29/11/2010

I was supposed to get some lunch, but I decided to go out for a walk instead. In the end, I decided I might as well skip lunch altogether. Why? Because I can if I want to.

I went out in the bitter cold, the sky a snowless creamy white, and I walked all the way to the nearest shopping mall to have a look at whatever stationary items they had there. They had next to nothing except bloody Christmas cards everywhere. Glittering raindeers, snowmen and whatnot. Crowds of people were gathered mostly around those Christmas items and decorations, their trolleys filled with such junk they will only use once and then bury in some cupboard. And that junk is expensive, too! A stupid candle with the face of an old bearded man suddenly costs 10 times its real value - just because, guess what, it's for Christmas. Wait till the day after the celebration, and all that junk will cost half what it does today... I guess that says it all.

I'm in a somber mood - can you tell?

As I was walking I had all these thoughts dancing in my head, making me oblivious to everything that surrounds me. That leads to some problems at times, as I will forget to stop at a green light, for instance, and I've lost count how many times a car narrowly escaped hitting me in the process. Everytime that happens, my heart jumps in my chest just as I hear the loud, angry horn of the car, and I answer with the most scornful of glares back at the driver.

Anyway, as I was walking, an odd thought occurred to me: what if I was facing a lion right now at this very minute - what would I do? I told myself it was a very odd thought to have, and how the hell did it come to mind in the first place? I followed the thread of thoughts back to its source and realised my mind had been reflecting on people in the street first. I had been thinking about the time I had advised a friend to watch Appocalypto, and when I asked him what he thought of it, all he could say was 'it was so violent and bloody...'
That memory of the conversation led me to look around me at the people in smart suits everywhere coming out from the tube station in masses. I suddenly wished I would have replied that friend that at least the savages in that movie looked the part of what they actually were: cruel savages. At least you knew that when they didn't like you they just grabbed their axe and you would simply lose your head. End of story.

What has changed in the world? Only appearances. The same savages are everywhere, only their wicked ways are hidden under the cover of smart suits and expensive leather briefcases. They no longer use machetes to kill you on the spot, instead they kill you in the slowest way possible by poisoning your whole existence on Earth.

They no longer say 'me kill you, me stronger, you weakling, me going to eat you', they use complex prose and Shakespearian words instead. Remove such layers of appearances, and the base is exactly the same.

So as I was thinking about all this, the thought 'what if I was facing a lion right now at this very minute - what would I do?' occurred to me.

Well, if I was facing a lion right now at this very minute, I would hide at once from it because I know full well that I'm weaker than the lion and it would only make sense for it to jump me to eat me if I were to linger about. That's what I replied to myself, anyway. I would hide away from its grip and then outsmart him with my wits and brains. After all, brains and wits were always mankind's main 'weapon' of survival in nature.

28/11/2010

Nothing to say.

27/11/2010

It's so cold outside... I decided to retreat under a mountain of blankets with a warm cup of coffee.

As I ventured into the living room earlier, I saw that the family was watching a movie I watched in the cinema a couple of years ago or so. It was a very loose biopic they made of Jane Austen (Becoming Jane) and I remember that when I heard they had made a movie of her life I was rather surprised because nothing much happened in her life - because she spent it writing stories. I always liked to think that her novel Pride and Prejudice was like a mirror version of her life, where she had the power to change fates and give her characters the happy endings she knew she would never get for herself in her reality. The movie actually hints at that at some point. After all, Elizabeth rejects the only suitor she had 'any hopes' of getting due to her poor circumstances and lower standing in society because she could never marry without love. Jane Austen had gone through the same exact thing, choosing to remain alone rather than marry out of convenance. Whereas Elizabeth does get her prince in the end, it isn't so for the writer.

See, she too had a love, but her poorer status and circumstances meant that he had to marry someone else and they could never be together. She carried on writing, and one day, many years later, they meet again by chance as she has become a renowned writer. The man’s young daughter comes up to her full of admiration, and her name is Jane, too. She looks at that young girl and her lost love, and though there is a flash of old pain (the one of what could have been, but never was) they smile at each other and simply part again. He walks away with the family Fate dictated he should spend his life with, and she walks the opposite way, alone but never lonely, for she had that richness within made up of worlds that always defied reality.

It's true that none of us can have it all. That always kind of frustrated me. I always hated the fact that we had to make choices in life, mainly because making choices involves turning your back on other possibilities with often no idea as to how things could be like if we made a different choice. The more passionate and dramatic side of me always liked to think that no matter what choices I would be forced to make, I would know for sure what I could never compromise on, and the very things I could never compromise on include Love and pursuing true meaning of absolutely everything in this world, even if it means spending my life in retreat from the distractions of actually 'living' it. What I mean here is that you can't observe things in enough depth when you're completely caught up in the daily living of life. You need to take that step back and stand at a distance of all that is happening so you can observe and reflect on what it is you see. It means that sometimes being an observer of this world involves sacrificing your own proper living within reality. When would you find the time to ponder in depth if you were constantly distracted by matters of reality?

In a way, me slowly getting to accept these facts fits with the way my path seems to have shaped itself over time. The element of isolation and the impression of standing on the verge of the world rather than being immersed in it were always there, or they have been for a very long time. In fact, I see the moments when I'm not isolated (or just feeling isolated) as exceptions, and life's way of telling me: "Alright Aliska, though you need to stand on the verge of the world because your path is to understand many things in depth, here are a few things you do need to go through in reality as they are necessary lessons or glimpses for the growth of your understanding."

