Ego

In the end, it matters little if I am the way I am because I chose it or because I cannot be otherwise, even if I try. I can only succed for a short time pretending to fit in... so why bother at all? Why not face it that I do not like the things people usually like or pretend to like and do not want the things people usually want or pretend to want.

The little break I get from raised eyebrows while faking interest is all but nullified by the stress of maintaining a facade. I do not wish to be anything or anyhow. I am content to just be.

two in one morning promotion

a promotion of flashbacks, what else? you know, the ones i usually get on my morning walks home from work. i s'ppose neurologists or something like that could better explain the why's of these things happening. for me it's just like some kind of enhanced perception thingie that sometimes throws me out of my tracks but that i usually rather enjoy. because of some illusion of control over time.

remembering insignificant bits that stuck in my memory against hope makes me feel like... like i am saving bits of fabric that come undone behind me. it's like i'm walking on a tapestry suspended in mid-air, weaving it as i go while behind me it just comes undone and vanishes forever, like it never really was there in the first place. recollecting such little things, so forgotten yet so part of me is like i'm reaching back and making sure that some strings still remain tied together... that i indeed passed at a certain moment through a certain place and it was not all a grand illusion of colours and smoke.

the first bit hit me as i passed a huge puddle that is usually always there. what it triggered was a memory from when i was a little kid and some water pipes had broken in my street, leading to the street being flooded. several square meters of puddle. and while our parents were angry because of household utility and cost reasons, us kids were in paradise. mud had formed and we were playing in it, "building" structures, following the patterns that the flowing water made from where it sprung out of the asphalt down to the manhole it flowed in, watching the plants that growed, splashing... that sort of thing. it was heaven... until the people from the utility company came and repaired it and ruined all fun... and for days when passing the spot where the water had come out we would look there filled with the hope that by some unknown (and uncared for) miracle, the water would come back.

i walked on smiling to myself at the memory when the second flashback struck. honestly, the feeling when this happens is just so weird... i can't properly describe it. so two in a row is a bit much. but i saw the cranes on the construction site nearby and i remember this one time in kindergarden...

we were sitting in a semi-circle and there was this big drawing of a city, a typical 'communist' one. a building site with huge cranes and construction workers, blocks of flats, a park with small children playing, some pupils in school uniforms crossing the street... cars, buses... well, the usual, it just had this little 'communist' 'everyone happy working for the fatherland' touch to it.

we were to name the objects we saw in the drawing, then go and point them out to the other kids. one by one. and after that, we had to name the different colours we saw on some little drawings of the objects in there, put separately on a board. like "that crane is yellow" and "that girl's uniform is blue". when it was my turn, there was a picture of a car left and i had to name the colour. so i looked at the car a bit puzzled. of course i had seen the colour before, i had just never given it a name in my had. nor did i know what to call it. so i said the next best thing that seemed similar, though i knew it was not precisely that. i said "yellow". and then the teacher explained that it was not yellow, though it was close... it was "orange". and that's how i learned the word orange.

and i recalled the entire scene just because i had looked at those darn cranes... leaving my head swirling with sensations up to the time i finally got to bed to rest my brains... and induce some consciousness blockage to bursts of streams of consciousness like these.

losers weepers (8) the end of innocence

I just remembered the first time I ever lied.

I was in kindergarden, four maybe five years old. The teacher had us run around in a large circle or something like that. We were having some sort of gym class. And a boy pushed me rather roughly and I called back to him "stupid!" or "idiot!" or something similar. Not a very bad word anyway, now in a hindsight :)

After the gym class, the teacher called me and the boy to her and told me: "Theo said you called him stupid. Is it true?". And... you've guessed it. I went red to the tip of my ears, I think. But I said "No", loud and clear. The teacher looked at me menacingly and said "I will find out the truth eventually". And I believed she would. I believed until the end of the day she would, by some supernatural-like power that adults maybe have, find indeed out the truth and I would be punished. For something I had done and denied, though I still considered it justified. I mean, the guy was - or at least had behaved like - an idiot.

I had this sicky lump in my stomach the entire day. Not so much a bad conscience, as fear. I had lied, my first lie ever, to save myself from precisely that punishment that I feared would fall upon me eventually. Which it obviously didn't and that was a good thing, I guess, for it shook off some of that aura of supernatural power that I assumed adults must have. They really don't know everything, don't find out everything or even if they do, they couldn't really care less.

