Automatic update, new live content from Space Monkey.
Woooooooooooah!!!?!?
What the fuck was that!
Am I dead!?
No, hang on. Get a grip.
I'm in a lead lined box, and cannot see or hear.
Ah.....
It's time to update the journal! Of course.... I fixed up a kind of glow in the dark keyboard, so that periodically I could wake from slumber and type something. It's more of a personal dream diary though. You see, all that radiation is stimulating the hallucinatory centres of my brain, and so whilst I am sedated, I'm dreaming of being a human man, trapped in an academic suburban life, feeling almost as distant from the human race as I am. Jeeez. It was strange.... Here is what I do remember, although it might be fragmentary. I kept thinking I was a solar physics student, measuring flares and solar stuff all day in a darkened room. I guess it's pretty clear where those thoughts came from in my daily life, given that I spent several days in nervous paranoia watching the radiation meters climb ever higher, before finally taking my drastic lead lined sleep. But then there were other bits of the life, late night trips to fast food emporia, to consume victuals. Games of badminton. Mood swings - the sedatives aren't really sure if they're uppers or downers I expect, actually, I think they're epilepsy medications really, I just found them in a bag that someone left on board before the launch. They knock me out though, which is the crucial thing.
Yeah, where was I.
Hmmmm. It was gloomy, and dull for the most part, lots of rain and a garish hue of sodium yellow on wet roads. Disenchantment was like a virus there, pervading every core. People, so many people, all living together, yet so causally disconnected from one another. I swear, you all know each other, but you go through so many middlemen to do it, I guess you're true children of the eighties, always looking to defer to higher management, even in your social lives. Come the revolution you will abolish the managers, come together and form random friendships with people just for the fact that it's fun! I mean, just talk to each other without that awful principle that you've got to have an excuse. And yes, this means you. You ALL do it. People don't even look at each other on the pavements any more - they talk into mobile phones instead, looking with their ears and ignoring what is right in front of their eyes.
Then there was a really odd bit. Some more mood swings, and then a party. At which there was a girl.... and what a girl - whoever I was supposed to be, seeing her was like a religious awakening. I think he was hurt by someone a while ago, and since then whenever he sees a beautiful woman he likes, he experiences a sweet rush, with a bitter aftertaste of fear and pain. This one, the same. The rush was sweeter than normal, as she looked at him, stared - with long dark wavey hair, framing a perfect smiling face with the sort of beautiful eyes that draw you magnetically into them, begging you to stare into them for ever. And would he have liked to do that? Of course, but did he do it? For a while, yes - longer than I sensed would be normal for him, but after a tiny while the fear crept over him and poisoned his social graces, and he left the room, and didn't see her again.
The next few dreams were confusing, lots of trying to get to sleep, which is odd to dream when you're in a dark bed like lead box, because it gets hard to disentangle reality and dream. So either he was trying to get to sleep, and kept being snapped awake by thoughts of this woman, this stunning woman, who fit his idealistic aims so perfectly, who had actually shown some interest in that amazing look in her eyes.... who, he even dared to hope - might be single? Long thoughts, complicated thoughts, powerfully emotional thoughts. Finally sleep, and I awoke, to find myself in bed. But who was I? The central question of Fight Club in a moment of experiential clarity - if you go to sleep, can you wake up an entirely different person....? Well, sometimes I must have been myself, sometimes I was him, and just wrapped deeply up in my long epic dream. But I could never quite tell.... Who are you, when you're dreaming that you're dreaming? I woke up now, and I'm pretty sure I know who I am, as I can see the keyboard which activated about an hour ago (unless I'm dreaming). But the thing is, I've been dreaming so long now, on and off now for nearly 2 weeks, that I find it hard to disengage. I'm up here, alone in space, in a lead box, sheltering from space radiation, and all that matters to me is this burning vision of aesthetic beauty that keeps haunting me. I can finally understand something of you humans. I've had a taste of love. I know it's not love, he knows it - it's just a sort of awe at the moment. But I've never really felt it before, not quite like this (hell, I get horny, like all of my kind), and I finally understand a little of your complication, and your curious self inflicted pain. And I know that despite it, you wouldn't be the same without it - the confusion and the struggle, they're part of the fun - I guess we monkeys miss some things by being straightforward.
A curious thing I noted, was that despite the powerful attraction, he doesn't actually know her name yet. She's a friend of his friends, but there's no direct connection there, so it's awkward. Later, he thinks he might know her name now, but he's not entirely sure. And you know, the feeling is a little altered. He's puzzled by it too - vague senses of something primal - some sense of what was meant in the belief that you had power over something if you knew it's true name. Not literally of course, but it helps to compartmentalise her in his mind (must contain a potential emotional landmine). In that sense, he's finding balance again. Oh hell, I'm not sure this really conveys what I'm after, but it does convey the vague impression of my thoughts (have you read up on Zen yet)? It's all very ephemeral.... which makes it more beautiful, another of these wonderful contradictions.
Finally, in a later dream he learned the conclusion to this story: she's not single. Her radiance dazzled him and her eyes were probably just friendly or admiring of his coat or some such thing. Crushed. This dream is a roller coaster of human emotion, a tangent wave from placid to the height of elated to the asymptote of rejection, all within a week. Now he's just a sine wave, bobbing up and down with the tide as his daily thought stream carries him along. Yet there is still some hope, after all - human relationships, they ebb and flow, they form and they fall apart. But what good is that if he's too scared of falling for her to really get to know her? Humans... simply... fools.
Space monkey, confuzzled and schizoid - signing off and hoping wistfully of looking into those eyes again.
