All Hallows' Eve

They say pets take after their owners, and my gadgets take that too much to heart. For instance, My laptop is a lot like me, my pride and joy, the gaming monolith I call za3faran, doesn't like to talk about its feelings or ask for help. One second I'm watching Modern Family on my laptop in the bathroom because I slept 18 hours more than I should have and it messed up my sleeping/studying schedule, and the next it just dies on me. Don't do that, laptop! Just tell me you need power, it's not like I'm gonna hold back.

I am, I am gonna hold back. Za3faran knows me too well, bless its processor.

Freak outs aside, I'm having my first senior-year induced panic attack, airing from my shell of solitude that is the can. Hello and welcome to the screening of the first senior year panic attack. Nice to have you all, take a seat. And on to our first show, we have a WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING TAKING AN APPLIED ARTS COURSE I CAN'T FUCKING DRAW.

Senior year is turning into a real roller coaster. Pressure has taken on a new meaning; no assignment is just 'that assignment', and no midterm is just 'that day I have to wake up early then come home and recover with a 7-hour sitcom marathon', everything is fallout boy: Nobody leaves a baby in the corner level. All freak-outs are can-worthy, not just every other freak-out or the occasional 'what the fuck happened last night' freak-out like it used to be. Good days.

Midterm mania is a whole other breed of midterms week too. If Frankenstein had a baby with abou regl masloukha, their devil spawn love child would be senior midterms week. I dread to think what finals would be like. Good thing I got support. Meet my best friend Wilson, the coffee thermos. He's been there for me so far and I got a feeling he won't let me down. He cheats on me with a sleazy pack of luckies every now and again, but they let me watch.

Halloween was a blast tho. Let it be known that on the night on my first senior year midterm, I was out partying. Plot twist: I still did great. And that's what I would like to call a win for evolution. This nerd has evolved, baby!

But has not quite shed its skin, given that I went as a white walker. 

I win Halloween.

And of course, the morning after.

"This droid is in power-saving mode. Please do not voice 

commands for another 47 minutes. Bleep."

Some pictures will never see daylight, as per the holiday tradition. I'll come back later with some juicy details and half-assed anecdotes that'll fly over most of your heads, but now I gotta run. I got a midterm slur this week that I know next to nothing about. Wish me luck and a full-limbed escape.

Don't Answer The Door

A chilly winter night, a beer, a smoke, a rocking chair and BB King. What more can a girl ask for, eh?

Present vocabulary, ideally.

It's good to be vacant sometimes. Those fleeting, eleventh hour reprieves. Not that it's sustainable.

But then again, no matter how great you feel, you'll never feel as great as the deluded old man Eric Clapton is calling King and writing a song about riding with.

Itchy & Scratchy

Cherry Bomb

The Censored Lady on the Subway

I saw this the other day on the tube, on my way home from work.

There was this lady in a nikab, cradling two children, a toddler and a baby. I was sitting on her right and we were both facing the opposite window. When the subway went into the underground tunnel, the lady's entire upper body - her head and shoulders - were swallowed up in the black reflection. She assimilated into the pitch black darkness. Even the outlines were barely there, almost entirely gone.

Looking into the opposite window, I could see wires and the unfinished, rough fieldstone inline of the tunnel swooshing by in the opposite direction at subway speed, with flowy black arms coming out of it, cradling drowsy children. I could not see her head in the reflection, it physically disappeared, blended into the background; its existence could only be realistically assumed, or rather extrapolated.

It barely looked human.

It was one of those rare, poignant moments where reality transcends metaphor and it leaves you gaping and lost for words.

It was as if the lady was censored. In real life. By a rare coincidence of physical laws and light show, her identity was bleeped, and the only part of her that existed in our plane was the part responsible for taking care of the children.

The censored lady on the subway. Try forgetting this.

Martian Child (2007)

"Dennis, can I just say one last thing about Mars? - which may be strange coming from a Science-Fiction writer - But right now, you and me here, put together entirely of atoms, sitting on this round rock with a core of liquid iron, held down by this force that seems to trouble you, called gravity, all the while spinning around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour and whizzing through the milky way at 600,000 miles an hour in a universe that very well may be chasing its own tail at the speed of light; And amidst all this frantic activity, fully cognizant of our own eminent demise - which is our own pretty way of saying we all know we're gonna die - We reach out to one another. Sometimes for the sake of vanity, sometimes for reasons you're not old enough to understand yet, but a lot of the time we just reach out and expect nothing in return.

Isn't that strange?

Isn't that weird?

Isn't that weird enough?

The heck do ya need to be from Mars for?"

Eureka

I found out why I like Neil Gaiman.

He's the only writer who can make me feel truth, rather than merely see it.

The Abstract

Of a Beady Beetle

The Doctor (Tom Baker): "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering."

Nostalgia Radio

Space Camp!

I have much and more to document! Words escape me, for the closer the topic is to my heart, I struggle to bear it. Blasphemous habit for a writer, self-styled notwithstanding. It's at times like these that I wish I could borrow someone else's voice. Probably John Cleese. 

You thought I was gonna say Morgan Freeman, didn't you? You mainstream little bastard, get off my blog.

Let me try. It's comforting to know that hitting the delete button could send it all into the ether. Jump out, little words. If I don't like you, I'll go Sparta all over your ass. Come on, don't be shy. Self-preservation be damned, you're not sentient, stop acting the part!

On a sleepless night, one of many, I stumbled upon this shady little page that organized trips to the Kattameya Space Observatory. Merlin's beard, I had no idea we even had an observatory! I got so excited the alien inside me almost jumped out of its skin suit trying to phone home. I registered myself and a dear friend, called the organizer so many times he decided to be friends with me out of self defense, made calls at 1 in the morning to a fellow alien asking her how the hell people pack sandwiches, whipped out my prized space bag (yes, I have one and it's glorious) and packed for the ride. 

