Dreams and visions of the afterlife

I had a dream last night rich in complexity and detail.  It sounds like the setup for a Brandon Sanderson story.

The dream began with my arrival in a deep, dark cave.  The cave was filled with unearthly sounds - subhuman grunts and wicked laughter.  There was no light, save a distant gap far above.

This was the place I would come to call The Cave.

I spent only a moment in the cave when a massive train, larger by far than any train of my past experience, caught me up and pushed me forward.  One did not board this train, it simply picked people up somehow if they should be on it.  It was as though I was seeing through the front of the train, where the headlights would be if this were an earthly vehicle.  The train surged upward, impossibly defying gravity as it swiftly approached that distant point of light.  As we came close, I saw that the hole was massive, larger still than the enormous vehicle beneath me, of whose size and composition I was remarkably aware.

The train came to the surface, revealing a dry, parched landscape, filled with crags and crevices, though none so large as the hole through which I passed.  There was no desert sand nor fertile soil, only barren rock as far as the eye could see.

The only other thing visible beneath and cloudless sky was the long, sinuous train track, bearing the train along with immeasurable speed.  Thus, within the space of a thought, I found the train coming to rest in a crack in the base of a large hill or mountain.  The crack seemed narrow from the perspective of the train, with barely an inch of clearance on either side.  The top of crack was lost in darkness far above.

The inside of the crack itself was filled with people who bustled about with a great sense of purpose.  Goods had been deposited for the train and people were watching expectantly to see who might emerge.  I separated from the train and was greeted warmly by the dust-covered men who called this crack The Cove.

Among the men, I found an old friend whom I had not seen for many years.  I spotted him quickly as his clothing bore a redder hue than the dirt-brown jackets of those around me.  I realize now that he must have been sent to watch for me, to help me understand my circumstances.

We were all dead.  This was some form of afterlife.  The Spirit Train bore souls and cargo to where they were needed.  The Cave, the central hole from which I first emerged, was a sort of Grand Central Station to which and from which all tracks led.  Every soul entering this world whose name I did not learn during my visit began in The Cave just as I did.  All those with whom I spoke told a story similar to mine of awaking in The Cave and being conveyed out by the Spirit Train.

You could only board the Spirit Train if you were meant to do so.  The religious among the men said that God controlled the train and decided if you needed to be on board.  Call it God or Fate or whatever you would, there was no escaping the beckoning whistle of the Spirit Train for long.

I saw no women in The Cove, but I supposed that people lived deeper in the cracks of the mountain and sent their men to the train platform as needed.  Either that or they were in another Cove of their own.  There were, in fact, many Coves scattered throughout this rocky terrain, each with their own population.  No one explained to me how it was that a fractured tunnel through a hill came to be referred to as a Cove, despite such being a nautical term.

As I talked with my friend and as the dust from the train's passage began to settle, I noticed that the reddish hue was not confined solely to his clothing but rested also on his skin, emanating from everywhere except his eyes.  He explained to me that every soul becomes aligned with a certain element or combination of the elements, generally depending on the disposal of their bodies.  Those cremated, for example, would become aligned with fire.  Those buried in earth would be aligned with earth.  Those buried at sea would be aligned with water.  While those who dwelt in The Cove seemed to know about those aligned with air - both their origin and their existence - they never spoke of them in more than whispers, and certainly not to me.

Some, like my friend, were aligned with multiple elements.  He was of both fire and earth, allowing him to be comfortable in either environment.  The Coves were where those aligned with Earth came to dwell.  I did not learn during my brief visit about my friend's other home, where it might be or how one might come to be there.  My own element or combination had not yet fully manifested.  Such things took time but I was most likely at least partially aligned with earth.

This elemental alignment came with more than a change in the tone of one's skin.  It bore with it both certain powers beyond those of mortal men and certain burdens.  I learned that those aligned with fire, for example, ran the risk of "burning out", causing their bodies to vanish in a puff of smoke and flame.  My conscious mind imagines that this is how they return to their other home amid the flames, though it is apparently quite painful.

