ideas

Urban Myths

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We hear stories and local legends, and like with Fairy Tales, urban myths have a way of hanging around, being retold, shared, and handed down through generations sometimes. Smaller and more local than the grand Myths, Monsters and Legends that end up being known through various lands. These ones being relevant to their location and time, and often with threads of truth running through them, but have had their own element of ‘Chinese Whispers’ added over the years.

But I watched an interesting documentary about Staten Island, and of their urban legend called Cropsey. Now, I have already been looking at certain islands around that area, with Coney Island being mentioned in my articles A Train of Thought and Being Real, linking them to ideas of enticing young people to islands with promises of fun and freedom. Also, Ellis Island has not gone unnoticed as a central hub of movement, looking like an ordinary processing centre when told it was for registering immigrants to America, but it seeming like so much more now. But Staten Island is different, and as they say it, became a dumping ground. Not just for vast amounts of rubbish and waste from New York, but for the ill, disabled and infirm, with many buildings being used as hospitals, testing sites, disease control sites and so on. And it was only because of a missing child, in fact a number of missing children, that it became a very real focus point for many at that time. It seems there have been an awful lot of occasions where people, and more alarmingly children have gone missing and never been found, or what their final fate was. Becoming new legends and myths in people’s lives.

And many of us might remember such strange stories from our childhood, or have heard various legends of places along the way. A few films below that come to mind for this subject, which all have a slight supernatural element running through them, apart from The Village, that was more a psychological one pretending to have supernatural entities causing havoc.

Candyman (1992), The Blair Witch Project (1999), IT (1990), Jeepers Creepers (2001), Urban Legends (1998), The Village (2004), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

But we are led to believe that it’s the imagination that adds the supernatural elements and make them more than they are. However, that doesn’t seem to tally with what we see or know. Although people’s attention can be caught by sensationalism, mostly people prefer the reasonable and more ordinary answer. Often not willing to accept even the idea of an extra dimension of darkness, because it’s safer for the mind I suspect. So, I wonder how it is that such stories of demons, ghosts, witchcraft, vampires, rituals, entities and such made it into the mainstream. Just though fiction? Or is it that fiction is the only way to cross that border of ideas, comprehension, and understanding. To make people consider the extreme of it being real, so as to plant the seeds of warning.

And why would we need those warnings? Are movies and stories just a modern version of those old fairy tales, updated for the times but still there to pass it on. As well as desensitising some people, it alerts others, to the strange and dark that mostly likes to stay hidden and be among us, like the day walker, just blending in. So, myths and legends do something more than just entertain or keep the past alive. They are a cautionary tale often with threads of truth running through them, trying to reveal themselves. All we can do is pay attention as you don’t know if it is just fiction after all…

A Short Walk – one of my short stories, if you like that sort of thing.

(c) K Wicks

Terraforming

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It’s an idea we usually think of about other planets, of making the terrain and atmosphere habitable for us humans, but is it perhaps that we are being terraformed ourselves? As a planet and perhaps as a species, and maybe have been in the past so that we ended up in a ‘Goldilocks Zone’, and with the physiology we have today.

The Martian (2015) – showing how a human tries to sustain himself and grow things when stranded on Mars, giving a rather bleak and harrowing view of a futile looking landscape to try and ‘survive’ in.

Transformers – I guess the clue is in the name there, but part of the storyline for the films, was that they would try and transform earth into a machine world.

The Matrix (1999) – the film insinuated that the setting for that human battery farm, was actually earth, and that it had been changed along the way starting with the battle for supremacy. “We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power.” Makes me think of how today there appears to be plans afoot to obscure the sun, because what that movie failed to mention, is that humans are also dependent on the sun, as are all the other topside living organisms. Many are starting to notice that something isn’t quite right with ‘up there’.

Oblivion – The TET, a vast machine that appeared to be helping to take the last resources from earth to a new home for humans. The lie that kept the cloned humans in the dark and working to help achieve that aim, all the while being used and deceived for something else’s ‘greater good’. Sound familiar?

And perhaps there is a type of terraforming that occurs in the mind too, Laying The Foundations for immense structures of confusion and fear to be built and maintained mentally, in a personal metaverse for each person. Terror-Forming, where a terrifying reality takes shape but only in your mind, which is well equipped to run with it, facilitate and enhance it, using imagination and emotions to nurture and sustain it. Being Terror-Formed, so that we do our own terraforming, believing like with the TET, that we are trying to escape the world collapsing around us, when it appears humans are the ones helping to collapse it. This is why I guess many people look to those ‘in power’ with a somewhat different view, and ask whether they are in fact normal humans, as there appears something so very sinister and vacant about many now, that it’s noticeable. And it could just be that people find it hard to really believe and understand that other humans can be that dark, and nasty and calculated, which of course, they can. But there is also something else, a bit darker and bit weirder that seems to be playing out these days, so all ideas are being considered…

(c) K Wicks

Playing Chicken

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Some of you might have played that game in your childhood. The skill-based danger game of dodging traffic. The point is to get to the other side unharmed, and ideally not cause a crash or issue other than to show off to your mates. Or prove something to them and yourself.

