Torture Garden Party

The Torture Garden Party is coming again to Athens!!! YAY! Another chance to flirt with gay boys dressed in mini-skirts and not feel bad about it. I wonder how naked should I be? Quite.

Shitting bricks

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

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

The aftermath

My friend A. tells me that she is not afraid of commitment but she just needs time and space on her own. I, on the other hand, know she is just like me: not exactly afraid of commitment, but more than anything else, afraid of what commitment ensues.

"Friends"

You fucking cunt rug. You despicable twit. Thinking you've got everything right, everything fixed. With a few kind words. And I'll be happy again, like an imbecile, or a hurt puppy. As if my whole life depends on people's approval. When it was so simple: what you had to do was keep your word, and you didn't do it.

You idiotic bastard. You fucking, blithering asshole. Thinking you've got me wrapped around your finger just because you have a dick. When all you can do is stare at me, stare like a bemused moron. Till my inner light will blind you once and for all, till my face burns itself onto your memory. And I'll descend like a tower of fire, to touch the ground for a single breath before I take flight and disappear.

You will pay. Oh, how you'll all pay. I will make you all pay. Because you are not worthy of your title human, άνθρωπος -άνω θρώσκω, κοιτώ προς τα πάνω- turning the stare to the sky, unlike pigs that cannot do that. Because you sacrificed everything for the sake of your ego, or rather, your dick, because all you had to do was keep your mouth shut. Because that thing you've got between your legs, that fleshy protrusion is meant to be filling the gap between our legs in only one way. Like the sky would.

Brother piece of "friends".

Music: Porcupine Tree: Stupid Dream: A smart kid.

This world hurts me.

This reality, this plane of existence hurts me. People hurt me by being themselves. They make me crazy. They make me sad. I want to go away. Run. Hide. I want to stay hidden. Disappear. Vanish without a trace.

“The lady of the lake.”

Water, feelings. More than anything else, pain. Great pain.

I take pain too personally. I take pain as an enemy. I want to run away, to escape pain. I want to escape this world. And the only way I can do this is create. And I cannot create when I am so hurt. I cannot create. Creation is a cocoon to hide me in and make me feel protected. Safe. Nurtured. It helps me breathe cause I cannot breathe. Not in this world. I am not made to breathe air, I can only breathe underwater. And this world is dry and my gills feel brittle as if they are about to shatter. My chest aches as I breathe, my being hurts as I breathe. I cannot draw breath and I cannot create. I feel like a whale that was washed out and the sun is killing it.

It’s so hard to put into words what feels like a rain, a storm inside. So hard.

Rage

Qana, 30th of July, 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We all live under the same sky

We breathe the same air

We watch the same stars

Anything that happens under this sky is our business

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

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

Fucking hell and three times shite

...how the time passes by. The previous entry was written on the 3rd of July and I only posted it now. Weeeell, truth be told, I enter phases of freaking out at the mere thought of going online, while others I cannot help but spend a minimum of five hours frying my brains on the internet. It has to do with my credit card being sky-high presently: I simply cannot afford to spend more, and therefore avoid internet like the plague. Cause I know the drill: the temples of sin called Play, Lulu, Amazon and E-bay, the whorehouses that host Japanese art books, ready to display their beauty for all to see, the secret calling of all those sites with comics... I say to myself, I will just buy this one thing, and the one thing becomes a dozen, and up it goes, the credit card, up, up, and away... Till the monthly statement arrives and down I go on the floor in a mighty swoon. The next day St. Peter who guards the entrance of Heaven steps out of the gigantic gates and starts sweeping with a broom, till he comes across a credit card. He picks it up curiously, reads the personal information (Elizabeth V) trying to make sense of it and wonders aloud: "What is this? Is this some kind of joke?" And a bad one, I would argue. Thankfully I don't believe in heaven, dear St. Peter, but still the joke is on me.

Argh. Enough. I go publish bullshit at the discordian site. If I manage to log in, that is. But if anybody feels like saving me from jail, I have two wish lists in Amazon.co.uk and in Amazon.com. Feel free to buy and send me stuff. The trouble with wish lists, as a friend said, is that they slowly turn into one's shopping cart. So don't let this happen to me, okay?

