I Want My Tears Back - Nightwish

The treetops, the chimneys, the snowbed stories, winter grey
Wildflowers, those meadows of heaven, wind in the wheatA railroad, across water, the scent of grandfatherly love
Blue bayous, Decembers, moon through a dragonfly's wings -

Where is the wonder? Where's the awe?
Where's dear Alice knocking on the door?
Where's the trapdoor that takes me there?
Where the real is shattered by a Mad March Hare?

Where is the wonder? Where's the awe?
Where are the sleepless nights I used to live for?
Before the years take me -
I wish to see the lost in me!

I want my tears back!
I want my tears back now!

A ballet on a grove, still growing young all alone
A rag doll, a best friend, the voice of Mary Costa

Where is the wonder? Where's the awe?
Where's dear Alice knocking on the door?
Where's the trapdoor that takes me there?
Where the real is shattered by a Mad March Hare?

Where is the wonder? Where's the awe?
Where are the sleepless nights I used to live for?
Before the years take me,
I wish to see the lost in me

I want my tears back!
I want my tears back now!

Lockhart's Lament

I don't know if you've noticed that I'm really bad at this 'updating the blog on a regular schedule' thing? There's not even really much of an excuse for it; it's not as though I'm working on more important things (well, I am, but I'm spending a lot of poorly-prioritised time on less important things, too). I'll have to try to get back into the habit.

Anyway - I try not to talk about myself too much on this blog because it's really not about me so much as just me thinking about things. (In case that motif wasn't already obvious on the blog background!) But I'm making an exception, because there's something I absolutely HAVE to gloat about at the moment. So, personal anecdote first; if you get lost or bored with the mathematics, skip to the bold text below where things get less anecdotal again!

For a little background - my current college transcript contains references from four different schools already and I'm only halfway done. The problem this has led to is that I took basic classes like Calc I and II at one school, then transferred to another school that accepted them as a prerequisite for Calc III, then transferred again to a school that counted Calc III towards my degree but not I or II, compelling me to have to retake them. The good news is this is advantageous to my GPA; the bad news is... well, guess who decided to use Laplace transformations to solve petty little first-order differential equations? Me. Because BOOOOOOOORIIIIIIIING. It's an open secret in Calc II that I have paid scarcely any attention in class at all, and still set the grade scale for the rest of the class.

Here's the part where I gloat: on the last exam of the year, I got 111%. I scored higher than the grade scale permits. ("I don't always get pass tests, but when I do...")

Here's how. The grade scale in Calc II worked by first scoring all the exams by points-per-problem out of points possible. All the scores are then scaled based on the person who scored highest - if the highest score is 93%, it becomes 100% and everyone else gets (100-93)% = 7% added to their score. Then the extra credit points are factored in; every test has up to 10% worth of extra credit, so the highest theoretical score is 110%. (Did I mention this was an easy class? It was a really easy class.)

There was only one question on the last exam I missed. (NOTE: If you don't follow the rest of this paragraph until you reach the next note, that's okay.) The instructions were to integrate 1/(1+x²) from -1/2 to 1/2 (the antiderivative of 1/(1+x²) is arctanh(x) + C, AKA the inverse hyperbolic tangent, in case you haven't gotten to hyperbolic trig...). Yes, it was literally the formula exactly, so it seemed easy until I realised the calculator doesn't have an inverse hyperbolic tangent button. After mulling this over for a while, I decided I could define y = arctanh(x), solve for x, use the identity tanh(y) = (e^y-e^-y)/(e^y+e^-y), and then solve for y to learn the logarithmic equivalent of arctanh(x). (NOTE: Okay, we're back!) Good news: it worked. Bad news: I completely lost the teacher somewhere along the way, who was expecting us to solve it using Taylor series. Oops. So I lost points and got a 93%, the scale was set by someone else who got a 99%, and so after accounting for extra credit I ended up with 104%.