But lately it feels like a big weird game of chicken going on, with higher stakes, more showing off, not so much care for not causing harm to others, and strangely, actual chickens are now involved. We know there are extra regulations trying to muscle their way into food production, farming and agriculture generally. Herd culls, rewilding, printed ‘meat’, raw milk, numbers, stats and targets from models and ideas of control. All of it neatly leading to a major disruption in the well laid systems there for food sustainability. Almost as if they think people have lost the ability to think ahead or imagine consequences. And if you understand that the ones playing chicken want those consequences, well, like I said, it ups the stakes and changes the ‘game’ somewhat.

Birds – there has been various attempts on the bird population along the way, or it could have just simply been a benign way to familiarise people with the programming to come. To believe the news when they talk of a virus, to accept what scientists say about it, to have fear about what it could become. And then the inevitable effect it has on the farm, or area they designate as being ‘infected’. Then other species become the target, and nobody notices because its small and one farm at a time, one sanctuary, one factory, one industry at a time. Slowly cutting it all back.

Chickens – like I said, chickens and birds have been used before for purpose of whipping up a frenzy and used as a handy tool. Currently a rule is attempting to come into force in October in the UK, to force anyone who keeps domestic birds or chickens to register them. Just like previous times which has morphed into The Digital Doomsday Database, this is adding to that upgrade.

Because chickens are rather awesome, they provide a consistent food source which is highly nutritious for us, and potentially many other benefits. They are great at dealing with food scraps, eat insects and vermin, therefore are natural pest control, and are an extra food source if needed.

Food chain – I think of the overall importance of each farm animal that gets targeted the most, and clearly cows and chickens are top of the list. And for cows, they also provide consistently, have extra purpose and uses, are food and help to keep the land in check. But, I also realised that the raw milk aspect might be linked to the amazing discovery of curing smallpox, as when that was prevalent, it was milk maids they say who didn’t get infected. Leading me to wonder if certain animals are there to protect us in a way, through that process of eating. Strange I know, but when everything seems so perfectly placed and developed for our consumption, I wonder if it is necessary.

I’ve already speculated on eating soulless and dead food that has never had ‘life’ in You Are What You Eat, and is the opposite view I guess to the vegetarian or vegan thought process behind it. That we need certain things to remain part of what we have come to know as the natural world, like in Spirited Away when the supernatural food is eaten, they become part of the weird and unnatural landscape. And it really is starting to feel as though a very weird and unnatural landscape is trying to be created, attempting to deceive your senses and replace your instinct. But deep down, we know, or at least many do, that this is not the way it is meant to be…

(c) K Wicks

Big, Yet Small

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I have already written articles about Giants, and their smaller counterpart covered in Little People, but this one was of thinking of how we have represented the smaller version in stories and films. Wondering again if there is some kind of smaller world we aren’t entirely aware of, or that we are the smaller ones and world already.

Alice in Wonderland – and that first strange room she needed to get through. With the eat me and drink me potions to make her big and small to fit through the door. But because everything was quite off there, it was difficult to discern thereafter, how big or small anything was as there was no starting point. Alice herself would have been the starting point had she remained the same size as in the ‘real world’, but as she didn’t, you weren’t able to tell unless they hinted at a large difference, i.e. walking through the ‘oversized’ flowers, making us think again that Alice was small and the flowers were what we would think of as normal size.

Honey I shrunk the kids – this shouldn’t really need any further explanation, even if you haven’t seen it, the title really does tell it like it is. The perils of being small in a big world, although comedy, was still a good idea to convey the sudden differences faced when you are a very small fish in a big pond.

Inner Space – a film about shrinking down someone to be put into the bloodstream of a human body. Seemed like just a bit of fun back then, these days, not so much once you know what scientists appear to be getting up to.

Downsizing – one I haven’t seen other than a clip for the trailer, of people wanting to shrink down to a smaller size to they can have more and be less of a drain on the normal size world. Creating a miniature functioning society, where the old world becomes full of giants and rather large structures, and the new small world gets on or something like that. Maybe what we think of as giants of the past, were just normal, and we were the shrunken weirdos?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Mike TV, the annoying kid who gets transported into the television, but shrunk down as was the chocolate bar, to be fully formed, just smaller, or indeed, larger.

