I mostly believe

Ha, ha, ha. I have been looking for this everywhere.

by Neil Gaiman (from  the book American Gods)

“I can believe that things are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

- Samantha Black Crow I agree with about 98% of this. He, he, he.

Grumpy

[Art by tobiee.deviantart.com]

I am in a grumpy mood. It was not a good night. I spent two hours, from 04:00 am to 06:00 am tossing and turning on the sweat drenched sheets. Then another hour, from 06:00 to 07:00 staring at the ceiling. I finally fell asleep after 07:00 and woke up around 09:30 to 10:00. Unsurprisingly, I was in a bad mood although by now the particular routine is all too familiar to me. There are nights I cannot sleep until the sun has risen, and that's that. I miss my youth, when I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow... Haha.

I saw you in my sleep. You embraced me fondly as soon as you saw me and we chatted. It matters not. I don't care what happens in my dreams when my waking time is so different. It just adds to my bad mood when I finally wake up. I could have emailed you and told you about the other things I saw in the dream concerning you but what difference would it make? Would you listen? No, you'd probably freak out and run away even faster. Bah, I cannot be bothered anymore. I really can't. Run, knock your head on the usual walls you do, drink yourself stupid as you do anyway, take drugs, fuck around, try to escape your own self in every single kind of meaningless instant gratification you use. See what changes, what gives, what stays. And in the morning ask the stranger in the mirror what he wants from his life to receive the same shrug as a response. 

I should not be ironic, I know. I am not doing much better with my life; I would not know what meaning was even if it bit me in the arse one sunny morning. The only difference between you and I is that my body is still intact, because I respect it far too much to abuse it. Or because I am too much of a coward to dabble in the area of permanent alteration, save, of course, for my beloved tattoos. But meaning? Bah. Meaning is a lie. The only things keeping me here are untold stories and new songs I am waiting to discover and paintings to fall in love with. So decipher your life as best as you can and I'll struggle with mine. You might even be happier than I am; happiness, as I had written in my latest short story, is often found in the strangest places. So forgive me if I sounded like I was judging you. It's my disappointment speaking. I could and should do better than this.

A dear friend of mine is back from the "dead". I thought I had lost him for good but no, he's made a comeback I never expected. I am still too shocked for words, but happy. Life gives you lemons in abundance but from time to time also treats you to a big chocolate cake. I hope he stays. I have known him for so long and our qualities are so similar that he's a landmark in my existence.

I miss my heroes. I miss their qualities in my daily interactions with humans.

Next time I see Dorian I'll ask him to kill someone for me and I'll watch.

But Dorian is not part of this reality.

I am no part of this reality either.

So we're even.

I need to have more tattoos. This will solve pretty much everything. I am certain it will.

Serious thoughts covered by chocolate.

It's one of those days I am going round and round with no actual idea what I am looking for. But I know it's not here.

I am looking at the relationships I form around me and can't help but wonder. In all my relationships I have played a positive, therapeutic or soothing role. Sometimes I wonder if I am some kind of pain junkie. I sniff out people's pain and find myself there in milliseconds. Most of the time I know what to say, how to touch or how to push people's buttons to make them respond, feel better, forget. I wonder if I should change this.

Bah. Who cares. If I need to change it, it will just happen.

My energy is also another weird multifunctional thing. It slips right under people's guard (or nose) and as soon as it finds the smallest crack, it dives in and starts working furiously. I am a sly beastie too; my stories are outstanding blasts of my energy. If the recipient is open, they are so screwed. :-D Very soon the genuine article of change is inside them and working overtime, and I have seen what my energy can do to others if they are willing. It's something beyond description. And it's not something I control or have expectations from. It just is.

Let's eat much much more chocolate and see if we manage to acquire a zen state through it. :-D

There is something I want to say...

 

... but I am groping about inside my skull and have had no success in capturing it as of yet. Eventually, if I keep writing, my fingers will get a hold of it. I hope. Or I'll bore myself to tears and scrap this entry. And perhaps use it to wipe my ass, or turn it into a tablecloth to celebrate a meal for one. Heh. And so I try and try, I push my hand inside the currents of my mind and try to capture one of the many writhing beasts in there. I am not sure if they are fish, dragons, nameless monsters or corpses of drowned teenagers. Perfect in their moment of death, preserved in the most glorious period of their lives. But dead nonetheless.

