The aftermath

What bugs me lately is that in order to decipher, unravel, make sense of something one must be a dispassionate observer. BUT. That's exactly my problem as of late. I feel too much of an observer. I feel totally disengaged with life. Things are happening and I don't give a damn. People die, animals die, and I am blissfully detached. On the contrary, I read about a character in a comic book suffering and I cry. It's fucking tragic, crying for paper people and not crying about my father who died. It's tragic cause he turned himself into a total stranger, and I had to build a fortress to keep him out and never let him hurt me again, and I don't have a single happy memory from him. Even now, in his last days, I stood by his side and let him feel loved and safe, but I never opened the door of my heart to him again. The door does not open anymore, a wall has sealed it off, and I can't pull the wall down for anyone, anymore. It's tragic cause I am turning into a total wacko and feel pity for those people and things inside my head (and other people's heads) and not those around me. It truly makes me worry. Perhaps I should not worry, but I feel I am turning into a walking statue. I feel I am losing my connection to real life. And what is real life, exactly? That sanitised, joyless version of working like a slave and your every surprise being predetermined, your every choice and encounter controlled? Is it any wonder that I sympathise more with heroes from books and comics?

I want to give a few kicks to a few asses, but haven't discovered the people these asses belong to. YET.

Bad news

My father has a generous bout of pneumonia. I don't think he'll live.

Tearing up things again.

Music: Agalloch: Ashes against the grain.

Song: Fire Above, Ice below.

"The woeful silence and wind's reflection/

Of your body's pale ode, an icy fortress of blood and ages/

Sky fire above, ice below the hearth/

Fall away from me to that citadel at the end of time/

Where death sleeps and dreams of your buried pain/

There has never been a silence like this before/

There will never be an ode like this again."

It has happened twice in the last three months. Been tearing up all those things I have been keeping as mementos. Old letters, letters and photos of boyfriends, terrible poetry I had written when I was ten or eleven, diary pieces complaining about boyfriends I never had, clipouts from magazines, copies of letters I had sent to people... I have been keeping those things believing they were in a way describing me and what I am. Problem being, I'm not that person anymore. I do not care about those people, don't communicate with those pen pals anymore and generally these are just old skins I have shed on my way to now. Like an idiot I have been holding onto skins while the original is here in flesh and blood. Who needs those things? Certainly not I. So I tore and tore and tore until I had a trolley full of past and then I went and emptied it into the recycle bin. I felt relief.

It's amazing how much papercrap one manages to accumulate in any given amount of time. For me, at least, it's papercrap. Other people with different inclinations collect other types of crap. Notice the keyword: crap. These things are just material objects. They are not us. Western civilisation has given to death the status of the absolute end, while it is nothing more than the transmutation of energy. So people collect things in order to keep death at bay, they hide under tons and mountains of bullshit. One day death comes and finds them and those left behind throw everything away, or suffocate under their crap, harbouring the illusion of those things being the person that is gone. We have promoted material objects to people. Congrats.

What is it about death that scares us so much? Probably the dissolving of ego, the loss of personality. Why? Ha. I wish most people HAD some personality, in order to be justifiably scared of losing it. I am being mean again, I know, but believe me, you have no idea what being mean is about and I'd rather leave it at that. I however promise that at a later entry I might decide to analyse what good and evil means for me. You don't have to agree, of course. You don't even have to read it, so...

Hyacinths

(Image by Yang Fan, http://jiuge.deviantart.com)

The smell of hyacinths brings death to my mind.

There is something about the smell itself, its oily sweetness that reminds me of a rotting substance. And something about the flowers themselves when they start to wither and lose their suppleness. Then the finger touches them and feels no resistance. They give way under one’s touch in a rather unsettling manner. Like a dead body after a few days. I love hyacinths, but just like human beings, I want to see them for small periods of time. Beyond that, I start to feel put off by them.

Everything has to have a special meaning. Everything has to be dissected and analysed. Magic needs to be trapped and explained using test tubes. Happiness measured by machines and explained in wavelengths. Each and every one of us so certain he or she is right. Each and every one of us eternally craving, eternally thirsty for something we can’t put our finger on. The water given for free and yet it never quenches our thirst, meat and bread set out for each of us on the dinner table and yet we trace patterns in the dust and ash instead of eating. That is the nature of humans, judging where they should simply accept and finding fault in all people but ourselves.

I am tired. I am exhausted and feel like I have been nothing but pushed around by howling winds. And the worst is yet to come. There is no time to rest. In order to break free, the butterfly must tear the cocoon. The bird must break the egg. The being we call human must tear apart his or her reality. All the things we take for granted are just the first layer. Layers over layers.

Oh how I miss the sweet taste of blood of the freshly killed pray, and the times killing was the most honest and justified thing in the world. We got civilization and added more layers, we mummified reality under false laws and false values, while once there was a time of innocence. If you did not like someone, he was the first to know, by face-to-fist contact. And if you craved someone he was also the first to know because you asked for pleasure. Children had no fathers, or rather, a host of fathers but only one mother and the main concern was remaining alive. Now we got laws and lifestyle and nobody eats his dead relatives, but rather digs the grave of the living by lies and hatred and half truths. And we are all civilized. Proper. Caring. Open-minded. Alternative and mainstream. We talk to those we don’t like and never say “I love you” to all those we really care about. We smile to our customers and cry ourselves to sleep. We live (?) in our little cement and metal boxes, gather stuff we can’t take with us and argue about the meaning of life. And one day we go away, one day we lie silent and still and those left behind try to understand why.

