Self Portrait Number 17

Well, it has been months since I have produced a self-portrait.  Over the summer I had a greater interest in drinking a beer while reading from my Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars Battleworld Box Set after work, but as the end-of-day sunshine became impossible to capture and the  weather worsened I have taken refuge in my drawing table once more.

This picture is from a video I made back in October. I had been looking for another project to work with my water color pencils and this screen capture had the rays of sunlight at my head making it fun to try and capture.

After Self Portrait 16, I was anxious to work with color again but every attempt I made was unsatisfying.  I began to get frustrated with nearly everything I was trying to produce and eventually just took to doing the occasional practice drawing.

After the long summer break, I had enough time between drawings that I went back to using the drawing upside down technique for this project.  Much of the anxiety that presented itself after Self Portrait 16 had receded and I just started drawing as if I had never taken a break.

I think Self Portrait 17  took at least two months from start to finish which points out to me the need to record the start date just so I know my own progress.

I did get some wonderful new tools for my drawing for Christmas, a brand new drawing table.  A nice LED light that stretches across the table, some flesh tone pencils, a male form drawing manikin and a male hand manikin. So since Christmas I have been practicing action shots with the manikin.

Now that I am at the end of the year and have produced 17 self-portraits and a variety of practice sketches, I am very glad I started on this last year.  I still need a lot of practice but I have drawings that I have drawn.  The idea that I cannot draw has been vanquished, it is only to figure out how to sketch certain things or control the ratios and perspective of what I am attempting to draw.  I look at the world differently now.  When I look at a person or an object, my mind starts breaking the basic shapes down and I am constantly asking myself, 'How can I draw this? How can I bring out the color in this?" so that this has been one of the most successful New Years Resolution-type things I've ever attempted.

Harry Potter and the Fourth Chakra

Story opens in the town of the Riddle family years after the Riddles are all found dead.

There is a pub called the Hanging Man which is a reference to the 12^th card of the Major Arcana and can also refer to Odin hanging from the World Ash Tree in order to learn the meaning of all the runes.

While there were no snakes in The Prisoner of Azkaban, at least not that I recall, in the very first chapter a very large snake makes an appearance as an old man eavesdrops on Voldermort and Peter What's-his-name, the traitor who lived for 12 years as the Weasley's pet rat Scampers.

The snake tells Voldemort the old man is listening outside the door and Voldomort has Peter bring the old man in and then murders him.

Then Harry Potter wakes up with his scar hurting, he has just dreamed all of this.

Harry thinks of who he can talk to about his scar. He rejects Hermionie and Ron after imagining what their advice would be and decides to contact his godfather, Sirius Black who is still on the run.

Since the third chakra is all about the heart, we find Harry's home life improving somewhat because he has discovered Sirius and the Dreasly family, knowing that Harry has a relation to such a person thought to be a murderer, treats Harry better.

Again, just like in the preceding novels, Harry's home life imrpoves based on lies. Not that it matters so much because the Dreasly family has no desire to know the truth

For the first time in the series we see Ron becoming jealous of Harry after Harry's name comes flying out of the Goblet of Fire.

First task involves dragons and the acquisition of a golden egg

Second task deals with with water and mere-people

Third task involves finding a way through a hedge maze to claim a kind of cup.

When Harry and Cedric both clasp the cup, I am assuming the cup is a loving cup with a handle on each end, they are transported to the Riddle estate

Cedric is murdered right away.  Cedric means "kind and loved"

So the Tri Wizard trophy is  a loving cup one handle grabbed by Harry the other handle grabbed by Cedric

Cedric's murder strikes me as a human sacrifice, that Harry led Cedric to be sacrificed so that Harry could escape Voldemort. This point seems to be proven when Harry can't accept the winnings from the Tri Wizard winnings. It's blood money that Harry finally gives to the Weasly twins so they can start their joke shop. So the sacrifice of Cedric, of “Kind and Loved” is transformed or transmuted into a joke.

So, how is my thesis going? Do the Harry Potter books align with the main chakra system? So far they seem to but in this book, the heart is blown up, in a matter of speaking. Kindness and love are sacrificed.

The serpent makes a reappearance at the start of this novel as Voldemort's pet snake.

Just to recapitulate from memory, there is a boa constrictor Harry releases from the zoo in the first novel.

There is a basilisk in the second novel that lives in the Chamber of Secrets.

I don't recall a serpent in Azkaban.

And Voldemort's pet snake is introduced at the start of this novel.  Voldemort's pet snake is named Nagini and while looking for an image for this set of notes, I found that Nagini is Hindu for the female snake gods.  A naga or nagini is also a person in possession of the Kundalini, or serpent life force.

Harry Potter and the Third Chakra

Note: As a reminder, these are my notes on reading through the Harry Potter series.  Plenty of spelling errors are to be expected and all conclusions should be considered soft conclusion or speculations. In this case, there was about a week's break between finishing the reading of the book and concluding my notes.

Lots of wolf imagery in the book so far. Don't really know if this has anything to do with the third chakra at this point but...

Okay, so this story starts with Harry at home wanting to get a permission slip signed by his guardians so he can go into this town that only third year students with their parents or guardians can visit at Halloween.

There is a news story about an escaped convict named Sirius Black, Sirius is the dog star. Black could refer to Saturn as black is usually used as a symbol for Saturn, the Dark Side, in most movies, like Revenge of the Jedi where Luke is clearly moving toward the dark side of the force.

Some fat aunt who also hates Harry is coming for a visit, if Harry behaves and backs up his uncle's story about the school Harry is attending, the uncle promises to sign the permission slip

Things go very bad as the fat aunt gets drunk and insults Harry's parents and Harry uses magic to causer to to fill up like a balloon

Harry figures he is going to be expelled from Hogwarts for using magic again and he runs away from home. While he is out on his own, he sees a big dog or wolf. He wonders if he has imagined this and feels in danger. Just then a bus for stranded wizards turns up.

Harry takes the bus to London

Harry find the minister of magic is already in London waiting for him. Harry doesn't understand why he isn't being expelled since it is the second time he has used magic while on vacation. The minister tells him not to worry about it.