I just wish sometimes some of these lessons didn't have to be so painful... but then again, if they weren't they would defeat their own purpose, which would be to allow the person to expend from such lessons. Reaching Truth, even just from within, and past all illusions.

So today was graduation day… I went there with the little family. I’m actually glad I went… But I feel exausted from all that social effort. I don't know about you, but being social drains me. I can feel the energy being sucked out of my body and brain every time I have to spend too long in the company of people, especially crowds of them.

The place in which they held the ceremony was sumptuous, mind you. And it also felt like the end of an era, I suppose. Oh, and walking up and down those ancient corridors from bygone times wearing these gowns and that black cap kind of felt like we were wandering around Hogwards.

I had to get there early as I forgot to book a gown - again. I forgot the first time around, too… I bumped into T in front of the building and she gave me a lovely contrived smile, eyeing me up and down swiftly first. That girl was part of a group of people who I guess used to be my friends back in second year.

After that, I waved at a few people, but no one really came to me and I wasn’t able to find S, which is a shame. S was one of very few people I could actually stand in my year mainly because, just like me, she was quiet and liked to keep to herself.

Then I bumped into L, and she seemed genuinely happy to see me. She’d been so scared to end up all on her own with no one to talk to that she called me last night to make sure we'd meet in front of the building. I said 'yeah, sure. Please stop stressing.' She giggled and asked me if I was nervous. I said 'No. It's just a ceremony where we'll be wearing weird clothes while our parents take way too many pictures.' Then I added: 'I hope it snows tomorrow, that would actually make it interesting.' She said she hoped it wouldn't snow and that got her worrying about what would happen if it did snow and her train was delayed.

We met several times as we all wandered about in our Harry Potter gowns in the ancient parts of that building… I have to say this graduation was way better than the law one, and I think I’ll remember far more of it. Though it was pompous and full of cheesy speeches from the dean and other bizzarly dressed professors, I could just gaze around me at the ancient statues and chandeliers hanging down from the high domed ceiling. It was good that the speeches happen to be so long and boring, too, for it gave me time to try and decypher the latin inscriptions carved on the old stones.

I also got to see a good tutor of mine. She told me that the student magazine on which I worked last year is no more… apparently the new Vice Chancellor doesn’t like the idea of students interviewing staff…and they didn't like it when people such as myself went out of their ways to ditch the dirt on that university.... talk about control and always more control. She told me she wasn’t going to fight it… what’s the point, she sighed. I guess our lot was lucky enough to escape right before the net of complete control finally closed in on that university. We got away with ditching quite a lot of dirt going on inside that place.... but that was only because the previous Vice Chancellor didn't mind it. Interestingly, he was sacked pretty quickly. Well, officially he wasn't 'sacked' - they offered him half a million to go quietly.

And now... unless you're going to write about how wonderful the system is, you'll have no chance in the world to see your work published through that university. Would I really be going too far by assuming that the same thing applies as far as all the mainstream media is concerned?...

Having said that, I'll be keeping an eye out on Wikileaks set to release highly confidential government data. I just hope it's more than petty name-calling between chiefs of states.

22/11/2010

Run away, run, again and forever!

I remember a clutter of hazy thoughts I had as a child, but some striking memories never left me, and they happen to be the many times I plotted to run away.
The very odd thing about such occurrences in my childhood is that these ideas came at a time when everything was well, and at a time when I was very young.

Many a time, my mother would tell me off for something I had done, and she would use words that may not have been so harsh, but they hurt me. They hurt me because I was aware the words used were too strong compared to what the misdeed deserved. I would run to my room and cry my eyes out, then draw from the deep sorrow to make myself feel detached from everything. As soon as I reached that state of complete emotional detachment, I would drag the massive old suitcase buried in the wardrobe and I would place in it all my favorite toys and perhaps a few clothes for good measure. I would sneak into the kitchen and grab a pack of biscuits (food for the road, you see) and place it inside the suitcase that I would then drag along with me all the way to the front door. I would stop there for a moment, glance around me and say in a voice loud enough for my mother to hear: "Good bye mother, I'm leaving."
She would come into the corridor and stare at me blankly before shaking her head in disbelief.

The first time I did this, she took the time to reason with me. She asked me to think about where exactly I was thinking to go. I couldn't answer. I just wanted to leave and that was as far as my planning went. I was no more than 6 years old. Seeing that I refused to discuss it further, she would simply sigh and say: "Well then, go." And so I would, but the funny thing was that each time this would happen, I would leave a little further from the house so that in effect, the very first time I took a suitcase and decided to 'leave', I made it only as far as the front door.

The time after that, I made it all the way to the elevator.

The time after that, I made it all the way to the ground floor hallway.

Then one day I made it all the way into the street, where I stared around me, at the traffic and endless crowds of people and... I realised I had no idea where to go next. That's when I stopped trying to 'run away' from home.

And that's when I began to plot my escape outside of home.

