vampires .

Life is difficult

In this ugly computer lab, it is as if thousands of lives stream past each other like a river over rocks. Our faces the stones, exposed and private. I pick up themes from postures and gestures. Do these belong to us? It’s like that feeling left behind after you finish a book – an impression or residue left behind on the palate of your mind. An echo. I wish that I could hold on to it, and label it. But I think its value lies in its opacity. I remember a quote by Joseph Conrad about The Heart of Darkness… it went something like ‘I wish to convey a dark resonance, a lingering feeling which remains after the fact’. It makes me think of that feeling left behind in the air after a good quote, actually.

“The seeds of transcendence are contained within the awareness of limits”

That’s lovely, isn’t it?

I finished an Anne Rice novel this morning, about vampires. My friend Zee calls it clitriture. But somehow I always manage to find some depth in the gloss. The idea of immortality is so well explored in her books. These vampires live for thousands of years, ironically in closer contact with death than most humans ever are. Yet, they always remain children like mortals tend to do. Children, because they are driven by their powerful, preternatural emotions to foolishly caper from one mistake to the next. Plagued by their respective histories and driven to transform humans to become their companions these litirary creations relfect that constant theme of loneliness and a search for an unselfish love (or perhaps to just understand love) that seems to keep step with mortal interests. The metaphor is quite simple, but it contains something so sincere:

how, in the same instant, life is always death.

 

Fundamentally, we are all scared.
Even the vampires

.

it has been long .

It has been a long weekend. It feels like a whole micro-cosmos unto itself really. I feel like reflection is in order, yet nothing of real Substance has occurred. Perhaps I shall start this off as a story?

Wednesday evening I made my way to the university computer lab to finish up the final touches on my Phenomenology essay and start (as well as finish) a small Applied English Language Studies (or AELS for short) assignment… both of which were due for the next day at 12. Finishing the phenomenology essay, a guy approached me with a proposition – combine forces with him and his friend with the AELS assignment and all three of us could get out of there lekke quick quick. This offer I could not refuse, and the three of us became fast friends of convenience. We put in a half-arsed effort and printed the thing and I offered the gentlemen a lift home. At this point I feel it is worth mentioning that both these guys were called Dave… Dave & Dave. Like some sitcom. Anyway, I dropped the rather less than comedic duo at home and the larger Dave (or Doop amongst his initiated inner circle) invited me in to smoke a bong as a ‘thank you’. How kind.
I thought to myself ‘Why not Kirstin? All your work is done, it’s a long weekend. Let’s party like it’s 1999. Don’t be a square’. Unfortunately, a bong and I tend to disagree on the more important facts of life, information that my past self neglected to utilize in this judgment.
I basically took the hit, got back in my car and drove at the break-neck speed of 2km/hour back to my own flat, all the while experiencing the all-too-familiar sensations of heart palpitations and blurred cognitive skills. Drat. I am a square.
At home, I got a portion of slap chips from the Caltex below my building and got down and dirty with it in my bedroom. The most action I’ve seen in weeks. Getting to sleep was probably one of the worst exercises I’ve tried to do in ages (well, at this point in the weekend I thought it couldn’t get any worse. I was wrong). The next day I initiated the operating sequence of getting my projects to the relevant drop-off points in a somewhat more groggy fashion than I normally do. Which I feel is in itself an achievement, if not really a highlight of the week.
At this point I need to mention that Thursday night – the very night in question – my flat mate was having her 21^st piss-up at our flat. The rest of the day consisted of party prep, which quickly degraded into a powerful migraine. As it was, I hadn’t had a migraine in maybe a couple of years, seeing as they normally arose from the deep depressive state that high school inflicted upon me. In a illogical panic, I elected to take 4 myprodols to sort me out; two before my hour long nap and two afterwards. By 6pm I was feeling wobbly, yet able. And when the drinking of punch commenced roundabouts 8pm, I didn’t think twice.

Alas.

