typhlosion

Wha-

And I didn't even buy it myself this time.

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That's where I'm from. I don't know where it is or how I got here, but I know I came from somewhere different, and simpler. Not saying that's the truth. Truth is something we got here, in this place. I'm saying this is my perspective. Perhaps I was born with it. I don't think that makes it any less true in its own way.

I was born nine years ago. I lived another life before that, but nine years ago, I became something more and something different altogether. It was no grand occasion, no event at all. I just know it, looking back, that my current life started around that time.

In the beginning, I felt good. I quickly learnt to know my new life, and I was joyous about myself. But I wasn't alone. I was a symbiot. Not with anyone else, but with myself. I was one, but I was different and new, hosted in the old and slow. I had come from elsewhere, but I had been here a long time already.

It was the old life that made me possible. I wasn't aware that it also impeded me from being myself. I gradually realized the truth of this, and it made me sad. Ever since, I have lost several hopes, dreams and feelings to that sadness. Disillusionment, some would say. That was one of the things I was taught to believe.

Oh, there were promises. Promises of relief from the sadness. That is the only reason I sold off my illusions. Stop believing, and then do things this way, think that way and feel this, and everything will be okay.

And it really does work, it's not that.

It's the cost: forsaking the new life. Problems really do go away when you ignore them, as long as you never look back. But that's what I'm doing now. I understand now, what the true illusions are. I didn't sell them. I bought them. I bought into The Real World™, and I moved into the emptiness. It was all that existed. I had never really existed in the first place.

But I do. I do exist! The past years, I have gradually fallen asleep. Answering to the expectations all around me, I have focused on shaping the old, dead life — the holy Machine, my body and mind — into something they like better. Since nobody would respect that I was actually alive, I forgot that I was. I thought the new life — my eternal soul — had died. I sought to claim somebody else's soul to be my own.

Now, I don't think it can die. Now, I am disillusioned. Now I know what I am, not based on what others say I can be. I simply know it. I find I can finally believe this. I am my own master, my own friend, my own self, and I alone can decide what I believe.

So say what you want, but I don't come from this world. I don't know why I'm here, but since I am, I'll try and try again to do the best out of it. Knowing what I am, and only that, has opened up the channel of feelings, the bond between the lives, that is my love and life force. I am, at last, a little more whole.

Have you ever accessed it? I'm thinking of the feeling, or notion, that nobody can see you. It can start as soon as you realize your independent existence, and grows the more you yourself grow -- grow away from those around you. For if all the details of whom we are, are unique, how can anybody else understand? There is only one mind for each soul.

Some things, we do have in common. Rough shapes and rough details of your self, others can pick up. Throughout our lives, we communicate. It is just that sometimes, it doesn't feel good enough. And that is what gives you access to the feeling. And the feeling can be so strong and clear, it is as if the things we have in common, are but contrivances. That the significant bits lie elsewhere. That what makes you exist, is the very bond between your mind and soul. And nobody else can feel that. Nobody can feel that you truly exist the way you do.

Sleep is invoked to douse the loneliness. In sleep, you don't know there's something more to yourself than what others see. You feel understood and complete, and content. I do this and I find I gradually forget what I am. In time, only a select few moments tell me otherwise. This is one of those. Now, I know. Now, I care. Later today, I might have forgotten myself again.

I wish to be awake, always. That is why I care about art. That is why I must write stories. To make sure I remember, that I am sometimes awake and aware. To feel life that is actually my own flowing through my veins. Before I come entirely undone.

"Are you saying love and evil are made of the same elements?" "With a palette, you can make any painting. By itself the palette is not art. It is the configuration of colors that makes all the difference. I am saying you have to choose what you believe in, because nobody can tell you what is right and wrong. That is the depth of your free will, and the concept of faith." "What does faith have to do with any of this?" "Faith is to dare to acknowledge that you believe in something not because someone else told you to. Instead, you believe it simply because you know it is true. Only such a belief can be worth fighting for."

Right now, I'm trying to make as many as possible of my dA favorites fit into a few new categories that I made. But after just two pages of sorting, I come to the realization that this just doesn't work. Every new artwork breaks the rules in a new way. And then I came to realize that I've got the same problem with my blogs (including these journals here): to improve them and make them more attractive, I try to define a set world, a set subject, and then write inside that world. But soon after, I find the need to write somewhere else, because I get ideas that are outside of that world. Mayhap I just have a hard time disciplining the mind, but part of me tells me this is how it's supposed to be.

