Scattered

I took a train to Cambridge yesterday and only chose the destination based on my ability to find the cheapest possible tickets to whatever destination... I didn't care where. As I sat on the train watching the countryside pass me by, I wrote a few lines down:

"I can see the appeal of living a life with no strings attached, making the most of the company of people as they happen to cross your path... always moving forward as though soaring constantly towards the unknown. Perhaps I was a Gypsy in a past life?

Making the most of each encounter, no matter how trivial or brief, and learning from these encounters even when at first glance it all seemed pointless or meaningless - random...

I sometimes think back on my dear strangers in the night, these people who entered my life only briefly to offer a helping hand at the least expected moments... I think back on the kindness of strangers, and I wonder about the likes of Hector in Peru, of Kho in Hong Kong, and so many others before them... so many faces that waltzed into my life only too briefly like passengers on a train that only meant to stay on until the next stop. Somehow, these strangers remain etched on the side of a road less travelled - mine.

And as I think about them I wonder if they, too, sometimes wonder about me.

Watching the landscapes pass me by is like staring at an infinite blur made up of every imaginable shade of green the eye could possibly fathom. The mist of rain that weighs on the tree tops looks like a veil made of the finest gauze negligently left behind by one of the Gods above, and suddenly it all takes a profoundly haunting turn...

Yes, I have been bewitched by the hauntingly surreal aspects of the English countryside and its rolling moors bathed in a seemingly infinite fog that rarely ever shifts but for the unexpected streaks of dull sunshine piercing through the cover of glowering clouds frowning their way across the mighty horizon."

Shallow days

I’m so cut off from so-called reality as men have built it… this endless stream of complexity justified by the words “because we live in the modern world” makes no sense to me. Instead of moving towards a world we can better understand, our capacity to comprehend even the most basic things around us is increasingly challenged. I mean, nowadays even what you thought was beef turns out to really be horsemeat, for instance. And this is symptomatic of the illusion-based world we live in.

 

The same goes with this pathetic, widespread belief that we are better off today than at any other point in time – according to what or whom, exactly? History books full of constant revisionist attempts, with stories that change as often as every school year ticking by? The telly and its smartly dressed people that look like they must know what they’re talking about? What everyone else around is happy to parrot regardless of what the source may be for that parroting in the first place? All of the above?

Let’s face it. So-called modern life (as currently experienced and witnessed in the 'developed world') is an addiction. Modern life for the most part means easy ways and convenience, and since we’ve spent decades adapting to things that supposedly make our lives easier and more entertaining we’ve become terribly afraid of losing those crutches – for these are mere crutches. This… never-ending need for more comfort, or more ‘things’ in general, this endless obsession with always rising or gaining more in some way, and the incredible fear in which so many of us live of losing what we have, or the comfort we have, is all symptomatic of enslavement disguised as some twisted notion of ‘freedom’. 

 

We would not need means of escapism and therefore such things as ‘entertainment’ (and here I really mean to point at the whole grotesque 'industry' that developed just to entertain us, the mindless sheep) so much if we were content with our lives just as they are. We are in fact brought up, or conditioned, to be unhappy with our condition from the start. There is much to be gained for the fat, corrupt cats that rule on an elite level, because if they can make us believe from a young age that what we have or even what we are is not good enough they can ensure that we grow up to buy into the illusion-based reality pulled before our eyes in which we’ll spend our existence trying to escape a ‘bad’ condition, or our own selves, by using means such as escapism through entertainment and spending/consuming endlessly to fill a falsely created void that was never there to start with but was added in us through years of conditioning since birth.

Interlude





 

What is this heart I feel

That tremors against my chest,

And when I breathe in too deep

It burns a hole within?

 

What is this heart, tell me,

That bleeds even at peace,

And when its love is spurned

Is shred to nothing but pain?

 

This heart, my dear, is a blessing

To those who love and are loved.

But this heart, my dear, is a curse

To those alone and loveless.

 

Thoughts on a midnight day

I was listening to Nirvana this morning, and it never fails to bring me back to a time when I was only 13 years old and my best friend was called Sandrine. She was into hard rock and used to wear this pale blue denim jacket that always reeked of stale tobacco. The funny thing was that although she smoked I never picked up the habit with her but later on when I was around 15. She and I couldn’t have been more different and yet we were soon given the nickname ‘clones’ by our peers because for some reason, and despite our frequent fiery arguments, we really bonded for a time and were 'inseparable'.

A lot of people didn’t understand how come she liked me, actually, and I remember meeting her in the morning in front of the school gates once as she puffed on a cigarette, only for her to notice a group of people we knew glancing darkly at me, which prompted her to say something like: “I don’t understand why people don’t like you.”

