Bookhopping

I have been feeling weird for the past week; dizzy, weak, disoriented. My sleep hasn't been good either. It's nothing new. From time to time I find myself feeling ill for no reason. After forty one years on this earth, I've come to realise that being psychic to some degree is similar to having a chronic illness. I do not mean to make light of the daily struggle of people suffering from a chronic illness. They alone know what they have to deal with and the dehumanising effect of chronic pain. Under no circumstances would I say I face even a portion of the challenges they do. However, there are similarities. For example:

• During the day, I may find myself feeling ill, or drained and exhausted, for no apparent reason.

• My sleep is often awful. Not always, and not always in the same way, but getting a good night's sleep is way more challenging for me than it is for the average person.

• This one is thankfully rare: I wake up to find that the world is spinning round and round, though I am perfectly still. If I try to move, even in the slightest, I am apt to vomit. Everything hurts and I feel wrecked. I don't drink alcohol, ever, so I don't want to hear smart comments about a hangover. This happens to me infrequently, usually every few years. When it does, I am rendered useless for that day. 

• Interacting with the wrong people is a one way ticket to hell.

• I can't touch, hug, or have sex with random people. Hell, I can't even dress up, put on make-up and go out without returning home feeling sick. It's fun, you should definitely try it. Not.

Yesterday was one of those fun days. After a bout of the merry go round effect (it happened on Tuesday), on Saturday I started feeling unwell. It got progressively worse. Headache, muscle pains, disorientation. I went to bed early and also took a painkiller. It didn't help much. I spent the biggest part of the night tossing, unable to find a comfortable position to sleep. Then I started shivering. I had to get an extra blanket. Then I started sweating. I had to keep just one blanket in order to stop sweating. I ached everywhere, and woke up feeling exhausted. I still feel exhausted and my body aches. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be better. I am grateful for the fact I don't have to work on Monday because it is a national holiday. I would have been the equivalent of the queen of zombies working as a secretary.

I didn't begin this entry to air my woes. I wanted to refer to my bookhopping. Bookhopping is like barhopping, only with books, and for different reasons than locating a place with lots of excitement. Let's say you read a book, and the protagonist is about to break up. Being emotionally drained, you decide you can't handle it, so you hop to another book. You read that other book, only to discover that the heroes are facing a difficult challenge. Can you handle it? The answer is no. So you hop to yet another book like a frog that's chased by an army of hungry snakes. Gee, maybe I should start reading books for first graders about butterflies and shit. Maybe I should stop reading in general and start, dunno, knitting. What are the chances of abandoning a scarf because I am emotionally vulnerable?

Other than that, I am alive and well. I read two very interesting articles I would like to share with you. They both touch on how language and repetition/ stereotypes define and program our beliefs.

 

(Update in 2021: unfortunately the first article does not exist anymore.)

http://leftbrainedhippie.com/2017/02/25/8-words/

https://markmanson.net/negative-self-help

I would like to close this entry with this photo. 

She was found shot seventeen times, with one ear cut off, blind, pregnant and with a broken jaw. She survived, got adopted and now she is a therapy dog. Look at her. She is the living example of not letting your pain define who you are, but turn every bit of pain you've been through into solid gold. I mean LOOK at her. And maybe, just maybe, next time you face a challenge, instead of "I can't do this", say, "I'll give it a go." Just give it a go.

As per usual, if you'd like to support me, please buy me a coffee.

More info on the dog here: 

https://www.ladbible.com/news/animals-pregnant-dog-shot-17-times-has-qualified-as-a-therapy-dog-20190713

Sleep is overrated

My insomnia symptoms have spiked again in the past few days. I can't sleep before ten in the morning. For the time being, it is fine, because I am on holiday. But soon I begin working again, and not getting any sleep at night is not going to help me.

Twice this week I could not sleep. Twice I chose to get out of bed and run some errands, hoping I would fall asleep once I was back home. It usually works.

It's interesting walking the streets very early in the morning. There are just a few people out. The sky is blue and the temperature isn't unbearable yet. Passers-by think I woke up early, while I haven't slept at all and feel like an imposter among the early birds. I'm usually giddy with self-sarcastic, surreal humour, mocking myself and the situation and having conversations with myself out loud. What can I do? I can't sleep. It has to do with who I am, how I react to energy and what I've been through. I'm usually the first to know when something is awry energy-wise. I didn't ask to be made this way and I can't undo the way I am. I'll never be 'normal'. I don't think normal really exists. So I try to squeeze some laughs in it. Nagging is useless. It will pass.

All is well in the kingdom of Nomasland. 