(Hey, I know this won't work, but it can't hurt to try, can it? ;-D)

Nag

Music: Elend, "Sunwar the Dead"

I am restless, as if my soul hosts an angry sea. I suppose if I get enough sleep I will be better. And when I shed my monthly blood I will be even better.

In the heart of initiation nothing matters

The world is falling apart

I think that vomiting would be a fine way to show my perspective

Purge myself of the extraneous

I don’t want to let go, I am the one who is causing this agony to myself

But I don’t want to let go

It’s like losing a loved one or a child

I can’t let go

Yet.

The problem is simple yet devious. I realised after almost four years of busying myself with my body of work that this body of work will not continue. I don’t know why, save for the obvious reasons of copyright involved. You see, all the characters and events are mine but the playground I chose belongs to someone else. What’s even worse is that I chose this playground willingly, because I needed to pay homage to the particular genre. Don’t ask me why. I do have a whole universe created by me, the creation of which begun back in 1993. It's not like I don't have inspiration. It is actually beyond epic proportions... A living, breathing world. It even has its own fan club, friends of mine who heard the stories of all those heroes and heroines. At some point I realised that in Greece nobody reads horror and fantasy and came to the conclusion that I must start writing in English. At that turning point, I started writing something else, which I wanted to be a short piece to deal with an incident from a role playing game I participated in that time: Vampire the Masquerade. Just a break, I said to myself. A break that after almost four years of developing can be broken down to six books or two trilogies. One and a half book is already down to paper. So, I reach the point of realising after these four years that this second project is not meant to be, while I have not re-written the first. I cannot publish this for a hundred different reasons, copyright being the basic –and logical- one. Cause what is even more strong and important is my inner voice telling me "this phase is over. You must now move on to the next." Don’t ask me which one is the next. Those bloody little voices never give further explanations.

"I have seen the veil, / I have seen the grave,/ the rain it came/ and silence covers all./

The drops like spears, / this hollow chest/ these salty eyes that never rest./ They have seen this world/ they have seen the dead,/ the night it came/ and silence covers all.

O praise the moon/ don’t await the dawn/ the river’s stream, the glimmering sky/

I wandered all alone./

O sweet hemlock kiss,/ the poisonsea burns/ and silence covers all.

O let them scatter my heart among the ruins./

You turn, you shiver- your skin so pale, your breath so cold/ I have been longing for your love,/ I have been trying not to lose you./"

The hemlock sea (Elend)

Elend’s music is such a wonderful way to force myself to spit all the poison out. I do this in full knowledge of what it causes me. Hemlock, heh. Poppyseeds and mandrake. Aphrodite. Was it Hecate or Aphrodite the one called "lady of mandrakes"? I don’t really remember. I will look it up.

So I simply have to let go. And this is the last thing that actually keeps me, my very last anchor. Ha, why is it so bloody obvious to me that even that has be swept away to fulfill the final conditions of my inevitable initiation?

Dammit. It hurts. I know it would. It was the last thing left. It goes too. For good or for ill. Goodbye.

Epic battles the size of a brain

Music: Aesma Daeva: Here lies one whose name was written on water.

It's quite funny in a sense. I work in the kiosk while archetypes clash and heroes die and battles rage within the four walls of my foul brain. I don't know what's worse: the fact reality is lacking so much or that the customers won't leave me to my quiet to write about these things. :-(

My soul yearns for things I cannot put to words or explain. And I know that no matter how long and hard I try, how many years I strive, how many times I struggle with them, they'll never be captured and put down with enough success.

Have you ever hungered for something you cannot have, hungered for it to the point of madness and screamed till you felt your very soul was released from your body through your lungs? Have you been overwhelmed by blind desire for something you cannot reach or does not exist -from a point onward they are the one and same thing- and cried because of that, till you were empty from both tears and strength? Have you looked at your face in the mirror till there is absolutely no spark of recognition whatsoever, till you look at nothing more than an animated corpse? Do you know what it feels like to talk to statues and trees and dead pets and realise that most human beings never stop to listen, let alone try to understand?

