Digitized Another Maze! I Chose An Easy One So That I Could Familiarize Myself With Making Them Again.

Digitized another maze! I chose an easy one so that I could familiarize myself with making them again.

This was made back for SMB's 25th anniversary. 30 is comin' up soon...

larger version

From the Shatter Official Videogame Soundtrack.

From the OC ReMix album Sonic CD: Temporal Duality.

Mythology of the Stars (a poem)

Originally written for a friend.

Mythology of the Stars

When on the fourth day God put the stars in the sky, He set them up as watchers Over everything else He made.

We use all our instruments To study His creation; To understand the stars And why He put them there.

We know how beautiful their inner workings are, How they shine and light the sky. But fact, though it reveals much, Becomes dull over time.

The stars shine too brightly to be dull; They have a different story to tell.

God placed them to watch us And observe creation's every move. The audience of the universe, They have seen eons of life and love.

Their light is known to men: It warms up the sky. It pierces the darkness And shows us our way.

But it has a dual purpose. Every move that is made Is detected by changes In the light the star gives out.

Stars have seen many things Even lightyears away; Tales of entire planets, Of races and species, lives and deaths.

They have seen the rise and fall Of great empires and kingdoms; Some, mighty and just; others, great conquerors; More, peaceable and meek; all ending in time.

They have seen countless instances Of two people together, Living in companionship and love But driven apart by death or scorn.

They have seen the greatest minds at work Creating, inventing, debating, demostrating; Living to be famous for a time Before time took their fame from them.

They have seen unfolded the stories Of torment and malice and shame; The only hope, plea and cry of the victims Is that time would take them away.

They have seen the stories of entire races Become sentient and learn about their surroundings; The races advance and create; they build and destroy; They create comfort and shelter from the natural world outside.

Their skyscrapers are impressive; Their lights shine far and wide. But in all their actions They have left out the stars.

The stars look down on this society And are blocked by a heavy shield: A sphere of light, an aura bright, That holds fast and will not yield.

Those stars who shine through All the bright lights and advancements - They have a new obstacle to confront, One that proves more challenging:

The very shelters that protect the race Hide them from the stars; No longer can the stars see the race Or learn of its workings.

But for those who know the secret, And go out to greet the sky: They are noticed by the stars, And they see the shining light.

God sees the work of His creation, Again noting the stars; They have done their work well, And have been a reminder to creation:

For all the light and love the stars give And all the things they have seen, God loves us more, and cares for us, And sees all we do, even inside ourselves.

May the stars watch over you.

I still don't know if I'm a morning person or a night owl.

It used to be that I would wake up at 6:30 every Saturday morning and play video games until noon. I don't do that kind of thing anymore (since I can play whenever I want to now), but whenever I wake up early in the morning, I'm at my happiest and most creative. I LOVE mornings, in fact.

But I can't wake up to save my life. Lately I've been waking up at noon! It's really sad. Part of this stems from my other tendency - I hate sleep.

Many nights, I'll end up staying up until three in the morning. I try to limit that to midnight during the week, but it's because I hate sleeping. I never want to sleep, so I avoid it as much as possible... by staying awake until o'dark stupid in the morning. Oddly, I don't feel tired when I do this (most of the time). There's a little bit of drag, but I can stay up for a long time with energy to spare.

It gets really confusing on a day like today, when I went to bed at 2AM and woke up at 7AM more rested than having slept from midnight to nine (like on a weekday - that's getting dangerously close to missing class). Even when I go to bed at 10PM I still can't seem to wake up when I want to.

One of these days I'll figure it out... maybe.

Over time I've slowly discovered an odd phenomenon about myself and my ability to understand things: words are stored in my head as feelings.

The first time I figured this out, it was with the word "freezing." When I hear that word, I actually feel a little colder. It's a very subtle feeling, almost unnoticeable, and it lasts a shorter time than it takes for me to even say the word.

It's a subconscious thing. In fact, 99% of the time I don't even notice. Occasionally I'll just notice it for no reason at all. Other times I watch myself to see if it's really happening, or if I'm just making it up.

Naturally, I've tried other things. It turns out I do this with numbers as well. I have a very distinct feeling of the presence of "one," or "three," and even an idea of "one taken from three." It starts to distort with larger numbers; I can rationalize that 10,002 - 10,001 is the same as 2 - 1, but they don't feel the same. Another thing that works is punctuation; I can feel the breaks and pauses in the sentence differently based on a single comma or capitalized letter.

This plays into how I understand the world. When my teacher explains something in class, I'm able to connect with the idea in a way that lets me explain it to others in a way they can understand. When someone is telling a story of what happened to them, it's essentially happening to me at the same time; I'm able to empathize. It is the strangest and most wonderful thing.

Why do I say all this? Because maybe this is normal for people, and someone can get some use out of knowing this about themselves. Or, maybe I'm just lucky. One thing's for sure: this is all just further proof that I think too much.