There was a full moon tonight, and it made me think of some story or another where the moon was personified and described as a goddess or somesuch. That thought made me vaguely sad because it got me thinking that what with scientific advances over the centuries the mystery that celestial objects once held for people is gone; it's not the huntress coursing through the dark anymore, it's a big floating rock. The sun isn't the inexplicable radiance that gives life to and warms the world, it's a natural nuclear furnace made of coalesced gas. I guess the way I'll try to find my own magic will be to find wonder in that these things exist as they are and their scale and so on.
   That all also makes me think of the mysteries that used to be in religion, say in the Catholic Church for example. Their services were once conducted in a language that few understood (and thus had to have explained to them) and with the priests' back to the people, &c. I think when the service was more mysterious it gave people more access to a spiritual sort of register, and perhaps allowed for more (what I think is more valuable) mysticism (re: the register that actually allows people to get deeper into religion without being spoon-fed someone else's thoughts or chanting empty words, like Buddhism/yoga-as-religion in a general sense, Muslim Sufis, and in this vein the old-school Christian mystics that don't seem to be around anymore).

   What if the cats who go running around chasing stuff that isn't there are actually chasing something that we can't sense? I guess I get a bit creeped out when I get that same question in my head when a patient is hallucinating something (the 'famous' example being the 'little girl' that climbed around me and on the ceiling).

The Manchurian Candidate - Okay, if way longer than we expected. The first third had the kind of dream-fear that Mulholland Drive excelled at, but when that atmosphere trailed off I started waiting for the movie to be over so I could see what would happen. Xuemei, Phil, and Steven were leaning towards the original being better, and noted that this one was darker if not as "devious."

photographs by Jacek Pomykalski