When I got the test back and asked about the big red question mark on that problem, teacher explained his confusion, I explained my process, teacher said OH! That makes sense, and gave me back the seven points I had lost. And, since he wasn't about to go recalculate everyone else's grades in the class, that left me with a score that was 1% beyond what was theoretically possible! :D

Okay, anecdote ends here. Those of you who ended up skipping to this point get something to read as well. Most of you are probably part of the broad portion of society who not only hate mathematics, but are openly proud of it, which is a weirdly socially-acceptable display of ignorance. Ever wonder why that is? Paul Lockhart says it's because of the way that mathematics is (erroneously) taught as a science rather than an art, and you probably do appreciate mathematics when you encounter it - you just don't recognise it when you do, because you've been told all of your life that mathematics is something totally different! You can read it here. It is a bit long, but entertaining, illuminatory, and totally worth it. Post your thoughts when you're done.

The One Thing - Paul Colman

The Willpower Paradox

I feel vindicated!

This is something of a personally important issue for me, I guess. I wasn't exactly brought up under the slogan of 'believe in yourself and anything will be possible', but it's a common enough refrain that I was familiar with the idea and sorely confused by it. I'm pretty sure I was born a realist, and my nascent love of science was very clear that if you thought you could do anything just by mustering sufficient determination the laws of physics were going to have some harsh words with you. (Everyone thought this was nit-picking, of course. I was also born a pedant.)

As I continued to try to justify my unfounded thoughts on the matter it also occurred to me that determination was far less important to your success than accurate judgement - since, after all, if your ideas are wrong your inner drive is worthless and if your ideas are right then your determination just hastens what is ultimately inevitable! At some point I discovered and became obsessed with the reductio ad absurdum and the idea that submitting your own ideas to reckless assault for the slightest weakness was the only sure way to guarantee you were right, to prove that it was impossible to be wrong! Oh, and G. K. Chesterton's introduction to Orthodoxy - "I can show you the homes of the supermen... the men who truly believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums" - didn't hurt either.

So basically, I'm really enthusiastic about self-doubt, and I hope you'll forgive me if I point you in the direction of two much-better-written articles - at Scientific American and Nowsourcing - and simply seize a shamelessly egotistic opportunity to relish my own correctness.

The Clockyard - Abney Park

There was a young boy, in a clockyard,
Building himself from the pieces he found
Screwing on what's been left on the ground
Hoping to finish enough, one day, to leave

The years flew by, and some gears fell off -
Fears and rust and tears he doffed
And bravely searched, while parts he scoffed,
But soon he found -

There was a young man, in a clockyard,
Building himself from the pieces he found
Screwing on what's been left on the ground
Hoping to finish enough, one day, to leave

The years flew by, and some gears fell off -
Fears and rust and tears he doffed
And bravely searched, while parts he scoffed,
Until he found -

There was a grown man, in a clockyard -
Building himself from the pieces he found
Screwing on what's been left on the ground
Hoping to finish enough one day to lead

He thought to himself, "If I wait too long
To find the pieces I need, then my chance might be gone
What I need might be outside the gate
But I will never know, if I continue to wait."

And then he had a dream:
An old man cried in a clock yard,
Giving up on the scrap that he found on the ground,
"I can't build myself from this scrap all around!"
The man woke up and said, "I must leave."

Ethics and Madness in Beowulf

Okay, interesting fact time!.

One of the problematic aspects of translating Beowulf is the use of ambiguous words whose clear definition is not known. One of these words is 'æglæca', a noun which has connotations of monstrousness, vileness, or hostility. This, however, is complicated by the fact that it is used at various points to describe not only every one of the monsters Beowulf fights, but Beowulf himself. Repeatedly. Indeed, at one point Beowulf and the dragon he is fighting are described together using the plural form 'æglæcean'.

That the authoritative translation of Beowulf (by Frederick Klaeber) makes the interesting choice of translating the word differently depending on to whom it is applied - 'warrior'/'hero' for Beowulf, 'monster'/'demon'/'fiend' for Grendel or Grendel's mother, 'wretch'/'monstrous woman' for æglæcwif (a feminine form used for Grendel's mother) - does not simplify matters.