Over and out.
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Small things make me happy

 

"There is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky with wonder and longing—for the same reason that we stand, hour after hour, gazing at the distant swell of the open ocean. There is something like an ancient wisdom, encoded and tucked away in our DNA, that knows its point of origin as surely as a salmon knows its creek. Intellectually, we may not want to return there, but the genes know, and long for their origins—their home in the salty depths. But if the seas are our immediate source, the penultimate source is certainly the heavens… The spectacular truth is—and this is something that your DNA has known all along—the very atoms of your body—the iron, calcium, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and on and on—were initially forged in long-dead stars. This is why, when you stand outside under a moonless, country sky, you feel some ineffable tugging at your innards. We are star stuff. Keep looking up."

Jerry Waxman

 

Small things  make me happy because I can't have the big ones I dream about.

I can't leave this planet behind and travel to the stars, except maybe as stardust.

I can't understand everything, not without leaving this personality behind like a discarded piece of clothing. And this body, this personality has not had enough experiences to leave it behind. It's good to be human before giving ascended master status a go. It's good to scrape your knees before you learn to fly out of your body; to have mundane love break your heart before you draw conclusions about the Heart of Everything.

It's good to see the worst this world and you have to offer before you don yourself the title of messiah, avatar, empath, lightworker, earthly angel or whatever else.

Never before have I seen dust of our kind. We're dust, nothing but dust, yet the night sky speaks to my heart in the voice of the perfect lover I never had. When the moon is at its last quarter, it rises late, bathing everything in a weak yellow, almost negative light. The wind blows and shakes the branches, making me shiver with longings I can't put in words. It's four in the a.m., I am standing at the rooftop and can sense I'm not alone, but no human is awake at this hour. Four a.m. is not an hour for humans, except maybe for the sick, the mad, the broken and those too young to have responsibilities. 

It is a humbling experience to find yourself alone and outdoors in the small hours of the night. It makes you realise how insignificant you are. I can feel it during those late nights with waning moon. Other beings and entities roam the night and sneer at me, and the same rooftop I've been to hundreds of times is an alien, scary place. The stars are hesitant to lend their light and the failing moon spells sickness and death. Crawling night serpents with scraping, poisonous scales, and other, blacker things the names of which I don't know fill the skies and the shadows. My heart is a bird frantically trying to escape from my chest, and my only ally is my resolve. I know that same moon shines its leprous brilliance over swamps, and ruins, and nightmarish, desolate places forsaken by the so-called champions of light. So I kneel, and call upon the darkest aspects of being. I call upon Hecate, Hel and Kali, and the Angel of death, and ask for their blessing. Those strange, horrible landscapes are as much a part of this reality as everything else. I can't understand this world or myself without them. I can't reach comprehension unless I embrace them too. Because as above so below, as within, so without. Everything is part of myself, not just sweetness and light. And the night obliges. The heart slows down and opens. The soul drinks and is sated.

Oh, what would I give to go back to whatever dead, dark star the atoms of my being originated from. To go back home. But I can't. And so I strive to find a job, and find someone who understands, and love my cats and my friends. And make this world a better place, not because I love the light, but also the dark. I love the dark with all my heart, because the Heart encompasses everything and everyone. 

I serve the needs of the Heart, and through the Heart, all my needs are served.

PS: The soundtrack of one of my most favourite movies is as good as the movie itself. Enjoy. 

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The Fool

I have spent the entire past hour editing parts of past posts. Youtube has deleted lots of videos due to copyright claims and I had them embedded on my blog. :-( And since I always choose the music/ pictures accompanying my texts with the utmost care in order to enhance the effect of my writing, it is nothing less than frustrating.

Oh well.

Last night found me wandering the streets again. Night? Five in the morning. I could not sleep. I was angry, and wanted to save the culprit (my mother) from a nasty if silent death by pillow smothering. So I was walking like a person on drugs in the wee hours of the night, hands in pockets, disheveled, dirty hair half hiding my face and a thin t-shirt on. When I went out, I was not thinking. It did not take me long to verify it, as soon I was shivering from the morning cold. But then walking made me warm. Made me feel a little better.

I cannot find the edge of this fucking stage comedy that we call reality. I am sure, you see, that if I find the edge and give it a hearty pull, this entire parody of life will just peel off like an old poster and reveal what's behind, and then someone will give me some explanations. They should better. But no matter how frantically I try to find the edge of the reality poster with my fingertips there is nothing to pull on, no edge, not even a hint! Gods damn all the lemon sorbet ice creams on the planet, there is no lead to pull at. And this leaves me walking at five in the sodding morning, only to return home and discover I'm still angry and cannot sleep even though it is daybreak and I have to get up in less than two hours.