And I'm glad I did, if I had the least sense of survival, I would have missed out on what turned out to be - arguably - the best 16 hours of my summer break, thus far. Worry not, I'll top my own charts soon enough.

It was a ride of good music and dry energy bars, funny songs and tailgating professional bikers down the Ain Sokhna road. One of the bikers was a friend, and we honked the hell out of his tight-wearing ass. It's only fair. 

We followed the winding roads between mountains that bore all kinds of trespass warnings, from military and animals alike. The suspension on my friend's car was shot, so we got a crunkin' cruise down the unpaved, pebbly paths. 

Road trip!

We felt like thugs while we're at it, too. As the little black dude inside of me was appeased, the alien inside of me spasmodically fangirled at the sight of the observatory dome that peaked its head out of its hiding place soon after. I unabashedly gaped and shamelessly squealed. I would have waved, had it been socially acceptable to animatedly greet objects.

Arriving there, after our guide led a brief introduction to break the ice, I stashed some metaphorical icicle shards beneath my shirt just in case. Realistically, I packed some spare change in a book like the nerd I am, then packed the book into the camera case like the fangirl I am, then gave my camera case to my friend, like the hobbit I am. He's less likely to ruin the taters, I thought, and stumbled forth. 

And it was good thinking, for within the next 30 minutes of exploring the site, I had amassed 6 different injuries, to the amused giggles of my friend. We had breakfast with our feet dangling off the farthest ledge of the encampment, looking onto the nothingness that fringed distant civilization. Desolation was beautiful, for it had the rare quality of non-habitability; humans ruin everything they touch, and they had not touched this place. I feasted upon the silence as we snacked on our clumsily packed sandwiches. 

The campsite was built by the English, back when they colonized Egypt. The encampments were built in the style of lavish barracks, and mostly closed off to tourists. Organized trips were set by the staff during maintenance period, so it was mostly desolate. "Is that where scientists live?", I naively asked my friend who choked on his food at the suggestion of existing scientists in this shit hole. "I can totally see myself living in that one on that dune over there with a bunch of dogs. Who needs humans?", he concurred.  

Space exploration wasn't set to start for another 15 minutes, so some terrestrial exploration was due. Having ignored the guides' disclaimer to stay close to grounds due to small predator attacks, we decided to ignore the guides' disclaimer to follow the program next. We scaled every unlocked building in site, and climbed up the steel-beamed ladder of the smaller observatory. It was there that I unearthed a primal truth; short people are scared of heights. My friend took turns morally supporting, threatening, pranking and taunting me to release my deathly grip of the ladder that I'd clasped onto for dear life mid-way, and I finally got up and took shitty pictures of great scenes. 

The guide called us back to the first chapter of the day; he introduced us to different types of telescopes; comparing their history, usage, components and science behind them. I unblinkingly stared ahead, trying to retain as much information as the class pet presented himself for validation; a buff, square-torso'd bald man in his mid-thirties, who knew more about space than anyone I've ever met. At that point, I hadn't met the others, so it was true at the time. 

We were herded to the biggest observatory, built in 1955 and renovated in the 70s and 90s. Mostly manual when it was built, workers manned the cogs, monstrous control gizmos and lever-based contraptions that now collected dust and stares on the sides. A button-choked sealed cupboard now automated the entire process. The renovation was sparked by the breakdown of the mirror of the gigantic telescope when oil leaked into the pressurized vault during cleaning. Maintenance expenses exceeded purchase expenses, so they went ahead and bought a new one, and replaced the motors while they're at it. 

Ground control to major Rory!

We were taken inside, and a huge speech was given about the workings of the gigantic machine that stood before us, then later led into the control room where we saw the monitor and he explained the process behind the scenes. A talk of parameters and physics, of space and machination, of lenses concavity angles and calculated rate of relative rotation, of passion and custom programming, I could cry. But the best was yet to come. 

Pressing buttons, he led us outside. We climbed to the higher landing and stood sentry at the circular walls of the observatory, cameras cocked and ready. At the click of a button on a giant, generously colored remote control with an antenna thicker than a human finger, the walls started rotating. A shred of the ceiling slowly opened and attracted the giant telescope, which started gravitating towards the opening. I took pictures of the first glimpses, then I must have spaced out. I was too busy watching this giant ET finger call home. A scene for sore eyes, outdated as it were.

Sex!

Night had fallen by the time we were out, and the breeze almost knocked us off our feet as we hurried to the car in pitch darkness, as fast as our clattering teeth would allow us. We put on all the extra clothing we had in the trunk; several unwashed t-shirts, shirts and a couple of jackets. Civilized we'd rushed in, and hobos we'd trudged out. We headed to the kitchen to make coffee, then retraced our steps to the clearing where the first several telescopes were laid out. It was still too early in the night to get clear view of the sky, so the people took their time setting up camera gear and settling down, to the cozy murmur of the guide prattling on about constellations and galaxies.

I had given up on figuring out how to handle and manipulate a professional camera on  short notice. Defeated by the runes of aperture and shutter hexes, ISO charms and tripod curses, I went back to the car to bury my borrowed camera and take a bunch of energy bars, my inhalers and an extra plaid shirt instead. We used the time to have a meal of shrimp leftovers; my friend knew I'd accidentally starve us. He knows me too well. I gratefully nommed. 

By the time we were back, the sky had settled and let us have a look under her skirts. We had a 5-hour window to sate our hungry eyes before the protective moon came home late from work and obliterated all chance of glances by his meager 18% clarity, chasing off all the chattering girlfriend stars and pulling the darkness coverlets for a night of uninterrupted slumber. 