I don't even know precisely where that fear was stemming from. I had never really been properly punished, yet that spectre of punishment somehow hung over my head very menacingly. Stories I had heard, I guess. Yet, look what they made me do, sooner rather than later. And... heck, I'd still do it. I'd still rather lie than get in any kind of trouble, even be it a sad look, a raised eyebrow or a moderate lecture. Though nowadays I prefer omittance.

versions of violence and other barks

i dreamt of kara this afternoon. she had crawled in some den with entrance in the garden next to our block and wasn't feeling very well; apparently she had swallowed a (deflated) football. i was trying to get it out of her, either making her throw it up, or else i had caught hold of it down her throat, am not too sure - when my father called out to me. there was someone there who wanted to see me. i was reluctant to leave her side until i had gotten that football out, and there were also some boys from the neighbourhood around demanding their ball back but he insisted, so i eventually went to the entrance of the den to see the person. it was my brother.

until i went to work later at night i listened to alanis' versions of violence on repeat for almost two hours and... well, i'm probably guitly of most. and i'm probably marked by most, too. but that's the way it goes with most of us, i guess, mostly unaware.

when i got at work for my nightshift, the dog in the yard my office window is facing was barking his usualy two-note bark. he has a very monotonous barking, like a bored clerk doing a routine duty. same two notes, barked halfheartedly. on and on and on and... some of the folks here find it disturbing noise. i find it... sad. for some time i used to try to imagine what the dog looked like from his barks. i pictured him as a big dog, long fuzzy fur, grey or maybe dirty white. kinda like a big unkempt shepherd dog. well, turned out i was only right about the fact he's old and the shepherd bit. he's a german shepherd, though. nu fuzzy fur. as sad and worn out looking as his bark sounded. so that i could really not hear a change in the tone of his bark when one of his human family members comitted suicide. a sad bark's a sad bark. and some dogs didn't even get that. r.i.p.

losers weepers (7) mr. duck

i met him again yesterday morning, going home from work after a nightshift. he struck me as... aged. this morning, i met him again... he barely walked, and held a hand on his back, near the hips, as if he was aching.

i have no idea what his name is. i don't know where he lives either, but i know it's somewhere around me. i've known him since i was a kid, by no other name than "mr. duck" (no, not 'drake' as wiki.answers claims a male duck is called). i made fun of him by that name with my brother then. it was because of his walk. his whole body moves from side to side when he walks. actually, more like that of a penguin, but i didn't know of penguins when i was little. that's for how long i've known him. since before i knew of penguins.

i always met him along the same way, coming from the opposite direction in his duck-walk. i always said 'hello', because i thought it was someone i knew - after all he lived somewhere around and i saw him every day and my parents said it was polite to say hello to people you knew. he would always raise his left hand in a salute and say "hello, dollie" to me.

that's how he has always said it since then. i saw him now and again even recently. i gave no further thought to when i did, usually in the mornings coming home. he was part of what should be there, part of the familiar landscape. like the buildings i keep passing for twenty years. because the path i go is largely the same ever since late kindergarden.

as said, no further thought. i always said hello, he always raised his left hand and i could read it on his lips that he always said "hello, dollie". i haven't really walked much around without headphones on ever since highschool and that is a LOT of time ago. i never turned the music off when we crossed paths. that's how little consideration i gave this man who has no name known to me other than "mr. duck" and who has been part of the landscape for nearly twenty years. he hasn't even changed much - he always looked exactly the same... or so i thought.

yesterday i was really struck. i saw he had some difficulty walking and i looked closer at his face. he has aged. a lot. twenty years. and he was probably sick. if yesterday i was stunned to suddenly discover how time has passed over this anonymous duck-dude, yesterday i felt a pang of pity. he definitely found walking a taxing activity. and he was obviously in pain when doing so. he even stopped to talk to me, a thing he had never done. he never said more than hi except maybe on one or two occasions when our dialogue consisted of "school's out?" "yep, for today" or "back from school?" "no, work" "my, you've grown"and then it was while we were passing each other by, not really stopping.

what he told me, as i took off my earphones (yes, i did in my surprise) was along the lines of "look at this, can you believe it, i can barely walk". and my reply was very stupid and very out of line "eh... the joys of 'youth' ". he laughed and said it was true before we each went our way. the next moment i only thought of that as a very, very stupid joke. though it was the very obvious truth. i guess it was just not one of those truths that should be flung in people's faces. and i was the last one to do it, after all i've been calling him "mr. duck" all my life. it just came out of me on the spot.

and i went home wondering in what shape i'll see him next... and struck by the thought that there will come a day when i will never see him again. he will vanish from the landscape, like a tree cut down, or a facade painted over. only much, much less noticeable. see, he is so peripheral and insignificant to 'my world', even though he's always been there in some sort of way, that if it hadn't been for this two days and the way his appearance struck me, i probably wouldn't even have realised that he has disappeared from it.