I remember trying to run away from school, once. I was still around 6 years of age and I had one best friend at the time. I remember her quite strikingly because although we became 'best' friends, I remember liking the fact that she listened to me and was easy to influence. I had this thing back then that made me very bossy and I tended to impose my ways on others because I just felt my ways were better than all others. Before lunch time, as we were playing in the playground, I told her that we should run away. School was a prison and we needed to escape into some great adventure, and since life was so boring, we had to make the adventure happen: therefore we had to escape the school walls and discover the world. She agreed with my idea at once, and I began to plan our escape.

We went into the girls bathroom and I noticed the windows that could be reached by climbing on the toilet seat. I turned to my friend and told her that was our escape. Of course we would have to be very mindfull of the teachers lurking in the playground, and I thought the best time to make a run for it would be if we finished lunch quickly while the number of adults was at its lowest outside. Although I can no longer remember the detail of my thinking, I had gone through all the main points that would ensure the success of our escape... but we got caught at the last minute for a stupid error that involved me dumping the contents of my plate in one kid's tray so as to finish my lunch 'earlier' (as the adults would never let you leave the table unless you had eaten a certain set amount of food). I guess that kid got stuck at the table with too much food to finish (I had also dumped my best friend's food in his plate) and some adult must have asked him how come he had so much in his tray... and he must have said it was me. So that time we got caught and I vaguely remember being asked why I had dumped all the food in that boy's tray.
I think I shrugged and said I'd asked him if he wanted some more and he'd said yes.

The other time I plotted my escape, I was around 9 years old. I was playing outside the house with a school friend who also lived nearby. We were sitting on top of a low brickwall, swinging our legs and watching the older kids play football in the middle of the square. I remember getting that sudden wave of mental suffocation that comes and goes... just like a wave. I glanced up at the sky and asked my friend if she also felt like a prisoner. She glanced at me and nodded, but I don't think she had a clue what I was on about. To be fair, I had no idea myself why I was feeling that way, either. I asked her if she'd ever dreamed of running away into the unknown, just to at least see how the world worked else where. Maybe life was more interesting and 'adventurous', even 'magical' some place else and we just needed to find that place ourselves.

She said she had sometimes imagined that she was running away. She had a bad family and her father would often be the kind to beat up his kids. I asked her why she had never actually tried and she told me that every time she couldn't go through with it because 'where would she go?'
I tried to convince her that we should give it a go - run away together into the wide world. At first she seemed very excited by the idea and we began to plan how we would manage to sneak out of our homes... but soon she was heaving a deep sigh and finally said: "We can't do it... We're too small, and we wouldn't know where to go. And I'd miss my family."

"But we can try," I retorded (or something close to that). "And we'd have each other."

"Well, you try, but I'm not doing it," was her final answer before jumping to her feet to join the group of older kids playing football.

I remained sitting on that brickwall, gazing pensively around me. As much as I felt the urge to escape into the unknown, I suddenly got that realisation that I couldn't just do it on my own. Alone in the wide world, trying to find that perfect place just wasn't the same as being with another person that experienced it with you.

And that was the last time I planned to run away.

21/11/2010

I hate everyone.

(That's a lie. I Like my true Self.)

I hate the whole world.

(That's a lie. I find nature and unspoilt landscapes soothing.)

I hate Pain.

(That's a lie. I believe the right amount of Pain is required for a human being to grow.)

I hate lies.

(That's not a lie, but hey guess what, everybody lies.)

I hate life.

(That's a lie. If I really hated it, i wouldn't be here writing so much about it.)

There is man, there is woman,

There is spring, there is winter,

There is light, there is darkness,

There is evil, and there is good.

Everything in this world seems to rest on a balance of perfect opposites. I would go so far as to venture that nothing can actually exist without its complete opposite existing as well.

So what does that tell us? I'll tell you what it shows us, shall I? It means that striving for one extreme or another in bound to end in defeat because for one extreme to exist, the exact opposite of it must necessarily exist to allow for both's existence. That's part of the Balance of everything that exists.

The problem was never about ridding the world of evil, or anything at all for that matter. All that occurs, all that can be seen or experienced, belongs to a spectrum or other made up of at least two core extremes.

As such, those who act 'badly' (corrupted, perverted, heartless, cruel, you name it) are but mere vectors that slide too close to one extremity of the Good-Bad spectrum - whose definition, by the way, depends mostly on an individual, a group, or a society's perspective at a certain time and place, so that what they deem good or bad today may well be different tomorrow.

The problem was always about the lack of striking a balance between all core extremes. Strike the perfect balance and harmony can develop. Slide too far off one extreme, and chaos is the norm.

I suppose the way nature works provides the best observing ground for this line of thoughts. By observing what we call the 'blind' justice of nature, we can note the fine balance that exists, involving just the right amount of every extreme. But I should really say 'the perfect amount of middleground between each extreme that exists'. Because nature is essencially perfectly wired to strike a perfect balance between opposites, it isn't too surprising to see how it managed to ensure a constant cycle of life like clockwork for so long.

Humans have been observing this clockwork orchestra displaying a mastery of the notion of perfect balance for thousands of years. Most of them are still stuck wasting their braincells on 'how to rid the world' of such things as poverty, hunger, pain, unfairness, war... whatever.

If you are one of those striving to get rid of whatever extreme that exists, or even whatever occurrence that seems so 'unfair' to you, then you have still much to reflect on. You are simply unable to see past your own subjectivity, and therefore failing to see truly in the greatest depth.

From time to time you can hear seagulls cry in the early morning, and I catch myself wondering, how far is the sea.


