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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Old diaries

Diaries I've used from 2001 to this date. Pictures taken from two different angles to help you understand the size of my (mental) problem. :)

And yes, in those folders under the diaries there is more of my writing. You had to ask, didn't you? :)

Please help, this is beyond control and it's getting worse every day.

Please help. This is the biggest refugee crisis after world war two. Almost 20 million people have been forced to leave their homes and half of them are children.

Mr. Gaiman's thoughts on this gut-wrenching issue: 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/many-ways-die-syria-neil-gaiman-refugee-camp-syria

You can donate here:

http://donate.unhcr.org/international/neilgaiman 

If you live in UK, you can also donate by texting 'GIVE' to 61144 to donate 5 pounds to Save the Children charity, or by texting 'NEED2510' to 70070 to donate 10 pounds to United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees. Please help in any way you can. It's urgent and only human to do so.

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?"

Swimming

It was the word I used to describe my current job situation to a friend. It reminds me of a person who fell overboard and no-one noticed. In my case, the entire country was pushed overboard. I've found myself in the middle of the ocean, swimming towards God/dess knows where. I keep swimming in the hope someone will discover and save me, as in 'hire me'. I can't reach the coast, so I'm trying to keep my head above water and my wits about me. I have no guarantee someone will indeed come to my rescue and the ocean is a very big place. I can't get out, I don't know for how long I'll manage to keep swimming and I can't give up, either. Months pass by, the unpaid bills get more, the money we have to borrow to make sure there is food on the table keeps getting more and we can't pay it back. It's fun! If your idea of fun is pinching pennies and counting days until the end of the month when my mother's pension comes in, it's great fun. I keep sending CVs, no-one bothers to answer and life goes on. I keep swimming in the hope something will appear. I have no other choice.

Recently a friend told me I need to change attitude and be more flexible and positive. Maybe they are right. Maybe I indeed need to be more positive. I try, but my mother's pension lasts for ten days, and afterwards we live on credit, charity, bottles I collect and borrowed money. So perhaps offering advice while their current situation is radically different than mine is a moot point. As for flexibility, I exercise two to three times a week in the hope of acquiring a super sexy tummy, but haven't seen any results yet. My neck is as stiff as always, things moan and groan in my body and my tummy remains rather rude. There are days I feel like an old ship that's three months pregnant; bloated at parts and creaky all over. :D

You know what the funny thing is? I don't need pity or sympathy. I am not sick. This isn't a goddamn funeral. I need a job, and to retain a certain level-headedness despite my stress and the friction with my mother. Find what makes me push on, chat about something inconsequential, eat some ice-cream. That's what I really need. I would also be quite happy if my mother stopped using my nerves as a trampoline. When I am alone in the house, I don't get stressed. I am so blissful I could be on drugs. I do what I can with what I have. When she is in the house with me, she relieves her stress by snapping at me and reciting long-winded monologues of doom and gloom. She adds her worry to my own. It doesn't help. I try to ignore her, keeping in mind she can't help it. This is how she is, and she's not going to change now, a breath away from her seventies. But I can't help it either, she gets me low, angry and stressed.

Then I came across this lovely video and it made me smile. Maybe it will make you smile too. 

By the way, the first season of Daredevil was excellent! I am in love with Deborah Ann Woll. Have been in love with her since True Blood. That girl shines from the inside. She enters a room and everything changes by her luminescence, by the white of her skin and the way it glows, by her smile. She's indescribable. I kept spitting on my laptop screen to avoid accidentally giving her any negative vibes (what Greeks call the evil eye). 

Aaaaand off we go to hit 50.000 views for this humble blog. :) Go me, and thank you. 
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Small things make me happy

 

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

Jerry Waxman

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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..."