# Prepare your epitaph and eulogy



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

mimesis said:


> Just something to reflect upon. Arguably, regret can make it difficult to accept life. But does it make death any easier to accept?


I don't know that absolving regrets would make death easier to accept, and I couldn't tell you if I'll ever accept death. Not fully, at least. Am I scared? I'm scared. I mean, I can say, yes, I will die (or who knows, maybe I'm immortal). I may talk about it, I may dwell on it, even joke about it, but does that make it any easier to accept? What's weird is that even the oldest person on the planet is a child in the eyes of death. What if the most confident, most virtuous and thoughtful person, quietly spending his whole life quietly accepting that he will die, at the moment of reaching the precipice, suddenly panics? Even Christ himself, saint throughout his life, at the moment of his death, doubted. His final words were not of calm reassurance, but of doubt:




InmarBergmansWinterLight said:


> Algot Frövik, Sexton: The passion of Christ, his suffering... Wouldn't you say the focus on his suffering is all wrong?
> 
> 
> Tomas Ericsson, Pastor: What do you mean?
> ...


And not God as a being, but as a belief or a way of life—how you've lived your life, simply speaking. Could be enneagram fixations, like the 7's desire to move and move, the 9's to numb, etc.

I read somewhere that the Buddhists appreciate humor and use it as an analogy for enlightenment... that enlightenment was not so much a destination as a moment, just as "getting" a joke requires that flashbulb insight of "aha!" I've got it. And perhaps... this is why so much music and art talks about "The Light." Because just as music works in opposition of God's Silence (i.e., Gospel) or more simply, silence itself, does not the light illuminate the darkness? This is nothing profound, of course, but I'm always amazed at how often I'm looking for something, like my wallet or whatever, and there it is, right under my nose. Not always, of course, but often.









and for @mushr00m... is not music akin to a lantern to light the way? Perhaps it may not point the direction, but it can help you see what is right before you (if does for me, anyways).





But as far as regrets go... I mean, I think the potential for regrets is always there. Even if you try to fix one, go down one road, you are giving up the opportunity (at least in that moment) to take other roads. But... I think one can get sick of being in a rut for instance, stuck in the mud and stagnant, so perhaps movement can be a good change of pace.

So I don't see something like The Pretender as a criticism of working 9-5 _per se_, but finding solace and peace amidst that. Even if it's temporary.


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## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

hal0hal0 said:


> I don't know that absolving regrets would make death easier to accept, and I couldn't tell you if I'll ever accept death. Not fully, at least. Am I scared? I'm scared. I mean, I can say, yes, I will die (or who knows, maybe I'm immortal). I may talk about it, I may dwell on it, even joke about it, but does that make it any easier to accept? What's weird is that even the oldest person on the planet is a child in the eyes of death. What if the most confident, most virtuous and thoughtful person, quietly spending his whole life quietly accepting that he will die, at the moment of reaching the precipice, suddenly panics? Even Christ himself, saint throughout his life, at the moment of his death, doubted. His final words were not of calm reassurance, but of doubt:
> 
> And not God as a being, but as a belief or a way of life—how you've lived your life, simply speaking. Could be enneagram fixations, like the 7's desire to move and move, the 9's to numb, etc.
> 
> I read somewhere that the Buddhists appreciate humor and use it as an analogy for enlightenment... that enlightenment was not so much a destination as a moment, just as "getting" a joke requires that flashbulb insight of "aha!" I've got it. And perhaps... this is why so much music and art talks about "The Light." Because just as music works in opposition of God's Silence (i.e., Gospel) or more simply, silence itself, does not the light illuminate the darkness? This is nothing profound, of course, but I'm always amazed at how often I'm looking for something, like my wallet or whatever, and there it is, right under my nose. Not always, of course, but often.


I like those thoughts. 

When a dear friend of mine died of cancer, he had ample time to prepare his own funeral. Probably the best funeral after party I ever had. There was deep sadness but also a feeling of love, gratitude and privilege and joy. So yeah, happy in a weird way. That was how he hoped it would be, and how he felt about it himself. The last song at the funeral ceremony, after a couple of melancholic tracks from Dead can Dance, the ceremony ended with the Stones






Still, before I met him, about 10 years before, when I was 22, I didn't want to get older than 40. At the time I dreaded ending up like a nobody, or over the hill. The fact that this doesn't concern me any longer, I thank much to the benefits of meditation, which this friend had taught me. Unfortunately he himself died at 36.


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## Golden Rose (Jun 5, 2014)

*Game over. Respawning in 3.... 2... 1..*

or

*Brb just checking something*

or

*She was never into Necrophilia but if you're hot, she'll make an exception*

Basically something cheeky, funny and unusual. I'm an obnoxious cunt and proud, I don't need fake heartfelt in memoriam, I'd rather have something special because of me not because I asked for it or made a big deal about (wanting to) being a big deal.


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

mimesis said:


> When a dear friend of mine died of cancer, he had ample time to prepare his own funeral. Probably the best funeral after party I ever had. There was deep sadness but also a feeling of love, gratitude and privilege and joy. So yeah, happy in a weird way. That was how he hoped it would be, and how he felt about it himself. The last song at the funeral ceremony, after a couple of melancholic tracks from Dead can Dance, the ceremony ended with the Stones
> 
> Still, before I met him, about 10 years before, when I was 22, I didn't want to get older than 40. At the time I dreaded ending up like a nobody, or over the hill. The fact that this doesn't concern me any longer, I thank much to the benefits of meditation, which this friend had taught me. Unfortunately he himself died at 36.


Very interesting. I think I had similar thoughts:

"I'll die at 16,"
and when 16 came around:
"I'll die at 20,"
and when 20 came:
"23 will be my last day on earth,"
And when that number rolled around,
Dammit all, then 25 will be my day.
And so on."

It's like constantly pressing the snooze button. Maybe the next one. Maybe the next one. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe. Maybe never. Maybe now. I couldn't say.

I've said before that Late for the Sky is my favorite Browne record (TBH, I can get tired of most every other Jackson Browne album very quickly, but not that one):






The words had all been spoken
And somehow the feeling still wasn't right
And still we continued on through the night
Tracing our steps from the beginning
Until they vanished into the air
Trying to understand how our lives has led us there

Looking hard into your eyes
There was nobody I'd ever known
Such an empty surprise to feel so alone

Now for me some words come easy
But I know that they don't mean that much
Compared with the things that are said when lovers touch
You never knew what I loved in you
I don't know what you loved in me
Maybe the picture of somebody you were hoping I might be

*Awake again I can't pretend and I know I'm alone*
And close to the end of the feeling we've known

How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been dreaming I could make it right
If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might
To be the one you need

Awake again I can't pretend and I know I'm alone
And close to the end of the feeling we've known

How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been running for that morning flight
Through the whispered promises and the changing light
Of the bed where we both lie
Late for the sky

At any rate, I am glad your friend was a part of your life; he sounds like a great person.


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## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

Alright, so I said I'd respond with a little more introspection, but well, of course, that's asking for a DERAIL, though everyone's thoughts are kind of scattered too so maybe it isn't that. If you think the opposite though just know it's all your fault XD We could have left this at Space Jam.



hal0hal0 said:


> I mean, I can say, yes, I will die (*or who knows, maybe I'm immortal*).


The bolded - right? I mean, have you died that you know of? Can you be sure?

You crack me up when you bring stuff like that up too, because it's where my mind tends to go. When I voice these thoughts I usually get "only crazy people think like that" sentiments along with imploring looks that are just kind of dropped with oh. Yeas.

I don't think I'm crazy though. It's not like I necessarily believe that I can literally physically escape death with some inherent ability lacking in the majority of humankind (though I do have a friend who suffers from a bipolar disorder and tells me fascinating stories about how he's jumped off of roofs and crazy shiz during manic highs unscathed from the adrenaline rush somehow or who knows). I do wonder if I've made contact with other planes of existence in this lifetime where physicality works differently (is it really as simple as mind over matter?) We've talked about dimensions being more spatial than linear in potentiality - so are we so sure that these little port keys, to make a necessary HP reference, don't exist in our current universe? Do you have to literally die to experience the afterlife? It's like that Cabin in the Woods movie (Joss Whedon) that I brought up a while ago, on the Legends thread I think, where the group of kids, each representing an archetype, drove into a separate dimension, which they were then locked into, unaware.

We've talked about Lost recently, and there's a similar theme there too. I love the line in the first season when they get to the island and Charlie asks, all in heightened perception (they "hear the numbers" <thinking there's something metaphorical to that) "Where are we?!" (To make another reference to fiction - Frodo leaving the Shire was an afterlife, in a way).






I've told you that I think that they were sort of playing with the meshing of Eastern and Western thought in that show (Dharma initiative?) 



hal0hal0 said:


> I read somewhere that the Buddhists appreciate humor and use it as an analogy for enlightenment... that enlightenment was not so much a destination as a moment, just as "getting" a joke requires that flashbulb insight of "aha!" I've got it.


I read a Buddhist quote once that was something like "Every morning we're born again." (I got "The Practical Neuroscience of Buddha's Brain" for Christmas too, so I'm sure I'll let you in on thoughts about that after I get around to reading it). Maybe I died in my sleep last night in the dimension that I'd been existing in previously and everyone is mourning me as we speak in that one and I'll never know. How would I be "told" if this were the truth or not too? By who? Is it like you can ask for a badge or something like you would a cop? (Do you know what those would look like? I don't )

I think that there's a lot to be said for instinct and essence. Though - where does instinct really come from? Jung's collective unconscious theory gets into that. Does enough cohesive information create an energetic code on our DNA or something? (<Well, it doesn't get into specifically that, but it's a conjoining theory). How is information deemed information? I think that's more where you enter into Western thought. It tends to hone in on the microcosm, whereas I think that Eastern idealogy has settled into the macrocosm of possibility within reality (there isn't the same distinction between life and the afterlife). That's where I don't totally agree with Eastern thought though without the Western to balance it, because it can lack an anchor without inspection (we were getting into this on that other thread - but then it was more in regards to progression and conservatism).

It's interesting that you quoted Winter Light, because I watched that back to back with Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly, and if Winter Light is about God's silence, Through a Glass Darkly is about it's menacing, unrelenting presence. Marie Louise von Franz told a story about a patient that was similar to the main character's in her book about Feminine Individuation in Fairy Tales (I believe...) and this woman was haunted by hallucinations of a God like figure who wanted to hunt and rape her. (In the movie I think it was a spider). 










You were curious about my thoughts on that film - when I went through my dissociative disorder it wasn't like I was literally breaking from reality and having visions, it was like observable objective facts were that highly synchronistic things were happening (with names, clients, events, messages, electronic mediums, media, etc). Even my sister noticed it after a while and accused me of maybe being a medium (I think I told you this, lol - it was the kind of thing though that you could only really observe over time, because isolated stories or events can more be easily explained away as coincidence). If I didn't have this site and other people (notably, though not limited to, other Ni and Ne doms with odd experiences usually attributed to the spiritual as well, and yourself, Mr. hal0hal0 ) to talk to I'm not sure I'd have recovered from the panic attacks that resulted, because it made it impossible to think on a "normal" level of consciousness where you can kind of just accept the moment as something recognizable. 

Detaching was a method of protecting myself a bit. Do you remember, for example, when you started the Puer Aeternus thread? It was either you or @mimesis who brought up the story of Zeus and Semele where he hit her with a tiny lightning bolt to prove his presence, and she couldn't handle it and died. A few hours later, when I pulled up the thread on my phone, when I was supposed to be flying out West, I got delayed because my plane had been hit by lightning. (That's really one of the less literal of the synchronistic stories too, lol).

How important do I really think I am when processing information like that? To entertain the thought that it's significant is entertaining a slew of other thoughts that the thought police generally keep in the restricted section of the library under the category of narcissism. The idea is that we'd like to think we are, right? So what when a request for this is honored? Yes, Semele, Zeus himself wants to get in your pants. You are remembered in his spank bank, you are special, and the time for the otherworldly is now. In this world. The door has been opened. If Christ had a crisis due to feeling that his holy identity had been revoked, she likely had one feeling that her humbleness had been. (To be somewhat blasphemous but not meaning to be disrespectful - it's kind of like a washed up child star crisis vs. the crisis of someone propelled to fame (or worse, and perhaps more fitting - infamy) overnight).

Since you just brought up McLuhan on a thread about self identity, this quote seems relevant to thoughts I've been having:










Just like in dreams, you begin to feel like you're kind of existing in third person within your own life without an identity to attach to (especially if you've had a strong pre-existing sense of self - but, idk, maybe I'm making that part up). I remember you sent me a video a long time ago that was extremely touching for me. It was a dude in isolation who kept checking his inbox to find a lack of messages. Then he pulled out a picture album in nostalgia and an email finally came through along the lines of that someone who cared about him was reaching out. 

I think I said something in response like that I tend to notice that life works like this energetically (I am the Psychic Cat Lady, right? Thank for that by the way XD), but having just broken down the bones between objectivity and subjectivity the other night, and also remembering a conversation we had about projection vs. introjection - I can see how nostalgia helps to ground us in the present when we feel that we're floating otherwise, on a deeper level. Projection isn't always a nasty word haha (not that you don't agree). It's a mirror, an objective measure of learning where we stand with others. Gawd, wait a minute, what am I saying here and how does it relate. Movie projectors fit into it too (you've said your nostalgia is largely for memories created by film). I'll probably figure it out later  



hal0hal0 said:


> This is not the image that defines the picture, however, nor is it the one that bothers me the most. Rather, it is in the final shot of the picture, in which the joy of whisking the bride away, a tale of rebellious youth and the joy of that triumph fades, leaving the question:
> 
> *Now what?*


So the After Hours that I REALLY should have included wasn't the one that I did or the one I said I was thinking of, but this one - which actually talks about this scene from The Graduate (I think this is it's newest episode too  Unless you've already seen it and it aided in your thoughts in the OP).

I have one for every occasion lately it seems XD I feel like it's a shtick that's getting half (or totally) old, but damn it, I love their wisdom  Why do we have to limit getting that from the boring guys like Yoda?






The first bit is them calling all large romantic gestures creepy, which, I don't know, it really depends on the situation, lol, but it starts to seem especially relevant when they get into talking about Twilight and Romeo and Juliet. They say that movies like this have to be about fourteen and fifteen year olds because that's the only part of your life where everything is so high stakes that you feel so dramatically about love. Then they call them short sighted assholes, hahaha, since it all just usually ends like the Graduate scene if not in death or suicide.

What when you've become SO far sighted though that being a bit short sighted feels like it's own wisdom? So, true kinda depressing story - I started our legendary Legends thread a couple years ago because I was almost totally resigned to nihilism. I wasn't even suicidal, just more - fine with death. It's been a good run. I think I figured I'd either find some direction on a scale that felt hopefully meaningful even if completely absurd (which was pretty much the only option left for feeling that anything was meaningful) or leave Something behind since we were getting into esoteric subject matter. 

I was making my peace with God (though that more led to it's opposite, lol, as that summer opened up that bag of dissociative worms and what the fuck experiences) and leaving a virtual note in the process. I felt more like an electronic man (McLuhan) at that point anyway since digital fun makes my brain light up more than watching other people play on their phones or having them break plans on me constantly - seemed the place to put a fingerprint (plus - there's just something more...immortal about the internet, isn't there? Unless we can lose it in a fire, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that. Actually - I have no clue how the internet works lol).










(^ I feel like that pic somehow fits the mood of what I'm talking about too lol. Random).

Kind of a tangent but not really - I've been disappointed with the last few games I've played on the Mafia forum in that they felt like they got somewhat abandoned by a number of players about halfway through for the next game. Maybe this is a seven thing of finally digging in my heels or something but it's been driving me crazy. NO. I don't care if this is just a stupid game on the internet. I will try to fight you (not you, personally, but, like, other players) so hard and make it feel relevant LOL. I've never been a particularly competitive person until recently, and now it's the little day to day things that I especially would have let go before. 

Like if Buddhists believe in settling in, I'm there. l could be dead you could be dead we could all be dreaming. I might have secretly died in a disappearing Malaysia airline type deal the last time I flew and had my memory of it erased because I got to be one of the "good" people allowed to exist in the afterlife without suffering. My family might not have a body to do anything with. Depending on who you ask this is either enlightenment or the beginnings of schizophrenia lol, but yea, the regrets bit. Posting this and then more thoughts on that.

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## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> But as far as regrets go... I mean, I think the potential for regrets is always there. Even if you try to fix one, go down one road, you are giving up the opportunity (at least in that moment) to take other roads. But... I think one can get sick of being in a rut for instance, stuck in the mud and stagnant, so perhaps movement can be a good change of pace.


I'm stuck in a rut too, and I get angry at myself sometimes for letting that happen to the momentum in my life, but I don't regret it. Any momentum I make in the future will feel less...tired? At least that's the hope, lol.

This popped into my Pinterest the other day and I don't know why it made me laugh so hard XD It seems relevant though given that they're both immortal.










Placing relevance in the wisdom of fourteen year olds at thirty is probably a helpful way to avoid ruts later in life. Frantically trying to find my way out of this one has been one of those moth/cocoon type deals you were talking about too 

I think I sent this video to you a while ago, but it seems fitting here also. 

Show your hands
If you need a new coat of paint
If your bones are now heavy things
Like anchors hidden somewhere 'neath your skin

Or if your head's just an empty box
If your heart has become spare parts
If your days are now just something you must bear

Well, oh, it seems you're a lot like me
You dug yourself into places
You never thought you would be
But don't you fret, and don't you mind
The only constant is change
And you never know what you'll find

Yeah, tomorrow I might wake up nice and clean
And I might believe the things I said I didn't mean
And this might turn and wind up just the way we'd dreamed
And I might become the things I swore I'd always be

Well, we're always on our way
We're on our way
Well, we're always on our way
We're on our way
Well, we're always on our way
We're on our way
Well, we're always on our way
We're on our way ​





My favorite shot is 1:50 - 1:55. The old man looks confused and threatened, and then they pull to the care free young dude who's completely oblivious. There's something bittersweet to it.

You know what I think it was with the black cat picture I just posted that felt associated? Cats were seen as _familiars _ for witches and wizards. The relevance of that name never really hit me until now. I like the idea that these familiars exist for us in our life when change starts to feel like a storm. For me I think it's the concept of the archetype (conservative of others in a very basic sense). Breaking that down to it's most fundamental, you basically have Adam and Eve. Man and woman. Which is why I think I get so confused when we can't agree upon what this means (gender, sexuality, biology?) 

I think I told you a while ago though that I wonder if JK Rowling's term Animagus was an attempt at bridging the Anima and Animus. She had it associated with animal energy too. Maybe the Native Americans were on to something with placing so much emphasis on the tradition of believing in animal totems. Maybe I should be buried or cremated with my cat (yes, Jophie , I saw your PM btw and I'll respond soon) - like an Egyptian coins over the eyes type ritual (I think that was the Egyptians?)

Maybe that image from the Graduate just needs updating. Something to spice it up. I mentioned the Cabin in the Woods movie - it's funny, because the ending is kind of similar in it's well, that was intense, so now what? Only they raised the bar with the intensity first and there's drugs hahaha.















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## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

@_Veggie_

That books sounds interesting, I scrolled through a powerpoint presentation of the author. 

Anyway, I've gathered some mildly related bits and scraps on Dionysos, - the 'dying God' who was born twice, which may be interesting from the perspective of type 7. 










Zeus and Semele 




Friedrick Nietzsche said:


> Dionysic stirring arise either through the influence of those narcotic potions of which all primitive races speak in their hymns, or through the powerful approach of spring, which penetrates with joy the whole frame of nature. So stirred the individual forgets himself completely... for a brief moment we become ourselves, the primal Being, and we experience its insatiable hunger for existence. Now we see the struggle, the pain, the destruction of appearances, as necessary, because of the constant proliferation of forms pushing into life, because of the extravagant fecundity of the world will. We feel the furious prodding of this travail in the very moment in which we become one with the immense lust for life and are made aware of the eternity and indestructibility of that lust.
> 
> Nietzsche's first book was published in 1872:The Birth of Tragedy, Out of the Spirit of Music (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik) views non-rational forces as residing at the foundation of all creativity and of reality itself, identified a strongly instinctual, wild, amoral, "Dionysian" energy within pre-Socratic Greek culture as an essentially creative and healthy force. Surveying the history of Western culture since the time of the Greeks, Nietzsche lamented over how this "Dionysian," creative energy had been submerged and weakened as it became overshadowed by the "Apollonian" forces of logical order and stiff sobriety. He concluded that European culture since the time of Socrates had remained one-sidedly Apollonian and relatively unhealthy.





Dionysian Mysteries said:


> The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques (like dance and music) to remove inhibitions and social constraints, liberating the individual to return to a natural state. It also provided some liberation for those marginalized by Greek society: women, slaves and foreigners. In their final phase the Mysteries shifted their emphasis from a chthonic, underworld orientation to a transcendental, mystical one, with Dionysus changing his nature accordingly (similar to the change in the cult of Shiva). (...)
> 
> In intoxication, physical or spiritual, the initiate recovers an intensity of feeling which prudence had destroyed; he finds the world full of delight and beauty, and his imagination is suddenly :liberated from the prison of everyday preoccupations. The Bacchic ritual produced what was called 'enthusiasm', which means etymologically having the god enter the worshipper, who believed :that he became one with the god".
> Dionysian Mysteries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





CG Jung said:


> In addition to transcendence experienced through ritual, a second transcendence of life is described as a spontaneous, ecstatic or visionary experience of mystery without the aid of ritual. Nietzsche's Noontide Vision is discussed as a classic example of this type of transformation: in the myth of Dionysus-Zagreus, who was dismembered and returned to life, the Deity appears in the noon hour, sacred to Pan; Nietzche's reaction is as though he had been present at a ritual. It is cautioned that these are more esthetic forms of experience, like dreams which have no lasting effect on the dreamer, and that they must be distinguished from those visions which involve permanent change in the individual.
> 
> CW v. 9.1: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (p. 118 Collected Works of C.G. Jung





Elixir of Life said:


> The ancient Greeks used wine in moderation and also the potion ergot (fermented barley or rye) to experience this state which they called “ekstasis” (now called ecstasy) which means “standing outside of oneself ” or no longer static but rather in an e-motive state. At the Temple of Eleusis near Athens many thousands of ancient pilgrims performed the sacred rituals called “The Mysteries of Eleusis”. The essence of these rituals was to experience being happy rather than “pursuing happiness”. The “pursuit” of happiness essentially kills any possibility of true happiness. Enthusiasm is in a state of presence…not in the future.
> 
> Throughout history there have been periods of time and/or particular cultures in which enthusiasm has flourished. In addition to the ancient Greeks mentioned above, other examples include the Gnostics (from about 100 A.D. to 700 A.D.), the Alchemists (from about 100 A.D. to 1200 A.D.), the Troubadours (from about 700 A.D. to 1300 A.D.), the Sufis (from about 600 A.D. to the present) and the New Age movement of this present era.
> Enthusiasm | Ottawa Hypnosis





The Art of Ecstasy said:


> Then, in 2001, I went to Norway with my family, as we do every year, usually we go cross-country skiiing but this year, fatefully, on the very first morning, I followed my cousins down the black slope of a mountain called Valsfjell. The visibility wasn’t very good, and I’m not a very good skiier, and I crashed through the fence on the side of the slope, fell thirty feet, broke my leg and three vertebrae, and knocked myself unconscious. When I awoke, I saw a bright white light, and I felt filled with love. I had a sudden deep sense that there was something in me, in all of us, that can’t be broken, that can’t be damaged. I felt that what had caused all my suffering was not actually some chemical dysfunction in my brain, it was my belief that I was damaged. I could let go of this belief, and trust in my soul, in what the philosopher Epictetus called the God within. (...)
> 
> 
> 
> ...





Epiphany said:


> In Wikipedia he is described as “the god of epiphany, - the god that comes”. I know they were totally unaware of the humour of this statement, but this is wrong, because he is actually the god who doesn’t come, because the principal mechanism by which Dionysios achieved spiritual experiences, was kundalini energy generated by sexual stimulation – or its various equivalents.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> Kind of a tangent but not really - *I've been disappointed with the last few games I've played on the Mafia forum in that they felt like they got somewhat abandoned by a number of players about halfway through for the next game. Maybe this is a seven thing of finally digging in my heels or something but it's been driving me crazy*. NO. I don't care if this is just a stupid game on the internet. I will try to fight you (not you, personally, but, like, other players) so hard and make it feel relevant LOL. I've never been a particularly competitive person until recently, and now it's the little day to day things that I especially would have let go before.


Naranjo does describe the Sx 7 as the most "extraterrestrial" of the 7s, which I think refers to how the 7 general fixation upon pleasurable experiences, when coupled with the Sx instinct, results in "overshooting" the mark, so the speak—as an ideal seeker, it is so fixated upon a better experience, that it may ultimately be disappointed with every present one. Imagine trying to use a ICBM to get to the neighbor's house. Specifically, the 7, as an ideal-seeker, seeks "that which is better than my present circumstance." 

I think this is echoed in what @mimesis posted about Dionysian-Apollonian dyad, which you have talked about before. More specifically, it relates to the gap between the 7's Holy Idea and its ego, specifically, the ego-fixation that causes the 7 to obsess and search for a particular experience, to the point of losing contact with a part of itself or failing to actually remain present. The Fauvre's general advice to the 471 triad, for instance, is to "see the perfection that is, rather than the perfection of what could be." 










For type 7


RisoHudson said:


> Holy Idea: _Holy Wisdom, Holy Work, Holy Plan_ Recognizing that, in this very moment, the Divine Plan is unfolding perfectly, is Holy Wisdom. When we are present, we see that there really is a Divine Plan, and that it is happening right now. The ego's desires to steer reality in preferred directions is seen through: we know that in this moment, we are having the optimal experience for our souls to have.
> We start to understand that consciously participating in the miraculous unfolding of reality is the Holy Work, and it is the greatest source of satisfaction that we can have. Satisfaction is not to be found in having a particular experience. Rather, it is the quality of our awareness and presence in any experience that gives it its satisfying quality. Knowing in our souls that we are part of the Holy Plan fills the heart with joy. We do not need to plan or anticipate or figure out where we are going or how we are getting there. The pleasure is in the journey itself. We do not necessarily know our destination, but we know that the closer we get, the more our heart is illuminated.


The ideal 7 is the joie de vivre Dionysian... drunk on the experience of life. It may be the simplest of experiences, but the archetypal 7 appears as that joyous sort of hedonism; pleasure incarnate, so the speak. 

The issue, I think, is that the Vice gives the illusion of achieving the Holy Idea; gluttony is eating past the point of satiety—to excess. It becomes on autopilot, where the 7 may become the slave to its idealization of experience, rather than "flow" in a mindful way or quite simply, enjoy the experience itself. In a sense, I wonder if the 7 is not the most emblematic of "being mindful of being mindful," but I think all types struggle having this disconnect with reality in one way or another.

This is something that I think ideal-seekers in particular are attuned (or rather, not attuned, lol) to:






Cronenberg's Crash is arguably one of the finest explorations of the Sx instinct, which constant pushes the envelope into newer territory; an exciting experience, by necessity, is a foreign or unfamiliar one, but that boundary is constantly moving. Thus, an experience once pleasurable becomes numbing, mundane or uninteresting. It loses its potency. This is perhaps why the French refer to orgasm as "la petit mort."... the highest acme plummets to the lowest of nadirs; it is quite literally a crash to reality from the high of experience.





Veggie said:


> I don't think I'm crazy though. It's not like I necessarily believe that I can literally physically escape death with some inherent ability lacking in the majority of humankind (though I do have a friend who suffers from a bipolar disorder and tells me fascinating stories about how he's jumped off of roofs and crazy shiz during manic highs unscathed from the adrenaline rush somehow or who knows). I do wonder if I've made contact with other planes of existence in this lifetime where physicality works differently (is it really as simple as mind over matter?) We've talked about dimensions being more spatial than linear in potentiality - *so are we so sure that these little port keys, to make a necessary HP reference, don't exist in our current universe?* Do you have to literally die to experience the afterlife? It's like that Cabin in the Woods movie (Joss Whedon) that I brought up a while ago, on the Legends thread I think, where the group of kids, each representing an archetype, drove into a separate dimension, which they were then locked into, unaware.
> 
> I read a Buddhist quote once that was something like "Every morning we're born again." (I got "The Practical Neuroscience of Buddha's Brain" for Christmas too, so I'm sure I'll let you in on thoughts about that after I get around to reading it). Maybe I died in my sleep last night in the dimension that I'd been existing in previously and everyone is mourning me as we speak in that one and I'll never know. How would I be "told" if this were the truth or not too? By who? Is it like you can ask for a badge or something like you would a cop? (Do you know what those would look like? I don't )


Have you heard of the games Portal and Portal 2? You awaken in a mysterious facility that clearly, brings to mind 1984, Cube, Brave New World dystopias and the goal is to escape. You are given this portal gun that shoots orange and blue energy (i.e., pairs of opposites, like yin-yang... orange and blue are color opposites as well) that creates a bridge or portal between the two spots. It's best to just see it in action...






That opening part brings to mind the Bioshock directive: "Would you kindly..." Because while games offer the greatest sense of freedom, they are ultimately bound to the laws of the game, and thus, give the illusion of freedom and choice... the physics engine creates its own laws, just as our world is governed by the gravitational, electromagnetic, strong and weak forces.

Another terrific example: The Stanley Parable:

Ugh, I really shouldn't show a video of this, because you can't really experience it through a video. It's not the same. The point is that the game reacts to your choices and provides a commentary. Ultimately, it's all scripted, but the world sets things up in such a clever way... through having a keen understanding of how a player will respond to its environment. I read an article a while ago that anyone who plays a video game will attempt, usually, to test the limits of that game... leap off a cliff to see what happens, massacre everyone (i.e., Grand Theft Auto), etc.:






^In The Stanley Parable, you can even just stand in the starting room and that's one of the game's ending.


----------



## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

hal0hal0 said:


> Cronenberg's Crash is arguably one of the finest explorations of the Sx instinct, which constant pushes the envelope into newer territory; an exciting experience, by necessity, is a foreign or unfamiliar one, but that boundary is constantly moving. Thus, an experience once pleasurable becomes numbing, mundane or uninteresting. It loses its potency. This is perhaps why the French refer to orgasm as "la petit mort."... the highest acme plummets to the lowest of nadirs; it is quite literally a crash to reality from the high of experience.



I agree. Perhaps Sx/Sp more accurately? I noticed that you can see the whole movie at Youtube (at this moment that is). So much better than the 2004 Crash which won 3 oscars, in fact I've forgotten what it was about. :tongue:









Georges Bataille said:


> *2. La Petite Mort
> *
> “What we desire is to bring into a world founded on discontinuity all the continuity such a world can contain.”
> 
> ...


----------



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> So the After Hours that I REALLY should have included wasn't the one that I did or the one I said I was thinking of, but this one - which actually talks about this scene from The Graduate (I think this is it's newest episode too  Unless you've already seen it and it aided in your thoughts in the OP).
> 
> I have one for every occasion lately it seems XD I feel like it's a shtick that's getting half (or totally) old, but damn it, I love their wisdom  Why do we have to limit getting that from the boring guys like Yoda?


Nah, I always enjoy After Hours videos. And I hadn't seen that one before you posted it. I think we all have our stock inspirations that we like to bring up (for me it is usually Kieslowski and Bergman). You've talked before about how Sx can appear Sp, which reminds me that The Double Life of Veronique is essentially that. I have often called it "the most intimate movie ever made" even though much of it is the main character in isolation, staring through a glass marble, seeing your double. 

The Polish Weronika chooses her career (Sx) and dies of a heart attack, while the French Veronique chooses to withdraw within herself





(This scene shows Veronique seeing a puppet show at the school where she teaches; the puppet show depicts a ballerina/performer living and dying by her passion [a la The Red Shoes], which mirrors that of her "double" Weronika, who, unbeknownst to her, had earlier died as well).

You've talked about lifelines before, specifically, the red line. What context was that again? I've told you before that Kieslowski is likely INXJ, because everything is connected or meaningful. The string she wraps around her finger has been likened to an EKG line (Kieslowski himself would die of a heart attack). 





^Uh... btw, the intertitle going "HE FLASHES HIS DICK" isn't in the movie, :laughing:. But The Double Life of Veronique will randomly toss in those "did I just see that?" moments.



mimesis said:


> I agree. Perhaps Sx/Sp more accurately? I noticed that you can see the whole movie at Youtube (at this moment that is).


Youtube is so corrupt (or lazy). They will have videos flagged for copyright infringement using like 5 seconds of a song, but they won't flag a whole movie... the videos they target tend to be the popular ones, and it seems to me they (or the copyright owners... pretty much NEVER the actual artist of the song) are taking advantage of the ad revenue from popular youtubers (i.e., "you used 5 seconds of my song, therefore I deserve a cut of the action.").



mimesis said:


> So much better than the 2004 Crash which won 3 oscars, in fact I've forgotten what it was about.


LMAO, when Cronenberg was interviewed on what he thought of the 2005 Oscar-bait Crash using the same title as his picture, he said he found it "annoying as hell." I could go into a thousand reasons why I detest Crash (2005), but I think it's incredibly heavy-handed in portraying racial tensions, schmaltz factors that totally pull their punches in an attempt to be "brave" but not upset people (i.e., "shooting" the little girl, but no worries, they were actually blanks!; Rich white woman feels victimized by having a Mexican repairman simply be in her house; half-black woman gets felt up by a cop but then gets saved by that very same cop later on—it's like WTF???). It has what I call a "see spot run" simplicity to it and it feels strangely cold, uninspired and detached to me, like there wasn't any actual artistic inspiration or passion for it (to the point that it feels like propaganda or a Public Service Announcement made by producers to say "we are all prejudiced... be kind to your fellow man!"). I can see it now:

Producer #1: Hey, you know what might win us an Oscar? A movie about racism.
Producer #2: Hey, yeah, that's a great idea.
Producer #1: Just my thinking... America has so much racial tension that people will feel guilty not voting for this picture. The message we want to send the viewer is "are you a racist?"
Producer #2: Excellent. We're making this picture for the greater good, is how I see it.