This entire conversation, in the way of dreams, happened in the blink of an eye, but in a very different way from that of the train's passage.  While as in any dream, many details are skipped over but you somehow know what happened, the train literally traveled at the speed of thought when one was on board.

While one could easily leave The Cove on foot, there was little enough to do on most of the barren landscape.  Following the tracks one way led to The Cave.  The men, smiling gently between themselves, encouraged me to follow the tracks the other way to see what I could see.

When I did so, I found myself lying in a little wooden church, listening to a conversation between the local priest and a man who, it seemed, had come to visit the graveyard which lay beyond the window.  They were discussing the location of the grave of the man's grandmother, "beneath the distant willow tree."  As I listened, I realized that they were speaking of a woman not yet buried but who soon would be.  Finally, the priest gestured in my direction and assured the man that they would take good care of her.  I then understood that I was observing the scene through the senses of his grandmother's corpse which was awaiting burial.

When I emerged from this vision, I found myself at a spot on the tracks only a short distance from The Cove.  It was beginning to push an enormous white-wrapped cylinder longer even than the train itself through the crack in the mountainside towards The Cave.  What might be in the cylinder?  I never learned the answer to that question.

I returned to the Cove and was told by the Men of Earth, with an edge of compassion in their tone, that my friend had "burned out" while I was gone.

Here, the dream ended as my daughter came to wake me up for the day.

Hi again, at long last!

Hey out there, friends, fans and family, I'm stopping by here briefly in between things to give everyone some updates! First of all, let me apologize for the long gap between entries - I've got a heavy workload in my classes that just keeps getting more interesting as time goes on. I think I'm starting to get a handle on things now. First, a list of what's keeping me busy:

1. Golden Age Literature. So far this semester, I've written a 5-page (a full page and a half of which hinged on the interpretation of a single word) analysis (on which I got a 94% - YAY) of a sonnet by Góngora (one of the giants of his century) and given a presentation about my final project for the class, which will be a 15-20 page paper whose major focus is a comparative analysis of the sonnets of Garcilaso de la Vega of Spain and Sá de Miranda of Portugal - so chosen because they've got really similar backgrounds (to the point that it was rumored ((my instructor believes that the rumor is false, however) that they were both in love with the same woman!) as the men who brought Petrarchan Italianate verse to their respective countries. Some fun, eh? Not to mention, what an incredibly long and rambling sentence! What am I, some kind of literature student? Oh yeah . . .

2. Modern Hispano-American Poetry. I recently turned in (and got 8/10 on, which I take as a good thing since some others in the class have simply been asked to rewrite their paper from scratch) a 5-page paper about a poem written by Jorge Luis Borges (one of the coolest modern authors I've ever run across - if he's good enough to quote at my convocation opening ceremonies (not to mention in General Conference!!), then he's good in my book!) titled, in translation, John 1:14. The title of my paper: The gospel of Sartre (The guy who basically founded the philosophy of existentialism) according to Saint Borges. With the underlying concept of existentialism as defined by Sartre being "existence precedes essence," it really is amazing how existential John 1: 1-14 is! I'm currently in the middle of a similar paper on a poem by Octavio Paz, a major surrealist poet. Besides a simple analysis of his poem Olvido, I'll be comparing it to the works of Salvador Dalí, most particularly The Broken Bridge and the Dream. This blog entry represents a brief mental respite from that one. My final project for this class will be a 15-20 page analysis of Borges's abandonment of Ultraism (a school of thought of which he was one of the major founders). Borges's departure from Ultraism was sufficiently severe that he later rewrote a lot of his early poetry when his "complete works" were assembled. I'll be focusing on the differences between the original and the updated version.