I spent the rest of the (highly successful) party, running to the toilet to purge my stomach at least every half an hour until 3am when my body finally gave up and let me sleep. On the upside, a nice looking gentleman who came to the party with a friend of mine spent the evening sitting next to my bed and chatting with me, which culminated in him asking for my number “to take me out for supper some time”.  In retrospect, he is either really nice or really weird. Sadly, I don’t think it matters now, because he hasn’t called yet. Either he forgot or realized his mistake. WHATEVER IT’S NOT A BIG DEAL.

Friday morning was actually so bad that I called my mom to come look after me. I contemplated going to the hospital to get my stomach pumped. It was hectic. But I survived in time to go to work the next day and make some cashmonies.

Sunday and Monday are mostly dull… or duller than what I’ve already described and I shall just skip over them. I saw some movies and slept, and on Monday I had a few drinks at Bohemia before my stomach told me to eat more slap chips and get to bed, basically. Come to think of it, Tuesday was average too. Gah.

On an introspective note, this weekend I decided to
1. Never smoke another cigarette ever again… not that I’ve even been a proper smoker with cravings and the whole deal, but when there are cigarettes about, I often indulge. Now I shall not! It’s been 7 days and I’m going strong.
2. Not consume weed in any shape or form until I get to Amsterdam in June… oh yes; I’m going to Europe with the money I’ve managed to save. WHAM.

I also saw quite a bit of my friend Heinrich (who is also going to Amsterdam). He’s great.

(on reading this again, I realise that I sound like a pompous twat. Next time, I'll try a different style)

everything is different now .

This afternoon, the sky was the colour it is in this photo of fag and his fag-hag.

I have never been able to rid myself
of the urge to feel less
(alone)

This feeling has been
stuck in me

and it has made me sit outside
for years in the cold
wondering where the breeze will blow
me to

i press my ear against the wall
everyone is building shelters
and vaults

my beloved monster and me .

http://hypem.com/#!/search/johnny%20cash%20hurt/1/

Ok so this is my second post, just minutes after the first one. I can only hope that my updates will always be so fast and forthcoming.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a writer. I loved books, I loved the feelings they made me feel. But as I grew up and came to university, I realised that I don’t have a narrative inside me; I am not a story teller. I am a feeler of feelings and a thinker of thoughts. So I fell in love with philosophy instead.

I’ve always written in a style that expects to be read; I am a self-aware narrator. I write as if it is to You, to Someone. Like in a diary. I think.

For a while now I have been trying to read the Artist’s Way… or trying to DO it. But it hasn’t been going very well. I wanted to tap into that which might be inside me – life, art, beauty, nothing, anything. The words seemed hollow and they left no impression on me. The instructions felt forced. I now realise that I was myself hollow and forced. I’ve been forcing myself to live since I was 16. And I’ve misplaced everything that I once carried inside myself. My opinions have come from a place slightly to the left of my heart or my soul or myself.

Years ago, 2009 to be exact, I read “The Time Traveller’s Wife” and this poem was part of it:

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

-          Derek Walcott

And I thought it was the most beautiful thing I could ever have found.
But I didn’t really Know how beautifulandtrue it was.
Now, suddenly I understand – because I have actually never loved myself. And never known myself. And I have been looking and looking without knowing what I lost or didn’t have in the first place.

I’ve realised we are all little unfathomable bubbles unto ourselves. Like, we try to translate ourselves – connect. But our inner space can never be shared. “Loneliness is the human condition” (White Oleander).

We fall in love – with anything – and it is as if suddenly this space is validated or filled or forgotten. Some people think of this inner space as the domain of Religion. “Only the Lord can fill you up!”. Maybe this space is God. But that is for no one to decide. It just isn’t that kind of thing.

Like good old Keanu said in the movie Thumbsucker: “That's 'cause we all wanna be problemless. To fix ourselves. We look for some magic solution to make us all better, but none of us really know what we're doing. And why is that so bad? That's all we humans can do. Guess. Try. Hope. But, Justin, just pray you don't fool yourself into thinking you've got the answer. Because that's bullshit. The trick is living without an answer. I think.

I think that I’ve been fooling myself all my life. I’ve held on to the religion of Myself, never realising that there was nothing to begin with.

But whatever. Those are just some thoughts about lifetheuniverseandeverything.

I'm not always so sooper serial. I can be funny too. Eventually.

title song .

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.