I woke up at the crack of dawn today, and way before my alarm clock was set up to wake me. My eyes flung open as though I'd been stirred abruptly, and I laid in bed with one arm over my face to check if I could fall asleep again for a few moments. Then the thought occurred to me that if I did drift to sleep again, I may end up oversleeping, and that thought got me up on my feet.

I have a tendency to procrestinate a lot. I do. I like to think things over and imagine them time and time again in all their possibilities and outcomes, from the most realistic down to the extremely far-fetched. If I'm meant to write something like a letter, for instance, I may spend days, if not weeks, imagining what I would write, imagining every word, weighing them in different combinations and appreciating their possible effects... Then one day I sit down and actually do what I'm supposed to do, and the best version becomes the one that stood out in my mind, the one I remember more strikingly so that it will simply flow out of me without much effort at all. All other options are phased out simply because my mind didn't find them worth remembering, perhaps. Or they proved to imperfect. Or something of the sort.

Other times I get caught up in the process of imagining all that may or may not be, all that may feel like or may not feel like, words that could be used or perhaps yet others instead... So much so and with such fervor that before I know it I have spent a long time dreaming a hypothesis away from concrete reality.

I was having a look at old things I used to write when I was younger. French words were dancing before my eyes and as I tried to translate them into English, I was horrified: it sounded horrid, nothing like the original flow, let alone rhythm and play of words. It's not that what I used to write was any good - far from it at times - it's just that I already used to write in a weird fashion even in my native language. I'd use refined words and then break the flow with a swear word or perhaps a 'loose' term, all the while never really following rules of poetry at all - only the rhythm in my own head. It worked in French at the time of writing them, but to dupplicate that in another language would require of me to slip right back into the exact state of mind I was in at the time so as to capture the full meaning I intended to convey, but this time in English.

I was listening to old French songs from the bygone times of my 'youth', and came across some old rap songs I used to listen to as a teen. One of them was inspired from Star Wars, except the meaning of the lyrics had little to do with the movies, but everything to do with a world embracing darkness, I suppose. It was called 'L'Empire du Cote Obscure', meaning 'The empire of the dark side' and a translation of the lyrics can be found here.

From there I came across another French rapper I used to listen to (with translation here), and I got to appreciate how he used to rap using quite refined words rather than your usual 'I kill you baby, come on, come on, come feel my pistol' whatever. With a few plays of words that are again quite hard to replicate in another language, but I guess that's the struggle translation always faces at times because each language will have certain turns or expressions rather unique to its own. A bit like jokes that are very funny in one language, but when you try to tell them to someone in another language, the other person fails to get it because they lack the deeper connection to the original words used and that made the whole thing funny in the first place.

How time flies... got to land back on Earth for now.

12/11/2010

"On ne renonce pas à sauver le navire dans la tempête parce qu'on ne saurait empêcher le vent de souffler. " Thomas More

I remember jotting down this quote on a loose page taken from one of my many notebooks when I was reading Utopia. I was perhaps 15 at the time, and I remember keeping that torn piece of paper with me, drawing pictures all around the quote while sitting in class. Then I lost it one day, but I'm pretty sure it has remained safely tucked in between the pages of one of the many books resting on my bookshelf. The English equivalent of that quote goes something like: "“You must not abandon the ship in a storm because you cannot control the winds..." but I always find the French version far more melodious and meaningful, for some unfathomable reason.

And after the storm, always comes the calm.

There was a storm in my head last night... It tends to occur when I suddenly lose focus, and therefore perspective. Something within me snaps and suddenly a deluge of Great Sorrow overwhelms my whole being. But then, I always learn from such occurrences... for even as the storm destroys many things in its wake, always it will leave behind enough water for life to be reborn greener, more beautiful and stronger.

The same notion keeps dancing in my head: patience. I have not yet mastered that art. And quiet abandon... Until I do, I won't be able to rid myself from the storms, which should really be replaced with a simple steady flow.

Often when I think about all the things that occur in my existence, I see all that occurs as lessons to be drawn so that I can develop my self futher. Some lessons are definitely harder to face than others, but refusing to face them would be defeating the purpose of being alive and human in the first place.

In that sense, I am like a piece of clay Life slowly helps to give it a perfected shape. Fighting against that process ends up living bumps and difformities of all sorts on the piece of clay being shaped throughout the years... Doesn't that explain to an extent why so many of us end up failing to become what we ought to have become if only we had strived to better ourselves truly?

It's too easy to look at the world and draw a list of all its flaws... Everyone is quite capable of doing it, and why is that? That's because it's easier to focus on the wrongs and weaknesses of others rather than our own. At the same time, making that terrible mistake not only blinds us from developing our self, it also ensures that we nurture all the wrong emotions within, such a deep-rooted anger, resentment, scorn and ultimately Hatred and Bitterness.

I need to allow the 'peace' within I can feel I always possessed from the start to flow unrestrained, because I know it can never lead me down the wrong path... But sometimes the noise of this world gets to me and prevents me from doing just that. I guess it means I need to develop a better way of being in the world, but not of it. And I already know that Time itself is the best ally of all.

I have also been listening to this today, and I have to say that particular passage has a wonderfully soothing, dream-like effect on me.

I keep wondering... Is there a way to actually know for sure that what people tell you is true? Is there any way at all to know that people actually mean what they say?
From my own observations, it seems that most people will only express what they feel or think will get them approved, or accepted, by a majority. That is not truth. That is not even close to sincerity or honest mistake. It all belongs to the same category: lies.

