Our Mother

Our mother of sorrows
our mother of the thousand faces
multifaceted jewel adorning the universe
breath of our breath
heart of our hearts
the soil we walk upon
the breast that feeds us
the embrace that receives us
when all is said and done for.

A million thanks to her
written in blood everyday
in the blood of her children
slaughtered without thought or feeling.
Mother, please forgive us
for we know not.
I am so
sorry.

Letters with no receivers

You like writing letters so much. Letters, lists, memos, diaries, digital letters, gods help you, you live immersed in the written word like it’s the air you breathe. And it is. It’s both what you breathe and what you choke on. Because that’s what you end up doing. Choking on papers and unspoken conversations with people who are absent, or dead, or not real.

You listen to love songs and murmur the song along with the singer. And you wonder, when the time comes for you to leave, what of that gift? Who will get the uniqueness of your voice save for the crows that don’t feast on the flesh of the dead anymore, and what will they do with this ill-begotten loot?
Perhaps sing love songs to themselves after midnight, sing love songs with a human voice when no-one is there to hear them. Scare the dead.

Your imagination tortures you like you share your mind with an evil twin. You are the crippled twin of the two, left to watch while the other mocks you for everything you (cannot) do. For every wall and barrier that shuts you off and surrounds you the other twin sees only sky, an open sky you are forever doomed to watch without the ability to soar. You look at rooftops and trees and you can almost see yourself there, perched lazily and looking at passers by with the audacity of a cat or a winged creature. You see yourself dancing on rooftops and dangling from windowsills and laughing wildly as you somersault from one impossible feat to the next and then gravity lands on your chest like a tombstone and reality slaps you. And the evil twin of your imagination laughs at both and gives you and them the finger. And with something akin to fever you wish you were shallow and boring and you could only think about your mundane job and what to cook for supper and to buy some milk on the way home. Not about dancing on rooftops and singing from trees, not about the open sky that laughs at your face every time you look up.

The night is so beautiful. Like a velvet curtain of negative light. Pull the curtain aside and you’ll find a hidden door of endless possibilities. Life and death kiss each other and laugh, laugh, laugh.
The earth is so beautiful. Like a living jewel sparkling and breathing. You are so afraid that She’s breathing Her last that you want to scream.
You miss flying so much.
You miss killing so much.
You’ve done neither in this lifetime but you remember them so vividly that your heart breaks.

Words, words, words are so cheap. They are a penny a bucketful. Aren’t you bored?
Shut up and get out.
The night is so beautiful.
Like killing. Like flying.
Out.

[Bartek Borowiec the male model in both beautiful photos]

Nothing like Facebook

A test for you:

On a night out clubbing you are approached by a handcuffed couple wearing odd garments consisting mainly of latex and lace that leave their private parts exposed. You feel:

A) Freaked out. What the hell? I thought this was a weirdo-free place!
B) Excited. You've always wanted to be part of a threesome, only you did not know how to start or where to look!
C) Interested. You love latex!
D) Indifferent. Your outfit is so much more interesting!

If your answer is A, you are in the wrong blog. If the answer is B, C, or D, then join us. We are really friendly freaks! :-)

Cute as a crocodile

I am restless. I can’t calm myself and I don’t even want to try. I partly know what’s wrong, but there is nothing I can do to make things better. Sometimes what is here bites me, sometimes what is not here cuts me. I am trapped in the exact middle of suffering. Suffering? Not really. I am trapped in the exact middle and refuse to feel anything. (See previous post). Save for my heart that yelps like an abandoned kitten and my brain that is filled to the brim and overflowing and my loins that have once more started their never-ending whining (end of period, beginning of ovulation) all is fine. All is peachy. All is great.

I refuse. Refuse to make myself cheap, to mingle with all the people that drag their hearts (or what’s left of them) in the mud of every day exposure, of meaningless facebook chat, that throw their hearts in the mincing machine. I refuse to dress my heart as a whore, dress my body in a way that hints “available” and go out, to bars and cafes in order “to meet someone”. I am not “someone”, an interchangeable vague quantity. I refuse to shut up, to feign stupidity, to become “cute”. I am 5’10’’. I don’t do cute. I do tall with generous curves and vicious fists, I do tall with ritualistic tattoos, a stinging tongue and an acidic intellect. I also do vulnerable as fuck for animals and innocents. I don’t do spinster, agreeable, easy going, conventional or safe. It does not matter if my heart cries its loneliness at night because I know who I am and know what my heart needs. We’re priceless and we don’t sell out. There is no trial period, no reduced prices, no nothing. There is genuine feeling, or nothing at all. There is passion or silence. And even if I don’t find what I am looking for, I won’t regret it. I am not here to live a normal life. I am not here to be agreeable or charitable. I am not here to be an example for the social standards that raised all those robots that piss and shit on the planet, relationships, their children, themselves. If I wanted to be such an example I would have opened a fashion blog to advise airheads to buy $600 and $3000 shoes to be looked at as ascended deities from the Hell of credit cards. I would be “cute as a button”, “social” and married with two children, a car and a dog. I am none of these things. I hope I’ll never be.