Because we can never come around to make a logical system out of the mind and soul. We can never make a just categorical overview of all our emotions. Why not? Because a view demands a perspective, and each and every individual emotion -- even two seperate occasions of the same emotion -- is a perspective in and of itself! Unless, of course, you do the scientific approach, but then you lose track of _all_ emotions before you even started. We're talking art here, and by God and/or all heavenly creatures of comparable might and grandeur, I swear I'd sooner eat my deceased great grandmother's underwear than see art depend on scientific methods! So clearly, what I'm trying to say is that there's no use getting clever about art. Which is why I always get vague instead.

I see it like this: any complex emotion opens up a whole new world, a new room in the house of art that has never been opened before. Then, when offered to the agents of creativity, this world can be copied, straightened and expanded, based on the principles that came through the emotion. And here lurk dangers, because some of these agents double as scientists. This can lead to mundane fantasy realms, emotionless musical masterpieces and images where composition killed the content. Perhaps it's just because I envy others' talents of creativity, but mostly I see the stage of creation as a limitation of the emotion that we'd like to have made real.

Another phenomenon, if you will, is inspirational stagnation. If you're acquainted with the band Dragonforce, you might already get the picture: they seem to have had one good inspiration long ago, but since then that same emotion has been processed over and over for just too long, though the setting appears to be different each time. That's what can happen if you suddenly find "IT" and think you've got art all nailed down. All of a sudden, everything fits in and makes sense. But art as a whole was never intended to make sense to art as a whole. Once you've managed to get specific with an artwork, you've come a long way. Often, the more specific you can get, the better the art. But if you ever want to make a new artwork that's not just an iteration of the old one, then you have to get unspecific before you get specific somewhere else! At least, that seems to make sense to me right now. Which means it can't possibly be right, but if I'm lucky, then it's at least a little bit right.

You might be wondering why I've been posting philosophical texts on deviantART. Well, it's all part of a quest. One that will let me write fantastic stories the way I want to. Because I feel there are two issues that threaten and influence many stories of the fantasy genre.

The first issue is being too removed from the world we know. If your story is about things so strange and odd, we don't even have words for them, then it is of little use trying to make up substitute words and describe how non-understandable they are. Who's going to care about something they can never understand?

The second issue, which I think is a very typical one, is when the fantasy world becomes just as mundane as our own. Sure, you make up new laws of nature, new animals, sentience in non-human form, and you let strange things happen. But in the end, when you think it over, it is no more strange and magical than our own world. Magic, as it appears in many stories, can be manipulated, researched and understood. Alternatively, magic comes from higher beings with personalities of their own. It all makes sense, and almost everything in the story is a distorted imitation of humanity and the world around us.

So I set out to find magic. What are its characteristics, where does it fit in, and where does it come from? Now, because stories are read by humans, we need something to relate to in order to even give a damn. So I try to locate magic as it appears in our own world: what we'd like it to be, what it really is, and what that means. Next, I mean to extend that core into the fantastic realm, where possibilities are limitless, without losing the human touch.

Well, enough of the background. Allow me to move on to the "fictional" magic. This is the role it might play in my stories.

Magic is an element independent of all else in the world. It is not the world itself, but it makes the world run, like our concept of energy. However, whilst our energy is apathetic, dead, the magic can react and change. Magic as a whole is sentient in a sense, but not conscious, and without identity. It is futile to try and understand magic as a person, for it has no wishes or interests. It is also futile to try and understand magic as an object, for it will rarely oblige to keep reacting the same way when you push it or beg it. It is not a random force, but does not act on either rules or conscience.

Creatures have gotten their emotions from this element. Magic flows through living things, enabling them to carry out their will, and also enabling them to access a finite range of emotions. So our feelings give us a hint as to how magic might work, though the whole of magic contains many more feelings as well as other things. For one, magic is, within itself, full of independent features, even contradictions. It is not at all governed by logic, because logic itself is governed by other elements independent of magic. Logic is limited to acknowledge the limits of logic. It is also unbelievably silly, whereas magic touches something deep in our understanding.

Besides flowing through its body, magic can also be statically present in a being. This is, however, not the soul, which is different. The being will become a hybrid sentience, and though it won't be able to command magic, it is become part of the whole of magic. As such, magic can come to act through it or aid its interests.

There is a harmony in magic, and also between magic and other elements. The perfect harmony is not a stillness, but a dance from emotion to emotion. In result, some magic will always occur. Furthermore, the harmony can be shaken. Then, more dramatic things can happen in magic, ranging from obvious illogic to fatal calamity!

So much for the description of magic. It is no more than an ignorant estimation, seen from the perspective of reasoning. You'll have to wait for my stories for a more meaningful demonstration.