I am Albie

[David Kartos]

Mar 16, 2009 12:26:36 GMT albie said:

Yes, I've been published a tiny bit. Haven't we all? Famous for fifteen minutes for fifteen people. That's the internet for you.

No! Dear god, a seeming maniac with comunicative setback problems can get published, but I can't ?

.............


Joking aside, your posts seem to be of the more, eh, less comprehensible side. You kinda write as I have seen people do at ca. 14 or so. No offense meant, but it's truthfully the first thing comes to mind , because your first series of posts had a litle "spammy" feel to them (again, no offense meant) .

(And concerning the missing double letters and such in my post, I'm not english, just to clarify . )

[albie]

>>'Schizotypal personality disorder, or simply schizotypal disorder, is a personality disorder that is characterized by a need for social isolation, odd behavior and thinking, and often unconventional beliefs.'

>>Probably most of us here could neatly join this throng. I certainly could, but if you dig deeper it appears to be much more comprehensive and serious in its implications than mere eccentricity.

I downplay it, I didn't want to get all serious. Or did I?

As for publishing. Three stories printed in seperate issues of Bare Bone. One of which was reprinted in the first of those British Horror forum books. I forget the title of the publication.

Here I am. Under Albie Swain (not my real name)

www.britishhorrorfilms.co.uk/bhf-anthology.shtml


One of my other stories from the Bare Bone set earned an honourable mention in one of Helen Datlow's Best of Fantasy and something. For the year 2006.

I don't really send stuff out though. I do keep writing ;D.

[albie]

Actually. My condition is quite useful for writing fiction. Odd thinking is a tool of the writer. One aspect of my condition is having odd bursts of weird emotions(although this may well be an aspect of my former years of cannabis use). For instance, I will get a burst of a particular emotion that will connect to certain images, memories. I am lead to discover the core of that emotion -which feels like suddenly dreaming for a second and is quite annoying in its ephemeral, if pleasurable, nature and - so, I am lead to discover the core by writing a story using the nearest elements to that burst, that mini dream. Which then gets fed into the mix and the feeling enhances. It would be apparent to most that extrapolating this equation to a future point in time would result in rather odd possibilities springing to mind. The fiction may well be a tool to some future mental illness of gigantic proportion and/or a collection of fiction that would please certain types of people.

[Craig Herbertson]

Interesting. Fascinating in fact.

[albie]

So you do not get these bursts yourself?

[Craig Herbertson]

I loosely call myself a manic depressive. I suppose I am technically not one but it feels like that. I've had various ephininal experiences, plummeting abysses, ecstatic highs, long periods of utter torpor, short bursts of wild enthusiasm, occasional prophetic insights, moments of utter blindness.

I suppose the best indicator is that is have occasionally beaten very high ranking players at chess and yet at the moment I have lots 20 games in a row to poor players. In short I don't know what the fuck is in my head.

[albie]

Brain chemistry is an odd thing. I can feel fine all day and then when it comes time to go to bed I feel completely horrible. The act of putting away the laptop, or putting down the pen brings on a darkness. But it does not feel like my darkness. Are you familiar with the notion of co-consciousness? I have experienced this for the last ten years. Or have become aware of it. Most will say they experience it, but will most have it to a degree that is damaging to them?

I wonder if my bursts of dreaming memory are my other, still asleep
Lazy bugger! Or I am seeing his thoughts. Her seems to dwell in the dream when he chooses to. The dreams of my life. When we dream are we not a different person? A madman who is easily swayed by the unconvincing landscape and laws of that place? Maybe that man is my other. We stroll down here, finding things to fill his world! We furnish his realm with our psychologically bruising mundanity! And the barrier is flimsier than we thought. Or maybe he wishes me to join him.

Note to self: try not to sound like Ligotti so much.

[Craig Herbertson]

I experimented with dream walking in 1985, after reading too much Carlos Castenada. The basis technique for those unfamiliar is to attempt to walk into dreams. My technique was to meditate on the threshold of unconscious as I entered sleep. I did for a year. It worked three times.I stopped when it got scary

[albie]

That sounds interesting. Is it as it sounds? astral travel in the dream realm? That would be excellent. I am quite addicted to dreaming. I shy away from hard drugs though, and I find it impossible to shut my mind up in able to meditate. Or I just am too impatient/doubting.

The things that happen to me, I am too frightened to detail as they would immediately register as delusion. I am heavily into doubt. I'm a crazy James Randi. If I were to mention that I turn up in comic books and films and mythology, that would be crazy. I've never seen myself as Napoleon. Maybe I'm sizeist or just avoidant of cliche. See? i use humour? Like David Icke. That proves I'm sane. The insane have no sense of irony or sarcasm. They struggle with Doctor, Doctor jokes. HAHAHAHHA. Get it?

