Airing Out After Midnight

It was just after midnight, I was inside my ground-level apartment, writing my last blog post, when I noticed in the air, an intense, petroleum-like smell. My slider door was open and I thought the smell was coming from outside. It was rapidly becoming highly unbearable to breath, so I closed the slider and vacated, outside into fresh air.

I found the origin of the smell coming from the darkness of the bushes beside my patio. The patio light was on, back-lighting the brush. I stared for while, then started to notice in the brush, what looked like a strange, vertical fir branch. I stepped toward this fir branch, when it suddenly charged at me, postured like a wild bull, emerging onto the lawn, revealing it was an angry skunk, making highly-aggressive eye contact at me. I immediately retreated into the building, and at the same time, hated thinking that I was letting it know it could push me around. I was worried it would stay...

I returned outside, looked around for rocks, didn't find any, and found one pine cone. I returned to the skunk's last location, threw the pine cone and saw there was no movement. So I assumed it left, then spent the next two hours airing out my apartment, to a point where I could tolerate it, then wrote this post :-)

Seeing More Clearly

I'm writing a screenplay and want to convey an idea: that information from personal experience shapes our individual belief and perception. What you know affects how you see your reality. Your eyes are just a lens, like that of a camera. Light enters, hits the back of the eye, where it transfers into electric impulses, that travel down your optic nerve, to the back of your brain. The external reality you see is an internal holograph manufactured in your brain. What you know already, gives meaning to what you see next.

In my story, my characters can't just talk about this idea, I have to demonstrate it through their dramatic action in a logical story. It's like solving a complex psychological puzzle, through understanding the mechanics of human behaviour. For me, it's a journey of my own enlightenment. When I solve this story puzzle, I will be more knowledgeable and my perception will be more clear, and this I like.