Author: antonarchus

I’ve just realized there is one more scary face in the Iron Maiden’s “Brave New World” artwork. This time I was listening to it on YouTube through Xbox with large art cover spread across tv screen. On the left of Eddie (front Cloud Monster Head), right under the “screamer” I saw years ago, I now noticed there is something like a piranha head! Took me years to see it! I looked around a bit more, wondering if there were more, and I think there is one! There is a thing kind of biting Eddie’s right cheek – I saw kind of eyes sockets and mouth… so I wonder if there are more?

I think BNW artwork was intended to have those images on purpose… or not?! I never saw that stuff in Maiden’s art before, but maybe this stuff in “Brave New World” artwork inspired them write a song and make up the story of Benjamin Bragg who was seriously and afflicted with nightmares he started painting.  

That would be all nothing, but it’s funny, I see faces in chaotic splashes art (or not art at all), or in pictures of tree branches. I wondered if there is an actual term for people seeing images in graphics orderly or chaotic that don’t show at first glance. I even made my own term for it – situational objecto-chaos scrutinism. Kinda heavy, huh? Well, the English speaking crowd can sigh with relief – I won’t impose that term on anyone, because there is a proper word I found this week – pareidolia (see link below). Looks like a real thing with a name. So – other people experience it too!. I’m relieved.

And yet, still I wonder – how much of that stuff that is seen in chaos is intended to be there?!

(more about pareidolia here: https://earthsky.org/human-world/seeing-things-that-arent-there/?fbclid=IwAR2M8fj_eX7Qw5G_akA0W41dtG5wjn6S3u25n_Us_NThc5do8f7a_yEZ-sw#:~:text=Bottom%20line%3A%20Seeing%20things%20as,examples%20of%20pareidolia%20in%20nature ).  

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image was copied from here https://www.metal-archives.com/images/1/8/2/182.jpg?1801 . thankyou.

One day earlier this year I took an axe and destroyed the crap out of the armchair at my apartment.

Crazy!, is that the image you’ve got in your head by now? Well, this is not a story about anger management, or something like that. I destroyed the armchair because it was getting old, the seat was falling through, and we had no room for it anymore, and moving it around each time to watch movies or whatever was too much of a job, cause it was that much heavy. My girlfriend who originally owned it, said it was time for it to go. So I took the axe and…

It’s been a while since I did furniture demolition. I did it several times professionally, when I worked for a college. Chairs, desks, that kind of stuff. With those things, what you see is what you get. Just have to strike a bit harder from time to time. But not this armchair. It took me about half hour to deal with it. It was an old-timer, from those days when they made them to last through storms and bombing, I guess. Leather bound into wood, wood into intricately tied ropes, and then the staples were crazy thick! 

I was working at it, swinging the axe like it was a battlefield and I was facing the orcs. Harder, deeper, and all that. As I was doing that, and the cuts in leather were opening more, and I could see how intricate the chair’s structure was, I was gaining some appreciation for the work that was put into it. 

It made me think of “While You Were Sleeping” movie (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114924/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) when Sandra Bullock’s character sits down on the brand new rocking chair made by her new friend. They are in his large truck, and she sits down on the chair in front of the opened sliding door, and she rocks in it gently, clearly enjoying herself, because she trusts him and his work, and she is safe. It is made that well.

I kept thinking of that while cleaning up my mess and taking the monstrosity that I’ve turned the armchair in to the dumpster. And I thought of something else…

…of the way people are made: bones, muscles, sinews, nerves, tendons, joints, brain cells. And not just parts of all kinds, but also connections. How it works so well. People mostly are very resilient, they walk away from falling down, from being beaten, from all kind of physical damage and disaster. Our bodies allow us to do that. We walk and lift stuff, sometimes not even realizing we train our bodies that way, preparing us to stand longer against whatever life throws at us. 

People sometimes walk away from car crashes. People rise from grief of profound loss. People come back to life from the ashes that destructive addiction and continuous substance abuse burnt them into. People regain trust in relationship after being burnt badly. And they manage to not only co-exist in relationships, but build them stronger, and invite others who were broken, so they can heal too.

There are days I don’t believe anything good will come out of us all being in the same pot. And then other days I’m amazed we are still here, and we still cooperate, and enrich each others’ lives.

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image was copied from here https://www.casa-padrino.de/en/casa-padrino-luxury-leather-armchair-vintage-black-leather-armchairs-art-deco-lounge/echt-leder-moebel/sessel/a-91873 and bleached and dismembered by me. thankyou.

Worlds stand

Worlds grow

In the everything, everything on its own

In the bright sun light

In the night moon shine.

Fogs must be heavy now –

I cannot see your splendor lately,

I feel no connection 

Not the rest of the Nine,

Essential, as in crown and roots,

I see only Midgard,

With all of its filth

And flowers don’t smell today.

Care in my mind

Rusts my spirit.

Send me a beam to see truer,

A lightning to know you still stand strong,

To hear Yggdrasil’s might branches 

That carry all

And wave loudly in the storm wind.

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image by (c) Antonarchus

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My doom is in thinking

That what should be right, shall be so.

I forget what kind of world I live in.

This a world of shit.

It is shit in the unflushed toilets

It’s on their mind

And so they treat others like shit,

As well it’s in their self-serving and self-destructive plans

It’s on their breath as they speak lies

When people say they are full of shit,

That’s the only truth they seem to speak.

It is also world of grass fields and forests

Sights that bring joy to the eye and soul

But then geese and dogs shit takes over,

And people don’t mind

And in winter, grass is out of sight

And all I can see is snow until dogs come out and leave their marks behind, again

Human waste in plain sight is not uncommon either

When I see all that, I think deep,

And it is a cold hard fact that

Expectations of normality are to be outlawed.