Am I winning?

Tell me more about your dream travels. (pulls up to the fire and takes off headphones)

[Craig Herbertson]

I'm a bit reluctant to detail the methods of dream travel to avoid culpability. Anyone who tries it takes a big risk and is probably out on the extreme edge of sanity or at least in the penumbra where dark things walk. You'd probably be best to read up on it and make a considered decision.

The problem with you doing it Albie is best described with an analogy.

If you lived in a house with four doors and one was already open, would you be more secure if you opened a second door.

[albie]

Culpability? Don't tell me, you went back in time and became Jack the Ripper?

There's little chance of me doing any dreamwalking intentionally, although your analogy was spooky enough. Too much sugar in my diet. it's the mystic's kryptonite.

[Craig Herbertson]

Lol.

I tried to do the dream walking for about a year- every night without fail - a pretty long haul. What I realised after I succeeded was this:

It's okay to examine something in a theoretical fashion and make judgements about it but the empirical reality is something which has its own dimension and its own reality. You can't simply talk about this, the experience itself will tell you more than words or theories.

However, to confront the paradox of theorising, the basic discovery is that dreams are simply another reality but contain the same moral dimension. It is probably possible to live for twenty-four hours a day, in dreams and waking. The question really becomes - do you want to do that or maybe what are you doing it for? You get remarkable insights which probably help the creative process much as in hallucinogenic drugs but the purpose of the creativity becomes another question.

I wouldn't try it again because basically it's scary

[carolinec]

All I can say to you guys going on about doing weird things in your dreams is this ...

Try going through the menopause! ;D

Apparently, it's something to do with changes in brain chemistry and misfiring electrical impulses, but you get some very strange "waking nightmare" type experiences from that. I'll be glad when it's all over!

[albie]

>>It's okay to examine something in a theoretical fashion and make judgements about it but the empirical reality is something which has its own dimension and its own reality. You can't simply talk about this, the experience itself will tell you more than words or theories.


Sure, but you could tell us how it differs to a dream. Is it more static? Dreams bang on at a pace. Do you have time to smell the flowers and sit about and do nothing when d-walking?

Do you have control of the landscape? Is the landscape like a normal dream? As in a cut-up of waking life? Do you meet people there who have conversations? Are you lucid?

I've experimented in lucid dreaming. But all I ended up doing was evil acts to the fake people in my dream. I hope they were fake. I've even ended up in other people's dreams. I've experienced all manner of crazy stuff other than dreams. Like reality altering and things like that. I've altered my mind so much that it will never go back to being one person. I see the future. Controlling it is another thing altogether. Maybe I never will.

I have been going through a menopause. It started when I was 16. I've changed! I'm no longer a human, in my eyes. Better? doesn't feel better. Madder, maybe. Dark enlightenment, is what I call it.

[Craig Herbertson]

^{could tell us how it differs to a dream. Is it more static? Dreams bang on at a pace. Do you have time to smell the flowers and sit about and do nothing when d-walking?}

Dream landscapes tend to shift and change dramatically but when you dream walk you appear to be exactly in a place for some kind of duration. Smell - I' didn't experience - it seemed to be purely visual.

^{Do you have control of the landscape? Is the landscape like a normal dream? As in a cut-up of waking life? Do you meet people there who have conversations? Are you lucid?}

No control of landscape - you are in a setting somewhere. You can walk somewhere else in the dream and you will meet people - this last is a scary bit. You do have conversations but also there are parts that are utterly silent overeal, surreal, absurd.

^{I've experimented in lucid dreaming. But all I ended up doing was evil acts to the fake people in my dream. I hope they were fake.}

Doubtless the evil is some kind of attempt at balance in your life assuming you are not evil in waking life. This is what I meant about a moral landscape. You are better not to commit evil in a dream in my view. And I would say there are entities in a dream that can commit evil on you - that is the problem with dream walking. There are things out there better left 'out there'.

To give one example, I awoke in a small house, Spanish, Mexican or French, sunlight coming through an open door. A bare sparse place. I arose from the bed and made a move towards the door. You get a lot of sensations in a dream walk and in this case my immediate sensation was 'for fuck's sake don't walk out that door.' Deep seated Lovecraftian fear of the outside and what might be waiting. Difficult to define but intensely frightening. Yet, what was it all about..? No idea and I no longer want to know