I only wish I could feel that there is at least one person, except for my friends, that feels I am the most interesting, attractive and challenging individual he or she has seen in a long time. And that I would feel the exact same thing. But I am not here for that either. I am only here to live as best as I can with anything that this entails, relationships or lack of them, desires or lack of them, hope or lack of it. I am just here to live as best as I can, period, and if I am honest with myself the rest will follow.

In the mean time: whatever. I am looking at the wabbit and melt. Fuck off and leave me alone. I am too hard-boiled and tough to be swayed by any overdose of fluffy cuteness. That's the spirit.

*Starts making silly voices again because she thinks she is alone*

A meeting with Death

Ok, now I am seriously wondering.
What’s wrong with me? Have I become so skilled at suppressing my feelings that I fully lost contact with them?
(And more importantly, who cares? A little voice adds here. It’s really convenient that most of the time I am numb to, well, everything.)

It’s really convenient that I care about no-one save for myself. But I don’t care even about myself that much as it seems. Well, I don’t care about anything. The feelings switch is stuck to 'off' with permanent glue and six inch nails to make it more secure. Instead of feeling, I go through the motions. Half-assed at best. I am expected to feel sadness and pretend I feel it, or happy about something and I pretend about that, too. In reality don’t feel anything at all. I expect nothing, hope nothing, fear so much.

Funny how I am listening to Anathema now and the lyrics say:
“Today I introduced myself/ to my own feelings./ In silent agony, after all these years,/ they spoke to me…/ After all these years.”
I dread the day the feelings will speak to me again “after all these years”.
It will be like a handshake with a tornado. It will rip off my hand and then my head. And that’s probably what I deserve for denying my inner voice for so long.

But you see, I somehow have to preserve my sanity. I somehow have to keep functioning, keep working 75 hours a week only to watch the mountain of bills grow bigger with each passing month. To work from day to night in order to sink more and more in debt. To deal with the fact that if I want to do something creative or simply different than eating and dropping dead in my bed I need to sleep less. To somehow deal with the loneliness that always lunges and bites me at the jugular when I am least expecting it. To deal with everything. If I let my feelings run amok like I used to in the past I’ll resort to breaking things, screaming at people, screaming at mirrors, hurting myself, hurting others. I have been there and I don’t want to revisit that place any time soon. It’s not constructive in any way to cry about where you are. In the long run it always makes me a lot more depressed and desperate. And I can’t afford desperate and depressed right now. I have to keep my wits about me somehow, in some way, and I’ll do anything it takes to do that. Anything needs be done. I have to stay focused, sharp and NUMB.

And then something slips by. Something slips through my guard. It may be a picture on the net, or a song, or an article in the newspaper. Feelings are represented by the element of water. And you cannot imprison water. Sooner or later, water will find a way, as a friend always says. It may be a single drop, but that drop falls on my heart and burns it like acid, like boiling oil, it runs through it like a barbed spear. The pain is so intense that it gives a whole new dimension to the entire concept. It’s bright. It’s magnificent. It’s almost beautiful in the way anything final or lethal is beautiful as much as devastating. It cannot be ignored, suppressed or escaped in any way. It’s like ending a life, taking the wrong turn in a way that cannot be undone and it will always and forever live with you from that point onwards. That’s the pain I experience. It’s so deep that the night seems transparent in comparison, that the red of blood looks pale yellow beige standing by its side. And I want to stay away from it. I want to keep a safe distance. I am not sure if I should blame myself for it. It’s not a passing notion; it’s not a fleeting sensation. It’s nebulae and supernovas and the end of the world distilled in one single moment. The moment the pain switch breaks the glue, spits out the nails and clicks back to the 'on' indication. Then a multitude of other feelings stampede in, and they use me as a pogo stick, with my head down, before kicking seven shades of blue and red and purple out of me. It’s not fun. Desire is the first to rush in and wrap me in its arms, kiss me in the mouth with its breath smelling of chocolate and honey and summer and run its nimble fingers all over me, setting me on fire.