My tom-cat sleeps with his front leg wrapped around my right arm and purrs in his half-sleep. And he is happy because I am home from work and I fed him and rubbed his tummy. And I am happy because he is happy to see me.

Death is what makes everything so precious. Don’t you see?

It has come full circle. Goodnight…

Morbid fascination

A few hours ago I had to drag a disemboweled dog to the side, near the pavement, with his owners watching me transfixed and shaken to their core. Someone had just run him over and left. I knew this dog, it was a rather irritating little bastard, but he did not deserve this fate. Nobody does.

It's rather funny being what I am. Most women would never bear to be close to that dog, let alone touch it. I was so taken aback that I could not really think of anything else than what had to be done. And it was done. Two days ago I was on my knees on the ground at two a.m. digging out cyclamen bulbs, with my hair hiding my face (like Sadako in the Ring). Tonight I was trying to move the dog out of other people's view, taking generous eyefulls of what once was his insides and now was on the pavement, still steaming hot and twitching though he was dead. Having cured and cooked meat quite a number of times, I can tell you it was not very different, save for the twitching. Disgusted? You should not be. You are not -I am not- very different on the inside. What makes the difference is the way we choose to live our life before we are transformed into rotting bags of meat and entrails and bone. And maybe not even that. Maybe the universe does not hold human beings in higher regard that trees and insects. Humans suffer from this need to feel themselves the center of the universe, but they can't really offer any proof that this is the case. So choose wisely lads and lassies. Make sure that your actions make sense to you if not anybody else. At least it will help you sleep easier at night, but as for granting you a place in heaven or anywhere at all, I can't really say.

Shitting bricks

Okay... Here's a little story for your amusement...

Last night around 3 am my best friend was me returning me home with his car after watching 'The Empire of Wolves'. We took a turn and both of us saw a bouquet of flowers lying exactly in the middle of the road and passed over it. J. commented, "Perhaps I should go and pick it up," meaning to leave it at one side of the road, and I considered it for a few seconds thinking, why not. Then my eyes fell on one of the trees on the side of the road and I observed the way its branches moved in the night breeze. My heart nearly stopped. Something inside me screamed "get the fuck out of there and don't touch that bloody thing." I told him that I didn't want him to get out of the car for any reason and he commented he would not, we were much past it by that time anyway and he did not intend to return for that. Then we had a little conversation and I explained to him that the particular bouquet looked like it had been placed there by someone or something to attract attention and make a passer-by pick it up. Like a... "...bait", he added, using exactly the word I intended to use. "That place has a very heavy, bad feeling," I added, and he agreed. It was then that I realised that it was the local cemetery, and the bouquet was just next to the gates of it. I cannot explain why or what made me feel like that, cause I am not afraid of cemeteries (told you I am a gothette, didn't I? *winks*) or the night in general. It just felt like there was something waiting there for someone to touch the flowers in order to attach itself and follow him or her home. A spirit or entity of some sort. In any case... These little feelings I have are unjustifiable but most of the time correct. Like the other time me and J. were on a night stroll and passing by a place I had the sensation someone had used a hat pin to pierce my skull... Upon asking J. I found out that a murder had taken place there and that they was also the suspicion some people had made rituals (lots of dead animals and paraphernalia found scattered around every now and then.) Oh well... All I have to do is stop thinking and listen closely, I suppose.

Rage

Qana, 30th of July, 2006

The child that died by your bombs is real. It was alive and breathing just a moment ago. It was probably laughing too, before the war began. Till you took it all away.

The child that died by your bombs could be your child. All that separates your safe reality from the ultimate terror is a twist of luck. And luck doesn’t last forever.

The child that died by your bombs is your child, the one you never had. Because you were not ready for it. Because you could not afford to. Because you chose to live your life without the burden of responsibility for now. That child will not get to live one.

The child that died was killed by all of us. By you. By me. By thinking it’s none of our business. By believing we are not affected. By equating distance with safety and disengagement. By turning our heads away. By choosing to watch something more pleasant on our TV sets.

That child was our child. It was our hope for the future. It could be the one to save humanity from cancer, or a great artist whose genius would have changed our lives forever. It could be the one to make your son or daughter happy. It could be the one to make your day. Now it never will.

The child that died today was you. It was me. It was the image of a tiny me, full of potential, never expecting the sun today would caress my face for the very last time.

Enjoy your glory. Enjoy your victory. Revel in your self-righteousness. And then return home to be loving fathers and mothers to your children, feeling safe. To caress them with those very hands that pushed the buttons which made the other parents mourn. Cause you are doing the right thing. You are making the world a better place. For your beloved children. Until someone kills them.

We all live under the same sky

We breathe the same air

We watch the same stars

Anything that happens under this sky is our business

Every man, woman and child that cries in pain and terror is my lost brother and sister. Is the friend I haven’t met. Is MY fucking problem. Till nobody cries from hunger, terror or violence anymore. Till we all have an equal chance to life and happiness.I may not live to see this but I’ll struggle and shout for it as long as there is light within my soul.

Closing, I would like to dedicate this to a friend of mine, who only recently gave birth to a little boy. This is for her child, for all children. I will therefore use her favorite quote to close: “Be careful, cause you are turning the world into what you see it.”