yet, this morning his presumed future disappearance at some point seemed like a little tragedy. a little selfish tragedy. it was not him as a person i cared about or would have mourned, but my childhood world losing an apparently totally insignificant piece of the puzzle. but it is one of many. like the piece that disappeared when they leveled the 'hill' we used to sleigh down in winter, or the rose-beds around which my dog ran, or the moving out of a neighbour i kinda liked though never spoke to, or a loved t-shirt i've grown out of. somehow, pieces of the puzzle seem to get lost along the way and i never even give them conscious thought as such... i just some days wonder what has gone amiss and what exactly this diffuse feeling of loss is. probably the feeling one gets when looking at a puzzle full of gaps, i'd guess...

anyone know a good lawyer?

there are songs that simply should not have been written. i mean.... hello? would you please not take my diary, record it on your album and make a shitload of money from it? i guess that is one of the possible reasons why some songs call forth such strong emotions in some listeners - the connections they draw up.

darren hayes for instance, has such a way with words... that i usually instantly develop a love-hate relationship with the songs he writes. been that way ever since savage garden, still goes on. i sometimes really consider sueing the guy for writing about me... though i do have a hunch it might be himself. robbie williams hit the spot a couple of times too, so did others. but if i were to name one song that should've never ever been written (or come to my hearing, at least), it would be a k's choice tune.



K's Choice - What The Hell Is Love
more songs on the site »


He was not so tall and rather fat
Had a Labrador and a limping cat
Born in a country with a broken heart
He had enough money and a credit card
Told bedtime stories to his teddy bear
Gave him lots of hugs and a dress to wear
He had a small apartment, what a lovely sight
He watched MTV all night

Where the hell was friendship
He must have turned it off
And most of all he wondered what is love
What the hell is love

He enjoyed the silence more and more
As he heard the door slam right next door
He had a fancy Parker and a diary
In which he wrote some poetry
And as he went to bed at night
The cat's eyes gave him ample light
To make him lie awake and see
The content of his misery

Where the hell was friendship
He must have turned it off
And most of all he wondered what is love
What the hell is love

Where the hell was friendship
He must have turned it off
And most of all he wondered what is love
What the hell is love

a storm coming in

what do i do when i should blog, but don't really feel up to it? that's right, i tamper with blog layout and colours and widgets. this time, i actually considered closing this blog. starting a new one from scratch. i've changed my mind, fortunately or unfortunately. it would still be only me and my pseudo-intellectual toxic waste, so what point would be there.

instead, i went for a rather radical look change since it's the first time since i started writing here that i've actually changed both the template and the title of the blog. and to top that off, my blogger identity. so, from this post on, they will be signed as Arashi. it means 'storm' in japanese, just in case you were wondering. probably a storm of more pathetic musings to come, this first one being the eye in the storm mentioned in the title. because i've refrained myself from getting dramatic in this one :-)

stuck in a rut, stuck in a rut, stuck in a rut

this is so absurd. the fact that it's almost 7 am and i am still up is also absurd. i've been trying to go to sleep, twice until now and i got up every time. i've even considered getting some professional help... for about two minutes. because i pretty much know the roots of all these doubts, just as well as i know where these bouts of depression stem from. and i also know darn well that there's nothing anyone except myself can do about it and i also pretty much know what it is. so why should i spend the money, the time and the effort to even ask. god, i miss my childhood. bit of it. i have some very clear images burned in my mind that i miss dearly... and some dull memories of stuff i wish to hell, too. and i can see it so clearly, the traces some of those totally insignificant moments left... and when i think back on those things... it's like watching a movie that you know, and every time you know something bad is going to happen you just want to shout "NO!". and even in present, i watch 'myself' like in the movies. i watch with lofty detachment how i slowly self-destruct myself. not by actually doing anything... but by not doing anything. anything for myself. i ruin my body and my psyche and at the same time i just sit by and watch... and sometimes shrug... and from time to time, i snarl at those who point that out, or even worse, mean to help. and i make sure to push them all away so i can watch myself letting myself go to hell by not doing anything about it, like i'm someone i don't give a damn about. and i am. this is plain sick...

not to touch the earth...

this has been a blog long in the making. both because i hate the content (but need to get it out) and because it's kind of hard to somehow bring cohesion to what i mean to write. i know what it is but it's rather intuitive perception and knowledge. i can't quite grasp it and thus i'm a bit at a loss regarding the wording. (ps: which kind of explains why it took me several attempts at starting it, ending in the change of layout for the blog if nothing else much and then a couple of days to actually finish it, after almost a month of brewing it)

for those who don't recognise the (by now probably boring to be used in the title) pop culture reference, it's a song by the doors. not to touch the earth, not to see the sun, nothing left to do but run, run, run.