She said it in the most candid way but it hurt me to hear it at the time. I was taken aback and could only shrug in answer. I didn’t know myself why I kept attracting enemies along the way. Sometimes all it took for people to dislike me was for me to just show up, and I didn't even need to open my mouth or emit a sound. It was as though the mere fact of my existence was excuse enough to reject me at once.

"What do they say about me?" I somehow found the strength to prod her further on the subject and it was her turn to shrug.

"They say you're weird, but I think you're great," she replied, sliding one arm around my shoulders to give me a friendly hug.

Weird, huh? The word bounced around inside my head as I fell silent. What did that even mean? What the fuck did it mean when people found you 'weird'?

I've never stopped asking myself that stupid question. All I know is this: whatever people mean when they feel the need to describe me as 'weird' it always translates in them not liking me to the point of complete rejection. Almost every single person I meet will choose the word as part of their description of my person. Some 'friends' will even have the nerve to say I'm a 'nice type of crazy' and all I can do is scream inwardly, wishing they had a fucking clue just how much their choice of words can hurt another person.

It's like the French thing, you know. How many times am I supposed to find jokes about my accent funny? Or how many times am I supposed to feel guilty because I happened to be born and bred in a country full of snobs?

I am whatever they say I am according to their limited perception of humanity and its people as a whole. That's not really the problem. The real problem in all this is that it keeps me alienated and alone in this big world full of people that will never accept a person like me because, hey, I'm so-called weird... whatever that means. The saddest part is that they probably don't even know what it means themselves.

The end result remains the same: solitude and alienation.

Cheers.

Actes Manqués

Insight truly is a beautiful thing… I was looking at pictures of my old school friends from Paris, most of them now with babies in their arms, and I was struck by a flood of memories rushing back to mind. I went for that old red folder containing all that is left of my school years – namely faded-looking birthday cards, actual photos that can be held in one’s hands (back in the days when no such thing as digital photos existed just yet… back in the days when teenagers would mostly use those throw-away types of cameras…). 

I looked at the little messages scribbled by my peers back in the days when we were all 14 or 15… and suddenly I understood. Suddenly, I was struck by an incredibly bright flash of clarity that allowed me to look back on my past with striking objectivity… and I saw the extent of what had been destroyed back then.

I had friends… I loved my friends… I loved them dearly. My best friends Maria and Célia… All the silly memories we had shared together in my last year in Paris before my mother decided to spirit me away overnight, urging me to cut all ties at once because it was ‘better that way’. What a lie!

“Don’t tell them anything. Don’t tell them we’re leaving. It’s over. There is no point in keeping in touch, Sarah.”

I remember it was the summer before my 17^th birthday when my mother came home in tears one day, telling me we were about to lose everything and that we simply had to leave. I stared at her in disbelief and I probably smirked. I was used to her grand dreams or fantasies; she used to talk about ‘leaving’ all the time but nothing ever happened and I was quite certain my life would always be the same predictable rut it had been so far. However this one time in my life I was proved wrong. Very wrong indeed.

I remember counting the days before we left… we were to leave at the end of the first week after school started again, but when I didn’t show up on the first day the phone started ringing at home.

“Don’t pick up,” said my mother.

We let the phone ring, and ring… until the answering machine took over and the voice of my best friend briefly filled the air. She was worried and hoped I wasn’t ill. She was looking forward to seeing me soon at school so she could tell me all about her summer adventures.I remember thinking "I wish so much I could just talk to you and tell you that I did write you a long letter but that I never sent it because... I know I'm leaving, and apparently there is no point in looking back or even letting you know."

The phone rang every day during that week but we never picked up. By Friday, my best friend’s voice sounded strained… pained and confused.

“Don’t pick up,” said my mother.

So I never picked up. And then we left, and after 10 years had passed I was finally confronted by this past I was made to leave behind...but only today have I come to understand what it was that was truly lost in the process: relationships.

Insight truly is a beautiful thing…

Unlike Gatsby, I don’t believe that the past can be repeated… what is lost in time is usually lost for good. Things change, nothing ever remains constant – that is the very nature of life itself, is it not?

I’ll always look back on my last year in Paris with a pang of bittersweet regret deep within my heart and I guess the secret urge to turn around and tell the now all-grown-up woman who used to be my best friend that she was just that, my best friend, will never leave me... that I am sorry, so sorry, and that I miss her dearly, and will always miss what can never be again even as I learn to accept that such is life.

I can't express how I feel right now, but perhaps the song below can?...



O heart, why do you hurt so much?

I am such a naive idiot... I really am. I was never meant for this concrete world. I really never was. I am a dream, a thought, a memory, a smile, a gesture... not a 'real' person.

I keep trying.... I really keep trying to be more 'real'... concrete... but it is a struggle, day in, day out. Because all that this world is... I am simply not.

And yes, it makes me weird, different, alone... you name it. I have no one beside my own self. And I am not even sure who my 'self' is.

Love... yeah... it hurts, that's for sure.