3. Literary Approach to the Spanish Civil War. Each week for this class, we read a THICK tome (generally between 400-600 pages, though we've had some plays of late which has helped) about the Spanish Civil War, mostly works which take an autobiographical look at the author's experiences during the war. We then (each week) write a couple of informal pages of our thoughts about what we've read. My final project for this class has taken an interesting turn. I had originally thought to take a "War: What is it good for - according to each of the authors we've looked at?" approach for my final (15-20 page) paper but our instructor doesn't want us to base our final paper on what we're reading for class. That's right, he doesn't want us to use the approximately 3,500 pages of material we will have read by the end of this class. My current thought, after a brief discussion with him, is to base my paper on "Political Applications of Religious Archetypes in Art and Iconography of the Spanish Civil War." At least with that, I don't have to read quite as many thousands of additional pages, I just have to talk about pictures. All three of my instructors seem to love tying in visual arts to the literature - good thing I took those Art History classes back at SBCC! Thank you, Professor Handloser, wherever you are!

4. Work at UConn Residential Life's Front Desk. I spend 20 hours a week waiting for phone calls from people who either have maintenance issues or have foolishly locked themselves out of their dorm rooms. Thankfully, not a whole lot of calls come in between midnight and 3:00 AM (which is part of my shift on Wednesday-going-into-Thursday) so there's hypothetically time to get some reading done. Unfortunately, between the TV, the interruptions and the siren song of Facebook, it's not really a productive place to get my schoolwork done.

5. Emotional issues. First, a bit of history. As those of you who either know me or have followed this blog know (if you're one of those people, feel free to skip down to number 6 unless you'd really like a synopsis), I've been dealing with cyclical bouts of depression since January of 2004 (at which time I was ministering to a small congregation on the Guatemalan coast). The diagnosis given at that time was clinical depression and, after some experiments with Prozac (during which time I wrote this poem) they settled me in on Zoloft. This kept me, if not happy then at least functional through the beginning of 2006. My then-fiancee, Emilee, pointed out that, even though the Zoloft kept my bouts of depression down to about once a month, it also blanded me out so that I never seemed really happy. I left the Zoloft behind, convinced that my newfound love would banish my doubts and depression.
It didn't.
I saw a new psychologist in Provo, Doctor Griffin, who declared, "you're not just depressed - you're bipolar!" and prescribed Lamictal (for the depression) and Lithium (for manic moments) My bouts of depression began to come much less frequently, eventually only striking when I was under significant stress (read that as Finals Week).
That all changed when we got to UConn.
With the stress of a new environment, homesickness, financial pressures of student debt, missing our friends in Provo, missing our families in Utah and California, being thrust into graduate school without much guidance as to what the heck I was supposed to be doing here (not to mention the question pounding in the back of my head - what the heck AM I doing here?? Every time I tell people I came here from Southern California for graduate school, they ask that exact same question, reinforcing the issue), the depression became an almost constant burden. Finally, realizing that I needed more help, I set up an appointment to talk to someone at UConn's mental heath facilities.

6. New meds and a new diagnosis! After meeting with Doctor Powers (Psychologist) and Doctor Grace (Psychiatrist) at UConn's mental health facilities, they became convinced that I wasn't bipolar after all - especially since the dosage of the lithium was, clinically speaking, insufficient to have any real affect! Finding that I had a history with A.D.D. (I took Ritalin through high school), Doctor Grace took me back to cyclical clinical depression - A.D.H.D. just makes my normal, happy times SEEM like manic moments! Last week, they took me off the lithium and, instead, put me on VyVance - a fun little drug that's kind of like Ritalin, but with a very important difference. It doesn't take time to build up in the bloodstream - it's more like a 12-hour aspirin (if aspirin cured chaos as well as pain). On day one, I noticed a difference - as though my brain was reawakening to a level of intelligence which it and I had forgotten. This effect lessened over the next couple of days and I felt somewhat emotionally fragile. This Tuesday, I spoke with Doctor Grace again who said of my experience, "Perfect! That's exactly what I expected! Now we have to play with the dosage so you can feel that smart every day!*" She told me to experiment with different dosages - take 2 or 3 and observe the results. "You'll know if it's too much - you'll kind of bland out." Where have I heard that analysis of my personality before? Today I tried taking 2. I feel that I have been more productive and Emilee notes that I seem happier today. Yay for modern medicine!
*at least, for 12 hours of every day. Today's twelve hours, coincidentally, ended shortly before I began this blog entry.