It’s a fascinating and crazy idea when you think of either supersizing, or minimising something which then remains intact and as it was just with a new size. And given all the things we have in the world which show where things were indeed much larger, and we have all been scaled down through temperature, climate and atmosphere over time. Imagine if that change was more instantaneous and could be caused by those things, it might be of interest to then create something that could harness that potential. Creating large and small as needed rather than waiting for nature to mosey along on its own timescale, people are impatient and mortal, so I can see why we find it hard to ‘wait and see’. But all that tinkering and experimenting comes at a price, and one I am not sure we are yet aware of…

(c) K Wicks

Monkey Puzzle

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Not the tree, although they really are quite impressive as trees go. This is a wondering of that old argument of where did we come from, or how we came to be as we are. From monkey to man. The oddest idea I was given years ago that has kept rumbling on over the decades, was that we humans are the missing link. That ‘aliens’ tinkered with apes and monkeys and created ‘humans’. It seemed quite out there, not gonna lie, and even though it came from my own parent, I took it with a pinch of salt, yet filed it for later thought. And that later thought came about a couple of weeks ago watching a vid about mythologies and ancient texts, leading onto other things that tie in and spring to mind.

Vanara – “in Hinduism they are known as forest-dwelling monkey people. In the epic the Ramayana, the Vanaras help Rama defeat Ravana. They are generally depicted as humanoid apes, or human-like beings.”

The word monkey as well, I wondered if it represents something else that has been lost to time. Man-key, the missing piece of that evolutionary puzzle we are part of. But not in the way Darwin put forward, more in the alien way as mentioned above.

Monkey (TV Series) – a well-loved and epic series of gods, mythology and magic. The main character Monkey making me think of the Vanara.

Flying monkeys – Wizard of Oz. The terrifying army of winged monkey helpers that the wicked witch had. They were adequately human to be extra creepy, and animal enough to make them seem separated from us.

Planet of the Apes – the classic crossover here, representing completely ‘humanised’ apes, and us humans taking the role of animals.

Makes me wonder if splicing, hybrids, or other creations have come before. Or are they an eery premonition of things to come. Because there are an array of them depicted throughout ancient stories and tales. Centaur, minotaur, gorgon, chimera, vanara, ant people, shape shifters and so on. All sorts of things that only seem to find a place in fictional stories these days. Yet there is something about them, something so very tangible that I can’t help but wonder, what if…

(c) K Wicks

War of The Minds

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It was a pre laid trap, a virus, war, disaster and ‘aliens’. It would be a war for the worlds but in a different way. Played in the mind, just as the experimental radio show of it was, for testing the water, Laying The Foundations for a takeover of society.

Two things about this recent episode in our society reminded me of war of the worlds separately along the way. Firstly the idea a virus could wipe out a species completely, of course we are happy about that when it’s the aliens succumbing to it. Not so much when it’s us. But the idea gets planted, that a virus can eliminate your foe.

Secondly, the ‘blood clots’ that seem to have been a consequence of certain products, which in some images look rather like the creeping tentacles of the sprayed red mist. Growing inside their host instead of covering the landscape as they did in the story.

And if you look back through, there are many triggers and influences to steer a thought process. Individually and collectively. To then enhance an idea and amplify its effect on people and helping to shape society and how it functions. Or doesn’t, as is the current situation.

Where those triggers have perhaps all been activated at once, amongst chaos, threats, and a never-ending stream of doom to wash it all down with. A spoonful of tech helps the mass psychosis go down. And go down it has, seemingly now to be deeply rooted and following its projected path, to whatever end…

(c) K Wicks

In The Closet

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A Door, or to be more precise, the door of a wardrobe or cupboard. With a fantastic story or magical adventure, if you go through and follow the lure that led you there. However, there was usually a price or penalty for straying into lands unknown, often with a dark undertone.

Narnia – a serious adventure ensues from this tale, and is one of the first ones I think of when it comes to crazy wardrobe lands.

Time Bandits – this is the second one I think of, again a thrill ride of events, with a demon like supreme being overshadowing the fun.

Poltergeist – not such a fun adventure on the other side of that door, and gives reason to wonder what might just be on the ‘other side’.

Monsters Inc – Doors to children’s bedrooms through their wardrobes, creepy as hell as a storyline. But because it’s animated and colourful, the weird under and overtones don’t seem to get discussed much.

Coraline – not quite a wardrobe or cupboard, but A Portal through a tiny bricked up door, not a wardrobe, but still the face of the portal to an alternate ‘reality’.

Alice in Wonderland – no door, but she fell through a rather long and strange tunnel. As with a few other tales of tunnels, the Woolpit Green Children and the origin of the cabbage patch kids. Although they are often said to be caves and tunnels, so the story widens once you start factoring in caves.

Winchester House (California) – a very strange house and one I was fortunate enough to visit many years ago. It has lots of features that don’t make sense, but one of them are doorways that open to solid brick walls – like the above in Coraline. And wardrobes that are doors to the next room. Weird on the face of it, but maybe not if it was perhaps for others to use, if you catch my drift.

But it seems there is definitely a theme of something lurking and using doorways as a gateway from somewhere else. And as I always say, it could just be imagination and good storytelling. Or it could be, something does have access through those portals, and is indeed, lurking…

(c) K Wicks