to affect and travel about its new environment, and, if clever enough, maybe even to break out of it.
Much of this imagery comes from certain dreams I had in the past featuring similar places. To consider them part of an afterlife, I guess, shows I am not so much against the concept of afterlife as I am against religion's version of it. I imagine, though, that in the end it will just be the end. Depressing. But if that is so, then there is no harm in hoping for even my surreal and strange and benign afterlife, is there?
Maybe, if I'm lucky, or even astute, the afterlife will simply be an unending dreamworld, which we glimpse fleetingly throughout our short lives. Or, and this is more likely, I am just wanting to dream more, and I miss the deep relaxation that comes from dreaming sleep. I need to sleep more, maybe. Still...
Nah, I need to go to bed.
Offed some of my huge bucket o' soup on a couple of friends this evening. We traded. I gave soup, they gave chicken and cornbread, and we made a meal out of it. The adored the soup, and insisted that I make it again. Now there's a compliment I can beam over. We watched Spirited Away while we ate. Great movie, but for some reason, the whole train ride sequence really hits me hard. The imagery of faceless, half-real passengers, the view of the mirrored water all the way to the horizon, the lack of civilization except for the train itself, and the station platforms... it touches a corny place in me, but it really means something to me, but I am not sure what.
I'm not fond of any religious concepts, as religion, to me, is a concerted drive towards extinction. However, some part of me wants to see an afterlife, not of "Heaven" or "Hell", but of some stranger less ordered but more peaceful place. Every now and then, I see some imagery that reminds me of this same concept of a sort of "non-created" after-world.
Usually, it involves a constructed or somehow artificial place, such as a building or other structure, but always devoid of normal, interactive people, if there are other beings in it at all. Typically, the place is brightly lit, usually white, perhaps blue or some other colors, but never yellow or red or orange. Even though the place may have been built for a purpose, the purpose is never visible, and oftentimes, it seems a contradictory thing, such as, in Spirited Away, the train platforms with no visible buildings or any surrounding signs of habitation. Just miles and miles of crystalline waters. Another example, to me, was the ending of 2001, when Dave Bowman is in the strange white rooms the aliens created for him to live in. Or the peculiar "white" levels of the Half-Life mod, "Peaces Like US". Often, I think, the tendancy of such scenery to be white, quiet and peaceful usually suggests to most that the place is Heaven of some sort. It means nothing of God, or christian souls, or Cities of Gold to me. I feel that any afterlife that exists would, ideally, anyway, be a sort of dreamlike state. Without a body to order the pulses of a mind, what else could such a place be?
Such an anachronistic place may be little more than a monument, or might be a vast, complicated structure. It always seems to suggest, though, a sort of not-alone isolation, sort of like a solitary contemplative retreat, where, through strange perturbations in the fabric of the after-reality, one might contact other planes of understanding, or even other beings, high and low, of other existances. Being in the afterlife, I imagine, would be sort of like being outside of life and existance, and occasionally, one might find a window they could bang on or try to shout through, perhaps even open from the outside. Whatever the situation, the passed anima is allowed free reign over its new realm, with only its wits to discern how to affect and travel about its new environment, and, if clever enough, maybe even to break out of it.
Much of this imagery comes from certain dreams I had in the past featuring similar places. To consider them part of an afterlife, I guess, shows I am not so much against the concept of afterlife as I am against religion's version of it. I imagine, though, that in the end it will just be the end. Depressing. But if that is so, then there is no harm in hoping for even my surreal and strange and benign afterlife, is there?
Maybe, if I'm lucky, or even astute, the afterlife will simply be an unending dreamworld, which we glimpse fleetingly throughout our short lives. Or, and this is more likely, I am just wanting to dream more, and I miss the deep relaxation that comes from dreaming sleep. I need to sleep more, maybe. Still...
Nah, I need to go to bed.