In my dreams I can fly

In my dreams I can name the things that make me weep till I have no breath left

Notions turn into livings beings that can be captivated and tamed

An gathering of dead poets and writers is not very lively company, but I can tell it's heading that way. An multicoloured herd of cats, a rather big, empty house with countless libraries and a crazy old lady atop the roof every now and then, throwing her usual tantrums, reading Kavafis to the bats and moths of the neighborhood. An army of cats, dead lovers of literature and a house that seems even bigger than what it is cause it's so quiet. And no little boys chained in the basement, no playroom with weird torture instruments in the attic. Just mould and spiders.

Does it matter?

No. Creativity blooms in solitude and madness needs shade. Add a pinch of reality every now and then, stir and inspect. Remove dead dreams and outmoded notions every waning moon and add new books on waxing moon. The results can only be spectacular...

The dazzle of glory

... has blinded me. :-P The people from Periplous have finally published the collection of short stories in which I have participated. The book is out. I don't have it in my hands yet. Eventually I will. Like I care...

It is strange, in a sense. I have been waiting for this book for so long (it was supposed to be out in Christmas) that now that it is finally out, I don't really care. The enthusiasm is gone. And why not? Yeah, one of the stories in there is mine and hopefully it will be the weirdest of all. It will be the only English one too. I have often wondered about a lot of things: whether they butchered it or not, what people will think about this little monstrosity of mine (heh heh heh) and whether it would have been better if I had smoothed it out a bit, turned the boy protagonist into a girl, etc. I mean, gay romance between a serial killer and a teenager? For the love of god/dess, this is Greece! But I smoothed out nothing, did not alter a word to make it more accessible, morally inclined or less annoying (and hopefully they haven't either) and out it is. Maybe they chose it because it was so weird. "The bearded lady among the ordinary gals", as I had written to a pen pal. Maybe they picked it cause it was the only English one worth publishing and they needed at least one English since the competition was organised by the British Council. I'll be damned if I know. I'll be damned anyway for harassing little boys, but as I read in that T-shirt, "we are all going to hell anyway, I'm just struggling for a good seat." Meh.

You know what? It is just like that Chaos Magick theory I had read. You can cease any of your habits and this will not change who you are. You can abandon your beliefs, alter your ideas, change your sexual orientation and still not change who you are. You are not your habits, your beliefs, your ideas. You are not your routine. You are something entirely different than all these things. They are just a mask over your true self and people sometimes forget that this mask can be removed at will, so they let it stick on their faces. And then the mask becomes you.

For all I know, in ten years' time I might be in Hawaii, fishing. So- it is not really important, it is just a thing. Now- let's do something else.

Troglodytes and pampers

As if. The Lady Eris has sent proof of her engagement in the situation in the form of a cat without a nose. The Chaos Magick practice presupposes that someone has an income of at least 3000 euro per month, otherwise I see no way someone could do this seriously. I mean, yes, cut off your ties with all other human beings and devote yourself to acts of sacrilege and absurdity, yeah right, after your daily nine to five. Scratch my back, Watson, atta boy. And then I start to read the Pseudonomicon, by Hine, of how a possible connection with the Lovecraftian Old Ones could benefit the serious Chaos Magick student. My head has started to feel as if I am trying to give birth to a giant turnip through the ears. Well, I do see the bloke's point, and he has done some serious work there, and his points seem well justified, but he begins with the idea that magical work should bring one close (or over) the point of insanity anyway, just like any serious work with magic in general should. I have my customers trying to do that, thank you verrry much. No need to invoke Cthulhu when the neurotic lady next door is doing her best. In the one case I will develop some intense infatuation with sea shells and an aversion to certain surfaces like mirrors, as the author himself claims, in the other I will just grab a mini Uzi and rid this planet of the aforesaid lady and her offspring. I say the second is far more productive.

My dreams are a tangled mess of things chasing me, ravens, boobs and peckers, my ex boyfriends trying to fuck me and recent friends making my life quite difficult, a girl with two extra mouths attached to tentacle-like fleshy antennae left and right of her nape (disguised as hair styling), futile attempts to categorise several absurd things, flying, being a fairy of some sort, my dead grandmother with a new haircut and my (living) father, fisticuffs and people coming to my house. I think I should try to keep a dream diary of sorts. I keep saying this but I never do it. There are some places that I have visited more than once in my sleep and really find fascinating. Maybe make a dream map at some point? I wish.

