Retrospection

What a year it's been... I experienced a first 'relationship', and what's funny about romantically-involved relationships is how close two people get, but once it breaks, it is as though the two people in question never ever knew each other. Unlike friendship, there can be no mending. Once over, both parties separate completely. There are always exceptions to rules, so there may be some people managing to stay 'friends', but even that can only come some time down the road. In my particular instance, I'll never again hear from the guy... he was just another passenger on a train. We hooked up and spent some time together, and then one of us had to get off at some point - and we were never meant to get off at the same station.

Then I started my 'first' real job. You know, that 'real' job that involves the idea of 'career'. It took me some time to adjust to it, to say the least... but it's good for me. I spend my life living inside my head, so it's good to have to deal with the real world 5 days a week, 7 hours a day, excluding lunch time. I also like my job because everyday it reminds me that I can work anywhere so long as I learn self-discipline. Hopefully some day I'll be a good pupil and learn to be organised enough to never have to work in an office. But even if that doesn't happen, well... such is life, so it's alright.

I spent the night between the 24th and 25th drinking vodka and Diet Coke with my cousin, sitting opposite each other on the old sofas of the living room. After a while, we were both talking in our respective languages and the language barrier no longer mattered. I suppose we just understood whatever we wanted to understand as the other spoke. And there we stayed, drinking and talking nonsense till dawn. I was wearing reindeer horns on my head and he was wearing a green hat with the word ELF on it. The rest of the family had been wearing red Santa hats, but they'd collapsed in bed way earlier than us.

I realised fairly recently that the friends we make often happen to be a certain reflection of ourselves, and it's because we recognise a part of us in them that we become friends. I haven't made that many friends throughout my life, but the ones I did manage to make are truly a reflection of some parts of myself... We seem to have at least one thing in common: we don't fit in and we don't seem able to find our place in the world. There's my friend B, forever addicted to the internet world, rough on the outside but softer than a baby's skin on the inside... There's my friend S, who came to this country many years ago to help her family and try to make a better life for herself. But she remains just as lost as I am in this world, never finding her other half while she watches everyone else that she knows be pulled in, get married and have kids. As she works her ass off to send her family money, her mother keeps nagging her about the fact that she's a social loser - in the sense that she's almost 30 and has no 'situation' for herself. Nice, huh?

There's my friend A, whom I've known since I was 13. We only went to school together for a year, and then lost touch for over 4 years - until I moved here and decided to go look for her. And because I chose to look for her, we rekindled our friendship. But I remember why she never came looking for me... I had to be the one who looked for her because I had been the one to break the friendship when we were 14 and she had to leave... and I couldn't stand the loss. Four years later, I end up having a dream of her inside an empty train station, and that convinces me to look her up. She's the other dreamer, the one who never gave up no matter how tough reality has been on her. She's been in and out of various relationships, forever seeking herself. Now she's toying with the idea of leaving her 'safe' job to focus on her dream full time... and I am in awe at her courage.

These friends just happen to be passengers on a train who chose to sit down next to me for as far as our journey together takes us. But it was never about the getting on and off part of the journey - the fact that we all come and go in one another's life - it's about the connections, and ultimately the interconnection of absolutely everything. It's about realisation. Knowing that each connection made between stations had a particular significance to be realised in the moment or in retrospect.

Moments

"If one ever wanted proof of Darwin's contention that the many expressions of emotion in humans are universal, genetically inscribed, then a few minutes by the arrival gate in Heathrow's Terminal Four should suffice. I saw the same joy, the same uncontrollable smile, in the faces of a Nigerian earth mama, a thin-lipped Scottish granny and a pale, correct Japanese businessman as they wheeled their trolleys in and recognised a figure in the expectant crowd. Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness. I kept hearing the same sighing sound on a downward note, often breathed through a name as two people pressed forward to go into their embrace.[...] The variety was in the private dramas: a father and teenage son, Turkish perhaps, stood in a long silent clinch, forgiving each other, or mourning a loss, oblivious to the baggage trolleys jamming around them; identical twins, women in their fifties, greeted each other with distaste, just touching hands and kissing without making contact; a small American boy, hoisted on to the shoulders of a father he did not recognise, screamed to be put down, provoking a fit of temper in his tired mother.

