Back online

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.
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The Book of Life

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate

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.

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Inner dialogue: an exercise in repetition.

This is what discussing with myself feels like. Source: http://duncantje.deviantart.com/art/Tea-for-two-371640506

I am learning to put up with people with some measure of success. I am re-learning to see them as humans, actually. Attempting to feel compassion. I need to do something about my constant anger. My motivating forces are anger and desire, and anger I can do without. So I am trying to see what can be done about it. 

My mind is constantly busy, more often than not going in circles around the same subjects. That's why I don't trust my thinking progress very much. I can give you an example of my inner dialogue.

Myself: I wonder if she is OK. I have called her and emailed her repeatedly and she does not answer. Then again, she never picked up her phone, so that comes as no surprise. I hope she is OK. Maybe she is mad at me. I didn't do something for her to be mad. Still I worry about her. 

Me: She chose her path a long time ago and there is nothing you can do about it. 

Myself: I don't want her to change path, but it would be nice to know she is OK. It would be even nicer to be able to communicate with those I have a good time with more often. 

Me: Stop this. You know she is not there anymore. She never was.

Myself: Why people can't understand how important it is to be human by doing simple, every day things like picking up the phone, laughing at a shared joke, discuss. 

Me: Because people are who they are and you are not here to change them. It's important enough to understand these concepts yourself and change. 

Myself: Yes, but if I have no-one to share my insights and discoveries with, what is the purpose of such a discovery? 

Me: It's not your responsibility that humans end up in a deathbed full of regrets. Stop bothering with what you can't change and isn't your cross to carry.

Myself: I wish I could make them understand. 

Me: You can understand and that's enough. 

Myself: I am tired of my loneliness. 

Me: You should be grateful you have the friends you do. 

Myself: I am grateful. I don't take anything for granted. I wonder why those who take nothing for granted are the underdogs of society. 

Me: Maybe because the reason they take nothing for granted has to do with who they are in society to begin with, and the hardship they've already been through. 

Myself: Hardship is no guarantee of a grateful person. 

Me: Nor is lack of hardship guarantee of a callous one. 

Myself: There is great callousness in ignoring whole parts of yourself because you can't deal with the pain. It is the same with that other person too, who was so close to me to grow up into a fussy, perpetually sour individual, who is looking for mistakes like there is a reward for them. She left behind everything she held near and dear because she could not deal with the pain and she secretly blames me for not giving up like she did. 

Me: Hey, are you back into the 'I wonder why people don't understand' mode? Stop this. Don't you have anything better to think about? 

Myself: I can always consider the possibility of my heroine ending with two alpha males instead of one. 

Me: Well, that sounds better than the previous line of thought. 

Myself: But you don't understand, I know and feel all those facts about others and I can't tell them! I am bursting at the seams with the things I want to shout at their faces and I can't. I can't because if I do, they won't listen. Even worse, they will deny everything and tell me I am crazy and I am making it up and I am a mean person and I don't understand shit! 

Me: So? You know what you know, it's not your responsibility to enlighten anyone else. Concentrate. Think of something else. The alpha male duo with the heroine sounds good. 

Myself: Yes, it does. 

Me: That's my girl.

See what I mean? Going around in circles trying in vain to understand why humans are being humans, and the other voice of myself trying to switch my attention to something else and stop me from considering those relationships and situations I can't change or understand. Thankfully she is persuasive.

Other than that, I have a better job now. I am no longer at the supermarket and feel great about it. Although I can't change or enlighten anyone, I can at least smile because I escaped. 

I am off to bed. That should be considered an escape too. My brain is melting from lack of enough sleep. I am afraid that if I blow my nose, I'll accidentally give myself a full lobotomy. Maybe that would be an improvement.
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Tired but alive and kicking

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.

Till we meet again. 

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Letters to the dead

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?"

Friendly conversation with a writer (with Thranduil's butt as a bonus)

Thranduil: Ass divine. Unlike our good ol' elven king, have one, don't BE one to your friends.

Source: http://ranlae.deviantart.com/art/mailea-kaila-556271990 

Me: "This pisses me off, you know? There is a friend of mine who has vanished for years now. And you do know how few my friends are. Every time he gets into a relationship, he drops off the face of the earth. Stops calling. Stops meeting with me. And it pisses me off when my friends do that. It makes me sad. Time passes and I may move abroad and never see him again. I am not expecting him to spend time daily or even weekly with me. But for the love of fuck, surely you can find some time once or twice a year for a fucking coffee with me?! I am not asking for the moon, I am asking for maybe two hours every few months!"

Lizbeth: "Let me quote Walter, the scientist, from the series Fringe: 'It's all because of that temptress. She tricked him with her carnal manipulations and he fell right into her vagenta!' (vagina+ agenta). Maybe his girlfriend isn't happy with him meeting his female friends, you know. Most women feel that way and they are VERY manipulative and cunning. They make sure to alienate their boyfriends from their female friends to eliminate possible competition. Men don't realise it until it's too late."

Me: *Laughs* "I don't know if he has realised we have not met each other for at least two, maybe three years now. Men are complete idiots. As soon as they find a relationship nothing else matters. They no longer have friends or other interests. There is the Holy Vagina, and then there is everything else: work, food, sleep and maybe something called hobbies, if her majesty the Vagina allows. These men find themselves alone in their fifties, married to what has become a fat, unpleasant woman, and they drink beer in front of the TV and wonder why they have no friends left. Because you ditched us years ago, you bloody morons, that's why!"

Lizbeth laughs. "You do remember what J. told you about it, don't you now?"

