I have a
brain like an artichoke right now, so maybe writing a blog post is not a
good idea. But to hell with it. I have made up my mind about stuff.
Here are my decisions.
One, I won't spend any more time thinking about the fuckwads who have been nasty or mean to me. It's pointless and it makes me angry. Anger is something I have so much of I can open an export company, or give my surplus to those in need. So, no more thinking about those that used to be friends, lovers, penpals, whatever the fuckity fuck ever. It's over. It's dead. It belongs to the past. *middle finger raised in solemn salutation* Good riddance to bad luck.
Two, I won't spend any more time thinking about where I am supposed to be versus to where I am now. It makes me depressed and I honestly can't deal with it. Plus it is as pointless as #1. I can't do anything about it. Maybe I don't care enough, maybe I am not trying enough, maybe this reality is a rigged simulation run by a type IV Kardashev scale civilisation and no matter how much I try, it doesn't and won't respond to my efforts. In any case, no can do, and that's that.
It is indeed. But I don't have the cure for others. I can only help myself.
Three, I can't spend a second more worrying about the fate of humanity, the situation of the world, the pollution, poverty, human trafficking, war, violence against women and so on. I refuse to give more time and energy to that gigantic clusterfuck of monstrosities. I didn't create those situations and consequently I can't solve them and refuse to dwell on them. The injustice of the situation makes me sick with rage. It makes me yell at the heavens at unorthodox hours when everyone is sleeping, and takes away the joy of living. So I will put my efforts in what I can do, however pitifully small that may be, and sign petitions, and feed my stray cats and take care of my friends. The rest, no way Jose. I can't, and it is not my responsibility.
Four, I will follow the advice of a dear friend. Stand your ground, stick to your own. I know who "my own" are. They are there for me. They may not have solutions to my problems, but they are happy to discuss books, movies, series and every day life with me. They call, they write, they make me laugh, they listen. This is more than most people have and I don't take it for granted.
Five, I will floss more often.
There. That's it. Now, here is something pretty with burnt orange eyes. You are welcome.
After two weeks offline I have a running laptop again. Weee! Two friends gave me their old laptop, bless them. I have a history of using old computers and laptops. I've never had to buy one due to the kindness of friends. Truth is, I wouldn't have the money anyway.
I *did* notice that the world did not end during my internet absence. I also noticed how much time I spend on the computer. It's inevitable. I watch movies, listen to music, write letters and stories, kill time on social media. During my offline days, I read books. Lots of books. There is only so much reading a person can do and remain sane. I haven't discovered it yet. I do know I have to stop reading when my eyes burn and my head aches. It takes a long time to achieve that state of bibliophilic grace.
I am watching the sixth season of The Walking Dead. It is a very good series. It shows what happens when the social web collapses completely. Something not different than what's happening in Syria and many other places in the world now. If you subtract the zombies and add the 'good' European countries plus US and Russia bombing for freedom and the local factions killing anyone who doesn't belong to their faction, which is basically everyone else, the brutality and mindless killing is the same. What's happening in the world now is not different than a post-apocalyptic zombie series, but for some reason, human beings don't find this alarming. Unless it's happening in their neighbourhood, it doesn't concern them.
Recently a friend was telling me how lucky we are that we don't have a war here, and don't really realise our privilege. It's true. In a sense, my country is lucky. In another sense, we're not. If I place on the scales outright war and economic strangulation, I am not sure which one is worse. And economic war is happening on a worldwide scale. Billions of people are below the poverty line, or barely manage to live. How did we let this happen to this planet? Why are we not rallying on the streets instead of uploading coffee and doughnut photos on Facebook and Instagram with mobiles we bought on credit? What the fuck is wrong with us?
A few days ago I saw a series of dreams. I no longer remember what they were about, but I remember my state when I woke up. In my dreams I remembered how I felt when I was a preteen. The hope and awe and unbelievable sensation that life was open for me, that all possibilities were open. Now I am older, disillusioned, cynical almost, and so very tired that my soul aches. And it aches even more when I remember even for a little while how I used to feel. That amazing sensation of trust and faith and belief and the deep certainty my life would be so exciting, so amazing, so... magical. I don't dare think about it because it hurts so much and at the same time that sensation makes me feel alive. It makes me remember what it is to have faith and trust and an open heart. It cuts deep to expose how much I've lost on the way, and how much I can, perhaps, rediscover.