Harry stays in a part of London that is magic friendly and eventually Ron and Herminie show up. Ron's rat, Scampers, I think, is finally given some book time and a orange cat is introduced as Herminie's new pet. The cat and rat immediately strain Ron's and Herminie's friendship.

On the train to Hogwarts, the children ride in a car with the new teacher of defense against the black arts, Professor Lupin, Lupin obviously refers to wolfs as Lupin is Lupine without the 'e.' It occurred to me if Hogwarts spent any time on teaching English etymology, half the mysteries in the book would be instantly solved just by the characters knowing what their own names mean.

While on the train, a Dementor attacks Harry for no apparent reason. The Dementor represents fear itself which finally brings us to one of the functions of the third chakra, the elimination of fear. Professor Lupin sends the Dementor off with a spell taht produces bright light, which again, third chakra, let you inner sun burn the cloud of fear from your inner sky.

Later this point is made implicitly when Harry and Lupin are having tea. Harry felt that Lupin things Harry is weak because in the Defesne class, Lupin doesn't give Harry a shot with the bogart, which is a being that presents itself as a person's greatest fear. Lupin assumes Voldemort will be Harry's greatest fear and doesn't want to freak the other students out but Harry tell Lupin that he was thinking of a Dementor. This impresses Lupin because it suggests Harry's true fear is a fear of fear itself.

Keeping up with the pet theme, one of the girls from the Huff & Puff house has a rabbit that is killed by a fox. This is part of a premonition the prophecy teacher gives to her class.

Oh yes, the prophecy teacher is introduced. Again, I don't know if this is related specifically to the third chakra but perhaps as we move up the chakras we come closer to being able to use premonition and intuition.

During the quidich match with Raven Claw, Harry is on his new broom, a Firebolt, which is the best of the best and even the game commentator cannot keep from talking about the merits of the new broom over giving play by play of the game, then there is a descriptive sentence about Harry catching a glimps of gold just before he is attacked by Dementors again. This time, Harry grabs his wand and casts a spell he has been practicing that shoots a bright silver-white light at the fear eaters. The gold is the color of the third, or solar plexus chakra. The silver-white light is the silver cord that shoots out from the solar plexus when one soul travels or astral projects but I have never considered it may be used defensively, whether by some external spiritual darkness or the inner sadness and depression most of use subject ourselves to.

In the previous quidich game against Huff and Puff, it was a stark contrast to the one descibed above: It was stormy. Harry was full of doubt. The entire team was upset that Slithering had begged out of the match due to Malfoy's alleged broken arm. And then just as Harry is reaching for the little gold ball that will end the match, the Dementors show up and, attracted by Harry's personal pain, they attack or feed off of him. He falls off his broom and his Nimbus 2000 blown into the wamping willow and is smashed to pieces which is why Harry needs a new broom. It was in between these two matches that a mysterious benefactor sends Harry the Firebolt and Professor Lupin teachers Harry the Petrolis spell that repels the Dementors and Harry also learns why they are attracted to him.

So the main point I want to drive home here, in relation to the third chakra, it is the confrontation and banishment of fear

After Harry captures the little gold ball, he is congratulated by Lupin on his mastery of the petrolous spell but then it is revealed that the Dementors were fake, they were Malfoy and his two cronies attempting to psych Harry out but instead the fear they wished to project was projected back on them.

Also, I think the appearances are made much of in the Raven Claw match. The sports commentator keeps talking about the benefits of the Firebolt broom and then there are the fake dementors.

I found the end of this book to be anti-climatic in spite of the time travel them. Yes, there is a time travel theme. I am not sure if that relates to the third chakra in any way but that would be an area of further study.

The thing about the time travel them in this book is it doesn't change anything. Hermione (finally looked up the spelling) has been using time travel throughout the book in order to take twice as many classes with the blessing of Professor McGonagall, I would point out here that her name is Minerva McGonagall so her initials would be MM, 1313. MM is also Roman for 2000. 1313 is also BB. Again, what any of this means is an issue for further study.

So, what happens as the climax is Harry and Hermione attempt to rescue Hagrid's Hippogriff. To the movie's credit, this is fleshed out much better in the movie than the book, but the Hippogriff is going to be put down as a dangerous magical creature because it has attact Malfoy. Harry had approached the Hippogriff in the respectful way and was able to befriend it. Malfoy thinks this means the Hippogriff isn't dangerous because he considers Harry a coward for fainting in the presence of the Dementors and the Hippogriff attacks Malfoy injuring his arm. So right here you have the whole lesson of courage and false courage.

Another big theme of this book is shape-shifting. Lupin is a werewolf and there is nothing he can do about this, he was bitten and so every full moon Dumbledoor has arraigned a place for Lupin to confine himself to so he doesn't hurt anyone. This makes Lupin feel isolated but he makes friends with Harry's father, James, Sirisu Black, and Peter Pettigrew.

In order to make Lupin feel less alone, the three other friends become shapeshifters also.

James turns into the stag

Sirius, of course, turns into a big black dog

Peter turns into a rat, again obvious in the last name Pettigrew, grew small.

One the night that the Hippogriff is to be executed, Harry, and Hermione run into Serious and Lupin. Lupin hasn't taken his potion which allows him to keep his sense of humanity while turned into a wolf and turns visciouls.

Scampers is revealed to be Peter.

Sirius is revealed to be innocent.

Nothing goes right and Harry and Hermione end in the infirmary and Sirius is being held in a tower waiting to be taken back back to Azkaban, which itself is a prision of time, I think. A and Z are the first and last letters of the English alphabet and I believe this to be a reference to Alpha and Omega, the Greek alphabet. Ba and Ka are Egyptian words that reference different aspects of the human soul so that could make AzKaBan Hell that contains the soul for all time. It's probably a hypercube.

Dumbldore knows Hermione has been using a time travel device and he advises her a Harry that “three turns should do it” Three again for the third chakra, and this takes Harry and Hermione back three hours where they rescue the Hippogriff and use it to free Sirius from the tower.

And from there the book just sort of ends. Nothing is really resolved. Sirius has to remain on the run. Harry has to spend the summer with the Dreazleys once again. I think there is one more confrontation with Malfoy but everything after the rescue of Sirius doesn't remain in my memory.