But mostly it was smiles and hugs, and in thirty-five minutes I experienced more than fifty theatrical happy endings, each one with the appearance of being slightly less well acted than the one before, until I began to feel emotionally exhausted and suspected that even the children were being insincere. I was just wondering how convincing I myself could be now in greeting Clarissa when she tapped me on the shoulder, having missed me in the crowd and circled round. Immediately my detachment vanished, and I called out her name, in tune with all the rest..."

- Extract from Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

I was reminded of that passage when I went to fetch an aunt and uncle at the airport the other day. I'd arrived too early and upon checking the information for arrival times, I realised that they'd given me the wrong time and that I'd have to wait an extra hour before their plane was due to land. I went to the nearest Starbucks inside the airport, ordered a coffee and almond croissant, and sat at a table in a corner from where I could just gaze vacantly at my surroundings. I started observing scenes as described by the author above, but for a second or two, I found myself unable to remember where I'd heard the description before. And then I remembered I'd read it a week ago or so when I'd started reading that book.

Then my aunt and uncle finally emerged from the arrival gate and I stepped out of the crowd to greet them at once as they pushed their trolley forward looking a bit lost and confused. Before that, I'd observed various scenes playing out; two children, a young boy and his older sister, emerging out of the arrival gates, stopping on their tracks for a moment to scan the hall blankly... and then their eyes lit up upon recognising their father waving from the far end of the hall. The children ran towards him, beaming, and clung to him as though they hadn't seen their father in years. A moment later, their mother was with them, reunited at last with the father as they gave in to a tight embrace before walking away slowly towards the exit, arm in arm with their children.

Next to me was a mother with her young son, who kept asking about the various destinations listed on the arrival board. "Look mum, there are people who come all the way from Los Angeles - does LA mean Los Angeles, mum?" he asked as they waited for family members to arrive through the gates. "Yes, it means the same," she replied quietly. "There are also people coming all the way from Australia - look," she added, pointing a finger up towards the board. And then as the people they were waiting for arrived, they beamed and greeted one another hurriedly before making their way out together, chatting loudly and laughing.

And there it is... the sameness in all our differences. Airports make for interesting places to observe. People... Moments... Life is nothing more, and nothing less than what we make of it, it seems.

Mad World

"Retail history is expected to be made in the UK today with analysts predicting the busiest shopping day ever recorded. Visa Europe believes that the nation's shoppers will use its cards to spend over £1 million a minute, nearly £18,000 per second - totalling £1.5 billion across the day."

"Visa predicts that the busiest shopping hour of the year will be on Christmas Eve between noon and 1pm, in a final flurry of activity before Christmas Day. A rash of discounts and sales is likely to hit profit margins as stores fight to entice cash-strapped shoppers through their doors."

- Sky News

"Millions of people have hit shops across the UK to secure last-minute purchases ahead of Christmas Day. Meanwhile, online shopping association IMRG expects consumers to spend £186.4m online on Christmas Day. It forecasts that £367.8m will be spent on Boxing Day.

"Hectic scenes have been reported across London's West End... [A spokesperson for IMRG said]: "There are also a lot of people at the Marks and Spencer and John Lewis food counters, where people seem to be panic buying."

- BBC News

"Time is running out for Christmas shoppers across the country as they hit the high streets in a last-minute buying frenzy. One million people were expected to descend on London's West End over Friday and Christmas Eve , spending an estimated £100m.

"In contrast, ugly scenes broke out at stores across the US as shoppers vied to lay their hands on Nike's new shoe. The release of the company's retro version of a classic Air Jordan model, which cost $180 (£115) a pair, was responsible for disorder outside stores from California to Georgia."
- The Guardian

Sometimes it feels like a dystopia of a world where every single original meaning or thought has been turned upside down to fit a particular agenda of a given time.

When did we get there as a society? When did it all become about materialism, so much so that we seem to spend our time buying, buying, buying...