I have a new kitten in the house. She is totally black, sleek and tiny. She loves to be kissed on the tummy. Strange for a cat. Smells like a cat should, her tummy hairs soft and clean and deliciously cat-like in their scent and feel under my nose. (All cats smell differently, did you know that? My orange one smells like cotton candy, she smells like chocolaty cat fluff, my Persian has a stronger smell, a little tangy.) I see her playing about and she is adorable. Many years from now, she'll probably be a fat sick smelly animal on the way out, as I have seen so many of my pets becoming after countless years of being a pet owner. And it mysteriously never ceases to hurt me. It never stops me from wondering how the hell did I miss the in-between years and how come I don't want to touch that sick smelly thing that used to be my cat but don't recognise anymore. I never manage to avoid feeling guilty about it either.

Impermanence. The source of all our sorrows. Is it really? Why should anything last forever? Why should we? We are faulty in our making, so why make this last?

Am I the only one who's so conscious of the passing of time?

Am I paranoid? Obsessive?

I don't want to leave but don't want to stay to watch myself become a fat smelly thing on the way out. If I shy away from touching my own cat, who will want to touch me?

So where does this leave me?

Nowhere.

"Make good art" Mr. Gaiman says. "No matter what's happening, make good art."

Can I do that?

Sometimes when I walk in a gallery and see a heart-stopping painting I know the person that painted it managed to capture one of the things that writhed inside their heads. And suddenly I know what that thing was. No dragon, no fish, no corpse, but a devious, sly monster very few brave people have managed to capture.

It was a moment in time...

[Both gorgeous paintings by John William Waterhouse.]

Trouble is an old friend of mine

Beautiful drawing by http://egosun.deviantart.com

I am looking for trouble in all the right places. And trouble finds me, kisses me on the cheek and shrugs. And I shrug too.

-Well met, Trouble.

-Well met, Elizabeth. How are you?

-“I am so screwed over” is the right answer. But you know that. I mean, we have just met. You’re supposed to be Trouble, not my aunt Helen. Don’t ask me things that are self-explanatory.

-Trying to be polite, Trouble replies. Never knew it went out of fashion. So, we cut to the chase then.

-Oh yes, we do.

-How do you want the chase to be this time? Trouble asks.

-Anything that does not involve chasing my own tail is fine, love.

Trouble hears that and doubles over with laughter.

-Are you plainly fucking delirious? He asks. We are talking about a male fairy here. Don’t tell me you don’t know what they are like. From all the things under the face of the good-ol' sun, you collided with one of the most whimsical, hedonistic, lying, obsessing, overindulging, sex-addicted races. And you don’t need me to tell you how murder is also their cup of tea, at least for some of them.

-Naga are the exact same thing, only they have scales and the ones I know don’t like to lie or kill, I interrupt Trouble playing smart ass. He snorts.

-Same difference to me. Are we talking about the fairy here or your collection of Naga acquaintances?

I shrug.

-So tell me about fairies.

-Come on, Trouble protests. You know everything about fairies. You have written half a book about one. You had picked the murderous type for the book, but other than that, there is nothing I can say you don’t know already.

-What do I do then?

-I don’t know, Trouble says. Run? Hide? Begin a stamp collection? It’s all the same to me. If I need to find you, I know where to look. My address book is always up to date.

I curse lowly. Trouble never lies.

-Do you think that I have some hope to get out unscathed?

-Ha, Trouble sniggers. I am the wrong one to ask concerning that. My job is to flay your skin, not give you advice. And he smiles a smile full of dagger-like teeth. 
I nod.

-You’re right. I am sorry. So, we begin?

-It has already begun, Trouble says and looks outside, then at his watch. He kisses me on the cheek again and I can swear this being smells like the tastiest thing ever draped over a rotting carcass.

-I am sure I’ll dodge you this time, I say seriously. I am certain the danger has passed. 
Trouble smiles his sweet dagger-collection smile and lights a cigarette.

-We’ll see about that, he murmurs.

-Goodnight Trouble.

-Goodnight Elizabeth.

Letters with no receivers

You like writing letters so much. Letters, lists, memos, diaries, digital letters, gods help you, you live immersed in the written word like it’s the air you breathe. And it is. It’s both what you breathe and what you choke on. Because that’s what you end up doing. Choking on papers and unspoken conversations with people who are absent, or dead, or not real.

You listen to love songs and murmur the song along with the singer. And you wonder, when the time comes for you to leave, what of that gift? Who will get the uniqueness of your voice save for the crows that don’t feast on the flesh of the dead anymore, and what will they do with this ill-begotten loot?