Now, this is already interesting in the implication of considerably more moral awareness and complexity to the Anglo-Saxons than is normally attributed, but I find Doreen Gillam's analysis particularly thought-provoking. She argues that the term is used to imply "supernatural," "unnatural" or even "inhuman" characteristics, as well as hostility towards other creatures: "Beowulf, the champion of men against monsters, is almost inhuman himself. [Aglæca/æglæca] epitomises, in one word, the altogether exceptional nature of the dragon fight. Beowulf, the champion of good, the 'monster' amongst men, challenges the traditional incarnation of evil, the Dragon: æglæca meets æglæcan."

In other words, it's possible that what we have is a legitimate Anglo-Saxon word that translates with the vernacular meaning of 'psycho'! :D

Balance Slays the Demon - Poets of the Fall

Deep in the ocean of darkness, in the mirror of light, balance becomes a stranger... and in your fantasies, he rides a storm on your peace. Beyond the shadows he settled for more. There is a miracle illuminated.

Deep in the ocean of darkness, in the mirror of light, balance becomes a stranger
And in your fantasies, he rides a storm on your peace - wake up and smell the danger

Ever the light casts a shadow, ever the night springs from the light

In the end, it's never just the light you need,
When balance slays the demon, you'll find peace,
In the end, it's never just the dark you seek,
When balance slays the demon, you'll find peace,
Find the peace

Beyond the lake he called home, lies a deeper darker ocean green.

Like an evil twin, feel it scratching within,
Like an insane sovereign ranger,
And his beautiful face with his leathery lace,
So can't you see the play he's staging?

Ever the light casts a shadow, ever the night springs from the light

In the end, it's never just the light you need,
When balance slays the demon, you'll find peace,
In the end, it's never just the dark you seek,
When balance slays the demon, you'll find peace,
Find the peace

yranidrO dellac ,nwot rehtona ni ,niaga neppah lliw tI

In the end, it's never just the light you need,
When balance slays the demon, you'll find peace,
In the end, it's never just the dark you seek,
When balance slays the demon, you'll find peace,
Find the peace

Screaming, new darkness descends on this frail frame, I drown in fathomless black space. Will I never scratch the depths of this domain? I see not, yet nothing could be worse then the shades my mind calls herein, alone, in my own Wake the unravelling of reasons schemed.

A Matter of Perseverance...

Apparently I've become Valve; I get two installments into a project and forget how to count to three. -_-

Well, so much for that. I will be certain to finish both the Strange Loop series and the Trouble with Sanity series, I promise, and in the future I won't even try to start something like that again.

In the meantime, however, I'm currently in the middle of finals. Regular posts should resume next week. I'll conclude both of the above series as soon as possible while moving on at the same time.

Sleep - Poets of the Fall

Hear your heartbeat
Beat a frantic pace
And it's not even 7 AM

You're feeling the rush
Of anguish settling
You cannot help showing them in.

Hurry up then,
Or you'll fall behind and
They will take control of you

And you need to heal
The hurt behind your eyes
Fickle words crowding your mind

So...
Sleep, sugar, let your dreams flood in,
Like waves of sweet fire, you're safe within
Sleep, sweetie, let your floods come rushing in,
And carry you over to a new morning
Try as you might
You try to give it up
Seems to be holding on fast

Its hand in your hand,
A shadow over you,
A beggar for soul in your face

Still it don't matter
If you won't listen,
If you won't let them follow you

You just need to heal,
Make good all your lies -
Move on and don't look behind

Day after day
Fickle visions
Messing with your head
Fickle visions
Sleeping in your bed,
Messing with your head
Fickle visions
Fickle visions

The Cat and the Moon - The Lord of the Rings

It's a good day for nonsense! :D



There’s an inn of old renown
Where they brew a beer so brown
Moon came rolling down the hill
One Hevnsday night to drink his fill!

On a three-stringed fiddle there,
Played the Ostler’s Cat so fair
The hornèd Cow that night was seen
To dance a jig upon the green!