Hell and damnation, there is not even discolouring or a tell-tale little unevenness around the edges. Not a hint. Nothing. Nothing at all. Because I know I can pull the damn thing down if only I could find that little edge. Those bastard reality architects really did their homework well this time. They know me too well, you see. They know I'm crazy enough to actually pull.

Hmph.

Strange stars are brewing in the skies lately, foretelling of your death, oh mighty one. Your time is almost done. Do you feel it?

Play with me.

You run after me but I am faster.

I am not a rabbit.

You think yourself a wolf, a mastermind. And you certainly are.

Yet every dog has its day and your day is long past.

I let you give chase and whenever you think you have me cornered I bite.

Chunks of angel flesh between dragon teeth.

Feathers on the ground.

And the day comes.

It will be my turn to give chase and much to your horror you'll realise I actually mean business.

So who's been playing with whom all along?

So many questions and no answers. Dark windows in the darkest hour before morning, empty streets echoing the footsteps of the lonely, the stark mad, the unwanted.

Hear my footsteps, then. And run, little wolf. Run for dear life.

Your kingdom is forfeit.

"You did not dream of us, you miserable creature. We dreamt of you. We gave birth to you in dreams, before reality existed, and this is how you repay us."

[Arachne to a liar writer- then again, all writers are liars...]

Predicament

"I know, the past will catch you up as you run faster, I know..."

All bonds break

Reality subsides

All hell breaks loose

It all crumbles to dust

No turning back.

This body will eventually fall apart just like everything else and it won't even have fulfilled its purpose, which was to be loved.

I am left with no choices. You left me with no choices.

Loneliness creeps in and sadness pours down like a unexpected summer shower. Startling cold.

I was handed a sword. Entrusted to cut clean.

I did not refuse it.

"Fear cuts deeper than the sword."

I twist and turn in my sleep, pushing the nightmares away, flailing, gasping. Not now, I will not have those memories surface now. I will deal with them in my own time. When I am awake. NOT IN MY SLEEP.

One day it will all be gone. No more second chances. No other choices, no alternative pathways. Nothing. Void. Back in the Embrace.

Do you realise that?

Have you played the game well?

Have you done all you could?

Have you tried all options?

Have you given your best?

Cause one day you'll be gone. Gone for good.

No one will ever again smile like you did, with the same knowledge gleaming in their eyes. No one will make your favourite food or coffee like you did. No one will touch your lover, or child, or parent in the same way. Nobody will throw tantrums in the same manner or be sad in the same degree. Nobody will be able to replace you. No one in the world will be able to appreciate a moment the way you do. Do you realise that?

Do you realise your time here is finite? Do you appreciate every day? Do you give your best, or plainly drag your feet in a half-hearted existence? Do you understand, fully understand, feel to your bones the irreplaceable void you'll leave in your place once gone? Do you appreciate yourself for all that you are and do, every little quirk and gesture that make you unique? Do you comprehend that one day there won't be a next day to set things right, to apologise, to touch someone or kiss them, to say sorry or "I love you"? Do you really, truly understand that some people will never hear this from you if you keep postponing it?

Do you really think you are going to live forever?

Do you sleep easy at night?

Do you have secrets?

Do you cry?

Do you get mad when people smile at you?

Does anyone in the world hold you when you are alone and afraid?

Do you care?

Late at night, when I walk the streets with my dogs, my footsteps echo in the distance and manage to stir only dust and memories.

Sometimes I sing with my MP3 player shutting off all sounds and I wonder what my voice sounds like.

[A mad woman, an owl, someone calling out to ghosts.]

So many ghosts

so many goddamn ghosts

hordes of ghosts following my every step and me crying out like a monster, an owl with the face of a woman, a harpy, a miasma.

My hands weave spells secured by my voice; tightly woven intricate patterns of energy like some spider from a fairy tale or stories from the old, and I grow older with every passing breath and yet there isn't a single stone on which I can lay down my burden and rest...

Everything carries power and special weight

and I wish I could embrace you and show you my love

Break your frail, bird-like bones in my grip...

Tiny creatures

we're all tiny creatures digging a pitiful existence in the mud

our eternal loves and ideals swept away in a single blink of a dragon's eye

and yet the pride, oh what pride we have...

Name the reality drug that keeps you going

name the illusions that feed your ego and make you feel invincible

name the addictions you harbour that make your world make sense

and all these while our existence lasts only for a scream

and our souls flutter away blind

leaving as blind as they arrived

and it's repeated into eternity.

Is it all meaningless?

Is it futile?

All those years, were they wasted time?

Only time will tell.

Till the dragons fly again,

farewell...

Interesting.