This is a world of air

You’d think air would be dominant of me to think of,

Green trees or winter time trees

Give oxygen freely

For us to exist

But gratitude is the last on my mind

For I see that we have mixed clean air with so much shit

In over a century that often it is as unhealthy

As the ever-present shit I mentioned above

In this world, shit prevails I know there is no escape from it

And as I make peace with that fact,

I remind myself there are no surprises –

Neither when shit hits the fan,

Nor when I so often see

People tend to shit where they sleep.

Expectations of positive change be damned!

That is how I keep walking,

Shoveling shit out of my way,

So others won’t step in it either.

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the image was copied from https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=258926250004444&set=a.158152623415141 and warped by me. thankyou.

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my knowledge of the dark

may be not what I thought it was:

there are things down there

I was not ready to experience.

depth of their eyes reveal pain they’ve hidden

even when the soul seemed to want to laugh

and blood drowned the tears unshed.

gods’ gaze at my failures is endless

for they wait for me to learn.

I knew not someone could wait eternally

if they believed truly the bus to come.

sea was far but river was closer to my home

and I walked along it, but never in,

thus in my isolation I knew not

how deep it was,

but the river knew it was mighty –

it carried life that counted not less than sea.

all that I feared I would become

is share their lifeless laughter;

all that I refuse is hollow homes

where restlessness dwells.

I want forest to be my bed

and autumn leaves, my blanket;

and I want your eyes to look into mine, always;

and hear the laugh of love

light as wind of gods walking above us.

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image was copied from https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.freepik.com%2Fpremium-photo%2Ffalling-dry-yellow-maple-leaves-autumn_116441-2907.jpg%3Fw%3D360&tbnid=vF4XVkF0c–YkM&vet=12ahUKEwieoLDxoOyAAxX6ATQIHf9uC6oQMygBegQIARBY..i&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.freepik.com%2Ffree-photos-vectors%2Fautumn&docid=4p3hmOx8EA3-dM&w=360&h=543&q=autumn%20leaves&hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwieoLDxoOyAAxX6ATQIHf9uC6oQMygBegQIARBY thankyou.

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I keep learning about listening to music. These days I listen to some albums I’ve let go for a while due to not having time, or patience, to discover the beauty, and spirit, and sense.

Last week it was one of the bands that inspired me greatly for 2.5 decades – Voivod. When their latest album Synchro Anarchy came out, I felt like it was no different from a couple of recent minidisks they have released. Then half a year or so later, I’ve reminded myself this is a band that requires to be chewed on over the course of time to really taste it. I’ve also reminded myself that when its predecessor, The Wake album, came out, I didn’t care for it, and it was a couple months later that I sat down and listened to it again while reading the lyrics along to it and loved the experience. So I did the same with Synchro, and it worked! I’ll be coming back to it soon, now that I’ve broken through the barrier of intolerance of first impressions.

Same way it happened today with going back to Enslaved’s second latest release, Utgard. I remember a month or so ago listening to their latest Heimdal album while reading lyrics and I found it uninspiring somehow… the lyrics at that time seemed unfocused. I clearly wasn’t ready yet. That time will come. This morning I listened to Utgard and after listening to music alone first time, I’ve put it on again and read lyrics while listening, and it all came to reason and spirit, and what a beautiful connection it has created… If I wasn’t tied tight into the Norse spirituality, I’d probably be still lost. Anyway, so far I mostly appreciate the bond of music and lyrics. Maybe some time soon, the appreciation of music alone will come to me as well.

I keep trying not to judge, as energy enters my sphere, be it the small balls of light, the moderate strikes of wind, and the grand agents of sonic sense, even if sense appears absent some time. Then as Utgard’s own lyrics say, “time is cosmic vanity” and no linear path of reality exists. Everything is relative, and everything may have more meaning and quality than one, as each person has more of a story than we care to know of. As long as I remember that, I’ll be ok.

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the image was copied from https://www.metal-archives.com/images/8/6/2/8/862857.jpg?3931 and taken advantage of by me. thankyou.

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I’ve learned a new word recently: solipsism.

The Online Webster says it is the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist. In other words, it is a close-mindedness, being oblivious to the idea/fact that things and forces happen to present themselves according to their nature and other forces and things that affect them that have very little to do with you, if anything.

In the same manner, people are not like you, they don’t act/react the way you do, and cannot be expected to do things the way we assume they would. The way I’m seeing it, solipsism is basically a worship of expectations cult. And it’s deadly.

I suppose I’m prone to fall into somewhat a solipsistic swamp. I notice that I often tend to expect from others to do or not do certain things. I think the reason that happens is because not expecting is hard. I was raised with expectations of others toward me. all the values, all the rules… and then school expectations… and then work places. so the system, the whole culture; expectations becomes more rigid.

So basically it comes to this strange equation: you are expected a lot from by others, but for the sake of personal mental and spiritual balance you shouldn’t be expecting anything from them.

Now, how does that work?

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the image was copied from https://artofericwayne.com/2014/05/19/say-so-long-to-solipsism/. thankyou.

Oh, ye mighty force of nature,

grant me humility

to understand and accept 

that when things aren’t working for me, 

it is the universe’s time 

to work for someone else.

Allow me to have enough open-mindedness

to accept yet again

that all things in the fabric of life 

are interconnected,

and when something is depleted of resources, 

it could be in the process 

of borrowing

and shifting energy from somewhere else 

to work more or less smoothly.

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the image is my art. thank you.