We made do. We saw most major constellations, as well as Messier 4, Messier 7 and the dwarf constellation of Messier 32. We saw the nearest galaxy, Andromeda, and shamelessly peaked in on our neighbors, discussing the possibility of sentient life. We saw NGC 6268 and NGC 6281, as well as the Prawn Nebula IC 4628. We peaked in on Venus and Saturn, and heard origin myths of Ursa major and Ursa minor, Scorpius and Sagittarius, and dispelled ignorant doubts that they had any hold over our fates against astrology enthusiasts through self-entitled, sarcasm-choked, pseudo intellectual debates. We talked of black holes and wormholes, until a loud ignorant creationist dispelled one-way-ticket space exploration journeys as suicidal, and although I had the knowledge and energy to dispel her very cognitive structure into the space junk belt where it belongs and pull her head out of her tight little sheep ass, I shoved an energy bar into my mouth and pretended it's astronaut food. 

I took over the guide's green laser pointer with my midget charms - best use of childlike body type if you ask me - and completely spazzed at the possibilities. It extended in a long visible line into space, and the guide used it to point out constellations mid-speeches as if space itself were a two-dimensional canvas. Dragging my friend by the sleeve to show him my recent, prized loot item, we lay on our backs in the middle of the clearing and pointed to space. We wrote our names on constellations, we wrote mirrored messages to aliens, perchance one happened to be looking for one out there, and tried to persuade momma ship to come back and beam us home with an "I forgive you" note, in case she was worried about the holidays. "What would we wish for if we happen upon a shooting star?", I asked him. "That it crashes into earth?", he pontificated. We happened upon four shooting stars, and wished upon every one. Each wish stupider than the former. But most importantly, that it crashes into earth. 

The moon was due in 45 minutes, and people were hungrily groping for any visible constellations they might have missed. We shortly froze our asses off and ran back to the car for a woolen blanket. We swapped jackets because mine was warmer and I was less affected by the cold, then we came back and claimed our spots; smack in the middle of the clearing, right under the most crowded hub of stars. We made a blanket sandwich and snuggled in, and napped under the stars while the others hurried to catch the best photo. I can't speak for the both of us, but that star-speckled view is ingrained my living memory, better than any flimsy film could etch on ephemeral paper or imaginary bytes. Visceral develops best; all memory blemishes serve as color correction anyway. 

We woke up an hour later, when I mistakenly thought the rustling of wind-carried paper wrappers were hyenas sneaking up to ravage our throats. Shivering, we went for coffee, then headed to the common hall. Most people were sleeping by then, napping before sunrise, only the staff was up. The engineer sat balled up on the couch, watching a vapid late-night show. One lid closed, we joined him, and we talked about space. Covering a wide range of topics; we had all sorts of questions, and later tried to suggest a program to bring people in. All that place needed was advertising and good planning, but it had a lot of potential. I was curious about him as a person. The man had come to give me hope, an astronomer and space researcher in his own right, and I was baffled as to how Egypt could let me have that.

Wonderful man. 

As passionate as he was about his field, and as good as he was at it, he'd ended up in the space department by mistake. "Small department it was at al Azhar, run just so the government would say it's there, housing 6 students in most years, and 15 at its most fruitful year. I heard that it was fun, so I jumped in, and here I am! Thankfully I graduated top of my class, worked as a TA then was conveniently shipped off here, where I've been working since. They have nowhere else to send us, really. As you can see, it's a ghost town up here, the best work this place does is help people write their masters, but that's about it. We get a sheepish 0.003% of the national budget a year. We had a lot of plans for this place, money-aside, but it falls on deaf ears. Not much we can do but do what we do."

I asked him what his PhD was about, he said he was still working on it, and he said it was about the effects of cataclysmic variable stars, and mentioned the red giant star being in its last state of stellar evolution and how it affects neighboring stars that it ensnares in example. I asked him what the most awe-inspiring thing it was he'd seen in his years and years of work, and he said he saw two constellations in their long, drawn-out process of collision, on their way to becoming one, back when he was a doe-eyed researcher. I secretly wondered if that man knew how cool his job was. Wonderful man, with a millennial kid sitting across the couch wanting to be him, and he had no idea. 

Talking to my friend about space stations and the James Webb telescope over our last sips of coffee, we walked out of the common hall and were surprised it was light out. Sunrise wasn't for another 38 minutes, so we walked. Most people were setting up camera gear again, to prepare for shooting a time lapse of the sunrise. We went back to the clearing to get a glimpse of the moon, and we did. We said goodbye to Galileo's telescope, Newton's telescope and Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov's telescope. 

Trudging into the desert where people have gathered near a construction site for what will soon turn out to be the most recent installment to the place; an auditorium, we said our good mornings and snuck in, mapping out what everything will be from the looks of the helix, then climbing up to the roof and drooling at the scenery. We came down just in time, and stood quietly facing the sun like a crowd of grim reapers, behind a row of tripods holding all kinds of cameras that could be bought with mortal coin, to Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication jingling out of a pocketed phone, followed by several other songs that stood the test of time we were wrestling against to catch those videos. It was beautiful. 

Soon, it was time to go. We were called back by the guide to gather our things and head for the cars and parked bus. I cleaned my friend's car, then we had a light breakfast on the ledge that started the trip in a desperate attempt at closure, went back for group photo, said goodbye to our old astronomer friend and got into the car. 

And we dreamily bounced off into the artificial horizon, that stood stubbornly poking out at the skies and chasing off all stars and planets with the dreams that they carry, separating what is and what could be by a white and black layered fart cloud, chalking the horizon.

Mom's Spaghetti

Yesterday I learned that if you pitch the human in you against the animal in you, even if the human had his word, the animal will always win. And that the real struggle lies in aligning them so that they find common ground in a manner that will still leave you a choice.

Of Witches, Landslides & Three-eyed Crows

Went down a massive memory lane, hell, more like a landslide, when I had to back up my pictures. So many people that aren't here anymore, so many people that aren't me anymore, so many me's that I no longer am, so many we's that changed to they's that changed to those who must not be named. I terribly miss all the them's, us's and me's, but I wouldn't contact any of them if I had a gun to my head. Everything changes so fast; it feels like I've had a thousand lives mushed into one. 