Me: "Yeah. J. said he has so many other, more serious problems in his life, that doesn't have any time or energy left to worry about those who never call and don't keep in touch because they developed a case of severe phone allergy doubled with Procrastinatis and Arseholery."

Lizbeth: "That's why I love that guy. He's right, you know."

Me: "Oh hell, fuck me, I know. That's why I stopped calling my friend and no longer try to reach him. He lives in a new house now, much closer to mine. If he can't be bothered to call and meet up, then to hell with him. I have other priorities too. I can't chase anyone. Let him go. Maybe someone else will replace him. It hurts, but you can't make people stay, you can't make them care or give you their time. Obviously my idea of our friendship was wildly exaggerated."

Lizbeth quotes Mark Twain: "As in 'the reports of my death have been wildly exaggerated'?"

Me: "Yeah. Something like that. How goes the review hunting, by the way?"

Lizbeth makes a face. "I've kissed so much arse in the past one month I am beginning to feel hairs growing on my poor chapped lips. You can't imagine how boring this procedure is. Some of the reviewers are rude, too!"

Me: "Well fuck them. Give them the finger if they are rude." *Raises her middle finger in solemn salutation*

Lizbeth: "You can't give them the finger, even if they are rude. Sure, I've said many 'fuck you too' to my screen whenever I receive a rude email. I don't mind a refusal. If they tell me they are busy and can't do another review, what am I going to do, kidnap them and force them to write reviews for my book? I just shrug and thank them anyway. But the rude ones, oh the rude ones are so much fun. I wish I become famous just so they regret being so unpleasant to me."

Me: "Don't worry about them. Fuck them. Your writing isn't for everyone. You know that, right?"

Lizbeth: "Nothing is for everyone. I just wish humans were less unpleasant to each other."

Me: "Isn't this what makes you write?"

Lizbeth: "Don't you go all Buddha on me now, about existence being painful and this pain being the grit that makes the pearl grow. Being polite is always an option, especially if the other person has been nothing but polite to you. Have an arsehole. Don't be one."

Me: "Yeah, fat chance of that, love. Mutation by proximity."

Lizbeth: "More like mutation by constant association with that orifice and thorough brain alienation."

Me: "I've got an 'alienation' label on my blog. Maybe I should use 'brain alienation' too."

Lizbeth: "Maybe we should stop caring about people who don't care about us in the same way."

Me: "How can you tell how much someone cares?"

Lizbeth: "Easy peasy. They check on you every now and then to make sure you are okay."

Me: "Aw man, I must delete almost my entire list of contacts if that's the case."

Lizbeth: "Don't delete them. Just stop worrying about them, stop calling them, and stop wondering why they don't call. You've got bigger fish to fry."

Me: "Yeah, my glorious self. I will be a feast." (I am Pisces with Pisces ascendant...)

Lizbeth: "Goodie. Am I invited?"

Me: "Of course. Come, eat, this is my body. But you will most likely start fancying elves and vampires and unpleasant characters afterwards."

Lizbeth: "I don't see any discernible difference. I do that already."

Me: "And here I was, wondering why we keep each other such good company..."

Lacrimosa

 

There is no changing what we are.

There is no changing what we feel. Or is there? 

I am struggling inside my mind, layers upon layers of fetters and conditioning.

My mind resides inside a physical form that places more fetters around my existence.

My body exists inside a society, a pre-existent construction that has its own rules and ideas, bringing more fetters in the equation.

My society is a country presently entrapped in a state of economical war with other countries, and I have no future to look forward to, no way to realise my dreams.

As if all the fetters inside weren’t enough, I am also trapped outside and there is no place to run to. I am stranded on a hostile planet with no escape. 

There is nothing for me here. Only the brief repose of reading a book, watching a movie, writing, talking to a friend, when time ceases to exist and that pain abates for a little while.

You tell me to keep on struggling, that better days will come, that this is not all that is, and there is hope.

Maybe there is. But right now all I see is darkness. I have struggled with all those fetters for years, and more fetters come to replace those I have removed and broken with so much effort. I feel buried under them. I cannot breathe. I keep pushing on, blind, broken, angry, furious with rage. I am blind rage and nothing more. Rage is the only thing remaining to fuel me. Sadness does not count.

There is so much blood on my hands, such a burden on my soul. This time I did not kill anyone. This lifetime I played by the rules, and gained a room with a view in prison.

I want out. I want to live. I want even the pretense of living. I want something I cannot have. I want bliss, and the brief moments I have experienced it make me even sadder for knowing what I miss. I want out of here. Out of this fucking planet. Out of this existence. Everything hurts. Every single thing I see cuts me and burns me and hurts me. I am an exposed nerve, and no matter how well I hide, if I make the mistake of walking out and looking at anything else than the trees, something appears to hurt me. From the piece of litter I see on the ground to the contemptuous glance a passerby gives to another passerby, everything hurts and overwhelms me. I am exhausted. I want to rest. I don’t understand anything anymore. I don’t know what I am doing wrong. Maybe this world isn’t for me. Maybe I am not made for this world. Maybe it was all a mistake.

I just want to rest. I want to close my eyes and sleep and never wake up again. I am so tired. So sick of struggling. So sick of fighting to gain what others take for granted. Everything is a struggle and a battle and I am so disgusted of existing just to suffer and flail and achieve nothing.

I want to do nothing. But there is so much I need to do. From mundane tasks to personal projects, there is so much I need to do. And if I open the door and step out of this life, even if something good happens I won’t be there to see it.

That’s what I tell myself and persuade her not to do anything stupid.

I don’t know for how long this will keep me here.

I don’t know how much time I have left before I break completely and don’t care anymore.

For today, it is enough. Tomorrow is another struggle.

One day at a time. One breath at a time.

We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

That’s my girl.

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