Be good to someone tonight. Just to one person, yourself included, and just for tonight. (If you enjoy my content, please consider supporting what I do. Thank you.)
I haven't gone anywhere near Dir en Grey for two years now, maybe more. When I do, I remember you are gone and get depressed.
We amass knowledge and experience during our lives. Look at you. You played a mean piano, ghost-composed or contributed to the songs of countless bands I listen to, supported noble causes in so many ways, and now you are gone. All you got was 37 years of life. Your creations are still alive, yet your knowledge and talent are gone forever. The languages you spoke, the music you made, the foods you cooked, the way you made love, gone with you. There is a hole where you used to be and it can't be filled.
I keep losing people I considered friends, either because they die, prove themselves superb assholes or just follow different ways. Every year that passes finds me with a smaller circle of friends. But if I want to be 100% honest, no-one can replace you and no-one will replace you. Some people are one in a million or perhaps one in a billion. What do I know? I don't know. You were one in a billion for me.
Lately mortality is a weight that pulls me down, it chokes me like an anchor hanging from my neck. I do the best I can, I say to myself. I do the best I can for reasons unknown. I don't know why I go on. I just do. Even when everything seems completely pointless, even though I know the knowledge and experience I amass and the effort I've put in bettering myself will be gone with me, I bite the bullet and push on. What will change if I give up? You never gave up. I won't give up either. I'll keep pushing, if only to make those who hate me cringe their teeth. I push on just to rain on their parade. One of the best reasons I had ever read was this, by the gracious Steven Barns:
"I had a student ask why, if nothing ultimately matters, we should care
about anything at all. Well, that’s why no world religion will take you
all the way to clarity: there’s no social benefit. However, encoded
within each major religion seems to be a hidden path to dis-assembling
the ego walls without turning you into a bum, madman, or wandering
Saint. It seems to be the inculcation of core values at a young age,
such that the residual ego shell still functions appropriately even
after you’ve shed the illusions. It’s tricky stuff.
My guess
is that the gate of Adulthood—responsibility for the core values held by
the culture (my version of this is body-mind-spirit) MUST be passed
before deeper, more secret teachings are offered. Most will try to go
straight for the goodies. But religions are what Buddhism refers to as
the “large boat” while direct experience of the divine is the “small
boat”, not for everyone. I don’t recommend it. I just speak about it
because, as I realized yesterday, this blog is my version of Literary
Autolysis.
But more directly, try this: a baseball game
doesn’t “matter”. But if you decide to play, you learn the rules and
play hard, to the best of your ability. If you don’t want to play, you
lose the right to complain about the results you get in this world.
The
challenge is to be “in the world, but not of the world.” To play hard,
to learn the rules, to clarify our understandings, and then to move on.
To say “it doesn’t matter” falls right back into dualistic
thinking, and logic breaks down a bit. “It matters/it doesn’t matter.”
They don’t exist separate from perception.
If you can’t play
hard, work hard, care for your family, engage with your community,
preserve your body, provide goods and services, and grasp the fact that
we can know NOTHING other than the “I am”—then please, please, please
don’t try this. Don’t use “nothing matters” as an excuse to ignore your
worldly affairs.
Remember the chakras? Master the lower ones
BEFORE you get to spirit. Otherwise, I promise you, rather than
clarity, you will be lost in illusion, and feeling holy about it.
Obese, broke, and lonely…and feeling smugly superior to all us idiots
who act as if the world is real. And then secretly weeping at night,
confused as hell: with all this wisdom, why am I so miserable?
Trust me: you don’t want to go down that road."
Perfectly put. Thank you, Mr. Barns. Taken from here:
Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.
I am still angry at you. I want to make you
understand. I want to shake you and yell at you. But even if I did, you
wouldn't understand. You never did understand, not even when I thought we were
close, let alone now. And why should I make you understand? It's not my
responsibility to make anyone understand.
Sometimes
I wish that the people who mistreated me would become aware of their
mistakes and sorely regret their decisions. I would love to see them
looking for me and not finding me. But this is wishful thinking.
