The Start of Something New

Memory

2010-10-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Strangely, it settles beautifully like the moon riding midnight waves. Anger and blame is such a heavy burden, it sticks to your eyes tainting everything you see. As I stare at you under the safety of my lashes all I see his him. The flash of white in his eyes, that calloused hand that left an invisible brand, his desperate animal need, the stale stench of alcohol. I look at you and I can feel the pain, I can feel his sweat dripping down my back. Some memories leave permanent marks in your mind.

Bed-time reading!

2010-08-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

A rather comforting thought;

'Manics live in a room of mirrors and do not see the inconvenient discrepancies between what they project and what they perceive. They re-create the world. To outsiders they appear self-indulgent, vain, egotistical, but it is an ego that no longer owns its identity, because it is incapable of insightful introspection and the self-control that insights bring' - The Flight of the Mind pp. 46

Musings

2010-08-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

How quickly your views on love change and how inconsistent it all ends up being; fission and fusion, breaking and making our social world. A recent evolution in my love life has rendered me a little more than distracted. In regards to love however, I am uncomfortable in the world of Byron, Keats and Shelley. I find myself slightly angered by Wordsworth’s daffodils and Shakespeare’s summer’s day; not least because they are battered and worn. I am in actual fact quite a follower of biological determinism and its associated frames of thought. This is more particularly the case in regards to human interaction and so I tend to view love through a series of hormones, feedback mechanisms and theories of sex selection.

Surprisingly however, and despite my dislike of it, within this I still have room for a degree of sentimentality. By way of Orwell’s ‘doublethink’ I sometimes allow myself to believe in a more ‘spiritual’ and meaningful connection. After all, we as Humans excel in ascribing meanings to nigh on anything in both our conscious and unconscious lives. Our second greatest talent is our ability to deceive our rational minds providing a functional mechanism that maintains our doubts at a survivable level – and so love transcends biology and enters the domain of god. The belief that what you have is important, that it has meaning and that this meaning is beyond simple reproduction and the necessary mixing of genetic material is flawed.

Feeling that love is little more than a sequence of biological drivers doesn’t, for me at least, detract from appreciating how marvellous (and dangerous) this feeling is. Understanding this however helps to provide an essence of rationality where a definite chasm of its lack has been created.

There is something strangely self-indulgent about allowing yourself to wash in the tidal currents of a newly burgeoning attraction. To slip into gentle day dreams and live a hundred lives within an hour, lives that never truly live up to the reality. The addictive woman that lives crouching within me relishes in these little fantasies of mine. My tenuous hold on reality and stifling, spectrum-level social awkwardness means that I live much of my life in dream.

Red Wine Induced Ranting

2010-02-15T09:00:00.001-08:00

Maybe it’s best I die so I don’t pass on this gene of suicide. I’m aware of it, is my mum? Is that how it passes down the generations? Where she is blissfully unaware and now still alive, I have to live through every minute knowingly. Knowing that I have the curse. Should I end it now before I make anyone else feel like they don’t know what is normal anymore? End it now before I hurt more people, before I pass on what my mum passed on to me. Oh for the joy of someone who understands. Oh for that peace. All the academics and physicians, psychiatrists, and anthropologists who can tell me the reason, nay, the origin of this, cannot. They cannot. I cannot. In my struggle to understand everyone around me, everyone, I fail to ever understand myself. And for sure, that was the only reason I tried. It’s too hard. I failed. I am failing. This search has given me nothing.

All I can do is try to help, yet this world has stunted me from that. To try to give others the love and care that I so need, that I need to give. I cannot. I know the love that everyone needs, I know it so well because it’s what I want. And I am human. Only human. I can give you that love. I can give you all that love. And through doing that I can annihilate myself happily. I thought this was what I should do. I thought this was what I could do. So why is there no path for me to do it? Annihilation. Happy, uncomplicated annihilation.

All the people who know me. They know me. That must mean I am alive. I am me. And I am here. I am the girl who mopped the floor in Qatar. This is my body. Am here. I am here. My dad, my mum, no. I am still struggling to come to terms with that. And all these relationships, these loves I can’t tell what they are. I cannot tell where there lies the truth. I cannot tell the real connection. Where I fit in this love and family. …. I fail to find the purpose for being human, for being in love, and for being here. I cannot find it in the books…. It should be in the books. One life and I am here.

A little Interlude..!

2010-01-13T05:43:00.001-08:00

We will not last too long my love; I feel that love is fickle.

I think I’ve lost my faith in love that literature foretold,
Where man and woman meet and then together they grow old.
How can fidelity exist in a world that’s born to breed?
Where a man’s own commodity is in fact his very seed?
How can you love a lifetime when that lifetime is in doubt?
Where replenishing insanities make the weak devout.