There was a children's movie on TV earlier and as I ate my lunch I watched parts of it. I'd seen it before anyway. It was about some guy becoming the new Santa, but there it was, staring back at me, the ideology of spending and materialism for children to be inspired by.

This so-called Christmas time has nothing to do with family or anything innocent or pure. It's a give-away for excess and materialistic orgies.

System Reboot

I vaguely remember a topic of dissertation I was given in high school. The topic stated something like "Man exists only among other men", please expend. It was the first dissertation topic we were given in philosophy and we'd been allowed to do it at home. I was struck by the fact that a mere few words (man exists only among other men) could inspire so many thoughts in me... the rush of arguments overwhelmed me at once as my mind was inspired to consider the hidden depths and multitude of factors that needed to be taken into account.

When the teacher came back to us with our graded papers, he accused me of cheating, claiming I had to have asked for help, that I couldn't have written it on my own. He only stopped the accusations after I scored just as high during class tests where we'd have to sit for 4h in a row writing a dissertation. In insight, the man didn't know me at all. I'd landed in that school out of the blue for my last year before final exams and the only friend I'd made was a girl who wasn't doing well at all and who was more obsessed about her boyfriend than school work. I had nothing in common with the girl, but for some reason she'd taken a liking to me. She was kind enough to invite me to stay with her and her family over the weekends, and since I was on my own in the city, it felt nice to pretend I wasn't so alone.

That one year spent in Warsaw was so strange... I remember only glimpses, as though in my mind I had decided that the whole year was just a glitch in time, because I would only be there in passing and the only reason for my being there was to finish high school. Even though I kept bunking off certain classes, I still managed to get the highest grades, which felt odd at the time. I had never been the 'best' in school except back in early primary school. The oddest part was that I didn't even feel like I was making a particular effort, and still I kept getting the highest scores. I had been out of the school system for a whole year previously - working in some Mc Donalds, cleaning tables and taking rubbish out - and still I was doing better than all the kids whose lives had unfolded like clockwork.

I was getting the best results in every subject - it was shocking. I kept wondering how dumb must the other kids be if I can do it without much effort at all. Once, I did mess up and got a low mark for an essay in literature, but while I didn't actually mind at all, the teacher was the one apologising to me for having to grade me down. "I'm so sorry Aliska, it's just that you forgot to mention this, and also that, so..."

Hell, that year I even scored the highest in freaking German. But there must have been a reason why I suddenly did so well over a one-year period of my life. And that reason is called: having a purpose, or goal. The fact that I was removed from everything I knew, all on my own with no one to turn to led me to focus absolutely on just that one goal to achieve (finish high school and pass the exams), and I somehow focused on this so much that it led me to do my absolute best without even realising it. Having an absolute goal in mind helps garner that intense focus of mind, and it is also a helpful psychological crutch in the sense that the person can simply lose themselves in it - regardless of the surrounding chaos. As I made my own mind focus solely on a precise goal, all its resources and strengths were channelled in order to meet that goal.

As lovely and powerful the focus born out of intensely focusing on a goal may be, the revert of that is what happens once the goal is achieved. What happens once the mind, which has been made to channel all its energy - to the maximum - towards one particular goal, achieves said goal? I can tell you from first-hand experience what happens. Absolute sense of confusion and loss. As much as the focus and direction feel clear while intently pursuing a particular goal, the achievement of the goal itself leads right back to square one. I experienced it with such force that it led me to a deep state of depression afterwards. As soon as my own absolute goal of the time was reached, no matter how incredibly well I did thanks to the intense mental focus, once it was achieved... the question "and now what?" was the most painful of all.

And that is the slippery slope notions like purpose, or pursuing any particular goal, that I grew incredibly wary of over the years following my experience with 'goals in life'. It only feels good so long as we're in the stage of trying to reach them, but once reached the realisation of 'and now what' is the most painful. It can truly annihilate you inside and out, although one should find the strength to look at it as a learning curve.

But what's the lesson in all this? It doesn't seem so clear or even possible to avoid going through life following one goal after another, but that is perhaps only a man-made conception that precludes us from being able to envision a way of perceiving existence as anything other than ticking boxes on a long list of goals to help pass the time and grant a momentary illusion of purpose.