Perhaps sing love songs to themselves after midnight, sing love songs with a human voice when no-one is there to hear them. Scare the dead.

Your imagination tortures you like you share your mind with an evil twin. You are the crippled twin of the two, left to watch while the other mocks you for everything you (cannot) do. For every wall and barrier that shuts you off and surrounds you the other twin sees only sky, an open sky you are forever doomed to watch without the ability to soar. You look at rooftops and trees and you can almost see yourself there, perched lazily and looking at passers by with the audacity of a cat or a winged creature. You see yourself dancing on rooftops and dangling from windowsills and laughing wildly as you somersault from one impossible feat to the next and then gravity lands on your chest like a tombstone and reality slaps you. And the evil twin of your imagination laughs at you and gives you and them the finger. And with something akin to fever you wish you were shallow and boring and you could only think about your mundane job and what to cook for supper and to buy some milk on the way home. Not about dancing on rooftops and singing from trees, not about the open sky that laughs at your face every time you look up.

The night is so beautiful, a velvet curtain of negative light. Pull the curtain aside and you’ll find a hidden door of endless possibilities. Life and death kiss each other and laugh, laugh, laugh.

The earth is so beautiful, a living jewel sparkling and breathing. You are so afraid that She’s breathing Her last that you want to scream.

You miss flying so much.

You miss killing so much.

You’ve done neither in this lifetime but you remember them so vividly that your heart breaks.

Words, words, words are so cheap. They are a penny a bucketful. Aren’t you bored?

Shut up and get out.

The night is so beautiful.

Like killing. Like flying.

Out.

[Bartek Borowiec the male model in both beautiful photos]

Not a circle but a spiral...

Is the circle I am about to re-open appropriate?

Is this circle right?

It appears so.

November 2003 to November 2005. Two full years, eleven notebooks. An entire book. Still in my hands and I am incapable of using it due to copyright matters. Should I revisit that story/time? Would that be wise?

There is never any way of knowing, any guarantee that our actions are correct. What I do know is that I love those characters more than I love my breath, more than I love my blood. They are my breath and blood. I have kept them in my heart all these years the same way I have kept a dead pet and cried over it. Time heals, and yet their absence still hurts me like it was yesterday I lost them. I need to go back. I need to reclaim that world, to revisit and reshape it according to my desires. It will be mine now, fully mine, and no-one will be able to stop me.

I owe that much to them. That I can tell.

I owe that much to me.

Erotica

Been writing erotica for three days in a row. Perhaps my head will explode and LET ME BE at last. And I am not even ovulating.

Mah.

I am expanding!

Literally. Last time I weighed myself I almost got a heart attack. But never mind this. Let's hope my next boyfriend will be muscular enough to deal with it, because I sure as hell won't do anything about it. No, what I meant was that I'll open a second blog that I plan to keep as vanilla as possible and only write about my hobbies there. I don't want to refer to this blog here as interview material, for reasons we can all understand, and I certainly won't censor what I write here in order to make it less "challenging" for a possible employer. On the other hand, a site with my writing is a good thing, and I want to have one handy. There will be a link to that blog from here, but there won't be a link to this blog from there because I want to keep them separate (again for reasons we can all understand). As soon as it is ready, I'll add the link. Feel free to visit, although I need to explain beforehand that it will be a blog related ONLY to my interests. Which means, letter writing, crafting, music, movies, books, comics, manga and the occasional reference to role playing games and other bits and pieces. No deep philosophical questions, no overdose of pondering and no profanity, to the degree this is possible.

Let's see how this goes. And THANK YOU for reading this blog, even if you don't want to comment or make yourselves visible. I take this as a compliment of this blog being a secret vice of some sorts (don't I wish!).

Personal favourites

Experts from the book “Oranges are not the only fruit” by Jeanette Winterson.

…“In those days, magic was very important, and territory, to start with, just an extension of the chalk circle you drew around yourself to protect yourself from elementals and the like. It’s gone out of fashion now, which is a shame, because sitting in a chalk circle when you feel threatened is a lot better than sitting in a gas oven. Of course people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things, so there’s no need to take it personally. Why will it work? It works because the principle of personal space is always the same, whether you’re fending off an elemental or someone’s bad mood. It’s a force field around yourself, and as long as our imagining powers are weak, it’s useful to have something physical to remind us.