The way I see it, I hope that never stops, I hope that a couple of years from now I'll have made a thousand more, ones that hurt like a motherfucker and ones that ease you into puppy heaven. I'll have it all, thank you very much, with fries on the side. 

Real touchy area, memories are. I can see why they can break people. When you come to think of it, it's not about how much you look into it, but how you look at it. It's all about the vantage point. Running with that particularly shitty metaphor to make it even shittier, that's what sets assassins and targets apart, but at the end of the day, the bird's view wins and the bird takes home the house cup with a glorious dump on either party. 

Bird's the word.

Summer break is almost here, merely a couple of days away, and I went online to scout any available internships that I could dive into and scab me some knees. Usual routine, I drew up my CV and made a few changes, and while I was editing it I scrolled up to the naive part where I state my short-term and long-term objectives. To my surprise, I found that in between now and the time I last edited it - being less than four months ago - all of them have changed. I no longer wanted any of those things. Shit, I thought, I'm gonna have to re-write that, but I was too tired, so I stumbled off to the bathroom and it was over there that it really hit me. The last surprise was the lighter news of the two, what really caught me off guard was the realization that holy fucking shit I think I know what I wanna do with my life. And guess what? Right down to the letter, it happened on the can. 

At 8:12 PM, on the 28th of May 2015, during my third year of college, right around the time of my life where my cynical nature and my sense of humour made an iron clad truce that left me swinging blind and begging for mercy in equal measure, when my reality was largely an elaboration on that field out there where right and wrong don't exist but dragons and gremlins do, on an irrelevant evening while sitting on the can; it came to me. Or should I say I got there? Who knows how the hell it works, or if it works at all. 

You'd think this shit takes spreadsheets you know? You'd think it takes trudging up slippery mountains of unimaginable heights to meet a recluse hermit and beg him for truth in exchange of that lost treasure you had to dig out of an alabastar cave where it nestled in a monster's lair and you had to snatch it out of the claws of a violent, insomniac bear or some shit. 

I haven't even given it any thought, I just knew. Kind of like how I knew when I was in danger, or how I knew when I was in love. But I repeat myself. 

I know what I wanna be you guys, the tough part's over. 

Or is it? Now comes the part after I know it where I want it, get attached to it, build hopes on it, pursue it, get jilted time and time again, get rejected over and over, not find the opportunity, fail to perform when I get one, and the great possibility of it not working out at all. 

Aw man, here we go again. 

But the I can see all the obstacles in my way part is a story for another time. 

For now, back on the I can see clearly now the rain is gone bit. 

Whether sunshine is ever in, I couldn't tell. Unfortunately I'm not psychic.

A change of heart marks a great transition, and a shift in aspiration definitely marks a change of heart. This might be the first major transition - that's not forced upon me by extenuating circumstances but came from within - that I'm conscious of. To be honest, I don't remember what made 5-year-old me give up on 3-year-old me's dream of being an astronaut to being a painter, but this one I'm old enough to see, feel and remember. This one I get to cherish in words rather than just viscerally. That is if I can find them.

So let's see, first conscious transition, what it's like you ask? If a sigh of relief was driving a car at 900 mph jammed into a truck hauling 500 tons of options that have been eliminated, the part of the explosion that contaminates the air of the observable universe but merely scratches the surface of what is happening on a molecular level brackets the spectrum of how it feels, alone. Definition of each escapes adrenalin-choked me, who only registers exhileration at the sight of the biggest show of fireworks my mortal eyes have ever seen. 

What it's like in my head at the point of collision sees the molecular cirque-du-soleil act and raises it, giving the celestial dealer the biggest boner he's ever had, sapping out his mental energy in what appears to the philosophical onlooker as equilibrium helplessly resetting itself, while reason scuttles away and re-asserts herself in the far corner, out of sight, where she can dignifiably adjust her stockings without a greedy host making a move on her. As to how I'm gonna remember it, that's for future me to know, and present me to wonder about, as if she doesn't have enough to wonder about already. 

One thing I can say for sure though, seeing years-worth of things and not having the capacity to register them in my tender, human pod, and it is this: I pity witches. Getting burned at the stake must have been a mercy kill. No wonder witches died laughing.

This Lady

Grandma went home today - she'd been staying over for about a month and a half - and I can feel a vacuum where her presence should be, and it’s sucking the life out of me every time I drift towards it. If it were possible for a person to be made entirely out of love, it would be Teita.

Of the Shadows of the World

I got a drunk dial from a fan today; she stumbled upon this blog and liked what she saw. If you're sober and you found your way back here, and somehow STILL liked what you saw, you get a shoutout; Greetings fine lady! You absolutely made my day.

Moving on.

It's a quiet night, haven't had one of those in a long time. I finally got to finish American Gods, and I take back most of what I said about it. It took its sweetass time coming together and I gotta say it came together quite beautifully. I knew my faith in Neil Gaiman shouldn't have wavered, but we're all human after all. Falter we do, and falter I did. Forgive me, oh Gaiman. In all your Gaimaness, you've outgaimaned yourself. *Curtsies and scuttles out of royal court*

Bit of an afterthought, I think the main reason why it took so long to hit home with me was because I already believed in most of what he was trying to say throughout the book. It wasn't that it was betrayed by its premise, it was the fact that it took him 90% of the book trying to build an argument for everybody else, then in the last 80 pages came the long drawn-out breath of AHA! Only it wasn't an "AHA!" for me, more of a "Heh, I see what you did there." I kind of envy all the shitheads that Neil Gaiman converted through this book, or even the ones who weren't all that confused that he gave something to think about; building seeds of doubt on the expanse between what is and what isn't, sprouting several could be's out of the cracks. You lucky fuckers, you got an epic on your hands. Here's to hoping his arguments aren't wasted on you. I wish I'd read this book 4 or 5 years back, when I was a shithead myself. That would have been nice. 