My 'philosophy' seems to have now become something like this: do and give my best in anything that I do in the moment, while refusing to dwell on where that might lead. This really means a focus away from the future, and doing that really means letting go of such things as ambition, to name but one.

Notions such as success, for example, are driven primarily by desire and ambition, but by allowing to be driven by the latter, one is merely getting caught in yet another pursuit of some goal. The achievement of something that has been pursued as a goal will only get the person back to square one, endlessly seeking another 'goal' to at least elongate or resume the illusion of meaning or purpose to escape the intense despair and confusion left upon reaching a goal in the first place.

So... it's not about having goals in itself that destroys and limits us in the long run - it's our focus on them.

My take so far? Have no goals, no ambitions, no expectation. Let the future, and any notions attached to it remain a complete blank slate. Meanwhile, of course, focus should be placed back on what we do in the moment - always with the intent of doing whatever we are doing now in the best way we can. Giving our whole to the now, and let the rest unfold without any goal in mind. it may be scary not to have the comfort of envisioning where our steps might lead, but it was always just an illusion in the first place.

In other words, it's about a cessation of pursuing any goal whatsoever to allow the now to take us there, wherever that 'where' ends up being (so long as a person gives their whole to each moment, doing or giving their 'best' and not just drifting mindlessly and then being surprised that the 'where' ends up a very bad place to be).

How hard it is to let go... So hard. Yet, it must be done to free oneself from all the ghosts accumulated along the way throughout one's existence.

I heard the thought that there was beauty in ruins, because ruins give way to something new or renewed, and for anything to improve - for anything to change - the old must be allowed to lay in ruins for more to be built upon it. There is beauty in being able to see the role destruction can play... inside and out.

Weakness

I never learned to show weakness in front of others, except for my mother, who taught me from a young age never to expect sympathy from others for some reason that probably stemmed from her own experiences in life.

The defining moment probably came while I was being bullied at school as a child. After over a year of keeping it a secret to my mother, I finally cracked and told her what was happening. That day, she turned into a lion ready to die to protect her cub, it seems. She said: "Aliska, no matter what they say, no matter what they do - never let them see that they hurt you, even if they have. Never show them, never give them that pleasure."

I listened to her advice, and developed all manners of cutting and hurtful comebacks as I tried hard never to show my 'aggressors' that I was hurt. I became so good at it that I wouldn't be surprised to have come across as some sort of heartless monster that just couldn't be put down by the age of 10. But inside, if they could only have seen the bleeding... inside.

In the midst of my worst mental woes, at a time when I was actually truly considering ending my own life, I never looked 'happier', apparently. I remember starting a part-time job when I was 20 over the Christmas period at some bookstore, where I met a 17 year-old boy, or young man rather, who for some crazy reason fancied me so much that he kept following me around all the time. I remember not wanting to hurt his feelings, so I kept bringing up the age gap, jokingly calling him 'kid'.

Even then, he would keep following me around, finding stupid excuses to be around me... We became sort of friends, and he'd take the bus with me all the way to the tube station after each shift even though he lived on the other side of town. Once, as we were sitting right at the back of the bus, I laughingly confessed that I was depressed and actually on medication. He stared at me for a moment and then burst into laughter. "You? Depressed? No way, stop lying. You're always smiling and looking so happy." I replied quietly that appearances could be deceptive, but he simply shrugged it off.

Then came our last day at work, since we were only supposed to work there over the holiday period. He asked if he could take me out to a restaurant and spend one last day with me. I agreed, and in insight I can honestly say that this boy - this young man - was the first and only one to ever treat me in a loving manner despite my inability to reciprocate more often than not. It was all so very simple... and then he gave me a present, a little silver bracelet I've since lost by accident. We had this meal, he told me again how much he loved me, I reminded him gently that he was a 'kid', and that was the last time we ever saw or heard from each other.

I never really thought back on this until fairly recently. I'd been trying to retrieve some memories of my early 20s, you see. The depth of my depression was so great that it had felt like a coma during that time... I sporadically wrote diary entries here and there, but reading them back feels so much like reading a stranger's mind... But it was me. I was this person writing these entries, even if I could no longer remember.