The training of wizards is a very difficult thing. Wizards have to spend years sitting in a chalk circle until they can manage without it. They push out their power bit by bit, first within their hearts, then within their bodies, then within their immediate circle. It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change. Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something which you do not understand is the true nature of evil.”

…

“‘Don’t you ever think of going back?’

Silly question. There are threads that help you find your way back, and there are threads that intent to bring you back. Mind turns to the pull, it’s hard to pull away. I’m always thinking of going back. When Lot’s wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt. Pillars hold things up, and salt keeps things clean, but it’s a poor exchange for losing your self. People do go back, but they don’t survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what’s left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to see you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.”

…

“If the demons lie within, they travel with you.”

…

“Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.”

…

Ought to be sleeping already

I have at least six decks of tarot cards and not one can give me what I am looking for: answers.

Answers can take many forms.

If every choice is valid, then it is almost self-explanatory that we should strive to avoid pain and experience happiness.

Now, almost everyone makes the kind of choices that in the long run will make them unhappy. If asked, the answer is almost always the same.

"I didn't know."

Didn't you?

It seems absurd to me that we spend such a big part of our lives getting to "know better" and then, once we do know better, we are too old to choose between wisdom and passion. There is only wisdom as a choice, because passion has departed forever. We are too old to be passionate without being ridiculous. We are too old, period. We are way past our prime, way past the age we inspired others to be naughty, daring, to seek moments of passion within our arms, in our company.

It's just absurd.

I see the first light of dawn seeping through the balcony door and I wonder: is it too early? Or too late?

Does it matter?

I have to choose wisely.

I always have to choose.

There is not enough time.

Time is an illusion of the mammal brain.

Time makes me most unhappy.

Time heals all wounds to replace them with new ones.

Time is a tyrant.

There is no escape.

There must be another way to do things.

There must be something.

I will just sleep now.

Sleep lies outside the clutches of time.

Ah.

Cats, butts and radioactivity.

Experts from a letter to my penpal B. in Canada.

I am positively positive that if I don’t do something different than what I usually do, my brain will explode into sparkly little thingies the colour of shit. So here I am at the kiosk beginning a letter to you, or else. I still haven’t got a letter from, I should say, your demented Highness, or nicely round Butt Excellency, but hope dies last. Fear not! I will try everything, even come there to freeze my equally nice round butt together with yours in order to get that darn letter. I can see both our asses side by side at the mantelpiece. Hey, I can see our asses pressed against the windows of your house, mooning the non-existent neighbors. What the hell. At this rate, you may attract neighbors as well. I can see our asses on TV, on t-shirts, on two page spreads in magazines. I can see our asses mooning the moon itself if we have to. It’s Assholy war.

See what I mean about my brain exploding? It’s like goddess Eris herself has climbed on my shoulders and she pulls my ears and kicks my kidneys while stuffing LSD up my nostrils. I have no choice but to write bullshit under the serious disguise of a letter addressed to someone who’ll understand my ass fixation. I need a choir of Asian 17-year-olds who can and will dance nekkid in the moonlight and won't make everyone laugh themselves to hospital because of how pitifully small their ahems are. I don’t mind if they can’t sing. To hell with singing as long as they have other redeeming qualities. I want to wake up tomorrow and know Japanese without the need to scribble down kanji on scrap paper four million times each. I want to wake up tomorrow and be in Japan already, with a steady job that is somehow connected to violating the aforesaid choir. Even though to be honest with you I look forward to a trip to Japan with mixed feelings. I am afraid that my poor little Jap boys will no longer be fun to chase through the darkness of the night, because there will be no challenge; they will glow in the dark. I am afraid that I, too, will glow in the dark if I spend time there, and it certainly hasn’t been on top of my list of priorities, “things to do when you turn 35”. Elizabeth as a life size Halloween decoration, ew. Imagine the worst scenario: only my vagina turns radioactive through contact and gives new meaning to my life; it literally sheds light on matters concerning my sexual activity. Those private moments under the sheets will no longer hold any mystery; there will ample illumination on the subject. Gahhhhhhh…

[Q: You work in an office. How can you tell which pretty boy fell victim to Elizabeth’s devious sexual charms the previous night?

A: You simply tell them to stick their tongues out. Anyone with a weird glow effect on their tongues either has a penchant for fireflies, or has been in a particular bed last night.]

