The name of the game

[A note concerning the video. All the wounds on the singer's body are self-inflicted. Please DO NOT WATCH IT if you are put off by such a thing. And while you are at it, don't read the entry either. It will be of disturbing quality.]

There is sadness and sadness.

There is sadness that is a temporary wave, a fleeting, passing fragility, like a moth touching one's cheek on the way out of a room. And there is sadness that has those roots that reach down, down within, entwined and thick and tightly enclosing one's soul in a lover's embrace, in an odd unbreakable love knot. You learn to love this second kind of sadness because you cannot part with it. You cannot tear off those roots without tearing bits of yourself, whole chunks of your being, without denying what you, essentially, are. "What brought you here". What shaped you into your present form. God/dess forbid I would ever refer to the emo movement. No. I am talking about the sadness of poets, visionaries, artists, of those mad, broken and burned beyond repair. Those who have lost too many loved ones, those molested or regularly violated, those who see things. It is the inevitable sadness when the world you see with the eyes of your inside has absolutely nothing in common with what you see around you. The feeling that makes you kneel and moan because it essentially means your very being is forever branded with the mark of isolation.

I have always loved my sadness like the leper learns to love what cannot be changed. This does not mean I enjoy it. There are days I would give anything within my possession to be able NOT to share my life with this permanent visitor. Yet I try not to complain, for I see things and taste emotions on the overdrive exactly because of it. Happy or not happy, I always overflow with feelings. My joy is violent like a drug; my melancholy deep like red wine. Madness, when it strikes, is a tidal wave. It sweeps me off my feet and sends me sprawling on the floor. One such night I took the right turn by accident. That's what I want to refer to tonight.

Some months ago I was on the floor of my room, tearing at my hair. It was well in the a.m. and I was trying to mute my screaming in something that would not make the people of the second floor jump out of their beds in horror. The joy of flats- one is not even allowed to scream and yell their pain out. As a result I was down on the floor letting gurgling sounds, while breathlessly punching things and flailing. My crises are quite clockwork; the pain builds and builds and just has to be released somehow. This leads to me simply losing it. However, that night was different. Because I did something I have never done before. I started writing things on my arm using a razor. "I need you. I am in hell. Where are you? Please help me." Those words were aimed at someone out there whose name and face I do not know, but I do know he (or perhaps she) is looking for me, needing me in the same way I need them. What my lips would never speak out loud was written in blood, because I cannot escape forever my need for another being in my life. Still I will probably never say these words to another human being. I simply cannot, in the same way I cannot reach into that part of my heart and claw till I tear off that need. I would if I could; trust me. So I wrote what I will never say. Writing, after all, is my precious bane.

Much to my surprise there was a response. In a dream. My dreams are a huge map of the impossible and the improbable, trapping things from the ether and dragging them all the way down in this reality. What arrived was an answer to my distress signal but I only realised now, that more things have fallen into place. And it's still far from being real, but at least now I know what it is about. Or do I?

In that dream, a gigantic being landed on my rooftop, almost making the building collapse under its weight. A dragon. Light orange and light cypress green on a beast that looked like a crossover between a Chinese dragon and a koi, those sweet Japanese goldfish. Huge fins that almost resembled wings, floating around him like fabric. He levitated effortlessly in mid-air, like swimming in heavens instead of the sea. He was following me around throughout the dream and I thought that he wanted me to do something for him. I am used to that. People coming to me and asking for things, never giving anything back. With the exception of my very close friends, that's what happens. I only recently managed to shift my perception concerning that matter and comprehended for the first time that he had arrived to help me and not the other way around.

So, a water dragon came to stay. He was the only one taking my therapy and offering something back, pressing me to accept his help. He is also the only one whose intentions are pure. He made me wake up crying just one night ago for he is even more unused to accepting love than I am. Like a tree that prefers not to drink water or a fish that tries to swim on the pavement. I was crying over the roots of that tree, begging it to drink the water I was offering it, shifting the soil at its roots which was bone-dry like sawdust. Mingling tears with the water I was pouring, knelt on the soil and sobbing from the deepest core of my soul. "Please drink. You will die. Please drink, I am begging you. Drink. You will die if you don't. I am begging you." Woke up with my chest into a knot, but the soil was moist. Perhaps he will drink. Perhaps he will not. I cannot help him understand. I can only love with no strings attached like I always do for all people and hope for the best for each of us, whether I will ever meet him in flesh or not.

The night after the therapy to him, I went to the rooftop for a while. The night sky was clear and beautiful. Only two clouds were visible- two oddly shaped clouds that looked like two fabulous beasts chasing each other.

"And to the winding vines

the pretty boys dive

And thru the pinhole stars

into the shadow mind

Will you lose him then

on some gentle dawn

This boy is here

and gone."

Smashing Pumpkins