Having missed out on the full-effect of this book, what really got to me were the acknowledgements at the end. It was a little something he mentioned while thanking all the people involved. I'll get to that in a bit, let me copy part of it here before I fangirl.

"It’s been a long book, and a long journey, and I owe many people a great deal.

Mrs. Hawley lent me her Florida house to write in, and all I had to do in return was scare away the vultures. She lent me her Irish house to finish it in and cautioned me not to scare away the ghosts. My thanks to her and Mr. Hawley for all their kindness and generosity. Jonathan and Jane lent me their house and hammock to write in, and all I had to do was fish the occasional peculiar Floridian beastie out of the lizard pool. 

I’m very grateful to them all. Dan Johnson, M.D., gave me medical information whenever I needed it, pointed out stray and unintentional anglicisms (everybody else did this as well), answered the oddest questions, and, on one July day, even flew me around northern Wisconsin in a tiny plane. In addition to keeping my life going by proxy while I wrote this book, my assistant, the fabulous Lorraine Garland, became very blasé about finding out the population of small American towns for me; I’m still not sure quite how she did it. (She’s part of a band called The Flash Girls; buy their new record, Play Each Morning, Wild Queen, and make her happy.) Terry Pratchett helped unlock a knotty plot point for me on the train to Gothenburg."

And here it is, "In addition to keeping my life going by proxy while I wrote this book...", that's what got to me. 

Perhaps it wouldn't resonate with you the same way it did with me, but that's what being a writer is all about. Hemingway said it; "You just sit at a typewriter and bleed." Now, it's gonna get a little cliche starting here so bear with me. 

How did writing start out? What was the first person thinking about when he sat down and wrote the first manuscript known to man? What made neanderthals get the urge to scribble on the cave walls? It wasn't all ego, it wasn't all a matter of record. (The first cave man wouldn't have known he'd die or multiply until he got there, probably by accident.) The way I see it, it was awe. Perhaps the only way writers are different from the rest of the people is the way they're always outsiders; they're always very conscious of their nature as vessels, and they're always struggling to document every aspect of the human condition. They struggle against word limitations, against abstract sensations that don't quite have semantic vehicles to transfer that exact experience to another human being. In a lot of ways, a writer is a child trapped in an adult's body, pointing at things and tugging at his companions' sleeves so they could see it too.

He's not the first or last person to get there, a lot of writers mastered delivering ideas, others mastered delivering ideas and feelings, other make money by expertly sending the reader on an emotional rollercoaster (Looking at you, Stephen King. You big cheat.) Few, though, got past those, and into that place where great, honest writing comes out. Borrowing a term from American Gods, I guess the only way you could describe it is this: They slipped into the backstage. And we all know what happens to mortals when they slip backstage.

And a lot of authors went mad in that process; they went mad trying to contain the human condition using various combinations of 26 petty letters on lacking, 2 dimensional paper sheets. The process is exhausting, frustrating and in a lot of ways excruciating, but the worst part about it to writers - and I mean real writers, not commercial writers or professional word smiths - is that the process is also needy. It pulls at you, it takes a lot out of you, and it consumes you. It makes you vulnerable, it stretches your confines threadbare and it makes you very conscious of what you're failing to pin down. It demands to be carried out, even if it takes you out with it. Pages and years are spent, and you still feel mute, because some things just can't be put down. Not with the tools we have at our expense anyway. 

And god, the pang of it.

What he said is a direct symptom of that. Which brings me to my next point; I now know exactly what I like about Gaiman, in all his lacking present ways, it's that he tries. And he sometimes touches upon great truths - visceral, intellectual, subliminal, emotional or what have you - that weren't communicated before. And for all intents and purposes, he doesn't completely miss. He doesn't deliver the whole picture, and in his groping for words he may not have chosen the right ones, but I get some sense of the image, a fading impression, a threshold outline, albeit out of focus or distorted, and it hits home. 

There were a couple of other parts in the acknowledgement section that got to me. I found myself thinking about his next book. Not about it per se, but rather about how Terry won't be there to pick up the phone if he hits a stubborn knot in the plot. At the expense of sounding like an obsessed creep, their friendship was fragile, co-dependent, and the combination of both their minds tuned them in to frequencies that the rest of us mortals can't hope to listen in on, not even with dog ears sown on. This by no way implies that any of them is less of a writer than the other one, but when they came together they produced lightening bolts. It will never be the same, will it? 

It hurt to register that Terry is gone. In a lot of ways, pathetic as it may seem to you, it still hurts. I hadn't registered it till then, and it took that line to make it real.

The acknowledgement also got me daydreaming around the part he mentioned his friend let him lease out the house to write in. We don't have that kind of culture in here; the culture of taking care of an author along on his way down inspiration lane. It was heartwarming, reading about how a community came together to help him write this book. 

Excuse my fangirling, I assure you I'm sane. Although you may have caught a glimpse of the hopeless romantic inside of me that I keep chained away in a dungeon, down in the shadows and depths of myself, away from prying eyes. 

The acknowledgement section was another long, drawn-out sigh of relief in its own way. I guess I didn't leave empty-handed after all, even if a little unconventionally. 

She's The Giggle At A Funeral

I've been very stressed out lately, it's showing up hilariously all over my self. I had a nightmare today that involved a Voodoo-cursed remote control that summoned Samara - that creepy Ring chick - from any and all TVs, which ended up in a high speed chase through hospitals and houses and ended up with me dreaming about a 70-year-old dad who's snarly and grumpy all the time and keeps sneaking chocolate from us.

Oh, and according to Grandma, not only did I take after my dad in talking in my sleep, I can hold entire conversations. As a matter of fact, I had a 20-minute conversation with dad this morning, who was apparently very bored...in my sleep...that I have absolutely no memory of. 



