No orietur

Revisiting Darkness

03/05/2006

Feelings are only one of the many faces of Hell.

19/06/2006

I was looking at myself in the staff room mirror, the other day, feeling quite depressed and hopeless, and I felt like part of me was separating from me as a whole. It was like my soul was looking at the human being, the mortal shell, through a deeper set of eyes, and the soul was feeling sorry for not being able to save the body, for failing.

How long is left?

18/09/2006

And here I am again, on the verge of cracking up like an egg, wide open for a blind world to see. Days are becoming harder to live, the pretence, the fake smiles harder to provide, the strength to do just about anything is fading like a falling star into the deep end of a big, giant void. Images of blood, sharp nails against the skin, violent scenes of all sorts are exploding, spinning out of control in my shattered mind. Death slowly becomes an epitome of beauty...Again. Feels like we've been there before, doesn't it...

Pretending is so hard, acting as if everything is fine when really you cannot take anymore... Wanting to cry, to burst into an ocean of tears, needing a release from a pain you know nothing about, a pain you fail to understand or recognise...Yet the eyes remain as dry as yellow grass burnt by the summer lights. If only I could cry! Let the wave of pain go free in one major outburst of tears! But what pain? What is this pain I feel inside, burning my chest, weighing on it like a rock that never shifts? What is this eternal  “mal-etre” ? Where does it come from, why is it here,constant like a plague for which there is no cure? 

So many people, so many lives around me,rushing all over the place, everywhere I look, yet the loneliness is always the greatest, no matter the number of souls dancing around. Nothing seems to matter anymore, nothing has a point, all is futile. The sky is dark and dull even  in its bluest. The wind is harsh, cold, venomous  even when scarce  Time is bloody, ruthless, even when ignored. Food is poison, evil, even when avoided. People are hurtful savages, even when caring and trying to be kind. Dreams are torture even though I chase after them relentlessly. 

Travelling down the river Styx, hopeless shadow of what I once was, I remember a little girl who would have been good. I remember the one that should have been and stare at the fraud that took her place, reflected in the dark waters of Nowhere.

Sleepless nights

It's the middle of the night and I can't sleep... I woke up with a start from some sort of strange dream an hour ago and since then I have been tossing and turning... but sleep eludes me, still. I'll probably pay the price later on when I have to drag myself into work with bleary eyes.

I haven't had a decent night's sleep in about a week.

As I lay on the bed earlier, my thoughts drifted back on my time in Peru, and suddenly I was missing the wandering across the Unforgivable Land (as I came to call it for myself in the midst of illness while travelling there)... I saw myself sitting on these night buses all over again, watching distant lights rush past me until suddenly night had fallen like a black curtain all around. I remembered the sickness, and how in spite of it I continued my journey to reach Machu Picchu. I had to. It was probably the fever talking, but I really began to identify with the Inca, or perhaps what I understood to be the core of their spirit - which to me was that of seeking perfection using rather Spartan ways at times. How could I not relate to that?

Oh, I miss Peru. I miss trekking across what feels like the unknown, challenging myself and the elements even if I have no clue whether I'll make it alive on the other side or not...

As cliché as this may sound, my wandering steps across that distant land now fees more like some sort of strange pilgrimage on a personal level whose impact has yet to be defined or discerned on a conscious level. All I know is that I can close my eyes and be there as if I'd only left yesterday...

But the sleepless nights themselves, well... they are part and parcel of 'modern' living, I suppose. The stress of office-bound routines, having to mingle with fellow rat-race prisoners under the constant strain of a claustrophobic atmosphere where staring at a screen all day long without moving much from your seat (because unless you're a smoker, you just 'forget' to take a break) is the approved norm... and they call this life. No, actually, it is worse than that: we all know it's bad and shouldn't be like that yet we feel obliged to comply because somewhere down the line each of us will have sold ourselves to the system, one way or another. The only man who is free is the one who needs nothing from the system; I am not sure such a man exists anymore. We're all slaves. And even those who aren't enslaved to others are probably enslaved to their endless wants spawned by a void inside that cannot be filled by material things.

On another note, they say it is better to have loved or to have felt than not, but I beg to differ. I still think it is better not to have known. It is always easier that way because once you know or experience something it can never be undone - it can only be healed by time, thus always leaving scars behind.

Interlude

Sometimes I forget to sit back and just think about what it is that lies before me; a naked tree against the waking skies torn apart by softly spreading lights and iridescent rosy streaks. Oh, the iridescence of a waking sky! And suddenly what was before me is no more, gone as swiftly as it had first appeared, and the fading crimson streaks give way to the stronger pastels of day.

On the notion of belonging

What do people mean when they use this word, belonging? How about 'fitting in' or 'having roots'? I have never known, and probably never will. I don't know if it's a bad thing, or a good thing, or maybe even neither, maybe it just doesn't matter - but the hurt from always falling between stones or through the cracks, as they say, is real. I know that much.