Love is only an interruption in a world without direction,
Where men can’t help but follow the arrow of their erection.
We meet and fall in love in this huge whirlwind of desire,
We promise each our lives and then our bodies fuel the pyre.
We go from one to next yet think that love but two can bind,
But love reaches out it claws and those naïve get left behind.

I cannot love you darling because I don’t believe it’s true,
I cannot believe that love was made for only me and you.
Love is a greedy lie that fools our minds in clouds of dope,
It tricks us into thinking that love is life and life is hope.
It gives us grand ideas and tells us how to live our life,
It shows us that a couple should become the man and wife.

The Importance of Dreaming

2009-12-01T04:15:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since i've nurtured a dream through to fruition. I realise now that this is a fundamental joy that is missing from my life. A really worthy dream needs to be right at the cusp of what seems impossible to you, it has to be difficult. It should force you to test yourself and your abilities, exposing new strengths and capabilities. Of course there are things we achieve in our day to days lives that are important, achievements of which you should be proud but the feelings involved are very different. There is something indelibly special about setting yourself a seemingly fantastical goal that affords itself the title of 'dream' simply because it seems just that; a dream.
Depending upon the circumstances of your life, your own dreams may seem absurd, or easy to others but it doesn't matter because they are hugely personal, and I suppose in some ways hugely selfish. For me the last dream I made real was walking an 800km route across Northern Spain called the Camino de Santiago. All throughout the planning phase and many of the days of walking I never actually believed that I would do it. I have a tendency to ignore things i'm scared of up until the very last moment before immersion (unfortunately this often goes hand in hand with a severe lack of preparation).
In the days before I left for this walk I lived a slightly deluded yet happy double life. While the most part of me was getting on with preparing for my first year at university (which I started late having worked a couple of years beforehand) the other half of me was busy with thoughts of the impending walk. I'd heard about it from reading a book I don't particulalry like (but is liked by many others) that was lent to me by my mother, Shirley MacLain's, 'The Camino.' I can't really remember how I went from being introduced to this route through a novel, a Shirley MacLaine one at that, to convincing myself that walking it might actually be a good idea.
At the time I wasn't in a particulalry inspiring or happy place. Having moved back to the UK from Indonesia, (I say back but i'd hardly lived in the UK before) I was having trouble settling in to British 'culture' so i'd put off univeristy temporarily and in my second year back moved in with my mum who lived in a small provincial town in South Wales to work and save some money. It is an undeniably stunningly beautiful area but filled with too many horrible, backwards, 'would prefer it if you to failed' people with what is actually a commendable collection of 'ists' just unfortunately not the good ones. The place reeks of failure, boredom, alcoholism and illicit sex (mainly between teenagers and old men). It is in all likelihood a getaway for Nick Griffin and the babbling lunatics that support his views. If it weren't for the wonderfully spiritual mountains and idyllic beaches my passionate dislike for this area would rapidly slide into a hatred that I don't often feel.
It seems I've drifted slightly off topic but i'll leave it at that for today and get back on the Camino de Santiago next time...

The Job Hunt..

2009-11-24T04:46:00.000-08:00

The job hunt is now well underway, the days are passing and the applications are going out. One atrocious interview, another on its way and some soul destroying, slightly entertaining visits to the job centre. I started this a few weeks ago with a great deal of excitement and optimism for what is the beginning of a new path and the end of struggling for money (so I thought). Having been a full time student for four years now, getting through my undergraduate and masters was supported through a bank loan and various, quite eclectic part time jobs. These ranged from the hard but hugely satisfying job of nursing home work to the more interesting, research worthy position of working in the local 'you'd be crazy to go there' pub.
It's been 6 years since I finished school with the I.B. diploma under my belt, some rosy plans for the future and an overwhelming desire to no longer be financially dependent upon my dad. 2009; my dependence has shifted to the bank and the state, I have on my CV a BA, MSc, various temporary research positions with International NGOs and a brief paragraph on a 800km trek I once did as 'proof' of my motivation. During this time I have lost two friends to incurable diseases and one to an unexpected heart attack, she was only 40. I've spent time with a hermit deep in the Rajasthani desert, living in a small fishing village south of Mumbai and built a Seamoss farm in Tobago. I have also found someone to love and share things with. At 24, finally done with being student I need to carve my place in the world through the medium of my career.
It's hard to keep up the morale in such a liminal space where it can seem that there is little giving meaning to your life. We exist in a world defined by titles, name-tags and roles. A woman can at one time be a mother, daughter, sister, lover and friend which are of course all worthy roles. Take away the vocation, course or job however and there feels a certain lack of credibility, or sense of self. What are you? By all means unemployment is not the worst evil in the world but it's a funny little sphere to live in and I hope not to be here for very much longer. I'm not enjoying the stand-still and my optimism seems to be running out. It's easy to see how people can spend months unemployed, it's hard to keep the motivation going and believe in your capabilities at the same time. As the money is running out, the tenancy on this East London flat is too... fingers crossed for this interview tomorrow.