I'm still hoping to get Emilee to post something about our trip to the Omaha zoo but that can wait. Come on, world - I'm ready for ya!!!!

Summer reflections

It was the best of months, it was the worst of months, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us . . .

July is always a fun month. With Emilee's birthday to kick it off, my birthday toward the end and one of our BFF's birthdays in the middle, there are parties, presents, excuses to spend extra time with family and friends and, of course, cake, ice cream and Tucano's.

July is always a hard month. With cake, ice cream and Tucano's comes another notch on the belt, another article of clothing that just doesn't fit like it used to, a more disgusting visage in the mirror, more reluctance to shower and contemplate my body in all its corpulence. With the heat of July comes difficulty sleeping and a sapping of energy, even with our wonderful air conditioner, that brings malaise and a lack of motivation to do much of anything, let alone exercise.

This July has been laid back for me. Not having a job for the moment, while I do my best to maintain the house (doing dishes and cooking dinner for Emilee being the main daily responsibilities) and pack a box every day, I have plenty of free time to read, write, play games, make blog entries, load music onto my iPod, etc.

This July has been tense for me. With every piece of furniture that leaves the apartment, with every box I pack, every time I look at the new van, every time I say good night to my friends, every time I listen to music from the CD I made with Impact, I think of what we have lost and are losing as we move to Connecticut. Every time I read my email, every time I look at paperwork still to be filled out, every time I think about spending so much as a dollar, my mind shifts to the doubt, debt and uncertainty which await us in Connecticut. Every time Emilee asks if she really does have to go to work today or if she can come home early (jokingly done almost daily), my heart is filled with guilt as I know I'm not contributing enough.

My friends and family encourage me to be excited for the adventure to come but I'm kinda having trouble feeling adventurous through the doubt.

The strangest dream

It's been a while since I gave you folks a good glimpse into my psyche, so I'd like to give you something new to analyze - last night's dream. What's particularly strange about it is that it had absolutely nothing to do with the book I was reading into the wee small hours - more on that later. This post may not hold much interest for most of you but I wanted to record this one for posterity since it's unique in several ways.

Chapter 1: Disney World
The dream opened with Emie, Dad and me at Disney World together. We passed by a colorful plaza and into a restaurant. I'm guessing that it was the Brown Derby, one of Dad's favorites, since there was a definite Hollywood atmosphere. The dream skipped ahead a bit to when we had been waiting a very long time for our food and we had been given some cookies to compensate for the wait. I decided to go enjoy Disney World since the food showed no signs of coming. As I left the restaurant, I noticed a sign board where you could order pizza by writing down your order and placing it on the board. I did so, thinking that it might be faster than the Brown Derby. Abruptly, the dream cut away from Disney World to . . .

Chapter 2: The Creamery
I worked at the old BYU Creamery for a semester shortly before it was torn down. In my dream, the old place was brought back to life and filled with nostalgic memorabilia, like a shiny pre-credit card cash register that looked like a miniature pipe organ - the whole place looked like an old fashioned malt shop, as though the clock had been turned back almost a century The place was strangely empty so I wandered around for a moment looking at everything. My old boss, Brian (incidentally, Facebook suggested him to me as a friend last night - there is no love lost between us, however, and I declined) showed up and told me breathlessly that all of his workers had called in sick and he needed my help. We negotiated my temporary wage and I told him that I had somewhere to be right now but that I would return once I was done. The somewhere I needed to be turned out to be . . .

Chapter 3: Jane Austen meets Charles Dickens
I dreamed that I (when I say I here, I mean it somewhat loosely, as I was apparently inhabiting a female host - the first time I've portrayed a woman in my dreams) was entering the garden of a lavish Victorian manor house where a man whose circumstances had prematurely aged him (he reminded me of Ebeneezer Scrooge but not as old in reality) sat outside grumpily. He had come outside to look at his flowers and the colorful pigeons (and I mean colorful - red, blue, green, etc.) for whom he had left a feeder. The pigeons, however, had become aggressive and were pecking at the miser and eating his flowers. I devised a solution to his problem (the dream kinda skipped over the details) and we entered the manor to figure out a solution to his other problem . . .