I think I have discovered a haunted place. I am not sure if this is the case but I don't really think there is any other way I can describe the feeling I got.

I went out for one of my usual night walks. I am always unafraid- perhaps I do not realise the possible danger I am in, walking the streets all alone after midnight. But the night winks at me and I wink back. I have never felt afraid that something might happen to me, on a physical level or otherwise. Yet as soon as I entered a particular street I felt afraid. I actually felt the beginning of disquiet before entering the street and this feeling of something not being right insisted throughout my walk in that street. I felt threatened. I kept looking around me, kept looking back, but there was no-one there. I first attributed my feeling of discomfort to the fact there are not many streetlights in that particular place. The darkness is insistent. Some of the lights are not working and there are not enough to begin with. Not many buildings either. Some older houses, some neglected spaces. But that was not the reason for my discomfort. I am used to the darkness. It is no more than a passing thought usually while I am busy with my walking and soul searching at the same time. I am only careful not to knock my head against the lampposts because I'm so damn absentminded that I could be walking through every wall in my area without understanding why the buildings collapse after my passing. Anyway, have you ever felt that someone is eyeing you in the absolutely wrong way? The kind of intense attention that it is the prelude of violence? That was the feeling I got that night. That someone was staring at me and waiting for the right moment to jump at me and... well. Not give me flowers.

The sense of danger kept bugging me even after leaving that street. I did my tricks, called upon my hidden aces and yet whatever had spotted me seemed to be following me for a while. Then it left me alone. Of course I could not see or hear anything, but knew I had ruffled the feathers of the wrong something in there. Now I seriously consider returning there to look for more details, but I'm so organised, insisted and interested-NOT. Besides I have enough material in my life to already win the title of a surreal circus of supernatural without adding a single pinch of anything.

The moon is cruel...

I cannot change anything, and I try too fucking much to no avail.

Nothing is real.

Everything is real.

I think I have gone officially crazy. Rejoice, oh crowds. Where is my scepter and my crown? And what kind of army do I have under my command? To conquer which land of fancy do I march? To the death, to the death. Fantastic beasts curl at the legs of my bed at morning, watching over me while I sleep, exhausted from last night's pursuits. And my army has no men. Only willowy ladies who play the harp and dine with youth and beauty, leaving behind them senile men and wasted landscapes. Yes... It seems that my army run amok in this reality, hence its condition. Dry and humorless.

I went walking again last night. It is funny how my body from the waist down seems to belong to a different person. My legs guide me. I have no idea where. I just walk aimlessly. I pass trees and have this urge to punch them to make sure they are real.

I look at the moon and wonder how sick it must be from watching all this bullshit happening down here.

I look at the moon and see one of the female aspects of the divine. I call it 'mother'. Ha bloody ha.

I look at the moon and see dreams passing by from her face, like smoke in front of a window.

I look at the moon and see the earth's satellite, cold, lifeless and distant.

I look at the moon and shiver and sigh like a person in the grip of opium or malaria.

Nothing is real. Everything is real. You choose your dream, your interpretation, your reality. You choose your drug, your booze, your fix, your jail, your aspirations. You choose. Or that's what I think anyway. But choosing needs brain, some sort of mental activity going on between one's ears. *giggle*

Only death is real, expressed through absence. It is funny to consider how something as absolute as death is expressed through the negative of existence. Absence. It never fails to amuse me. Life in general, and myself, never cease to amuse me. I am a funny gal, it seems.

I feel like my very soul has left me. Went away silently, flying on transparent, velvety wings.

And A. is leaving for U.K. Go, my girl. Go. Leave this land of lunatics and idiots. Godspeed. There is nothing more for you to do here.

I dine with ink, pieces of paper and impossible wishes in the ruins.

I pray I will be granted the chance to follow.

The moon is cruel tonight...

Breathe in, breathe out.

Music: System of a Down: Toxicity.

If I was my character, Dorian, I would have gone out hunting. The night is deliciously cold and crisp and it smells like winter. The air has a razor quality that cuts through clothes and freezes the face, but in a pleasant way. And the sky is such a dark blue that puts any fabric to shame.

If I were Dorian I would be walking out nearly invisible, looking for the one to kill, the one to quench my thirst. Not for blood. For sky. Killing is one more way of deifying one's self. However Dorian is a vampire, and that's a handy excuse for killing. A vampire is no longer human. It does not obey to the same laws a human does. A wolf is only expected to kill, after all. And we have lost the archetype of the hunter long ago. Or perhaps upon returning to the collective and diving back inside, it emerged as the vampire this time. The urban figure of the dangerous, alluring stranger. But I am straying from my original thought. And my original thought is related to killing.