Sleeping doesn't come that easily either, because as dog tired as I am, I'm too stressed out to fall asleep, so before I eventually fell asleep I had a two-hour long semi-sober day-dreaming trip of retro robots and space. I'm not even kidding. It was glorious.

In my delirium, I've been having several revelations, like for instance how Jesus was vital to Christianity in the sense that he branded it. Before he came along, Christianity was made up of broken text that describes a guy over centuries, practically impossible for the common man to envision without pitching in some elements of his own to seal the deal, and a downright pain in the ass for most theologians to get the hang of the man up stairs without the occasional blasphemous typo. So it was vital for the brand's survival that it becomes embodied; given personality that people could relate to, and a body with a pair of arms and legs so people don't freak the fuck out, which would in turn lead to association, then brand linkage, then brand transformation. That's where integrated marketing communications came in, with all the sermons and PR with the townspeople. Once the vision was unified, branding was complete. I've been studying too hard.



I deleted/deactivated most social interaction platforms because of a privacy breech. People that have made no effort to talk to me all year are sharing my contact information without my permission to ask me shit about finals. Unknown numbers, so many of them, unapologetically started talking to me; no hellos, no explanations as to how the hell they got my number, just inquiries. I'm not sure what kind of reaction they're expecting, but I had the choice of aggression, avoidance or plain fucking them over...or creating mutually beneficial relationships.

Funny thing is, my PR material led me to that last consideration of harnessing that power to create contacts. I had a strategy and everything, I will turn the creeps into puppies, hell, I studied how...but I couldn't get myself to. 

According to the latest statistic, exactly how many people have their heads up their asses these days? I'm curious. And how the hell do you react to a blatant, mass invasion of privacy without the use of a sledgehammer? Still haven't figured that out, but they've driven me into hiding. Which is ironic, since I can't round up a team to save my life but finals swoosh in and suddenly I'm feeling the love. People are creepy, don't make sense, and I don't like them. 

Oh and I legit-dreaded my hair in the middle of the night. That's not going away any time soon. Might have to shave it off.

And the holy grail goes to the blubbering fit that came over me two days ago when it dawned on me that I'm graduating in a year and not only do I NOT have the least idea what I wanna do with my life, I'm also not that good at, well, anything. I summoned dad from the highest mountains, and he donned his eye patch and descended to Midgard to counsel Rory Odinson. What did it was the fact that what most of my previous courses did, as opposed to teaching me anything - god knows Egyptian education merely skims the index - is show me what I'm not good at. Previous courses were a filter to all the things I don't want to do/can't work at when I graduate. 

Dad was entertained; here I was, his 22-year-old only daughter, panicking about graduation. It happened you guys. His reassuring argument consisted of two main parts. The first being; I'm actually good at what I do, I just can't see it. And the second being, wait for it, "You think anybody knows what they wanna do with their lives during college? That comes later. This is a rite of passage; you got about 5 more years of wandering and fucking up, and hopefully having fun while you're at it, until you get the least sense of who you are. Buckle up, kid!" And then he laughed, shook his head, got up, got dressed and went to work, his cape swooshing behind him, getting stuck on the door in his wake.



If all of that wasn't an indication of how bumpy it is on the inside of my head right now, Grandma has taken it upon herself to feed me even more than she already does since I threw up twice this week, I got about 5 bruises that I can't account for and probably acquired by running into knobs and counters in panicky folder runs, and now that I'm writing this blogpost to a Coldplay song remix, my regression to my high school self is complete.

Oh boy.

Game of Thrones: The Musical

Muggle Mike

After I watched True Detective, I was under the impression that Matthew Mcconaughey was a real person with some self-honed vision that he picked up along the way and started to show up in his acting, turning him from your average Ken doll to a rain man in the making. I came to idolize him on the side after his career peaked, as a shag-worthy opponent. Fooled by the script like a pleb, we all fall for it sometimes. Then I heard he gave a graduation speech in Houston university and I went on a YouTube pillage for every speech he ever gave, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever truth this man accumulated along the way, and here I modify my conclusion: He is a master bullshitter.

I don't respect him any less for it, he really had me going. Not a lot of people caught that Pokemon. Real tip of the hat for him, but I was still disappointed. To elaborate on what I mean by all that, that's a bit of a long story; completely unrelated but slightly parallel in a very abstract context. Meaning: It's a woman thing you wouldn't really get it. I kid, I kid. 

Over the years, I've come to see that people have different realities, because they have different life experiences and that leads them to different truths. Pit them against each other and one might sound truer than the other, but in the bigger scale of things they're just as true, because truth is relative. It wouldn't make much sense to you in writing if you haven't reached that point of your life, and although I can make the argument, that's one bite out of life's cookie that I wouldn't give away cheap. Work for it, or take it and forget it a couple of days later, what do I care?

Even Hooch had a vision.

My point is, not a lot of people work for their own truths, and settle on a bunch of half-assed delusions that they struggle to make themselves believe, let alone sell to whichever members of their community that they picked out and befriended to maintain suspended disbelief. It's sad to see them, it's sad to see so many of them, but that's just how it is. How it should be, is different. Instead of a bunch of delusional people who don't believe their own lies, you'd get a bunch of people who really believe in their own lies, because their lives have made them true. That's where all the different realities come in, the ones that people fight for in job interviews, fight over during family dinners, and fight to go to bed every night.

It doesn't matter how much you don't see eye-to-eye with them, because their entire lives have come together to make them arrive at that truth, just as your entire life came together to make you arrive at another truth that completely annuls theirs. That's what a lot of people don't get about life, and living in general. There are no truths. There are many truths. Both sentences are true. Isn't it a marvelous planet we're stuck on?