I would say that Harry learns to master his courage in this book. The Dementors can now be neutralized with the Patronus spell. Patronus comes from Patron and when Harry rescues himself from the Dementors the spell takes the form of the stage so at first Harry concludes it was his father but it turned out to be him. Harry has become a man over the course of this story which fits in with his being 13. In many cultures 13 is the age a child becomes and adult.

Me, as an Artist

As I continue on my journey, teaching myself to draw and use color, I have come to realize what a true study and discipline art actually is and is meant to be. I am constantly thinking back to art class in grade school and how the discipline of art wasn't really emphasized. It was giving kids colors and a task but either you could draw or you couldn't. You were either good at art or you simply had to tolerate it until you could go on to study real subjects in high school.

I remember in the second or third grade we had an art teacher who went off on a rant at the end of a class when were were tasked with drawing Santa Clause. The teacher may have emphasized that she wanted action in the drawing but didn't really explain what she wanted very well. The thing I remember most about trying to draw this Santa Clause is being stuck on the nose.

Drawing a nose was a big issue for me in my early years of school. Whenever I had to draw a face I would feel my nose and I felt my nostrils and nose formed a sort of soft letter “m” but when ever I tried to represent this, the nose always ended up looking like a pig nose. This was so frustrating to me and I didn't understand I was attempting to represent the most 3-D part of the face on a 2-D plane, and I understood nothing about shading, I doubt I ever heard the word and if I did I certainly didn't understand it.

So, when the teacher was going off on her rant about how all of the Santas were looking static, I was still stuck on the disappointment of having drawn yet another pig nose when the teacher stopped at my desk and held my drawing up as an example of, at least, an attempt to put some action into the drawing because my Santa looked like he was taking a step forward.

Well, this was because I also had trouble drawing symmetrically and I drew one boot in black marker that was smaller than the other boot so it looked like was taking a step forward to my teacher, whereas to me, it just looked like I couldn't draw two sides of a human body that looked the same and I actually felt worse because I was being praised for something I didn't intend to do. And plus, my Santa had a pig nose!

But the good thing about this incident is it had enough of an emotional implication that the memory has stuck with me and while I was reflecting upon this memory, that as incompetent as my drawings at that age were, I was attempting real art. I was attempting to represent a human nose as it was. I studied my own nose and I looked at the noses of my classmate and even though I couldn't not competently reproduce what I was seeing, I was striving.

Had an adult been able to explain this much to me and cleared up some other misconceptions I had picked up on kindergarten (the teacher had said that people had skeletons and we had to draw them not as Popsicle people but we had to include the skeleton, I thought I had to start drawing by drawing a skeleton first, then I drew the skin and then I drew the cloths and while it sounds funny now, I was very stressed out over this as it didn't make any sense to me) then maybe I could have gotten over that hurdle and started drawing a long time ago.

But these are the things we go through in this live. I don't think they are to be regretted. Yes, I would love if I could have been drawing sooner but I recognize that this is life and we are all going at our own pace and if it took me to 50 to make it past this block, well, at least I made it past that block in this lifetime. What else is there to do in life? Nearly everything, and perhaps everything that the culture or society or that very small group that festers within governments and universities that decide for us that which is important as you mastering yourself, overcoming those hurdles and pains that the culture makers have laid inside you in order to make you a more easily controllable citizen.

As you exercise your own discipline to study what you are in this life to study, as you become more of an artist in and of your self, the threat of would-be culture creators diminishes and you become more you without the drawbacks of egotism and narcissism, which are traps laid by the culture creators to keep us more keepable.

When I first started drawing, I was loath to label myself as an artist but through the process of observation, disciplined study, and self-discipline, I have earned that title. I am an artist. Regardless of the scale or skill level, what I produce is art.  If it touches other people, that would be awesome, if I am the only audience that can appreciate my art right now, that just as valuable.  We don't all start out equally nor do we all finish equally but we all have an equal chance of making something that is unique to who we are.  And that is the only equality there can be.

Harry Potter and the Second Chakra

Here are my nearly unedited notes on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and how it might relate to the second chakra which is also called the sacral chakra:

As the story opens, Harry's home life has improved but it is based on a lie.

Harry is no longer living under the staircase but his owl is kept caged up so he cannot communicate with his friends.

A strange elf appears to Harry begging him not to return to Hogwarts because there is a plot against him. The elf wants Harry kept safe because he credits Harry with defeating Voldermort and believes if Harry is killed Voldemort will return and so orchestrates Harry's second imprisonment within the Dweasly house as his uncle puts bars on the windows and imprisons Harry in a bedroom only letting him out twice a day to use the bathroom and feeding him through a cat flap.

Harry's friends use a flying car to bust Harry out, the car may represent the Chariot from the Tarot deck.

The flying car or chariot has to be sued again because the elf keeps Harry and Ron from boarding the train to Hogwarts. Of course, Mrs McGonagle later points out that the boys could have sent an owl with a message to let the staff know that they were stranded but considering the elf had already withheld mail from Harry's friends so Ron and Harry taking the Chariot again may have been their only option of getting to Hogwarts.

The chariot becomes entangled in the Whomping Willow.

The chariot comes back later in the book, it has become wild but still recognizes Ron as its master, it ends up saving both Ron and Harry from giant spiders

The braggart character only cares about worldly publicity and attention. All of his stories are true but it is other people who have accomplished them. He puts a memory charm on them so they cannot remember.

Harry finds Tom Riddle's diary which is blank. After accidentally exposing ink to all his books he notices Riddle's diary absorbs the ink. The diary ends up containing a memory of the last time the Chamber of Secrets has been open. But it is a deceiving memory.

The big bad monster of the Chamber of Secrets is a giant snake called a Basilisk. The Basilisk is a sort of Egyptian deity-monster that could cause death with a single glance but in our study of the chakra systems, it is also the Kundalini serpent making its way up the spinal column. Interestingly, an indirect glance in the novel causes people to become petrified like the gorgon Medusa is said ot have done to her victims and also interestingly the thing that stops enlightenment, the Kundalini serpent from making it to the crown is a calcified pineal gland.

Why Matthew McConaughey Might Really Be Santa Clause

So, I watched a video earlier today, 25 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Christmas, which you can click on below.