My own sense of identity was always going to be a challenge from the start. In literature, love children famously tend to be part of plot devices where overcoming a great deal of difficulties is required. I suppose they make the perfect fit for all that is confusing, unclear, secretive, challenging - you name it. The very nature of a love child is to be ignorant of his/her origins at the start of his/her journey. Not only that, but there is also the premise of social taboo, of rules being broken that the child will henceforth embody. It can only get worse or more challenging from there, often building up towards the need to find 'oneself' in some ways. Exciting, isn't it?

Yeah... when it's not you, I guess.

As if that wasn't enough, my sense of identity was further challenged by a lack of clear roots anywhere in this world - and  I mean this quite literally. Imagine being born in one country, but the rest of your entire family comes from another, yet they never teach you their native language, and you barely get to see the rest of said family for most of your growing or formative years. Imagine that the few times you did get to meet what is supposed to be your 'family' (though at this point it rings false in your ear... it is just a word to you that lacks true dimensions) they would invariably make a point in making you feel like a stranger exactly because you couldn't even communicate with them? Or because you were this 'child from the West' who had it all, supposedly.

Imagine that you have to contend with that - something more and more people are faced with in the 'modern' world: finding your place in a melting pot - and then add the fact that you also have to grow up with a surname that is foreign in the country you were born in - meaning that throughout most of your life you find yourself being asked to explain yourself about how you're really from 'here' and not from 'over there' even though you bear the foreign name. That was the story of my life back in France... and in France, unless your name sounds very French, you are never really considered 'French'. So, I was never 'really' French in the eyes of the country I was born into, and I was never considered part of where my parents were from.

Nowadays, if one asks me what I consider myself to be - and believe me people ask all the time, they think it makes for interesting conversation - I just shrug and say: "European, I guess."

But in the end, all I know about the notion of belonging is whatever illustration, or definition, I found in books along the way. It doesn't tell me much at all.

And then I wonder... I wonder if it matters at all... does it matter, for instance, that I was a teenager when we moved to this city? I wonder what impact this had on me, knowing how confounded I was to have to leave the safe cocoon of high school to suddenly fend for myself in the City of Money pretty much overnight. One moment I was expected to play moody teenager studying for exams, the next I was walking down the streets of an unknown city at night with no clue as to where we were going. One moment I was the brainwashed teen slouching mindlessly in front of the telly after school, the next I was emptying bins in a McDonalds and going back 'home' to a tiny 2x2 metre room I had to share with my mother.

Ah, that very first week in London... I never wanted to forget the details, but I'm afraid I already have... maybe it just doesn't matter. I mean, I was never able to tell anyone the 'whole' truth about me because saying everything that's happened in the last 14 years would never make sense to others. I guess there was a fine line between simplifying a storyline and downright re-writing history, as they say, and I fell into the latter when it comes to trying to share my 'story' with others. Aren't we all guilty of re-writing our own stories at some point anyway? If our history books are anything to go by, I'd say the evidence is clear.

And life goes on... it goes on turning even as we find ourselves stopping in our tracks from time to time to glance back over our shoulder, and what we see is but a blur on the horizon. What once was, never to be again.

And if there can be no true sense of belonging in this life, then so be it. One has to learn to live without it, somehow.

Belonging, acceptance, fitting in etc... they all converge back to the same root, really.

I can honestly say that I have not yet learned to get past this in Life:

Pride

Do not ask me to love the world

For I hate it.

Whatever lesson you wish me to learn,

I shall not learn it.

And even if you lavish me with pearls

Of wisdom to be attained

Still I will turn my back away.

For every sigh, for every failed sign,

I will turn a blind eye and swear,

And I will not break the boisterous resolve

That has coursed my veins since birth,

This I promise I will not even when,

Thrown out from the womb of a world

You force me to embrace,

The convenient excuse of Youth wanes.

I will make you watch me grow old and bitter,

Accused, pushed against the ground,

Hating the world as passionately as the first day,

Having learned nothing.

This is arguably the hardest Life Lesson I've had for my self so far. Few out there suffer from such a bad case of PRIDE as myself.

Une ébauche of Emptiness

On the first day, there was no one.

On the second day, there was no one.

On the third, the sun shone through

But still there was no one.

On the fourth, there was some rain,

And no one was around.

On the fifth day, there was no one

And the streets were empty.

On the sixth day the same emptiness went,

Up until the last day

When there was no one;

 No one was there.

------

 29/01/2013

[...]Everything in my life is a big heap of crap right now and I knew how empty it was even when I was working. I knew that the job was the only thing that kept me occupied, deflecting my attention away long enough from the real emptiness of my life. In all seriousness, we all live more or less immersed in a cocoon whose layers are added throughout our existence to make living more bearable. Remove those comforting, deflecting layers and you are likely to end up staring, just like me, at an incredibly dark and empty void. Or maybe it’s just me. I have reached a stage of such ‘nakedness’ that to me existence has taken the colour of stupid for the most part. And it’s cold, and it’s empty.
Remove all the hobbies, the pastimes, the work, the gossip and other social activities; the TV, the movies, the music… what is left? Silence and a void. Your own self, and your flaws, weaknesses, mistakes and regrets. Try staring at all that for as long as I have. [...]