I will download some POPE cards from the site of Discordians, so that everybody can recognise my status as a new messiah-ette. And then you will see, you infidels. I will make my birthday a holiday of drunken whales and invisible talking chocolate and each of you shall get his/her due.

Discordianism as a pastime

I am not sure where I am and why. Let'’s try this in Julius Caesar style, talking third person about myself:

"She was not certain about anything anymore. It all seemed futile. Some said that it was lack of free time in combination with pressure and stress that brought the change about. Others insinuated that she had always been a bit unhinged and in disagreement with this reality and bumping her head on various surfaces which she mistook for the door opening next to them did not help any. In any case, several screws were dislocated, some wires and cables disconnected while on sleepy morning rows and struggles with the neck of her blouse and the rest of her clothes and the happy avatar of Beligadesh (the Tummy Goddess) was no longer. The psycho troll with the round tummy and the unshaven (for a whole geological period) legs took control of Elizabeth's body. The change was violent and profound and scared everybody that knew her. First of all, before the change she used to snap at idiots. After the change, nobody approaching to earshot was safe from her verbal darts of abuse. Among other things, one could hear her curse and mutter about world economy, her mother and father, the bum of every God and Goddess that had ever been part of the collective consciousness, what exactly she intended to shove up the aforesaid orifice (a stick of dynamite for each, no cheating now, owww, you greedy thing, you) and several other obscenities. The only thing that probably saved her own ass was the fact that most of the gods were ROTFLTAO (rolling on the floor laughing their asses off) so she could not attempt the intended sacrilege with their asses dislocated from their original position. The rest of them were seriously considering improving their aim by using a few comets and a very particular planet as a target, but those latter were reminded of the paperwork this would demand in case of a success and said fuck it, let's go for a few pints and let her rant and rave and blow off some steam. Besides, she is only the avatar of an insignificant little deity. But the avatar had plans and walls have ears (and windows) and eyes have eyebrows, in her case left unplucked till they grew into gigantic fluffy caterpillars. And so she decided to mow her fanny in order to relocate it. After an epic battle with a pair of scissors that made the floor of her room look like a hedgehog with hair loss had tickled itself to death there, she found her fanny again. And there was much rejoice."

I still have not found a boyfriend or girlfriend (as if I'm looking!) and the mere thought of a person minding my business instead of his/hers fills me with cannibalistic glee and a very toothy grin. I am very excited for the chaos magick decision; it was based on rune and tarot readings that urged me on. I think it will help me understand myself better.

I haven't been out (not even to the movies!) since December that I went to the Torture Garden party in a club downtown. Originally from London, the Torture Garden artists vary and make tours around the globe. Essentially fetish/extreme artists, we had all kinds of niceties on stage: from a fashion show with fetish/vinyl clothes and bums and titties out for all to see, to a beautiful woman piercing her eyelids and lips onstage or another taking blood from her arm and drinking it after placing it in a chalice with water. It was funny, cause male members of the audience were quite freaked out! Generally it was rather enjoyable and very unusual for Greek standards. Pity there were no male members in the team with minimum clothing and maximum attitude. The original TG in London is much more extreme from what a friend (who has seen it) told me. I was busy chitchatting with three gay boys and it was a pity I did not take their phone number to hang out with them. One of them, a skinny thing with a skirt was using my boa to rub his cheeks and showed me his bra. Grrrr... Homework with whips and ropes. Shut up Elizabeth. Nobody wants to know.

It is obvious that things are well under way. I have no idea where they are headed to and neither care. I am merely making an observation of no consequence. I'm starting to develop a knack for this, observing the irrelevant. Plus my attempt to write what would be a rather demented and morbid SHORT story gave birth to yet another blah de bleurghh humongous and weird thingie. I am a puzzled bunny. Suppose I have to re-write it. I'm starting to feel like Cavafis: too old and too preoccupied with social rules to celebrate my madness by indulging into the pleasures of young flesh, so instead of doing things I write about them.

All hail to the goddess Eris. The change is almost complete. If you can't dazzle them with dexterity baffle them with bullshit, and all that.