Anyways, bringing up Crash (1996) reminds me of how very much I've enjoyed the erotic genre of movies, which I don't view as "sexual" per se, but as some sort of heighted connection between the characters... Black Narcissus coming to mind as what Martin Scorsese describes as "arguably the first erotic picture ever made":


















I can never decide which Powell and Pressburger picture is my favorite... Black Narcissus (Sx/Sp), The Red Shoes (Sp/Sx), or A Canterbury Tale (Sp/So).


















The nature of erotically driven pictures, such as Crash (1996), Eyes Wide Shut (tbh, this is the only Kubrick movie I'm really crazy about anymore), or Black Narcissus deals with the ebb and flow of connection and disconnect, passion/joie de vivre and detachment/apathy, holding back vs. spilling forth (metaphorically, at least, pregnancy and childbirth), or more fundamentally, life and death. Expression vs. repression, as well as the interface in which these two interact, such as in Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love:





As a side note, just how many movies have Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung starred in together?

Anyways, I'll just dump these two here. I've already talked with @Veggie about it, but Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse stands as one of my favorite 5 hour long movies ever and it might interest you (unless you've seen it already which is entirely possible); the relationship between artist and muse.










^Inglourious Basterds is the only Tarantino movie I actually like and came around the time where I felt that the art of composition, from the standpoint of cinematography, was dying in favor of "handheld" realism or simply dropping a camera down wherever and setting up shop. I got the impression that filmmakers didn't really care about how they framed their subjects anymore, so when Basterds came out, I fell in love with how it played with mythos and the notion of the Image. Tarantino has always been fascinated by reputation, the persona, and the way one's reputation makes one seem larger than life, significant, and a memorable character.

Roger Ebert described that scene as "fetishistic" or obsessively enamored with its subject. Of course, Tarantino's obsession is the cinema itself and more specifically, the way it immortalizes whatever it captures... the image lives on after we've died.


----------



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Sonuvabitch, double postage:










Here's a cracked that popped up in my feed for your entertainment @_Veggie_





Did you show me this one? I can't remember anymore. Katie @ 2:50 "hey that is OUR word!"


----------



## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> Naranjo does describe the Sx 7 as the most "extraterrestrial" of the 7s, which I think refers to how the 7 general fixation upon pleasurable experiences, when coupled with the Sx instinct, results in "overshooting" the mark, so the speak—as an ideal seeker, it is so fixated upon a better experience, that it may ultimately be disappointed with every present one. Imagine trying to use a ICBM to get to the neighbor's house. Specifically, the 7, as an ideal-seeker, seeks "that which is better than my present circumstance."


I don't know, that's not really my experience. I more just get very impatient with whatever I view to be mundane or start and stop, because I actually do settle into a number of (if not most) moments, and so I try to rush the unpleasant stuff to get back to soaking in enjoyable feelings of connection with either myself or my surroundings without as much mindful (cool in the McLuhan sense?) or, probably a better word choice, uninspired, effort. I have to keep restarting my laptop, for instance, and it won't catch up with what I'm typing and it's driving me f'ing NUTS. Why can't we jive laptop?! Did I do something to insult you?!

I hate feeling that I'm being slowed down. Maybe this is what I mean about how sx becomes sp in a psychic sense - I like to try to preserve my frequency in the realm of the extraterrestrial I guess  When I was a kid I used to be the first finished at meals, and then I'd harass everyone eating to hurry up and get back to playing with me, haha. I hate being bored. Perhaps sevens have a more childlike perception of time in some ways, where a minute can feel like it's *literally* forever. If it's an unpleasant minute I feel a need to escape on a downright survivalist level. Mind over matter.

It's also definitely hard for me to settle into processes themselves, since I more want that immediate completion or fusion, and I've read a lot about that being attributed to sevens. I read your post and immediately scrambled down a ton of thoughts and a bunch of pics and videos came to mind. I know they're all related, but sitting down and carefully putting them together and making sure that my post isn't totally disjointed is really annoying to me, lol. I do enjoy the nuances that I discover in my thoughts or deeper revelations that can only really be made by doing that work though. I think my ideal dream is that my entire life would be moving seamlessly from one groove to the next - regardless of what I was doing or where I was going. Would that eventually get old though? Probably. That's where the numbing to experience likely comes from too. I spoil my appetite for life meals, in a sense. I even try to hurry those necessary moments of emptying for the sake of refilling (I like Bruce Lee's quote - the usefulness of the cup is it's emptiness <or something like that) with cycles of binge and purge. 

This is the excerpt from Sandra Maitri that I mentioned in my first post, and it's very similar to a lot of what you're saying:



> Unlike Eights, whose lust is directed toward the most primitive and “dirty,” Sevens want a diversion, an escape, a good time, an avoidance of reality and of their fear, pain, and sense of deficiency. So rather than wanting to get down as Eights do, Sevens want to get high. The problem with getting high—whether on drugs, alcohol, or just adrenaline—is that sooner or later you have to come down, not a happy prospect for a Seven. The dilemma is articulated beautifully below in a section from Ram Dass’s seminal book of the early seventies, Be Here Now, in which he describes his disappointment that all of the insights he had under the influence of LSD could not prevent him from returning to his ordinary state of consciousness:
> 
> In these few years we had gotten over the feeling that one experience was going to make you enlightened forever. We saw that it wasn’t going to be that simple… . And for five years I dealt with the matter of “coming down.” … *Because after the six[th] year, I realized that no matter how ingenious my experimental designs were, and how high I got, I came down…. And it was a terribly frustrating experience, as if you came into the kingdom of heaven and you saw how it all was and you felt these new states of awareness, and then you got cast out again, and after 200 or 300 times of this, began to feel an extraordinary kind of depression set in—a very gentle depression that whatever I knew still wasn’t enough!
> 
> *Ram Dass’s dilemma personifies that of the hippie movement of the sixties and early seventies, which bears all the marks of a Seven-ish phenomenon. Bypassing the personality with the chemical help of psychedelic drugs, many members of the baby boom generation had their eyes opened to their depths. What they saw was what many of the spiritual traditions have been teaching for thousands of years: that our basic nature is love and that we are part of a Oneness. The problem is that the truths the hippies got in touch with when high were not integrated when they came down. It was not enough to give flowers to soldiers and share one’s food, home, and body. The defenses of the personality were skipped over rather than worked through, and so the inevitable result was that the undigested shadow aspects of the personality arose unconsciously—such as greed, selfishness, materiality, and so on.


I so relate to feeling disappointed by the prospect of not being able to maintain a heightened consciousness too. It's like being a part of another dimension of awareness, possibility and identity (you pick up on so much more, so no wonder paranoia often exists within this realm without feeling the proper sense of connection, and therefore trust). My eight fix also seeks out the primitive though, and I appreciate the "slow" in that sense. Camping being an example. I prefer that it be somewhat extreme in it's simplicity, however. (Best camping trip I've probably been on was literally camping on the beach in a tiny tent and then riding around on the back of a motorcycle). I think I have a high concentration of theta brainwaves, and so I need intense or quick moving doses of the physical not to slip away into them. 

It's like I alternate between those moments in the rabbit hole (Ni-Ti) and these moments of uber present Se that I feel suffocated by. That summer that I mentioned previously, when synchronicity was being a bitch, I felt like I couldn't breathe, like my lungs weren't inhaling oxygen but smoke. I couldn't drink to get drunk, I had terrible insomnia, and even when I did sleep my dreams were so lucid that it almost didn't even count. (Speaking of - the Dionysus stuff was really interesting @mimesis and I do have thoughts about that and Kundalini awakenings).

This picture is my dilemma, and the one described, perfectly:










Like there's always this separation of mind and matter. I either feel like I'm floating away or that I'm hyper present in a Technicolor Oz. The more I do research this shadow stuff and "digest" it though (love pics and videos!) the more I kind of feel like the two fuse, and reality is more cohesive.

Only problem is that I haven't had the same focus to digest much else, and so I'm kind of falling into bad habits there within what's generally considered "real" life. Le Sigh. Life is such a balancing act. How do people do things like raise other humans? 



hal0hal0 said:


> More specifically, it relates to the gap between the 7's Holy Idea and its ego, specifically, the ego-fixation that causes the 7 to obsess and search for a particular experience, to the point of losing contact with a part of itself or failing to actually remain present. The Fauvre's general advice to the 471 triad, for instance, is to "see the perfection that is, rather than the perfection of what could be."


I don't agree with that advice, personally. I don't love approaches to the enneagram or judgment threads that focus on "fixing" types or members, either. I think that there are strengths to every weakness and I don't believe in rendering them ineffective (plus, once you follow the growth arrow to another type, you then just have another list of neuroses to overcome - though I realize the point is incorporation...idk, just obviously there's no "right" way to live due to the system existing as it does in itself). I've sought particular experiences and _found_ them (strive for excellence, whatever that may subjectively be), and my life is more passionate and full of wonder for that fact. You were talking about opposites before - I think that we probably choose our approaches for reasons that provide individual balance. As a Fi dom, your balance will be different than mine as a Ni dom, and we both likely have different challenges for bridging the outer and inner worlds, for example.



hal0hal0 said:


> That opening part brings to mind the Bioshock directive: "Would you kindly..." Because while games offer the greatest sense of freedom, they are ultimately bound to the laws of the game, and thus, give the illusion of freedom and choice... the physics engine creates its own laws, just as our world is governed by the gravitational, electromagnetic, strong and weak forces.


I thought it was interesting that he'd been sleeping in suspension for so long that he'd created a deep imprint in his bed, especially given that we've been talking about ruts. It's like what you've said before about the river too - it forcibly creates it's path and depth over time. So if you were stuck in a deep rut or pattern of thought or behavior (karma? genetics? <is fate a combination somehow of the two?), the 7's ability to learn to exist above it in a sense might actually be beneficial to energetically creating a new path elsewhere.












hal0hal0 said:


> Another terrific example: The Stanley Parable:
> 
> Ugh, I really shouldn't show a video of this, because you can't really experience it through a video. It's not the same. The point is that the game reacts to your choices and provides a commentary. Ultimately, it's all scripted, but the world sets things up in such a clever way... through having a keen understanding of how a player will respond to its environment. I read an article a while ago that anyone who plays a video game will attempt, usually, to test the limits of that game... leap off a cliff to see what happens, massacre everyone (i.e., Grand Theft Auto), etc.:


"But in his eagerness to prove that he's in control of the story and no one gets to tell him what to do, Stanley leapt from the platform and plunged to his death. Good job Stanley. Everyone thinks you're very powerful."

:laughing:

What if Stanley could fly though?

I remember I kept bringing up the relevance of the flying car as a reference in movies eons ago. One of those things that I felt was meaningful symbolically somehow, but I didn't know entirely why. It's funny that The Graduate ends with them in the back of a bus and not the driver's seat. Stanley pressing the numbers and then stopping only to enter what the fuck land reminded me a lot of Lost too. Desmond presses the numbers in the bunker without knowing why, and then as soon as he stops he accidently crashes the Lostie's plane. 

So, I'm an idiot, and when I mentioned the coins over the eyes before, I realized, no, this wasn't the Egyptians (they were the mummies), it was the Greeks. 

Who's steering that boat on the river Styx though?!

Brings to mind the Willy Wonka through the tunnel acid trip, and the scene from The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus where Heath Ledger enters the mirror and becomes Johnny Depp. I love that when he's "liberating" and "enlightening" the woman before sending her along on the boat (which looks like Anubis, so there is an Egyptian correlation there) by asking that she give him her worldly possessions first, a snake appears. Is that really to her benefit? Is the sensory world baser?





 





(^Lots of fringe conspiracy theory videos that pop up along with that about Heath Ledger's death being an Illuminati sacrifice. That scene is odd, considering. How would a sacrifice work, too? If they're associated with the third eye (I thought it was cool that in that video game clip a little electronic eyeball came to him) is stuff like this happening, but perhaps in a way that we can't comprehend? Do these thoughts make us as crazy as Stanley?  Does time work like it does in Gravity's Rainbow? <haven't read it, but looked it up when you told me about it).

Okay, so buses and materiality make me think about these stupid memes related to the book that I'm reading. I've told you about it - it's kind of like Harry Potter in that kids are split into different houses, only they're founded by the Greek Gods (the series popped up as an Amazon recommendation because of the Goddess Girls books I read ) The main character, Jason Grace, wakes up in the back of a bus at the start of novel without his memory, and is Zeus's son (so there's a Semele equivalent here...kind of. I don't think they're getting it on XD He gets hit by lightning at one point too though to prove his Zeusiness), and he gets shipped by the fandom with inanimate objects, haha. There's apparently a love triangle between him and a brick and a stapler. I don't totally get why, I haven't read far enough yet - but what if you just loved your sensory reality that much? 





















hal0hal0 said:


> Here's a cracked that popped up in my feed for your entertainment
> 
> Did you show me this one? I can't remember anymore. Katie @ 2:50 "hey that is OUR word!"


Haha, I actually think I did, but that's one of my favorites. I like how it ends with Dan making a case for Narnia as the best alternate dimension, and it's cool that he mentions the light post, because that's like what you were talking about earlier with music. Ooh, and Aslan make me think of the lion animal totem. 



> (linsdomain.com)
> Creature of the Sun Lord, beloved of the Lady,
> Reveal to me the ancient methods of magic.
> Walk beside me as I grow in strength and courage.
> ...


...Whatever feminine means. It's interesting that it advocates not meeting goals head on though. I think that there is something to trusting your intuition when it comes to timing...at...times. Didn't you say that those last movie clips were about two versions of the same person? One had worked herself to death, and the other had basically more or less withdrawn to death?

Haha, ooooh, makes me think of this scene from Portlandia where they force the dude at the power company to take matters into his own hands when it's going to take too long for him to wait on the proper process for bringing it back after it goes out. They ordain him his own "Man"ager. If qualities like waiting are associated with the feminine, then I guess assertion would be the masculine. You've brought this up in the past, what with your analyses of Beauty and the Beast and stuffs. I like the bolded especially in that description, and it fits the scene where they cut the power cord. I feel like we've talked about this too - symbolically cutting the umbilical chord (Stanley's dilemma?) but then using that as an opportunity to leave a trail yourself.






Oh, and Stanley's plight made me think of this video too. What Does the Fox Say. I think I sent it to you a long time ago, but it feels relevant. How do you communicate with your surroundings without a set language or system for understanding? Gotta just go with the feels then. Laughter is a unifying force.















I like the idea that there's a presence that accompanies us into the unknown. A light. An attractive force that isn't a siren secretly luring us to our violent death 

The fox symbolism is neat too, having brought up the mysterious nature of the person (entity?) steering the boat on the river Styx. There's Prometheus correlations.



> (linsdomain.com)Stealthy messenger of the gods,
> Cunning and wise, reliable friend,
> Guide my steps through this maze of deception
> And see this problem to its end.
> ...


I feel like I've included this video (from Snow White and the Huntsman) in a lot of posts too, but I love it as a depiction of the light (or the "fairy" realm - that sort of enchanting, heightened fairy tale type reality - instinct? intuition? fusion?) appearing for you and guiding you in the darkness.






~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


----------



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> I don't agree with that advice, personally.


Oh, I thought of it more in the vein of Gauis Baltar's "You are perfect just the way you are!" when he becomes a religious leader (mainly for self-preservation and free booty calls with his harem of followers). The Fauvres I think are saying that you're fine just the way you are, or that you have everything you need to do whatever it is you want to do (there really isn't anything to fix). I agree that it shouldn't become an instruction manual however.



Veggie said:


> "But in his eagerness to prove that he's in control of the story and no one gets to tell him what to do, Stanley leapt from the platform and plunged to his death. Good job Stanley. Everyone thinks you're very powerful."
> 
> :laughing:
> 
> What if Stanley could fly though?


That was actually the first ending I got with the game, too; I wouldn't be surprised if that's a common ending for people to get though, since gamers tend to love testing the boundaries of games (i.e., "gee, will this kill me?"). I think that second ending in that video where he ends up going in circles over and over reminded me of you in some ways.

Speaking of flying, I LOVE Saints Row IV. The first 3 Saints Row games are urban gangster games, although the 3rd one got much sillier with weapons like giant purple dildo bats:









Yep, you can run around wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and a thong smacking people with The Penetrator or dildo bat.

Anyways, I really love the direction the series is taking. Whereas the Grand Theft Auto games seem to go for the more "serious" gangster genre (none of which I've actually played and GTA doesn't really interest me, TBH). Saints Row is taking a completely different direction and just being as ridiculous as it wants to be (and yet, it remains a very clever satire/parody of gaming culture).

So, with Saints Row 4, they basically have transformed the series from a straight gangster game into, yes, a SUPERHERO game. LMAO. 





I love how the game is so vulgar, but it still blurs out your characters' naughty bits when you break out of the Matrix Simulation and have to escape nekkid through a hostile alien warship. And yes, you play as the leader of the Saints gang and the President of the United States. 
You can even have a sex change midgame :wink:




Presidency of the United States Unlocked!
Adoration of America Unlocked!
Press all the buttons to initiate a global thermonuclear war!







Veggie said:


> I thought it was interesting that he'd been sleeping in suspension for so long that he'd created a deep imprint in his bed, especially given that we've been talking about ruts. It's like what you've said before about the river too - it forcibly creates it's path and depth over time. So if you were stuck in a deep rut or pattern of thought or behavior (karma? genetics? <is fate a combination somehow of the two?), the 7's ability to learn to exist above it in a sense might actually be beneficial to energetically creating a new path elsewhere.


The character you play as in Portal/Portal 2 is actually a female named Chell:










The imprint in the bed is probably inspired by Psycho, which is sort of the ultimate arrested development... Norman!



Veggie said:


> Okay, so buses and materiality make me think about these stupid memes related to the book that I'm reading. I've told you about it - it's kind of like Harry Potter in that kids are split into different houses, only they're founded by the Greek Gods (the series popped up as an Amazon recommendation because of the Goddess Girls books I read ) The main character, Jason Grace, wakes up in the back of a bus at the start of novel without his memory, and is Zeus's son (so there's a Semele equivalent here...kind of. I don't think they're getting it on XD He gets hit by lightning at one point too though to prove his Zeusiness), and he gets shipped by the fandom with inanimate objects, haha. *There's apparently a love triangle between him and a brick and a stapler. I don't totally get why, I haven't read far enough yet *- but what if you just loved your sensory reality that much?


Well, duh, if you look at the picture, he's clearly putting his noodle into the brick's mouth. It's like a kinky form of masturbation. I notice most of those pictures are him with the brick... I bet the stapler bit him.



Veggie said:


> Oh, and Stanley's plight made me think of this video too. What Does the Fox Say. I think I sent it to you a long time ago, but it feels relevant. How do you communicate with your surroundings without a set language or system for understanding? Gotta just go with the feels then. Laughter is a unifying force.


Hm, well the fox is also represented by Kitsune in Japan (the 9-tailed fox). I don't remember that fox video, but it makes me realize that onomatopoeia is probably "more logical" than our daily language, because things like oink, moo, or woof have some basis in reality... because... WHO THE FUCK INVENTED THE WORD "THE"??? Seriously, it's the most ubiquitous word in our language and nobody knows who first coined it. Anyways, the only word that really makes sense is "mother" because in most languages, it starts with "M" presumably because babies make the "muh" sound:

* *







> *Ways Of Saying Mother In Different Languages*
> 
> Afrikaans: Moeder, Ma
> Albanian: Nënë, Mëmë
> ...





Anyways, Kitsune is described in Japanese mythology as a demon fox that can transform into the form of a woman, and the thought is that the Kitsune is a great lover or seducer, playing into the trickster or clever quality of the fox animal (archetype-wise, I'd say 2ish at a glance).










One of my favorite animes, Spice and Wolf, which is actually about mercantilism (it's really a great change of pace... most anime seem compelled to deal with "end of the world" scenarios that get really stale as a premise after a while. Anyways, Holo is the pagan deity of the Harvest, however the villagers prayed for too many good harvests which ultimately exhausted the land. The villagers denounced Holo, so she decides to travel with a merchant named Lawrence.





The Japanese have many myths involving shape-shifting or demon women:





The "Big Three" countries considered the hotspots for cinema throughout history have been France, Japan and the United States. Those three are arguably the most influential. After the US, I consider myself reasonably well-versed in Japanese cinema, and it often struck me how often the woman's role is depicted as deceptive or manipulative. Perhaps this is an Eastern thing. It's not a "bad" context either.


----------



## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> Oh, I thought of it more in the vein of Gauis Baltar's "You are perfect just the way you are!" when he becomes a religious leader (mainly for self-preservation and free booty calls with his harem of followers).


Sly. It's funny that Johnny Depp is essentially the Animus figure for that woman's transition into the afterlife in the Imaginarium video I posted, because in "Into The Woods" he was the Big Bad Wolf (still meaning to complain about that movie. I never saw it on stage but I watched a few YouTube videos and I'm thinking it didn't properly translate).

In reality though - what are you talking about? P) I know my gentlemen from my PUA's. The internet has been sure to break that down for me. LOL.


* *

















hal0hal0 said:


> That was actually the first ending I got with the game, too; I wouldn't be surprised if that's a common ending for people to get though, since gamers tend to love testing the boundaries of games (i.e., "gee, will this kill me?"). I think that second ending in that video where he ends up going in circles over and over reminded me of you in some ways.












(I maintain that your elegant river as a metaphor for life can exist upside down in (inner? outer?) space as propellers too).



hal0hal0 said:


> So, with Saints Row 4, they basically have transformed the series from a straight gangster game into, yes, a SUPERHERO game. LMAO.


It looks funny.



hal0hal0 said:


> The imprint in the bed is probably inspired by Psycho, which is sort of the ultimate arrested development... Norman!


Or maybe by Semele. Can you have daddy issues with God? (Have at it Freud and Jung!)

I like this gender bend on Han Solo in the Carbonite with Sleeping Beauty, lol:












hal0hal0 said:


> Well, duh, if you look at the picture, he's clearly putting his noodle into the brick's mouth. It's like a kinky form of masturbation. I notice most of those pictures are him with the brick... I bet the stapler bit him.


Hahaha. OMG. It's your classic Madonna/Whore scenario isn't it? Because, yes, actually, the stapler more or less "bit" him when he was a kid and he has a scar from it, I do believe. Then you have your nice stable brick to counter.



hal0hal0 said:


> Anyways, Kitsune is described in Japanese mythology as a demon fox that can transform into the form of a woman, and the thought is that the Kitsune is a great lover or seducer, playing into the trickster or clever quality of the fox animal (archetype-wise, I'd say 2ish at a glance).


Made me think of Megan Fox in Jennifer's Body lol.












hal0hal0 said:


> The Japanese have many myths involving shape-shifting or demon women


Yea, I watched one about a shape shifting snake demon that sort of played like a Romeo and Juliet tale because the head Zen Master of the dude's dimension didn't want the two meshing. Not that different than Harry being able to speak Parsel Tongue, really, though he's still revered as saintly. (The patriarchy!) At least they redeemed Catwoman in the latest Batman.


* *

























~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


----------



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> (I maintain that your elegant river as a metaphor for life can exist upside down in (inner? outer?) space as propellers too).


You know where I actually got that metaphor from was actually Mushi-shi (as well as the milky way referred to as the "sky river"). The anime deals with mystical creatures called Mushi who are like microorganisms that cause miraculous/cursed phenomenon to occur. In reality, they are creatures just like any other looking to survive, however they may infect people, causing what are ostensibly miracles or curses (to the outside eye; some may cause a boy's drawings to come to life, others cause dreams to become reality, some become allergic to sunlight, some who are bound to forests). The main character is Ginko, who is a "mushi master" sort of like a traveling doctor that helps people afflicted by Mushi. The Mushi aren't seen as "bad" just like a mold is simply an organism attempting to survive, or a bear wandering into the suburbs... it's simply the conflict arising from the mutual desire to *live*. (which is arguably the essence of many dilemmas this world faces).






LMAO, the tone of Mushishi is more quiet, contemplative and solitary, so it's kinda funny seeing Billy Joel juxtaposed with that:






The imagery is quite beautiful though. Ni-Se like.



Veggie said:


> Or maybe by Semele. Can you have daddy issues with God? (Have at it Freud and Jung!)
> 
> I like this gender bend on Han Solo in the Carbonite with Sleeping Beauty, lol:


I think it's kinda funny that you assumed the character in Portal/Portal 2 was a "he." I mean, when a game is in first person, you could be anyone, but the only way you can tell is if you shoot two portals where you get the "infinite mirror" effect:










Anyways, I found this really cool live action portal video you might like:


----------



## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

@Veggie

His name is Charon


----------



## Mutant Hive Queen (Oct 29, 2013)

So this has literally nothing to do with anything else in this thread, but you and Veggie okayed my posting it, so I'm going to pretend like something you said made me think of it because fuck it I'm too damn lazy to make this actually connect. :tongue: 



Me said:


> * *
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Oh! Also, added stuff to note: 



Me said:


> What do you mean? What sort of concepts in our world, or what other works?
> 
> ...oh.
> 
> ...


Now to look at all these posts about shapeshifting and whatnot.

...actually I could legitimately connect the Aware to the Mushishi, albeit kind of tenuously. The specific mistakes the Aware want to fix _are_ the mindset of humanity, which gets amplified in their world. I was almost going to tell someone else before they topic shifted that every freakout we have over something like Swine Flu or Ebola is their world's Bubonic plague. So you see how someone from there who was aware of both worlds might think of things as either "them" or "us". Similar to the attitude humans have to Mushishi in your example, hal0, but with actual hate, because _most_ people really into analyzing society take pride in the fact that they can see what others can't, perhaps to the point of disdaining other people.


----------



## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

mimesis said:


> His name is Charon


For some reason I can't stop laughing at this XD I love that it's just a one liner, and I'm not sure how to pronounce his name, but to me it reads like Karen. All this build up about the esoteric mystery of the masked figure rowing the boat and then it's just like - "Um, his name's Karen." Hahaha.

Thanks for that though  It's interesting, just looked it up.



Autvoyeur said:


> So this has literally nothing to do with anything else in this thread, but you and Veggie okayed my posting it, so I'm going to pretend like something you said made me think of it because fuck it I'm too damn lazy to make this actually connect. :tongue:


I guess I've given myself authority over what constitutes as a derail on your threads @hal0hal0 

Btw, this made me think of you:









@Autvoyeur - The archeverse is like the akashic records, or the collective unconscious.

This is the video I was talking about that links the pineal gland to the third eye and imagination (and DMT). It's connected to the Dionysian mysteries that you mentioned earlier @mimesis too.

It's deliciously trippy so enjoy


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## Mutant Hive Queen (Oct 29, 2013)

Veggie said:


> For some reason I can't stop laughing at this XD I love that it's just a one liner, and I'm not sure how to pronounce his name, but to me it reads like Karen. All this build up about the esoteric mystery of the masked figure rowing the boat and then it's just like - "Um, his name's Karen." Hahaha.
> 
> Thanks for that though  It's interesting, just looked it up.


"It's like they didn't even _try_ with my ghost-fetish! I'm calling the manager!" 

...unless, of course, that woman in the picture is into transsexual ghosts. Well, not transsexual, _precisely_, androgynous. But even then... :tongue:







> I guess I've given myself authority over what constitutes as a derail on your threads @_hal0hal0_


Giving a thank is giving consent. Spread the word. :tongue:



> Btw, this made me think of you:


So is that because I'm progressing rather quickly in development/understanding/enlightenment or just because I made a trippy thing? :tongue:



> @_Autvoyeur_ - The archeverse is like the akashic records, or the collective unconscious.


Don't know _much_ about the akashic records (feel free to give me a rundown), but it being like the collective unconscious was the _point_. I had originally designed this to be a PersonalityCafe Roleplay, and before that it was the background for a story I was starting to make on PerC. :laughing: PerC has Jung. Do the math. :tongue:

Also, did you see the addition to that post I made?




> This is the video I was talking about that links the pineal gland to the third eye and imagination (and DMT). It's connected to the Dionysian mysteries that you mentioned earlier @_mimesis_ too.
> 
> It's deliciously trippy so enjoy


So, near as I can tell, the arguments this fellow's making are the following: 

--The rest of the world can be said to be part of who we (ourselves) are, because without those things we couldn't have formed the experiences that shaped us. Sort of a confusion of cause and properties, if y'ask me. _But_ it ties into the grand theory of Ni so I still win. :tongue:
--We associate the pinecone with a bunch of spiritual authorities because we unconsciously associate the shape of the pinecone with the spiritual powers of the pineal gland. I mean, _maaaaaaybe_. The prevalence of it across cultures does really sell the idea since whatever other possible cause a pinecone symbol might have (a spiritual leader in India taking LSD and seeing that shape, f'r instance) would probably not be relevant to a different culture that didn't follow that leader. Although maybe these cultures stole from each other more than I'm seeing, and maybe some other cultures _didn't_ use it, although spiritual enlightenment is rare, so who knows _what_ that means? 
--The pineal gland can grant us _magic_, and is responsible for our imagination. It's _possible_, actually, but I figure there should be some experiments around to check. I mean, we can test whether it's responsible for our imagination the moment we find some willing people to lesion there. :tongue:

Well, hmmmmm. Noticing that there's some contradictory information in this, but if Calcification is bad then maybe not...

If it _is_ connected to our higher intellect and our imaginations, it isn't the _sole_ holder of the connection, though. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a side note, have you watched anything from Spirit Science?


----------



## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

Autvoyeur said:


> So is that because I'm progressing rather quickly in development/understanding/enlightenment or just because I made a trippy thing? :tongue:


Well, I meant that it reminded me of hal0hal0 for some reason, haha, but I do dig the overall Sci-fi like trippiness of your story background, lol 



Autvoyeur said:


> Also, did you see the addition to that post I made?


Yea, I read it. I'm not sure if it's entirely what you're saying, but I have wondered about how parallel universes might impact or trickle down to one another.



Autvoyeur said:


> On a side note, have you watched anything from Spirit Science?


I don't think so. Any recommendations?

Also, on the topics of androgyny and different races coming together throughout separate worlds, this meme made me laugh the other day.


* *















Edit: Oh, and right, the akashic records. They're thought to be like the DNA of the universe. Actually, funny, they're described on one site as information encoded on a non physical plane of existence, and that's a lot like this one convo @hal0hal0 and I had about Platonism vs. Nominalism, I'm realizing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


----------



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Autvoyeur said:


> Sorry for taking so long to reply, you lot...it takes _stamina_ to reply to these behemoths. :laughing:


_Baby _behemoths, maybe .











Veggie said:


> I think you were saying @_hal0hal0_ that we never fully know who the people in our lives are, and, idk, it was just funny to me. Who is this testosterone driven creature who can physically overpower and plant his seed in me in my bed? There's an alien/shape shifting sort of component to that video too. I think that linear society probably exists partially due to conducting risk assessments, but how safe can you ever really be?


I think we talked about this before (My Dinner with Andre) where paradoxically, the closer you get to someone, the more and more mysterious they become... just who is this person? I think familiarity can breed a sense of security that is ultimately undermined by doubt, maybe because we've become used to having a problem to solve or chew upon.

I remember @_J Squirrel_ mentioned how a word seemed stranger and stranger the more you said it. Word. Word. Wooooooooorrd. Worduh. Werd. Werdh. Weeeerdh. Weerrrrrd. 



Veggie said:


> On a metaphorical level, it made me think about the extremes that we go to in order to avoid disease or rejection. I recently read an article about the porn industry - apparently they're (I don't remember who "they" were lol) trying to push for STD testing for actors every two weeks, and require condoms in films (<not aesthetically sexy imo, sorry).


Well, IDK, masturbation can be aesthetically sexy.

Speaking of, it's interesting that you identify with Esther the most in The Silence, because there are two scenes with her that are among my favorite—where she talks about how she "hates the smell of semen" and of course, where she rubs one out. There's just something about it, the conflict it creates. It's "hypocritical" in one sense, but it's just so freakin' honest in another sense, because maybe it is human condition to be hypocrites and have inner conflicts... repression and self-disgust vs. release and self-indulgence. I wonder if there's a masculine quality to her, due to that, but IDK cuz I'm not a woman... like how in Dr. Strangelove, the crazy general talks about "denying women his essence" due to the highs and lows of sexual hunger (or... bringing back My Dinner with Andre, how Andre talks about how just before orgasm, his mind starts wandering to completely mundane things like grocery lists, etc.).

Anyways, that masturbation scene seemed very Sp/Sx or Sx/Sp. Similar to how we've talked about those two instincts before, which I still see as the interaction between instincts rather than one becoming the other per se.



Veggie said:


> ^The Egyptians frequently depicted the (Kundalini?) snake going up and _out_ the third eye, but this felt more like something coming _in_ and down the third eye (fascinating because this is before I read about that Marie Louise von Franz stuff and the like). Interestingly, I'd just had a third eye opening ceremony at a Taoist temple a few months prior. (The way that my instructor described the relevance of the ritual and it's impact on consciousness sounded a lot like morphic resonance, now that I know that reference).









Veggie said:


> Like, that video you sent with the couple and the cat was cute, but idk, would I want monogamy if it were just him and I and a pet, no kids? I'm really not sure if that would be worth it. Intimacy is important, but at the level of committing your life to someone and making compromises and...meh. I'd have to be pretty damn in love. Maybe there is something to sexual sevens not being as sexual in a more literal sense.


Sort of a strawman on my point. Monogamy, polygamy, life-long swingin' bachelorettehood, crazy cat lady gig... do whatever you want, I don't care (as in, that's your call; none of my business). I was more getting at the notion of an ideal having to face reality—you may want something, but maybe it won't turn out perfectly how you envision it (which is something that 4s, 7s, and 1s do face), but it's not the end of the world (which I know is cliche by now,the whole c'est la vie thing, but if you don't get everything you want, then was it all bad?).