When I got to points 20 and 21(which the video should be set to start at those points, my contribution to the ADHD generation) my ears perked up as I honestly didn't know that Santa had 31 hours, due to time zones and whatnot to make his trip, but when the video got to point 21, I had an epiphany!!! You see at point 21, Jordy, the guy who made the video (be sure to give it a like), says that Santa's sleigh would have to travel at 4.7 million miles per second in order to traverse the globe in 31 hours. Which, is physically impossible, probably.

But here's the thing, I just saw Interstellar, last year's Christopher Nolan science fiction epic starring Matthew McConaughey. So in the movie, Matthew McConaughey enters a particular kind of black hole, one that it is possible to survive entering either because of science or movie, either way, when Matthew McConaughey enters the black hole, he ends up in a hyper-cube or tesseract. Now a tesseract is to a cube what a cube is to a square, it's a cube with an added dimension and in Interstellar, the tesseract gives Matthew McConaughey access to his daughter's bookcase at different periods of time, or more accurately, at all times at once.

In the movie, Matthew McConaughey uses this ability to communicate with his daughter and tries to communicate to her not to let him go into space, which attempting to communicate this is exactly what gets Matthew McConaughey to go into space in the first place. Eventually, Matthew McConaughey figures out that it is pointless to try and change his personal past and attempts to get his daughter a message at a different point on her timeline, one that isn't part of Matthew McConaughey's personal past.

So, the point of all these spoilers for a movie you really should have seen by now if you were going to, and would have if you had listened to the man in your bookcase, is that Santa Clause delivers presents via a hyper-cube!!! You see, the story of Santa Clause riding in a magic sleigh drawn by 8 tiny reindeer is actually a reference to the 8 cubical cells that that make up a tesseract so that Santa Clause doesn't have to go any miles per hour in order to deliver presents everywhere on Christmas Eve. He only has to enter the hyper-cube and deliver all of the presents to everyone everywhere in, probably under a minute. And he probably only had to do it one time for all time because time is meaningless in the hyper-cube!

And here's the thing about chimneys and Santa: They are only a doorway just like a bookcase is is a doorway, just like a book is a doorway. And who is the god of doorways? The ancient Roman god, Janus, for whom January is named. He is also the god of beginnings and endings and he is generally depicted as having two faces, one watchings the past and one looking toward the future but this god is the hyper-cube and the only way the ancient Romans had of wrapping their minds around the concept was a two dimensional representation of time.

So, therefore, Matthew McConaughey is Santa Clause! Or, at least, stands as good a chance of being Santa Clause as anybody else.

So, Q to the E to the D.

Harry Potter and the first Chakra

Currently reading the Harry Potter series for the first time.  For a long while I suspected there may be some relation to the seven books in the series and the seven chakras of the human energy system so here are my unedited notes from my first read through of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.  And when I say unedited, I mean unedited.  I will fix names and such when I have a chance. Or not.  Maybe I will just use these musings in other ways:

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Root Chakra

Harry becomes homeless

Harry is poor, or thinks he is

Harry is forced to live at the fringe of the Dreazley home having to live under the stairs, below the bottom

After Harry learns who he is, suddenly he has a vault full of money.

After getting Hogwarts, Harry proceeds to break rules that should get him kicked out of Hogwarts. First, after Neville is injured after misflying his broom and drops his Forget-Me-Not charm taht is swiped by Malfoy who is also breaking the rules and promises to put it high in a tree, Harry takes off after him. But instead of being kicked out, because Mrs Monicle sees him make an impressive catch, she gets him on the Squibbage team.

Later that night, after Malfoy challenges Harry to a wizard duel, Harry breaks the curfew rule and brings Ron, Herminie, and Nevillie along with him. Not only do they break curfew and wander the halls of Hogwarts after midnight, they break a further rule and end up in the forbidden corridor.

One of the reasons I was not attracted to Harry Potter right from the start is because I know there is no such thing as a “sorcerer's stone” and that what the title is referring to is the fabled Philosopher's Stone.

I honestly do not understand why Americans are fine with having things dumbed down for them. First Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone insults my intelligence and secondly it wounds my pride as an American.

I think most Americans are just as capable of understanding the concept and history of the Philosopher's Stone as any given European and so it makes no sense to me to talk down to a population, unless you want that population to stew in its own ignorance. But how does promoting someone else's ignorance help anything?

The same thing happened with Pan's Labyrinth which I think was a 2008 movie Guillermo Del Toro. I was very excited to see this film but as the movie went one I became increasingly disturbed by a lack of Pan. Why was it called Pan's Labyrinth when it was Faun who controlled the labyrinth? Listening to the commentary track, Del Toro said it was because the producers didn't think Americans knew who or what a faun was, but you know what? We can look it up.

This may be part of the lesson of the first chakra: Don't believe what your education system tells you. Suss it out for yourself! Risk getting kicked out of school. The school is there to serve you, not you it.

The Place of the Skull 44 88

Shocking information or synchronicity.

I am literally shaking as I write this down.

I watched a video this morning on an old pagan rite I had never heard of called Liberalia.  The video was a decode by YouTuber EnterThe5t4rz decoding the 44th episode of Inspector Gadget.

Inspector Gadget wasn't a show I had ever seen too much of as I had outgrown most of my interest in Saturday morning cartoons at this time although the few episodes I did see seemed more entertaining than most children's fare.

I did remember Inspector Gadget's battle cry which was Go! Go! Gadget! and then usually he would create a gadget out of his body.  I realized that GGG = 777 and I conveyed this to EnterThe5t4rz who responded back and asked me if I had noticed the skulls in Gadget's eyes when he is falling over a waterfall, which I had missed.

But since 5t4rz brought up the skulls it brought up the memory that Winneconne Wisconsin which I remember meaning something like Place of the Skull but before responding I wanted to double check the meaning and I ended up on the Wikipedia page where I was stunned, floored, overwhelmed to see that Winneconne is located at 44 degrees North and 88 degrees West. 