It was never that I really wanted to die... it was the tiredness and the refusal to become an 'adult' in that 'adult' world I saw and which made no sense to me that drove me to despair.

Nothing in my environment has changed much. It still feels very much as though I've been thrown to the lions for a long time. But somewhere down the line I must have found the strength to keep going. Perhaps it was the realisation that no one was ever going to uncover the fact that I'm so weak within, so easily breakable away from the eyes of others, and that no one would ever dismiss me as simply insane, at least not just yet.

In this world, I can use no excuse. Everything I do has to come from me, and I can get no 'helping hand' along the way, for some reason. This strikes me based on my current experience of work. I work with people who constantly use excuses - literally any excuse under the sun - and people respect them for it. I never realised until now how much social interaction rests on the ability to draw pity onto oneself. I mean, really. This strikes me because the few times I tried, people showed no care in the world for my woes, so there has to be an 'art' to make people feel sorry for you, so much so that always let you get away with it, so to speak.

The more pity you're able to draw onto you, the more people like you. It's the equivalent of being the funny guy in the group, really. I think it may appeal to people's need to see that others are worse than them, in a way. It not only relieves them, but also makes them feel stronger or bigger than they actually are.

I personally have no skills whatsoever in showing or pretending to be weak. Sometimes people ask me what's wrong when I'm not smiling at work for some reason, but whatever I say, I feel as though I'm lying. Complaining or drawing sympathy out of others feels so alien to me that it really makes me behave as though I was a liar. It's different on here of course, simply because... hey, I'm Aliska on here.

Trapped

This feeling... of being trapped. it came back to the fore recently after meeting with a friend, who was adamant we should 'run away' for a few days in the countryside not just to recharge batteries, but also in search for inspiration. We made plans, it sounded easy and straightforward enough. We were going to book places on a boat and after an overnight journey by sea we'd get where we intended to go. I was looking forward to it, I have to say.

My friend called me last night to tell me she'd just booked her place, and she sent me the link to book mine at once. As it turned out, there were no more places left. My friend had booked the last place, unbeknownst to her. I called her back, telling her it wouldn't let me book it, and she realised, sounding half-horrified, that she'd just booked whatever last place there was left on the last boat for the day. We checked the next boats - all full. So we checked air travel options - no places left. Everything was booked, probably because it's Christmas time.

I could have felt angry or frustrated about it... the fact that I couldn't go. And perhaps I was for a second or two, deep down... yet at the same time I was laughing inside in a more ironic or sarcastic way.

Me? Escaping for even a few days? hahaha... I am trapped in this reality. And the more this reality traps me, the more my mind finds itself fighting back.

Some day, some night,

There was you, there was I,

And then it all went dark.

The unfolding of processes

My very first blog entry was almost like a catalyst for things to come. It started with a feeling of oppression followed by that of release, or liberation within the mind when suddenly everything I saw, heard, or read rung false. At the time I thought I 'got' it, but I really didn't.

Whatever stage I've reached, it feels by far more strenuous, dangerous and unavoidable. The path of deep introspection is tough. Everything from my first entry was nothing compared to where I'm at now. It is as though I have come to realise that all that I am is based on my own perception of things, and with it comes the experience of what we call reality and the potential release of far greater awareness. A type of awareness that goes far beyond our usual perception of reality.

My obsession with understanding the external along with my own self has led to this realisation that it all starts within. Far from feeling free or at peace, I am at war inside. I have observed and pushed to understand my inner core so much that now I can only stare, helpless, deep into my own abyss.

As I stare into my own abyss, I feel as though I now have two pairs of 'eyes' through which to see and experience the world and even through which to reason. One pair of eyes is linked to Ego, the old self, whose gaze only allows to see as much as I've been able to see or understand until now. This 'old' pair of eyes is besieged with old habits, accumulated flawed or limited perception through the years, and through these eyes is projected the old persona - meaning the physical embodiment of Aliska interacting with the world, which could also be called identity, individual awareness or personality instead of persona. But now there is this other pair of eyes within. And this one... this one can stare directly back at the other pair.