Chapter 4: The "Haunted" House
The old man had begun hearing odd sounds in his house at night and was convinced that the place was haunted. I agreed to spend the night in the fellow's room (on the floor while he took the bed) to observe. (The inside of his manor house looked like the inside of my church building in Santa Barbara. After a while, we began to hear the noises and I arose to investigate. As I turned a corner, I nearly collided with a kid whose arms were laden with the man's possessions. I looked through the lighted doorway beyond and saw a woman who I presumed to be the boy's mother also looting the man's home. I clamped a firm hand on the boy's shoulder and pulled out my anachronistic cell phone to call the police as the boy's parents fled.

Chapter 4.5: The Austenian Ending
The scene cut away and I found that I was reading the book in which the events of chapters 3 and 4 took place and had reached the ending, in which the man's youth and heath were restored by the woman's actions and she declared her love for him. "I don't even know your last name but it doesn't matter - I know your heart and I love you." I closed the book and found myself . . .

Chapter 5: Back at the Creamery
I was in the creamery's back room where I found bright red and blue uniforms, again reminiscent of years gone by, as well as another employee Brian had managed to locate. I was again female so moved to the appropriate section of uniforms/costumes and selected one. As I began slipping it on . . .

Chapter 6: Return to Disney World - the Circle is Complete
I found myself walking across the same colorful square toward the restaurant. As I passed, a fellow at the pizza sign board called my name and said that my pizza was ready. I told him to wait a moment while I fetched my family and I hurried to the restaurant. I found my father and wife still waiting for their food, sitting together with a fellow who looked like Groucho Marx except that he had Harpo's hair. I told them that pizza was available outside and they began to rise.

Epilogue: Waking up is Hard to do
I awoke in my old room in Santa Barbara and opened my door as my wife opened the door across the way. I told her "I had a (I hesitated for a moment as I decided not to call it weird) great dream last night, and you were in it." "Was it about a cookie?" "Actually, there WERE cookies involved." As she smiled . . .

I really woke up. I came out of the bedroom and saw Emie on the couch. I told her "I had a (I hesitated for a moment as I decided not to call it weird) great dream last night and you were in it." "Was it about a cookie?" "Actually, there WERE cookies involved. And we had the exact same conversation in my dream."

Time travel, Deja Vu, gender bending, meta-fiction . . . quite the dream, eh?

Hot times in the old home town

When Emie and I planned our trip to Disneyland for our anniversary, we didn't even know the half of what we were going to get!My mother was the first from our group to hear about the Jesusita fire. In her words:

So, there we were at Disneyland, in line for the Toy Story ride, and I was checking Facebook on my PDA when I saw that a couple of friends here in SB had posted notes about a new fire in the SB foothills. I wanted to know more about it!! So, I checked a couple of usually reliable sources, and really couldn't find anything much - - - the fire was only a couple of hours old. When we finally located it on a Google map, it was just a tiny spot somewhere in Southern California.

What began as a small spot many miles away from home became a cause of much fear and alarm in the coming days. It was our actual anniversary, May 6, and we were visiting the Santa Barbara Zoo. We had debated between the Zoo and the Botanic Gardens, but I decided the Zoo would be better, since it's right next to the ocean. I had it all planned - A romantic walk on the beach to watch the sunset on the ocean followed by dinner at the Beachside Cafe.

It was as we got up from eating our lunch that we noticed the massive plume of smoke rising to the north. Having lived through the painted cave fire when I was a kid, my panic instincts started to kick in - this actually looked WORSE than the clouds that were gathering over the T-ball field those many years ago. Calling Mom (with interference from the smoke making the call cut out constantly), she told us that a mobile home had just gone up in the blaze, but it was nothing to worry about.

A few minutes later, we heard a zoo employee on his cell phone telling his family "I don't care what the police say, it's getting worse fast and I want you out of there! I'm coming to meet you at . . ." My panic rose. With my body on fight-or-flight mode (Emie, meanwhile, calmly wandered through the zoo's snake house), a romantic walk was out of the question, so I decided it would be better to just head back to my parents' house before things got any worse instead of our beach walk.

