I Dream of Death

I died into a bed of a small cabin. When I wake I already know what has happened to me. The cell is reminiscent of changing rooms in swimming pool facilities; the walls are bare with pale colours. I can come up with no expression for their warm hues. I'm not familiar with the capacity of this place − it seems I haven't been dead for a while. I look down to my body and there is no corporal confusion or any other post-traumatic effects that bodies are supposed to endure after a physiological change. This leads me to believe that the laws of nature my reasoning got to instinctively know are now gone.

I get up and go to the door, but my reflection in its mirroring surface stops me. Is this how I looked like before I died? I don't recognise myself, and yet I remember my former life so clearly. Shrugging, I open the door. The corridor outside reveals what seem to be cabins like the one I died into. Their entrances are reflective on the front, too. There is someone waiting for me outside and I notice the same face that looked back at me from the mirror. I stare at myself silently, knowing inexplicably that I am here to guide myself, according to the principles that shape this place into order. So I turn back to the entrance in order to look at myself again, to shake off the feeling of irrationality. I look a bit chubby and ageing.

Paranimalia: Deer Witch

If it wasn't obvious by now: I love writing. This pleasure exceeds the pages of Asylum for Thoughts. One of my ongoing writing projects is entitled Paranimalia. As I see it now, it will contain short stories, all of which tell tales by forging motives of animals and mythological creatures into the fabric of the wording, but with a specific twist each. The animals will never be directly depicted as They are usually imagined. Rather, Their symbols are to be used as stepping stones for hopefully enjoyable plots.

Until recently, I thought of these series as a project only to be publicized once it is finished. I changed my mind. In order to one day finish the whole collection, I'm proceeding in smaller steps. A neat element to this approach is that I can also tell the story of each story (i.e. what inspired me, and how the writing evolved until its ripeness). These descriptions will follow after each of the texts.

Dear Reader, I present You the first narrative of Paranimalia I penned, the: Deer Witch.

The Divine Projector

Do You have a pet? Observe it, Your real pet or the one You would prefer, in Your imagination. Don't do it only once, but for a while. Try to see It for what It is.

Since I was a kid, I was trying to unravel what is the gaze of non-human animals hiding when it's staring into our own. I have different theories about different species and individuals within species, and at least some of them, I believe, look at us in some kind of awe. We provide shelter, food, and constraint with conditioning techniques, leashes, bowls, cages, legal papers – not unlike how we sometimes act towards each other. If we humans are not aware of how most stimuli are affecting us, and we mostly shrug it off as faith, circumstance or whatever force beyond and larger than us – how are we not literally a form of a divine power for pets? The saying that 'You should first get a pet to see if You are fit to have offspring' is not without merit...

In Ourselves We Trust

It seems to be plausible to think that since the beginning of our conscious thought bearing days we looked towards the inexplicable with awe and bonded it with the desire to give a comforting explanation to the sources of our fears. For reasons that concern the survival of our groups, we gathered together and invented rituals so that we could feel more at ease with our mortal destiny. Over time, as we started using more and more extensions of our will (namely tools), our groups became increasingly larger and some kind of centralization of authority on a bigger scale was inevitable to establish some kind of collaborative order. We invented countless rules in the form of religion to govern the behavior of masses, and with a good reason. Little did we understand that behind the semantic messages of sacred teachings there are certain meta-meanings, which give form to thought and behavior, and are much more significant from the point of socio-cultural evolution. To take an example: if a religious principle declares that people are to legally bond and not practice adultery, and a person still performs such a natural act, They might feel self-condemnation, which can further lead to psychological torment between the legally bonded and possible disintegration of Their association.

If we consider evolution as not merely a biological process, we can certainly appreciate the thought of adaptation of culture. It is a necessary and inevitable course of progress. There is a neat overview of known human history as a single human life in the form of the "second insight" found in the book The Celestine Prophecy (although the theory is a bit flawed due to being inconsiderate to non-western influences). In the fashion of its style, if we look at our history as an evolution of a collective and not as segregated groups and individuals, as species we have just left our infancy and don't quite know what to do with all the natural changes we are experiencing.