Then there is the issue of people only telling you what they think you want to hear. We all work in pretty much the same basic way; we meet others, get a 'feel' of their person in some ways, and a whole load of assumptions follows within the mind about the person we're interacting with. More often than not, we are not even aware of the process of adaptation that goes on between one self and another. But it occurs every single time. We adapt to others in the same way as we learn to co-ordinate the items of clothing we're going to wear on a given day. That means some people are better than others. Some will know from the word go that a red shirt and yellow pants don't mix well together; on the other hand, a red shirt and black pants will do the trick.

We constantly adapt to one another, editing and sub-editing the way we are, the way we think, what we believe and what we are in truth according to others, and situations, and environments... Then we have some thinkers out there - such as myself - wondering about Truth... Haha. In a world that functions solely on appearances and deceit, I wonder what the point is to have the ability to think deeply in the end.

What the FUCK is the point of having the ability to THINK at all?

Wouldn't it make more sense to be like my cat at the end of the day? At least we'd be in sync with nature, right? We'd have our purpose all figured out for us from the start, and what's even better, we wouldn't even have the capacity to WONDER about it.

I am going to keep searching till I bleed from every single orifice that exists in my body, and when I'm done searching, and when I've found all the answers... I shall burn everything.

I'll burn everything to a pulp and myself with it.

11/11/2010

It's a stormy weather out there. I went out for a while this afternoon, and stepped out of the house right when it started raining hard again. I had an umbrella with me, but the wind was fierce and... the word 'angry' came to mind. I smiled to myself as the wind tried to tear my umbrella to pieces in scornful, agitated blows... Yes, the wind was angry today. Instead of blowing one way or the other, it was blowing in every direction at once, ensuring that by the time I got back home I was drenched in water from head to toe.

Listening to this music makes me imagine that I'm dancing in the midst of an ancient ball, in one of those huge dresses with frills everywhere and locks of long hair neatly arranged on top of my head to cascade down my back. The ballroom is full of beautifully dressed people wearing Venice masks and all of us are moving perfectly in rythm with the music coming from a large orchestra at the far end of walls painted crimson and gold.

I really do have too much imagination... but if it wasn't for it I think I would have lost the will to even merely exist a long time ago.

On a more 'reality-bound' note, I have actually spent much time stepping up my game in search of that all elusive job that will at least allow me to carry on developping my journalistic skills. I know that the right job will come along when the time comes for it to come, and so long as I keep my eyes open, I don't think I'll miss the boat this time.

Then... I was looking at old landscape photographs I used to take when I was younger. Many of them looked like this:


This sort of pictures I would take every year as I was sent away for the summer holidays and every time my mother looked at them upon my return she would shake her head in disappointment because most of the pictures depicted mostly landscapes rather than people or myself.

"What's the point in taking such pictures?" She would ask me.
"Just because... It was so beautiful, mum," I would explain.
"But I can't see you in them... It's just trees, lakes and flowers... The point of taking pictures while you're away is so you can show me what you've been doing," she would insist.
"But you know me already, mum," I'd carry on. "I wanted to share with you how beautiful the place was because you weren't there to see it, but I wish you could have seen it with your own eyes..."

Mother would then sigh and ruffle my hair.

"Well, next time take more pictures of people rather than trees."

Take pictures of people? Let's just say I never took that advice too seriously.

10/11/2010

I went out in the freezing cold this morning, but the sky was a pure diluted blue and the sun was shining - a lovely glimpse of the winter days ahead.

Since I didn't have time to have any breakfast, I ended up buying freshly squeezed orange juice, a warm bread stick (also known as baguette in the land I originally come from) and some chocolate spread on the way back home. Then I sat in the kitchen and had the most delicious of breakfasts instead of lunch, followed by a much needed cup of coffee.

Then I switched on my computer and logged into Facebook. Some people have actually been counting the days left until Christmas... Others are wondering about their list of gifts and already worrying about it. The ones who weren't talking about Christmas were talking about how they are waiting for a train, or a bus, or how 'great last night was'. The only interesting post came from one guy who works for a small publication in London and he had posted a link to a story about the Magdalenes. For those who don't know what Magdalenes refer to, here is more in-depth information about it.

Though these places have now been closed, it's disturbing to think that they were still in existence in the 1990s.

We seem to often take for granted that our society is so evolved and 'broad-minded'... The reality is that most people in the detail are plagued with all sorts of personal prejudices. Those prejudices are like a hidden cancer at the heart of society itself because people don't dare speak up their true mind, they only express the thoughts they know will be validated by the majority. So in the end, if everyone keeps hiding their true thoughts on most things, how are we ever supposed to address our differences in order to finally get to a deep understanding of one another? WE CAN'T.

Each person who chooses to withdraw their true thoughts to only express what they know will be accepted by the majority is in fact ensuring that every single society we live in will be plagued with chaos and a complete lack of true understanding on anything whatsoever. Furthermore, by hidding one's true thoughts, it becomes tantamount to ensuring the person will never really learn anything or expend their mind... because they'll never get to confront their possibly flawed reasoning.

09/11/2010

What a cold and windy day in london... The Earth is wet with sorrows that bear no known language to Man.