Other things that occurred to me about Gadget while I was writing this, he has two companions, Penney and a dog.  I don't remember the dogs name, I only remember Penney's name because 5t4rz mentioned it in his video but the dog can represent Sirius, the Dog Star and most revered symbol in Freemasonry but the dog also acts as the little white dog in the Fool card.  The dog that attempts to warn the fool he is about to go over a cliff.  Since the fool is caught up in his own thoughts, he doesn't heed the dog's warning and falls over the abyss but the dog, being loyal to it's master, accompanies him becoming a sort of conscience for the fool as he proceeds on his journey.

As the morning proceeded, 44's keep turning up.  I just want to get this up so I can share it with EnterThe5t4rz and put more work into it later if I need to.

Here is the video:

Here is a link to the Winneconne Wisconsin Wikepedia page (oh! Look at that: WWW)

Two Dreams Belated

20151025 Dreams

Swimming with Dolphins

I dream I am in some sort of suspense movie, there is some McGuffin some bad guy is after and one by one we are being cornered by his lackeys

[note: resuming after about a week]

When my character is cornered, I don't have whatever McGuffin the bad guy wants and I find myself knocked out. When I come to, I am on a yacht with some of the other people kidnapped and we look out and we are in the middle of the ocean and dolphins are swimming all around us.

I exchange glances with some of my compatriots, one a lovely woman, and the next thing we are all in the water swimming with the dolphins. I am a little worried because I keep thinking I am seeing sharks but they always turn out to be carved debris the dolphins have dreged up.

20151026 Dream

The Long Swim Home

I am recording this about a week after I had it. I haven't really dreamed, that I remember, since this dream.

I think I am a kid. It is confusing, at times I seem to be a kid and at other times I seem to be a very immature adult.

We are at a party, I remember wanting to go home, which is Madison in the dream. I text a great aunt and uncle of mine who have been long deceased. I don't know why I am texting them but I ask them for stuff and they seem to respond either materially or with advice.

In the dream I am in love with this girl and I want to take her out on a date so I text this aunt and uncle. I don't hear back from them. In the dream, the phone is older, pre-iPhone type razor phone with fireworks as the wallpaper. I don't hear back immediately so I proceed to head to the beach. Now I am a child of about 8 or maybe 6, I have a lot of childish boy energy and even though I feel older than the other kids when we are playing in the sand I am still one of them.

I climb a dune and the city of Madison can be seen, the entire skyline and there is so much blue because of some atmospheric condition. I laugh like a child and say, 'Look! Madison is Blue!'

I want to go home but the adult with us isn't ready yet so I prepare to swim. In the dream, we kids swim all the time from the shore to Madison, but it is quite a distance. Before going into the water I am putting my cell phone in a plastic bag and I have gotten a text back from my aunt and uncle: NOT YOUR MOTHER! Is all it says.

As I have finished recording this dream, I feel a sigh of release from deep inside, as if everything has been on hold until I've finally recorded this.

Dream of Art Fair and Balloon Ride

20151024 Dream

Me and my fiance are going to some sort of neighborhood art walk of some kind. Driving there is weird and the sequence repeats at least once. I'm driving and looking for parking, we come to a place where the road is blocked off for the art fair. I make a left turn up this hill that describes an arc around a big grassy knoll. We park and my fiance has to go and talk to someone else right away and so leaves me on my own. The parking sequence then repeats only this time there was rain and as I try to drive up the hill around the knoll the car slides to the bottom of the hill and gravity is off, the car is like a bumper car in a reduced gravity environment.

So I am on my own and I am walking toward an info table and the lady tells me there is an unannounced group that is about to perform just across the street. Well, I am the only person in this area, other than the information woman, and she is talking to someone on the phone trying to let them know where the performance is going to be. She ends up putting a Richard Nixon mask on the street the nose pointing the way.

I walk across the street and there is an alleyway where a bleachers has been erected. I see some props on the stage, one is a highly stylized vampire coffin and I can see an actor inside preparing and there are other props like this with people getting ready.

I ascend the bleachers and head for the middle of middle of the bleachers and I see two women who are performers walking down from the top row of seats. I'm a little worried they are going to bore me by talking about social justice stuff, I get this impression from the stage props although now I do not know what triggered this, and one woman asks me my name and then asks me about my brother.

I start telling everything about my self and how my brother's death affected me and I feel weird doing it, like I am giving too much information. She asks me about money and I explain I inherited some money and bought a house with it. The other woman seems judgmental about it, like “how can you have money and a house when there are so many problems in the world” while the other woman is not judgmental at all.

My fiance arrives and I ask her if it isn't incredible that this is going on, how we lucked into seeing this performance but she goes on a tear about how, in announcing the show, the organizers where splattering all over everybody. I don't see it that way, but I do wonder if they sent out a psychic message and because I was already close to the stage there was no need to hit me with it.

My fiance ascends from my lower left to above my right shoulder as the actors take the stage and the bleachers are transformed into a basket for a hot air balloon as we start to rise up into the air.

As we are flying were are not very high up yet and I can see houses in a neighborhood. We are gaining height but there was on roof that is scraped by the bottom of the basket. As I look down, I think I am looking at the roof to my house which is later confirmed because there are a pair of shoes in the back yard and the dream fills me in I was doing something to freshen the shoes and I had changed my shoes before coming to the art fair. There is a man sitting on my right and I exclaim to him that we have just gone over my house and I would have tidied up the back yard a bit if I knew we would be flying over. He says something to to effect that I shouldn't worry about it.

The balloon describes an arc and we are in an open field at the edge of the neighborhood. The man on my right directs my attention to an evergreen tree at the edge of a field and a road and there is a man standing inside the tree poking his hand out waving at us. It is a very white hand and then other actors appear on either side of the tree and start singing a song but we are too high up to hear them properly and I think about how amateurish the show is but, on the other hand, I am getting a free balloon ride.

Then I begin to wonder how they turned the bleachers into a balloon basket and how, since I was sitting in the middle of the middle of the bleachers, I ended up with such a good view at the edge of the basket. I feel bad for the people in the row behind me because I don't think they can see anything and they might not even be aware we are in a hot air balloon.

Dream of Dr Michio Kaku and Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson

Dream 20151023

I dream I am showing my fiance around a place I used to go when I was a kid. In reality, it is the Seven Bridges hiking trail in Cudahy Wisconsin which is on the shores of Lake Michigan but in the dream it is more like a resort.