I can get really annoyed by the "you can do anything you set your mind to!" positivity stuff, as if mind over matter was all there was to it. Can a paraplegic magically regain his ability to walk? And yeah, I use that example because I'm curious if your Lost-obsessed mind immediately went to this:


* *













I agree that that light can guide you, give you the energy to pull out of a funk or that cave lost in darkness and directionless, but sometimes, it's so bright it's scalding my retinas.




Veggie said:


> Also - you should take this test:
> 
> What Shakespeare Character Are You?




Goddamit (I hate those quizzes where I can't really answer them... like which TV show you watch when I haven't heard of most of them):


* *




You are Hamlet

"You are well educated and tend to work in an academic or artistic field - that is, if you have to work at all, since you usually have wealthy or high class parents. You are reflective, thoughtful, and affected. Some might say you are TOO thoughtful (and affected), and it takes far too long to make up your mind - but once you wade through the indecision, you are driven to implement your vision. You tend to keep to yourself, with you nose in a book singing songs to no one, or muttering in dark corners."

The worst part is a decent chunk of it is quite accurate and I was deliberately trying to avoid a Hamlet outcome while still making half-truthful responses


----------



## J Squirrel (Jun 2, 2012)

hal0hal0 said:


> I remember @_J Squirrel_ mentioned how a word seemed stranger and stranger the more you said it. Word. Word. Wooooooooorrd. Worduh. Werd. Werdh. Weeeerdh. Weerrrrrd.


----------



## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

Happy Birthday @Veggie !


----------



## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

Veggie said:


> @_mimesis_ - I read that article you posted with Georges Bataille where he talks about eroticism. The idea that it must include what "disgusts" us...eh, lol. It takes a lot to disgust me, and I'm not looking to get into asking dudes to take a dump on my chest, for instance, just for the sake of transgression (maybe that's seven's growth arrow to five? I don't have to try everything once <a philosophy I used to give a lot of weight). I think you can look at that as that eroticism is...risk, though.
> 
> I've done some weird things in my life, but I wouldn't say that I'm a member of the BDSM community or anything equally...standardized? The case in the movie though (her father's beatings excited her) took me on a strange quest across the internet and to some BDSM sites. I'd probably subscribe to the risk aware philosophy (really just in sex generally) more so than the safe, sane, consensual motto. It's like that Crash video - isn't the eroticism in the _real_ threat of danger? Not that there can't be eroticism in dominance or submission on their own and the like, but...idk. It's like we're trying to strip the world of danger to the point of it feeling more dangerous, imo. Ominous. Sexual liberation actually seems like it's regressing in ways too (maybe that chick in 50 Shades of Grey _liked_ that he ignored the safe word - maybe it brought subconscious fears to light - the dude's argument was that eroticism is psychological).
> 
> This came on the Smithsonian Channel (The Real Beauty and the Beast) and it had me laughing so hard I was crying. My humor is weird sometimes. Not the whole episode, but from about 17:55 - 25:00, where they're describing Catherine's marriage to the "wild man" - and most especially, where she very carefully and cautiously comes up behind him and puts a blanket around his shoulders on their wedding night XD


Fair enough. Though perhaps you can acknowledge that erotic intensity at least borders on disgust or aversion (or temporarily transgresses), not so much as it equals it. I mean I am sure you don't want to exchange saliva with just anybody, right? 










Our precious bodily fluids, as referred to earlier by @hal0hal0






Psychological research suggests there is a link between disgust and sexual dysfunction.



Sex makes everything less disgusting said:


> Our biological drive to do it conflicts pretty directly with our biological drive not to get involved with other people's bodily fluids. How do we ignore the obvious grossness of sex for long enough to propagate the species? Maybe, researchers say, by turning off our disgust reflex whenever we get turned on.
> 
> http://inkfish.fieldofscience.com/20...sting.html?m=1
> 
> Giving in to arousal or staying stuck in disgust? Disgust-based mec... - PubMed - NCBI


If you are interested you can download and read Bataille's pornographic novel History of the Eye.


* *












http://ps28.squat.net/bataille_story_of_eye.pdf


----------



## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

Autvoyeur said:


> You have a DnD character?
> 
> _Show me everything_. (I'm a huge fan of that game, and those like it.)


Yup. I'm a Tiefling Bard. I thought that both sounded especially cool, and then when I learned that it's a rare combination my special snowflake complex ate it up and landed on the decision 

You probably basically already know the races and classes if you've played, but idk, maybe not.

Tieflings are a race that are sort of bastardized by society because their ancestors made a deal with the devil for the preservation of power, and they don't have a homeland - so most are loners. They have solid orbs for eyes, so I chose gold, and I gave her purple hair and gazelle horns  She's younger, and the new generation sometimes chooses a name that signifies a concept that they try to embody - so I named her Art. She's Neutral Good.

Bards are travelers and storytellers with magical musical abilities. Actually, I really like their description, so I'm pulling this from the player's handbook (3.5 I think? Or maybe 4?)



> In the world of D&D, words and music are not just vibrations of air, but vocalizations with power all their own. The bard is a master of song, speech, and the magic they contain. Bards say that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of those primordial Words of Creation will resound throughout the cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and power...their spells lean towards charms and illusions rather than blatantly destructive spells. They have a wide-ranging knowledge of many subjects and a natural aptitude that lets them do almost anything well. Bards become masters of the talents they set their minds to perfecting, from musical performance to esoteric knowledge.














Autvoyeur said:


> Honestly if I were to describe my own worries, or the ones I experience in day-to-day life...well, I try to and am generally successfully able to push them out of my mind, but falling down the stairs was a big one. Because it's so stupidly easy to do, in some_ senses. Like, you just have to slip. And boom. I always thought that was kind of unfair, actually. Like, the sort of thing that never happens to people in movies, almost, but we mere mortals have to deal with. Their risks are always climactic and weighed against some reward, whereas ours are...not. _


_

Oh I always pretend that every risk and decision is climatic and of utmost importance (what if no one were taking this seriously?!) It needlessly stresses me out, haha.



hal0hal0 said:



Well, IDK, masturbation can be aesthetically sexy.

Click to expand...

With a condom though? 

I wonder if that will become a thing eventually. Safety first.



hal0hal0 said:



Speaking of, it's interesting that you identify with Esther the most in The Silence, because there are two scenes with her that are among my favorite—where she talks about how she "hates the smell of semen" and of course, where she rubs one out. There's just something about it, the conflict it creates. It's "hypocritical" in one sense, but it's just so freakin' honest in another sense, because maybe it is human condition to be hypocrites and have inner conflicts... repression and self-disgust vs. release and self-indulgence. I wonder if there's a masculine quality to her, due to that, but IDK cuz I'm not a woman...

Click to expand...

Well I said that I related more to the actress's characters over all than to the Through A Glass Darkly chick. It was actually more her role in Winter Light though.

The scene where she's pushing his buttons and he's just kind of verbally berating and tearing her apart especially, admitting that he treats her better than he wants to because he grew up in a culture where he was expected to treat women with more respect than men. I've been there in trying to get people to come out with what they're really thinking or feeling, even if masochistically. Always like that too though - pushing buttons a bit...probably because I still feel that I have power that way, thinking about it (and it elicits more honesty). I've never been into the whole judgment as constructive criticism thing though simply for it's sake in regards to my personality or standing because usually I just don't care, LOL. Everyone has their own ideas and projections and meh. There has to be an actual reason for it...but then I can generally withstand a lot. That scene still hit something vulnerable in me though and made me uncomfortable.










In The Silence - I don't think the semen bit was hypocritical - you can be disgusted by the smell but be fine with your own. Actually, masturbation makes a lot of sense then  I think I mostly identified with the way she struggled with meaning overall in that movie. 

The Family Guy video where Peter thinks that the third eye dot is coming from a sniper rifle. LOL. Yeah, those were pretty much the thoughts I started having too. All of these thoughts I'd never really let myself consider came forward and I was getting so weirded out about what I had opened myself to (I.e. made myself a target for). At one point I wondered if I'd been raped by a Jinn or something, since I'd just been talking with a Muslim friend about them. (I sound like I'm ignorantly describing my first orgasm or something, but...no...though similar. The first time that happens you're kind of left like uh, what just happened too. Anyway...I'm sticking with the word tantric and just sorta leaving it at that and attributing it to the root chakra and Kundalini).



hal0hal0 said:



Sort of a strawman on my point. Monogamy, polygamy, life-long swingin' bachelorettehood, crazy cat lady gig... do whatever you want, I don't care (as in, that's your call; none of my business). I was more getting at the notion of an ideal having to face reality—you may want something, but maybe it won't turn out perfectly how you envision it (which is something that 4s, 7s, and 1s do face), but it's not the end of the world (which I know is cliche by now,the whole c'est la vie thing, but if you don't get everything you want, then was it all bad?).

Click to expand...

You've been making the strawman accusation a lot lately  I wasn't saying that you were making a point otherwise, those were just thoughts I had after watching that. I agree with you too though - I expect that reality won't turn out as I envision it. Maybe that's why I hoard my strawberries, haha. Backup power and plans!



hal0hal0 said:



I can get really annoyed by the "you can do anything you set your mind to!" positivity stuff, as if mind over matter was all there was to it. Can a paraplegic magically regain his ability to walk? And yeah, I use that example because I'm curious if your Lost-obsessed mind immediately went to this:

Click to expand...

True story, the summer I was getting odd clients, Terry O'Quinn was coming into the spa too. I never worked on him, but it was kinda cool. (I don't think I'm breaching anything privacy wise by saying that since I don't work there anymore and I'm not like sharing the name of the place or anything. Also - don't think he was a regular).



hal0hal0 said:



I agree that that light can guide you, give you the energy to pull out of a funk or that cave lost in darkness and directionless, but sometimes, it's so bright it's scalding my retinas

Click to expand...

Well, yea, I'm not advocating hopping a magic carpet made of rainbows straight to the sun (wait though - why aren't I? ), I like that donkey parable because it's a bit by bit sort of thing that builds on itself.

I believe in dreaming though too. Since you brought up Lost again  - this scene is kind of cool because it fits in both with the whole sinking of Atlantis (feminine aspect) bit from that video that Autvoyeur posted, and the stuff about how the Dionysian creative energy has been "submerged" by the logical Apollinian that mimesis posted. 






It's interdimensional how they go through the layers of clouds and schools of fish and stuff to get to the island at the bottom of the ocean and it's cool that it ends with the foot of the statue. If absurdity enables you to move forward by believing in the miraculous, it become logical in a way.

Though depending, the Apollinian may more be needed for balance. I feel like that's where I'm at - trying to climb towards that responsibility, without losing my little...island, haha, (la la land?) Apparently Saturn is in Sagittarius for the next couple years, so the universe is halfway making me too (<oh yes, I do actually put stock into that kind of stuff and at least consider it).












mimesis said:



Fair enough. Though perhaps you can acknowledge that erotic intensity at least borders on disgust or aversion (or temporarily transgresses), not so much as it equals it. I mean I am sure you don't want to exchange saliva with just anybody, right?

Click to expand...

Well not just anybody, but, idk - how hot are they and how drunk am I? :tongue:

Am I on a dare or is it some kind of party trick? As soon as I read that I thought of the scene from This is 40 with Megan Fox and Leslie Mann, lol - and actually, that reminds me of this picture with Apollo and Dionysus too:















Bodily fluids really don't bother me as much as they probably should. When I have clients they're frequently sweaty in places what with the bed warmer on the table and stuff, when I used to nanny I'd get peed and puked on by strange children...idk. I guess I kind of just try not to think about disease as much as possible (I'm not like running around making blood sister pacts though lol) because I don't want to freak myself out and have it all be some self fulfilling prophecy that I manifest by focusing on it. My solution right now is just to avoid a lot of life and then I really don't have to think about it at all, lol.

This Portlandia cracks me up where Kirsten Dunst dies of confusion about what can kill her, because it's like...everything, haha. 








mimesis said:



If you are interested you can download and read Bataille's pornographic novel History of the Eye.

Click to expand...

Yea, I read it, wow, that goes there with the sadism. He is like really into the golden showers too XD 

It didn't disgust me so much as upset me. I don't know - I do acknowledge that erotic intensity can border on disgust - I just don't think that it has to?

I think that there's a difference between being aware of risks and just reveling in fleshing them out too. I mean, that can be hot depending but...idk. It's probably harder to get lost in the moment - unless your subconscious is keeping you from getting seduced by the experience and so bringing that stuff out there that's preventing it helps. That makes sense. I probably more prefer distractions or something from my weird brain right now.

Maybe I'm projecting my own prudishness (am I a prude? I have no clue where I'd fall on the freakishness scale, lol) but whenever I see S and M being taken, like, really seriously lately I think about this scene from New Girl. 






I guess you just have to do it right, haha. 

God damn it, I haven't done anything kinky in such a long time. I really didn't use to overthink this kind of stuff and it was more fun. I'm realizing that writing this out.

(Btw - how did we get here?! XD)










~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~































_


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> Maybe I'm projecting my own prudishness (am I a prude? I have no clue where I'd fall on the freakishness scale, lol) but whenever I see S and M being taken, like, really seriously lately I think about this scene from New Girl.






^I swear, these games have life lessons for everything. I love how the sex slave drawn chariots blow up if you shoot them.



Veggie said:


> In The Silence - I don't think the semen bit was hypocritical - you can be disgusted by the smell but be fine with your own. Actually, masturbation makes a lot of sense then  I think I mostly identified with the way she struggled with meaning overall in that movie.


More in the sense of her inhibition, as if masturbation is a treasured private moment for her, so to reveal this side of herself to anyone else (i.e., sex) would be to open herself up... to remove the guarded quality she has maintained for (presumably) her whole adult life. People say she was a lesbian (which may be true), but that I don't think that alone addresses her struggle, nor do I think Bergman was attempting to make a statement about homosexuality. although to be fair, Bergman often put his characters in androgynous roles (Ingrid Thulin playing a dual male/female role... probably his most underrated regular):


* *












In one regard (and I am projecting my own biases and personal experience onto this), I think Ester made a sanctuary out of solitude and self-sufficiency, only to realize that that discipline and solitude left her drowning amidst loneliness (i.e., where she's suffocating). To bring back the Dionysus-Apollo dyad, she's more Apollonian to Gunnel Lindblom's Dionysian character.



Veggie said:


> (Btw - how did we get here?! XD


Where? Bizarre derail land miles away from the OP? SMH that you'd even have to ask that .



Veggie said:


> The scene where she's pushing his buttons and he's just kind of verbally berating and tearing her apart especially, admitting that he treats her better than he wants to because he grew up in a culture where he was expected to treat women with more respect than men. I've been there in trying to get people to come out with what they're really thinking or feeling, even if masochistically. Always like that too though - pushing buttons a bit...probably because I still feel that I have power that way, thinking about it (and it elicits more honesty). I've never been into the whole judgment as constructive criticism thing though simply for it's sake in regards to my personality or standing because usually I just don't care, LOL. Everyone has their own ideas and projections and meh. There has to be an actual reason for it...but then I can generally withstand a lot. That scene still hit something vulnerable in me though and made me uncomfortable.


Excellent. Thanks for that. I've seen that scene more times than I can count over the years, so actually hearing a reaction to it other than my own gives a good perspective. I think I have similar views on it as you do (as far as getting the truth out there; getting things off your chest), but I have to admit that when I first watched that scene many years ago, it felt like tasting blood for the first time. Almost like a bloodlust, where your heart starts racing in anticipating the hunt or more accurately, the kill. It's a rather sadistic attitude, but it's almost like a word-lust with me, where I hope my words _can _wound.

^But, I rarely ever act on that, partly because I'm scared to burn bridges and also because I pretty much think my opinion doesn't matter (i.e., people get over shit, nobody cares what you think, so what's the point?). <--- That could be my 2 line; I can certainly relate to the way Pride craves power over others.

and LMAO, back at the 2-fix I see! :laughing:


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## Mutant Hive Queen (Oct 29, 2013)

Veggie said:


> Yup. I'm a Tiefling Bard. I thought that both sounded especially cool, and then when I learned that it's a rare combination my special snowflake complex ate it up and landed on the decision
> 
> You probably basically already know the races and classes if you've played, but idk, maybe not.
> 
> ...


4. Definitely 4, from what you're telling me. I haven't picked up 4th in a _while_. 

The last character I made wasn't actually a DnD character at all, but was rather made for a forum RP centered around some weird anime stuff (essentially sexy female monsters working alongside human nobility, with some tensions therein :laughing--she herself a Clay Golem called Canta. I actually borrowed a bit of Dungeons and Dragons lore for her to shape the character, and that bit of lore defines her motivation currently. Basically, in 3E Dungeons and Dragons, Golems aren't created from whole cloth, but instead are animated by a bound Earth elemental. From there I took some artistic liberties in the transfer and made her former "Earth Spirit" self much more humanlike in nature to play up the _loss_ of self involved in transforming from a sentient Earth Elemental into an actually mindless creature, and then I threw in a shapeshifting ability because freeform and clay. 

She's broken free of the control she _was_ in, but her memories aren't all or even _mostly_ back. She's developed enough of a rudimentary intelligence to utter extremely basic words, and also formulate a goal for herself--to get the _rest_ of her memories. She's working with the human nobles because one of them (literally called at one point The Hero, to get a sense of what he's like) inadvertently gave her a memory while trying to convince her in some crazy act of compassion not to hurt him (plus some other townsfolk, but that was peripheral), causing her to become loyal to him, to quite a huge degree. 

I'm sort of trying to design an actual history around _your_ character now. 





> Oh I always pretend that every risk and decision is climatic and of utmost importance (what if no one were taking this seriously?!) It needlessly stresses me out, haha.


So why do it? :laughing:






>


See, that's _almost_ worth it, but then I'd trade in the final years where my mental capacity _might_ degrade, for years where it'd _definitely_ do so. That's sort of a dealbreaker for me.


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## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> More in the sense of her inhibition, as if masturbation is a treasured private moment for her, so to reveal this side of herself to anyone else (i.e., sex) would be to open herself up... to remove the guarded quality she has maintained for (presumably) her whole adult life. People say she was a lesbian (which may be true), but that I don't think that alone addresses her struggle, nor do I think Bergman was attempting to make a statement about homosexuality. although to be fair, Bergman often put his characters in androgynous roles (Ingrid Thulin playing a dual male/female role... probably his most underrated regular)


Hmm, that's not really something that I can relate to. The more time alone I have to think, the less I feel that I'm really guarded at all (my brain guards start to turn on me) - and I crave connection to get me out of my head (which somehow helps to keep me in the privacy of the subjectivity of my mind).

I wonder if there's Anima and Animus business that goes down with this at all. Like if some men feel more comfortable seeing this private, pleasurable relationship that they have with masturbation play out in the female, since stereotypically they're expected to be assertive and on the prowl, lol. Women, stereotypically, are expected to be a bit more exhibitionist, receptive, to appeal to the visual aspect. This makes me think of the scene from the 40 Year Old Virgin where Steve Carrell is turning his action figures heads away when he breaks out the box 'o porn XD Maybe it's more comfortable for me as a woman to laugh at this paranoia in a man. Am I sure I'm not being watched?! (Not that this is the worst thing but then - how's my lighting, what's my frame, etc).











They did a few episodes of Charmed about that. The character Piper (she's a witch - more primal) can't get it on with Leo because he's a White Lighter (a guardian angel basically), which opens her to this new level of consciousness and self awareness and she can't get comfortable enough to lose her inhibitions at first since she's afraid she's being watched (presumably by other White Lighters or randoms within that realm, or...I'm not entirely sure - that's why it gets amusing, really. Who the fuck knows in a multiverse set up?!)



















It's hard for me to release that feeling that I'm expected to perform for someone...though I guess that would be the case for anyone. BUT. You don't usually see porns of dudes jacking it solo, whereas you see it with chicks all the time. Actually, HA, this is funny. Maybe I get off on disgusting, like...myself? I think I told you that I felt powerful when I didn't shower for a week once. (This land is my land! <Lol, what? I don't know).

Reminds me of the movie This Means War too, where Chris Pine and Tom Hardy are secretly lying CIA agents who are more or less stalking Reese Witherspoon via technology. The final scene is Chris Pine telling her to STOP THINKING hahaha. Or at least to stop overthinking when it comes to sex.











I couldn't find one of my favorite scenes though - where her and Chelsea Handler are at the grocery store and she's explaining that she can't date because she's afraid of becoming a skin suit, and Chelsea Hander's loading her cart with wine and trying to tell her to stop being so dramatic, lol.

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## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

Everyone disappeared :laughing:


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## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

@_Veggie_ don't worry, L'histoire d'oeil ain't the gold standard for measuring freakishness :tongue:


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Been a busy couple of days distracting myself with that fantasy of real life. Will get back to the real world of fantasy soon enough.



Veggie said:


> Everyone disappeared :laughing:


Wow, I was so turned on by that video. So hot. Phew!







mimesis said:


> @_Veggie_ don't worry, L'histoire d'oeil ain't the gold standard for measuring freakishness :tongue:







I saw "L'histoire d'oeil" and misread it as "trompe l'oeil" LOL... Kind of funny because both sort of deal with that Sx instinct as far as "breaking the 4th wall."










In the spirit of electronica and dubstep, will make all my videos in this post from my favorite radio station in Saints Row (I need to stop talking about that... and playing it non-stop getting home after a long day): K12 FM 97.6 (I love it when video games let you listen to different radio stations in game; mixes up the ambiance):






This one cracks me up... Spaghetti!


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## 7rr7s (Jun 6, 2011)

This post really spoke to me, as I'm in a very similar place. Since I know it will be up your alley, prepare for some literature and film references as well. I'll mark the things that stood out though. This may get totally of base here, so sorry in advance if I completely didn't get the message. 




hal0hal0 said:


> _Life is short, and it's never too early to start thinking about your future. Not silly things like career, family, education, or love life, but the future that will be with you [literally] long after you're gone—yep, that's right folks, when you're pushing daisies... how would you like to be remembered?_


I think of this all of the time. Death never leaves my mind, and I feel scared if it does because it feels like I'm just taking life for granted again. But I also think about how I will be remembered. 


> I'm interested in hearing about how you want people to see or remember you when you're gone (if at all). I initially wanted to make this thread very trolly and facetious and completely disrespectful and angry, mostly because I've been in a strange mix of foul bad temper, depressed, lonely (ew) and yet maniacally finding myself laughing at how stupid and absurd I'm being... I keep asking myself: Why do I worry about these things?


I remember talking with an INFP 5 and she said she didn't want to be remembered, and the thought of that was just shocking to me. It completely blew me out of my comfort zone. How could anyone NOT want to be remembered? It depresses me when I think of being forgotten. But then I think of all of the people who have lived and died and who are forgotten, or remembered only as symbols. We remember them as cavemen, not as individuals. We remember them as soldiers, not as individuals. We remember them as the people of this country, of this time, of this place; people of foreign places, with foreign names, remembered only in foreign tongues, or in myths that have come down to us. But we don't remember any single person. People still debate whether Jesus Christ actually existed at all. 



> _Ex nihilo nihil fit_


_Dal niente. _

The true paradox. This is the void, Nietzsche's abyss. I've been very depressed recently and I don't think I've ever came as close to touching the darkness as I have recently. It's like gazing up into the sky, without any landmarks of the earth in your peripherals. Just wide open sky. Except you're staring into the blackness of the void. It's scary either way. You don;t know if you can ever come back from it, and there were times when I really felt lost in it. And it scared me. It's plumbing the depths of the unconscious. And the unconscious is scary. This is Plato saying how _we are fired into life with a madness that comes from the gods. _This is Freud's _thanatos_, the death instinct. It's Ahab and the whiteness of the whale, but while the whiteness is the absence of all color, black is the mixture of all of the colors. In the blackness it isn't the absence of color, but the absence of life. It's the coldness of the unknown, the paradoxes of the mind, the despair that hangs in the questions and the possibilities that maybe it is all for nothing. Maybe it all is meaningless. 


> I am trying to figure out what I want to say, and the best word I can come up with is _hunger_. No matter how much you eat your fill today, tomorrow you will be hungry once more. The finest of feasts never... lasts. This is nothing new or especially insightful, yet I am continually blindsided by its forcefulness in spite of being fully aware that "nothing lasts" and that "all good things must end"—specifically, when the feeling of satiety and fulfillment subsides and the sense of hollowness or emptiness once more regains its grip upon me.


Yes! The hunger. We always gorge to excess and then we ache again in hunger. The hole, like the abyss is bottomless. It can never be filled. The appetite never whetted, the thirst never satiated. Hemingway's Moveable Feast was never enough. He was hungry as a young man in Paris when not even love and revelry and lust could fill him, and he was still hungry after war and adventure and women and drink. He was hungry as an old man for his hunger as a young man. He was still writing it when he killed himself. But he understood the hunger. _

It was a wonderful meal at Michaud's after we got in; but when we had finished and there was no question of hunger any more the feeling that had been like hunger when we were on the bridge and was still there when we caught the bus home. It was there when we came in the room and after we had gone to bed and made love in the dark, it was there. When I woke with the windows open and the moonlight on the roofs of the tall houses, it was there. I put my face away from the moonlight into the shadow but I could not sleep and lay awake thinking about it. _


> I suppose I find myself continually preoccupied not with the drunken night of happiness, but the hangover the next day. Or rather than the stupor of an opiate's dream, the painful withdrawal—the crash to reality.
> 
> Hope frustrates me in that way. It is a knife that splits the air into twin possibilities, one desirable and the other unthinkable. Icarusian, in the sense that hope launches you into the sky only to have you plummet later on.


Yes! The waking up from the dream to only find disillusionment. This is Gatsby's dream, his _heightened sensitivity to the promises of life_, his _extraordinary gift for hope, _and,_ romantic readiness. _But it's also _the colossal vitality of his illusion. _It's his extravagant parties with their _yellow cocktail music_. His mythos as Jay Gatsby. But it's all an illusion. It's James Gatz cleaning up the party with Nick after everyone has left. It's the schedule that Nick keeps of Gatsby's parties, dated July 5th. July 5th is the day after the revelry of July 4th. It's the hangover the next day, the crash to reality. It's Gatsby being the Great Gatsby, the war hero, the self made man, but plummeted down to earth, with no one but Nick thinking he is great. It's Icarus and the sun, Gatsby and the green light, both of them coming so close, and plummeting to their inevitable doom. It is the swimming pool being present at the parties, yet he only swims in it when he is to be killed. Just as swimming pools are used not as places of happiness and fun, but ominous symbols of death and doom in Breaking Bad, another show which features man crashing back to earth after getting too close to his dream. 

I have heard as well, that depression is the psyches defense whenever you are getting too close to any particular archetypal energy. 



> What happens, for instance, when you begin to starve? When that hunger is no longer satisfied? Maybe it's better thought of as the need to come up for air. I'm reminded, more than I have been in quite some time, of images from the 1969 counterculture picture The Graduate; specifically, of two images: One of Benjamin Braddock sitting alone before his aquarium, lost and adrift, without any idea of who he is or what he wants to do:
> 
> 
> *Now what?*


Exactly. What now? What happens? What is the next step? It reminds me of that scene in Fight Club where he's telling him about his father; how he told him to go to college, he graduates and asks now what? His father tells him to get a job, then he asks now what? I don't know, get married... 

I think, especially for American millennials, we have been raised to believe that we can do anything if we can just put our mind to it. We can become anything, but with all of this freedom, we find ourselves asking, now what? What happens after you graduate? When faced with the blank canvas of life, what do you decide to paint? 



> As the years go by, I find it more and more obvious that I romanticize the past, am angered by the present, and fear the future. I am a nostalgic. I am annoyed by impermanence and most of all, disheartened by a present that seems to slip into the past far too quickly for my liking. It is as if I am running in slow motion, and everyone around me is running away at twice the speed. Always drifting, drifting further apart.


I feel the same way. A part of me is very nostalgic, almost to a fault, and I feel so sad that I can't go back, but I realize that there is no going back. Back to Gatsby again, it;s his desire to capture the past. _"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"_ 
_
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. 

He talked alot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was... _

But it's the realization that our mind will _never romp again like the mind of God, _that we are _boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. 


_But then this desire, this longing for the past doesn't seem healthy. I often think to myself that one day I'll be older and it's _this_ time right now that I'll long for. It's my hunger for the past that I'll hunger for later in life. And so I try to take in every moment, try to take a mental snapshot of it to add to a collection of snapshots; great memories, fleeting moments of my life; moments that to anyone else but me seem just normal, insignificant, transitory. But to me, they remind me of all of the moments that came before, and it reminds me of the longing, the hunger for the past. It's the hunger that gives the moments their significance because I realize one day I'll hunger for them too. It's like being in front of a feast and eating until you are too full to eat, but not wanting to waste any of the food because you know that you are going to be hungry three hours from now. 

It's the desire to _suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder. _

And then I realize that I don't want to live a life of inaction either. Just being lost in memories and longing for the past without living fully in the present, or being blind to the pleasures of the present is scary too. 

I don't want to be like Marcher in James' _The Beast In The Jungle _who realizes that _It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. _Because, _It wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything. 



_Living life only in memories without creating any memories is the ultimate fear for me, and yet I see it more and more becoming a reality, which terrifies me. But I feel more and more, the impermanence of things. And in that sense I start to not want to even grow old. I'll lose my youth, my looks, my strength; I'll watch my parents die, my friends die, my pets die, my love die. Everything dies, yes, it's a part of life. But this knowledge of death, this closeness that I have entered into with it, it makes me not want to get close to anything or anyone because all of it is going to end one day. I think well, what's the point? What's the point of it all then? Then I start getting nihilistic and looking into the void more. Staring into the abyss. 

The Greeks said that the gods envied man's mortality because it gave action to their deeds. Life is so precious and so short, especially when you think about it. Say you live to 80, that's 80 summers. You might not remember the first and last of them too well, and you might not be able to enjoy all of them. So that leaves what, 50, 60 summers that you enjoy? Where you have your youth and vitality, and things are ahead of you and not behind you? Every year as I grow older I mourn the summer and the season that has passed because I realize a part of me has passed as well. I'm getting to the age where there's less ahead of me and more behind me, in the sense of youth. It terrifies and depresses me. I feel old already. I envy all those who died young in a sense, because they will be forever young and forever beautiful. We know them now only as young death, and that's what I feel have been prime symbols and motifs in my life. It's as Don Juan says, how _Death is our eternal companion._ It's like Keats speaking of being_ half in love with easeful death. _Youth and death, the corruption of flesh, the sanctity of youth, the beauty of death. _Thanatos! Thanatos! _
_
I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more._ Rev. 21:1




> The 2nd law of thermodynamics: ΔS[SUB](universe)[/SUB] ≥ 0.
> 
> Time ticks ticks ticks, like the drip of Chinese water torture or a leaky pipe.


Yes, time. The thing that gives so much meaning to our lives, and the thing we can never get enough of, never regain, never recapture. Every moment passes away into the next moment. In each new moment an act of creation. In each new moment an act of destruction. I want to know what it is to live and to die in that moment, in the eternity of every moment. If I can just find that place, that moment, if I can just live in it and become it and be a part of it and be present to it... But it eludes me as it eludes all of us. Like Gatsby reaching towards the green light, like Marcher waiting for the beast in the jungle, like Icarus flying towards the sun. 

But time spans and does not end. It existed before us and will exist after us and it's our mortality that makes us incapable of truly fathoming that fact. We end. Ashes to ashes. Flying towards the sun. Burning. Burning into life, cleaving into moments, into time. Burning it up. Burning to ashes. 



> Is that it then? Resignation? Go with the flow? Onto the next thing?


I don't know what the next thing is. And even if I did, it wouldn't do you any good. You make your own truth. I can't give you that. I can;t give you anything. 

I can;t find the scene from The Counselor, but here is part of the quote. 
_
Yes. At the understanding that life is not going to take you back. You are the world you have created. And when you cease to exist, this world that you have created will also cease to exist. But for those with the understanding that they're living the last days of the world, death acquires a different meaning. The extinction of all reality is a concept no resignation can encompass. And then, all the grand designs and all the grand plans will be finally exposed and revealed for what they are._



> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> I originally had a long list of epitaphs, most of which were rather trollish, but in the end, I can think of 5 I would feasibly like:
> 
> ...


I'm rather fond of this one. It's a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes. I first read it at the beginning of a book called The Grieving Garden: Living With The Death Of A Child. 
_
Alas for those that never sing, 
But die with all their music in them. _




> As far as a funeral... I don't really know. I would rather be cremated, tbh (which probably means I wouldn't have an epitaph). Small service or possibly none at all. No eulogy; just memories from those that matter (I think by biggest fear is being forgotten). I would [ideally] like my internet friends to know as well, which sounds selfish, but I'm not sure if that's better or worse than "wonder what happened to him."
> 
> Goddamit, why is life so sad :laughing::laughing::laughing:. Sad mad glad.:crying::dry::kitteh: Grrr... I'm so confused.
> 
> Actually, maybe I should have the PerC emoticons put on my epitaph. That would be kinda cool.



I'd want a large funeral. One of the reasons why I take so many pictures, but am also very selective of taking pictures is because I always think that these are what will be shown of my life on those boards at the funeral home. That's why I always try to look good. I'm sad that there aren;t any of me working at my father's store or when I was working in direct sales. I wish there were more of me playing guitar, writing and painting too. 

I would want to write my own eulogy because I doubt anyone else could pull it off better than I could. That sounds super narcisstic but it's true. At the same time I'd be fine with just paddling out to sea in a small boat to die alone at sea, preferrably during a storm. Being attacked and killed by a wild animal would be another way to go that I'd be satisfied with. I want a brutal death, none of this peaceful dying at home or dying in a hospital hooked up to tubes. No, fuck all of that. Death at sea, or death in the wild. I have comtemplated how I'd kill myself too, not seriously, just thought about it. I'd still want a brutal death and I'd probably want to go out like the Japanese Samurai, falling on my own sword, cutting out my stomach. I could still have an open casket funeral because the wound would be covered up too. Heart attack while having sex, or overdose would also be fun ways to go out too. 