Called by the fiddle to the middle of the muddle where the cow with a caper sent the small dog squealing,
Moon in a fuddle went to huddle by the griddle but he slipped in a puddle and the world went reeling -

Downsides went up - hey! Outsides went wide,
As the fiddle played a twiddle
And the Moon slept till Sterrenday!
Upsides went west - hey! Broadsides went boom,
With a twiddle on the fiddle inn the middle by the griddle
And the Moon slept till Sterrenday!

Dish from off the dresser pranced,
Found a Spoon and gaily danced -
Horses neighed and champed their bits,
For the bloodshot Moon had lost his wits!

Well, Cow jumped over, Dog barked wild -
Moon lay prone and sweetly smiled!
Ostler cried, “Play faster, Cat!
Because we all want to dance like that!”

Gambol and totter till you’re hotter than a hatter and you spin all akimbo like a windmill flailing!
Whirl with a clatter till you scatter every cotter and the strings start a-pinging as the world goes sailing!

Downsides go up - hey! Outsides go wide!
You can clatter with your platter
But the Moon slept till Sterrenday!
Upsides go west - hey! Broadsides go boom!
With a batter and a clatter you can shatter every platter
But the Moon slept till Sterrenday!

Fi-fo-fiddle-diddle!
Fi-fo-fiddle-diddle!
Hey-yey-yey-yey-oh-ho
Hey-yey-yey-yey-oh-ho!
Hey-hey-din-dang-do
Hey-hey-din-dang-do!
Hoo-rye-and-hott-a-cott-a ho
Hoo-rye-and-hott-a-cott-a ho ho!
Hott-a-cott-a-hotta-ko
Hott-a-cott-a-ko-cott-a-ko-ho!
Fi-fo-fiddle-diddle-hi-ho
Fi-fo-fiddle-diddle-hi-ho!
Ho fiddlee-ding-galli-do
Ho fiddlee-ding-galli-do
Hoo-rye-hoo-rye oops-oops- ay!
Hoo-rye-hoo-rye oops-oops- ay!
Hotta-cotta-hotta-cotta-mi-fo-fo
Hotta-cotta-hotta-cotta-mi-fo-fo!
Hotta-cotta-hotta-cotta-hotta-cotta-hotta-cotta-hotta-cotta-hotta-cotta-mi-fo-fo!

Downsides go up - hey! Outsides go wide!
With a twiddle on the fiddle in the middle by the griddle
And the Moon slept till Sterrenday!
Upsides go west - hey! Broadsides go boom!
With a batter and a clatter you can shatter every platter
But the Moon slept till Sterrenday!

Hey!

The Devil is a Liar - Seawind

This song is dear to me more for reasons of personal history than for contemplative purposes, but it's perfectly suitable for that as well.

(Also, my website is now apparently the only place online with the lyrics!)



How many times, in the back of your mind,
Have you heard a voice - calling to you?
Won't you come over here, let me talk in your ear -
I have something tempting for you...

I can give you all of the world,
With buildings that reach up to the sky!
Just sign your name in my book today,
And give me your soul when you die...

There are bunches of cars, and big black cigars,
People living their lives by reading the stars
Nobody's watching you now, you can take what you want
Wouldn't you rather have than have not?

Don't be a fool! 'Cause
I can give you all your desires!
Precious diamonds and rubies found so rare
Just sign your name upon the line
And give me your soul if you dare...

But don't you believe - you'll be deceived
You're playing with fire...
Because the devil is a liar

But don't you believe, you'll be deceived
You're playing with fire
Because the devil is a liar

He'll promise you all his kingdoms of gold
Then he'll leave you standing alone in the cold
He'll trick you and tease you
Entice, and then leave you a fool...

The devil's done a number on you, yeah
The devil's done a number on you, yeah
The devil's done a number on you, yeah
The devil's done a number on you, yeah

Every hour of the day, the game of life goes on
And you and I will have to choose the right way from the wrong
And just when you have made your choice, for the game you want to win
The tireless voice you know so well starts tempting once again!

He tells us... there's no God above
And only foolish people fall in love
But it's plain to see
The devil hates you and hates me

He'll trick you and tease you
And then he'll deceive you

But don't you believe - he's a liar
But don't you believe - the devil's a liar
Don't you believe, you'll be deceived, you're playing with fire,
But don't you believe, the devil's a liar
Don't you believe, you'll be deceived, you're playing with fire,
But don't you believe, the devil's a liar
Don't let the devil do his number on you, no...

