By the way, I am totally in love with Olivier Theyskens, ex designer of Rochas. NOT the fashion bullshit surrounding him (though some of his creations are magnificent) but the man. He looks so feminine and sensitive and sweet. I want to smother him; he just inspires me to. Death and love always walk hand in hand; death reminds us of the need to reproduce... (Evil little cackle). I can be so fucking predictable.
A few hours ago I had to drag a disemboweled dog to the side, near the pavement, with his owners watching me transfixed and shaken to their core. Someone had just run him over and left. I knew this dog, it was a rather irritating little bastard, but he did not deserve this fate. Nobody does.
It's rather funny being what I am. Most women would never bear to be close to that dog, let alone touch it. I was so taken aback that I could not really think of anything else than what had to be done. And it was done. Two days ago I was on my knees on the ground at two a.m. digging out cyclamen bulbs, with my hair hiding my face (like Sadako in the Ring). Tonight I was trying to move the dog out of other people's view, taking generous eyefulls of what once was his insides and now was on the pavement, still steaming hot and twitching though he was dead. Having cured and cooked meat quite a number of times, I can tell you it was not very different, save for the twitching. Disgusted? You should not be. You are not -I am not- very different on the inside. What makes the difference is the way we choose to live our life before we are transformed into rotting bags of meat and entrails and bone. And maybe not even that. Maybe the universe does not hold human beings in higher regard that trees and insects. Humans suffer from this need to feel themselves the center of the universe, but they can't really offer any proof that this is the case. So choose wisely lads and lassies. Make sure that your actions make sense to you if not anybody else. At least it will help you sleep easier at night, but as for granting you a place in heaven or anywhere at all, I can't really say.
Sometimes the stuck in-between period is just too much. Waiting waiting waiting... Waiting to receive e-mails, waiting for people to make up their mind and finally call me, waiting for the changes to take place, waiting for things to take shape... It seems that my whole life is one waiting period to the next. And then hopefully everything will happen at once, or not. Bah.
One of my stories was published (as I said months ago). My friend A. turned a little poem by me into a comic, that was published too. Now she wants to work on another short story. I am very honoured, but not excited. I am not really here. I am nowhere in particular. I feel like a ghost that exists in the in-between period between then and never and infinity, accidentally trespassing into now from time to time. I feel mostly fleshless. Everything begins from inside to and again returns to me, a cyclic river feeding itself, with no real source and no destination. I feel genderless, fleshless and purposeless. I will eventually feel better, I know. And it's strange because today J. told me some of the sweetest things I have ever heard about my writing style. He is sweetness impersonate sometimes, this being. Still the connection with me and this reality fails miserably. Ha. I don't know if I should laugh, cry or simply stare into nothingness with a thin, amused smile. The anchors are gone and I am floating like a balloon on the ceiling of my sanity. I will eventually find an open window and escape...
I am just tired and perpetually sad and nothing can fill this emptiness. Too many people leaving the scene at once and me left behind to entertain an audience that grows more uneasy and angry by the minute. I still live on borrowed reality. But fear not; I have medicine. It is called a good crying (which I am afraid I cannot do anymore) and chocolate (which I am sick of). It seems that the situation is serious...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
...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)
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.
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...
... 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.