I don't want to be buried though. Fuck that. Cremated and shot into space or washed out to sea. 

Also, my friend had to interview me on the subject of death for a college class he was taking. This is the interview. I think you might enjoy it.







_Morendo. _

_Fin. _​


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

KindOfBlue06 said:


> This may get totally of base here, so sorry in advance if I completely didn't get the message.


I didn't get the message either. 

"It is a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."



KindOfBlue06 said:


> I envy all those who died young in a sense, because they will be forever young and forever beautiful. We know them now only as young death, and that's what I feel have been prime symbols and motifs in my life. It's as Don Juan says, how _Death is our eternal companion._ It's like Keats speaking of being_ half in love with easeful death. _Youth and death, the corruption of flesh, the sanctity of youth, the beauty of death. _Thanatos! Thanatos! _


Interesting how I never thought of it, but both our avatars are of classic Hollywood stars who died young. I've told @Veggie before that Carole Lombard's death is marked by this strange correlation to the number 3... she died on TWA Flight #3, at the age of 33, in a Douglas DC-3 plane, the youngest of 3 children, and her mother, who was on board the flight with her, had warned her about the number 3 earlier.

The triangle is representative of conflict, instability and imbalance (Although, this has been played with extensively, with movies like Lubitsch's Design for Living or Truffaut's Jules et Jim, which tout the virtues of the menage a trois). In Kurosawa's Rashomon (and I apologize... THIS was actually my gateway to foreign cinema, before The Seventh Seal, actually, the triangular relationship is seen as the imbalancing force, specifically, as the archetype of the love (or possibly lust) triangle. 






Going back to youth, however, what would you say it is, however? Where's the cutoff, 33, 34, 35? 40? 60? 90? Put in perspective, if you condensed the history of the earth into a single calendar year, the birth of Christ took place on the very last day. The whole of humanity is but a tiny speck in the entire world's history, much less the universe. In a sense, however, is not the void rather liberating? In some regard, I think nihilism and meaninglessness (which I realize can be construed as its own sort of meaning) release the burden of perfectionism. 

So regarding youth, isn't it odd how our "old selves" are the younger selves, whereas the "new self" is the older one? In a sense, perhaps it is the elderly that are the most youthful of us all (and interestingly, it is the very young and the very old who are the most vulnerable of us all and most susceptible to certain forms of disease [flu]).

What I notice with Ingmar Bergman, for instance, who I've talked about extensively here and elsewhere, is that his films grow younger, no better exemplified by Fanny Och Alexander, what many consider to be his finest work. Whereas earlier work was directly obsessed with death, Fanny and Alexander seems more, hmm... full or complete. 






And it opens, perhaps better capturing those days of our youth than any other picture has before or since, save for Malle's Au Revoir les Enfants. Where you are home alone and it seems an eternity. You are the only thing in existence and you are completely alone. There is not a single person left on the planet and other than the sound of your breathing, there is nothing. That has always fascinated me. How the scale of time, 5 minutes stuck at a traffic light, for instance, can seem an eternity, yet we turn around and wonder where all those years have gone, as if they sped by without waiting for us to catch our breath.

The world is mad in this way. But then again, logic can drive me mad.



KindOfBlue06 said:


> When faced with the blank canvas of life, what do you decide to paint?


An albino cow trapped in a snowstorm.









^Although this piece is called "Monochrome White Painting" by Li Yuan Chia.



KindOfBlue06 said:


> I don't want to be buried though. Fuck that. Cremated and shot into space or washed out to sea.


Well, even if you end up as worm food, when the sun expands and engulfs the earth, you'll be cremated eventually.






Maybe the best we can do is distract ourselves and give each other friendly ass-slaps in our times of need (or hugs, IDK). As Faulkner wrote in The Sound and the Fury:



> “...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”


In one regard, my dream is to forget who I am (easier said than done, however). To step into another life, the myriad of lives I could've lived had I chosen a different path or perhaps chosen a path at all.


----------



## 7rr7s (Jun 6, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> I didn't get the message either.
> 
> "It is a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
> 
> ...


I've always been very fascinated by numbers as well. I'm a type 3, but typed as 6 for a while, but also might be a 6 anyways. 6 is divisible by 3. type 6 goes to 3 under stress, type 3 integrates to 6. There is of course, the holy trinity, and Christ being crucified at 33, with 3 and 3 being 6. The 33rd rite in Freemasonry. Then there is the whole 666 thing. 

And that's just 3, don't even get me started on 42. loll. 



> The triangle is representative of conflict, instability and imbalance (Although, this has been played with extensively, with movies like Lubitsch's Design for Living or Truffaut's Jules et Jim, which tout the virtues of the menage a trois). In Kurosawa's Rashomon (and I apologize... THIS was actually my gateway to foreign cinema, before The Seventh Seal, actually, the triangular relationship is seen as the imbalancing force, specifically, as the archetype of the love (or possibly lust) triangle.


There is much symbology associated with the triangle. In music, if you take the circle of fifths and make a triangle with the key centers, they are all a third apart. John Coltrane knew this and exploited this phenomenon in his music. Also, I heard that originally Stanley Kubrick wanted the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey to be a triangle. 



> Going back to youth, however, what would you say it is, however? Where's the cutoff, 33, 34, 35? 40? 60? 90? Put in perspective, if you condensed the history of the earth into a single calendar year, the birth of Christ took place on the very last day. The whole of humanity is but a tiny speck in the entire world's history, much less the universe. In a sense, however, is not the void rather liberating? In some regard, I think nihilism and meaninglessness (which I realize can be construed as its own sort of meaning) release the burden of perfectionism.
> 
> So regarding youth, isn't it odd how our "old selves" are the younger selves, whereas the "new self" is the older one? In a sense, perhaps it is the elderly that are the most youthful of us all (and interestingly, it is the very young and the very old who are the most vulnerable of us all and most susceptible to certain forms of disease [flu]).


I don't know man. I used to think 10 when I was a kid. Then it was 13, and then 16 became symbolic. Looking back on it, I think 7 since that was where I consider my childhood ending. 

The paradox of the old self and the new self is explored beautifully in Jacob Needleman's _Time And The Soul. _In the book he tells a myth of a young merchant who is in a hurry. He tries to take a shortcut through the desert Although he knows that if a storm come, he could be trapped and will lose time. He decides to risk it anyways, but a storm comes up. During the storm he comes across an old man who looks at him like he knows him, although he has never seen the man before. The old man asks him "Is it you?" The old man tells him that he is on his way to a nearby city but has run out of water. The young man stops to give him water and sends him on his way. The old man says "One day, the desert will repay you."

Thirty years pass and the young man now has a family. When his son falls ill, he decides to take the short cut through the desert. In his haste, he spills his water as a sandstorm kicks up. Just as he is about to cry out in despair he sees a figure approaching on a camel. He recognizes him. It is his younger self from 30 years before. He asks him, "Is it you?" He tells the man he is on his way to the city but is out of water and he sees his younger self weighing the decision. The younger man helps him and sends him on his way. He acknowledges his younger self and wants to speak with him of many things, but can only find the words to say, "One day, the desert will repay you." 

After the man's tale, the desert is known as _the desert where one meets themselves. _

The self I am now murders the self I was a moment ago by the sheer act of existing. My self now is the disease, the death head to the former self. 



> What I notice with Ingmar Bergman, for instance, who I've talked about extensively here and elsewhere, is that his films grow younger, no better exemplified by Fanny Och Alexander, what many consider to be his finest work. Whereas earlier work was directly obsessed with death, Fanny and Alexander seems more, hmm... full or complete.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Time is so elusive. We can;t stop time, can't recreate the past like Gatsby dreamed of, yet it remains blurred, transient, and elusive it does with the Ramsay's in Woolfe's _To The Lighthouse_.


> What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.


Yet time is what gives youth and beauty it's value. 
_
Beauty was not everything. Beauty had this penalty — it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life — froze it._

Time, death, and the beauty of youth is distilled in the prologue even, of _Romeo and Juliet,_
_
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love ...is now the two hours' traffic of our stage._

Time and the distorted perception of time continues. Even Benvolio asks, _What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?_

But as Tom Waits puts it, 
_
And it's time time time that you love. And it's time time time. _

Time is elusive. Reality itself is elusive. What is your reality is not my reality, and it exists to the individual alone. We create our own realities. But who knows. Maybe we're all just hearing the tennis balls, imagining it all, imagining ourselves even. 









> An albino cow trapped in a snowstorm.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


_

It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appaled me. ...were it not for that whiteness you would not have that intensified terror. 

But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous- why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.
_



> Well, even if you end up as worm food, when the sun expands and engulfs the earth, you'll be cremated eventually.


I fucking hate worms and the goal is to not become worm food. 



> Maybe the best we can do is distract ourselves and give each other friendly ass-slaps in our times of need (or hugs, IDK). As Faulkner wrote in The Sound and the Fury:
> 
> 
> 
> In one regard, my dream is to forget who I am (easier said than done, however). To step into another life, the myriad of lives I could've lived had I chosen a different path or perhaps chosen a path at all.


[/QUOTE]

Or maybe the goal is to just _know thyself. _Die a thousand deaths and create a thousand myriad selves. Either way, hugs and ass slaps are always a good choice.


----------



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

KindOfBlue06 said:


> And that's just 3, don't even get me started on 42. loll.


And you know, enneagrams 2 and 4 are much more similar than they may appear, and I don't think there is any type I empathize with or am more fascinated by than I am the 2. In a sense, I would say the 2 is the 4 inside-out, while the 4 is the 2 outside-in. That said, I can relate to all the image types in that way, there does seem to be some desire, perhaps more apparent than in other types, to be _*seen*_.





^Arguably Bogie's best performance, although I'm always partial to the madness of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Anyways, glad you popped up on this thread; I was hoping to see more image types, actually. I've wondered if the 3 fixation does not have a more intimate understanding of the conflict between emptiness and fullness, the hunger and the fulfilling thereof. I have sometimes drawn the line that the 3 balances between the extremes of the 4's hollowness/empty focus vs. the 2's desire to overflow like a wellspring.

I have a lot of catching up to do in the literature department :laughing:... believe it or not, I've never read a word by Hemingway and I've been saying so for years. 

But in the spirit of your post, I shall share bits and pieces of some of my favorites as well, starting with none other than Raymond Carver, who I consider more influential upon me than any other writer. I was googling something about him just now, and saw a picture of his gravestone:










And funnily enough, it made me laugh. God, what a guy.

Ray Carver is arguably the most _nuanced _writer I have ever had the pleasure of reading. There is flashier, more sumptuous prose (Vladimir Nabokov, Milan Kundera, James Joyce, etc.), but as far as the efficiency of words and the care with which every single word is chosen, nobody, IMO, beats Carver. It is what Carver leaves _*out *_of his writing that is so powerful. What is unsaid and unspoken. Because those are private moments, memories, that through their very mystery are made immortal.

So what struck me about seeing his gravestone was not Late Fragment, but rather, Gravy. Late Fragment is a lovely set of lines, but Gravy is the sort of frank, yet slightly coy Carver I know and love. I love it because it's so subtly happy-go-lucky, while simultaneously being tongue-in-cheek. 



> *Gravy*
> 
> by Raymond Carver.
> 
> ...


A _gravy _gravestone :laughing:. And to tie his memory to something as mundane as gravy is just so Carver. Carver was one of those writers where quotes just don't do justice to the writing, because it's the ambiance and attitude it creates. Those moments where you zone out and are lost in thought, where a word triggers a whole slew of memories, yet those are private, hidden things to keep for yourself.

I was at a Sherlock Holmes club meeting earlier tonight, and one of the members talked about how it was the _*scene *_that was becoming a lost art. Writers these days can nail down the plot and the characters in their books quite well, but the scene itself, they argued, was taking a backseat, so to speak.

I am most fascinated by those things, whatever they may be, that cause words to fail. 



KindOfBlue06 said:


> Time is elusive. Reality itself is elusive. What is your reality is not my reality, and it exists to the individual alone. We create our own realities. But who knows. Maybe we're all just hearing the tennis balls, imagining it all, imagining ourselves even.


Ah, Blow-Up. I haven't seen that in ages. What always struck me about that picture was the nature of perception; what the human eye sees and what it doesn't see. Data and the connections in between (imagination). That reminds me of a scene in Godard's Band of Outsiders (Band a Part). I can't find the scene, but Odile, Franz and Arthur are on the subway and Odile points to a young man sitting quietly on the train and says (paraphrased): 

_"Look at that man's expression. Say he is going to visit his sister in the hospital to give her a present and the expression becomes one of kindness and compassion. Say he's got a bomb in that box and it becomes one of menace."_

Blow-Up, similarly, operates upon incomplete data. It's right there in the title, is it not? To blow-up means to expand beyond our physical capacity. To exceed or break the limit of. To penetrate. At its heart, this is intuition at play, extrapolating between the data points to arrive at conclusions, but what is it that drives the _*desire *_to "make sense of it all?" Why do humans, when presented with a problem, a question or a dilemma, seek answers?

In other words, why do we expect or desire the companion of a question to be an answer? Maybe this should be my epitaph:

Any qvestions?



KindOfBlue06 said:


> The paradox of the old self and the new self is explored beautifully in Jacob Needleman's _Time And The Soul. _In the book he tells a myth of a young merchant who is in a hurry. He tries to take a shortcut through the desert Although he knows that if a storm come, he could be trapped and will lose time. He decides to risk it anyways, but a storm comes up. During the storm he comes across an old man who looks at him like he knows him, although he has never seen the man before. The old man asks him "Is it you?" The old man tells him that he is on his way to a nearby city but has run out of water. The young man stops to give him water and sends him on his way. The old man says "One day, the desert will repay you."


There is a lovely passage in Ulysses that is very reminiscent of Lolita insofar as being intoxicated by youth. Admittedly, the scene is pretty damn perverted from Leopold Bloom's perspective, but damn, what words:



Ulysses said:


> She was wearing the blue for luck, hoping against hope, her own colour and the lucky colour too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere on her because the green she wore that day week brought grief because his dressing that morning she nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside out and that was for luck and lovers' meetings if you put those things on inside out so long as it wasn't a Friday.
> 
> And yet and yet! That strained look on her face! A gnawing sorrow is there all the time. Her very soul is in her eyes and she would give worlds to be in the privacy of her own familiar chamber where, giving way to tears, she could have a good cry and relieve her pentup feelings. Though not too much because she knew how to cry nicely before the mirror. You are lovely, Gerty, it said. The paly light of the eveninig falls upon a face infinitely sad and wistful. Gerty MacDowell yearns in vain.


----------



## 7rr7s (Jun 6, 2011)

Veggie said:


> ? (Where you be @_hal0hal0_?! *Booooooooo* <you. Actually, know what? You might enjoy this After Hours if you haven't seen it yet. Goes over some afterlife options).


More on this shortly! 



hal0hal0 said:


> Like, ugh, there's more??? I'm mostly just interested in how syntax suggests intonation. I think italics are sometimes more effective than bolding and/or underlining. It's weird because they're more subtle that way. I don't know what to make of that, but I sure do like them.


I agree about the italics. They _are_ effective, and they _do_ make the tone more apparent when you use them in that way. If my life was a story, (short story at this rate, and I hope it never reaches novel length), I guess the years would be paragraphs, the days sentences, and so forth. Which leads me to wonder, just _what_ would the italicized bits be? 
I don't understand what this is saying, but I'll assume it's the wine talking.[/QUOTE]

Booyou is a member on here, I'm pretty sure. INFP I think. Or maybe Veggie was just wine mode. XD. 


* *

















> I think generally, the 7 can be numbed by excess, perhaps a kind of anhedonia to its own hedonism. As we've discussed before, I wonder if the 4 and 7 might not be opposites in terms of approach. I think Naranjo and Chestnut both single out the 4 and 7 as having "opposite" rebalancing approaches. I can't find the exact passage atm, but perhaps, if th*e 4 identifies with and even exaggerates being stuck in the rut (i.e., creating its own problem), then the 7 does everything to avoid it/deny it (i.e., "everything's OK"). *
> 
> I could be 6-fixed btw. I don't look at tritype much anymore.


Real frustration triad shit there. I'm still on the fence if I could be 4 core and/or 7 fixed. It's like burning the candle at both ends and hedging bets against yourself over which part of you is going to break first. 





> I dunno. Like, rather than hit the nail on the head, I'd rather skew it at an angle so the nail is bent and nobody knows what to do with it. I hate to sound like a tease, but I suppose if I were to drive for irreverence and defiance, I'd leave something cryptic and perplexing behind...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I've felt like that too at times. Like if I had the money, I'd erect a giant statue of myself or have myself buried under a giant sphinx, or a pyramid or some stone edifice with cryptic symbols and messages about my life and the time in which I lived. At the end of time, it'd be The Great Pyramids, The Sphinx, Easter Island Moais, Mt. Rushmore, and some wild man buried in the middle of nowhere under a giant stone structure. 

Actually, I wouldn't mind having my ashes spread over Easter Island. That way I can always be part mystery, part legend, and part of the island. 














Veggie said:


> Hmm, in reality though, I'd like to be cremated. The idea of 1.being buried in a tiny coffin dead or not and 2.being worm food and then excrement and giving animals the opportunity to desecrate my corpse is something that totally grosses me out.


Agreed. I fucking hate worms. I've always had a strange fascination and fear of fire as well, so I feel like being cremated would be kind of symbolic. A giant funeral pyre would be pretty epic too. 



> I'd really not like to think about people I love having to attend my funeral though. Oh God. Worst thought ever. So sad. I'd really hope that someone would take the reigns and tell funny and charismatic stories, and that something beautifully synchronistic would happen to make people feel like I was there (and maybe I would be somehow?)


What if instead of something that happened to everyone at once, everyone experienced small moments of synchonicity that reminded them of you that day? But it would only be personal to them. To anyone else, it wouldn't mean anything, but to them it would. And in an even further act of syncronicity, someone would mention it, and it would spark the other person to say omg that's so weird you said that, something like that happened to me too! And then they all start sharing amazing Veggie stories and that in itself becomes the giant act of syncronicity. 

For a moment, or a series of moments, you become timeless because the self you were continues in the minds and the hearts and the memories of the others, and the memories transcend time. 



hal0hal0 said:


> Caskets are painfully expensive, considering even the nicest ones get crushed and deformed under the weight of dirt on top of them.


If you get cremated, they have special caskets that are cheaper because they're made specificaly for cremation. Obvsioulsly they have no handles, and that was kind of a wierd thing to think about when I was looking at them. Although, the fact that I was looking into the prices and differences of caskets was probably the weirder thing. 

Then there's always a burial at sea or being shot into space... 



> Yeah, that's why I'm leaning towards not having a service (shit, should I get this down in writing?). I wonder if I should carry a note in my pocket at all times detailing all this out—no casket, cremation, chuck me down a storm drain. Keep it cheap.


I'm always worried about that too! I always feel like I should make a will because I don't trust family and friends to remember shit, especially if something were to happen and they wouldn't be thinking about that due to shock, or they would forget that I told them, or wouldn't think to look where I wrote it down or something. Shit like that always worries me more than an actual sudden tragedy befalling me. So my numbers up and I go tomorrow, fine, I can deal with that. But don;t put me in the fucking ground omg! 


> And the final episode of Rescue Me is pretty damn hilarious in that way too. *SPOILER*
> * *
> 
> 
> ...



* *







> But as it turns out, Lou was the one who died... it manages to be really touching but also lighthearted, angry, funny, and affectionate, stupid, etc... really liked that show a lot because the emotional range was just so raw and rough around the edges.


That was clever how they did that. That was a great show, and one of the first shows to really touch on alchoholism. I related to the deeper symbolic elements of fire the show touched on too, how people burn so fiercely through life, and how fire can sustain you and destroy you much like it did with Tommy. 




mushr00m said:


> Ideally, it would be nice to be remembered in a way that imparted some kind of mark on the world for the better, be it through wisdom, working in a poor country, creating something long-lasting or something that inspired others to use this to move onto better things. Maybe that's a little narcissistic to some or alternately, why not! As in, what's wrong with feeling self satisfied at leaving something for humanity to creatively gnaw on :tongue:
> 
> View attachment 250338


Well, since everything posted online is out there in the ether for all eternity, you shall not be forgotten mushy! Your great posts shall live on to inspire others for years to come! I feel the same way too though. I want to be remembered for something larger than just being a nice person to my family and friends ect. I was surprised though, when I realized that not everyone shares that sentiment. I talked with a person who said that they would rather be forgotton. I was pretty shocked at that, because the thought of being forgotten is terrifying to me. 



> Anyways. I learnt that things that keep popping up and when you try to suppress them, it doesn't really work so you kinda have to address them. In some form. So to worry about things, things that continue to rear their head, it shows concern and to find some way to remedy it, brings fruitful results for oneself. Even just the act of sharing those concerns opens a space for others to get involved in the dilemma.


Supressing things seems to cause them to reappear later in stronger and more destructive ways. I find this especially true with archetypal energy, but any kind of energy really. It's like not having pizza for a long time and then thinking about pizza all of a sudden. Pizza omg I want pizza now, RIGHT FUCKING NOW PIZZA YES OMG. And then you just end up eating way too much pizza and getting a stomach ache. I'm pretty sure this is not the first time we've concluded that life is like eating a slice of pizza. XD. 


> I can understand where your coming from here. I've been feeling a lot like this recently. Satisfaction being short-lived. Many things providing superficial happiness, hoping this will be the thing that satiates that inner hunger, that abyss and that focus on the empty space, it's not looking at the tree but the apples that have fallen down and the empty branches instead. I think I swerved a little away from the point in hand :? But it's something that came to mind reading your thoughts. It's like the feeling of retail therapy is a delusion, you buy stuff to feel better but it not quite what you want or doesn't bring you long term fulfilment. I s'pose it's finding, searching, for that vacation, that way of life, something that is important enough to you that you would dedicate a part of yourself to embody it, understand it.


Sticking with the pizza, yeah you might get sick from the pizza. But a few hours later you'd still warm up the leftovers because you're hungry again. I think it's human nature to want and to desire material things, or any sort of thing that makes you feel good really, even natural things like food, sex, sleep, ect. But none of those things are the real end pursuit of happiness. Happiness itself is a fleeting thing. Too much of anything is bad, even happiness. I'd never want to be permenantly happy. I'd feel like I wasn't growing, wasn't being challenged, being forced to adapt, to grow. The happiest times in my life were never when I was at the top so to speak, but when I was clawing my way up to the top. It was never the achievement, but the pursuit of it. It wasn't the meal that made me happy, but the hunger for it. I thrive on that hunger. It makes me feel more like an animal, more primal, more alive. 

But even with hunger, it needs to be satiated otherwise one starves. There's a fine edge between the fullness of life one experiences when hungry, and the starvation of life one experiences which makes death seem closer and more present. 



> It does seem when you look at life as a series of memories and you know that the very moment we exist now will also become a memory, did anything worthwhile happen? Is it no longer quite as important because it is no longer the present and the present is where it's all at! Is what I hear over and over, it's almost fanatical in a way. The past gave birth to the present and the past and present will give birth to the future. *explosion of other thoughts on this to even find the right wording to best describe them*.


YEs! It's so crazy! Every future moment is a memory. This moment right now will be a memory to the moment that comes after it. Maybe the point is to remember before we remember, to remember a time before we could remember. 

I forgot where I heard this, but it was something like today is not for remembering; today is to make memories and to make moments worth remembering tomorrow. I think that's a beautiful way to think about it. 



> But reading on, makes you question why the fixation on time? Is time the greatest healer? Or is it a case of a leopard never changes it's spots? Time explains a passage from one point to another, before/after. The moment itself - and losing track of time because it's the quality of the moment that brings up something profound in it's own way...


I think time is our greatest sphinx. The more we try to understand it, the more it eludes us, mocks us, invites us into it's mystery while remaining impenetrable, unending, and evanescent. 



hal0hal0 said:


> ok, I don't have long to respond right now, cuz I'm starting work in the hospital today, hooray!


Hooray!!! . 


Yes, suppression lets things fester. I have a lot of bad thoughts, fears, doubts, etc., and I've had the uh... useful strategy of just stuffing them down and bottling them up. I've heard this is an Sp 4 thing. Do it on your own, don't ask for help, your road, no one else's:
That's sorta the thing though, is that stuff keeps popping up :laughing:. I find solid ground (as in, real, emotional solid ground... happiness, connection, etc.), but then I lose it again. And then I feel like a total drama queen for asking for help... I've wondered if there is a cultural element... there's a word in my dad's dialect that means "not wanting to impose" that governs much of Asian culture (at least as I'm familiar with it). "Not wanting to be a bother/burden on others."

[/QUOTE] 

I can relate to that. I'd rather lick my wounds in private and get through shit on my own without having subject anyone to all of my shit sometimes. People say oh don't be afraid to ask for help, I'm here for you ect. but then I feel like I'm being a burden on them if I do. I also feel weak asking for help too. As for the solid ground and going back and forth thing, it's kind of like trench warfare where they gain some ground, then lose some ground, then all of a sudden there's mustard gas involved and everythings fucked all over again. 


> So I drowned myself in video games and the perfect world of 1940s cinema as a substitute for friends or real people to talk to (not that that didn't have useful benefits, lol).


That's better than drowning it in booze, drugs, sex, and other nefarious activities. XD. But I guess you could do a mix of both and just turn into Cat People. 








> I'm admittedly a perfectionist, and I've heard this is actually really bad... I have such a strong desire for things to go smoothly, to not rock the boat, etc., that I'm scared of offending people, turning people away... after all, people get butthurt about EVERYTHING. Even stupid shit that doesn't matter. And it's like an old dog can't learn new tricks and I still have that childish belief that friendships are all destined to fail, and that they are fragile as spun glass (and maybe sometimes, that is true):


Perfectionism isn't bad, but stop worrying about pissing people off. People get butthurt over EVERYTHING, you said it youself. Damned if you do, damned if you don'.t Fuck it anyways just do it then and they can learn to respect you or they can fuck off. People are kinda like dogs man, if you don't teach them how to act they'll piss everywhere and ruin shit. Be firm and throw em a bone, but don't be afraid to put them in the dog house, and sometimes maybe they need to go to the pound too. 




> I think the main thing for me is _regret _at this point. Missed opportunities. Never saying stupid simple stuff like "how are you" or telling a friend you are so grateful for them listening to your mad ramblings (yeah, thank you btw; it means a lot with all the stuff going on IRL). I'm a bit too fatalistic—if it's all destined to end, why bother in the first place?


Preach! I regret alot of shit too. I'm afraid of growing older and regretting never really living either. Remembering only when I should have been making memories. Growing older in general terrifies me. Losing my looks, opportunities, having less and less time in front of me. I only have one shot and I feel like I'm already blowing it, and in the end what if it doesn't mean anything anyways? what's the point? Now what? _Now_ what? Now, _what_?


> My "splendid isolation" where I spent basically all of high school and college as a recluse left me deficient in certain areas, like having friends or people to talk to (and don't get me wrong, my years of bottling it up I do appreciate for having that silver lining... I really cultivated a strong understanding and love of cinema in that time, but reclusiveness alone, as an _*absolute*_... that stubborn refusal to let people in, has its own problems... sort of like if you've been in space for so long, your muscles atrophy and it's difficult to even walk. Or you've been in the dark cave so long that the light is too blinding to bear).


I'll tell you what I think, and this is coming mainly from surface level since I've never really talked to you one on one in depth. From your interview, your threads, and your posts on here, you are a pretty incredible person. While other people are out there being social, doing social shit; parties, events, whatever, you were developing yourself. That's how you need to be looking at it. You were learning how to get along with the person who matters most in this life, and that's yourself. Time spent with yourself is not time spent, but time invested, and the best investment you can make is in yourself. I get caught up in the same shit sometimes too, and I know how it can feel. I drowned myself in music, literature, art, metaphysics, spirituality, esoteric unknowns, like you did with cinema. It's a fucking turtle race man. I'm sure you learned alot of shit that some people don't even learn until they hit middle age if they ever learn it at all. It's Plato's Cave man. Yeah the light was strong and blinding, but that first man out of the cave saw the grass and the sun, and he couldn't bear to go back to the illusions he saw in the cave. The others were fine with it, but he saw the cave for what it was. People are gonna do what they're gonna do, but you're refusal to let them in shouldn't be because you feel isolated from them, it should be because you're not sure if they're worthy enough to be let in! All the great explorers, pioneers, innovators, were alone. They were alone because everyone else refused to see the light, because they would rather stare at the flames in the cave, because they were afraid to be alone. It's sad that people can't be alone with themselves like that, and I genuinely feel sorry for people who are so terrified of themselves. Never apologize for your ability to be alone of for the rewards you reap from it. You said it yourself, it's a splendid isolation.


> I agree that it can become fanatical, the drive to stay "present," but so can resignation—why bother?


I don't know, I think the key is to be aware of it, but not think about it too much. Like being aware that the second is passing the moment it is passing. I feel that way when I play music, especially when I'm improvising. It's being aware of time; musical time, but the larger aspects of time. But the key is to not over think it. I'm making myself dizzy just thinking about how the earth is spinning although we can't feel it, and with each spin, we spin further into a time that hasn't existed until this moment, and the moment that existed previously ceases to exist forever. 


> I'm proud of being an Sp-dom, but I dwell on it a bit too much XD.


. It seems alot easier than being an Sx Dom. XD. 




> I think time is time. It's allowed old hurts to heal, anxieties that once plagued me no longer bother me quite as much. But it can also cause fester, rot and atrophy. I think it's a rebalancing act... sort of like how enneathusiast was talking about how each of the 9 enneagram strategies are valid, it's just each one forms a maladaptive attachment to that "creed" so to speak. So perhaps a little self-forgetting of the 9 isn't bad?


It's like trying to not pick at a blister. You pick at it and it's gonna get worse and fuck everything up, but if you don't think about it it kind of heals on it's own I guess. 


> Hey, bandaids may be temporary, but they can still help.


True. The key is to rip it off quick though when it needs to come off. 


> I think I'm just going to go with what feels right, which sounds so goddamn cliche :laughing:. If wanting to be happy or even find just a small moment of happiness is shallow (even if it's just, like, a cookie) or connection or understanding (like right now), then shallow me up. But... keep one eye on the clock cuz I have to go in 20 minutes.


You wrote that post in a hurry, but it;s been months since that post. In the grand scheme of things how urgent was that 20 minutes when you really think about it? 



> OK, I literally have to go now. This is probably a hot mess and I didn't say everything perfectly, but whatever.


[/QUOTE]

Ehhh, I'm not even sure what I posted here or previously, I just know that this is a hell of a thread. XD/ ,./,./,./



mimesis said:


> @_hal0hal0_
> 
> Just something to reflect upon. Arguably, regret can make it difficult to accept life. But does it make death any easier to accept?


I've found death easy to accept; it's always been life that's been the hardest to accept.


----------



## DomNapoleon (Jan 21, 2012)

Lion is a representation of God.


----------



## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

KindOfBlue06 said:


> Booyou is a member on here, I'm pretty sure. INFP I think. Or maybe Veggie was just wine mode. XD.


Yea I was just white girl wasted 



KindOfBlue06 said:


> What if instead of something that happened to everyone at once, everyone experienced small moments of synchonicity that reminded them of you that day? But it would only be personal to them. To anyone else, it wouldn't mean anything, but to them it would. And in an even further act of syncronicity, someone would mention it, and it would spark the other person to say omg that's so weird you said that, something like that happened to me too! And then they all start sharing amazing Veggie stories and that in itself becomes the giant act of syncronicity.


Aw I like that a lot. I'd entertain myself placing inside synchronistic jokes from the afterlife here and there if it is actually an objective thing that individual entities have any control of because...it could be. Never know  Especially if you tap into that potential energy by believing in it. Create your own adventure kinda thing. I could see myself on my death bed getting pumped wondering what's next. That's the mentality I want to remember to have about it if I make it that far and get lucky enough to prepare for it.












KindOfBlue06 said:


> Then there's always a burial at sea or being shot into space...


Those both sound terrible XD



KindOfBlue06 said:


> Supressing things seems to cause them to reappear later in stronger and more destructive ways. I find this especially true with archetypal energy, but any kind of energy really. It's like not having pizza for a long time and then thinking about pizza all of a sudden. Pizza omg I want pizza now, RIGHT FUCKING NOW PIZZA YES OMG. And then you just end up eating way too much pizza and getting a stomach ache. I'm pretty sure this is not the first time we've concluded that life is like eating a slice of pizza. XD.


Pizza!





















KindOfBlue06 said:


> Sticking with the pizza, yeah you might get sick from the pizza. But a few hours later you'd still warm up the leftovers because you're hungry again. I think it's human nature to want and to desire material things, or any sort of thing that makes you feel good really, even natural things like food, sex, sleep, ect. But none of those things are the real end pursuit of happiness. Happiness itself is a fleeting thing. Too much of anything is bad, even happiness. I'd never want to be permenantly happy. I'd feel like I wasn't growing, wasn't being challenged, being forced to adapt, to grow. The happiest times in my life were never when I was at the top so to speak, but when I was clawing my way up to the top. It was never the achievement, but the pursuit of it. It wasn't the meal that made me happy, but the hunger for it. I thrive on that hunger. It makes me feel more like an animal, more primal, more alive.
> 
> But even with hunger, it needs to be satiated otherwise one starves. There's a fine edge between the fullness of life one experiences when hungry, and the starvation of life one experiences which makes death seem closer and more present.


Yea, this definitely sounds more 3-ish. Permanently happy sounds great in my book. Trying to maximize that at new levels. Making love with existence. Sometimes I get really frustrated like, okay, am I there yet? Can I have my castle in the sky now? Can I just learn that I’m Queen of the Earth ala Jupiter Ascending already and have my very own Channing Tatem to moonboot through the clouds with? 

What do I have to do to get there?! And question – is there any way for it to take ten minutes or less? I’d really like to jump to the part where I’m invincible and making out with Channing Tatem now and then do that for forever.