Dandelions - Five Iron Frenzy

In a field of yellow flowers, underneath the sun
Bluest eyes that spark with lightning - boy, with shoes undone
He is young, so full of hope, revelling in tiny dreams
Filling up his arms with flowers, right for giving any queen!

Running to her, beaming bright while cradling his prize
A flickering of yellow light within his mother's eyes -
She holds them to her heart, keeping them where they'll be safe
Clasped within her very marrow, dandelions in a vase!

She sees love where anyone else would see weeds
All hope is found; here is everything he needs!

Fathomless, Your endless mercy; weight I could not lift...
Where do I fit in this puzzle? What good are these gifts?
Not a martyr or a saint, scarcely can I struggle through -
All that I have ever wanted was to give my best to You!

Lord, search my heart! Create in me something clean
Dandelions - You see flowers in these weeds!

Gently lifting hands to heaven, softened by the sweetest hush
A Father sings over His children, loving them so very much
More than words could warrant, deeper than the darkest blue
More than sacrifice could merit - Lord, I give my heart to You!

Lord, search my heart! Create in me something clean
Dandelions - You see flowers in these weeds

What Good This Deafness? - Trans-Siberian Orchestra

It's a pretty pathetic state of affairs when I can't even be bothered to post a song to think about in a week.



[From the shadows a beautiful spirit, Fate, and her deformed dwarf son, Twist, emerge to inform Beethoven of what he has already deeply suspected, that this is to be his last night on earth. They are accompanied by numerous spirits and ghosts from his past.]

[With each successive crack of lightning the spirits move closer and eventually Beethoven finds their distraction unbearable.]

Beethoven:
What good this deafness, when my whole life I have dread?
What good this deafness, with these voices in my head?
What good this deafness, when this prattle I must hear?
If I were blind, I'm sure they wouldn't disappear!

Twist:
Do you really want to believe what you're saying?
Do you really want to be here alone?
Have I interrupted a moment of praying?
While your life's decaying -
Your sins, are they weighing?
While you've been carving your stone...
All on your own?

Do you really want to sit here in silence?
Could it be that brooding is... part of your art?
Is it an extension of artistic license?
A moving defiance,
Of all of life's tyrants!
While you've been searching your heart...
...Alone? :)
...With us. :D
...In the dark! 8D

[Beethoven implores the spirits to leave him alone, but Twist tells him that as shadows they only exist by the light that Beethoven's life has cast and as that light is fading, it is only natural that they should cling to its last moments of illumination. As the clock strikes midnight their conversation is suddenly interrupted by the appearance of Mephistopheles. His presence causes all the other spirits to shrink silently back to the corners of the room...]

Versus Society

I'm sorry, I've had very little time to continue my posts lately and this may continue into next week. In lieu of a proper post, I'd like to leave you with some examples of what I mentioned briefly last time.
Here are some historical instances when a behaviour was diagnosed as a psychiatric disorder based principally on the Deviance criteria, of whether an individual behaves in accordance with their society. Most of these have either been formally overturned by the DSM or ICD or both, or are controversial while they remain documented.

• Hysteria
• Drapetomania and Dysaethesia Aethiopica
  
• Sluggish Schizophrenia, which I learned of recently in The Secret History of Moscow, a fascinating urban fantasy by Ekaterina Sedia. (Also refer to Punitive psychiatry in the Soviet Union.)
• Hospitalism, in which the deaths of infants due to the failures of hospital care were essentially attributed to suicidal depression in the infant
• Imbecility
  
• General Paresis
  
• Homosexuality
  
• Excited Delirium
• Neurasthenia
  

And yes, it is possible that such disorders continue to exist as defined by modern psychiatry as well. It's worth thinking about the various personality disorders, which are essentially various personality types which the patient extends to the point of disorder; or Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which if it were regularly diagnosed in adults and not just children could easily be abused for political purposes. It's also worth considering whether this may be the case for many other more stereotypical and more 'obvious' mental ailments for which deviance is the most prominent diagnostic criterion.