We checked in on the fire and didn't seem to be in immediate danger, so we went to the Elephant Bar instead. We returned hours later after some less-than-stellar service and realized that the fire could now be seen from our front door. It was on a distant hillside, true, but it was a frightening sight. We knelt together in family prayer and I called upon God to send His angels to fight the blaze, asking Him to use his power over the winds and elements to fight the flames. We felt somewhat better but the fire was still too close for comfort.

Emie went to bed and was sleeping soundly while my mother and I stayed glued to the news watching the blaze spread and destroy people's homes and lives. The Botanical Gardens were burned, striking a personal sorrowful note - I was glad we hadn't been closer to the fire, but sorry Emie never got to see the Gardens in their splendor. Mandatory evacuation zones expanded and multiplied quickly - the sundowner winds were taking their toll. Dad was out-of-state on business, but assured us that he had, while praying, gotten the distinct impression from the Spirit that we would not have to evacuate.

I tried to get back to sleep, but couldn't - it can be tough to share in that same Spirit of safety when you're scared to death. When I next emerged, Mom told me to get my shoes on - we had just been placed in an "Evacuation Warning zone." Essentially, we were being told that, while we didn't have to get out right now, we should be prepared for that order to come within the next hours. Much as we do our best to be faithful and trust what the Spirit says, God rarely favors an unprepared fool. We decided to start packing things into the van.

Mom and I had been through this sort of thing before, but only when I was a little boy. Mom said that, during the painted cave fire, she mainly held me while Dad took command of the evacuation. Without Dad there, our psyches took a heavy hit, but it was time to dawn the Superhero mindset again and set to work. Between the two of us, we managed to keep each other sane, though, sufficient to start working on top priority items to load into the van.

Our top priority thing to save - the cats. From the 6 cats I grew up with, Mom and Dad are now down to three. Two of them, Tribble and Q (am I from a family of Trekkies or what?) are wonderfully placid, docile creatures, easy to pick up and toss into the van. The third, Molly, is half feral, so we knew we'd have to get her caged. Molly was already on alert (probably smelled the smoke from the fire) and was difficult to catch, to say the least. I finally pinned her against the bed with my knee, then grabbed the nape of her neck and her tail while she dug her claws into the knee of my pants. I slowly rose from the behind the bed with Molly forming an obtuse triangle then got her into her cage. First task: Accomplished.

Mom was taking care of clothes, pills, money, checkbook, etc., so my task was to load the van with other "precious things." For Mom, this means her needlework, crocheted afghans, tatted doilies and her grandmother's quilts. I spent an hour or so wandering the house, collecting the symbols of Mom's hard work and loading them into the back of the van. They may not be worth much monetarily, but they have enormous sentimental value and represent many hours of Mom's labor.

We decided to let Emilee sleep (a fact about which she laughs) for several reasons - we didn't want to worry her, but we also wanted someone to get a few hours sleep in case we needed to drive for a long time in a car full of nervous cats. About 2:00 AM, having done just about all we could to prepare and observing that we could no longer see the fire on the hill, Mom and I decided to try to get some sleep ourselves. I awoke frequently to the sound of sirens in the distance, so I think I got about 2 good hours in preparation for our long trip home.

It's now several days later and we see our prayers being answered. The winds died down miraculously, the humidity rose enough to create mist, the fire is mostly contained and people are returning to their homes. As my father prophesied, Mom and Dad never did have to evacuate, despite being only a few blocks from a mandatory evacuation area. As my mother said, "There were angels on the fireline." God's promise came through for us again - no great surprise, but a wonderful reinforcer for faith.

Do you believe in Facebook?

Well, I hope you don't believe in it TOO closely. My brother recently posted the results of some personality quizzes he took on Facebook and I thought I'd follow suit. For good or ill, here we go!

1. Which Old Testament character am I? King David

People like you and follow your leadership. You love deeply even though relationships can cause you great pain. You’re sensitive and just want to get along with everyone.












I've got no problem with the analysis given above, but going a little deeper into King David shows some major pros and cons.