We go into a bar that is part of this resort and behind the bar water is coming in under the wall and the water is part of the tide. I see the body of Doctor Michio Kaku being tossed back and forth by gentle waves. Behind the bar is a standing plank over the water and as I witness the corpse of Dr Kaku gently wafting under and out from under the plank, I have a flash of an earlier dream where I am seeing Dr Kaku's face in an imperfect bubble rising like the moon into the sky and the sense that someone is showing me Dr. Kaku's face so I will pay attention. Telling me, in fact, to remember or dream about Dr Kaku.

My fiance acts nonplussed and walks behind the bar and starts fixing drinks while I call the local police. I am in a near panic and nobody else in the bar seems to care that there is a dead body in the tide. As I am on the phone with the police I am having a hard time telling them where I am because my conscious memories of the Seven Bridges Trail is messing with this dream version of a resort but in the end the police seem to be on their way.

As I am getting off the phone I want to turn my attention back to my fiance behind the bar but I notice out of the corner of my right eye that Doctor Neil deGrasse Tyson is sitting at a table, noticably drunk.

In the dream, I just remember him more by his deGrasse name than his last name and I ask him, “Dr deGrasse, was there some sort of convention you and Dr Michio Kaku attended?” He starts talking about Dr Kaku as if he were still alive and I ask him if he is aware that Dr Kaku is dead, drowned, behind the bar?

But then the police appear, Dr deGrasse is looking at the direction of the lake seeming a bit sad or angry but anything he said did not stay with me into my waking life.

In part, I feel almost as if someone was psychically projecting Dr Michio Kaku's image into my head based on the faint memory him his image in an earlier dream but why or what it could mean, I do not know at this time. Also I do not know if I was specifically singled out to receive the dream or if it was a general broadcast that went out to man people dreaming last night.

If you remember dreaming about either Dr Michio Kaku or Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, or if you were a part of some experiment to project thoughts of these public figures on our around October 22/23 2015 please post below.

The Bearman and Spiderwoman

20150812 Dream

I went to bed with an idea of dreaming for money advice. How can I make more money?

I had a series of complex dreams that I cannot remember much of. When I first woke up I lay in bed for a few minutes asking to recall my dreams but nothing was coming for several minutes.

Suddenly I flash on a big black man wearing a bright red shirt. He was guarding a door into some sort of slum apartment where me and a partner (it was a little like a police procedural). We were coming out of the building after talking to a woman who had something to do with the case we were working on.

I have a flash of her earlier in the dream getting us past the big burly black guard. He simply obeyed her when she commanded him to let us through.

On the inside of the building it is dark and dingy, exposed piping everywhere and as we open the door the bright sunlight and the bright red shirt the black man wears is a striking contrast. He holds out his hand for some kind of payment. My partner isn't having it and he just says something like, “The lady let us in.” as explanation as to why he isn't going to pay anything. I feel I should pay the man a little token. He doesn't seem mean and I feel a two dollar tip would be appropriate.

First I pull out my wallet but then I think better of it. That I have plenty of change and I don't have to open my wallet here and expose what I might be carrying. Which in the dream is only about $80-$200. I start sorting through my change looking for eight quarters. I find four and set them on a car hood that is nearby. I find three more and then I find a fourth quarter that has something stuck to it. It is like a small plastic mushroom camp, black with white dots. I try to free the quarter from it and maybe I do. I am not sure. I know I am thinking about that quarter is going to be sticky and I apologize to the man because of it but I might have given him the quarter with the plastic cap still glued on.

When this flash came to me, I decided to try and go back in the dream and ask the man some questions. At this point I didn't have as much detail as I have written above. I could only remember a black man in a bright red shirt and that we had gone into the building with a woman.

I decided I would ask the man who the woman was and why we had come to see her.

He told me she was a spider and that he was actually a bear. I had some memory of about 8 pipes the spiderwoman had shown me and the two top ones were the most important to me. The number 8 was related to these pipes and I felt 8's going down each of them. And maybe the vision of a city or a highway. I can almost see me in the dream, my eyes and forehead in the space between the pipes. I think I will try to do a rough sketch of what it looked like in order to honor this dream.

I asked the bearman some other questions about the dream. I asked him why he was wearing such a bright red shirt and he indicated that it represented danger but also just something to grab my attention (this worked as my first memory of the dream was almost an image of the searing red shirt in the bright sunlight). I asked him another question about the spiderwoman but he couldn't give me an answer. Perhaps I need to go back into the dream and talk to her, once I formulate a proper question.

Even though it seems to me the spiderwoman is the more important character I have the bearman the first credit since it was his image that allowed me to remember the dream.

Reptile And Robot

20150810 Dream

This dream is very complex and confusing. It appears to take place in a kind of composite of the backyard of the house I grew up in and the backyard of my aunt's house that wasn't too far away from where I lived.

When I first become aware in the dream, I am roaming the property with some dogs. I'm not sure how many dogs. Two I know from my youth but there are other dogs here too. At the far left-hand of the property facing away from the house is a stream or or creek of some kind. There is an aligator sleeping in it.

For some reason, I am not afraid of the sleeping aligator at this poin. There are two dogs sleeping under a tree about ten to twenty feet from the creek. One of the dogs that I knew when I was younger follows me on the property as I am doing whatever chore I am doing.

I come back to the creek area later and the alligator and the dogs are still asleep but then I notice the alligator stir. I call to the dogs to come to the house. In my mind, I am aware that alligators can move up to 60 miles an hour on land. This one is moving slowly enough and while I am in a heightened state of alertness in case I have to rescue any of the dogs, I am still thinking about how ancient the alligator is, that it is a living dinosaur. But about halfway to the house the hole dream shifts to an episode of Last in Space as the alligator changes into the Robot from that show.

In many ways, the Robot is more dangerous than the alligator because the Robot is mad. It can think, unlike the alligator that only seeks to quell its appetites. As I get the dogs to the house, it is actually a spaceship, much larger than the Jupiter 2 from the TV show, and there is a security area.

I suddenly know in the dream logic that everyone knows the Robot is mad and we have made a security entrance that we don't believe the Robot can get past. I get the dogs inside but I hear the ripping up of the security apparatus. Prior to going into the main living quarters of the ship, there is a large warehouse type area filled with all kinds of things the savvy space traveler might need. Mostly crated up in boxes and stacked high until needed.