Yesterday I went to the library and chose a few CDs to listen to in the peace and quiet of my bedroom... and I came across the one music I'd been searching for since I was around 12 - but I could never remember what it was called, or who the composer was, for that matter. I could only remember the enchanting melody itself, forever engraved in my mind. It was from Rimsky-Korsakov, and it's called Sheherazade. My aunt had bought me the CD as a Christmas present because I think she had no idea what to get me, and she probably picked that music at random.

Then that CD broke by accident, and I forgot what it was called because I simply have a hard time paying attention to names and such details. Soon after listening to such music, I developped a taste for soundtracks and every time I would watch a movie whose music would get to me, I would buy its soundtrack. For someone who tends to feel as much as I do, it isn't really surprising that I should appreciate these kinds of melodies, for they are designed to capture emotions on screen. And I'm a catcher of emotions, for better and for worse.

I never really liked superheroes... I prefere the anti-hero type. The shadow in the corner, the misunderstood ghost that started off as good but lost himself somewhere down the line so deep that in the end nothing much of the goodness remains... but if one looks hard enough, they can see that the goodness is still there, buried deep within.

In the story I wrote, about that little girl who escapes into another world - my version of Utopia, I guess -, the bad guys are given a voice almost just as strong as the 'good' guys. That's because I don't believe in clear-cut notions of Good and Evil. Who am I to decide who is bad, and who is good? Why don't you make up your own mind yourself based on the facts and circumstances?

My favorite moment of the story occurs when the girl is captured by the bad guys. As she faces the 'evil' Lord, it becomes clear that he is a highly intelligent man with much depth and feelings... Another allegory emerges, that of knowledge and how knowing in itself means nothing because the key always was this: what does one do with the knowledge they gain?
The man knew so much... but this knowledge was defeated the moment he failed to seek what he was meant to do with it.

The girl would have lost herself at that moment... she would have slipped away and lost her true self, if it were not for a fateful meeting with one boy who never said much, but when he did speak, he gave her the key to always preserve the I within.

I find myself unable to complete this story, though. First of all, it's LONG. Second of all, I could only get to write it in bursts of inspiration throughout the past 3 years. And third of all, I am in no rush to finish it because if it's meant to be completed, then it will complete itself, somehow. But my, I do love my characters... I fell in love with them whilst working on a second draft, actually. Surprisingly enough, I began to feel more for some of the secondary characters, and when this happened, I realised it was my mind's way of telling me I had neglected their storyline within the story itself.

Anyway... I once read this famous story called The Alchemist by Coelho. It was about a young boy who sets off on a journey to find his 'happiness' I suppose, or his fullfillment, or dream. He seeks a treasure he is destined to find, but has to get past many obstacles along a very long journey that takes him to many different places all the while following signs. One striking moment in the story is when he meets with an old man who owns a teashop, or something of the sort (I can't really remember the detail that much). As the boy is by then pennyless, he asks for a job there and the old man agrees after some persuasion. They start talking about dreams in life, and the old man tells him he always dreamed of visiting the Mecca but never got around to doing it. When the boy gives him ideas to expend his shop, the old man dismisses them because he is already 'happy with what he has'. The point here was to show that many people stop before reaching the height of their dreams - they stop mid-way before they can reach their true fulfilment, meaning that they become comfortable with second-best or better than nothing, and soon enough they have given up on their most inner dreams.

The boy doesn't give up, though... He carries on with his journey, and even when he finally meets the girl of his dreams, he leaves her behind because he still needs to first find his treasure - his fulfilment, or most inner dream - with the promise that he will come back for her once his quest is over. The story ends exactly where it begun... When the boy finally finds the treasure, it turns out it was always where he had first been - except that to find or see it, he had first needed to go through all these obstacles in life. Once he has fulfilled himself, everything else, all the secondary dreams, fall into place, and he gets everything, including his love.

I'm sitting at my desk, in the darkness only yet another candlelight breaks. I drew the curtains wide open to gaze into the night sky... There are no stars in the nightsky, just an edless cortege of deep gray clouds, like a forgotten old veil dragged away by some distant, alien God.

I left the window half opened to let the cold and damp air swirl in, and my ears are filled with music such as this one. It's from the Tristan and Isolde soundtrack, and it seems to capture my mood tonight rather perfectly.

I remember being away from home when I watched that movie; in fact, I was abroad at the time. I watched the green moors and drenched landscapes, the almost constant mist of rain washing over more deep green hills that ran as far as the eye could see... and that's when I realised that I missed home... that's when I realised that this rainy island had become home to me. How this happened, I do not know, but it happened.

When I now think of Paris, it feels more like a distant dream. It was the city of my childhood, and though I still remember where we used to live, and what some of the streets used to look like, my memories keep growing hazier with every day that passes. In a way, I wanted it to happen. I wanted a long time to pass before I would ever go back again, so that my memories of that city would grow as old and crackled as an old black and white photograph in my head... immortalising that passage in time in the most perfect way.

... So that the past no longer bears the ruthlessness of reality, but my own version of perfected memories, much like a dream I once had but that can never be dreamed again.

Sometimes I like to close my eyes and hold out a hand in front of me. I imagine the gentle touch of someone else's hand on mine, warm and loving... but when I open my eyes again, there is only coldness and emptiness to be stared at.