It is like a perfect mirror image within, where the old pair of eyes are confronted with the reflection of another pair of eyes, except it feels nothing like perfection and it certainly doesn't feel 'nice'. It is as though the other, more recent pair of eyes developed unbeknownst to me along the way as I kept digging deep within myself, pushing and pushing... And now all I can say is that I have these two staring back at each other - the old one being the window into Ego, the other being in the infant stage of taking over said Ego. But I can't be sure, of course. All I can really do right now is describe what's going on inside me, no matter how insane it may sound.

I feel mostly as though I'm walking deep inside a dark cave, wishing so much to find light, but all my calls for mercy and help keep drowning in the silence of this seemingly infinite cave... Trapped in darkness, constantly yearning for light. From time to time a faint streak of light beams from one corner and I try to run towards it - but by the time I reach it the faint light has already vanished to leave room only for more treacherous ground that forever seems intent on making me trip over.

As time goes on, the constant falling over inside the cave and the complete lack of light drains me from all my energy, making it harder and harder to get back up on my feet... to the point where I've grown aware that there is now a clear possibility I may never reach the exit from that deep, dark cave within. However there is this other pair of eyes in their infancy now, and it may be that if I can help it or allow it to take over the old one, I might, just might be able to keep going some more - always towards the end of the tunnel. What lies beyond I could not say, though.

On Memories

There is a certain sense of pointless arrogance in wanting so hard to reject the world based on selective perception, or placing extra focus on one side of the coin rather than considering both sides. Sure, most things to me will never make sense, and I know most days I will continue to feel as though I'm living in a giant circus, but I have to shift my focus away from that. Three years on and torturing myself by focusing exactly on what I know I can't change is now revealing far more about me than anything else in this world.

Why is it always so much easier to focus on other things or people rather than ourselves? There is this... illusion that if only we could make everything right on the outside, somehow it will lead to everything being right on the inside, too. I fell into the trap a long time ago, back in the days when my mother and I lived in precarious conditions. The stark contrast between how things were and how they changed was one thing that messed me up for a long time.

As we struggled, moving from one place to the next, never sure how long the respite would last, I got myself thinking that if only we could have a proper home again it would make it all better and suddenly everything could go back to the way things used to be. Between the age of 17 and 25, that is all I could think of to make myself believe that things would be okay again. I could not accept that what once was had passed - as all things are bound to do. I became a prisoner of my own ghosts. And each passing moment from then on was to add more sorrow inside the giant black hole eating at me from inside. Each memory formed by passing moments became little more than nutrition for the black hole within.

In the greater scheme of things, though, all we really are in the end is memories, and most of our human world as we know it rests on the passing of memories from one generation to the next. Among memories passed on from one generation to the next is knowledge, experiences, sometimes even the inheritance of knowledge as to where we come from. All this serves to preserve a sense of continuity from initial point A to the yet unknown or unfolding point B as I write this. Severe that bridge allowing for the transmission of memories from one person to another along the way and there would be no world to speak of.

All species on Earth seem to follow that need to connect past to present through memories, the only means of connection through ever-flowing Time. Of course, in the case of animals, we would be more likely to be talking about instincts and survival techniques passed on from, say, mother cat to her kittens. But the point is the same: if mother cat didn't teach her kittens and if she didn't pass on her own 'knowledge', the idea of cats as we know it would be disrupted. In fact, it may well mean there would be no cats to speak of for they would lack so much guidance due to the breach in the passing on of knowledge that they could not survive long.

As I pondered all this, I wondered how come memories hurt me so much when really they play a primordial role even just to survive long enough to have a world to speak of. And I realised that it was my attachment to them that led to the pain. This of course led me to start facing the fact that attachment has always been something that held me back even inside my head.

Attachment, fear of loss... it's all the same really. It only serves to stunt growth inside and out.

I used to assume that my past experiences of sudden loss had at once made me immune to it in terms of fearing it. But I was wrong. It was only the premise for a mighty lesson for myself. It was only the equivalent of the first act of a play when the plot is being set up or laid out.