night gallery or genius mode

Occasionally I wish that I had better recall of my dreams. Mostly they evaporate too quickly and I’m only left with the nagging tug of something forgotten, and regardless of what techniques I try, I am usually only able to remember my dreams as I am dreaming and they all come back in many layers with similarities that tunnel through. Although I am far from sure that I am loosing anything particularly creative, profound or prophetic by not remembering or if that’s just the preserving nature of dreaming, I do sometimes manage to retain, with some effort, not so much the content but rather the mechanics of an idea that I dreamt. I woke with the impression, already slipping into vagaries, whether ones nightly imaginings were responsive or pre-programmed.

I have experienced of course the alarm clock or other noises or physical urgencies ingratiating themselves an instant before waking, and I wondered if whole themes weren’t triggered by the mind’s chemistry responding to being too cold or overheated or other subtle stimuli. I also recollected the possibility that dreaming run on a fixed schedule, that maybe one dreams ones entire life as the subconscious sees it, or pre-determined segments of it, like a radio station’s broadcast day, with different scheduled hosts. Thanks for joining us for the Witching Hour, and next we’ll be playing you through 0400 with some familiar classics like impossible staircases, small dogs, driving from the backseat and vertical warehouses, but first here is a one-hit-wonder from the eighties, repetitive Tetris stepwise motion. I wonder if what strikes us as memorable or contemporary—or even as therapeutic or cathartic, in dreams only sticks because anything and everything is cycled through and the waking mind latched on to a coincidence of memory and revises, rewrites the whole evening’s play-list in a way we can make use of it in the here and now. Dreaming’s clearing-house, I suspect, is both responsive and on a certain timetable but maybe the masks that the waking and sleeping brain put on each other make such analogies very limited.

muttation

Though I feel woefully inadequate to offer relief to the unthinkable tragedies of the headlines and do not want to be another haunting voice to those who suffered loss, especially for those without intermediacy and far-reaching empathy, it is the hard things that sometimes one must do: that the author of the Hunger Games franchise hails from the same small community strikes me as something curious and unexpected. It is surely nothing to detract from the gravity of the situation nor the serious discussions that need to take place in the aftermath, neither is it any condolence or help for healing.
Far from glorifying violence, which I believe the American media unfortunately does with its cause-celeb, striding on the necks of facts to try to be first to get the story without regard for the consequences of inaccurate reporting or of making matinee idol monsters to be understood rather than allow us to contemplate those enduring monsters that we create and tolerate, the stories were an allegory inspired by seeing the same kind of terrible juxtapositions of war and violence and the anodyne chasers of misfit reportage filed under culture and lifestyle and usually for the benefit of sponsorship, the stories were allegories questioning the same kind of spectacle and of the horrors that go unseen by institutions and estate.  Redressing injustice is not a matter entertained due to customs imbued. Shield laws are in place for other crimes, meant to stave off premature incrimination and allow the law to pass judgment before the media and public has already decided, and though there is no innocence to protect or peace to be recaptured in such cases, maybe allegory for the outside world is a better format in order to avoid the vicious trap of fame. These terrors need to be seen and should be consigned to history, but the unfiltered unfolding of events and hastily assembled biographies and backstories do not help law enforcement and responders once broadcast, and I fear only serve to propagate that awful virus of twisted, angry logic when all involved become instant and intimate characters on the world’s stage that the audience is keen to analyze and interpret.

mood-lighting or ginger-snap

The old high gate towers undergo a very neat transformation with Christmas time when they’re strung with lights and the outline gives the stone the glow and the rich, earthy hue of a gingerbread house (Lebkucken Haus) with icing, especially from a distance.

On the interior, within the city walls, a different sort of Space Invaders light show was beamed on that tall canvas to pique the shopping mood on the cold night of the seasonal market and a lot of different stalls lined the historic city center. Surrounding buildings were also bathed and splashed with spotlights of all different colours.