I’ve read that stories about being “chosen” appeal most to the seven.

Speaking of though, that was probably the most ridiculous movie I’ve ever seen. Like, if I were to make a list of the top five most ridiculous movies of all time it would look like:

1.	Jupiter Ascending
2.	Jupiter Ascending
3.	Jupiter Ascending
4.	Jupiter Ascending
5.	Jupiter Ascending

Part of that was because the plot did advance so quickly, and these huge twists unwrapped at like warp speed. (You mean that alien who just told me that he was Galactic royalty and that I own the planet earlier this morning had ulterior motives and wasn’t trustworthy?! What’s good in this world?! What is there to believe in anymore?!) So yea, I could probably integrate a little more 3 energy.










(^Actual line from the movie. Or, I think it was "You can call me Jupe" more specifically).

I feel like I want to cram everything in. Experience it all. Sadly though – often times that leads in not really accomplishing anything. I found this a while back and related to it a lot:

EDIT. Damn it. Why does it keep double posting pics? Kay. Fixed.


* *















The Plato cave stuff:










~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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## Macrosapien (Apr 4, 2010)

I could not put long thought into this, I think of questions, and I write what comes to me at the moment. These are three things I came up with, they feel good. 

The Soil has return to its stead,
What of me remains,
Only an empty shed,
Maybe words heavy like weights
that flutters on the lines of your face,
revealing the hidden place,
where what I seeded,
moves at its own pace,
perhaps dominating a place,
hopefully commanding a base,
propagating until all that is left,
is a space where all humans,
can rest without having to die,
to win without ending their race.

Let the soil be the soil, 
let a man rest from his toils, 
my labors gave me no spoils,
I lived as if I die daily,
so this death is royal,
I died before I died,
So don't be sad it's joyous,
Mourn for yourself,
In the Wish TO BE,
Victorious.

Or something smaller,

My Hope, my obligation to Myself,

If I died, it was to myself,
If I lived, it was by myself,
If I loved, it was despite myself,
If I worked, it was with all myself,
If I helped, then it was without myself


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

KindOfBlue06 said:


> If you get cremated, they have special caskets that are cheaper because they're made specificaly for cremation. Obvsioulsly they have no handles, and that was kind of a wierd thing to think about when I was looking at them. Although, the fact that I was looking into the prices and differences of caskets was probably the weirder thing.
> 
> Then there's always a burial at sea or being shot into space...


I was thinking more along the lines of a cardboard box. 












KindOfBlue06 said:


> I agree about the italics. They _are_ effective, and they _do_ make the tone more apparent when you use them in that way. If my life was a story, (short story at this rate, and I hope it never reaches novel length), I guess the years would be paragraphs, the days sentences, and so forth. Which leads me to wonder, just _what_ would the italicized bits be?


Easy. The italics would be what's most memorable.



KindOfBlue06 said:


> You wrote that post in a hurry, but it;s been months since that post. In the grand scheme of things how urgent was that 20 minutes when you really think about it?


Haha, ugh, the "grand scheme of things." Sorry, I don't like that phrase, TBH, or I've grown to dislike it :th_dead:. _Scheme_... I love how it's called a scheme of all things. Hm, as in, the world is conspiring against you. And not just any scheme, but the grandest one of them all. It is a... _grand illusion_.

Hrm? hrmmmm??? *elbow nudge* No? To heavy-handed? 





^hard to believe that one of the most iconic movies ever made was almost lost forever. Celluloid is very fragile in that way, which makes found footage all the more interesting.

To answer your question (instead of being a facetious cad XD), the urgency itself, of course, does not matter. There is always something "grander" than your present circumstance; you are an ant, I am an ant, in a manner of speaking. But 20 minutes, for that 20 minutes, is the whole world if I so choose it to be. It is a passing feeling, as fleeting. To me, it is a microcosm, just as each panel of a comic is a world unto itself, slipping into the future, but, taken as a snapshot, whole and complete.

Is a slice of cake a fragment of a whole or is the slice itself whole unto itself?

I do agree with you, however, that I wouldn't want to be a novel. Not a big, plodding one screeching to a grinding halt after some tedious buildup, at any rate. I wouldn't prefer a short story either, however, except perhaps as a series of vignettes or anecdotes.



KindOfBlue06 said:


> I'll tell you what I think, and this is coming mainly from surface level since I've never really talked to you one on one in depth. From your interview, your threads, and your posts on here, you are a pretty incredible person. While other people are out there being social, doing social shit; parties, events, whatever, you were developing yourself. That's how you need to be looking at it. You were learning how to get along with the person who matters most in this life, and that's yourself. Time spent with yourself is not time spent, but time invested, and the best investment you can make is in yourself. I get caught up in the same shit sometimes too, and I know how it can feel. I drowned myself in music, literature, art, metaphysics, spirituality, esoteric unknowns, like you did with cinema. It's a fucking turtle race man. I'm sure you learned alot of shit that some people don't even learn until they hit middle age if they ever learn it at all. It's Plato's Cave man. Yeah the light was strong and blinding, but that first man out of the cave saw the grass and the sun, and he couldn't bear to go back to the illusions he saw in the cave. The others were fine with it, but he saw the cave for what it was. People are gonna do what they're gonna do, but you're refusal to let them in shouldn't be because you feel isolated from them, it should be because you're not sure if they're worthy enough to be let in! All the great explorers, pioneers, innovators, were alone. They were alone because everyone else refused to see the light, because they would rather stare at the flames in the cave, because they were afraid to be alone. It's sad that people can't be alone with themselves like that, and I genuinely feel sorry for people who are so terrified of themselves. Never apologize for your ability to be alone of for the rewards you reap from it. You said it yourself, it's a splendid isolation.


Well, thanks. I strive to be as superficial as possible. That's actually the "conclusion" I've come to. Not so much an answer as the attitude of: Whatever. 










^Much easier plant to work with than the Victoria water lily, which, while more impressive, is a prickly fucker. The lotus (N. nucifera) I've noticed has much more brittle tubers for whatever reason, however the hydrophobic character of the leaves gives them a kind of luster as the water bounces off them, rather than sticks.

roll off your back.



Veggie said:


>


But... what if you die and there is literally nothing on the other side? :th_o:

That's why I prefer stories and dreams. I love/hate the threshold before waking. It is my favorite time of day, but it's a pain waking up, where you are neither here nor there, but somewhere in between. I actually press my snooze button for about 2 hours before actually waking, so I have a habit of setting it to about 4 AM.

Oh, and my copies of the entire Fables series came in... (shut it XD this was before I made you my sponsor ), so I've started reading those and it's awesome so far (WAAAAY better than Once Upon a Time; more Raymond Chandler-esque, not so much kitsch)... 

Preview:

* *





The Big Bad Wolf aka "Bigby" is the reformed private eye and is currently letting one of the three little pigs bum on his couch, partly as an act of redemption.

Snow White is the mayor's right-hand man, underpaid government worker.

Rose Red is Snow White's promiscuous free-spirit that chills with "mundies" (aka, non-Fables... basically muggles; us).

Beauty and the Beast are struggling to make ends meet and cope with the Fables' exile from the homeworld. They love each other, but man, real life is hard.

Prince Charming is a sleezy gold-digger and ex-husband of... everyone (Snow White, Cinderella, etc.).










^It's hard being a Fabletown refugee...





















basically, I have more fuel for the Legends pyre... puttin' out the fire with gasoline.


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> I actually like the idea of indestructible objective (preserved) artifacts out there that remind us of past impressions. I think I've compared sentimentalism to horcruxes before, lol. When you literally feel like an alien without a home planet they can be healing.


One of our earliest convos was about immortality and today, I again found myself with the overwhelming desire to become immortal, if there ever was such a thing. Of course, at this very moment, how do you know that all of us aren't immortal? At this very second, anyone currently alive has the potential to live on forever and they wouldn't even know if if they were. I've been reading the Fables series, and the fables are immortal. As Bill Willingham, the creator of the series, says in one of the book's introductions:



> What defines humanity? Forget all those silly scientific designations—**** erectus? So what if we can walk upright? A bear can do as much. Monkeys, beavers, chipmunks, bugs and birds can. Penguins and emus and a dozen other kinds of bird even gave up flight to do it. My cat can do it for a step or two (and let me tell you, he looks adorable when he does). Even lizards can run along on two feet, to woo the ladies and intimidate enemies. Maybe we can do it a little better than the average bear, but the abiliyt to walk on our two hing legs isn't unique to mankind.
> 
> No, what really makes us special, what separates us from the other beastss, is our never-ending capacity for spinning yarns.
> 
> We tell stories to live, to love, to propser and to fail. A house doesn't get built until someone—the architect or the wise old man of the village—first tells the story of how it will be built. And the architect doesn't even begin his story until he hears one from the young new couple, eager and scared and nervous and excited, telling him the story of the sort of home they want. Stories within stories within stories, or nothing gets done.


The Fables, Bigby Wolf, Snow White, Rose Red, the three little pigs, etc., are immortal within the pages of Fables. You will see them, much like the Endless in the Sandman series, as eternal beings, outliving even the Gods. So the appeal of the timeless being, that lives forever, seems very attractive, I think. The usual "heartbreak" told with the immortal being is the notion that everyone around you will die, but isn't that true of one as of this moment? My conception of forever is unfathomable and speculation. I can anticipate, but I cannot predict.

In other words, until the day I die, I am immortal.

People will come and go in my life. Some may stick around, but most will disappear. I always seem to circle back to the conclusion that I am nothing but memories, and in some regard, I find myself diseased and plagued by nostalgia. Nostalgia is painful, I find. That forms the basis for much of McLuhan's theories (self-amputation). I get caught up by the past, mostly missed opportunities, and that makes the present an ever more pressing, urgent matter. 

I picked up (ugh, don't shoot me) the comic book The Sculptor by Scott McCloud, today at the bookstore:


















In it, the main character makes a deal with Death and discovers he can make anything he desires with his bare hands, and in exchange, he will die in 200 days. If you discovered you had 200 days left, where would this leave you?

Comics are eternally youthful. Their strong lines and contrasts distill the absurdity and madness of this world into a pure moment, just as a caricature highlights the essence or essential features of a subject. McLuhan drew parallels to the comic book as television, similarly cool and rebelling against the hot uniformity of literature or print.

A few thoughts. Somehow, I've been preferring these shorter, bite-sized posts as of late.


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## Dao (Sep 13, 2013)

My epitaph would say: 'Have a nice day.'

Then people would get all paranoid wondering whether it was meant passive-aggressively or not.


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## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

KindOfBlue06 said:


> Ohhh I know about that thread. I think I posted in there once actually. This thread is like reading Where The Wild Things Are and that thread is like reading a James Joyce Novel. Not sure if I'm at that level yet. XD.


I'm sure you would blend in fine.


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## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

Shimmerleaf said:


> My epitaph would say: 'Have a nice day.'
> 
> Then people would get all paranoid wondering whether it was meant passive-aggressively or not.


:laughing:


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## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> The Fables, Bigby Wolf, Snow White, Rose Red, the three little pigs, etc., are immortal within the pages of Fables. You will see them, much like the Endless in the Sandman series, as eternal beings, outliving even the Gods. So the appeal of the timeless being, that lives forever, seems very attractive, I think. The usual "heartbreak" told with the immortal being is the notion that everyone around you will die, but isn't that true of one as of this moment? My conception of forever is unfathomable and speculation. I can anticipate, but I cannot predict.


This made me think of the episode of Community where the characters all create video game versions of themselves. (Maybe because we were talking about mini people and Sims before too, lol).

I like when each is picking which version of themselves to use at first. Abed goes with "Evil Abed" (and kills monster hippies ) and falls in love with a simulated girl, lol. (In the show he downloads and saves her to come back for).






(^It's funny if you pause and read what they're saying, haha. 2:50 is an amazing pick up line. "In my opinion there is only one star worth studying. It is a black hole called Sagittarius A located in the center of the galaxy. It has the density of 40 suns. Just like my wiener." XD)

Anyway, idk, the smaller characters still fall under these larger objective characters. Maybe there's a sort of frequency to the archetype. Consolidating some, separating others. It's like the richest manifestation of that grouping. The story of Snow White, for example, is very similar to Eve's. That's some bare bones stuff there 





































(Oh, and btw, I just found this quiz about reincarnation and posted it to the Personality Test Resources forum. It's funny because the result options are very oddly specific, lol - if you want to know how many past lives you've had).

*This is Your First Life*










The life you are living right now is your very first incarnation. This is the reason you're curious, spontaneous, and full of enthusiasm for life. You are free from the burden of troubled past lives and you are a clean slate ready to explore. At times you can be impatient and worried about how short life can be. Fear not. There are many wondrous adventures ahead. Learn all you can in this life to prepare you for the next.​
How Many Times Have You Been Reincarnated? | Personality Quiz

Anyway, there can be something so healing about archetypal energy. I was complaining the other night that I felt like a caricature of a person, just really intense and dramatic, but I feel like I was riding out energy at the same time in a productive way. We all went to downtown Atlanta on Saturday and ended up at a Barnes and Noble for a while. I was reading through this book - Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System As a Path to the Self - and it was going into how the chakras store information, almost like computer code, and need necessary clearings to run efficiently and at certain speeds (very similar to computers again, actually).










Then we had a Dungeons and Dragons party, haha. It's been beautiful here - the flowers are blooming, sunny, warm...so we had it outside. We were blaring a Game of Thrones Pandora station, doodling all over this makeshift game board, loudly making sound effects, LOL - at one point we were like, hmm, I wonder what the neighbors think? Who cares though. It was that healthy Dionysian energy at it's best, lol. Giving into the inner nerd. (We're losing this so much as a culture. Even most artists now it seems like are more concerned with wealth, appearances, professionalism - it's not as inspired). 






(^Why was I thinking about that scene with Barney again? Something about how people's strong suits aren't always necessarily what seem obvious or something. Like he actually probably fit the archetype of logical businessman the least of the group, and I think he was the most accepting in some ways).

(My poor character bit it pretty hard. When I created her I kinda just went with what I liked and with what sounded cool, and I didn't realize how ineffective at fighting she actually is, lol. She's really more support. Like she can send "bardic inspiration" to other players (song, energy) and help them in their turns and some other stuff like that, but she has to keep her distance from the battlefield for the most part. I started feeling bad when I felt like I was being protected away by the group, so I took it upon myself to be the first to sneak down a corridor and open a door to a castle. It was booby trapped, so I ended up getting crushed by the crashing ceiling. I dug my way out at the very end though, and then when everyone was drinking later my cousin was like - oh, yea, I totally forgot to tell you that there are ways to test doors before entering. Well. Thanks. Lol. At least I got us through).

I just watched this episode of Portlandia the other night. A taxidermy shop gets burned down, so it's automatically blamed on the "weirdos".











(^The whole episode is funny. "Dead Pets". It's really only about 20 minutes long, it starts playing again for some reason when it's done).






(^And that just fits the theme of the thread, lol).

Why was I thinking of that though. Oh. My character got written into the game as meeting up with everyone because she'd been bastardized by society and was hiding out. And that fits the archetype stuff you were saying too. It's so archaic how these black and white character traits (bad, good, hero, villain) have been assigned to entire subgroups of people. In reality, archetypal groupings probably work more like Mighty Ducks teams 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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## Vaka (Feb 26, 2010)

bye


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> (Oh, and btw, I just found this quiz about reincarnation and posted it to the Personality Test Resources forum. It's funny because the result options are very oddly specific, lol - if you want to know how many past lives you've had).


I'm older than you, n00b.

8 Times









Most of your past lives were spent in the animal and plant world. This is your first life as a human, so that would explain your difficulty trusting other people and your mysterious nature. You are struggling to understand the meaning of this particular life and you can get frustrated sometimes. You have been a lily pad in a pond and an eagle feeding her young. Those lives had lessons for you and so does this one. You have a free spirit and the positive energy to handle your many future lives. 



Veggie said:


> (My poor character bit it pretty hard. When I created her I kinda just went with what I liked and with what sounded cool, and I didn't realize how ineffective at fighting she actually is, lol. She's really more support. Like she can send "bardic inspiration" to other players (song, energy) and help them in their turns and some other stuff like that, but she has to keep her distance from the battlefield for the most part. I started feeling bad when I felt like I was being protected away by the group, so I took it upon myself to be the first to sneak down a corridor and open a door to a castle. It was booby trapped, so I ended up getting crushed by the crashing ceiling. I dug my way out at the very end though, and then when everyone was drinking later my cousin was like - oh, yea, I totally forgot to tell you that there are ways to test doors before entering. Well. Thanks. Lol. At least I got us through).


Many classical style rpgs end up falling in that min-maxing pattern, where if you don't commit to your character's strengths, you'll become too spread out and not really proficient at the skills you initially selected. It depends, though, on the game design itself or the DM in the case of Dnd to actually design a game that benefits diverse playstyles. Combat *tends* to take the forefront of most basic rpgs, so that's why you generally end up with the three main branches of dexterity, magic or strength, although I've seen a few that expand upon this.

I've found that when playing Dark Souls, not really caring about dying helps a lot so I do a lot of suicide runs just to figure out where stuff is. It's kinda cheap that way, but it helps to let go of that inner perfectionist that doesn't want to die. It's actually pretty generous that you can't lose your stuff when you respawn. You lose cash/souls, but really, those can be farmed anyways.

But the Souls games are sorta known for having you die a lot.





I haven't gotten this far in the game, because I don't have the patience to play long stretches and I get easily distracted by other things, but the bosses Ornstein and Smough are sometimes called David Spade and Chris Farley.













^Kinda true, though. Most the bosses I've faced are basically me poking them in the ass and knowing the attack patterns. Ofc, it's not easy, b/c one mistake usually kills you.

I wrote a blog post yesterday about Lichtenstein. Copy and pasted it here: 


* *






When it comes to art, I am an idiot. I know bits and pieces of art history, like a child's scrapbook that collects clippings from a range of National Geographics, Time and newspapers and the like. I lack the formal training to really appreciate it on the historical continuum, even if I do pay a lot of respect to history itself.

Thus, my approach to art is visceral—how does this make me feel? It's a shallow approach, but it'll have to do.

Lately, I have resonated with Lichtenstein's paintings on a very raw level. In a sense, I consider him the Raymond Carver of the painting world, because the marked simplicity nevertheless crystallizes a moment. That is all. A moment. A moment of sadness, exhilaration, pain, anxiety, self-deception, beauty, or self-hatred.

I know next to nothing about Lichtenstein the man. My approach to art is heavily egocentric; I look at something and see how it relates to me, quite simply.

Nevertheless, when I look through Lichtenstein's work, specifically, the choices of the content, I see something quite, markedly different from, say, Andy Warhol. I admire Warhol tremendously, but there's a cool detachment to his work. As Warhol's stock phrase when asked his opinion on something he would give the lukewarm reply of "oh, it's great."

What I see in Lichtenstein, however, is quite the opposite. Whereas Warhol makes me feel the cool sense of detachment, I see in Lichtenstein images brimming with emotion, idealism, and a yearning sort of frustration that dreams, dreams and dreams.

Found art is beautiful in this way. I don't think it's cheap at all (nor do I think it is anything more important historically; I just happen to be fond of it).

You are sad. Having a bad day. Lost, angry, frustrated, stagnant. Powerless as your life, while not bad, is simply not quite right. The ideal just doesn't quite seem to fit perfectly. You pick up the paper and a comic strip panel suddenly hits you like a tonne of bricks. A single panel; not even the comic strip as a whole, or the entirety of the story, but the moment and microcosm that exists, suspended, in that singular panel.










Or self-hatred. Or hatred. Anger. Heat. Violence. Self-destruction. Destruction










Click this bar to view the original image of 630x1092px.










These images exist as mirrors. In the McLuhan sense, they have cooled painting to its breaking point, by forcing the interpretation back on the viewer.

The filmmaker Douglas Sirk (Magnificent Obsession, All that Heaven Allows, etc.) runs along the similar dime-novel pulp melodrama that a portion of Lichtenstein's work seems to focus upon, however this is mixed with a fascination with the everyday. To make the ordinary object into something extraordinaryThe meaning of an object I think is in relation to the subject's point of view. Thus, Lichtenstein's art is as personal as the poetic moments where a single word evokes a memory. Where, locked in each image, is the diving board into a whole different dimension, a memory, a thought, an ideal, a dream... these images I see as a gateway, and given their instant relatability through the commonplace object, this squarely places the work done on the viewer.

Of course, some may call this "lazy" as an artform, but I'd ask people of that frame of mind to ask themselves the same question... are they not lazy themselves in demanding that the artist not be lazy?

For instance, the hotdog.









Click this bar to view the original image of 550x275px.









I'm reminded of a time, having just graduated high school, in which I was vacationing in New York with family. It was a time at which I found myself, once again, lost. I dreamed of the glorious return. High school did not end particularly well for me. It was not wrapped up with a neat little bow and it wasn't the heroic epic I had envisioned. It simply passed and I didn't even go to graduation. In a way, I romanticized myself as an exile, apart from the high school crowd, in the hopes that I might be missed.

So there I was, in the city where I was born, perhaps the greatest city there is, and I felt myself trapped in my own head. I couldn't see the beauty of the urban jungle around me, the bustle of life, the heartbeat of NYC, but only consumed by my own thoughts.

Anyways, one of my grand-uncles (who, by some family voodoo, is actually younger than my dad) living in Jersey whom we were spending time with (it was when my great-grand uncle was still alive, but in a nursing home; IIRC, he had Parkinson's), wanted to get some hotdogs. It was late at night, we had visited our great-grand uncle earlier that day, and we were hungry.

So we go to this hole-in-the-wall hotdog place (I can't remember the name) and we each get a hotdog and mine is covered in onions and some sort of barbeque sauce. It was good. Especially because I was hungry.

And the point of this? There really isn't one. Yet, it somehow is the most memorable moment from that trip. That little hotdog detour, no matter how insignificant, remains tucked away in the library of my conscious. Written in my history as something more significant, apparently, than even the Empire State Building... I remember going there, but somehow, the memory isn't quite as clear as the hotdog one.

Perhaps, being so trapped in my head, that hotdog was just the ticket to rebalance me with the outer world. To taste something in the here and now, when my mind was perpetually dwelling upon impossible dreams.

Ideals hurt. It hurts when the heart wants, but cannot have. So to be able to say... that's enough. To look around you and not feel utterly hollow, even if it is just recapturing a memory; that is a good, small thing.










From Raymond Carver's _A Small, Good Thing_.



> The baker had cleared a space for them at the table. He shoved the adding machine to one side, along with the stacks of notepaper and receipts. He pushed the telephone directory onto the floor, where it landed with a thud. Howard and Ann sat down and pulled their chairs up to the table. The baker sat down, too.
> 
> "Let me say how sorry I am," the baker said, putting his elbows on the table. "God alone knows how sorry. Listen to me. I'm just a baker. I don't claim to be anything else. Maybe once, maybe years ago, I was a different kind of human being. I've forgotten, I don't know for sure. But I'm not any longer, if I ever was. Now I'm just a baker. that don't excuse my doing what I did, I know. But I'm deeply sorry. I'm sorry for your son, and sorry for my part in this," the baker said. He spread his palms. "I don't have any children myself, so I can only imagine what you must be feeling. All I can say to you now is that I'm sorry. Forgive me, if you can," the baker said. "I'm not an evil man, I don't think. Not evil, like you said on the phone. You got to understand what it comes down to is I don't know how to act anymore, it would seem. Please," the man said, "let me ask you if you can find it in your hearts to forgive me?"
> 
> ...


----------



## Golden Rose (Jun 5, 2014)

hal0hal0 said:


> I'm older than you, n00b.
> 
> 8 Times
> 
> ...


Nice try but...

*Millions of Times*










You have been reincarnated through many millions of lives. You have been a fly that lived only a day, a Redwood tree that lived 2,000 years, and a prehistoric beast that is undiscovered by people today. Living so many lives has given you confidence and empathy for all creatures, including the misunderstood. You are perceptive to moods and the energy given by your environment. Though you have seen so much, you know that there is always more to learn.


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## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> I'm older than you, n00b.
> 
> 8 Times


Well maybe here you are, but I could have come from somewhere else. Who knows how this works, haha. (The void?) I'm pretty sure playbuzz tests are a step in the right direction of figuring it out though. (Hey, why not? ;P)

If you put us together you get a cat  9 lives.












hal0hal0 said:


> Many classical style rpgs end up falling in that min-maxing pattern, where if you don't commit to your character's strengths, you'll become too spread out and not really proficient at the skills you initially selected.


I committed to the whole bard thing, I just didn't realize it would be as ineffectual in the actual game as it is. Though it's probably the best character for me in all honesty. I'm usually the one just screwing around with like story development when I do stuff like that. I get bored with learning all the rules. 



hal0hal0 said:


> Lately, I have resonated with Lichtenstein's paintings on a very raw level. In a sense, I consider him the Raymond Carver of the painting world, because the marked simplicity nevertheless crystallizes a moment. That is all. A moment. A moment of sadness, exhilaration, pain, anxiety, self-deception, beauty, or self-hatred.
> 
> Ideals hurt. It hurts when the heart wants, but cannot have. So to be able to say... that's enough. To look around you and not feel utterly hollow, even if it is just recapturing a memory; that is a good, small thing.


Someone on this site sent me a video on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Passengers on a Bus.











(^That popped into my Youtube recommendations afterwards too. On mindfulness. It's got a bunch of terrible puns and what not but it's entertaining in a trippy kind of way, lol).

I think we kind of come at this from two opposite ends of the spectrum (surprise, lol). I can get so caught up in moments that I lose ideals. Well, no, that's not true - I'm just not focused on them and I forget. Then at the same time - I don't really. They're like this continual buzzing nag in the back of my mind if I don't kind of stay one foot in one out.

Miles Aldridge:










(^That would be inferior Se. Keep me away from the bread and hotdogs please, lol).

I don't know. My ideals are more just like...frequencies though. Feelings. Like wanting to shoot a rainbow beam at the moon and then staying connected to whatever might manifest along that bridge, lol. If we can sort of...create this, then I have a problem with just accepting what is. Though. In that video. He's sort of just driving the bus. He's not aiming it at any particular goals so much as the goals are meeting him along the path. 

It's weird, I lucid dream a lot - but whenever I focus on anything too intently it disappears and I wake up. If I just focus instead though on trying to stay awake within the dream (running and touching stuff both work), all kinds of cool stuff pops up.

(Remember when we were both talking about eating the hamburger with mindfulness? This was a while ago - but you posted a video of Warhol. He was very calm and collected about it. I said I more related to a scene with Marshall from HIMYM where he's like dramatically reading poetry to it in his mind, haha. I love how over the top that show can be sometimes. Still not sure why I wanted to post about Barney, it was like 2:30 am, lol. I was trying to find the full version of that scene anyway but couldn't. Swivel chairs amuse me way more than they should. When I was a kid who was allowed to watch soap operas that was like my favorite reveal).

How cool are both of these though when it comes to how our focus leads to discoveries (or shapes them - or - both?)


* *















Dr. Quantum Double Slit Experiment:






These just popped up in my Pinterest too recently. Embracing the creative side:



















So I found this clip from a Ralph Fiennes movie when I was looking up third eye stuff on YouTube a while back. "The Land of the Blind" (taken from the quote - in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king). I haven't seen the entire movie, but this scene spoke to me in a haunting kind of way standing alone - similar to the animated captured moments you were talking about. The imagery. 

It's weird that it's Ralph Fiennes in this brightly lit white purgatory, because I've told you that the scene from Harry Potter where Voldemort is left like this bothers me. It reminds me of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" (short story). Apparently the movie is about totalitarian control being overthrown by totalitarian control, but he's trapped in this prison because he overthrew without effectively establishing something new. (I think. That's what I got from Wikipedia more or less, lol). Or maybe he's hallucinating - its left ambiguous. I think its interesting that they're asking him - "what's better than a big juicy steak?" Very Matrix like. Neo vs. the dude who wanted blissful ignorance.











(^ That scene comes to mind too for scenes that have effected me without having seen the entire movie. From Being John Malkovich. It sort of inverts microcosm/macrocosm. I've read that the fourth dimension can be likened to the concept of inside/out - so it's really interesting to me).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> So I found this clip from a Ralph Fiennes movie when I was looking up third eye stuff on YouTube a while back. "The Land of the Blind" (taken from the quote - in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king). I haven't seen the entire movie, but this scene spoke to me in a haunting kind of way standing alone - similar to the animated captured moments you were talking about. The imagery.


That's so terrible XD (I'm mostly just joshing you btw <3... it's more my old self reacting). Talking about movies without actually having seen them? I used to be really stingy and purist about the moviegoing experience, that chopping up movies into youtube videos really destroyed the continuum of a movie. But, they're just movies, so eh, I've relaxed about that since. But it's kinda sad, in a way, that we don't really watch movies in the usual way anymore, as a single, uninterrupted experience on a big screen (partly because those fuckers with their cellphones blinding me in the darkness). I used to think it's disrespectful, that people don't take the time to watch movies, but I'm basically that way these days too. I could be a bit too puritanical about: You have to watch it in a single sitting in a darkened room, preferably on a big screen. 

I myself have basically stopped watching them [movies] for the past 3 years. Most of it I reminisce through seeing youtube clips, but never seeing the whole thing, really. Like sample boxes of chocolates, but never really get the whole thing. I've watched maybe 5-10 a year these days... quite a reduction from my days of literally watching over 400 in a year (including that one week where I saw Rashomon about 20 times nonstop).

Are conversations these days genuine exchanges of ideas or are they two egotistical monologues running side-by-side?






I think a few years back, I remember reading quite a few articles pining about the lost art of the long take. Each shot in Werckmeister Harmonies runs about 7-10 minutes as a continuous take, but that detail really isn't necessary to be transfixed by the story told within each scene, just as bookends aren't needed to be captured by the pages in between.








Veggie said:


> I don't know. My ideals are more just like...frequencies though. Feelings. Like wanting to shoot a rainbow beam at the moon and then staying connected to whatever might manifest along that bridge, lol. If we can sort of...create this, then I have a problem with just accepting what is. Though. In that video. He's sort of just driving the bus. He's not aiming it at any particular goals so much as the goals are meeting him along the path.


Haha, you talk kinda vague. TBH, your post confused me for a while but I think I understood them better through visuals than words.

So... shoot the moon:








Veggie said:


> I think we kind of come at this from two opposite ends of the spectrum (surprise, lol). I can get so caught up in moments that I lose ideals. Well, no, that's not true - I'm just not focused on them and I forget. Then at the same time - I don't really. They're like this continual buzzing nag in the back of my mind if I don't kind of stay one foot in one out.










^Love Song in particular reminds me of what you wrote in terms of cadence. More specifically, the spaces between the words. This way, then that way, if that makes sense. Tossing and turning. The pauses, perhaps. Maybe the hesitations, but I'm speculating. 

If you think about it speculation is pushing someone [namely, yourself] into the water.

I hate youtube for showing this stuff, though. It's even worse for Brakhage than regular movies. The compression where stuff gets blocky sorta spoils it. I mean, I get you can't always see these things in a huge screen in 35mm or whatever, but a tiny-ass screen with poor resolution and "lossy" data really loses a lot of the texture.

It's like Behold! The Guernica!

































^Bastardizing the bastardization... oh the irony.


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> I committed to the whole bard thing, I just didn't realize it would be as ineffectual in the actual game as it is. Though it's probably the best character for me in all honesty. I'm usually the one just screwing around with like story development when I do stuff like that. I get bored with learning all the rules.


Well... that's why I said the other half is game design. You the player and the game designer have to meet each other half-way, or else skills like Speech or Charisma fall by the wayside as heavily situational and lacking diversity (which is why I like the concept of the party in the first place). RPGs, moreso than other genres, are two-way streets, where the player and the game designer (or DM) have to sort of play ball with each other, but game balance is very, very tough to achieve perfectly.

I actually think the more familiar a game becomes, the less balanced it becomes to the player. So the most balanced game is the one you've never played, although that's somewhat facetious, because it's more accurately that you are neutral at that point, not necessarily "balanced."

It reminds me of this interview with Duchamp...






RE: the Warhol video with the hamburger. As I've said, I am a drifter, so I'm "past" my Warhol phase. I pick up an artist for a time, like visiting a different country, immerse myself in that mentality, then move on. It's horrifically inconsistent, I know. I do this for mediums as well. I grow bored of television shows, styles, movements, etc.. I still see the occasional movie, but I'm "past" movies. Maybe I'll come back to them, but it's in the past, mostly.

Just saw these on Lichtenstein, and it strikes me how different he is from Warhol.










IDK, I find Lichtenstein much more down to earth, having heard him actually talk. Like, you look at landscapes and paint them. Here I am looking at comics and painting them. They're both processes.

It's always interesting to hear the artist themselves talk, even if I try not to conform to what they say, per se. I get the impression that artists tend to have difficulty (and this is a sweeping generalization) talking about their work, in part because it is the work itself that is their expression. Similarly, I think people in general can have difficulty self-observing (I know I do). But I like what he said here:
*"The new sensibility that I'm trying to bring to it is apparent anti-sensibility, but it is more a renewed sensibility, that's the important part..."*

Sort of like, seeing beauty where you didn't see it before. A new way of looking.


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## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> That's so terrible XD (I'm mostly just joshing you btw <3... it's more my old self reacting). Talking about movies without actually having seen them?


I'm not talking about a movie though  I'm talking about a scene from a movie  I'm also more so comparing it to another scene from another movie (and a separate short story). 



Veggie said:


> It's weird that it's Ralph Fiennes in this brightly lit white purgatory, because I've told you that the scene from Harry Potter where Voldemort is left like this bothers me. It reminds me of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" (short story). Apparently the movie is about totalitarian control being overthrown by totalitarian control, but he's trapped in this prison because he overthrew without effectively establishing something new. (I think. That's what I got from Wikipedia more or less, lol). Or maybe he's hallucinating - its left ambiguous. I think its interesting that they're asking him - "what's better than a big juicy steak?" Very Matrix like. Neo vs. the dude who wanted blissful ignorance.





hal0hal0 said:


> Lately, I have resonated with Lichtenstein's paintings on a very raw level. In a sense, I consider him the Raymond Carver of the painting world, because the marked simplicity nevertheless crystallizes a moment. That is all. A moment. A moment of sadness, exhilaration, pain, anxiety, self-deception, beauty, or self-hatred.


