lifewrecked

Some might argue that it is too early for me to be old and they'd be right. On the other hand, thirty two might as well be halfway to death, for all I know. And when you're halfway there, you're usually not livin' on a prayer, as the song goes, but rather living at a good point in time to look back, draw a line and check the direction you're heading.
There are lucky people out there who can nod satisfied and keep moving in the same direction. There are less lucky people who will frown and decide they need to adjust their course. And then, there are special people (and I've always considered myself rather special) who will look and look and look really hard again in order to figure out what their direction actually is, before realising they are pretty much adrift. It's not exactly shipwrecked, but it would be, if life were an ocean. Is lifewrecked a word? It should be.
And what the hell do you do when there's no wind in your sails and you have no clue as to where you should be rowing? How do you resist the temptation of closing your eyes and letting the currents take you to where the devil may care? How do you fight the numbness and indifference?
I can't motivate myself to anything without some real-life carrot to tie in front of my nose and I have no carrots whatsoever. I'm pretty sure diving in make-believe realms in one's own head is not the healthy way, but between controlled fantasy and uncontrolled depression, what would you pick?

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shadow of fear

I have been living in the shadow of fear my entire life. It sounds like a truism and maybe it is. It also sounds a bit cliché and I suppose it is that, as well. I've had a good childhood and a good life. I still do. I have a loving family, I have great friends and a good job. I earn well, I get to travel and go to concerts and read good books and everything is swell. And still, the shadow looms. It creeps in at night and echoes my every thought.
I've been afraid of failing ever since I can remember and I know most people have been or are in some form of another, though I doubt that for many that fear has stopped them dead in the tracks from any change in their lives, from taking any chance at all at being who they want to be or doing what they felt like doing.
I've been punished maybe twice in my life for doing something bad, but I've carried this fear of doing something wrong around forever. Maybe that's why I haven't done much wrong, which ironically negates any pride I might take in it - I strongly oppose fear as a motivator. And if all I've ever done right came out of fear, here I am wondering what sort of person I am and where would I be if I had more guts, at a point in life when most people have everything more or less worked out.
And also, here I am, walking down the beaten path. Breaking down in frustrated sobs at the realisation that it is this fear of disappointing others, of not living up and of rejection that paralyzes me like the fabled deer in the headlights. The usual encouragements and pats in the back just add another brick of potential-guilt-if-I-fail to carry, because they are no more than confirmations of expectations. And the sheer fact that I understand and rationalise this and that I am yet stuck in inaction just serves to measure the dimension of that fear. I cannot struggle with it, so I bow to it. Kicking and screaming on the inside.

labels

Isn't it funny... how we all flare up when we feel people apply labels to us. Yet we do the same with obstinate masochism. We view ourselves in labels and strive hard to behave accordingly and get all messed up in the head when we don't. We are honest, therefore feel horrible when we lie. We are straight, so heaven forbid we might feel attracted to someone of the same gender. We know good music, so the latest Gaga song is just a guilty pleasure 'cause it's so damn catchy. We're into artsy fartsy movies so that last stint to see Thor was just for laughs. We're libertarians, so we agree with that conservative point of view only because they sold it so well to manipulate us. We are free thinkers, so blame that last prayer on a socially conditioned response in high stress situations.

The only label that covers us all is human. We love and long for the things that make us happy, whether it's other people, our chosen forms of entertainment or opinions that match our own. We just strive to vibrate on the same wavelength and make it all so complicated by formulating rules and labels where there are none...

losers weepers (9) little white balls and a red rose on the wall

When I was a little kid, my neighbours decided to buy a table-tennis... well... uhm table. It was kept under lock and key in the storage by the block entrance. However, each summer day, the guys in my block and their gang down the street would take the table out and start playing, organising matches. I love the sound that little white ball made and I was watching like hypnotised from my balcony, both its constant movement from one player's side to another and the fancy strokes one of them would sometimes put up for show.

I was rarely allowed outside on my own back then (and when I was, I was watched) but I used those occasions to watch from even closer. I had some paddles from my brother and sometimes I took them with me but I was usually too shy to ask (or maybe unconsciously wise enough to avoid a refusal) to play too so I usually settled with playing ball-boy. At some point, I know I did play a set with one of the 'grown-ups'. Till 6-0 that is.

My folks somehow disapproved of me fetching the balls for the guys, as well as of their company so when I wasn't allowed out, I vented my frustration guerrilla style, by throwing little lumps of earth from the flower pots on the balcony onto the ping pong table and quickly hiding in order not to be spotted (unnecessarily to say it was quite obvious it was me anyway).

And just as a side-comment of some significance: one of the guy's name was Mio (well, Miodrag actually)(whom 8-year old me thought was cute) and he was the prime suspect of scratching and drawing a red rose and the letters D and M onto the walls of our block's hallway. And that was somehow a bad thing, though I don't know why. Well, I know why scratching the walls is a bad thing, but the rose was kinda nice so I don't know why my brother was appalled by it. Much later did I find out that DM and the rose stood for Depeche Mode whom my brother as a declared rocker (though underground listener) felt the need to repudiate in public. Paranthesis closed.

Well, after a couple of years I got over the not-being-allowed-to-play-ping-pong drama of my life. I was old enough to be able to (difficultly) carry the table together with a neighbour's guy of my age. The guy had a net for it so we spent quite some afternoons ourselves playing. He also had a cool bycicle from his father (as some sort of compensation for him not being there anymore since his parents got separated, but his father was a cool guy himself) and I would sometimes ride around the block with him. On one of those occasion he tried to kissed me, as I figured out later, since I didn't have the faintest idea what the heck he wanted so I pushed him back and we nearly fell with the bike.

However, at some point later that year, with my neighbour's father moved away and the two other guys playing leaving the area, the big mean grown-ups (and hysterical old hags) decided that since no one in our block was playing, the table should move to another block's storage and it should stay there, since the constant clatter of the ball - the sound I so liked - was disturbing their summer afternoons' peace and quiet. Apparently me and the neighbour's boy were 'nobody'.

Thus, the table and its hypnotising little white ball went away; after a while the neighbour's boy went away too. And the red rose was painted over with fresh paint on a big renovation. Most of the times it's just like none of them really existed in the first place. Seems they are there though, in a dusty corner of my mind, ready for sudden keyword-triggered flashbacks. And the keyword of the day is 'ping-pong'. So...

darksander (3/5/2009 6:02:30 PM): credits go to me then.

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
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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