05/07/11

This world isn't real... none of it is

I may be on the verge of becoming a solipsist. Why not? It seems to make more sense right now than anything else being touted 24/7.

Nothing can be proved. Science is just the mechanics. It does not give you reason, it does not give you feelings, it does not give you meaning. People give you meaning just by gathering - even 2 people gathering together is enough. This means minds give reason, but science cannot explain reason, it can only explain what the brain is made of.

Therefore everything is a lie. Everything is an illusion, and nothing is really real.

All of this life. An illusion.

It's a warm and sunny weather all over again. Feels like summer, eh.

Work is as hard as ever, and I'm still swimming in a sea of confusion. I also feel sad and depressed, even though it doesn't show in reality. In reality, I've always been good at pretending that all is well, so I can't really expect anyone to take any notice of it - and it's probably better that way.

I couldn't sleep last night and I hate when this happens. The heat, coupled with the load of thoughts weighing on my mind, kept me wide awake until almost midnight. The cat remained dutifully by my side, watching me with glowing silent eyes as I tossed and turned.

I just feel so sad and disappointed. I don't know what I'm supposed to do to make it all better.

I thought if I remained true to myself and acted as my self with people I care about, then it would make a difference in the way my relationship with them would develop. I guess I forgot to take into account that this could only work if the other people are willing to do just the same. That is almost never the case. People play games all the time. Or they are so emotionally disconnected that they make it impossible for me to reach out to them in their depth. Instead, they constantly put up these walls surrounded by pretence and role-play where appearance is the one thing that matters to them.

Truth be told, in a world that mostly cares only about appearance and being the 'best', being yourself without subterfuge or role-playing treachery is almost guaranteed to make you end up as the stuffed goose in the story.

People are so used to playing games in all sorts of relationships that when you happen not to play any, then you're either at risk of being dismissed as 'boring' or too easy to manipulate or figure out.

In general, the lack of care and true feelings is what gets to me the most.

Life is a funny, sadistic thing, in a way. Whatever it is you ever wanted the most, you can rest assured you'll never get it.

Bah... I'm just too sad to carry on for now.

Imagination encircles the world...

I wish I could just delve into the feeling of love... without constantly having to make room for such things as work and the mindless stress of daily chores... It would be too easy, wouldn't it?

Yes... Still, I wish I had the luxury of being able to set a big chunk of my time just indulging in the love and nothing else -as though almost nothing else really existed beyond it.

Work, competition and expectations always come into the picture... It would have made more sense if the work, no matter how useless, wasn't so enslaving in essence, requiring most of us to literally dedicate most of our time and life to it. After all, for a society to exist, we each need to put some weight in, but there is no balance, and I don't think there ever was one.

Now that I work in an office environment, I get to observe people who are quite used to such routines. They can juggle work, personal life and hobbies very well... and that's it, that's the clockwork way things are for most: get up in the morning, get crushed inside a train or bus to get to work, sit at a desk for 7 hours (without daring to take your PAID lunch break away from the desk because it looks 'lazy'), get back on said train or bus, crushed and mentally exhausted... get home and enjoy the few hours left for yourself before it's time to sleep. The trick is that when you're made to juggle both work and personal life, a big chunk of whatever time is left in the evening goes into trying to keep up with that personal life.

Where's the time for the self? Where's the time for deeper reflection? By the time the weekend comes, you're so exhausted and feeling so highly-strung that your mind desires nothing but mindless rest. Mindless entertainment and activities that allow for the mind to relax a little before the routine frenzy starts all over again 2 days later.

My job wouldn't have been so bad, if only - if only - I wasn't made to write about things so complex it makes me feel like a retard most of the time.

The routine of our modern world is almost too easy to turn into a caricature... I guess the only way one can escape it is if they're rich. Yeah, if you're rich then you have the luxury to escape. Most jobs are conceived in such ways as to prevent the majority from ever being wealthy enough to escape. I guess if everyone was rich then it would break the rotten balance of this world, and soon enough you'd end up with the 'rich' being merely average compared to the super-rich... oh, wait... I've just described capitalism at its peak, haven't I?

