Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“We are all born mad. Some remain so.”

—Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Odd beliefs cling to the face of the moon—and why not? It hangs above us in splendid glory and from the first blink of consciousness, primates must have gazed on it in wonder and fright and superstition. It’s inside of us, too, its cycles shaping the ebb and flow of our internal tides. The moon is a very powerful object, pulling and deforming the shape of the earth as it rotates around us. Why shouldn’t it also pull and deform the creatures that crawl upon the earth?

Science remains skeptical. Oh, not about the pull of the moon on earth’s tides and geography, but on the claims of its influence on human beings. ER doctors, police, mental health professionals may all come up with strong anecdotal evidence of altered behavior during full moons, but scientists—who require replicable studies to believe things and are no fun at all—find it hard to take such things seriously. Even when they do produce a study that suggests some aspects of moon lore may have a basis in fact, they are quick to point out that a single study must be viewed with a certain amount of cynicism. Sometimes even by those who produced the study.

Take for example the belief that a full moon leads to restless sleep. A study from 2013 suggests there may be some basis to this. Christian Cajochen and his colleagues at the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel decided to do sleep studies on 33 volunteers and found that around the time of the full moon, the kind of brain activity associated with deep sleep decreased by 30 percent, participants took slightly longer to fall asleep than they did at other times, and slept on average twenty minutes less overall. What I find most significant is that their levels of melatonin also diminished during this period. Melatonin is the hormone that regulates sleeping and waking cycles.

However, when interviewed by National Public Radio, Cajochen was quick to downplay his own study, saying the findings might not hold up in a larger investigation. Other scientists remain adamantly and steadfastly skeptical, demanding more research before they take anything to do with moon madness seriously. Like I said, no fun at all.

A 2014 study at the Max Planck institute found no significant connection between the lunar cycle and sleep.

Research published in March of 2016 of 5,800 children between ages 9 and 11 in 12 different countries found that they slept about five minutes less on nights with a full moon.

So. The search for truth continues. So do the myths. I suspect science will never be able to completely convince those on the front lines of moon madness triage that there is no correlation. As for me, I will continue to “purify” and “charge” my crystals by the light of the full moon. You just can’t be too careful about such things.

This is an interesting overview of scientific studies on moon madness.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those.”

—Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day: 

“The only beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.

—André Gide, The Journals of André Gide, Vol. I

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

 

“The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.”

—G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:


"I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

—Sir Isaac Newton, after losing his life savings in a financial scandal, quoted in “The Damn’d South Sea,” Harvard Magazine, May/June 1999





"Irrational exuberance pervades the stock market. Speculators pay ever-higher prices for shares despite scant evidence of underlying value. Skeptics warn that the bubble will burst. This must be England in 1720…" Read the rest of this article on the South Sea Bubble financial scandal here. The more things change, the more, blah blah blah.


(Thanks to handworn.)


( Illustrated version. )



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:


"There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical."

—G. K. Chesterton, "The Fad of the Fisherman"






( Illustrated version. )

From the quote file:

"The world is made less of nouns than of verbs.  It doesn't consist merely in objects and things; it is filled with useful, playful, and intriguing opportunities."

—James Hillman, The Soul's Code


Lately my life has certainly had a high verb count.  Things are calmer this week, an eye in the storm.  A hurry up and wait week.

Some days, though, my verbs are quite minimal:  eat, sleep, read, watch—and a few other basic body verbs that really have no place in a public blog.  Concentrated periods of inactivism are just as important as activism.  Some days I have the need for serious sloth because most days, especially during the week, it feels like I'm burning the candle at both ends, even when I'm not crashing at work, doing rewrites, moving offices, etc., etc., ad nauseam. 

Maybe that's an artist thing?  No matter what art you're doing, even if you consider it a craft, I think artists have a tendency to never truly be inactive.  The mind is always churning.  Even when we're asleep, even when we're holding conversations on other topics, below the surface that other channel is working—like a vast aquifer, never still, always pushing slowly and infinitely towards the sea.

Maybe that's a me thing?  I've talked to other artists/craftists, though, who have a similar duality, a feeling of things always pushing, of things moving even when we want them to stop, of ideas swimming and brewing and fermenting.  I guess that's the need thing, the need to do art, the can't-live-without-it thing.  In some ways it makes us (me) crazy, in other ways it makes us (me) sane. 

I have an acquaintance who has a schizophrenic brother.  She loves drawing parallels between his world and mine.  False parallels, I hasten to add.  She's fascinated by my process and the fact that characters are always alive in some part of my brain and that they take on a certain reality to me.  Although unlike her brother, I can tell the difference between the things I create and consensus reality.  Most days.  :-)  She doesn't understand the creative process, or at least not this deep need to do creative things.  She thinks creativity is something you discover one day, like someone shows you how to sew and suddenly your hands know how to make astonishing quilts as if by magic.  She laments not being creative and thinks that the reason she's not is that she's just never found the thing that will unlock her creativity.  Maybe she's right, but from where I'm sitting, I think she's got it backwards.  The creativity comes first, the vehicle for its expression comes second.  Creativity is an activist process, not a passive one.  It doesn't wait to be discovered.  It's intrinsic and ongoing, insist, persistent—a good stopping off point on the road to the loony bin. 

I don't think creative people are better human beings then other folks.  Some of the most miserable, messed up people I know are highly creative; also some of the best people I know.  Which is by way of saying that quality of personality, moral character, all that stuff, are separate issues.  Creativity is just another aspect of being human. 

Although it does feel like a divine fire sometimes when your brain is burning and your hand can't get the ideas down fast enough.  I don't know what it is, frankly.  But I do know certain aspects of it quite well:  creativity is mostly about letting go and allowing, of getting out of the way and letting it flow through, about not second guessing and trying to control until the thing is well and truly outside of you and you can then enforce all the damned control and second-guessing your left brain is itching for.  It's that flow that I live for, though.  It's that great, non-judging activist plunge into the void that makes everything else worthwhile.

So, in that sense, maybe my acquaintance is right: she's never found the thing that allows her to let go of control and give herself permission.  Maybe she doesn't lack creativity (because the egalitarian in me says everyone has some creative spark).  Maybe she just can't let go.  I don't know.  I operate on faith and instinct.  Analysis is always secondary, always a rewrite.