So I am sat at the kiosk, surrounded by an army of pieces of scrap paper thrown everywhere, all of them covered in kanji that I have been practicing in the vain hope of remembering them the next day. The idea someone will get by looking at this scene is that the whole place has contacted a nasty case of the measles, but an alien strain of it, with black squiggly thingies instead of red spots. I’m munching compulsively whatever my dirty paws can get a hold of while raising my butt every now and then and farting discretely in the pillow. There’s a perpetual stink around the kiosk like someone cracked open the door of a mausoleum full of cholera victims. I am pretty certain sooner or later a demon with a strong business sense and nefarious taste will come and shake hands with me, then offer me to bottle the essence and sell it to the market of Hell as air freshener and make us both rich. He’ll later confess to me that it was the subtle rotten egg aroma that underpinned the basic stink of death and dismay and made all the difference. I am also pretty certain that if I stand up and start hitting the pillow on the wall, ominous green clouds of stink will emerge out of it, and if I try to disperse them by fanning at them with my hands, I will discover that they are solid enough to need breaking them with a hammer into smaller pieces first.

I am absolutely positive that if I ever live together with a companion, they will die in their sleep by gas attack while I’ll be snoring in the pillow next to them without a care in the world, my ass accidentally poised at them and firing non-stop. I am also pretty certain my orange tom-cat has no sense of smell. The Persian is devious; she sleeps under the bed. He sleeps curled near my ass. Can you imagine that. Just next to the stirring volcano. Perhaps he likes it there because it’s so warm and breezy.

I do know one thing for certain. If I see areas where his lovely soft orange fur is curly and singed, I will not wonder why. One cannot escape the inevitable! Sooner or later, special becomes mundane, holy becomes profane and the grim reaper of my butt becomes the hair dresser of my cat. The mighty have indeed fallen.

Yet no man is an island...

Some people are clutching at straws to make sense of what's going on. I am clutching at pieces of paper. My entire life is nothing but piles of paper, heaps of paper, castles of fucking paper.

I think it's time to strike a match and say to hell with it.

I am just too tired for words and yet words are what I have left. Words and cathairs as well as cats, the avid producers of the aforesaid hairs. Enthusiastic producers they are for certain. I'll give them that.

Fifteen years old, with a lovely voice. Raped, killed and thrown down the cliff. The razor straight, almost vertical cliffs of beautiful Ireland, going down to the pounding sea.

Less than thirty. Slowly executed in a concentration camp, the kind of living death when every day you are stripped naked of everything that makes you human. It was a crime to be of gypsy blood. Seventy years later, it still is a crime.

Twenty three years old. Killed by her abusive, drunkard husband for having an affair. What's new?

The thoughts and stories and little lives circle me tonight, circle me resembling large goldfish, dragonfish, orange and green and golden, and they want a piece of me.

Have a piece. It's useless anyway. I am living a pretty much pointless life. It does not make much difference one way or the other. It's Zen, baby. Zen to the rotten core. That apple is zen. My life is zen. I am so fucking zen that the great masters of Zen stand ashamed in front of me. They slap their foreheads and wonder why they didn't think of it themselves; living a perfectly empty existence.

(The last strings were cut, cut free, cut clean, and even though I am floating the gravity of my own mind pulls me down, pulls me down viciously, and my soul feels like a lead balloon, and I don't want this kind of soul, I want a different one with lots of colours, not such an old, dirty and torn thing. I don't want this kind of soul with the weight of countless ages, the weight of so many deaths on my hands, on my conscience, no no no, please take it away, please take it away, I DON'T WANT IT ANYMORE)

The art of living is such an easy thing. Breathe in, breathe out. The rest will follow.

I have never felt about any one thing that it could be such an exercise in futility as much as I feel it about my life. Never, ever  have I considered something as useless as those thirty something years here. What the hell do I struggle for? Why do I fight, why do I insist? Why do I torture my mind over countless pieces of paper, why do I work like a slave and say no to so many things, and put up with so much bullshit, and discuss so many daft matters with such a variety of idiotic people? Why do I bother sticking to my code of honour and asking what would be the best path of conduct, and brush my teeth and wash my hair and all that shit? Why oh why do I bother with these, give me one valid reason why I bother, why I even try, why I spend so much time and put so much effort in this pitiful semblance of existence?

Poor Daisuke, poor little child of mine, birds of a feather always flock together, don't they? You just came into my head uninvited one day, just like we all come and leave one day, you came to stay and what I can say is that I am sorry, I am so sorry my little boy. I am sorry because I am not a story weaver. I am a teller of tales, which means a witness. I am merely a witness to what's happening anyway, behind closed doors, by people with no conscience. I know why you can't connect. Don't let it bother you anyway, it's the same here. I can't connect either. Some things are not meant to be, and I cannot be like them because I know, and they cannot be like me because they don't. And I don't blame them one bit if they don't want to know and understand. I chose knowledge and look where it got me anyway. To the madhouse, in a room with a view.