I go into the main house to warn everyone that the Robot has broken through the security but nobody thinks the Robot can get past the main door and they don't really care or try to help me in any way. I try to get all the dogs into the main living area but they are scattered around the crates.

By now the Robot has broken in and is heading down one of the aisles. I think I have a chance to stop it if I can get behind it. I do and grab it from behind and pull it backward so that if its weapons discharge they will go up and not risk damaging the main living area. I think I then pull the power pack from the Robot but as I wake up, I think about the Robinsons traveling through space with a mad Robot. I think maybe this is why many of the aliens they encountered where hostile How did they introduce the Robot to the new beings they met? “Hello, we are the Robinson family from planet earth and this is our mad Robot who once tried to kill all of us while we were in stasis.”

Also, after thinking about this dream for a while, I was struck by the dichotomy of the threats. That this dream stretched all the way back to the dawn of time all the way to the space age. In a sense, I shouldn't be surprised. This is the programming I grew up with. Planet of the Apes, Lost in Space, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek: All of these entertainments at one time or another warned both of devolving back into the primitive and at the same time offered dire warnings of the bright and shining future offered by science and technology. What, exactly was I being programmed for?

I think this is even more insidious than the common religious programming or the familial programming I received growing up because religion and family were treated seriously while this stuff was treated as entertainment and nobody really monitored or tried to decode it. So baby-sitter television kept me quiet for hours at a time and the unchecked programming just seeped in.

20150801 Dream Portent?

20150801 Dreams

I dream I am having a party at my house. Me and Patti are together but it is still generally recognized as 'my house.' In the dream it is a large estate on a hill that overlooks an ocean. People are dressed well, especially women I notice are wearing dresses that flow in the wind. Like something out of antiquity.

After I have two beers Patti puts me in a cab to take me home. I am perplexed by this and I tell the cab driver that I am not drunk and that we just left my house. He drives me to an ampartment, it is very small and dark having space only for a roll-out bed and a bathroom and a kitchenette. I look around and at the head of the bed is a beautiful balcony.

I thank the driver but tell him he has to take me back but that maybe the reason this mistake happened was to show me this cramped but somehow wonderful apartment.

When we get back to my house, I try to pay the driver but he refuses my money and says he only wanted to help me.

I think this is a dream of my own death. That was my first thought when I got out of bed. That would make the cab driver Charon but he refused to take my money so I do not think it is about an imminent death, just a way to look at it when the time comes. Returning to the place we all come from, returning to the sea.

I had another dream after this and even though I was thinking intently upon it as I woke up it left me quickly as the idea to write it down came to me. It had something to do with feelings of shame and all eyes being upon me.

20150528 Dream of Joining the Army Again

Author receiving medal circa 1988

Over the years since I got out of the U.S. Army back in 1988, I have had occasional dreams about being in the army again, that I join again voluntarily. I have not had a dream of this type in a number of years but I had one this morning.

I dream I am arriving back at my old unit in Germany. It is modern times and I am being driven by a female soldier whom I know, that we have served together before and although there were female soldiers I served with, this one is completely made up by the dream.

She is explaining to me that I security as been vastly upgraded since the last time I joined. I check into the company, get assigned a room in the barracks. I take my gear to a bunk that is only partly made and I stow it. I am not sure why I think the unmade bunk is mine but I stow my gear anyway.

My first assignment is to get drugs from a local bar. I don't know why. The female soldier who drove me from the airport takes me to a residential place and we pick up two wives of other soldiers. They are partly cover and partly operatives. It isn't clear to me how much they know.

The place we go to acquire the drugs is a strip bar and the three women I am with are dressed very well compared to both the girls who work there as well as the clientele. I notice they seem out of place and that makes me worried about completing my mission. I fear that the patrons will notice how different they are and our cover will be blown. I also notice how the faces of the three women are brighter and more alive than anyone else in the club. The three women take up three different positions in the club and I see one who has dark hair and is wearing a blue dress. I feel embarrassed that she is in this place because of my mission. I tell her she and the other woman should go home, I can handle whatever I am there to handle but she politely refuses. I still notice how no other woman in the club is as well dressed as the three I cam in with. I see another young woman who is obviously the girlfriend or wife of another patron and she is wearing kind of capri pants and a shirt and flip-flops and looks rather shabby, like everything else in the club.

The woman who drove us motions me to the bar in the back. When I get there the bartender is Anita! She reaches over the bar, cups my face and kisses me straight on the lips. She greets me in a think German accent. In all my dreams of rejoining the U.S. Army, I don't recall ever meeting a civilian I knew in real life. Anita was a short, plump, middle-aged German woman who worked as a waitress at one of the Guest Houses right outside the depot. We talk for a bit and then, finally, she passes me a small packet. It is supposed to be pot but it looks more like a packet I've seen on a TV show I've been watching. In the TV show it is heroin.

At any rate, I put the pot in my pocket and me and the driver exit. We are walking in an underground parking ramp discussing the small amount of pot which I am to deliver to someone inside the barracks. Somehow, as we round a corner where the car is parked, the small bag falls out of my pocket. I quickly pick it up feeling relieved this mishap happened just out of view of a security camera.  The driver takes me back to the base she says, “Now you'll see exactly how much security has been beefed up.” I think of where I should hide the small bag and have visions of all my pockets being turned out by the gate guards but then I think, it shouldn't be any big deal as the small amount couldn't be anything other than personal use. But when get get to the front gate, nobody searches me. Nothing happens.

I go back to my barracks room and look for a place to hide the small packet of pot. While there I notice how big the barracks room is and I see some other soldiers there. At this point I go back the the bunk that I selected as mine and realize that it might already belong to somebody else.

I remember when I checked into the company I only talked to one person who did some very limited paperwork. I wasn't even issued any linen.

Everything in the barracks seems degraded. The other soldier in the room seems like he is on drugs. While I am putting stuff into a locker another old familiar face turns up as two soldiers enter the barracks room. I look at him for a few minutes trying to place the face and then I call him by name, which I no longer remember in real life but he recognizes me and we chat briefly about our old times back in AIT.