Threading together ideas. It gives the brain somewhere to go from - "so I wonder what ever happened to him?" Since we've been talking multiple lives and dimensions and what not it seemed fitting too - even if Voldemort were a fictional character, lol. (I also maintain that there is a relation to the excerpt you posted by Raymond Carver. Transcendence by steak or matrix? Physicality or imagination? Sensation or intuition? A lot of spiritual practices are somewhat (or actually) at war over this in a sense. Which is better, more enlightened or "in the moment". 

What would imbalance there look like over time? I don't know - something you said about the "moment" struck me too, because sometimes a moment isn't a moment...it's eternity. If you're trapped in a purgatory prison (either or both). I think I like being able to track - okay, so maybe this would happen next, and then this, and, okay, then, right. A moment is just a moment. It's not the end of the world. <which I guess is a good thing for getting through the bad stuff, but a bad thing for settling into the good stuff as an experience of immortality).

This was in my Pinterest feed this morning:










We've talked about alchemy, dissecting the golden goose, emptying and refilling the cup of life. If the snake is the symbol for transformation, maybe there _is_ a certain magic to realizing that there's nothing actually inside the chalice. (Or perhaps that there is after all. "OMG there is _literally_ a snake in this cup? How did this snake get in here? Lol. This was the caption - "I Confesse I awoke like this All this snake in my Cup like this.") 



hal0hal0 said:


> But it's kinda sad, in a way, that we don't really watch movies in the usual way anymore, as a single, uninterrupted experience on a big screen (partly because those fuckers with their cellphones blinding me in the darkness). I used to think it's disrespectful, that people don't take the time to watch movies, but I'm basically that way these days too. I could be a bit too puritanical about: You have to watch it in a single sitting in a darkened room, preferably on a big screen.


I do get what you mean by the disrespect though. You want to see the full expression of the artist. Is that ever really possible though? Like Lichtenstein was saying - there's an element of individual communication with a piece of art. 

Still though, I also get what you mean about properly sitting down to a film in the theatre. Fully making respectful room for it. It's like the difference between sitting down to a five course meal, lighting candles, dressing up, taking your time vs. grabbing gourmet food prepared with care on the go and shoving it down your throat in traffic. 


* *















(^That probably fits too. "Pare down to the essence but don't remove the poetry". Stripping a piece of art to it's underlying concept, or attempting to, can feel antiseptic. You've said that before and I think he did too. (Personally, to me, it's synchronistic and exciting - but then I'm more caught up in the experience of the synchronicity than the piece itself). I think you can also pare down to the poetry while removing essence though. Like - what is the point of this? Idk - I like simplicity. I always have. Choosing between chocolate and vanilla I'd choose vanilla. Clean. But not doctor's office clean, lol).

I actually have seen a number of movies in the theatre recently though. I can think of like...7? Just since I've been down here. I used to go all the time. I worked at a movie theatre in high school and we could see movies for free and get friends in. I used to go just about every week - usually with a car load of people, but sometimes I'd sneak off by myself. (I was dating my manager for a while, and sometimes he'd take me up to the projection booth and we'd watch several at once, spy on the audience - that was fun). I go to watch a lot of movies by myself now too. I'll enjoy just about anything. I used to see a lot of live theatre - both the Broadway Across America and experimental stuff - but it's been a while. 

Its funny you mentioned the dark. I sleep with the lights on. I used to be really terrible - lights on, TV on, couch, in, like, my jeans, and sometimes even my shoes. Part of it was that I'd agreed to switch rooms my sister when she was living at my parent's house and I was right outside of DC, thinking I wasn't ever gonna go back to stay, and learning that it was like - I swear to God - haunted, haha. The other part was not wanting to settle into anything, probably. (Not even sleep, apparently).

I saw this movie like a year ago about this. The Trouble with Bliss. I tend to like quirky little slice of life movies like this that don't necessarily do fantastically review wise. Dude was the same way. Slept in his shoes and always felt like he was waiting for something. 






Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night last night and read through part of your post and wondered huh. Maybe a good start to getting my life back on track would be to sleep with the lights off, lol. Find some general sobriety there. 

I had lucid nightmares all night :crying: I used to be downright masochistic about that kind of stuff (4 day juice fasts, cleanses that made me sick, super intense work outs, etc) but I've chilled out on myself. I'll probably compromise and get a nightlight today like a five year old. Nothing wrong with a little anesthetic sometimes. Or with knowing when to keep the fire going rather than putting it out. (I noticed that was the first thing to happen in that Werckmeister Harmonies scene - flames doused by water).

I do feel better today than I've felt in a while though. I had one dream in particular that was kind of comforting. My grandmother had these bizarre glowing green eyes, and told me she was going to clean my aura (not something she does in real life, lol). She pulled this glowing red orb from my forehead. It started to float away so I was like - wait! If that's negative energy we should do something with it right? So I scooped it into a bowl (?) Then we were like - what next? Does that even do anything? How do you "properly" go about transmuting negative energy? Lol.



hal0hal0 said:


> Are conversations these days genuine exchanges of ideas or are they two egotistical monologues running side-by-side?


I guess it probably depends on who's having them, lol. I always make sure that I'm relating what I'm saying to something you've said to a degree. We're on the same wavelength so it works out well a lot. (Like the mindfulness video - the way you were describing eating the hot dog in your blog post reminded me of it). I think a good conversationalist takes some liberties in the connections that they make so as to include their own...material? but that makes it all more colorful and expressive. I like tangents within conversation. 



hal0hal0 said:


> As I've said, I am a drifter, so I'm "past" my Warhol phase. I pick up an artist for a time, like visiting a different country, immerse myself in that mentality, then move on. It's horrifically inconsistent, I know.


It's funny. When you used to type as an INFJ, there was more of a...lightness (?) to your posts, and you'd more often meet me in ruminating about ideas just for the sake of it. I think we probably all go through this to an extent too though with phases. I think my posts used to be lighter as well.



hal0hal0 said:


> Haha, you talk kinda vague. TBH, your post confused me for a while but I think I understood them better through visuals than words.


Yea, visuals. I remember when people would ask for my ideas on spirituality and I would just draw them a picture, lol. This one dude I dated is coming to mind. He used to be a pastor, and I was hanging out with Taoist friends all the time. There wasn't a strong romantic connection, but we were intrigued by each other. Anyway - that's why I save pictures sometimes. Parts of PerC have become like my online journal, or interactive, spread out blog, lol (really helps in avoiding Ni-Ti loops). I come back to certain threads, and the pictures help remind me where my brain was at. (Ideally, I will figure out what the hell I want to do with some of my thoughts and ideas that could actually produce some sort of income. I'm pretty intrigued by psychodrama and ACT the more I put stuff together). Even when I kept a paper journal - they more read like scrapbooks. 

So visuals:




























I think the first pic is a cool representation of Ni. The girl on the left is kind of what I was talking about. In terms of the ideal too - with that second image. It's more about wanting consciousness tuned to the most ideal station, I think, and then letting life manifest what it will.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> It's funny. When you used to type as an INFJ, there was more of a...lightness (?) to your posts, and you'd more often meet me in ruminating about ideas just for the sake of it. I think we probably all go through this to an extent too though with phases. I think my posts used to be lighter as well.


You = Bart Simpson
Me = Formerly INFJ Cool





Uh... since when have we _stopped _talking about ideas for the sake of it? Isn't that like, all we do? Or like 95% of it? I know we've talked more lately about IRL stuff, but still, most our conversations revolve around theoretical nonsense that we firmly believe is more important than real life.

I've noticed when people change types, my own observation (filtered through my own biased perception, mind you) is they start acting like that type. Like @_Hotaru_ (not questioning your current typing btw; just the only example I can think of atm) I noticed that change when typed at 7 (the more playful Hotes McGoats IIRC) + the Sx-dom switch... Who knows. That's kinda why I've "given up" on typing people. It's a two-way street, where the actor's performance put forward and the audience's observations taken in, both carry bias. Like, if anything, your posts have been more light-hearted since typing as 7 and I've often wondered if there is some "costume bias" there, similar to the Stanford Prison Experiment:





ZIMBARDO!!!

Look at my first post in Legends, where I'm basically talking about *the same* stuff I'm talking about here, sans a few references like Joseph Campbell because I got bored of that context. The ideas of rebirth, recycling, etc, however, are still there. Questioning ideas and questioning the extent of the hypothetical and the acceptance of things as they are was present even when I typed _*as *_INFJ.

And btw, I've changed to my true type, this time; the ISFP stuff was just a thought experiment; cuz you know how we Ne-doms love new ideas (and all that depressed "4" stuff I wrote was due to clinical MDD, for which I'm currently being treated for with SSRIs). Let's see how this affects my behavior and just as importantly, others' _perception _of my behavior.

And moreover, what is an idea, exactly and why do we think of them as abstract? What if you conceptualize sensation and manifest ideations? Would the sensations remain sensations or would we be thinking of them theoretically? And would the ideations therefore become sensations? Moreover, if Jung defines a sensation as "that which exists" and an idea exists within the mind (assuming the mind exists ofc), then does that not mean that our conception of an idea is really a sensation? Like some form of Synesthesia?

OMG, look, Ti-nitpicking! Must be an XNTP!

But no, seriously. Have we ever _stopped _talking about ideas? I was under the impression that we were basically running in circles (glorious circles, mind you). Don't I talk about McLuhan more than ever, which is basically idea-central, USA Canada?. I'm curious now, because I thought that was our main _*tango*_, lady.  If I wear the ENTP 7w8 tag will I eventually become that? If I act the exact same as I have, will people suddenly start "seeing" Ne-dom everywhere? Even as an ISFP, I feel more "theoretical" than other intuitives here (like, my whole life is one big theory and no action).

This is where I kinda want to go back to Unknown Personality like @_mimesis_ our residential international man of mystery:









^I had such a crush on Liz Hurley in that movie. Apparently, she and Tom Cruise have "perfectly proportioned faces" a la Phi:















<3

^Haha, there is probably some good ol' fashioned editing voodoo there. But the irony is that Nixon was beat at his own game, considering he basically pioneered the use of television to connect with the American populace.

Checkers speech - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Veggie said:


> What would imbalance there look like over time? I don't know - something you said about the "moment" struck me too, because sometimes a moment isn't a moment...it's eternity. If you're trapped in a purgatory prison (either or both). I think I like being able to track - okay, so maybe this would happen next, and then this, and, okay, then, right. A moment is just a moment. It's not the end of the world. <which I guess is a good thing for getting through the bad stuff, but a bad thing for settling into the good stuff as an experience of immortality).


Well... that's sort of what that opening scene of Werckmeister Harmonies is describing. How eternity exists within a moment and time seems to stand still. You know how, when you are in that state of anticipation, the seconds slow down to nothing? The people are fearful of the solar eclipse and Janos attempts to describe it.

In that way, time is malleable in the hands of imagination and the storyteller that molds the seconds like so much wet clay.

However, Harmonies is more complex than mere escapism. It balances on the edge of a razor; for every scene of bewitching enchantment like that opening one where the music starts up in their little impromptu pantomime of the Earth, Moon and Sun, there are scenes of the political brutality experienced in soviet-era Hungary, or the sobering realities of a sick relative...








> I had lucid nightmares all night :crying: I used to be downright masochistic about that kind of stuff (4 day juice fasts, cleanses that made me sick, super intense work outs, etc) but I've chilled out on myself. I'll probably compromise and get a nightlight today like a five year old. Nothing wrong with a little anesthetic sometimes. Or with knowing when to keep the fire going rather than putting it out. (I noticed that was the first thing to happen in that Werckmeister Harmonies scene - flames doused by water).














> Threading together ideas. It gives the brain somewhere to go from - "so I wonder what ever happened to him?" Since we've been talking multiple lives and dimensions and what not it seemed fitting too - even if Voldemort were a fictional character, lol. (*I also maintain that there is a relation to the excerpt you posted by Raymond Carver. *Transcendence by steak or matrix? Physicality or imagination? Sensation or intuition? A lot of spiritual practices are somewhat (or actually) at war over this in a sense. Which is better, more enlightened or "in the moment".


So... you know that one post you made about that one topic on that one site we were talking about that one day? You know what I mean :wink:  

I kid. But you do sometimes throw out those references to "you know that one time [at band camp]"?... and I'm like... no, I don't know what you're referring to, sorry; can't read minds and can think of a dozen things that refers to. More specific?

Relation of the Carver excerpt to... ???



> (^That probably fits too. "Pare down to the essence but don't remove the poetry". Stripping a piece of art to it's underlying concept, or attempting to, can feel antiseptic. You've said that before and I think he did too. (Personally, to me, it's synchronistic and exciting - but then I'm more caught up in the experience of the synchronicity than the piece itself). I think you can also pare down to the poetry while removing essence though. Like - what is the point of this? Idk - I like simplicity. I always have. Choosing between chocolate and vanilla I'd choose vanilla. Clean. But not doctor's office clean, lol).


Can I one-up you by choosing no ice cream at all? #MinimalistMaster



> Art actually is based on the notion that if you would really celebrate an idea or a principle, you must think, you must plan, you must put yourself completely in the state of devotion, and not simply give the first thing that comes to your head.
> 
> -Maya Deren


Maya Deren is one of my heroes, so I was glad to see that today. Like, people think the artistic process is clean or just this magical place of bunnies and smoking weed, and maybe that's true, but most great artists I've seen work their asses off. Too much attention paid to the Mona Lisa and not all the scribbles and failed attempts to get there. I think true genius is the ability to keep pushing forward, moreso than raw talent (I actually get the compliment that I'm "intelligent" a lot and it really annoys me, because I don't think intelligence [assuming I even have it] is that important. As Truffaut would say:

A movie should show either the pleasure or agony of filmmaking.





^Video embedding sux.


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## Golden Rose (Jun 5, 2014)

hal0hal0 said:


> Like @Hotaru (not questioning your current typing btw; just the only example I can think of atm) I noticed that change when typed at 7 (the more playful Hotes McGoats IIRC) + the Sx-dom switch... Who knows.


To be fair, I was having a major untreated manic episode and I lost control of myself, I was fighting who I was. Deeply disintegrated. But I get what you mean, looking forward the social experiment.

I typed as sx-dom for a long time, sp-dom was due to reasons we've discussed.
Self understanding is a never ending journey.


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## Pressed Flowers (Oct 8, 2014)

How do I want to be remembered? I want people to have loved me by the time I die. I want my family... my family, my mother's family who have been such a crucial and intrinsic part of my childhood even though I have not been an intrinsic and crucial part of their lives, to comment on how much they loved me... to remember me, I guess. I want some kids from my high school to come. Those kids I grew up with, who commented every single day from one voice to another to another how adorable and endearing and lovable I was... I want them there, I want them to repeat it, to say that they loved me, to affirm that... 

But I imagine other things too. I'm going to teach or have a Girl Scout troop or run Sunday school, I'm going to help children... I want them there. I want them to share how I live on through them, how I helped them do something and improve themselves and they're living on through that. They're still improving. My impact is still rippling, expanding, bringing good in the world even after I'm gone. 

I've been to so many funerals. I can count at least ten off the top of my head. I've seen many types. 

And from that, I know... I don't just want my sister and mom and daughter and the obliged distant cousin there. I want them there because they love me, because they knew me, because they valued me. I want them to share stories about me, about how I helped them and how endearing I was, how thoughtful. How the world will be a little sadder place without me, but also a brighter place due to the echo of my actions here. I want it to be sad but hopeful. 

Sorry. That's long. But I have been to a lot of funerals and have thought very indirectly about what I want from them. It's very nice to finally have room to appropriately articulate that.


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## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> You = Bart Simpson
> Me = Formerly INFJ Cool
> 
> 
> ...


:laughing::laughing:

Okay, good point. I don't know though. It just used to be buzzier. You ground theoretical nonsense in real life more than you used to. The tangents aren't as bizarre. But then again - so do I 



hal0hal0 said:


> I've noticed when people change types, my own observation (filtered through my own biased perception, mind you) is they start acting like that type. Like @_Hotaru_ (not questioning your current typing btw; just the only example I can think of atm) I noticed that change when typed at 7 (the more playful Hotes McGoats IIRC) + the Sx-dom switch... Who knows. That's kinda why I've "given up" on typing people. It's a two-way street, where the actor's performance put forward and the audience's observations taken in, both carry bias. Like, if anything, your posts have been more light-hearted since typing as 7 and I've often wondered if there is some "costume bias" there, similar to the Stanford Prison Experiment:


Really? I think I was much more so when I thought that I was a 6. Looking back at a lot of my oblivious behavior during that time is why I landed on 7. I was doing textbook stuff without even realizing it. I was on group Skype chats all the time back then too and got typed that way. I was so defensive of my INFJ'ness though (because I'd simultaneously get typed as ENFJ with the 7 tag) that I just dismissed it, lol. Then I remember you started throwing your Bergman posts at me on the Legends thread and I literally lost it in my attempts to prove that the universe loves us if we only put enough positive energy out there, that I particularly am special because I'm smart enough to know this, and - Get Outa My Head Sensei!!! Lol. 

*Guzzles all the libations* *Answers phone calls from God*






(^ Damn it, lol. They cut it off right before he answers his cell, haha).

I actually think I lost a lot of playfulness after that. I stopped Skyping, I stopped hanging out with some friends, stopped actively dating. It was a darker year. Accepting the 7 tag meant also accepting and confronting some addiction issues. And not like ones that I made up to prove that I was a 7  Ones that had been there all along. (Because you know, only 7's can be addicts. But when paired with the 7's origins, other behaviors, etc - it fit pretty well).

Actually though, true story, the idea that you're Ne and 7 makes complete and total sense to me. I just think you've been in shadow mode. I've suspected you of secretly being 7 for a long time  I've even pointed out that a lot of your posts in this thread read as 7. (Like that Maitri description).

Anyway, I like the sig tag XD I'll respond to the rest in a minute.


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> Actually though, true story, the idea that you're Ne and 7 makes complete and total sense to me. I just think you've been in shadow mode. I've suspected you of secretly being 7 for a long time  I've even pointed out that a lot of your posts in this thread read as 7. (Like that Maitri description).


That better not be hindsight bias I smell (sometimes, I wonder if you use that stuff as perfume, but I've been skeptical of the Ni-dom "I knew it all along" since I first joined this site: http://personalitycafe.com/infj-forum-protectors/115735-what-do-you-think-clairvoyant-label.html 

Like, what if you one day threw out the thought that maybe I was Ne-dom (note that I actually did mention this possibility in a blog post I mentioned you in). So this one thought gets cherrypicked amongst the many other possibilities I mentioned, in part because of your belief that ENTP *should* jibe with INFJ (the type dynamics, while I don't disagree with, I think are heavily confounded by a myriad of variables that have nothing to do with type).

And, since you clearly _*adore*_ me , I *must* be ENTP, because ya know, INFJs aren't supposed to get along with Fi-doms. And type dynamics must be true cuz they so aesthetic .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism

Although in terms of understanding the functions... my knowledge was pretty shit back then; I wouldn't be surprised if most of the typings I made were dead wrong, since I mostly relied on dichotomies and things like "only Fe-users care about others..." I had some of the worst understanding of Fi, ranting about it endlessly on various forums (can you tell I'm still bitter about my INFJ typing? I hate to say it, but I carry chips on my shoulders longer than I should; I usually just don't talk about them) but no. Not a 7.

Also, bear in mind that we don't really talk in real-time. I put a lot of planning, editing, etc. before ever posting, and the forum format itself provides a catharsis for me to be more headstrong than I am IRL so even though I tend to write more stream of conscious without really planning, there's still a lot of censorship on my end that likely mutes the uh... full experience.

4w5 1w9 6w5 sp/sx if I had to guess. Truth? I don't really believe in the system anymore as a static one. At most, the core issue holds the most relevance, but I consider tritype fluff and let's not even get into subwings, which is even more "noise."

The issue I see with online typology is the confusion of association and causality, so commonplace generalizations of the types are ascribed as directly consequential, rather than incidental. With enneagram, I disagree with looking at traits to prove type, because it's like putting the cart before the horse. You *may* pair things appropriately, but there's a good chance you actually might need to pair the cart with an ox, a mule, or a donkey instead leading to... a mess.

So, it has to start on some level with the core fixation. I've fallen out of favor with most of Character and Neurosis, but it's more the sloppiness of Naranjo's presentation filled with extraneous musings than the core ideas themselves. Nevertheless, there's a reason that he titles Enneatype VII as _Gluttony, Fraudulence, and "Narcissistic Personality."_

Naranjo points out that his use of the word "narcissistic" for enneatype VII is a particular use of the word, since it is used widely to describe a number of types (i.e., the obvious example being type 3, even though I don't consider 3s "full of themselves." It's more an unfortunate semantics play, in which the tale of Narcissus gazing at his reflection happens to intersect with the concept of vanity.

You *can* have a person that carries 3 and 7 influences, to be sure, but narcissism does not necessarily necessitate vanity and vice versa.

Thus, I think if you cannot, on some level, relate to the core fixation of the type, then reconsider (unless you are so self-deceptive that even admitting to the possibility of being wrong is like "the floor is lava" levels of forbidden).

I know you've said you don't like me talking about 7s as Narcissists, but that is the one part of Naranjo's descriptions I would absolutely stand by, more so than the pleasure seeking or what have you. That, and positive outlook (not as "positivity" but as narcotization or "numbing.").



CN said:


> Only of the gluttons it may be said, as Millon says of narcissists, that "their behavior may be objectionable, even irrational. And that their self-image is that they are superior persons, extra special individuals, who are entitled to unusual rights and privileges. This view of their self-worth is fixed so firmly in their minds, that they rarely question whether it is valid.


^Which is why uniqueness I *really* consider a red herring for 4s, just as pleasure seeking is for 7s, because 7s can "buy into" the idea of being a special snowflake, it's just they do it for different reasons (very different reasons, IMO).

I tend to think the Harmonic triads hold the most weight, followed by Object Relations in terms of "appearance." Or as I prefer them called "surface/deep" characteristics. Probably my favorite resource on enneagram, because it's the most structured:

Directional Theory

I've been guilty of the "any type can do anything" mantra, but really, I don't see 7s embodying an inferior or "low" self-image the way I do. My childhood has been pressured to be perfect and live up to expectations that I simply couldn't meet. My grandmother is a classic Tiger Mom. In us was drilled the expectation to be perfect, however when you are faced with a brick-wall of expectations to climb and no means of climbing it, it becomes a way to identify with futility, "never good enough" etc. I was always "never good enough" in the eyes of parents. "What's wrong with you?" etc., like a broken toy that didn't know how to fix itself.

Moreover, I think 7s are less likely to consciously or chronically second-guess themselves. Maybe in hindsight, there is remorse, but the "in the moment" of the 7, as an id type, tends to be more action-oriented.

Well, not sure what else to say on that. TBH, I've just been sitting here staring at the page for like, 3 hours cuz I'm not sure if it's very good, so I'm not sure whether I should add more or trim the fat. I feel like I've said a lot of this before.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anyways, I really just came here to post some Gondola Sessions from my dear Colorado, before getting distracted by debating enneagram (guh). It's not like we're on the enneagram forum or something. There are some talented people in these things.

nahko bear




"here goes 'nothing'"




best ending




musical saws ftw









^Huh, I don't think I've ever been to Telluride now that I think about it. Actually... don't think I've been to Telluride, but on our road trip last summer we stayed overnight in Ouray, which is apparently called the "Switzerland" of Colorado, and it's not too far from Telluride. The roads south of there are pretty treacherous; it's nestled in the mountains and people out of state drive way too fast (and probably more likely to go careening off the mountain side).


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## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

hal0hal0 said:


> This is where I kinda want to go back to Unknown Personality like @_mimesis_ our residential international man of mystery:












Evidently, I'm a closet enthusiast :dry:


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## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> That better not be hindsight bias I smell (sometimes, I wonder if you use that stuff as perfume, but I've been skeptical of the Ni-dom "I knew it all along" since I first joined this site: http://personalitycafe.com/infj-forum-protectors/115735-what-do-you-think-clairvoyant-label.html
> 
> Like, what if you one day threw out the thought that maybe I was Ne-dom (note that I actually did mention this possibility in a blog post I mentioned you in). So this one thought gets cherrypicked amongst the many other possibilities I mentioned, in part because of your belief that ENTP *should* jibe with INFJ (the type dynamics, while I don't disagree with, I think are heavily confounded by a myriad of variables that have nothing to do with type).
> 
> And, since you clearly _*adore*_ me , I *must* be ENTP, because ya know, INFJs aren't supposed to get along with Fi-doms. And type dynamics must be true cuz they so aesthetic .


Lol, okay, well, do you want my opinion or not? Because it's like you're out to discredit what I have to say before I even say it. Which is why I rarely type other people. It's exhausting. (Like when you typed as an ISFP I kinda thought - eh - but I went along with it. If that was helping your personal growth. Plus I'll almost always give the benefit of the doubt (you're right, we don't communicate in real time, etc). And my indifference wasn't coming from INFJ's not being "supposed" to get along as well with ISFP's, but the fact that I found it unlikely that you were a secondary Se user given so many things that you've said to me over the years about having a more difficult time with presence. I also know two secondary Se users pretty well and they find putting focus on this sort of theoretical stuff a huge waste of time. Typology stereotypes do exist for a reason).

The Ni "I knew it all along" thing more works as - I didn't realize I knew it all along in the moment, but looking back now I probably did on some level. And not because of hindsight bias, but because it will eventually click as an "aha!" that I don't just get towards anything, and then I can go back and find like a thousand pieces of supporting evidence. (Which, if I didn't give, I'd be discredited then too. Why even have aha's or try to discern reality though when we can always just claim that it doesn't exist or that everything is biased? That can frustrate me at times. Like yes, but can we at least agree on a path to take here? It reminds me of this scene from the other guys, lol, where Mark Wahlberg learns as much as he can about the arts just to make fun of the people who take them seriously). 






Anyway. Ni dom. Inferior Se. Lol. I don't always understand what's happening to me or what I'm processing as it happens.

I think I know you well enough now that if I did give you certain examples of things you've said we could both agree that they are examples of a pattern that I've picked up on - that they don't really stand alone.

I just found this video. The Micheal Pierce one on ENTP. Dude, it fits you to a T. (And yea, I said I could see the ISFP one fitting too, but I don't think it fits as well). I think you're an actual ENTP. The label is so intertwined with, like, Robert Downey Jr. stereotypes that I think there are a lot of mistypes, or people who shy away from the label.








hal0hal0 said:


> I think true genius is the ability to keep pushing forward, moreso than raw talent (I actually get the compliment that I'm "intelligent" a lot and it really annoys me, because I don't think intelligence [assuming I even have it] is that important. As Truffaut would say:














hal0hal0 said:


> And btw, I've changed to my true type, this time; the ISFP stuff was just a thought experiment; cuz you know how we Ne-doms love new ideas (and all that depressed "4" stuff I wrote was due to clinical MDD, for which I'm currently being treated for with SSRIs). Let's see how this affects my behavior and just as importantly, others' perception of my behavior.


I know you're being sarcastic here (or at least I think you are), but this does actually make sense. Maybe you were doing this subconsciously somehow. You remind me a lot of Jawz in ways. He had a hard time landing on a type too, but finally did so as an ENTP. (Without any input from me). He'd gotten into a motorcycle accident like ten years ago that messed up his leg really bad, so he was depressive and on medication too. When he made the switch he got flack for it from other ENTP's (he would write about feelings so obviously he was a feeler!) but I think he was properly typed having talked to him a lot. He was my first friend here and we used to derail a lot too, lol. 

Leaning more towards that you're ENTP than 7, thinking about it. Maybe you're a rare ENTP 4. Or maybe you ARE a 7 since you think that you're the exception to all of these rules   (Always exceptions to rules though).

Alright, I'm gonna grab food, and then I'm gonna break open Naranjo (snore) because I do think I have a couple other thoughts.


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> Lol, okay, well, do you want my opinion or not? Because it's like you're out to discredit what I have to say before I even say it.


I'm being bloodthirsty, sorry. Of course I want your opinion; I'm going to make a type me thread in a bit. You're probably seeing my "old" self. Before I joined PerC, I was once of those people that *had* to win a debate; I forced my values onto others and *mostly* because I had exorbitant amounts of free-time on hand, zero social life and above all, a perfectionist streak. I had to make things right. I hated ambiguity because... well, it's ambiguity. To me, I suppose I had the thought that people should be able to come to an agreement. Even earlier than that, I remember being overwhelmed by the desire to "fix" the world. I fantasized about shoulds. The world should be this way.

Ideals. So, in my self-typing process, the only thing I am sure of is that I'm a introvert (or am I that bad at self-observation? Or am I just like, super unhealthy?). Cognitively. I resist the outer world. That's the main reason I don't agree with you on an Ne-dom typing for me. That said, I read Quenk's Ne-dom thing and I didn't relate to it anywhere near as much as inferior Te. I mean, the thing that bugs me about this is that I relate to fucking ISTJ descriptions, too, so the online typology world (and Quenk isn't perfect either) is mired in soooo much Forer effect.

That that said, it is making me reconsider INFP, but I don't really believe in MBTI.

That's why I stick to Jung's descriptions insofar as _*determining *_type, because it becomes this clusterfuck where anything can be conveniently rationalized away:

- Oh yeah, that's my 9-fix!
- Uh oh, that 6-wing's acting up again
- Yeah, that's my dominant-tertiary loop-a-majig
- Yep, auxiliary function FTW. Saved me again!
- Damn that pesky PoLR
- Stupid Role function! Shut-yer-face!
- Power triader... aw yiss.

A lot of this depends on our own interpretations of Jungian theory and its progeny. As I've said, I think attitudes play the greatest role; I am a bit of a Jungian purist because Myers-Briggs attempts to further develop the structure of auxiliary/tertiary in ways that I think oversimplify the enormous complexity of actual people. I believe the dominant function plays the greatest role and more specifically, the first thing to be nailed down should be: Are you an introvert or extrovert?

That's why I can't quite buy a Ne-dom typing for me. I am not oriented towards objects.



Veggie said:


> but the fact that I found it unlikely that you were a secondary Se user given so many things that you've said to me over the years about having a more difficult time with presence. I also know two secondary Se users pretty well and they find putting focus on this sort of theoretical stuff a huge waste of time. Typology stereotypes do exist for a reason).


I think this again depends on our interpretations of theory. 

My difficulty with presence I have viewed as a result of introversion, and as I've said, I don't agree that an ISFP necessarily has auxiliary Se (in other words, I think MBTI is bupkiss). Introverts I *believe* are generally more likely to have difficulty with accepting outer realities or staying present. I actually theorize that introverts therefore are more likely to argue with each other, be stubborn, and have reservations.



> Whereas the extraverted type refers pre-eminently to that which reaches him from the object, the introvert principally relies upon that which the outer impression constellates [_sic_] in the subject. In an individual case of apperception, the difference may, of course, be very delicate, but in the total psychological economy it is extremely noticeable, especially in the form of a _reservation of the ego.
> 
> _Jung


Here are my steps to typing myself:

1) *Introversion/Extraversion*: I've beaten this with a dead horse, but I think attitude is not only the first thing to determine, but it's also the most obvious. Actually, bringing up that Michael Pierce video, I disagree with him that an ENTP "doesn't see the object directly." The video overall is pretty good, but that part is bupkiss, IMO, because it completely violates what was the basis of Psychological Types in the first place. He's confusing extraversion and sensing in ways that sort of annoy me.

Sensing: It exists; whether as stored experiences (i.e., memories; Si). Or as... it exists. End of story.

ENTPs *are* extraverts. They are oriented toward the objective possibilities. 

2) *Dominant function/Inferior function* : Due to the way Jung opens PT with conscious/unconscious, I think he's referring to dominant-inferior functions; how the dominant function becomes too uh... dominant? 

The inferior Se only fit me insofar as the hostility of the outer world. Feeling like a remedial dumbass when dealing with matters of the outer world. So again, don't think I'm an extravert, because I'm not oriented to the outer reality.

However, I can become extremely critical (i.e., rod up the ass levels). I do censor myself a lot, however, and hold my tongue.



> One may even be made to feel the superfluousness of one's own existence. In the presence of something that might carry one away or arouse enthusiasm, *this type observes a benevolent neutrality, tempered with an occasional trace of superiority and criticism that soon takes the wind out of the sails of a sensitive object.* But a stormy emotion will be brusquely rejected with murderous coldness, unless it happens to catch the subject from the side of the unconscious, _i.e._ unless, through the animation of some primordial image, feeling is, as it were, taken captive. In which event such a woman simply feels a momentary laming, invariably producing, in due course, a still more violent resistance, which reaches the object in his most vulnerable spot. The relation to the object is, as far as possible, kept in a secure and tranquil middle state of feeling, where passion and its intemperateness are resolutely proscribed. Expression of feeling, therefore, remains niggardly and, when once aware of it at all, the object has a permanent sense of his undervaluation. Such, however, is not always the case, since very often the deficit remains unconscious; whereupon the unconscious feeling-claims gradually produce symptoms which compel a more serious attention.
> 
> Jung on Introverted Feeling












Leaning more towards that you're ENTP than 7, thinking about it. Maybe you're a rare ENTP 4. Or maybe you ARE a 7 since you think that you're the exception to all of these rules   (Always exceptions to rules though).



Veggie said:


> I think I know you well enough now that if I did give you certain examples of things you've said we could both agree that they are examples of a pattern that I've picked up on - that they don't really stand alone.



These subjective tendencies and ideas are stronger than the objective influence; because their psychic value is higher, they are superimposed upon all impressions. Thus, just as it seems incomprehensible to the introvert that the object should always be decisive, it remains just as enigmatic to the extravert how a subjective standpoint can be superior to the objective situation.