Oh, I don't know... Maybe I grew too accustomed to having a lot of free time to think and reflect, and now I suddenly have to lead the same hamster life as everyone else - and it's a shock to my system.

It seems the only reason I was able to develop more depth of thoughts was merely circumstancial in the end... I was just 'lucky' enough to be able to spend a lot of my time in relative social isolation while also avoiding the plague of 'busyness'.

It's good to be busy at times... in bursts, actually. But then you need the time off to reflect and take stock. This modern setting doesn't really allow it. It actually regiment our lives like the worst of dictators. It dictates everything, and you have to fit everything around its orders. You can't rest, eat, think... except when you're allowed to at very precise times.

20/04/2011

I woke up with a vague toothache this morning. By the time I reached the workplace, it had turned into a dull kind of pain that comes and goes. The heat made me feel more tired than usual, not that I'm complaining about the sunshine... people at the office have been looking like drained zombies for the past few days, and it made me wonder if I, too, look like a drained zombie now.

Must be the result of the anticipation for the longer-than-usual weekend ahead of us, courtesy of religion's celebration of something that has to do with Jesus coming back from the dead. I keep wondering what the Easter bunny has to do with it nowadays, but anyway... Whatever sells, eh.

On my way back from work, I argued with myself whether to book an appointment with the dentist or not. My illogical phobia of needles wins the argument every time - well, until the pain is so excrutiating that I wish I could shoot myself in the mouth. Then the idea of letting it get worse until it killed me kind of appealed to me. I fantasised about it for a while as I was being crushed inside the train taking me home by a sweating crowd of tourists in sunglasses mixed with fellow penguins (by that I mean all the office workers wearing a more formal attire).

As I walked down the quieter streets leading to my building, and immersed as I was in the dying streaks of sunshine, more depressing thoughts began to overwhelm me. I realised that I've never felt more stupid in my life, and maybe that's down to the fact that I work in a field I know nothing about, and yet I have to keep pretending that I can somehow cope.

I went to a meeting yesterday and listened to bankers talk about how now was really the right time to get back into stock picking. I actually understood what they were on about, but then as always when I'm witnessing such occurrences, my mind suddenly starts to focus on completely different things than the ones I'm 'supposed' to care about. What I mean here is that I was supposed to focus on the bankers' talk and their announcement, but instead I found myself staring at the old banker guy, fascinated by the fact that he could talk nonstop using such complex jargon that even a dictionary couldn't help you understand it. My mind tried to understand how it was possible for a human being to be able to talk and talk about things so complex as if one was talking about the weather. I mean... The guy could go on and on without even thinking or pausing, and it made me wonder if these people were even human. Maybe they were robots, I thought to myself, and that was why they could talk about such complex and unatural things so easily.

I was kicked out of my pondering by the banker's cellphone ringing loudly all of a sudden from his pocket as he was standing in front of a screen to explain something that had to do with the talk of the day. He drew the phone out of his pocket and laughingly said that it was his wife calling. Everyone at the table laughed heartily without even the need of a prompt, it seems. My reflex was to laugh along with them, of course, but at the same time I shrugged inwardly: he must be human after all, I concluded to myself.

I was still on my way home when the sudden urge to burst into tears gripped me. I had to swallow hard and squizz my eyes for a second to chase the tears away. I got home and the cat greeted me happily, for a split-second making me forget about my unspoken sorrows, and then I stared at Charlie the hamster's cage, and then back at the cat.

"My God," I said out loud for no other human ears but mine to hear, "you don't know how lucky you two are. You're treated as brainless pets and no one expects anything from you. I'm a human treated like some pet, and yet the weight of expectations on my shoulders could dig a hole as big as the universe."

02/04/2011

Listening to this at the moment and wondering about too many things at once... Far too many uncertain factors at play in my life this time.


So many things I thought were true turned out to be so wrong, or flawed... So many things I wished for... but the monster that swallows all of our dreams swallowed mine, too. People always discriminate against each other - that's almost as if that ability was in our genes, and maybe it is - but the monster never does. It hits each and every one of us regardless of anything.