------

i might have dropped a line or two before about this online game i've been playing for a while now, tribal wars. as circumstances would have it, i found myself in the position to fight rather fierce defensive battles on behalf of a couple of friends while sitting their accounts. because they claim i am such a top defender. i still laugh that off as a poor joke and consider that what has "earned" me that appreciation was nothing more than a fluke, a stroke of luck. being online at the right time, having more time and more patience than my attackers and no other big deal. still, the 'title' has somehow stuck. as said, i was laughing it off until some while ago when, having nothing better to do than brood on my own thoughts, something struck me.

back in the sixth and seventh grade, during sports class i wouldn't play volleyball with the girls, but football with the boys. and guess what position i was playing? bingo! goalkeeper. a pretty decent one. until we had a match with a team of tenth graders and i decided to defend a shot... which hit me straight in the stomach. then i finally switched. to volleyball. where... need i mention it? i had a rather good service shot but where i really felt and did best was... well, obviously defending.

and all these half serious half playful activities would still mean nothing had i not also remembered a line my mother used on several occasions. all of which were arguments. or rather, her saying something and me snapping. and that line she threw in was "stop being so defensive!". and you know what? i am. constantly.

i'm self-conscious on the brink of paranoina (like... if people look at me more then two seconds on the street i get the feeling i'm running around with my jeans zipper open or so, even if maybe they just read the inscription on my t-shirt); i snarl at whoever crosses my lines (which i never draw clearly - because they aren't - or bother to point out); i don't socialise beyond the point of meaningless chatter and that only when i have to and i most certainly don't bond too much or too easy and at some point i always end up screwing it up big time. i pretty much suck at building and maintaining relationships so i don't even try in the first place; so i kind of keep away from people or rather keep people away from me; i use irony as a pretty efficient weapon to that end (or rather, an extremely efficient one) and a certain wittiness to build an appearance of confidence that flashes out (or should...) "do not trespass". and all this to protect a solitude that i both cherish and dread; that i don't want to give up and that gets me depressed at the same time... and that i run back to whenever defense breaks down.

because in the end, defense always breaks down. it's a rule. however, what they didn't say in the technical notes was that in time, it'll happen to crack more and more often. ever so often i find myself running. i don't know why or from what or who. probably from myself. the last long distance run started around a month or so ago... and i'm still catching my breath from it, so to say.

i spent easter and the day after at work in a pretty much deserted building with instant messaging broken down and most people i talk to away. well, people out there actually do have a real life, as opposed to me. i took off the next week to... well, in the end do nothing. i wanted to get away. i was planning on a trip but in the end was too lazy to take it. so i spent a whole week at home, sleeping, cooking and playing games. offline or invisible, mobile on silent and not being paid attention to. i found out at the end of the week that they've been looking for me from work the entire week, calling everyone they knew and inquiring about me. i haven't even counted the missed calls or the offline messages.

i went back to work in the meantime, am working ever since... but i still miss that trip i never took. i miss last year's skipped holiday and i miss the reason why i skipped it. i still dream about her, and not the way i'd like to. i miss talking to people, but it feels odd to just walk into their virtual lives again like nothing happened. odd and ruthless, as ruthless as was walking out without a word. something did happen and i don't know what myself so i can hardly provide a satisfactory explanation. the best way i can put it is that i just broke down, exhausted from running. though to me that sounds overly dramatic... like requiring medical help or so. i don't. i just needed to seal myself off in my bubble, the only thing that could help me short term, and hurting me a bit more long-term, cutting off another thread - even temporary - that binds me to what is usually defined as real life. people say that's bad and i tend to agree that it's not healthy... though i am not quite sure why...

Your Personality Is

Idealist (NF) You are a passionate, caring, and unique person. You are good at expressing yourself and sharing your ideals. You are the most compassionate of all types and connect with others easily. Your heart tends to rule you. You can't make decisions without considering feelings. You seek out other empathetic people to befriend. Truth and authenticity matters in your friendships. In love, you give everything you have to relationships. You fall in love easily. At work, you crave personal expression and meaning in your career. With others, you communicate well. You can spend all night talking with someone. As far as your looks go, you've likely taken the time to develop your own personal style. On weekends, you like to be with others. Charity work is also a favorite pastime of yours.

The Three Question Personality Test