Don't let it bother you one bit. Just raise your gun and shoot me once. Aim true. Make it impeccable. Make it a mercy killing, make it a banquet. Make it look like I am sleeping. Make it look like I was torn apart by wolves. Make it look any way you like, it doesn't really bother me in the least. What truly bothers me is this so-called life.

To hell with it all.

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We are all strangers in a strange land

“You know it’s best not to get attached to things.”

“But isn’t that the point of it all?”

Grant Morrison, WE3

Sometimes I am pretty certain I am weird. Other times, I know I am weird.

Right now, for example, I have no idea what it is that I want to do. I’m restless, but haven’t a clue why. I want to do something meaningful but meaningful is a word with many different interpretations. I don’t want to write a letter, I don’t feel like studying, reading or filling in fbs. I hunger for something and I am under the impression that this ‘something’ is human touch.

I think of people as islands or landscapes. This is why I loved drawing portraits when I did draw (back then in antiquity, when I was fifteen). And this is probably the reason I never describe the environment when I write stories. I don’t care about the setting unless it somehow affects the plot. People, however, are fascinating. The way they look, what they are made of, their faces, their hair, bodies, clothes they choose, reactions, the aura or sensations they create when entering a space. That’s what catches my interest.

Presently I would love to write something but I have nothing to write about. I stopped writing longer stories years ago and even short ones are a very rare occurrence nowadays. Poetry comes and goes according to the whims of the Muse and the Muse has a headache. What I have in mind is snapshots. Nothing to write a story about. Snapshots that don’t even show a full face. Black hair, a tiny leer, a pink nipple, a ring on a finger, the lines of expression next to the mouth. A bowl with two goldfish. A part of a tattoo on a person’s chest, depicting a kitsune, a fox spirit. The cuff of an expensive shirt died crimson with blood. I know what they are; stolen moments. Moments in the lives of the people/heroes inside my head. I am a peeping Tom in their lives and can’t even help it.

I ordered the new Dir en Grey DVD as I watched some videos in youtube and the boys are back on the Path of War and mean business. Not that they had ever left this path, to be honest, but it’s nice to know one of your most favourite bands is alive and yelling, isn’t it? And I am also ogling the new Gackt photo book, with a long-haired Gackt dressed beautifully, sword in hand. How original. I never. Waaay, waaaaaay too expensive to buy at this point, but I am sure I’ll locate it in a friendlier price later on. Or I won’t. I already have a ridiculous number of magazines and photo books with Gackt and not a single one can give me what I desire the most. Contact with a real person, or meaning.

There is no actual meaning. We devise meaning but there is no meaning. A strand of hair, a gust of wind, an old photo in a drawer. I have some photos that belonged to my father and they are at least forty years old. I have no idea whom they depict. Perhaps they were friends of my father's or relatives, but my father is dead and he can’t tell me. So to my eyes they are just random strangers. No matter how important (or not) they were to him at the time, they are strangers to me now.

For all of us comes the time when we are unknown people in photos that are accidentally wedged at the back of old drawers. Meaning is very relevant. It presupposes attachment, connection. Time eats away at attachment and connection. No-one remembers. No-one knows. And it’s not really important.

What is important? I keep wondering and wondering and have no answers. I remember times I was so in love that I thought my heart would burst. And I remember times I almost went mad with pain or anger. It’s gone now, like it happened to someone else. Those moments are gone. I am a random stranger typing furiously at a net café and writing, writing, writing what she can’t live. I am an old photo in a drawer. I am a ghost in the machine. And all the photo books in the world, all the DVDs in the world cannot give me the thing I crave the most. The smell of your hair.

[ Images from GACKT Nemurikyoshiro Buraihikae Official Photobook]

Almost everything.

It is only natural that I don't write everything here. Save for the obvious reasons of not every thought or occurrence being worthwhile of recording, sometimes written word does not cover one tenth of what I really need to say.

Haha.

The other reason is perhaps less obvious; the people reading it, at least the ones who know me personally. The other ones, well, there are lots of warnings everywhere in the blog, so let the reader beware, right?