There is this picture of me as a kid sitting down right on the floor in the middle of the living room, holding my old cat prisoner between my knees as we both sit in front of a cage holding three tiny hamsters prisoners inside it, and I'm gazing up at the camera with defiant eyes. If I could go back in time and talk to that little girl, I would warn her, even though I already know she would never listen. I would tell her to be mindful of that gaze about her, and those dreams I know she nurtured within her so ardently... because I know what happens next while she doesn't - because she still believes in fairytales, and she still lives trapped in her own universe.

It's nobody's fault. It's this life, the way it exists in itself, the way it works like clockwork, and we are just the loose element within that world...

I am tired. I am less and less able to relate to the person I used to be, and at the same time I know that who I am now is better than who I was before... should it matter, then? Probably not, I guess.

Someone once said that you have to reach the bottom of the ocean before you can make your way back to the surface, and it feels kind of right. Yes, maybe it is right... I don't know.

I don't know.

The only thing I'm certain of is that I don't know.

Things happen, things break. Nothing ever lasts. I know the only reason things don't last is because we want them to break in some way. I know that alone I can't make anything last or be good for long. I know that. I know too many things I wish I didn't know.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong about absolutely everything I ever thought I knew, and because I fear this could well be the case I think I should shut up for a while.

Dear unknown reader, I'm outta here.

Good day
Good night
Good bye.

Dreaming... dreaming... dreamed...

Dreams... A distortion of reality as we live it?

I saw things, beautiful things - in my mind's eye... and then they were gone, these beautiful visions, replaced with versions of your reality.

Your reality is cold and implacable. Your reality dictates that everything should revolve around profit and personal gain of some sort.

Reality is so cold... Frozen with the same old 'feelings', really. I dare YOU to try and narrow down what feelings people actually get to experience in this reality when they are above the poverty line (meaning when they are above basic instincts of seeking food, or refuge, for mere survival)... What is it that repeats itself over and over again in this world - what makes this whole world turn?

Greed. Want. Profit of some sort - be it purely personal or genetically-based ( I mean by that wanting to secure the best for some so-called progeny, or 'children').

I am SO sick of all of you... no one has any idea how sick I am of you lot. Yeah, all of you. None of you is strong. None of you is ready to die for what makes sense, what is simply righter than wrong... I'm not even saying 'what's right', I'm saying what's 'righter' than wrong.

Oh, but wait, I can hear it already, the same old excuse I used to give to myself... 'but I'm too small and insignificant to be able to do anything'... Yeah, I know that one really well, you see. I used to tell myself just that. Well, guess what, I say fuck off to that pathetic excuse. We are I, and we can do anything in this world... we really can.. because we are I...

The only reason we feel overwhelmed by this corrupted world is because we allow it to destroy this notion of together-ness, this... notion of a whole even beyond the fact that each of us is one.

I know this, and you know this too, deep down. So why is all this bullshit happening?

I'll rest my case soon, but not just yet.

From this gloomy and sombre night
A thousand and one glass eyes at a stand-still
In the distance;

Across the dead city
Wrapped in its ebony shroud,
A thousand and one icy lights shimmer.

Such a sinister picture painted
From the grey, moaning window,
All these yellow eyes staring at me
In spite of white curtains waving
Akin to dead eyelids…

To reach beyond the dreadful black veil
Shared only by rust-covered iron lions,
A soothing music luring me away
To see at last the true sun
Glowing,
Scorching,
Melting away the icy walls,
Tearing away at each ghastly shroud
That haunts the beyond of my sobbing window.

01/03/2011

Still listening to a song that takes me back in time. The song in question is this one.

Funny how songs or music in general manage so well to capture memories in time... but not just images - oh no... Not just that. A song or music can capture an exact moment, including a scene, a scent, the emotions experienced, even the things said or thought at the time. Just like good wine, the key to preserving such moments captured in music is to let that piece of music be 'forgotten' for a long time so that the memory attached to it will grow in strength and power. After a few years, listening to it again is garrantied to make the precise captured moment come back to mind at once. Well, that's how it works for me anyway.

I wonder... about so many things... It's night again in the city but the sky is a starless sheet of darkness.

Let's light up a candle and let it rest by the silent window, and as we let it burn to nothingness, let the mind escape and dream of things that will be, and of all those that never will.