28/01/2013

[...]Sometimes I really feel as though I’m living trapped inside some sick simulation, that I am but a pawn surrounded by drones that are under even more control than I am. It feels so much like this reality I feel and experience every second of every day is just one giant illusion or puppet show put together for my benefit… does that make me sound like a solipsist?

Why does it matter, tell me,

Whether the fields are blue, or green,
Whether it matters to live in sin

Or if it was all a lie to see

Through you, through me,

Through every one of us here?

22/01/2013

I still feel very lost in this world I struggle to recognise. Sometimes I look around me, so to speak, and wonder in disbelief how come the world looks so much more different from what it was like when I was little. Comparing my perception of what the world felt like to me back then (in the late 80's/early 90s) and what it looks like today makes me feel as if I’m staring at an alien world, in a way… it’s difficult to describe. I was telling my mother the other day that even though I’m not 30 years old yet I already feel obsolete, beside the point, lagging behind – you name it. This fast-paced world in which we’re all immerse, or stuck in, keeps moving faster and the moment you forget to keep up that’s it, you’re made to feel stranded like an old man lost at sea. I said to her: “I’m not even 30 yet and I feel the way people in their late 60s or so used to feel at some point when they looked at the younger generations and couldn’t – or wouldn’t – adapt to the changes anymore.”

I feel like I’m suffering from adaptationitis, or something crazy like that: an inflammation of my capacity to adapt caused by a lengthy period of over-adaptation efforts, much like an overdose. The constant overflow of information, the fast-changing technology, the contradicting ideologies being pushed from all corners, the politically correctness hard at work transforming the way we are allowed to relate to one another, the struggle to make a living, the increasingly pronounced impression that everyone else is keeping up or incredibly talented while you lag behind… all of it is making me shut down. I know I can’t be the only one feeling that way, and though we live in a so-called increasingly interconnected world we’ve never been more disconnected from one another. More and more we communicate according to the current format which consists of saying not what we really think but what is the accepted, censored version validated by the majority – but that majority is itself an illusion because it is the MEDIA that propagate the validated versions of what must be expressed socially. Transgress that, speak your mind against the validated versions and you will find yourself at once vilified. [...]

10/01/2013

You’re free only so long as you don’t test such freedom. The freedom society likes to boast about these days is as true or authentic as pigs flying in the sky. It only exists in theory, as a fantasy people like to tell others, but as soon as one tries to take their word for it and decides to live as though they were really free, they’re in for a really rude awakening. There is NO freedom in life, only enslavement to one condition or other.

The best we can ever do is move from one condition of enslavement to another, hoping to make the new one better than the last, but to believe in freedom is like believing that pigs can fly. If you don’t believe me just do what I did: shun social rules, leave the rat race overnight to do as you please for a while and then try to get back into the fold… you’ll probably find out that by the time you decide to get back into the mainstream fold, good old society has already labelled you as some ‘unreliable rebel’. The end result? The sheep won’t trust you and will want to keep you out because you’ve broken away from the norm and actually dared check out what life is like outside the box. (and I'm not talking 'travelling around the world' like some tourist) [...]

09/01/2013

[...]There is something about the way things are changing across the world that makes me feel like an obsolete model. Perhaps it’s linked to this era of constant consumption, the fact that the world is centred on industries that must constantly come up with newer things all the time… I’ve started to feel it for myself… and it’s a horrible feeling, that of being past your sell-by date even though it ought to be too soon to feel that way. But there you go. Back in the days, you felt out of the game around the age of retirement, perhaps, but now you can feel left out even before your first grey hair.

Everything is going so fast… it’s a constant race for new things. The word I hear the most these days has to be ‘update’. We live in a world of constant updates… update your I Phone, I Pod, resumé, Facebook or Twitter status, the TV, a program, a computer… you name it. You even have to keep up with your style and the way you brand yourself in the world – not just the world around you but also the whole planet nowadays. Beware if you fail to keep up with the constant updates: you’ll be left to feel like a lost puppy before long.

But the worst part of all, to me, is the fact that while we are made to sell ourselves by making brands out of our very person – just like any other consumer good or commodity out there – the audience in front of which we are constantly made to perform is no longer local but increasingly global (internet). So when you fuck up and the whole world can keep track, where the hell do you go? It used to be the case that when you fucked up in the past at least you still had the option to move to a new place and start afresh… it was always hard but feasible. But now… Now even that is taken from us. [...]

07/01/13

Everything we don’t have control over must necessarily be a trivial factor. That means that birth itself and circumstances outside our own control or choice must fall in that trivial category that weighs little in the bigger picture. The understanding lies beyond these trivial points, and if we can see past them then we are onto something bigger, a truer glimpse of a greater meaning.

Et cetera...