Pros:
David V Goliath.
Writer of the Psalms
Prophet/King

Cons:
Bathsheba. One of the questions on there was about relationships. I replied "There's only one woman for me," which really does not fit King David at all.

According to what claims to be a personality test given by HR departments found here: http://www.personalityquiz.net/profiles/hrdepartment.htm

Others see you as fresh, lively, charming, amusing, practical, and always interesting; someone who's constantly in the center of attention, but sufficiently well-balanced not to let it go to their head. They also see you as kind, considerate, and understanding; someone who'll always cheer them up and help them out.

For the Ice Cream flavor quiz here: http://www.personalityquiz.net/foodtests/icecream.htm

I was torn between two, but I like the responses for both:

If you like chocolate, you are lively, creative, dramatic, charming, enthusiastic and the life of the party. Chocolate fans enjoy being at the center of attention and can become bored with the usual routine. Seductive, well-dressed, extroverted, easily influenced, a follower, intuitive, enjoys intimate relationships. Prototype: Feminine woman, macho man.

If you like banana, you are easy going, well adjusted, generous, honest and empathetic. Prototype: The perfect husband, wife, parent or child.

I can live with those!

Facebook's Star Trek quiz tells me I'm Captain Kirk

A similar blog analysis program to the one my brother mentions has given me similar results - completely opposite those I usually associate with myself.

Oh yeah, order and logic, those are my strong points, and Sapphire Sting has no imagination to speak of. Pthththth.

Yes, this blog entry is still under construction

The Demon Within

As we've seen before, power often has a dark side. Of late, I've found myself battling my inner demons with a different understanding than I have hitherto had. I'm coming to recognize the voice of my inner demon - the creature nestled in my soul that whispers all my imperfections. "You're not good enough" it states in a quiet voice which still pierces my heart. "You're not strong enough or smart enough. You're weak and unworthy," it states in a sibilant hiss that cuts to the core. It's the voice that weeps in the dark, that shuns the light of day and the joy of friends and family. It's the grasping hand that pulls me down into despair. The Hyde to my Jekyll, the Gollum to my Smeagol.
Of late, I've been trying to distance myself from the demon, to separate him from my own identity. I've been considering naming him Xander, after the dark persona of my past. Can I truly pluck him from my heart and end his torturous cries? Will the void in my heart ever be filled? Can I ever know true peace in this life? Only time will tell.

Just for fun

I realized that my posts had been a bit dark of late, so I decided to pay a visit to Dr. Blink (and when I say pay a visit, I mean pay a visit. His rates are kind of high, but he's the only one in town licensed to treat supers), and he gave me an interesting personality quiz. While I'll leave most of the personal details out of it, I've posted the basic results at the bottom of this blog. Feel free to take the quiz yourself!

Mental Lapse

The city has been quiet this last month, and domestic duties have kept me occupied. In order to maintain a low profile, we're changing the location of our headquarters. The new base will be smaller, but more secure against intrusion (Particularly from the arch-villain Formiciman and his insect minions).
During the process, I've realized something about myself - Deep down, I'm afraid of change. Perhaps that's part of why I make an effective super hero. I like my world to retain in the nice, orderly pattern which it has always held for me and work to make sure that happens. I know my wife is right about the advantages of our new location - lower cost, more protected and all the rest - but even today, the day we are slated to move our base of operations, I find myself uneasy. Something in my gut is clinging desperately to the reality which we have known for these last 2 years, even if they haven't trimmed the bushes since we moved in.
And so, I find myself asking why I can't simply accept with grace the opportunity which presents itself. Is this, somehow, symbolic of something greater? We had hoped to fill our larger base with a larger supergroup, but we haven't had any luck. I suppose that my heart recognizes this as a measure of giving up on those hopes for the time being. Is that, perhaps, why my heart is heavy?
As supergroups and hero families flourish around us, we ask why we can't keep up. Are we doing something wrong? Are we somehow cursed to remain alone? Will a kind and merciful God finally send us what we've been asking for? Moving brings all these questions to the painful forefront of my mind.