Veggie said:


> but the fact that I found it unlikely that you were a secondary Se user given so many things that you've said to me over the years about having a more difficult time with presence. I also know two secondary Se users pretty well and they find putting focus on this sort of theoretical stuff a huge waste of time. Typology stereotypes do exist for a reason).


A confession: 

You are really good at baseball, I suck at baseball, but I want to hang out with you so I play it anyways, even though I suck. I'm just too ashamed to say it. Also, my "randomness" in posts where you say I come up with all these examples... I'm just looking at stuff that's easy to access XD.... Like, if I happen to be reading the Fables comics at the moment, that's what I talk about. Sensing is an anchor in that way. It's usually tied in some way to what I care about (Fi) like hobbies or aesthetics.

(again, it's complicated. And this is where I think my Sensor tendencies actually come out, is that people turn these systems into cut-and-dry cardboard cutouts, and all I can think is people are neglecting:



Culture
Life experience (i.e., what if you are a recluse/hikikomori?)
Personal interests - I happen to idolize postmodernist thinking, which itself is grounded in debunking, poking holes in arguments, irony, sarcasm, etc.
Teachers/mentors
Comfort level (i.e., I am more confident
Values - what if your most treasured belief is honesty? As in, if something is bothering me at the gooey, feely level
Countertypes in enneagram - Oops. Sorry. Sp image types are notorious for giving a confusing picture of their fixation, similar to how a "counterphobic" 6 conceals its fear, so an Sp-image type conceals its shame... perhaps by insisting it isn't shame or perhaps openly mocking the "serious" attitude towards image (i.e., nonchalance).


And these, to me are all Facts. Variables in the real world that can affect how a person appears. So I think all the cute little type dynamics are. I interpret these as Se data. As in, you are presented with a patient case are given all these vitals, labs, cultures, etc., and you need to know what to do, here and now. Moreover, the "skepticism" that Michael Pierce talks about in his video: Could this not apply to Sensors as well? 

TBH, I don't always follow your posts or get what your saying. Which makes me feel bad because you say you try to relate to what I'm saying and sometimes, I just... don't get it? I've actually never been good with abstract stuff. This is why I stay away from -isms, philosophers, or debate in general unless it's matters of aesthetics or something I feel I can actually talk about. The words are too vague or ambiguous, which can be frustrating.

Like with the Ni-vision thread. The point is: There is sensing _*and *_intuitive data there. There is beauty to the solid line itself, as well as what is suggested by the line. So I think that thread is inaccurately titled. It should be Ni-Se vision gallery if we're really intent on splitting hairs.

RE: Stereotypes... Guh, but that's so frustrating because you debunk some stereotypes to validate an ENTP typing while uphold Se stereotypes to debunk an ISFP typing.

IMO... dispense with all stereotypes and focus on dominant-inferior and intraversion/extraversion or else it's too confusing and ambiguous.










You know what I really think? I think if we peeled back the layers on *everyone* nobody would agree on each others' typings. I know people have typed YOU, yes YOU @Veggie (who are so sure of typing as INFJ ) as ENFP and I could probably form a pretty sweet argument debunking that type.






All I'm really getting at is that typology is less accurate/useful than art. Blue Velvet hit on exactly this... that if you peel back the layers of Order, there is nothing but chaos and ambiguity beneath the surface.

^Which is why I like McLuhan. At least the medium and its effects on people are easier to observe and less ambiguous than Jungian Jedi Mind Games.


----------



## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> Ideals. So, in my self-typing process, the only thing I am sure of is that I'm a introvert (or am I that bad at self-observation? Or am I just like, super unhealthy?). Cognitively. I resist the outer world. That's the main reason I don't agree with you on an Ne-dom typing for me. That said, I read Quenk's Ne-dom thing and I didn't relate to it anywhere near as much as inferior Te. I mean, the thing that bugs me about this is that I relate to fucking ISTJ descriptions, too, so the online typology world (and Quenk isn't perfect either) is mired in soooo much Forer effect.


Ne dom does resist the outer world objectively though. It soaks in what is, and replaces it with what it could be. Which is Ti in the ENTP.

Introvert/extravert isn't so easily determined when digging into the individual types, and not just by the functions, but how they interplay with one another. Ne-Ti is a very specific combination, for example. So is Ni-Fe. Ni is forming it's subjective viewpoints based on what it's drinking in objectively from others. Which is why I think a lot of "INFJ's" are secretly ISFJ's. INFJ is actually supposedly the extraverted introvert. I can spend inordinate amounts of time with other people so long as they let me live in my subjective world. They only fuel that then probably. 



hal0hal0 said:


> That's why I can't quite buy a Ne-dom typing for me. I am not oriented towards objects.


You only talk about stuff like films, like, all the time  (And even just on this thread, you've more admitted to seeing them as objects worthy of respect than I have).



hal0hal0 said:


> However, I can become extremely critical (i.e., rod up the ass levels). I do censor myself a lot, however, and hold my tongue.


Yea, what's that like? Haha. (Sarcasm). It cracks me up when people think I'm being careless or harsh, because then I'm still only expressing, like, half of what I want to (and finally, after, like, years of sealed lips), and being careful to monitor it. (Which I do think is more Fe). I'll usually only do it too if I feel like it...makes sense within a social principle that I hold dear. 



hal0hal0 said:


> A confession:
> 
> You are really good at baseball, I suck at baseball, but I want to hang out with you so I play it anyways, even though I suck. I'm just too ashamed to say it. Also, my "randomness" in posts where you say I come up with all these examples... I'm just looking at stuff that's easy to access XD.... Like, if I happen to be reading the Fables comics at the moment, that's what I talk about. Sensing is an anchor in that way. It's usually tied in some way to what I care about (Fi) like hobbies or aesthetics.


That has nothing to do with sensing or intuition. It's just a natural human tendency, I think. And you do still pull at randoms that aren't immediately your experience anyway. (A film you saw a few years ago - and it always fits too, lol).

It's funny. You were freaking me out with how good _you_ were at baseball for a while. I remember when I posted the Revolver chest scene just to send some psychic energy back at you out of paranoia XD






Funny that the Maya Deren video you sent was chess related. I think she's my favorite of old directors and movies you've sent my way. I really liked Meshes of the Afternoon. I feel like they've all been dubbed over, but I liked this rendition.








hal0hal0 said:


> You know what I really think? I think if we peeled back the layers on *everyone* nobody would agree on each others' typings. I know people have typed YOU, yes YOU @<span class="highlight"><i><a href="http://personalitycafe.com/member.php?u=22548" target="_blank">Veggie</a></i></span> (who are so sure of typing as INFJ ) as ENFP and I could probably form a pretty sweet argument debunking that type.


Oh trust me. I know. It's annoying, because Ni is supposedly the most enigmatic function, but when you try to share your experience of it it's all - you're crazy!, or - you know what? You're probably really - *enter type* or ...other annoying things. I hate the special snowflake labels too. Like, bitches! You're getting your credentials! Like people based in the physical world aren't getting their rewards all the fucking time. You need them all though, huh? And I'M the special snowflake asshole? One gift I swear I have - sometimes I'll say something to someone and I won't know why I'm saying it. I would just write that off as antisocial behavior except for the fact that they almost always meet me in what I'm saying. Like they know what I'm talking about even when I don't. So, I don't know, call that what you want. But if I have any talents, maybe it's tuning into certain frequencies.


----------



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

I wrote a much longer post but deleted it... I'm just gonna stop, since it's really wearing me out, upsetting me and not worth my time/energy. I'm not just saying this for the sake of proving my type, but these theoretical discussions do take A LOT out of me. It's literally taken me about 3 hours (yes 3) to write this post which is really not that long.

I inevitably conclude that I hate Jungian theory more and more, because it's just these pointless circles that don't make me feel good.



Veggie said:


> You only talk about stuff like films, like, all the time  (And even just on this thread, you've more admitted to seeing them as objects worthy of respect than I have).


Which are tied to _*MY *_tastes and _*MY *_standards of what I think are appropriate. I feel like you sometimes disregard the level of attention I'm actually putting into the _aesthetic _quality of a thing, like my posts. Like _italics_. Like, something that is my _favorite_. Favorites are my favorite. Maybe you can't see that, read my mind, or if this makes any sense to you, I don't know. The significance of the favorite or fondness. It's like... at the very root of me, so I actually tend to keep my favorites a secret. Inseparable, like the pulse in the heart.



Veggie said:


> Oh trust me. I know. It's annoying, because Ni is supposedly the most enigmatic function, but when you try to share your experience of it it's all - you're crazy!, or - you know what? You're probably really - *enter type* or ...other annoying things. I hate the special snowflake labels too. Like, bitches! You're getting your credentials! Like people based in the physical world aren't getting their rewards all the fucking time. You need them all though, huh? And I'M the special snowflake asshole? One gift I swear I have - sometimes I'll say something to someone and I won't know why I'm saying it. I would just write that off as antisocial behavior except for the fact that they almost always meet me in what I'm saying. Like they know what I'm talking about even when I don't. So, I don't know, call that what you want. But if I have any talents, maybe it's tuning into certain frequencies.


I can't remember ever questioning your Ni-dom typing (except in one of my posts today, but that was more out of sarcasm). I've always said that you are probably one of the few INFJs properly typed here. There are a few posts in SPAM to that effect.

But... yeah, that's how I feel about my Fi-dom typing. When I try to share it with you, I feel like you're just dismissing it as a joke typing when it's _*not*_. Like, "that's nice dear" *pats me on the head for trying* but you're REALLY an ENTP. I did my homework and I read Psychological Types. The Ni-dom mistype to me is understandable because I hadn't done my research. But Fi-dom I feel is at least close and it's like you're shooting it down "nope, completely wrong"). I would like to think I have at least _*some *_observation skills and am not in some uber shadow mode. I would like to think that I'm not completely self-deceiving myself. So yeah, the Fi-dom is touchy for me and I feel like when I try to point out where inferior Te has manifested for me (and yeah, I think it has, plenty of times), it gets disregarded like I didn't even say it. Like you're not really taking me seriously or something, IDK.

And I've probably disregarded plenty you say without realizing it either.

I'm sure there's more I want to say. But I think the issue, as I've said before, is we don't interpret Jung in the same way. I've noticed this before, that most our arguments and disagreements center around Jung. There was too much in your post that I disagreed with at the basic level and I ended up quoting a bunch of Psychological Types in response (TBH, I just wanted to post: _Reread Psychological Types_ , but I think it's more a difference of interpretation than it is your knowledge of the book), but it gave me a headache trying to formulate my argument.






An impasse.


----------



## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

@hal0hal0 - Okay, Ti time. (Ti time? Mad Ti party time?)












hal0hal0 said:


> I can't remember ever questioning your Ni-dom typing (except in one of my posts today, but that was more out of sarcasm). I've always said that you are probably one of the few INFJs properly typed here. There are a few posts in SPAM to that effect.


Okay, now you're making me feel like I'm, like, betraying you or something :laughing: For the record, I'm not saying that you're definitely NOT an ISFP, that you've terribly mistyped yourself in thinking so, or that it's so far off from what could be the truth. I'm not saying that an ENTP typing is objective reality. I'm also not playing a game of telephone where I'm all like "Hey guys? PerC? You know hal0hal0? He thinks he's an _ISFP_. Yea, no, really. I'm not kidding."

You told me to reread Psychological Types though (well, no, you told me you were _going_ to tell me to reread Psychological Types, but decided not to, but in doing so...you told me to reread Psychological Types).

So now I have (well, part of it), and it was really annoying, so I'm just sharing my observations so that it wasn't in vain. There is an impersonal, tongue in cheek air to this probably more than it might read. I'm not attached to it. 



hal0hal0 said:


> But... yeah, that's how I feel about my Fi-dom typing. When I try to share it with you, I feel like you're just dismissing it as a joke typing when it's _*not*_. Like, "that's nice dear" *pats me on the head for trying* but you're REALLY an ENTP. I did my homework and I read Psychological Types...Like you're not really taking me seriously or something, IDK.


Well, you don't take yourself seriously. You've even just said that you don't really believe in MBTI, lol. Do you blame me? 0

(Remember that time when you decided to conduct a social experiment by typing _yourself_ as an ENTP and I actually believed you and it made something click for me and you got really annoyed by it? XD Well, I guess we know the results of that one now. Can cross it off the bucket list, lol. (Forever! Dun dun dun). I know that you did your homework though, I'm not saying that you didn't. You're right too, you've considered Ne before and I never particularly went along with it. So I guess if it's clicking for me now - I wasn't doing my homework either if homework was indeed not being done, if you are a Ne dom, and if any of this is actually real or matters after all, lol).


* *






hal0hal0 said:


> And btw, I've changed to my true type, this time; the ISFP stuff was just a thought experiment; cuz you know how we Ne-doms love new ideas (and all that depressed "4" stuff I wrote was due to clinical MDD, for which I'm currently being treated for with SSRIs). Let's see how this affects my behavior and just as importantly, others' _perception _of my behavior.





(^That specifically is what made it click for me, tbh. I was just thinking not too long ago that I haven't really talked to any ENTP's here more personally, but I'd totally forgotten that Jawz had landed on that type. He reminds me of some ENTP's who play mafia a lot too. You can absolutely pick up on trends with people doing that. I actually always spy on all of the player's types each game and it helps a lot in reading them).



hal0hal0 said:


> That better not be hindsight bias I smell (sometimes, I wonder if you use that stuff as perfume, but I've been skeptical of the Ni-dom "I knew it all along" since I first joined this site: http://personalitycafe.com/infj-forum-protectors/115735-what-do-you-think-clairvoyant-label.html


So, the seven stuff - just even on the first page:


* *






Veggie said:


> I like that you posted this on the Enneagram forum, because this might be your 7 fix speaking  I just read something on the forum about this...loss of connection in sevens, and I don't know if it was literally compared to starvation or not (of course it's more imagined, cus...gluttony), but that's what I got from it. Something else I've been meaning to comment on, but, well X_X





Veggie said:


> I say 4,7 to counter my 7,4. It makes too much sense





And the ENTP stuff - maybe this is where that random Barney vid came in. (Because everyone knows that he is ENTP).

Foreshadowing? :shocked:



Veggie said:


> (^Why was I thinking about that scene with Barney again? Something about how people's strong suits aren't always necessarily what seem obvious or something. Like he actually probably fit the archetype of logical businessman the least of the group, and I think he was the most accepting in some ways).


From that ENTP video - At about 5:55 he says that: when an ENTP adds another facet to their system their mind plays a funeral march for that facet no longer has potential. They seek to view all the faces of an object and rebel against stagnation and limitation of settling into one particular side and will naturally play devil's advocate, questioning and challenging every established viewpoint. If you show them a coin they will naturally wonder what the other side of the coin looks like.

(^That last bit fits what I said about the swivel chair earlier, haha. I find that incredibly entertaining even if it breaks my brain).

(Maybe my "clairvoyance" was just knowing that our conversation would take this turn. *I knew* <Fact. XD)


* *






Veggie said:


> Oh trust me. I know. It's annoying, because Ni is supposedly the most enigmatic function, but when you try to share your experience of it it's all - you're crazy!, or - you know what? You're probably really - *enter type* or ...other annoying things. I hate the special snowflake labels too. Like, bitches! You're getting your credentials! Like people based in the physical world aren't getting their rewards all the fucking time. You need them all though, huh? And I'M the special snowflake asshole? One gift I swear I have - sometimes I'll say something to someone and I won't know why I'm saying it. I would just write that off as antisocial behavior except for the fact that they almost always meet me in what I'm saying. Like they know what I'm talking about even when I don't. So, I don't know, call that what you want. But if I have any talents, maybe it's tuning into certain frequencies.





(^And omg I'm being the most annoying person in the world here, apologies. "Boo hoo, no one will give me a trophy for being like...psychic. Well, _sometimes_. ...Probably. We're not sure."












hal0hal0 said:


> I'm sure there's more I want to say. But I think the issue, as I've said before, is we don't interpret Jung in the same way. I've noticed this before, that most our arguments and disagreements center around Jung. There was too much in your post that I disagreed with at the basic level and I ended up quoting a bunch of Psychological Types in response (TBH, I just wanted to post: _Reread Psychological Types_ , but I think it's more a difference of interpretation than it is your knowledge of the book), but it gave me a headache trying to formulate my argument.


I just see Jung as a starting point. He doesn't really get into the complexities of how the functions interact with each other - because...it isn't MBTI 

Yea though, I told you that I woke up with a headache this morning, haha. Disagreeing can be fun though 



Veggie said:


> Introvert/extravert isn't so easily determined when digging into the individual types, and not just by the functions, but how they interplay with one another. Ne-Ti is a very specific combination, for example. So is Ni-Fe. Ni is forming it's subjective viewpoints based on what it's drinking in objectively from others. Which is why I think a lot of "INFJ's" are secretly ISFJ's. INFJ is actually supposedly the extraverted introvert. I can spend inordinate amounts of time with other people so long as they let me live in my subjective world. They only fuel that then probably.


^ So this is a terrible argument, because Fe is secondary for both ISFJ and INFJ, but I guess that I mean that there's a headier, less objective quality to intuition overall (though I myself have challenged this, lol. "What about primordially? What if the physical world is secretly the collective unconscious?")

Annnnnnd, actually. This is pretty much how Ne is written in Psychological Types. At least in my opinion.

First of all though, general extraversion:


* *






> This is the extravert's danger; he becomes caught up in objects, wholly losing himself in their toils. The functional (nervous) or actual physical disorders which result from this state have a compensatory significance, forcing the subject to an involuntary self-restriction. Should the symptoms be functional, their peculiar formation may symbolically express the psychological situation...
> 
> Again, a man on the point of marrying an idolized woman of doubtful character, whose value he extravagantly overestimates, is seized with a spasm of the aesophagus, which forces him to a regimen of two cups of milk in the day, demanding his three-hourly attention. All visits to his fiancee are thus effectually stopped, and no choice is left to him but to busy himself with his bodily nourishment. A man who through his own energy and enterprise has built up a vast business, entailing an intolerable burden of work, is afflicted by nervous attacks of thirst, as a result of which he speedily falls a victim to hysterical alcoholism.





^ JUNG! Wtf? (He gives us permission to challenge him over stuff like that XD So like...his own ideas. Or are they?  How does individual thought work?)

More Extraversion:


* *






> Now, when the orientation to the object and to objective facts is so predominant that the most frequent and essential decisions and actions are determined, not by subjective values but by objective relations, one speaks of an extraverted attitude. When this is habitual, one speaks of an extraverted type. If a man so thinks, feels, and acts, in a word so lives, as to correspond directly with objective conditions and their claims, whether in a good sense or ill, he is extraverted. His life makes it perfectly clear that it is the objective rather than the subjective value which plays the greater role as the determining factor of his consciousness.
> 
> He naturally has subjective values, but their determining power has less importance than the external objective conditions. Never, therefore, does he expect to find any absolute factors in his own inner life, since the only ones he knows are outside himself. Epimetheus-like, his inner life succumbs to the external necessity, not of course without a struggle; which, however, always ends in favour of the objective determinant. His entire consciousness looks outwards to the world, because the important and decisive determination always comes to him from without. But it comes to him from without, only because that is where he expects it.





Ne:



> Whenever intuition predominates, a particular and unmistakable psychology presents itself. *Because intuition is orientated by the object, a decided dependence upon external situations is discernible, but it has an altogether different character from the dependence of the sensational type. The intuitive is never to be found among the generally recognized reality values, but he is always present where possibilities exist.* He has a keen nose for things in the bud pregnant with future promise. *He can never exist in stable, long-established conditions of generally acknowledged though limited value: because his eye is constantly ranging for new possibilities, stable conditions have an air of impending suffocation. *
> 
> *He seizes hold of new objects and new ways with eager intensity, sometimes with extraordinary enthusiasm, only to abandon them cold-bloodedly, without regard and apparently without remembrance, as soon as their range becomes clearly defined and a promise of any considerable future development no longer clings to them. As long as a possibility exists, the intuitive is bound to it with thongs of fate.*
> 
> ...



* *






Veggie said:


> Ne dom does resist the outer world objectively though. It soaks in what is, and replaces it with what it could be. Which is Ti in the ENTP.





^So yea, this a weak point, but I think what I meant was that it resists the outer world objectively by replacing it with possibility - but then, that's still objective possibility, so technically in that sense...it isn't resisting the outer world objectively as a whole - but rather just it's present experience of it? 



Veggie said:


> It's funny. You were freaking me out with how good _you_ were at baseball for a while. I remember when I posted the Revolver chest scene just to send some psychic energy back at you out of paranoia XD


This is how my mind works, btw. "Ooh, I feel like hal0hal0's in my brain right now, so, I know! I'll post a video about a guy who thinks he's in other people's brains but secretly they're in his! Who's who what's what now?" #Gotcha! (>Everyone else - huh? At least that seems to be the reaction. I'm not the one reacting as other people, lol).












hal0hal0 said:


> So... you know that one post you made about that one topic on that one site we were talking about that one day? You know what I mean :wink:
> 
> I kid. But you do sometimes throw out those references to "you know that one time [at band camp]"?... and I'm like... no, I don't know what you're referring to, sorry; can't read minds and can think of a dozen things that refers to. More specific?
> 
> Relation of the Carver excerpt to... ???


Yea, I always think my transitions are much more obvious than they actually are, haha. Though I'm getting better at them. Here - you were talking about eating a hotdog, a short story about eating...bread? and ideals, so I was like ah - I'll post mindfulness and acceptance of the moment (yet while risk taking) videos, explain my ideals as existing more as a frequency, and oh hey cool! This ACT video is kind of like a combination of both. (Though that may have been entirely a subjective viewpoint, lol...though I did give my reasoning).


* *






hal0hal0 said:


> So we go to this hole-in-the-wall hotdog place (I can't remember the name) and we each get a hotdog and mine is covered in onions and some sort of barbeque sauce. It was good. Especially because I was hungry.
> 
> And the point of this? There really isn't one. Yet, it somehow is the most memorable moment from that trip. That little hotdog detour, no matter how insignificant, remains tucked away in the library of my conscious. Written in my history as something more significant, apparently, than even the Empire State Building... I remember going there, but somehow, the memory isn't quite as clear as the hotdog one.
> 
> ...








hal0hal0 said:


> I wrote a much longer post but deleted it... I'm just gonna stop, since it's really wearing me out, upsetting me and not worth my time/energy. I'm not just saying this for the sake of proving my type, but these theoretical discussions do take A LOT out of me. It's literally taken me about 3 hours (yes 3) to write this post which is really not that long.


Dude, it's taken me days (longer really at times when I'm not actively working on a post but as I try to gather my thoughts) to respond to you in the past (especially since you just keep shooting new information at me a lot when I'm doing it). I'll work on it, save it, come back to it. I told you that I've begun keeping a PerC notebook too, lol. 

Also, which is it? 



hal0hal0 said:


> Uh... since when have we _stopped _talking about ideas for the sake of it? Isn't that like, all we do? Or like 95% of it? I know we've talked more lately about IRL stuff, but still,* most our conversations revolve around theoretical nonsense that we firmly believe is more important than real life*.


So this, separately:


* *






hal0hal0 said:


> Which are tied to _*MY *_tastes and _*MY *_standards of what I think are appropriate. I feel like you sometimes disregard the level of attention I'm actually putting into the _aesthetic _quality of a thing, like my posts. Like _italics_. Like, something that is my _favorite_. Favorites are my favorite. Maybe you can't see that, read my mind, or if this makes any sense to you, I don't know. The significance of the favorite or fondness. It's like... at the very root of me, so I actually tend to keep my favorites a secret. Inseparable, like the pulse in the heart.





Yea, this could be Fi. I wonder if it could be inferior Si too? Especially when repressed by Ne-Ti. I don't know, just something to think about. 

And no, I don't disregard the level of attention you put into the aesthetic quality of your posts. I actually really admire that  It's fresh and original. You've helped me to get better at presenting my thoughts.



Veggie said:


> I also know two secondary Se users pretty well and they find putting focus on this sort of theoretical stuff a huge waste of time. Typology stereotypes do exist for a reason).


Your point that I'm typing you not based on stereotypes but Se users based on them is fair. (Though I did say I think you fit the video which makes generalizations itself).

Granted, I'm thinking of ISTP's, and since these videos are now my most credible deciding source for determining type P) it really does differ a lot from the ISFP you sent me.






^Maybe I've already incorporated my animus (I think I recently mentioned that I just read somewhere that heavy Se users are supposed to help with that) and now I just need help in making sense of it  (Help! I have this big metaphorical dick and I don't know how to use it).



hal0hal0 said:


> Maya Deren is one of my heroes, so I was glad to see that today. Like, people think the artistic process is clean or just this magical place of bunnies and smoking weed, and maybe that's true, but most great artists I've seen work their asses off. Too much attention paid to the Mona Lisa and not all the scribbles and failed attempts to get there.












(^ I actually don't really smoke though. I feel like my thoughts are in that place produced by THC on their own most of the time, lol. Wine is more my thing).



Veggie said:


> I actually think I lost a lot of playfulness after that. I stopped Skyping, I stopped hanging out with some friends, stopped actively dating. It was a darker year. Accepting the 7 tag meant also accepting and confronting some addiction issues. And not like ones that I made up to prove that I was a 7  Ones that had been there all along. (Because you know, only 7's can be addicts. But when paired with the 7's origins, other behaviors, etc - it fit pretty well).


Okay, so I sound like I'm admitting to like a hardcore meth or crack addiction or something here, but no, nothing like that. That time period really saw the culmination of a lot of things too.

Really, more than anything, I just need to find balance again. I have a hard time denouncing the world of drugs and alcohol completely not because I'm an addict who makes rationalizations (that's a viewpoint, sure, but it's not, like, the only one) but because I think it limits individual thought, responsibility, choice, etc. 

From "The Alchemist" actually:

_"The Alchemist opened a bottle and poured a red liquid into the boy's cup. It was the most delicious wine he had ever tasted. 'Isn't wine prohibited here?' the boy asked. 'It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil.' said the alchemist. 'It's what comes out of their mouths that is.' The alchemist was a bit daunting, but, as the boy drank the wine, he relaxed. After they finished eating they sat outside the tent, under a moon so brilliant that it made the stars pale. 'Drink and enjoy yourself.' said the alchemist, noticing that the boy was feeling happier. 'Rest well tonight, as if you were a warrior preparing for combat...'"​_
I think I told you too that when I was in Panama a lot of drugs were seen as more shamanistic. It's cultural really. Safety and danger. And who's the one determining what?

Ayahuasca Info - A general introduction to Ayahuasca

This video popped into my Youtube recommendations and I ended up watching the whole thing. It was comforting somehow. Removing that fourth wall between audience and celebrity without creating the wall of technology, just listening to people shoot the shit. Natasha Lyonne cracks me up especially. Its funny when she talks about how being an actor in NY used to mean something, because I have a friend who's a director in NY who went on this long diatribe on FB about the same thing. It's missing it's edge. I identified with what she's saying too when she talks about how it's kind of depressing that scrolling through your phone or wasting time reading the Daily Mail has replaced more immersive (hot?) experiences with literature, music, etc. (The last minute cracks me up too - "We just want to do as much as possible before we hate the industry" - "And, uh, die" XD)











(^ Just found that today too. The (trippy) effects only lasted like five seconds for me, it's probably safe )



hal0hal0 said:


> I've been guilty of the "any type can do anything" mantra, but really, I don't see 7s embodying an inferior or "low" self-image the way I do. My childhood has been pressured to be perfect and live up to expectations that I simply couldn't meet. My grandmother is a classic Tiger Mom. In us was drilled the expectation to be perfect, however when you are faced with a brick-wall of expectations to climb and no means of climbing it, it becomes a way to identify with futility, "never good enough" etc. I was always "never good enough" in the eyes of parents. "What's wrong with you?" etc., like a broken toy that didn't know how to fix itself.


This actually _does_ fit 7. 

Naranjo:

_When we look at the life history of the cheerful and trusting individual, however, we find that there frequently has been a fall from paradise even more distinct than in the case of the type IV, so a regression to the passive and trusting attitude of the child at the breast has taken place in response to the frustrations in later life. Just as type VII does not want to see the harsh aspect of life, it seems that the child has not wanted to deidealize his mother or sometimes his father.

A frequent element in the life stories of ennea-type VII people that I have heard is that of an outrageously authoritarian parent vis-à-vis whom a soft manner of rebellion seemed most appropriate. Most commonly this happened with type I fathers whose excessive dominance and sternness was experienced as lovelessness and not only contributed to an implicit judgment that authority is bad, but to an experience of an authority that is too strong to be met head-on...[hence why "gluttons tend to form equalitarian brotherly relationships rather than authority relations."]​_
7's are also often afraid of being uncovered as frauds.

_Should [their] balloon be burst [self image], however, there is a rapid turn to either an edgy irritability and annoyance with others or to repeated bouts of dejection that are characterized by feeling humiliated and empty.​_


hal0hal0 said:


> Moreover, I think 7s are less likely to consciously or chronically second-guess themselves. Maybe in hindsight, there is remorse, but the "in the moment" of the 7, as an id type, tends to be more action-oriented.


That actually is a really good point. That last bit on 7 sounds 4-ish, and they really do become similar in ways, but that's a good differentiator. That usually is my experience too. (Second guessing myself in hindsight).

So yea, you could totally be a four (and for a plethora of other reasons too, not just shadow stuff). And a lot of our talks have existed around the potential of you being Se-Ni, so there's that too.



mimesis said:


> Evidently, I'm a closet enthusiast :dry:













~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


----------



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Commenting on as much as I can



Veggie said:


> Dude, it's taken me days (longer really at times when I'm not actively working on a post but as I try to gather my thoughts) to respond to you in the past (especially since you just keep shooting new information at me a lot when I'm doing it). I'll work on it, save it, come back to it. I told you that I've begun keeping a PerC notebook too, lol.


Ok, so this explains a lot and yeah, I'm sticking to ISFP. I actually don't do that. As I've said, I'm actually really good at time management (I have to go in 1 hour to do my drug screen and I want to get there as it opens, so I'll get as much done in that time on this post). I prefer to get posts out of the way as quickly as possible, which is actually why I did my MOTM in one go.

I've actually always enjoyed getting things out of the way and not procrastinating... taking care of problems AS they emerge. Even my ISTJ dad isn't as good at this... he'll say: I really need to take care of this problem someday (granted, he has a TONNE of problems on his daily plate). But he is very much "measure twice cut once" sort of guy. I'm more like: "Get it done, so I can get back to doing my hobbies." (And yeah, I think Fi really loves its hobbies... Feeling functions are all about agreeableness... I remember LiquidLight giving the best damned definition of Feeling because it was so simple:
_*
"Feeling is, basically, whether or not you like something."*_

My INTJ sister is notoriously bad at time management and the brunt of a lot of my inferior Te projections (again, will get into Beebe model later (reasonably sure... she does Se-indulge... speeding 80 mph in a 30 mph zone when she's pissed, buys excessive amounts of stuff and really dumb, extravagant purchases [I enjoy spending myself, but I don't exceed my limits like getting a SECOND car just cuz it has flames on it even though it's totally unrealistic and she had to keep it a secret from dad, only drove it a couple times and ended up selling it not long after]. 

Jung describes Se-dom as the "ultimate realist" which I do relate to. I have my moments it's just my Se isn't "developed."



Veggie said:


> Well, you don't take yourself seriously. You've even just said that you don't really believe in MBTI, lol. Do you blame me? 0


I see this as related to Sp-4... I actually relate to Sp-4 tremendously as a subtype; as in... hits you like a truck so it's probably true. Remember that Sp-4 (along with all image types) tends to downplay its image and understate itself... it cares about appearing to not care. I just wrote a post on that so I'll link it here since I'm too lazy to write it again:

http://personalitycafe.com/type-5-f...out-5s-feel-free-disagree-5.html#post16138842

Thing is... I am conflicted. Do I care about how I look or not? Problem is: People who take themselves too seriously are made fun of... like it's BAD to take yourself to seriously, because everybody is just "joshing" you... so I'll hide under the airs of nonchalance as a strategy of avoiding being "revealed" as actually, YES, I do give a shit how people see me. I hate the spotlight. I remember this one time in high school, we were supposed to read a play out loud in class because the teacher was out sick (so like, Lord of the Flies where all the hellions are self-governing themselves). And of course I get picked. I hate the limelight and I don't want to be the center of attention. I prefer being low-key, unless it's on my terms (i.e., like those essays I wrote). I hate the sound of my own voice so I often challenged myself to see if I could go the whole day without speaking. Naturally, getting up in front of others to read a play is NOT something wanted. Fi for me doesn't always know what it wants (complex question, where to begin?), but it knows what it HATES. And for me, it loathes the spotlight being forced upon it. 

So I end up, mid-recitation, just start crying in front of EVERYBODY because the guy I who played the other part was tying a string around my arm for NO FUCKING REASON. What a goddamn violation of personal space. I fucking hate that when people are all so touchy-feely and he was clearly making fun of me. But I couldn't control myself. My privacy, my desire to remain low-key, my personal space... all of it disrespected in that moment.

^Now that I think about it, it was after that that I froze my emotions solid. I became much colder and bitter after that.

There's so much that I want or feel the need to say or more accurately express, but there's not much time. I want to express the TRUTH. What I feel is right what I feel NEEDS to be said, but there's too much, so why bother? I usually end up not saying anything at all (that's actually why my post count is generally quite low/average). Again, I'm conflicted, because I do actually manage my time very well (which is partly why I retired those two times... PerC posts can eat up a lot of time, but they also screw with my sleep schedule and I'm normally pretty disciplined.

^Like, oh, remember when you and Ash were all insominiacs. I was basically pretending cuz I wanted to sit at the cool kids' table, but in truth, I usually need my 6-7 hours.

Alright, 30 minute mark; I'm not going back to edit this one, so enjoy. Technically, I have a 4 hour window, but I like being early (partly my dad's fault, I want to get into that a bit, but we'll see; I also have to take a piss right now; but again, I'm stubborn about finishing things first... durr, that's my OCD). 