But I digress. Why I was drawn to Matthew Mcconaughey after watching True Detective was a shootout of this argument; I thought he was one of those people who had some kind of vision. They're really hard to find these days, even harder to find in the realms of men, so you can imagine why I would be led to believe the fighting pits of Hollywood may have attracted a couple of lost lunatics that saw blue trees instead of green. They exist by the way, one of them is Shekhar Kapur, check out his Ted Talk. Great visionary. Others exist in more obscure realms of scientific journals, somewhere on the outskirts of politics, and most in various detention camps and loony bins around the world. Not all of them are great conversationalist, but they're saying something, one thing, throughout their life's work. They have this one truth that they're trying really hard to communicate to the world, and unfailingly they all come back to the cave to people who can't believe they're more than their own shadows.

I bounced back pretty quick though, for although Matthew Mcconaughey didn't turn out to have any great vision, he remains damn easy on the eyes. And to start my day off on the right side of the bed, I'm watching Magic Mike over my morning coffee. As I'm sure so many of you would rationalize it to themselves, I'm a straight girl, and I'm telling you, I'm only watching this for the stripping. And I ain't ashamed, get over yourselves.

Guess I'm back to blogging frequently again. Thanks for unclogging that toilet, Matthew. 

Scrapbooking

Grandma's been staying over for a while, and she has this thing she does when she wakes up every morning that just plain baffles me. She gets up, makes herself a mug of tea, and sits in complete darkness for an hour or so until some oven ping goes off at the back of her head and she decides to get up, open the shutters and go about her day. She doesn't doze off, she doesn't try to start conversations (now we know where I got that from), she just kind of sits there...in complete peace. No Buddhist mantras or Hinduist chants help her get there.

Being me, I've developed the habit of joining her on that morning routine, or at least trying to. I sit there and I watch her for a while, then I try to get to that place she's in, fail, and unfailingly jump into one my glowing portals. What is it about old age that makes you fall asleep so fast, bounce back so easily and become a levitating guru? I join her anyway, because wherever she goes off every morning backfires some relaxing vibes my way. It must be nice over there. So hard to get a damn ticket tho.

 We watch cartoon after so it's great.

We've been doing all kinds of stuff together, giving her a tour around my world. She doesn't like it very much. She likes most of the content but finds the people two-dimensional; like they've been splinched in two and lost track of the rest of themselves. I also introduced her to Nicki Minaj because I was bored and it was elders react: level purge. My god, I thought, grandma's hitler. Such a nice Hitler tho, nicest one I ever met. 

Finally caught up on Louie. I love that show. I relate to Louie in more ways than I should relate to a 47-year-old single dad who lives in Manhattan. It would take all day to list why I see eye to eye with Louie, but perhaps the most defining factor is being the only disillusioned human being within a fifty mile radius at all times, and leveraging your blood pressure levels against your sanity. This season is lightweight compared to the old seasons though, but I guess they're going somewhere with that. Try as I might, I can't see Louie giving in to ratings.

I miss board games. A lot of human interaction went into this, a lot more than human conversation as it prevails today. I wonder where people buy them these days; I've been out of the loop since I was yay high. Dad and I used to have chess games that lasted for days at a time. He always beat me at Battleship though.

It's finals week and I need to get some sleep. Rory, out.

Age of Ultron

Earlier this month, Pride and Prejudice came on TV, and I watched it and marveled at how, at one point of my life, I remotely related to it or held it in any kind of regard. Jane Austen was one of my earliest favourite authors; I grew up reading her books at an age when most children would have been gobbling down comic books. My copy of Pride and Prejudice in particular was dog-eared, I'd read it and re-read it, I'd fawned over the conversations and shuddered at the turn of events, even though I knew them by heart. On my 16th birthday, Aunt Nadia bought me "Jane Austen's Guide to Dating", and I'd treasured it as it softened the blow to the oh-so-excruciating phase of puberty. Watching it now, the parts that had once stirred my affection were ridiculous, and the characters that I once liked or cared about were dancing monkeys in an exaggerated farce. It's been so long ago, it's been 'a different person' ago. How much can one person change? It was as if I'd slipped into a different skin suit, that person long forgotten, someone I ran into down the grocery aisle unawares and promptly evaded by made-up excuses of imaginary appointments. 

I spent most of today reading Frank Miller's Man Without Fear and Born Again, both Daredevil comics, and later Neil Gaiman's American Gods. The doctor was right, time IS wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. Tying in with the last revelation, I suppose we're all meant to go through so many different variations of ourselves before our time is up. Most of us just get laggy and stick to one version longer than they're meant to. But what do I know?

American Gods was disappointing. But perhaps, judging its premise of the shifting nature of faith from blood sacrifices to old Norse, Hinduist, Egyptian and Scandinavian gods to devotion to new gods of internet and highways and TV, investing time and energy in the new gods in place of ceremonies and rituals, the shift from giving to the unknown and mysterious to yielding to known and familiar, from the glorious to the boring, from the synaptic to the synoptic, all of that set against the backdrop of the spiritual desert that the American culture has become, with a protagonist that is ultimately incapable of relating to the world around him, disappointing is a medal of honor. Perhaps it was betrayed by its own premise, having old gods walk the modern world is bound to let you down; how could you portray mortal sacrifice and eternal glory in the back lot of a 7/11 on the outskirts of Nebraska, when the scuffle of blades has been replaced with tinkering of cutlery and the biggest moral question to pontificate is whether it's right to ask out your best buddy's ex? 

Perhaps it was meant to be disappointing, to drive the point home, or perhaps I'm just biased. I'm too much of a Neil Gaiman fan, despite his shortcomings as a fantasy author, that I can very well see, he still holds my loyalty. I had this conversation with a friend once, about why it is I like Neil Gaiman in his mediocrity, lack of voice and hopeful strides that fall short of being literature, why I like him despite seeing all of that. I haven't found the answer yet, but the guy has soul. I gave American Gods more time than I would have given most novels to climax, but it just didn't cut it for me. This is the closest I've come to disillusionment since the last time, a couple of years back, when I started seeing the world for what it really was and sprouted a couple of grey hairs in willful protest.

