Of Shifting Shadows and Lucid Elusions

Well, where shall I begin? I must say, it has been a prohibitively long time since I last have posted anything on my blog, and for that my noble readership, I do not apologise! Excuses come & excuses go, but a life of responsibilities remains beyond the realm of electro-bytes.

Since I last made a meaty post, back in the dawn of February, I've travelled to Mexico, I've directed a 10-minute scene, I've completed my psychology major, I've become a line-cook, I've learned about Sony patenting technology that can be used to implant thoughts into people's brains & I've read about chemists succeeding in actually turning lead into gold. Yes, all very interesting things & yes, all very true, but when you boil it all down & render it into some digestible form, what does it all matter? What are the implications and the true significances of this oddity called life?

I don't know. I'm having a hard time right now trying to figure it out. I do know what my conclusions on the matter are, but that will come later on in the paragraphs below, for it's not nearly as much about the destination as it is about the journey towards it. That being said, I will continue in this seemingly disjointed and discordant rant that will hopefully congeal like much atoms of lead in a jellium formation to look, feel and act like gold in the end.

I got contacts for the first time in my life about a week and a half ago. It's funny—the first time that I actually succeeded in putting the, in and walking around without glasses on, I was amazed. It truly is a wonder to be able to see with crystal clarity in every region of the visual field; something which I am sure that those with perfect (and even those with relatively good) vision cannot really appreciate. I was ecstatic. There were no lenses to clean, no frames to keep pushing up on the bridge of the nose, no blind spots and no restrictions on how or where to look. Perfect visual freedom: amazing. Glorious. But, then it began.

I'm now leaning towards the opinion that every "correction" that mankind applies to the Lord's creation necessarily comes with a costly trade-off. Industrialisation, while improving the productivity of mankind, ravages our natural resources. Modern medicine, while improving each human's longevity comes at the cost of both overall quality-of-life—since people get sick more often instead of dying off—and overall genetic strength—since medicine's role is to circumvent the "survival of the fittest" ideology. Organised religion, while purveying peace, costs liberty & naivety. Contact lenses, while correcting for feeble vision, dry out the visual organs and irritate the eyeballs immensely. I've been wearing these contacts for like 10 days, and without exception, an hour or two into wearing them, my eyes are dry as a desert, scratchy like unbrushed wool and burning like caustic soda. Not only this, but trying to read actually gives me a headache. It's quite a cost for spectacle-freedom, and I'm not fully convinced that it is worth it. For the most part, wearing contacts just makes me feel tired and unpleasantly discomforted (yay redundancy!), but people say that you get used to it... What about the headaches at trying to read? Will that go away too...? I think I may need to take a trip back to the optometrist...

Interesting organs, the eyes. Most people believe that their eyes see lightness, but that actually isn't the case at all. On the contrary, in human eyes (I can't globalise here across species, but man would I ever like too...), our retinal ganglion cells—aka the signal-detecting ends of the optic nerve—actually respond to the absence of light: we see darkness, not the other way around. Implications? Many. Good illustration material, you betcha.
Close your eyes & turn off the light in your room, if you can. The darker the environment you can find yourself in, the better. What do you see? DO you see a solid, unchanging void of complete blackness? ...or do you see something else... Say, like little pops & bursts of floating bits of "snow" of various (usually) dim colours and intensities. Kinda reminiscent of channel 1 on your TV set, but without the hissing in the background & not nearly as "present," correct? Try it out: the longer it's dark, the more "intense" the fuzzy little pops become—to a point. If, on the other hand, you actually see absolutely nothing when you're in a dark environment, then you've severed your optic nerve(s) & aren't really reading this blog entry in the first place!

Anyway, what you're seeing—those bits of light—is visual noise: eye nerves are fatiguing due to all the darkness you've placed yourself in & they can no longer keep up the rate of activation that they were originally producing. Up the stream, in the visual regions of the brain, these randomly slowed down signals get combined to create the visual experience of patterns, shapes, motion, depth & colours that aren't really there. Cool, eh? Apparently—extending an example from one of my textbooks that created a featureless visual environment—being surrounded by a uniform field of light would be the most relaxing thing for your eye nerves & any variation in the uniform light (we're talking a visual scene that has no shadows, no lines & no changes in colour or depth, regardless of where you look) would eventually melt away to you seeing nothing but a soft, neutral grey. Of course, this is simplifying the whole thing a huge amount, since there are more than just "seeing" ganglion cells in the retina & I'm getting waay off topic, telling you something you probably don't really care about in the first place :). But think about this: how does all of what I said tie into God describing himself as The Light?


Part one of a many-parted installation is complete for now. I'll do this in chunks to save you (and me) the pain of going through all of what I have to spew out of my fingertips at once. Keep checking back every once in a while & you may be pleasantly surprised!

Until then.


—-slipping back into the shifting shadowland-—

Quick Thick Trick Pick

ok, so it's 3.30 in the morning & I want to go to bed, but I thought that this was interesting enough to post before hitting the hay...

So, I was riding the bus home from work today & a guy got on, paid his fare, walked past me & sat in one of the seats across the aisle a couple of rows behind me. All's good for a while. I'm sitting there minding my own business, reading my Bible on my PDA. The bus keeps going along on its route until some time later, the guy who got on out of the blue says, "So, you're the Lord's, eh?" I look up and over at the guy, who was obviously looking at me. He sounded a bit drunk, so I ignored him. A few seconds later, he says, "So, you're fighting for the Lord, eh?" as he mockingly smirks and chuckles, "So, what're ya gonna do? ... Drink a lot of beer! That'll help you fight for the Lord! ... A lot of beer!" The next thing I know, he's pulled the yellow "stop request" cord and gets off at the next stop.

I mention this instance because it was completely out of the ordinary, but it reminds me of several previous incidents I've had. What's striking about these circumstances is that there would have been no way that he could have known that I was a Christian by mere observation: I was quickly reading the preface to the NASV during his stay on the bus, so there was no Biblical passage in sight even if he was looking directly over my shoulder, instead of across the bus & opposite of my viewing perspective. So.... what's up? Here's the goods: intoxication lowers inhibitions, not only physically or mentally, but spiritually as well. It was not the guy who was taunting me. Yes that's correct, you read it right. Although it was his body, it was not him. A spiritual power within him was manifesting itself. How can I be sure? Well, I've seen, talked to and been around demon-possessed people before & I know what it's like: I've been involved in 2 exorcisms; I've seen the signatures of demon-possession in people's eyes when I "look into" them (ask me about this sometime if you're interested); I've heard the manner in which demons have spoken (at least the manner they've used when I've been around). Not only this, but we have documented instances of demon-possessed people interacting with Christ & even some apostles in the NT.

As a result of this experience on the bus, I kind of was hit by a feeling of "Oh yeah." I was reminded that there's a lot more going on around us in our daily lives than what we are aware of, and that we are actually in a battleground, with an a enemy that is not bound to this world & who is very powerful—yet not more powerful than He who lives within me.

It made me think again. Demon-possession is weird. It could be around us all the time & we don't even notice it... the spiritual world is real & it's something we as (post)modern Western civilisation gloss over far too readily. But--this experience is yet another instance of me being confirmed in the realisation that the God I serve is real & the spiritual powers out there actually do exist.

Are you on the winning side of the war? Are you fighting? Do you want to know more &/or to talk about it? Feel free to approach me.


The Lucid Elusion is out... for now.