^See, I don't depend on Pinterest. Google button is right there, so most my images are "search as I go." Also... another pro-tip you probably know already: I use Ctrl + F like crazy... It's so much more efficient. Like, I'll jot down a keyword that I need to get back to for your post, then find it immediately with Ctrl + F.




Veggie said:


> I just see Jung as a starting point. He doesn't really get into the complexities of how the functions interact with each other - because...it isn't MBTI


Good point. I'm too much of a Jungian purist or adamant about that. That said, I don't agree with you on using Isabel Myer's 4-function model, which you seem (?) to place the most stock in. The Beebe model is much more flexible, because the key is that the functions are NOT ordered. I never could stand the "development" nonsense of the Myers model, because it was like, destiny or some crap. Like, at age 20 you will develop function X. Blah blah blah.

I have actually read that Fi-doms in particular (simulated world's thread in Cog. F(x) forum) can be suspicious of "placing people in boxes." I do anti-stereotype a lot, which I believe is related to either Hero/Anima projection (again, Beebe model, will provide links... but I'll probably talk about that later since it warrants its own separate post.

Anyways, the Beebe model is preferred to me because it describes functions as "housed" in archetypes, so it's really NOT about the functions themselves, but our relationship to them. Beebe model also seems more flexiable than Myers'. Which brings me to:



Veggie said:


> Your point that I'm typing you not based on stereotypes but Se users based on them is fair. (Though I did say I think you fit the video which makes generalizations itself).
> 
> Granted, I'm thinking of ISTP's, and since these videos are now my most credible deciding source for determining type P) it really does differ a lot from the ISFP you sent me.


That's what annoyed me, was all this emphasis you placed on auxiliary-tertiary, especially sort of... assuming that auxiliary is necessarily strong. It's the path of least resistance in MOST cases, but life experiences and individual circumstances can drastically affect personal development.

Your arguments to this effect (supported by auxiliary) assumed (by my assumption, ofc, maybe not your intent), that all Se-auxiliary types were comparable. BUT, what about age, life experience, gender, sexuality, personal hobbies and interests, etc., that can affect how they appear?

That's why I posted those logical fallacies. Yeah, I know they are annoying and frankly, too many logical fallacies exist, but I felt you were basically taking a Gausian distribution and flattening everything into a single mean.

Ecological fallacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alright, 10 minute mark... On this commercial break, I would like to ponder the nature of defending one's own type. The thing is... people like to twist things in weird ways like: Oh, if you defend your typing too vigorously, then that means you really AREN'T that type.

^Which I've decided is poppycock (and also why I tend to downplay how meaningful typology is to me; it's not everything, but yeah, I put a lot of thought into my typing and feel I'm at the point where my knowledge is decent and truthful.



Veggie said:


> Yea, this could be Fi. I wonder if it could be inferior Si too? Especially when repressed by Ne-Ti. I don't know, just something to think about.


I dont' understand how it could be Si... explain? Don't just throw out unsubstantiated (or vaguely substantiated) claims. :dry:



Veggie said:


> This is how my mind works, btw. "Ooh, I feel like hal0hal0's in my brain right now, so, I know! I'll post a video about a guy who thinks he's in other people's brains but secretly they're in his! Who's who what's what now?" #Gotcha! (>Everyone else - huh? At least that seems to be the reaction. I'm not the one reacting as other people, lol).


Surprise! Your spell failed because I haven't seen it yet. Like trying to blind the blind man with a flashbang. Derp.

I will get to it eventually. So... when I tell you I skip videos a lot of this I actually do see as an Se-time management thing (i.e., the "ultimate realist" per Jung). I usually watch the short ones first, anything greater than 5-6 minutes gets put on the backburner, and then I chuck things 10 minutes or longer back in the freezer unless it's something that I know will be good like After Hours.

The reason is: Reading is much faster for me, whereas a video, I am a slave to that stupid clock... when will it be over? Not that I'm not interested in your many YT videos, it's just the format doesn't click with the immediacy of the 

Honestly, it's like sitting in lecture hall sometimes XD.

OK, 3 minute mark.




Veggie said:


> This actually _does_ fit 7.
> 
> Naranjo:
> 
> ...


I bolded the key part, however. @Animal has *the best* phrasing for this: *The 7's "narcissistic bubble" bursting*. As I've said, I think positive outlook as a general vibe, is a part of the 7. Positive outlookers, like any other person, can be depressed, feel inferior, etc., but as a DEFENSE, they narcotize pain, "look on the bright side" etc.. Yeah, a lot of that for me may appear 7, but you remember where I told you I actually don't like comedies? They so happy, which makes me feel low, sort of thing.

Actually, my light-hearted side only really came out when I started talking to you. My idea of a "good time" was a movie marathon running:

*Ran*: Akira Kurosawa's 3 hour, depressing, detached and languidly paced adapation of King Lear (which ends with the whole family hugging and making up).

*Bicycle Thieves*: It has a happy ending... NOT

*Faith Trilogy*: You know about this already.

*Cries and Whispers*: Bergman's color masterwork that makes Winter Light look like slapstick (seriously, a relentless, brutal 90 minutes... it feels much longer than that.

So yeah this thread I made a year ago:

http://personalitycafe.com/type-4-forum-individualist/148246-4s-dont-really-want-unique.html

I no longer agree with (and it's one of my most popular, go figure!). Authenticity or craving thereof is NOT a 4 trait.

Ok, now I'm over time, so I will pick this up. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Notes to self:

- Dad
- Beebe


----------



## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> I've actually always enjoyed getting things out of the way and not procrastinating... taking care of problems AS they emerge. Even my ISTJ dad isn't as good at this... he'll say: I really need to take care of this problem someday (granted, he has a TONNE of problems on his daily plate). But he is very much "measure twice cut once" sort of guy. I'm more like: "Get it done, so I can get back to doing my hobbies." (And yeah, I think Fi really loves its hobbies... Feeling functions are all about agreeableness... I remember LiquidLight giving the best damned definition of Feeling because it was so simple:


I think everyone really loves their hobbies - like, I just think that's one of those more universal things. (Sure though, some people are more prone to being a workaholic or whatever else (but then is work a hobby? Define hobby) - but I wouldn't necessarily tie that to the individual functions). I'm also not sure that Se has anything to do with time management specifically. I still get posts and responses out of the way fairly quickly too given what all else I have going on in my life, and how long they can take. 

I just have a different means of focusing. (Like last night I'd do a laundry load, sit back down to PerC, make a store run, sit back down to PerC, etc. Other times writing is more like a laser focus (I'd actually say that's more the norm and what I aim for, because I feel so scattered otherwise) - but idk, I just go with it). (You prod me an awful lot too. Which is cool, I've told you that I honestly don't mind, it's invigorating, but I'd probably spend a lot less time here if not for that (my post count is fairly low too having been here since 2011) - because I _do_ feel compelled to read and respond in a halfway timely manner. I took a year long break from PerC once to focus on school though, because I tend to be pretty (extremely, at times, honestly) thorough with certain things, and there are only so many commitments you can make there within a 24 hour day).

Anyway, however, your particular _brand_ of focus sounds like it could be Se, sure. (Though Ne can be about efficiency as well. I think that's why it has a tendency towards simplification (it prefers what isn't clearly defined/fleshed out), and seeing the many options gives it a way to discern the quickest route to take to reach it's momentary destination).



hal0hal0 said:


> ^See, I don't depend on Pinterest. Google button is right there, so most my images are "search as I go."


Yea, I mean, I'll do that too. It's just that I swear synchronistic stuff pops into my Youtube and Pinterest all the time that fits what we're talking about.



hal0hal0 said:


> I dont' understand how it could be Si... explain? Don't just throw out unsubstantiated (or vaguely substantiated) claims. :dry:


LOL, excuse me? I prefaced that with "I wonder" - if you want to throw it out then do so. I'm not going to go out of my way to prove speculation (i.e. not a claim) when it's likely going to be immediately discarded anyway. You seem pretty sure that you're ISFP. Can I say something frankly too? That I don't actually care? (<And for the record, you say things like that to me all the time). You were the one to make the point that you see people's behavior change when they change their tag. 

I basically said, huh, thinking about it - I did notice a slight shift in you when you made the switch to ISFP. There was more of a focus on feelings at that point rather than ideas for the sake of ideas. Then you made the lavish change to your signature, changed your tags to ENTP and 7, and all I said was, well, you know, I actually could see it (like, after you did it. I never said anything about you being mistyped beforehand). If you're so sensitive about your type and your ability to type yourself then why do that? Social experiment, fine. I do those on this site all the time. The number one rule though, I've learned, is being open to releasing the outcome. Was the point to chide anyone who believed you or considered it? Because I put a lot of work into studying and thinking about typology too. My post is more defending where I was coming from.



hal0hal0 said:


> Surprise! Your spell failed because I haven't seen it yet. Like trying to blind the blind man with a flashbang. Derp.


Lol, and you guilt trip me for not appreciating your aesthetic sensibility when I've watched entire movie marathons that you've sent me? Do you think I have that much time to waste myself that I'd just do that if I didn't? Wallowing in thoughts about death and the absence of God (whatever that is - a universal intelligence of some sort...probably more poly theistic in my belief) is like my least favorite thing to do too. But it can be grounding and sobering and it expands my comfort zone, so fine. A little respect though? Lol.

And if you don't watch my videos, that's fine. It's for me and the sake of expression in a way anyway. There are...embedded points sometimes though, or they are linking to something that you said somehow. I might be vague about the connections I make within conversation, but I have put in work to make sure that they're there. I'm not just saying or posting whatever comes to my head...well for the most part.


----------



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Alright, back from pissing into a cup. I've actually never used in my life. Up until recently, I never even drank coffee, but I drink a lot more now (currently have one right in front of me).

Funny, but when you do those things, they instruct you: DO NOT FLUSH and I'm always paranoid that I'm going to flush out of muscle memory and have to sit there filling the tank again. Stupid kidneys... work faster!



Veggie said:


> (Remember that time when you decided to conduct a social experiment by typing _yourself_ as an ENTP and I actually believed you and it made something click for me and you got really annoyed by it? XD Well, I guess we know the results of that one now. Can cross it off the bucket list, lol. (Forever! Dun dun dun). I know that you did your homework though, I'm not saying that you didn't. You're right too, you've considered Ne before and I never particularly went along with it. So I guess if it's clicking for me now - I wasn't doing my homework either if homework was indeed not being done, if you are a Ne dom, and if any of this is actually real or matters after all, lol).


Yeah, I guess that didn't last long . This experiment has been withdrawn for hurt feelings. Peelings, in filipinese:





^I actually greatly prefer my filipino culture compared to the Chinese side.

But I deliberately chose that type because it never felt right and was probably as different as I could get it from my presenting typing. I was trying to make the joke really obvious, but then you went and ran with it, and yeah, I can see more of myself in ENTP, so maybe it's not quite so absurd, but there are still a lot of reasons why I don't think it's quite right. 

Maybe I have an Ne-S instead; I would fit the INFP stereotypes better. It is odd to me that you jumped clear to ENTP. I remember when I tried that typing, it felt really off like I was a fish forcing myself to walk on land. It's not a natural fit.

Anyways, I think I know why you can see a possible Ne-dom typing for me. And that reason is...

*Dad XD*

Alright, so to give you a primer, basically, think Mad-Eye Moody: *CONSTANT VIGILANCE*!!! When you are the brunt end of Anima Ne-projection galore and you are ALREADY prone to introjecting criticism like a sponge, guess what: You start adopting those Ne tendencies of considering all possibilities.

Sidenote: I absolutely hate the casting choice in the movie. Not that the actor is a bad actor (and this is my inner Bressonian critic coming out ), but the face is all wrong, probably too chubby (I envisioned him more gnarly, like a gaunt wooden tree). Similar to the illustration in Book 4 where he's introduced). This is closer:










That is the Cliff Notes summary of dad, so to suffice to say, everytime I hang out with him, I'm on guard. It's like every single second I'm with him is an opportunity for him to remind me of all the rules I need to do. Lemme illustrate some "lectures" he's given me. Note that every time we go somewhere, he makes me drive because it will be "good practice." This actually makes me really nervous, because I have to do everything, in my eyes, perfectly or else he will get mad or lecture again and again.

ISTJ 6w5 So/Sx



> " *Tsk* You forgot to put the handbrake up _*again*_. *sigh* I notice you always forget to put the handbrake up. You really need to put the handbrake up when you park the car... what if the car starts rolling away and goes into the street and causes an accident. You might get sued and end up homeless. Really, we're all just ONE MISTAKE away from being homeless and without a job so you need to be mindful of these things. I really feel like you aren't being mindful. Be mindful! Like Thicht Nhat Hanh: Wash the dishes to wash the dishes... PRESENCE!"


^And here's the thing... do you really need to put the handbrake on ALL the time? To me, that's not realistic. I do these things on a contextual basis if the situation actually calls for it; it's much simpler that way rather than burden yourself with remembering that shit every single time... if the car is on flat ground, that is a *really* exceedingly low probability of it rolling around. What if the parking lot is fucking empty and it's the dead of night?

*He even pantomimes HOW I should remove the keys from the ignition so I "don't forget" to pull the handbrake when I park. It makes like, zero sense, because he's forcing his own habits on me. 

And when I'm NOT driving with him, there's so much less pressure to remember every little detail he wants me to remember because it's tied up in this negative reinforcement Pavlovian crap that makes me CONSTANTLY scared that I'm missing some tiny little detail that has a 0.0001% chance of saving my life (but oh, you'll thank me later WHEN that impossibly unlikely event actually happens), I can actually not get caught up in my head wondering: Shit, is there some possibility that I'm missing? That I didn't account for that dad told me to look out for? This sort of worrying makes it to where I literally CANNOT focus or stay present _*because *_he's trying to make me stay present.



> Did you check your blindspot? And you didn't just look, right? You like, _really _looked. Always check your blindspot.
> 
> Even if it's a one-way street, always look both ways. There's always the possibility that someone is accidentally going the wrong way. If the traffic is coming from your right, look right first, then left, then right once again. And vice versa if it's coming the other way.
> 
> ...


^To be fair, a lot of this is grounded in "eye-openers." We had a break-in, for instance. Also, this certainly does not apply to all ISTJ 6s, but I'm certain of that typing for him. He's also a doctor in critical care, so you kind of *have* to be prepared for anything.

It's not that these lessons aren't important. To be sure, people really ought to be less carelessin their driving. BUT, the way he presents it is very micro-managing and focused on rulesets, procedures and particular protocols. Like, for me, it's more about doing what is necessary when I need to.

Nevertheless, dad's constant drilling and "emergency training" and contingency planning, etc., have made me constantly think of all possibilities. Honestly, it's like burned into my brain, but I admit it can overwhelm the hell out of me. He basically wants me to be prepared for any possible thing that could happen, see it before it happens, and know exactly what to do A PRIORI. He hates "figuring out as you go along" instead favoring absolute preparation. All sides of an issue. This is entirely learned, NOT a cognitive preference. 

I think planning might be a Pi-Je or Je-Pi thing, because the Pi perfects its vision of the world, while Je is more efficient in its execution and judgment... like, you said you plan out your posts and have drafts. I rarely do that. I have a notecard with about 3 keywords on it as my "outline" to trigger where to start but otherwise, I just wing it, which is probably more Ji-Pe or Pe-Ji.

Also, my family goes:

ISTJ 6w5 So/Sx dad
INTJ 5w4 Sp/? sister
ENTJ 1w2 Sx/So mom (who I initially typed as ESFJ, but nope, Te-dom all the way)

Which is Te heavy.



Veggie said:


> From that ENTP video - At about 5:55 he says that: when an ENTP adds another facet to their system their mind plays a funeral march for that facet no longer has potential. They seek to view all the faces of an object and rebel against stagnation and limitation of settling into one particular side and will naturally play devil's advocate, questioning and challenging every established viewpoint. If you show them a coin they will naturally wonder what the other side of the coin looks like.


And you could say the same thing about ESXPs in relation to experiences. Here's the rub:

How do you ACTUALLY differentiate intuition (potential) and sensation? To me, that is not a clear-cut objectively proven thing *just* by looking at a person's habits or actions. Experiences carry potential and potentials LEAD to experience. Ergo: Both ESXPs and ENXPs may "get bored" easily and excited by a new hobby, for instance. BUT, viewing this from the outside, they might look quite similar. "Go-getters" probably, but more freeform and winging it than, say, EXXJs.

"when ESTPs add another experience to their repertoire their mind plays a funeral march for that experience no longer carries its novelty." They seek to have a breadth of experiences and rebel against stagnation and limitation of settling into one particular mode of experiencing."

Alright, now onto Beebe:

http://personalitycafe.com/cognitiv...volving-eight-functions-type-beebe-model.html

The part I'm specifically bringing up is the ego-syntonic archetypes:



> *Understanding the Archetypes involving the eight functions of type (Beebe model)​
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Curious about your INXJ perspective on that thread RE: The Anima archetype.


----------



## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> Lol, and you guilt trip me for not appreciating your aesthetic sensibility when I've watched entire movie marathons that you've sent me? Do you think I have that much time to waste myself that I'd just do that if I didn't? Wallowing in thoughts about death and the absence of God (whatever that is - a universal intelligence of some sort...probably more poly theistic in my belief) is like my least favorite thing to do too. But it can be grounding and sobering and it expands my comfort zone, so fine. A little respect though? Lol.
> 
> And if you don't watch my videos, that's fine. It's for me and the sake of expression in a way anyway. There are...embedded points sometimes though, or they are linking to something that you said somehow. I might be vague about the connections I make within conversation, but I have put in work to make sure that they're there. I'm not just saying or posting whatever comes to my head...well for the most part.


Double standard, I know XD. I'm so horrible. But what I meant is that at that time, I hadn't seen it yet. As in... I do watch pretty much all your videos, it's just I tend to not do it in an orderly fashion. I generally find it more engaging reading what _*you *_write, if that makes sense... sort of like how the primary resource is a bit more... direct. I guess I'm more interested in your perspective on it, than the video per se, because if I go straight to the video, I can't always tell if I'm seeing it the same way you are.

But no, I appreciate you taking all that time; I think I totally have an entitlement complex chock full of double-standards. And the comedy has helped me a lot, too, so I appreciate you cheering me up... god, that sounds so awful:

hal0hal0: Thanks for cheering me up
Veggie: Thanks for making me think about death

I still remember all those old Humor Me posts; I think that's where you and I started interacting more.



Veggie said:


> The number one rule though, I've learned, is being open to releasing the outcome. Was the point to chide anyone who believed you or considered it? Because I put a lot of work into studying and thinking about typology too. My post is more defending where I was coming from.


I agree. I did it as a joke, then you seemed to take it seriously (it's hard to tell what is serious sometimes on a forum, I think) then I was like: Aw, crap, does she think I'm being serious? Or is SHE playing along? But no, I appreciate you going there and actually considering it, because I do have some of those trait structures of ENTPs, I think it just comes from a different perspective at its source RE: my Soc 6 dad influences.

And I was defending where I was coming from. It was helpful for me too. I'm sorry I made you reread Jung, LOL; I know he's painful to read. Like I said, I'm too adamant about "sticking to Jung's original ideas" which I think is important foundationally to nail down those core concepts, but it fails to grasp the nuances, true, like MBTI/Beebe and uh... Socionics. So you really did spur me to study Beebe in more detail, to figure out how the rest of those functions fit in so thanks .



Veggie said:


> You seem pretty sure that you're ISFP. Can I say something frankly too? That I don't actually care? (<And for the record, you say things like that to me all the time). You were the one to make the point that you see people's behavior change when they change their tag.


No, that's perfectly fair. And when I say "I don't care" it's that I don't care enough to nitpick every detail of what you choose to identify with or dictate what you should be doing. That's your call. If you want to read Goddess Girls, go right ahead (and I actually do admire you for finding that meaning in all those little things), it's just... I'm not about to start reading them myself XD. But yeah, of course I care about you. I mean, after all the bullshit you've patiently listened to me rant about, how could I not? I always appreciate that you share with me at all .

And... you seem pretty sure you're INFJ, since you only talk about Ni like... all the time .


----------



## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

Veggie said:


>


Funny though, because...

person (n.) 
early 13c., from Old French persone "human being, anyone, person" (12c., Modern French personne) and directly from Latin persona "human being, person, personage; a part in a drama, assumed character," originally "mask, false face," such as those of wood or clay worn by the actors in later Roman theater. OED offers the general 19c. explanation of persona as "related to" Latin personare "to sound through" (i.e. the mask as something spoken through and perhaps amplifying the voice), "but the long o makes a difficulty ...." Klein and Barnhart say it is possibly borrowed from Etruscan phersu "mask." Klein goes on to say this is ultimately of Greek origin and compares Persephone.

but anyway...

























































/random tangent


----------



## Veggie (May 22, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> Alright, back from pissing into a cup. I've actually never used in my life. Up until recently, I never even drank coffee, but I drink a lot more now (currently have one right in front of me).


The world of pissing into cups when you have used is so seedy, lol. (Marijuana actually stays in your system the longest, so it's kinda silly imo). I know people who have taped other people's (clean) piss to their inner thigh to keep it at body temperature, and then use fake dicks (I just looked it up - Whizzinator) to dispense. Strip cleaners, B vitamins - it's a whole industry XD I used to feel guilty when I worked in HR and I was expected to give employees instructions and obtain results, because one of my bosses seemed so sure of the fact that it was just a stress free formality and everyone would pass. I kinda felt like...uh. 



hal0hal0 said:


> Yeah, I guess that didn't last long . This experiment has been withdrawn for hurt feelings. Peelings, in filipinese:


Aw, sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Or to be so curt just then. (Curt? Is that a word I use now?) 












hal0hal0 said:


> I think planning might be a Pi-Je or Je-Pi thing, because the Pi perfects its vision of the world, while Je is more efficient in its execution and judgment... like, you said you plan out your posts and have drafts. I rarely do that. I have a notecard with about 3 keywords on it as my "outline" to trigger where to start but otherwise, I just wing it, which is probably more Ji-Pe or Pe-Ji.


It's weird, I kinda do the opposite. Like I don't really have drafts (it's more like I'll just sit down and continue a post - I'm not editing it really) but I'll plan in the sense of that my notecard is like - specific pictures, videos, ideas, thoughts that come to mind. Then I'll be like - how do I put these together? I plan in trying to arrange them, I guess. So I'll end with the consolidated bullet points and start with the meat...kind of.



hal0hal0 said:


> Also, my family goes:
> 
> ISTJ 6w5 So/Sx dad
> INTJ 5w4 Sp/? sister
> ...


My family is Ni heavy. INTJ dad, ENTJ brother, ISTP sister. (My brother is marrying another ENTJ this fall too. She's cool and she's helped my development with this stuff a lot. She was a psych major and after she graduated she gave me all of her old textbooks, and let me talk her ear off about this stuff for a while, lol).



hal0hal0 said:


> And you could say the same thing about ESXPs in relation to experiences. Here's the rub:
> 
> How do you ACTUALLY differentiate intuition (potential) and sensation? To me, that is not a clear-cut objectively proven thing *just* by looking at a person's habits or actions. Experiences carry potential and potentials LEAD to experience. Ergo: Both ESXPs and ENXPs may "get bored" easily and excited by a new hobby, for instance. BUT, viewing this from the outside, they might look quite similar. "Go-getters" probably, but more freeform and winging it than, say, EXXJs.


Tbh, it's how you've worded your perceptions at times that fit the Ne descriptions I've read in ways. But. Your perception is your perception. I'm also really not familiar with how Fi dom would work too. I think Ne makes more sense to me because it's kind of a reverse of what I'm used to.

Actually gonna prob watch those type's videos next out of curiosity.



hal0hal0 said:


> [/SIZE]Curious about your INXJ perspective on that thread RE: The Anima archetype.


I'll look more into it, but I don't see SP types as inferior at all. Actually when I was younger I had an ESFP altar ego, haha. 



hal0hal0 said:


> Double standard, I know XD. I'm so horrible. But what I meant is that at that time, I hadn't seen it yet. As in... I do watch pretty much all your videos, it's just I tend to not do it in an orderly fashion. I generally find it more engaging reading what _*you *_write, if that makes sense... sort of like how the primary resource is a bit more... direct. I guess I'm more interested in your perspective on it, than the video per se, because if I go straight to the video, I can't always tell if I'm seeing it the same way you are.


True, but then, you say that you don't always understand what I say too  Sometimes other people say it better for you. Honestly though, it doesn't offend me if you don't always watch all my videos. It was just like the way you worded it that rubbed me the wrong way and made me sensitive, lol. (You've been bamboozled!)



hal0hal0 said:


> But no, I appreciate you taking all that time; I think I totally have an entitlement complex chock full of double-standards. And the comedy has helped me a lot, too, so I appreciate you cheering me up... god, that sounds so awful:
> 
> hal0hal0: Thanks for cheering me up
> Veggie: Thanks for making me think about death


Haha, no, thank you for being so cool and accepting in listening to my thoughts about death. Like I kinda felt an aversion to this thread originally, but I participated out of respect for you, and then, like, a month ago, it felt synchronistic. People who don't give tragedy enough weight really piss me off. Like, I might try to avoid thinking about it, but I do think I give it weight. 

"Chillax brah, new sunsets, broader horizons, fresh tomorrows." Ugh, fuck off. What pisses me off the most about that I think is the condescension in thinking that I don't, like, know how to do this myself when I want to. (Probably better at this point in my life!) "Omg! You've enlightened me! No actually though, I'm just not a heartless bastard and I realize that life has it's shadows and I try to be sympathetic to that." I've cut most of those friends from my life, and I try really hard to not be that way myself now (I've been guilty of like, super hope! in the past but actually - I have a sweet story I can PM to you about that. Maybe some people do appreciate it - it's at least recognizing that hope is needed. I guess people just need different things and gravitate where they will). It's that whole Anna Kendrick vs. George Clooney approach from Up in the Air we were talking about though, realizing (speaking of - I remembered what I was going to say about that and I might try to respond there soon, actually).



hal0hal0 said:


> I still remember all those old Humor Me posts; I think that's where you and I started interacting more.


Yea, that was a fun little bubble, haha. We had a little crew. SO MUCH dark humor though, lol - I guess we found the bridge between death and comedy.



hal0hal0 said:


> I'm sorry I made you reread Jung, LOL


That just reads really funny to me as a one liner, lol.



hal0hal0 said:


> And... you seem pretty sure you're INFJ, since you only talk about Ni like... all the time .


Haha, yea, I don't think I could really come back from it now even if I wanted to, lol.


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

Veggie said:


> It's funny. You were freaking me out with how good _you_ were at baseball for a while. I remember when I posted the Revolver chest scene just to send some psychic energy back at you out of paranoia XD


He's chewing on a match... you know what that's an homage to? Last Year at Marienbad. They play this game call Nim, where the objective is to force your opponent to take the last match.









^That movie plays like a recurring nightmare, walking down the same hallway. Vibe-wise, it is similar to Maya Deren's style, if you're into that sort of thing... surrealist, eerie sense of vague deja vu. I think it influenced Lynch, probably. I actually have a Japanese poster of the movie framed in my room. I have no idea why I got the Japanese one; it just seemed cool. Like, a japanese poster of a french movie:










Imagine: We talk of accents, like a japanese accent, but an accent is always a relationship between two languages. What does a japanese accent sound like in french, for instance? Or a japanese person speaking german?

^Everybody points out the scene in the courtyard... Did you know the people's long shadows are actually painted on the ground? The bushes don't have shadows. Oooooohhhhh..... Spoooooooky.

And who's to say that bushes don't have an Anima either?






That always hurts my brain thinking about it. Similar to chess, but with Nim, there *has* to be a winner if you play by the rules. With chess, I was always fascinated by the flawless game... like, if you freeze the board at any point in time, there is always a move that is considered "reasonable." But there is a tipping point, either through blunder or failing to adapt to the opponent's strategy. 

^In chess, when I used to play tournaments, I liked using pieces in unconventional ways, using overly aggressive tactics to "crack" their defense, almost suicidal in my approach (and I've lost plenty, LOL). I tend to believe, in chess at least, that a good offense really is the best defense... if you can put pressure on your opponent, you essentially force them into inaction and paralyze their momentum... it's risky though, sort of like boxing where exploiting a weakness often means opening yourself up as well.

Momentum/Tempo is soooo important in chess. That's actually your most precious resource, is turn advantage, I think, even more so than pieces. But, of course, pieces themselves can slow your opponent down, which does tend to confer tempo advantages. I tend to place more emphasis on pawn structure and I do have a habit of attacking before developing entirely, however. I also have a bad habit of "shock" tactics like sacrificing a piece just to show off, even if I'm not 100% sure what my plan of attack is afterwards, like I'm more interested in making an impressive (yet dubious) play than a strategically sound one.

^^So yeah, that's like our mental sparring. It probably doesn't help that both of us seem to love playing devil's advocate XD, but I'm glad to have you as a fencing partner. 

^^^This thread is sooo derailed btw XD.


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

@_mimesis_ @_Veggie_ RE: Masks





^Best score and my personal favorite Kubrick; sort of riffing on Jaws using a few notes repeatedly, but the effect is quite different. This is the movie that got me into classical music, namely Dmitri Shostakovich:


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## 7rr7s (Jun 6, 2011)

I had a long thought out reply, and it somehow got erased. ;(. *disintegrates.* I thought I posted it, but I didn't. I looked for it for a half an hour, but that's like finding a specific sentence in Finnegan's Wake or listening to a specific phrase in a late Coltrane improvisation. XD. 

Anyways, I'll get around to it in a sex.


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## hal0hal0 (Sep 1, 2012)

KindOfBlue06 said:


> Anyways, I'll get around to it in a sex.


Don't you dare edit this post XD. Quoting it for posterity.


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## 7rr7s (Jun 6, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> I don't know that absolving regrets would make death easier to accept, and I couldn't tell you if I'll ever accept death. Not fully, at least. Am I scared? I'm scared. I mean, I can say, yes, I will die (or who knows, maybe I'm immortal). I may talk about it, I may dwell on it, even joke about it, but does that make it any easier to accept? What's weird is that even the oldest person on the planet is a child in the eyes of death. What if the most confident, most virtuous and thoughtful person, quietly spending his whole life quietly accepting that he will die, at the moment of reaching the precipice, suddenly panics? Even Christ himself, saint throughout his life, at the moment of his death, doubted. His final words were not of calm reassurance, but of doubt:


I find that especially relevant during Good Friday. I think of the crucifixion alot and how he must have suffered. How scared he was even the night before, how none of his disciples knew what he was trying to say to them during The Last Supper, how he was sweating blood while praying in the garden. He must have been scared, knowing what he was about to endure. And then to be betrayed, abandoned, beaten, possibly raped, humiliated, and left out to die in the sun. 

Even on the cross, he calls out, in Mathew 27:46, 

_My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? _

Which is a reference to an earlier passage from Psalm 22. 

_My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Far from my prayer, from the words of my cry?

O my God, I cry out by day, and you answer not;

By night and there is no relief for me. _



He must have been scared, and being abandoned and frightened and in pain, are all very human emotions of suffering. To feel that alone at the hour of death must have been scary. 



> And perhaps... this is why so much music and art talks about "The Light." Because just as music works in opposition of God's Silence (i.e., Gospel) or more simply, silence itself, does not the light illuminate the darkness? This is nothing profound, of course, but I'm always amazed at how often I'm looking for something, like my wallet or whatever, and there it is, right under my nose. Not always, of course, but often.


It reminds me of Mother Teresa saying how when she was working with the poor in Calcutta, that was the time she felt the furthest away from God, and she often questioned her faith and felt as if God had abandoned her. She experienced a real Dark Night Of The Soul.

I've experienced my depression in that way, as it felt like it was deeper than just mere circumstances or chemical imbalances. It was more dark, more primal, more terrifying. When I was in Catholic school, our graduating class had to choose a verse as our class motto. The one we chose seemed nice at the time, but it's relevance only hit me years later after I had suffered my own darkness. I still think of it whenever I am depressed. 
_
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. _
-John 1:5. 



> But as far as regrets go... I mean, I think the potential for regrets is always there. Even if you try to fix one, go down one road, you are giving up the opportunity (at least in that moment) to take other roads. But... I think one can get sick of being in a rut for instance, stuck in the mud and stagnant, so perhaps movement can be a good change of pace.


Regrets fuck with me, not because I have them but because I forget their significance. And with the roads, I want to travel them all, but sometimes I think I want too much. There's so many roads, so many choices, but I forget that the best way is to make my own road and take it as far as I can go, blaze new trails, and do it on my terms, not anyone elses. 


* *






The above quote reminded me of this song, and it's actually one of the ones I want played at my funeral.








 






> So I don't see something like The Pretender as a criticism of working 9-5 _per se_, but finding solace and peace amidst that. Even if it's temporary.


Life is a constant cycle between times of order and times of chaos. Order brings about chaos and chaos resolves itself in order. In times of order things are nice, but we stagnate. We don't grow. It's only in times of chaos that we really learn the deep lessons and really realize our greatest strengths. We then must make peace with chaos. Neither are perpetual, but it's hard to remember that sometimes when you're in the thick of it. The darkness gives way to the light.


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## 7rr7s (Jun 6, 2011)

hal0hal0 said:


> Don't you dare edit this post XD. Quoting it for posterity.


Leave it to me for my mind to wander to thoughts of sex on a thread about death and suffering. XD.


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## 7rr7s (Jun 6, 2011)

I thought of this thread last night. I was preparing notes for my talk on my book and realized there was such pathos to it, and that film, literature, music, art, try to reach into that pathos. There was something I was trying to get at in those stories, something that ached and bled, some morsel of life. 

It made me realize more, the juxtaposition of art in our life; that tragedy, longing, loving that transcends age, history, time. It's in every mythology, every culture, every moment of our being. To feel these things then is to feel the heartbeat of the entire human race.

Life is movement, life is song. Life is.


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