Humans are too self-involved and egotistical to realise there are things
beyond their self-indulging mind games and petty interests. The sad
fact of this life is that we're unappreciated by others, and they never
realise their mistakes. Time passes, life moves on, and none of these
people have the guts to come and apologise, or say they understood, or
they are sorry. If they had the balls to admit such sentiments they
wouldn't have treated us so shitty in the first place. Soon the
relationship or friendship is a memory, yet another page torn off the book of Life and thrown into the fire. Humans go on, as blind and
ignorant as always, life goes on, nothing changes, nothing is ever lost.
Except maybe for a few days, weeks, years, lives, centuries, and it's
still nothing on a cosmic scale. We're ants reproducing on a speck of
dust in a vast, vast universe, and it doesn't really matter, and it
never will. Evolution matters and evolution has no winners and no famous
authors, no celebrities and no point. Its only point is continuation of life itself, orgiastic expression in myriads of
forms and countless colours, in ways I cannot begin to perceive or imagine
with my humble mind.
Everything matters. Everything is completely futile. Writing here is futile. Not writing, when I can write and so many others can't, is hubris.
The planet will continue, with or without me on it, with or without my
writings on it. It doesn't matter to anyone except me that I am awake
instead of sleeping and writing here instead of resting. It makes no
discernible difference either way.
I miss Virve.
I miss her fiercely. Almost two years since her passing. And still life
goes on regardless of how I feel, what I do or don't do. When I am not
angry, I am sad. When I am not sad, I drag my feet from one chore to the
next. And sometimes, just sometimes, I am happy without needing
anything besides the fact I am alive and breathing and healthy. I see a
blind person, or a drowned infant, and understand how many things I take
for granted.
Won't
this pain ever cease? Won't this suffering end? Does it ever end? I
guess it does end, when we cross over and there are no more words. But
until then, I am here and I am writing. For good or for ill, and until I
can no longer write.
He never gave up either, and he didn't begin with the same chances as the rest of us. Well, look at him now.
I've been working on this blog for three days now. I'm organising my labels. Labels are useful; they categorise together same theme entries. For example, there is a label called humour. If you click on it, you'll be shown all humorous entries I've ever written, no matter how old they are. This arrangement will help readers discover entries worth reading that have been buried in the backlog of ten years of blogging. I understand that people may like my writing but not have the time or inclination to read my entire blog. Hey, I am the writer and even I can't read my entire blog in one go. So there, I hope the label system helps. I am not done yet and don't know when I'll be done. I am going back and forth between posts and labels and it takes time. After three days of work I was glad to see there are many humorous entries, a lot more than I originally thought. Humour is a good way to deal with despair.
Work is slavery. The hours and workload are exhausting. I have no good memories from Christmas anyway and now I have an extra reason I dislike it; the hordes of barbarians who want to do last minute grocery shopping. I wouldn't have guessed how vital eggplants and prosciutto are, but it turns out they are extremely important elements of Christmas. Who am I to judge the priorities of others?
I've been trying to get in touch with people without luck. Months ago I chanced upon an old boyfriend of mine, the one I was with more than ten years ago. I was very happy to see him as we had a good time together and I'm fond of him. He seemed happy to see me too. We exchanged numbers to meet again for a catch up coffee. I've rung him several times. He doesn't pick up. I honestly wonder why he gave me his number if he doesn't want to talk to me. He gave me his Facebook too. Doesn't reply to messages there either. It's really frustrating. I don't know what kind of weird ideas he has concerning what I want, but I just wanted to see him and talk about trivial stuff. You know, see how he is. Tell him where I am and what I do. His behaviour perplexes and hurts me, especially since I never mistreated him and I am the opposite of clingy. But humans in general are beyond my humble comprehensive abilities. I don't spend too much time pondering what is wrong with them or why they behave the way they do. I did it in the past and it's completely useless. He has every right not to want to see me and he's not obliged to explain why. And I have every right to consider his behaviour inexplicable, rude and hurtful. Then I eat chocolate and get some extra sleep because I am very tired and life goes on. What else to do? I mean yes, sure, I want to grab him by the lapels and shake him and yell at him "what the hell is wrong with you? I just wanted to chat!". Since he's unavailable, I shrug and move on. It doesn't have to do with me, but with him, and consequently there's nothing I can do.