“Remember me?” Desire asks. “Now look at him. Isn’t he beautiful? Wouldn’t you want to smell his hair? Wouldn’t you want to touch the back of his palms, oh, look at how beautiful his hands are, wouldn’t you want to see him with fewer clothes on? Wouldn’t you want him to look at you and feel the same, wouldn’t you want him to inhale your scent as he bites you during lovemaking? Now, don’t lie to me, because I know you want to.” And I want to, I burn with the need to. But I manage to kick Desire in the groin and wring the necks of all those needs fast and effectively, like I was dealing with poisonous snakes. And run, while muttering lists with things I need to do in order to distract myself from the urgent demands of sexuality.

Then Creativity steps in. “Hello", it says. "Remember me? Don’t you want more people to read what you write? Don’t you want to speak out loud? Don’t you want to sing when so many others screech and whisper and croak when they write, while you sing? Don’t you want to free all those children you have made out there, and see how they fare away from your hands?” I smack Creativity in the face, take my whip and force it to put that down on paper instead of yelling it into my ear. And that’s the point I manage to escape that threat. Creativity writes furiously while muttering to itself, one eye blackened, its attention diverted from me. And I run like hell only to stumble upon Death, who gives me the look he has patented and copyrighted and trademarked.

“Hello Elizabeth” Death says. “Remember me? We used to be friends.”
“That was in the past. When I thought I had plenty of time. Now I am running out of time,” I mutter nervously.
“Well, you can always pick reproduction as a means to gain immortality,” Death says with a shrug. “You know, pass on your genes and all that.”
“What the hell?!? What are my genes to pass them on, a second hand T-shirt?” I yell at Death. “I am not falling for that!”
“And what do you think time is?” Death asks. “You cannot run out of time. There is time enough for all your needs. Time is not coffee, or the Herald Tribune in order to run out of it,” he observes. He seems amused, but I am not.
“It’s a trick. Sexuality is a trick to force us reproduce because we fear you!” I shout at him while pointing with my finger. Death shrugs.
“First of all, I’d like you to stop pointing. It’s not polite, and you would not want me pointing at you.” I gulp and immediately stop pointing. “Now, you sound like a Cosmopolitan article gone existential Freud. I did not even know such a thing existed before now.” He makes a face like someone added curry instead of cinnamon and salt instead of sugar to his cappuccino. “I believe you need to sleep and you need to get laid. Not simultaneously, it will be a failure from both aspects. And I cannot bother about any of those, they are your responsibility. And I suggest you sleep now, since getting laid requires company that you presently lack.”

What a perfectly wise idea. Let’s be practical and realistic. Off to bed. NOW.

PS: Damn you. You are good looking, interesting, funny, have similar political views to mine and live a few thousand miles away. This is not very helpful, you know. Or practical.

PPS: Three of grails, King of Skulls, the Hermit, Nine of Grails, Judgement, Two on knives. I hope you are happy now.

Not a circle but a spiral...

Is the circle I am about to re-open appropriate?
Is this circle right?
It appears so.
November 2003 to November 2005. Two full years, eleven notebooks. An entire book. Still in my hands and I am incapable of using it due to copyright matters. Should I revisit that story/time? Would that be wise?
There is never any way of knowing, any guarantee that our actions are correct. All I know is that I love those characters more than I love my breath, more than I love my blood. They are my breath and blood. I have kept them in my heart all these years the same way I have kept a dead pet and cried over it. Time heals, and yet their absence still hurts me like it was yesterday that I lost them. I need to go back. I need to reclaim that world, to revisit and reshape it according to my desires. It will be mine now, fully mine, and no-one will be able to stop me.
I owe that much to them. That I can tell.
I owe that much to me.

No escaping gravity

It's funny how I see the bars of my cage everywhere.
I see them in what makes other people comfortable. In relationships, family, steady work. In friendships. In finding someone or something desirable. Even in having this blog. In all the strings that come attached with anything we do. I see them even inside my head, drawing lines. Enclosing and creating meaning and at the same time imprisoning me.

It could be almost funny how what we perceive as reality is fictional. More and more I realize that there is no such thing as reality. There is only a haphazard splashing of meaning on a canvas made from nothing. Absolutely nothing. I have seen people going crazy. I know the next irrational act one can do is but a hair away from the semblance of "reality", from that fever dream we live on a daily basis. People grabbing a shotgun and creating yet another bloodbath. People snapping and killing someone they love. It doesn't take long, or much for someone to be unhinged. I have seen the sly beasts hiding behind the eyes of parents, I have seen the hand that caresses killing with the same ease.

Right now I am living a normal life.
The more I look inside the more I comprehend I am none of the things I like or do.
There is nothing I cannot do, or cannot become.
I do have a personality, but personality is mostly a creation of habit. Habits can change and that small creature of habit called personality can die a silent and effective death.
Do I want to do it? Now that's a question.
Do I want to become everything?
Oh hell yes.

I have seen behind the veil and there is nothing there.

[Beautiful art by heise.deviantart.com]