Sometimes I am thinking about starting another blog and writing whatever the hell I want there, no matter how extreme or weird or whatever. But truth be told, this one is almost as good as I want it to be. Almost. And I am against too many blogs and too many accounts in too many sites. A lot of people are total attention whores, but I say to myself I am not. This is a bit of a lie, as writers are terrible attention whores. Then again there are things I would do and things I would not do to get attention. And sacrificing the blog I have created bit by bit in the past five years would not be something I'd do to get attention. Posting naked pics of me would also get me lots of attention, but not the kind of attention I want. I mean, I have breasts, hips, and generally every body part women have. What's new?

The only new thing I can display and flaunt in people's faces is my mind. Nothing more, nothing less. That, and the way I understand and experience reality. The way I interpret what we call life.

Human beings are very fragile creatures. A single gust of wind and we are gone. But the mind and its creations stay. And the word "mind" is actually too narrow to describe what I want to say. The Greek word would be "pneuma", πνεύμα. A beautiful word meaning spirit and soul, related to breath and the mind.

I think that's about the only thing that stays behind in some form or other. And this is what this blog is about. It may be poor, it may be lacking, it may be anything. But that's what I have, that is my treasure. They can strip me naked of everything but they cannot take this away from me. It's my treasure hidden in the deepest vault of my heart and yet open for everyone to see and partake if they so wish.

That's all I have. And I am both proud and grateful for it.

"God[/dess] is hidden in the details."

Blood tidings

[Beautiful art by http://feimo.deviantart.com]

And yet that night she spoke to you.

She had not spoken to you countless times that you craved her presence more than dear life. But that night she spoke to you, and endless days without her by your side vanished in a blink.

In a dream she came to you.

Be careful, my love, she whispered.

And the sweetness of your native tongue on her beloved lips was a gift you were not prepared for. Yet she gave it just the same.

Dead, you said, before you could stop yourself, head spinning, heart beating out of control. You're dead, aren't you?

But her sensation was more real than anything in your waking life for the past twenty years, and the pain was more that you could stand. Blinding and crippling, like death itself. You shakily extended your hand and found hers in the near darkness of that room, and it was the hand you knew, small and warm and beloved. Something broke inside you then and you found yourself on your knees.

Stay with me, you whispered. Please.

But the only thing that stayed with you when you opened your eyes were your tears.

My beloved Japanese pixie yells his pain out in what feels like gusts of wind. And I write, because there is nothing else I can do. Nothing else.

I am sorry, Mr Takeshi.

It is raining again.

So many things I could say. But what is the point? What would that achieve?

I am gorged by art and unsatisfied desire.

I was reading a piece I wrote four or five years ago. It was a good piece. It will never be published.

It’s funny how we always seem to go in circles around ourselves. Round and round we go, like a shark that circles its prey, and always preoccupy ourselves and our minds with the same thoughts. Our poems and prose follow familiar patterns, our habitual interests a safe ground we can rest and enjoy the sights we already know. Our obsessions dress our minds like a comfortable old leather jacket, like an old faithful pair of boots. Comfortable enough to ignore even the fact they are threadbare and full of holes, and the only actual warmth they give us is imaginary.

What will become of all those stories that will never make it beyond the shores of my own eyes, never be read by any other person than me and perhaps two more friends?

Let the wind take them. Let the wind and water take these boats not fit for travel, and undo them. Let the waves take them for if you try to sail on them you will sink with them. And more than anything else, let time serve you in building that boat which will be stronger, and take you to the other side. The other side of yourself and reality, where you have nothing to lose or gain, and the stranger with the knowing smile that will greet you on the coast will embrace you and ask no questions.

My cat knows. In all his fat ginger fluffiness he knows there is no time for a single moment to be spared, and yet there is no such thing as time. He does not expect tomorrow to curl around my arm late at night and purr his content. He knows the greatest secret of all. There is no tomorrow. There is only here and now. Seize it as best as you can.

I cried for your inability to say you are sorry. I cried for that hurt little boy in the room with the mirror and I cried for the grown man, all tangled up in his own stories and hurt ego. You want the sacred words circled around your body; you want the ode for feelings tattooed on you. And yet how far from understanding your own feelings you are. I touched your face, accepting you just the way you are, loving you just the same, but I cried for you just the same too, and for me, and for the petty ego tricks we fall victim to when we should shine from the inside. I cried because we think we are going to be forever, that there will always be a time to set things right, to reconsider or change our minds. Somehow we are certain we need not apologize or look back. We behave as if we are larger than life and invincible when we are but mere candles, flickering in the garden of Eternity and you, having seen death as often as you have, should know this better than anyone else. I cried a little bit for both, but more than anything else, I think I cried for what I already know too well: no matter how much I care, I cannot save you, or anyone else. I’m not even sure I can save myself.