arco de movimento or see, i can sit 'n stand by myself

A few days ago, the Daily Mail reported on a Brazilian study that seemed fairly comprehensive and scientifically balanced that supported a strong correlation between the ability to rise from a seated position on the floor without the aid of one’s hands or other supports and longevity. Conversely, the inability to raise oneself was indicative, apparently, of impending mortality—or at least atrophy in terms of muscle and skeletal integrity. I slipped and fell on my hinder just prior to reading that article (I blame the snow and ice but it was more likely some ice that had hitchhiked on the grooves on my boots rather than poor housekeeping) and have not quite regained full range of motion in my hips so I have not yet been able to reconfirm that I can indeed extract myself from a seated position on the ground (although I did jump right back up when I fell).
I am keen to put it to the test—like the nervous jitters that one gets from seeing those ubiquitous headlines that being sedentary for hours on end is a real killer, and maybe without hyperbole, which one invariable reads while seated at work and inspires one to jump to attention. I am sure that the corollary is true too—that training oneself to get up, stand up could stave off ill-effects, just as consigning someone with already limited mobility to a wheel-chair or outfitting them with raising beds and easy-chairs or stair-lifts seems like an unhelpful sentence in some cases. The science-desk at Boing Boing also recently expanded on an article from Slate Magazine that addressed this topic through the lens of cultural attitudes and characterization of maladies, which can colour a condition (or limn one into existence in many cases) and its interpretations as much as diagnosis and prescribed treatments.

no asssembly required

nocturne

While the feast of Saint Lucy (Luciadagen or Lussimesse) is not exclusive to the great white north, marking a moment of rebirth and illumination during the darkest time of the year and promising that if one has made it this far one can expect to survive the rest of the harsh winter and the daylight will soon begin to outshine the night (going by the Julian calendar—13 December would be the Winter Solstice, instead of 21 December, the longest night of the year), it is strongly connected to Norwegian and Scandinavian tradition.

Parents of daughters can also expect a special breakfast in bed, in addition to the pageantry and ceremony.  Though perhaps symbolism is divided between celebrations in far climes and in the Mediterranean south, where the lighted crown born by the saint represents the non-consuming fire at her martyrdom rather than a night-light, customs evolved at both poles—in places like Malta, Italy and Finland, Sweden but little in between.  Recognition, however, has spread and new and unique traditions and interpretations have formed. One area where Saint Lucy has taken root is Denmark, who honour the insertion of an unfamiliar holiday, which came about quite recently and an export from their Nordic neighbours as a means to subtly protest occupation during World War II, both with a flame that does not sear but also does not waiver.

googleganger or shift + print scrn | sysrq

Since the federal moratorium on purchasing pilfered or questionable data—far from quality intelligence and doing far greater damage to German/Swiss relations, some constituent states are still engaging the bounty of opportunists and scorned employees for compact-disks whose authenticity and reconnaissance is never guaranteed. One of the latest dossiers is apparently little more than a screen-capture from a bank’s terminal, but it still fetched a high price.

Bavaria, among the other states, is a hold-out and so far has refrained from seeking out or taking up any offers that purpose to tattle on tax-avoiders—directly, least, but has allowed other authorities in some cases to extend their jurisdiction and have cooperated in investigations. While in America one’s identity is tethered to a social security number (though it was never intended to be a universal identifier and certainly not a better or more secure system) or the like, in Germany one is triangulated through name, residence and date of birth. In a case of mistaken and insisted identity from earlier in the year that was only very recently resolved (not identity-theft but rather identity-burden), a woman from a community in Bavaria with the very ubiquitous name of Kristin Muller was approached by out-of-state tax-agents (Bavaria had agreed to allow these agents to fight crime by proxy) who rifled through this housewife’s modest home and accused her of hoarding a half-million euro in Swiss institutions. The woman was aghast, naturally, but at quite a loss when it came to distinguishing herself from her sister-in-name, who remains unknown and at-large. When Muller tried to clear her record with the reporting bank, no one was able to confirm or deny whether Muller and Muller-Prime were the same individual or not, since this data list only contained names and account numbers, due to Swiss banking secrecy laws and even if the bank knew more, it was legally bound not to disclose it. What an awful mess to untangle for Frau Muller and other potential victims of circumstance, and I wonder if should could have claimed the balance of the deposit along with the liability the tax-agents insisted she owed. Perhaps Bavaria has been right in not pursuing what’s lauded as maverick justice and a way to level the playing field but in reality does not always deliver.

making spirits blithe

It’s funny how the latitude of bad (but not chaotic) weather compartmentalizes things, not in a way, hopefully, to create a chore or hardship out of every errand but rather to mask, imbue it with some seasonally fun challenges. Of course, a lot of underlying support goes along with the invitation to be out-of-doors and resist the urge to hibernate or curse the snow and ice, reliability to oppose the exception throughout the rest year of good health and adequate sanitation and infrastructure.

I suppose (though I am the first to admit to being not among the it-getters when it comes to skiing) it’s like the thrill of being outside of one’s comfort-zone that comes with winter-sports and being able to take to the slopes and to push oneself to enjoy the elements. Jingle, jangle, jolly.