My dark side is having a party. It is okay. I invited all my demons out to get to know them better. They talk to me, and the things they say are more than just tempting... They are delicious. That's probably the reason I will never understand vegans. Killing is a sacred act. Killing is not alien to our nature. I suspect that people would have a much better relationship with death and loss if we still had to catch and kill our own food. And as for all those people freaking out at the mere thought of taking advantage of someone innocent, there is nothing more tempting than the destruction of innocence. That's natural to us too, and only cowards would deny its pull.

I need to voice out my darkest callings. I need to let them roam free inside my head, or else I will burst. If thoughts were a crime, we would all be behind bars or in padded cells. Yes, I would love to kill, or scare someone witless. Yes, I would love to take something beautiful and destroy it utterly. And I would certainly pick the most beautiful and charismatic I could find from the human crowds, and also find them at an age I would be able to work on them as if they were clay. No, I would not kill them. I would turn their world view upside down and make them like me. I would make them worship their egos as the only god that exists in this sad age. I would create little viruses like myself and I would unleash them. And through the opposition I would only serve my part of the plan. Sad, isn't it? In all our glory and creativity, and though possessing the strongest weapon that exists -the human mind- we can only serve one of the two basic urges: love and death. Sex and power. We cannot escape our glands and genitals. We cannot think of something beyond that, and even if we can, human language cannot pinpoint it or describe it. Lovecraft tried to second guess alien gods. Arthur Miller and Arthur Machen tried to hint of Iago, to describe pure evil. The anti-saint. And all the average human can think of is money and pleasure. Sad.

At nights like this one I am happy. Content with the taste of winter on my lips and the sense of wild joy in my heart. As if I am the one leading the hunt, and there is a strong horse between my thighs and miles of snow-covered forest ahead of me, with no sign of humans anywhere, with no human city to be encountered ahead of me. Because they don't exist yet. I am happy to look at the night sky and watch my breath crystallise. I am fulfilled.

Night walk

Sometimes, late at night, the urge strikes me to go for a walk. I take my MP3 and off I go, letting my feet guide me. The place I live is close to a mount and a forest of sorts, but I walk the streets. They are a maze.

I walk quietly, or I might go dancing and singing if the song is inspiring and the mood is right. Most of the time I am what I strive to be in real life too: an observer. I walk by and steal glimpses of the lives of other people. I see their gardens. I stop and smell their flowers, or touch their trees. When a room has the light on, I stop and observe the house. I see what kind of feedback I get. Would I like to live there? I often wonder what I would be like if I had grown in that house and had been in the company of different people. Would I be different? Then I count the lighted windows, estimating how many people are not sleeping, much like I am not. Are they expecting something? Are they insomniacs? Perhaps they are guardians, even without knowing. Perhaps they are suffering, or making love, or staying up till late watching this or the other film. Or maybe they are tormented by others, or tormenting themselves or others. Are they happy? Are they sad? Do they realise time flies? Do they strive for the best they can, or they hold back, afraid of fate, others, themselves? Do they live at all?

I don’t envy the lives of others. I know I will never get to live their lives and don’t want that to begin with. It’s me I am always talking to/with. Through my eyes and personality I interpret reality and am content being myself. Yet there are times I wonder, how many of these people will come to be meaningful to me, how many will be indifferent or even enemies, how many of them will be my lovers, which one (if any) will be the one to kill me, though ill intent or otherwise. Does it matter? No, it doesn’t. Those are just questions to pass time. What does matter is that time passes.

Do you ever see me passing by? Do you realise I am talking to your flowers or myself? Do you think me crazy? Do you crane your neck trying to catch a glimpse of the glorious night sky which envelopes the whole planet? Do you realise how tiny you, me, we all are, how easily a tragedy can take place, stripping you bare from everything you consider familiar, from your security and preconceived notions of life? Do you tell to those people that matter to you how you feel about them? Do you spend a few minutes every day with the one you love, be it a parent, companion, child, pet, or craft? Do you let them know you are there? Or do you just let time pass, thinking about bills and wages and pussy and dick? Do you really care? Do you see? Not just look, but see? 

Open your eyes

The night sky is clear tonight and the stars are a sight to behold

The night is sweet, and mostly quiet, and smells of flowers and spring

The earth awakens

Every moment, with every breath you take you change, you become a different person, a different version of yourself

Every moment, with every breath you take, millions of cells in your body die and new are created and your consciousness is begging you to make that one step that separates thought from action

Open your eyes. Wake up from your coma.

This is your life, right here, right now. This is your life, so you might as well live it.

Open your eyes.

You might just see me passing by.

Goodnight.