I am not exactly sad. Merely reflecting on my choices and next steps. Disengage, my dear Takeshi-san would say quietly. Do not worry. Do not anger. Let time serve you while you pay servitude to yourself. And unsurprisingly, happiness, when it knocked on that little man’s door, was to him as sweet and unexpected as warm summer rain. It did not last for long. But Takeshi-san knew how to make it last. He knew how to drink sips from that elusive rainwater as he fed his goldfish, as he took care of his precious bonsai, as he brushed his teeth. He was there every single moment. His mind did not wander. His full attention was on every single thing he did like that task was the most important thing in the world, like that moment was the greatest moment of achievement in his life. But I am not Takeshi-san. I am merely Elizabeth. And I worry, and I anger, and I am not focused on every moment that passes. And time slips from my fingers like grains of sand, and the more I try to hold the sand into my grasp the more it flows freely.

Takeshi-san, forgive me for being such a poor student to your wisdom. Forgive me for being too cocksure when I should be humble and keep an open mind, and forgive me when my mind wanders on the paths of anger, and worry, and cheap desire. Forgive me for being impatient and lacking faith, for fighting when I should give up and giving up the times I should have fought. Forgive me for all the times I have wished I was never born, and have been disgusted by the entire human race including myself, and have given up hope or resolved to violence. Forgive me for being human when I should shine, and for being rigid when I should have bent with the wind.

Takeshi hears that without commenting or interrupting and gives me the slightest of nods when I am done. I know what he thinks: “I have been cocksure, and proud, and close-minded. I have been impatient and have lacked faith, I have fought when I should have given up and run away when I should have stayed and fought. I have wished I had never been born, and have been sick with the entire human race and myself. I have given up hope and have resolved to violence. I thought I had to prove myself, first to others, then to myself. Did I prove something? I don’t know. I do not think so. But I have two goldfish to feed, and they need food daily, and three bonsai to take care of, and they cannot wait. They will take the food and the care I offer and will not ask me if I am worthy. And if they consider my care adequate to live and flourish, that is all the proof I need.” But instead of saying these things he keeps his silence, his dark eyes focused outside. It is raining again.

Discovered!

With the help of my dear friend K., the table Nuare fucks (previous post) is finally discovered!

Happy new year everyone! :-D

Vampire Hunter D

I am presently reading the Vampire Hunter D series of books. I have five of them.

I am pissed off with the series.

When I read the first book I had been left speechless. The book combined hack and slash with a fantastic setting in the far off future. There are spaceships and laser cannons and at the same time people travel on horseback and fight with vampires and werewolves. There is a very interesting basic character, D, who sports outrageously good looks and is about as involved with other humans as the moon is involved with your average bus. He merely shines his grace on them. And that's about it. Now, having the kind of father I had and all the lovely traumas and confused childhood years I had, it was inevitable that I would be immediately smitten with D and would want to read about him. And the first book was very good. But then I read the second, and the third, and then the sixth and tenth. And in the tenth book the basic character is still as evolved as it was in the first. He never mingles with humans. Never uses the bathroom. Never masturbates or fucks or shows even a glimpse of interest in anything else than "flying like a mystical bird through the air" and slashing everything around him in bloody confetti.

And I got really annoyed and bored with the series.

In my stories I have Nuare. Nuare is similar to D in some ways. But he fucks. In fact he would have fucked just about anything that caught his fancy. Even a wooden table with three legs and a vase with flowers on it. I swear. He cannot fuck anything he wants but when he does fuck there is enough detail in there to make the reader sidestep to avoid a flying ribbon of spank that is coming through the page and seems to be aiming at their eye. (I swear this is accidental, by the way.) It just happens that any realistic character will have some sort of sexual life at some point if it is a humanoid being. Right? And if not sexual life he will have friends. Some kind of emotional involvement with SOMEONE, for the sake of fuck.

But no. D "flies like a mystical bird through the air". Of course. How stupid of me. That should be enough.

Give me five years. That's all I am asking for. And they will all eat my dust. That, or I'll find a way to slip half a dozen viagra in D's goblet of wine and make him show me his other bird. Not the mystical. The one hidden inside his trousers.

"And there was much rejoice".

Monty Python