Today I came across someone I liked years ago. Another 'what if' story that never took place. He moved to another city because he was accepted in university just as I was wondering if I should make a move. He looks as startlingly handsome as always. As per usual, I looked like shit. :D It's a joke how I always meet the ones I like when I look my worst. Then again, I don't know if that is the real reason I haven't had a relationship since Noah started building that boat. I don't think it is. In a similar manner to the previous subject, I shrugged and moved on. I'm tired. I don't what the real problem is. I never did and probably never will. These things are best left to chance when actual effort proves futile. Then again, chance has proved to be as futile as effort in my case. I just don't know, and it's not important. Yes, it hurts. It never ceases to hurt how I find myself as the victim or the spectator to happenings in my life, but I am trying to leave the martyrdom role behind. I want to keep myself happy. I have several books to read and stories of my own to daydream about. Since both effort and lack of effort bring the same result, I can only daydream, work hard and not think too much. Thinking leads straight into despair.
I hope the new year will bring some long expected results of my hard work. And I hope I'll prove several people wrong. Living a good life is the best revenge one can get. I am angry enough to fantasise about not picking up my phone when I am better and they call me, but not petty enough to actually do it if it ever happens.
I've found work in a supermarket. To say it's terrible would be an understatement. To help you understand the mentality, there is a chair behind the till because if the store doesn't have one, they are subject to a fine. However, if you sit and they see you on camera, you may get fired. They are understaffed, because the owners don't want to hire enough people and pay wages. The money you get for working six days a week without a day off is 500 euro. I know, you are thrilled. I am trilled too. I'm already sick with a cold because I didn't get enough sleep while I do work for two people. I'm a hair away from going to the headquarters of the company, finding the owner who interviewed me before hiring me and telling him what I really think of his professional ethos. It won't be pretty. I'll probably use the company shirt to strangle him. But I need the money and so I say nothing and stay where I am, though I hate it. It is not going to be easy. I'll be working every day until the end of year, including Sundays.
I have to keep reminding myself I need the money. I have to keep repeating, "remember who the real enemy is". I have to keep telling myself not to pay attention to the fact after a full year of frantically looking for a job all I managed to find was this one. I wouldn't have found this one either if it wasn't for knowing someone who knew someone else and I got special treatment. Imagine that. You need to use your connections to get jobs like this one, where you slave away for six days a week every week for the rest of your life to get paid 500 euro. I pity the ones who have to do this for the rest of their lives; they deserve a metal of valour, an honourable mention, something. Companies work them like slaves and suck them dry and they can't quit without leaving their family unfed, without risking everything they've got.
Strip a person naked, take everything away, and they can still hold onto their dignity.
Remember who the real enemy is in this game. Don't lose sight of your goal.
You need the money. You need the money. If you are going to go to UK, you need to save money. So keep working and keep looking for something else at the same time.
I am out for your blood. You can't stop me. Throw as many monkey wrenches into the equation as you want. You are only making me angrier. You are only making this worse for yourselves.
It's going to hurt so much, and when I am done with you, there will be nothing left.
Keep your head down and remember who the real enemy is.
"...Look at me.
I am pilot error, I am fetal distress, I am the random chromosome...
This is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It might not be your cup of tea, but oh well. Each to their own. I'd say it puts things into perspective.
Truth is, we're really insignificant. And that's why it's all important. Since what we are and what we do on a cosmic scale amounts to shit, we might as well make a difference in the lives of people around us by not being self-absorbed little shits. I mean, why the hell not.
If the only way we can transcend time and space is love, and perhaps art, we should transcend our mortality with whatever means we got, right? If every one of us is as old as the oldest stars, because we are made of star matter, and matter is never created or destroyed, then maybe we can act like it? Maybe we can put our tiny, whiny egos aside for a bit, and behave like grown ups?
I know you're waiting for me on the other side. The people I've loved, my dead cats, they come to me in dreams, in the one place death holds no sway. I wake up with tears in my eyes and the knowledge they aren't here with me, but they are somewhere. Maybe looking after me, maybe waiting for me.
Please help. This is the biggest refugee crisis after world war two. Almost 20 million people have been forced to leave their homes and half of them are children. Mr. Gaiman's thoughts on this gut-wrenching issue:
If you live in UK, you can also donate by texting 'GIVE' to 61144 to donate 5 pounds to Save the Children charity, or by texting 'NEED2510' to 70070 to donate 10 pounds to United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees. Please help in any way you can. It's urgent and only human to do so.