Cabbages and turnips

Elend: “Winds devouring men”. Like a funeral march, or the walk to the gallows.

And I open any page from my story and it’s all there, in full detail. All my feelings, my anguish, the number of little deaths throughout the day. The number of times I say your name in vain. Aconite and nightshade upon my lips. Every time I cried out god’s name in vain.

Saturn/Lucifer watches silently with suppressed interest. Hecate walks dressed in darkness and endless possibilities swirl around her. I walk my path alone, knowing that which makes the gods laugh: the degree of human stupidity and frailty. The fact that we consider ourselves immortal and safe from harm. If the gods are nothing but figments of our imagination, the death of human race will mean their death too, or rather the death of archetypes as a whole. Hmph. The divine masks fall to reveal the emptiness behind them. From that emptiness, “both pregnant and empty” like the blank rune, from chaos, unformed and shapeless, came creation. And as creation slowly slips into chaos, I can’t help but wonder if change will be satisfying when it comes. I am certain it will not be, for it is human nature to hate change. But nothing is more certain than change. The whole of human race has been installed wrong software, I am absolutely positive.

It is hard to put into words certainties that make my skin crawl. It is harder still to explain the way little omens appear to show me the way of doing things, or puzzle me sometimes. Chaos magick is the next chapter. I think the Lady is happy with my choice. So let’s see: Tiamat would be one goddess related, Sekhmet too, Hecate another, and funny as it seems, there is Loki. I am not happy about the last, but I bet he’s having a field day. (I mean Loki, especially if we keep in mind my dislike for him). Discordia or Eris… Gah, this is so fucked up and so wrong that it ends up being the right thing to do. Eh. I am sure I’ve missed a turn somewhere along the way.

“Forlorn, I sailed/ and once I saw winds devouring men. /And I became the great deceiver/ to see what fair eyes still cannot see: /a tear in every sea, /a fragment of light exhausted. /Vision is all that matters to a wayward sailor. /

Through centuries of burning/ -we have waited for so long/ clothed in the serpent’s skin/ from the portal I was calling/ you lay me in the dust of the dead./ A swan in agony.

Patience, patience, patience…/ night moths on her wings, /a staggering moon murmurs./

The land blessed the manifold faces of your love. / The Garden lies asleep, the grave unclouded, /and we dance about a fallen sun.” (Elend)

It is all getting clear in a way that makes absolutely no sense. If we are to look behind the masks of existence, behind the masks of gods themselves, then we must claw our way through all the veils and even use a bloody spoon to dig under the bedrock of reality. To realise what? If the masks have been empty from the start then who’s wearing them? “There is no spoon”, I know. It is all a masquerade. The “harlequinade”. The end of worlds. A new dawn with the sun put out. The forms and the sounds are confused with one another. Reality is unraveling like an old rug and we are fleas hiding in that rug. Maybe this is what it takes to remember.

I need to sleep. My madness progresses smoothly. All is well. As Lord Fanny said, “we have the best corn”. In our ears, most likely, this is why we are incapable of making sense of the obvious. The symbols are dancing like the wings of a hummingbird and I want to laugh or run away like hell. Reality is overestimated. That and the joys of sanity. There is no pattern. This is a pattern. We can play just fine without bothering with rules once. We can play and I have missed playing so much. It is all an exercise in absurdity. I will not be angry again. It gives them the benefit of attention. I will not pay any attention to them ever again. I will only pay attention to what is important: the weather, the colour of ribbons, the way some bumblebees look like fuzzy zeppelins and are propelled like rockets. Now that’s worth taking note of.

Okay, my divorce with reality has just begun. Do they give away doughnuts when this happens? I want one with a hole in the center and chocolate. The archetypal doughnut. When I eat it and the god behind the archetype dies, its divine ghost will do what it must: settle comfortably upon my tummy and augment it a wee bit more. I fear no god, I am the avatar of Beligadesh, the tummy goddess. You can kiss my divine bellybutton and eat crow, the lot of you.

God, a doughnut would be nice.

PS: Some of the above might make sense if someone is familiar with the series "the Invisibles" by Grant Morrison and Jung.