About Mr. Gryphon & FailSafe

On June 16, 2006 about seven months into the first iteration of this blog, I introduced a character named Mr. Gryphon for the first time in a blog post entitled Fainting In Coils.  The post is about us having dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in Union Square.  I originally created him because I was breaking up with my ex  and it was my way of keeping him around for a little while longer.   Even in his first iteration, he wasn't really like my ex though he would sometimes make comments or do things that reminded me of him.  By his second post, Mr. Gryphon was already evolving into his own unique character and this process has continued.

Right out of the gate, I started writing posts where we were wandering around inside songs and movies then on August 1, 2006, I had a dream about a deadly young girl named April who looks a lot like Go-Go from Kill Bill Pt. 1.  This dream was so strange and disturbing that I couldn't get it out of my mind.  I didn't know what she wanted or why she was so angry so I decided to write a story where Mr. Gryphon and I go into the dream and talk to her.  It turned into a three-part story and was very cathartic.  I haven't posted it here nor will I because it's extremely personal but my strange world, the setting for postings about me and Mr. Gryphon which I now refer to as The Forest Of My Imagination ("The Forest"), was introduced for the first time.

Genesis for The Forest started years ago with a vivid dream I had about an amazing Library with cathedral architecture, complete with flying buttresses and huge stained glass windows.  The best thing of all was the Library was all mine.  When I woke up I wished I could have taken a video recorder into dream so I could show others what it looked like.  The Library is now my residence in The Forest.  Later I added the maze with blue doors that constantly move around.  There's an actual forest, a beach, and the Stillpool, a lake that represents my capacity to love others.  In addition, there's another place I call the Burned Out Landscape Of My Dreams which started out as the location of a series of disturbing nightmares.  Other places include Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, and many transitional places.  All of these places have been written about in stories, most notably in my story FailSafe.

Mr. Gryphon, as I've mentioned before, is me.  In fact all the characters in these stories are me.  As of now, I've written a total of three complete (and rather long) stories featuring him and the other characters who populate The Forest, and many individual blog posts.  I've only posted one of the stories here, FailSafe.  All stories and posts that have to do with Mr. Gryphon and The Forest are very personal.  They are always about something concrete going on in my life and the longer stories are my way of working through a private issue.

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I had a second blog, Fainting in Coils, which I took down on July 9, 2011 after I figured out how to create button labels at the top of my blog.  I started Fainting in Coils as a place to house my posts about Mr. Gryphon and to provide a home for any longer stories I might post involving these characters.  Everything has been consolidated here on San Francisco Life and can be accessed via the buttons at the top of the blog.

All posts that would have been on Fainting in Coils will now be labeled "Mr. Gryphon." I created a link list for FailSafe and its Asides in the correct order on the side bar.

You should know that FailSafe is very heavy in religious imagery due to my fascination with religion.  I'm not a religious person at all but my imagination latches onto these elements all the same.  Some people might find some of the story elements offensive.

Thanks for reading.