The Psychology of the Mundane

Congratulations. You are, most likely, not crazy.

The reason I feel comfortable stating this is simple. Insanity is, ultimately, a (non-quantitative) measure of normalcy based around how well a person is able to interact with other people around them. It can have a variety of causes, ranging from the individual's genetic heritage to chemical imbalances derived from their environment, to how they understand and behave toward their own personal history. Psychopathologists and abnormal psychologists have developed a variety of approaches to studying, explaining, and treating such problems, appropriate to the individual problems as they are discovered and recognized, but because of the diversity of the field and the nature of the problem it's difficult to speak of as a whole. How do you distinguish someone with actual mental problems from someone who's just rather strange?

To address this issue, four basic questions are used to determine whether a person is insane:

• Deviance: Are the person's thoughts, emotions, or behavior typical of their culture? (Note the specificity of 'their' culture. This is not used to condemn an entire culture or subculture that deviates from the rest of society; it's been a huge problem historically, as I'm sure you can imagine.)
• Distress: Is the person troubled or deeply emotionally affected by the way they think and act? Do they feel in control of themselves?
• Dysfunction: Is the person impaired in their ability to survive? Can they get by in life on a day-to-day basis?
• Danger: Is the person prone to violent or injurious behavior, to themselves or to others?

The vast majority of humanity is self-organized into social groups that promote their own utility and well-being, and most of those people who aren't have physical conditions or circumstances that prevent them from doing so. Therefore, most human beings are, by definition, not crazy. That probably includes you, no matter how really angry or lonely or loopy or rebellious or unsympathetic you've felt recently - if the biggest obstacle to obtaining everything you want in life is the unfair perversity of the cosmos, you're not insane.

So, if you're one of those people, congratulations. You're adapted to society. You're normal enough to get by. You're not less special. You're better off.

Okay. Now flip the coin over and stare at the other side.

If insanity doesn't mean a lot of things you thought it did, the same is true of sanity. Sanity doesn't mean you know what you're doing. Sanity doesn't mean your beliefs and thought processes are true to reality. Sanity doesn't mean you're rational. Sanity doesn't mean you understand. Sanity means you're adapted to society and you're normal enough to get by.

Society is a vast and amorphous beast, a picture puzzle where the pieces are constantly moving and being joined to other pieces and all kinds of different pictures can be created from largely the same pieces... a piece that is considered insane in one particular subset of society may be perfectly well-adjusted to another. And then we could consider phenomena like hallucinations in the sane which 10% of healthy, sane individuals will experience at least once in their lifetimes, despite being almost universally associate with insanity in the popular mindset.

But more importantly than any of that, as far as I'm concerned, is the sticky ethical morass of whether being well-adjusted to human society is in itself a good thing. There is a long, long list of psychological observations demonstrating that human beings do not think clearly or reasonably, do not understand the world around them, do not understand each other, and even do not understand themselves... when you think you have a pretty good understanding of it all, and so does everyone else. It's called cognitive bias.

The Road Goes On - The Lord of the Rings

There's a Road, calling you to stray
Step by step, pulling you away
Under Moon and Star - Take the Road, no matter how far!
Where it leads, no-one ever knows
Don't look back, follow where it goes
Far beyond the Sun - Take the Road, wherever it runs!

The Road goes on, ever ever on
Hill by hill
Mile by mile
Field by field
Stile by stile
The Road goes on, ever ever on

Mountain and valley and pasture and meadow
Stretching unending for mile after mile
Fenland and moorland and shoreline and canyon
Bordered by hurdle and hedgerow and stile

One more mile, then it's time to eat
Pick some pears, succulent and sweet
To the farthest shore - Take the Road a hundred miles more!
Sweet pink trout, tickled from a stream
Milk a goat, churn it into cream
Far beyond the Sun - Take the Road wherever it runs.