One thing that came out of me reading that dreadful (Read: intentionally dreadful to make a point, making it amazing on scale that is not directly felt by sensory notion but rather in abstract context retrospectively where the dreadful adjective was the original intended outcome and oh my god who am I kidding this book ate a portion of my life that I desperately want back) is that I remember what I liked about the classics. What I saw in Pride and Prejudice many years ago, and somehow lost sight of along the way, what gives the classics the edge that they have in the hearts of so many that are not blind to the heaps of racism, sexism, social injustice, cliches, redundancies, histrionics and overall exaggeration these books hold, that were rampant at the time and were blissfully wiped out by time and questionable progress, is one thing and one thing only; their intensity. 

When it comes down to it, the main reason why many level-headed, intelligent, modern people still relate to the completely non-relatable ballet of shittiness that make up 87% of your average classic novel is that whatever that ballet of shittiness was addressing, it was addressing it with sheer fervor...that was also wiped out by time and questionable progress. It is the mark of our time, the plague of our millennial parade; we don't care. More often than not, the winning side is determined, not by their actions, but by their in-actions, and by the admirable way by which they didn't give a shit. My god, it's thought, they don't give a shit, they're immune to mortal weapons. My god, it's said, he's still pining over her, he's such a creep, did you see that post? I heard he tried to call her. TWICE!

It's hunger. Hunger that drives us to bad literature written about a worse time with flawed characters that violate every right we spent years trying to get back and every freedom people died to regain because the characters cared, sometimes comically, about anything. They cried with sheer agony, they laughed in ecstasy, the killed over indignation, they sacrificed themselves after long speeches, proclamations and declarations of love or cannibalistic remorse. They died for causes, for ideals and for mere impulses. They had the capacity for a wider range of human emotion, most of which spectrum is now either frowned upon or unheard of in the natural life span of a modern man. People run back to classics for the same reasons children run to dragon lore. 

Which brings me to the next order of business; Daredevil. Why the hell do I like it so much? The guy embodies almost every concept I hate, yet I find myself drawn to the tortured Matt Murdoch. Point in question; vigilantism. I'm against it. Not only can you not save people from themselves or stop the high order of organized crime that is the judicial system, but as the saying goes; you cut an altruist and an egotist bleeds. Next point in question; emotional creatures. They repel me, on a very primal level. Matt Murdoch is an emotional wreck of a vigilante, a highly volatile egotist and pathetically reactive grown man given to bouts of whining fit of an overgrown 10-year-old. Why is he my favourite superhero? 

Watching the Daredevil show did what my friends failed to do over a year and a half of constant ranting, half-assed threats and forced exposure; it successfully got me into comic books. Not only that, it got me into comic books for the sole reason of finding out more about Matt Murdoch. Of course, after the Marvel universe got a hold of me, it led me by the hand down a glittering corridor of bling and diamonds to about a dozen other fandoms that I'm now part of, the n00b that I am, but one doesn't expect less of Stan Lee's multi-billion dollar industry of bear traps. 

The question of why I like Daredevil has been on my mind for a couple of days, itching away at the back of my head like a freaking shackled Cujo. My better senses tell me knowing why will open the flood gates to cognitive dissonance, since the guy is not only the intrinsic opposite of everything I believe checks out, but is - to put it simply - fucked up in the head with cuckoo birds chirping out of his nostrils twice a day. Not looking forward to that revelation, no sir. 

Tumbling out of the ether and onto material ground, it's final projects week so I'm stressed out threadbare, with projects to hand in that shook digits off my life counter and witnessed the revival of dying arts of war against enemies of olden ways who wear their hairs in flowing strands that seemingly leak their IQ points with every whip, back and forth. Following that, there looms the horror of finals week, where junior hobbits explore and push the horizons of bullshit to get past the balls and hoops of the paper-shuffling Saurons and emerge on the other end even dumber than they came in. 

All things considered, summer ripens with promises of an internship, a martial arts training and a beach retreat with good friends. Disclaimer: Don't jinx it, you fuckers. 

Noise

So many changes. All the fucking time. I'm exhausted.

Hope

Of Much Needed A'Tuin-ing

Sometimes, during those late hours of the night, you get some moments of clarity. True ones, that aren't obstructed by desires or sidetracked by rationalizations. You let yourself daydream, breaking free of the reigns of reality and morality, what you can and can't be, and you just see, detachedly, what you're all about.

You're not necessarily any less lost, but you're not panicking about it. Time stops, silence sets in like a medium of its own, and you really see; all that you want, all that you need, and all that you fear. Reality loosens its grasp, and you see beyond yourself. All that's important to you is obvious. All that you need presents itself. And you're not in distress.

Perhaps, instead of looking back onto things that were, peeking in on them as they're undressing, or looking on to things that will never be, getting attacked by liquor bottles from unfriendly hobos, you could look in on a time that never was and never will be.

A time with more dragons and space and mathematical extrapolations. A world of flowing coffee rivers and gremlins and music. One where gravity isn't so certain and time isn't so constraining. One where you could visit long forgotten tunnels, saunter into forbidden forests, and hack into your old inventory to arm your avatars with shields and great swords and charms, instead of intentionally casting them as helpless, unarmed and scared intruders.

One where winds blow by and through, obliterating you in scale. Rounding up into a deafening storm worthy of the wrath of Norse gods, shooting down from the skies to spite you, and in all its arrogance, instead, it soothes you.

RIP Terry Pratchett

Goodbye, you wonderful wonderful alien. You came from a better world, this one has never deserved you, and now the mothership has come back for you. You cannot die, for in your words: “No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.” And yours shall not, not for me.

Kurt Vonnegut & Joseph Heller War Experience: Battle of the Bulge, Bombing Raids, VE Day (1995)