I shouldn't be here, for I belong to the realm of dreams and fantasy... does that sound crazy?
Yet here I am. Yes... Here I am, with only my mind and heart forming a bridge toward the way back where I belong.

Someday someone will say: "She was here... but we didn't see her...We never saw her in time."

Looking, but never seeing.
Hearing, never listening.
Talking, but never thinking.
Existing, but barely living.
Sensing, but hardly feeling.

That's the problem with this world.

07/11/2010

It's a quiet Sunday morning. I woke up early, for once, and it felt good in a way because it reminded me of how I used to wake up at dawn to write. Dawn was always the clearest time of day for my mind.

I like taking pictures of landscapes, capturing the play of light and the beauty of simple things. Like a tree with twisted limbs, or the shimmering surface of water in the sun. I think I'm definitely going to invest in a decent camera as soon as I can.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Love was always just about two people caring so deeply about each other that the mere thought of being apart is unbearable. The intense desire to share everything, even in all the differences, and the comfort of knowing it's okay to be yourself truly with that one other person. I never had the chance to experience that for myself... but I wish I could.

I just finished watching a lovely romantic movie called The Time Traveller's Wife and though I didn't cry at the end I almost sort of did. The plot itself wasn't great, but I was absorbing the emotions and feelings between the two protagonists.

The guy keeps traveling in time at complete random moments, making it impossible for him to lead a normal life with the woman he loves. In fact, he meets her when she's just a young child and he carries on coming back throughout her life as she grows older. She falls in love with him instantly, it seems, and spends most of her time waiting for him to reappear in her life. Right before they manage to get married, he has a conversation with her father, who comments about the fact that really, as parents they never quite succeeded in making her deal with reality. That's perhaps what made their love so strong in the end... He was suffering from a 'condition' that made him a ghost in this world, and she was an artistic dreamer who saw him in a way nobody else could.

Anyway... In a story I wrote, which is more of an excuse to expose my deepest thoughts under the guise of writing a fantasy, the heroine's journey begins as a child. As a child, she is the explorer, full of imagination and dreams... Like me, she longs to escape into another world, one made of pure beauty and magic - everything her reality isn't.

The power of a writer rests on the ability to change the odds in any way we like. In my reality, I never escaped anywhere but more pain and disappointment, but I had the power to give my heroine everything I could never get myself. I gave her a portal through which to escape - with a twist, of course. She was never going to escape without having to learn things in the process... Things about her true self, about life and what it means in reality even within a dream, about duty, courage and Meaning. I also gave her Love.

At the end of the story, she is left with a clear choice: remain in that other world, or return home.
Now that the bad guys are defeated (of course I was going to make the bad guys lose in this story... mainly because they always win in my reality) she is free to choose, but then again by then we all know she was always free to choose from the start - but she could not understand that for a long while, because often in life, we make choices that simply don't feel like true choices... even though they are. So what does she end up doing? On the one hand, her family is waiting for her back home, on the other, she fell in love with a boy from that other world. In other words, she finds herself with one foot in each world, and that's what makes the decision one of the most difficult to make.

I, who live with one foot in reality, and the other in the realm of dreams, could never bring myself to remove one foot or the other completely... So even as the writer of the story, I could never quite decide on what my heroine would choose to do... and so in the end I decided to leave it for the reader to decide. The story ends with the rising of dawn, and the reader's imagination free to envision what happens next.

It's 16.55, the sky has grown darker, so dark in fact that I decided not to switch on the light and instead lit up a small candle on my desk as I drown in the beauty of this piece.

Listening to such music is like feeling as though you suddenly do have wings... and you can fly away so high, into a whole other world, or universe, and all that is felt is felt a million times more intensely than anything you could be made to feel in reality.

As I was sitting here at my desk, I reflected further on my earlier sadness, and my deep sense of alienation .It made me think that I simply needed to focus on what’s real in my life, even though everything in my life is pretty shit and empty right now… but at least it’s REAL. And, who knows… if I start paying more attention to my reality, I may one day see things start falling into place as it does for the majority out there… And even if nothing changes, I still need to try.

I'll always be the way I am, and I do believe it is a beautiful way to be... I just need to open up to the world a little bit more all the while avoiding being so over-trusting and even reckless at times.

Yes.. I noticed for myself how reckless I could be sometimes, and I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it's a direct effect of being child-like at heart and therefore too spontaneous in a world full of scheming and double-crossing individuals. I'm like a toddler reaching for the flame burning on the stove despite the parents' warning that it will burn.

Yet... if the world was full of genuine, good people, then my nature would have nothing to worry about... but what use is it to dwell on the 'what ifs' when reality shows itself as being the complete opposite? And... I always sought beauty and marvels, so I was always attracted to the odd and bizarre simply because it looked slightly different from the bland, robot-like norm.

I long for love, but let's face it, I haven't been very loveable so far in my life. It's all up to me now... Earlier in my life, I had very little control over my existence, but now I do.

I need to get back to my writings... I have stories bugging me to get out of my head, and I feel for them the same way a mother must feel when she's expecting.

One of the most beautiful allegories I ever came across was from Plato, actually, who likened the art of writing as exactly the same as a woman in labour... You have to carry the story in your head for a long time, and then you must give birth to it, and that process is just as painful in many ways. Sometimes there are complications, sometimes the birth goes without a hitch.

I am not just a woman, I am a writer, and I am a human being who uses her reason to be a thinker rather than an individual, or even just a mere person.