The Road goes on, ever ever on
Moor by moor
Glen by glen
Vale by vale
Fen by fen
The Road goes on, ever ever on

See the Road run past your doorstep
Calling for your feet to stray
Like a deep and rolling river
It will sweep them far away
Just beyond the far horizon
Lies a waiting world unknown
Like the dawn its beauty beckons
With a wonder all its own!

Númenna!
Auti i ré.
Yallume! Hilya!
Númenna!
Auti i ré.
Yallume! Hilya!
Hilya! Hilya! Auta. Hilya!
Númenna!
Auti i ré.
Yallume! Hilya!

Mountain and valley and pasture and meadow
Stretching unending for mile after mile
Fenland and moorland and shoreline and canyon
Bordered by hurdle and hedgerow and stile

The Colour of Insanity

Two excellent writers I follow have been independently writing on the same subject: Kyle (A Deeper, Darker Ocean Green), in Psychopath, and Nixie (Musings from the Well), in an entire series (!) called Disturbing the Disturbed. Both would like you to know that you are not a psychologist, you don't actually know what the signs of mental illness are because everything you've heard about them is the second-hand grossly-oversimplified theme park version, and, basically, you just don't know enough facts yet for your self-diagnosis to be worth sixpence.

Go on, go and read. They are fascinating. Detailed. And right.

Don't fret, though. You're not less special because you're not crazy. In fact, you already have enough of your own psychological problems to get in the way of accurately understanding yourself and the world around you without having to claim psychological and emotional disorders as well!

So, next week, we get to talk about normal psychology and cognitive biases.

The Storm - Blackmore's Night

A timeless and forgotten place,
The moon and sun in endless chase;
Each in quiet surrender, while the other reigns the sky...
The midnight hour begins to laugh -
A summer evening's epitaph -
The winds are getting crazy, as the storm begins to rise...

...

Wild were the winds that came,
In the thunder and the rain!
Nothing ever could contain the rising of the storm!
In the wings of ebony,
Darkened waves fill the trees
Wild winds of warning echo through the air!

Follow the storm, now, I've got to get out of here
Follow the storm, as you take to the sky
Follow the storm, now, it's all so crystal-clear
Follow the storm, as the storm begins to rise

It seems to come from everywhere -
Welcome to the Dragon's Lair!
Fingers running through your hair, she asks you out to play!
For all of Nature's sorcery,
The most bewitching entity -
Heaven hath no fury like the rising of the storm!

Follow the storm, now, I've got to get out of here
Follow the storm, as you take to the sky
Follow the storm, now, it's all so crystal-clear
Follow the storm, as the storm begins to rise

Meet the New Year!

...same as the Old Year!

I want to start taking advantage of the fact that there is more than one day per week. Sunday will be a day for sharing music, and possibly other art, that I find worthy of reflection. This category will be denoted with the tag "Selah".

Poets of the Fall - War

Do you remember standing on a broken field,
White crippled wings beating the sky?
The harbingers of war, with their nature revealed,
And our chances flowing by

If I can let the memory heal,
I will remember you with me on that field...

When I thought that I fought this war alone,
You were there by my side, on the frontline
When I thought that I fought without a cause,
You gave me a reason to try

Turn the page - I need to see something new -
For now, my innocence is torn
We cannot linger on this stunted view,
Like rabid dogs of war

I will let the memory heal
I will remember you with me on that field

When I thought that I fought this war alone,
You were there by my side, on the frontline
And we fought to believe the impossible!
When I thought that I fought this war alone,
We were one with our destinies entwined!
When I thought that I fought without a cause,
You gave me the reason why!

With no-one wearing their real face,
It's a whiteout of emotion,
And I've only got my brittle bones to break the fall

When the love in letters fade,
It's like moving in slow motion
And we're already too late if we arrive at all

And then we're caught up in the arms race -
An involuntary addiction -
And we're shedding every value our mothers taught

So will you please show me your real face,
Draw the line in the horizon?
'Cause I only need your name to call the reasons why I fought...

When I thought that I fought this war alone,
You were there by my side, on the frontline
And we fought to believe the impossible!
When I thought that I fought this war alone,
We were one with our destinies entwined!
When I thought that I fought without a cause,
You gave me the reason why!