This was part of an email I sent to my late friend on the
day she died. I didn't know she was so seriously ill. She never read it and
now she is not here anymore. Or maybe she is everywhere and everything, her atoms
travelling the entire universe. So it's time to share that email with the
world. We never talked again, but at least now I know what I have to do. I have
to make sure I don't give up, like she never did, although large parts of her
life were living hell.
"...I can’t for the life of me understand what I am
supposed to be doing here on this planet. I am 36 and still don’t have any idea
what my role should be, how to respond to any role, what it is that the world
needs me for, why I am here in the first place. I do know that if I go, this
world will be poorer, and I am not saying this due to any inflated sense of
self-importance. From that aspect, my creations are far more important than I
am. I brought them here from the dreamland, from the collective unconscious,
and I filtered them through my experiences and my unique point of view. No-one
else will manage to bring the same things here and express them like I do
because no-one else is me. I don’t know if I am a good writer or not, but I
love my ‘children’ like any parent should love theirs. Such a pity our parents
were such complete failures. Maybe if I had a different childhood I wouldn’t be
looking for meaning, because meaning would have been self-explanatory. A
psychologist once said to my friend A. that only children from dysfunctional
families look for meaning and a sense of belonging, because they never had this
offered to them. A happy child feels they belong here, they have no doubts or
fears or questions of that kind. I am not unhappy with my share, I do count my
blessings, and I can’t change the past. It doesn’t really matter now, and I
would miss the weird, quirky individual I’ve grown to be due to my fucked up
childhood. But the feeling of not belonging drives me batty and gets me so very
depressed. I guess we all have our demons and the better we get to know them,
the better company they keep us during those long sleepless nights.
When I feel very depressed, I always dig up my older
writing and read it again. Older heroes, some of them created when I was
fourteen or fifteen years old, most of the story plots not valid anymore,
because as I grew up I added elements and made it more and more complex and
less teenage fiction… Still they are mine, they are my first creations, written
in Greek on paper that by now has yellowed and creased and has been read
hundreds of times. Inevitably, trying to acquire a sense of belonging, I fall
back to my creations, I go back to familiar space, just like you would resort
to your music. They are my safe space, the place I built in this world for me
because this world didn’t have one reserved for me, or wasn’t willing to host
my being. I belong there, to my stories, not here, and maybe that’s the
problem. Children who grew up feeling unloved and unwanted open their hearts
and look for alternative worlds in which they are important, cherished and
protected. They grow up to be gifted individuals because to escape the outside,
from a very early age they turn inside. Most of them, through the inside, they
discover and open the door to the Other, they pierce the Veil and go to the
Other side. These children are always with one foot here and one foot there,
changelings that one side doesn’t want them and the other side can’t have them.
They also bring gifts here, gifts from the Other side in the form of art and
innate understanding. Outsiders, lost children, weirdoes, outcasts and social
failures, forever struggling to fit in and make sense of this world. I am so
tired of this world, tired of my legacy, tired trying to fit in. I read my old
stories like a child would run to the cupboard and embrace the dress of its
dead mother, trying to get a whiff of her scent, trying to feel her close,
trying to feel loved and safe. That scent is getting less and less each year,
until the child isn’t sure if they can indeed smell something or it’s a ghost,
a comforting memory cause they have nothing else to hold on to. I feel like
that child. I have no mother or father, no siblings, no-one. We’re all isolated
in our bodies and our minds and we live separate existences, and then our paths
cross with people we come to care about and then we’re alone again. We’re
always and forever alone and that loneliness sometimes kills me. It’s like the
cat you love so much and caress and keep close and sometimes that same animal
turns and claws at your face for no reason.
Don’t worry about me, I’ll keep going and keep trying. I
miss you, I miss you so much though we haven’t met. I need you to be here. Please
be here. Don’t go away and leave me, it would just make life even more
unbearable. I care about you so much and I don’t even know how that happened. I
really don’t, you sly, subtle Finnigami.
We’ll talk again soon, I’ll write you a normal letter.
I am sending you a chapter of my story. As I’ve said
before, I don’t write something for someone, but I do write things because of
someone or something. Can you guess who that piece refers to?"