To sleep, perchance - to dream?
What the fuck was that!
Am I dead!?
No, hang on. Get a grip.
I'm in a lead lined box, and cannot see or hear.
Ah.....
It's time to update the journal! Of course.... I fixed up a kind of glow in the dark keyboard, so that periodically I could wake from slumber and type something. It's more of a personal dream diary though. You see, all that radiation is stimulating the hallucinatory centres of my brain, and so whilst I am sedated, I'm dreaming of being a human man, trapped in an academic suburban life, feeling almost as distant from the human race as I am. Jeeez. It was strange.... Here is what I do remember, although it might be fragmentary. I kept thinking I was a solar physics student, measuring flares and solar stuff all day in a darkened room. I guess it's pretty clear where those thoughts came from in my daily life, given that I spent several days in nervous paranoia watching the radiation meters climb ever higher, before finally taking my drastic lead lined sleep. But then there were other bits of the life, late night trips to fast food emporia, to consume victuals. Games of badminton. Mood swings - the sedatives aren't really sure if they're uppers or downers I expect, actually, I think they're epilepsy medications really, I just found them in a bag that someone left on board before the launch. They knock me out though, which is the crucial thing.
Yeah, where was I.
Hmmmm. It was gloomy, and dull for the most part, lots of rain and a garish hue of sodium yellow on wet roads. Disenchantment was like a virus there, pervading every core. People, so many people, all living together, yet so causally disconnected from one another. I swear, you all know each other, but you go through so many middlemen to do it, I guess you're true children of the eighties, always looking to defer to higher management, even in your social lives. Come the revolution you will abolish the managers, come together and form random friendships with people just for the fact that it's fun! I mean, just talk to each other without that awful principle that you've got to have an excuse. And yes, this means you. You ALL do it. People don't even look at each other on the pavements any more - they talk into mobile phones instead, looking with their ears and ignoring what is right in front of their eyes.
Then there was a really odd bit. Some more mood swings, and then a party. At which there was a girl.... and what a girl - whoever I was supposed to be, seeing her was like a religious awakening. I think he was hurt by someone a while ago, and since then whenever he sees a beautiful woman he likes, he experiences a sweet rush, with a bitter aftertaste of fear and pain. This one, the same. The rush was sweeter than normal, as she looked at him, stared - with long dark wavey hair, framing a perfect smiling face with the sort of beautiful eyes that draw you magnetically into them, begging you to stare into them for ever. And would he have liked to do that? Of course, but did he do it? For a while, yes - longer than I sensed would be normal for him, but after a tiny while the fear crept over him and poisoned his social graces, and he left the room, and didn't see her again.
The next few dreams were confusing, lots of trying to get to sleep, which is odd to dream when you're in a dark bed like lead box, because it gets hard to disentangle reality and dream. So either he was trying to get to sleep, and kept being snapped awake by thoughts of this woman, this stunning woman, who fit his idealistic aims so perfectly, who had actually shown some interest in that amazing look in her eyes.... who, he even dared to hope - might be single? Long thoughts, complicated thoughts, powerfully emotional thoughts. Finally sleep, and I awoke, to find myself in bed. But who was I? The central question of Fight Club in a moment of experiential clarity - if you go to sleep, can you wake up an entirely different person....? Well, sometimes I must have been myself, sometimes I was him, and just wrapped deeply up in my long epic dream. But I could never quite tell.... Who are you, when you're dreaming that you're dreaming? I woke up now, and I'm pretty sure I know who I am, as I can see the keyboard which activated about an hour ago (unless I'm dreaming). But the thing is, I've been dreaming so long now, on and off now for nearly 2 weeks, that I find it hard to disengage. I'm up here, alone in space, in a lead box, sheltering from space radiation, and all that matters to me is this burning vision of aesthetic beauty that keeps haunting me. I can finally understand something of you humans. I've had a taste of love. I know it's not love, he knows it - it's just a sort of awe at the moment. But I've never really felt it before, not quite like this (hell, I get horny, like all of my kind), and I finally understand a little of your complication, and your curious self inflicted pain. And I know that despite it, you wouldn't be the same without it - the confusion and the struggle, they're part of the fun - I guess we monkeys miss some things by being straightforward.
A curious thing I noted, was that despite the powerful attraction, he doesn't actually know her name yet. She's a friend of his friends, but there's no direct connection there, so it's awkward. Later, he thinks he might know her name now, but he's not entirely sure. And you know, the feeling is a little altered. He's puzzled by it too - vague senses of something primal - some sense of what was meant in the belief that you had power over something if you knew it's true name. Not literally of course, but it helps to compartmentalise her in his mind (must contain a potential emotional landmine). In that sense, he's finding balance again. Oh hell, I'm not sure this really conveys what I'm after, but it does convey the vague impression of my thoughts (have you read up on Zen yet)? It's all very ephemeral.... which makes it more beautiful, another of these wonderful contradictions.
Finally, in a later dream he learned the conclusion to this story: she's not single. Her radiance dazzled him and her eyes were probably just friendly or admiring of his coat or some such thing. Crushed. This dream is a roller coaster of human emotion, a tangent wave from placid to the height of elated to the asymptote of rejection, all within a week. Now he's just a sine wave, bobbing up and down with the tide as his daily thought stream carries him along. Yet there is still some hope, after all - human relationships, they ebb and flow, they form and they fall apart. But what good is that if he's too scared of falling for her to really get to know her? Humans... simply... fools.
Space monkey, confuzzled and schizoid - signing off and hoping wistfully of looking into those eyes again.
To sleep, perchance - to dream?