06/11/2010

It's finally autumn at the door... I took my uncle to visit the Queen this morning - well, we visited the outside of her 'humble' home, really.

We took a long walk across St James' Park, which is right next door to the palace. Though it had stopped raining, the air was cold and humid, and smelled of wet grass freshly cut. It was truly a beautiful scenery, and it helped sooth my anger.

Why exactly was I angry? Well, it's not even worth wasting precious words on the reason, and the anger is gone anyway...

We mingled with the crowds of tourists standing in front of the palace and took a few pictures of the monuments around, and then we popped by the library and I rented yet another CD at random... and today I'm discovering all the beauty of Mendelssohn's works. I particularly like the violin pieces, I have to say, but then again I always felt a certain affinity for that instrument... perhaps because a violin can sound like sorrowful cries just as much as it can uplift you to new heights. This one piece, by the way, is simply wonderful...

As we sat on the bus on our way to Buckingham palace, I felt depressed... I wasn't angry just yet, but feeling extremely sad. I was looking blankly out the window, at the vanishing wet streets, at the procession of umbrellas and more faceless people. I pondered on the fact that I felt so much like an outcast, and even if I tried to fit in anywhere, I wouldn't even know where to start. I wondered how come I didn't know how to 'live' within society as so many seem to be able to do so naturally.

I felt so depressed that I tried to imagine how liberating it would feel to simply fall asleep and never wake up. Then I tried to imagine what I would do if I were to lose the small family I have, and how would it feel like to wake up one morning with absolutely no one around for you. The first feeling I experienced while thinking that was that of anxiety, and then that feeling swiftly changed into a strange sense of curiosity. What if I was suddenly accountable to absolutely nobody in this world, not even one single living soul? Nobody expecting anything from you, and having nothing or nobody left to lose...

I remember reading a story from Kippling a long time ago. I cannot recall what it was called, but it was about a man who lived completely isolated in a house in the middle of nowhere... At first, he had no problem motivating himself to behave in the same way he had within society. However, the more time he spent alone, the more he could feel his human nature sleep away from him... If there was no one else around, then why bother make any effort? Why bother with anything at all? Why dress, why even wash or try and look good? There was no other person to validate his own existence. In the end, the only way for him to save his own sanity was to force himself to act as he would have among people, even as he spent all his time alone.

Then we took that stroll across the park and the autumn scenery simply took my breath away for a moment... Reminding me that if I only make the effort to ignore most people in this world to only focus on the latter's pure beauty then suddenly the mere fact of being alive today was worth it.

05/11/2010

It's bonfire night tonight... For those who are not familiar with the English tradition, it's all about "Guy Fawkes " and a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament a few centuries back. Today, people just light up a few fireworks and then go to bed.

If there ever was a tune to define my own existence, it would have to be a mix of this one and this one, and I don't know why, so don't ask me why, it's just how it is.

I went shopping today. I woke up late, but not that late (well, before midday, so that's not really that late, is it?) and I had decided the day before that I would be going shopping, so I did. I went to the nearest shopping mall there is from where I live, which is about 4 tube stations away.

As I was looking at all the clothes on display I realised for the first time that if there is one thing I do love buying, it's underwear. Technically speaking, that's the one thing most people never get to see, since it's hidden under layer upon layer of clothes... but it's so PRETTY. CUTE. LOVELY.
Isn't it?

Come on, it really is beautiful. Lace, satin, frills... I could drown in them all... So tiny and revealing, and yet concealed under more and more clothes...

But as I was sitting on the train back home, I began to look at the people around me, and I felt more and more suffocated by the world in general, and that's because I suddenly remembered my 17th year of life… and I had to try hard not to cry. Even though we went through hell back then, I still had hopes and crazy dreams. I had to be strong, so I was… or I acted as if I was, but I remember that one moment as mum and I were walking down the street - not knowing where we were going - and she was shouting at me for being so soft and weak… in her own words actually “ungrateful and difficult” and that day something broke in my mind itself… I really felt something snap inside my head.

The damage didn’t show right away, because survival instincts were still kicking in… but as soon as I was away from home, whatever ‘home’ meant at the time… That’s when the damage emerged, slowly, but surely.

I don’t care to show the broken parts of me for the whole world to see (because I am, after all, only human), I guess part of me is waiting for the ‘coup de grace’ that never seems to come, and perhaps I have a completely flawed perception of my self in the end. Perhaps I am stronger than I think I am. But that… I cannot say.

The ‘damage’ was that my mind went into sleep mode for a few years. Like hibernation. It really felt back then as if a part of me had truly died. My mind. Yes, that’s right, I thought and believed that my mind had somehow died on me… leaving me to wonder, puzzled and frightened, what the hell was left then if my mind was already dead. I thought the best way forward was to kill the body so that it could catch up with the mind that had already left so soon, and without much of a warning… But at the same time I guess I loved life too much and couldn’t just kill the body.

But… the beauty of the story so far isn’t that I didn’t manage to kill the body, it is the realisation that the mind had never actually died… it was asleep. And that’s why I call the period between my 18th birthday and 25th a coma. Whilst asleep, my mind still observed and took in perceptions and experiences… it just wouldn’t communicate with my being as a whole.
And now that I’m finally awake… I have to adjust to all the things I know so clearly deep down with the way things are in your world.