I think how everything is actually so degraded here. I'm sent on a mission to get drugs, everything in the barracks is lethargic, nobody seems motivated. I think about how it was when I was younger and first went into the military and how now it was barely a whisper.

Self Portrait 16

I'm still behind in getting out one self portrait per week but I am learning a lot. Mixing colors, watching YouTube videos, patience, and when to stop for the night.

Here I think I did a pretty good job. Maybe even a very good job. I might go back and see about adding a visual representation of the stands and maybe to touch up anything I notice later but essentially SP 16 is in the books. And only 7 days after the last one which happened to be on Walpurgisnacht.

Today, all I know about was the British elections, and within a week of the last one.

Well, don't have too much to say tonight. Brain is ready for rest.

My Vision of May 4, 2015

Isabelle Tuchband's studio looks something remotely like my vision

Parts of this actually came to me on May 3, 2015 but it wasn't until I sat down to draw tonight that I thought I should write it down:

In the not-to-distant future, I know this because I look much the same as I do now.  I have a very large art studio, most likely a converted barn, I see sunlight streaming in from the skylight and art and materials piled everywhere and a loft and a ladder leading up to the loft. And there is welding equipment because even though I am very satisfied with drawing right now, it is not enough, and I get satisfaction out of drawing down what I am going to make in whatever material.

I am wearing clothing unfamiliar to me, black shirt where the sleeves come down to about my elbow, and shorts that come about down to my knees.  And I am wearing black shoes and black socks of some kind. I am wearing glasses but they are black rimmed and I have a welding shield on my head.

I am smiling as I walk to my current project. My beard is longer too. I feel like I am made up of cones. my beard is a cone blending into my chin, my arms are cones blending into my shirt sleeves and my legs are cones blending into my knees and when I have my welding mask one my head looks like on giant cone with a big black Cylon eye.  I am also slimmer and more, how you say...sinewy.

Gary Numan is blasting throughout the studio as I am walking to my latest project.

Some friends are outside but they hear the music and they say, "No, it is Gary Numan Telekon, he just started working. We'll let him go for a while. We'll let him listen to all of Telekon and all of Replicas and if he starts The Pleasure Principle we know it is a good time to visit him."

Ambition: Fueler of Dreams or Dream Killer (SP 15)

My ambition to produce one self portrait a week has gotten side-tracked by my ambition to work with color.

After Self Portrait 14 and the fun of doing a mostly landscape color portrait, I picked a picture with quite a bit of blue in it and I spent two weeks just working on getting the drawing part as good as I could and finally I decided I needed to move forward on the color.


The drawing I had intended to be SP 15 is still a work in progress but while trying to figure out how to blend color I finally saw that I had bitten off way too big a chunk so last night I made a mini drawing of my face and tried to find something with the colors I have that approximate skin tone.

Dougie Anime

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Oh! Wait! No eyebrows! Here we are with the signed version:

I really needed those headlines too! And you can see the lighting difference too, when I drew this one I used a LED bulb but when I touched it up today I used an awful old earth-killing CFL.

Onto the ambition part, the lesson I learned from working on the more ambitious project is that finally, I am ambitious about something, maybe for the first time in my life, and I like to encourage my ambition but this time I may have over-indulged in it and threatened my new livelihood, not livelihood in terms of making a living at it but livelihood in that it makes me feel alive to dig these things out of me and share them.

And that is the Master Run-On Sentence! Take that, Grammar!

Anyway, I will have to decide if I should continue work on the intended SP15 or shelve it until I learn more. I'm included to simply work on it and do my best.

Here is the color worksheet that SP15 appears on:

Self Portrait 14: Back on Schedule

As I reported in the Self Portrait 13 update, that my drawing has been much more of a flow since I have been listening to Gary Numan from his Replicas and other Metal Period albums. This week, the idea came to me that the reason for this is because when I was 15 and 16, however old I was when I first listened to Gary Numan, I was at the height of my potential.  Or something like it.  And instead of using Gary Numan to relive my so-called glory days, I am using Gary Numan to tap into the limitless potential I had when I was that age.

I do not wish to be that age again. I like the age I am now.  It feels like the perfect age for me.  But I do want that potential I had back then. I want the thrill of discovery like I had when I first discovered Philip K. Dick and Gary Numan with my friends. But I do not just want that thrill of newness and discovery just for the sake the thrill of the newness and discovery, I want to channel it.

The other thought that struck me is how pure an act of true magic it is to exercise my will and recreate a photograph into something coherent on the paper.  To work my will and create something that did not previously exist in the world and that it is something that only I could bring forth.  And when I put all my effort into a drawing and I feel that tiredness that feels good.  That feels like I have done some real work today. That is sheer joy.

And I then the third dominant thought I have this week is how my friends in podcasting, Phil Leirness and Dean Haglund of the Chillpak Hollywood Hour and how I would not be doing any of this now if I had not listened to their show in January that inspired me to do my best. To draw and put it out there no matter how bad or good I might think it is, because it is the act of drawing and struggling to improve that is the important part, not the fear that I may not be good enough or that I may never draw for anybody but a very small audience. But that is enough.  Thank you Dean and Phil for getting me started allowing me a visit every week. It has been a blast so far.

And thank you to all my friends who see my drawings and encourage me.

This week, I really wanted to experiment with color once again.  About two weeks ago, I bought some water soluble colored pencils so I had to find something colorful to draw and I settled upon this picture of me playing my flute from March 9, 2014 at sunrise on the Sanibel Island beach:

I am very happy with how my first use of these colored pencils turned out.  First I I worked on the drawing and blending the colors. And I really liked just the pencil but it was rather streaky and the beach had very little beach-like feeling to it so I continued by making the beach darker.  I even tried to draw in that sea slinky that is just to the left of me in the picture but that definitely didn't look good.  I tackled the beach first using my broadest brush and working the light as best I could.

Next I worked on the sky starting with the cloud, then the sun, then the rosy dawn and then I worked on the central figure and decided to just make him grey against all the color except for a little brown for my flute's pouch.

I also purposefully decided not to draw feet since they are cut off in the photo in order to make it feel like the figure, who is me,  is some sort of spirit coming out of the sand.

Thank you for reading.