Mentalechoes

The burning curtain seems now to have indeed been a portent omen. One friend lies in the hospital striken with a serious illness; another has renounced me for reasons unknown. All in the space of a single day!

I’m not really one who sees signs in everyday events, but having two such things happen only hours apart, well you do start wondering what’s going on. As superstitious as it sounds, ill luck always to seems to follow ill luck, as if each negative thing that happens seems to create a magnetic field that pulls more negativity towards it. Or at least that’s the way it can seem to a person helplessly caught up in the swirling center of it.

I wonder what tomorrow brings!

Padwanna!

Tick tock, tick tock, goes the clock.
Time passes, I take part in life classes.
What do I learn; for what do I yearn?
There is plenty to see, but what shall I be?
When the tick tock of the clock,
comes to a stop!

I’m obsessed with time! I’m obsessed with it because when I’m not wasting it, there is never enough to do all the things that I want. I find it so ironically funny that we know exactly how much money we have, but we have no idea how much time we have, yet we are so careless with time, and so careful with our money! Doesn’t that seem so incredibly back to front?

It’s this ‘here now, gone tomorrow’ finality of life that drives to me write this blog to be honest with you. In the dawn of the digital age these blogs, these windows into our own unique minds, will survive into the centuries to come in a form almost indestructable: ones and zeros! Historians of the future will not so much pick up leather bound volumes of vellum and parchment, but instead spider across untold exabytes of stored data in vast computer databases. I often fantasise about my blog being discovered in 500 years by someone who stumbles upon me by chance, in some hidden away corner of an unimaginably big data center. Then to be resurrected and brought back again to the light of day for a new generation. I’m vain that way. I would like to be famous one day as a fabulous writer.

Really, if we can’t take anything with us, then it’s what we leave behind that makes us immortal!

But this discussion all seems so maudlin tonight; thinking about the time after our life has passed. Perhaps it’s the haunting electro tunes that seems to be heightening my own gothic feeling, but it feels very dark and heavy to be talking about this. And yet at the same time, perhaps not. To try to see past our own lifetime lets us appreciate how precious the time is that we have within our lifetime.

When I was seventeen I used to go and see a clairvoyant with my mother as I was fascinated by what my future held. I used to hold crystal balls, and turn tarot cards, and hand over personal objects, all to be read by mystical old ladies who I believed had a power to tell me of myself in the time beyond my mental vision. Later I came to realise that I didn’t want to know what my future was because I came to feel that once someone had told me, then that future would set like instant drying cement and I would only have that path to follow. Perhaps I was looking to see if great things were in store for me; perhaps I was hoping I would become someone great. I don’t really remember anymore. It was a long time ago, and I have travelled a long way from that boy on the beaches of the Gold Coast. Whatever it is I was hoping to see back then in the cards and hear in the readings, I am fairly sure I found them later as I left home and headed out for the world beyond, to terra icognita.

Now though I find myself once again fascinated by the future, and I become intensely curious to know what’s in store. After all, the first part of my life is over, my heady days of youth. Now comes the second phase of life, the days of wisdom born of life experience and the power of a strong mind.

I wonder if this obsession with life and time is the result of the fire yesterday? Maybe! I spent a long time afterwards playing what-if games with myself. I experienced many different endings to the one that I did experience. Some of them better, some of them worse, all of them guiding me to another place away from where I am now.

I wonder if it is possible to know what lies ahead? Because at this time of my life, I think I would like to see what shape the horizon takes.

Padwanna!

I’m still shaking with adrenaline. Even though it’s been about 20 minutes now. A curtain in the living room moved somehow so it was draped over a light bulb on a standing lamp. I was sorting out tax papers on the couch when I became aware of a burning smell tingling in my nose. At first I thought it was in another room, so I got up and walked into the kitchen as that’s where the gas central heater is. but there was nothing. I then stepped into my bedroom but there wasn’t even a hint of smoke odour there, so I came back out to the living room once more. I checked a lamp that a light had burst in, which had also shorted out the electricity in the front half of my flat. The smell was strong though, something was definitely burning. I looked up wondering if it was coming from the flat above and that’s when I saw this acrid black smoke pouring across the ceiling. My eyes followed it to the curtain over the light bulb. A pit in my stomach opened and I reflexively wanted to vomit. I ran across to the curtain and swung it away from the light but I could see a large lick of fire already running up towards the roof.

My god, this was actually happening! My flat was on fire!

Suddenly instinct took over. I didn’t even remember it was there, but I had a large drinking glass on the coffee table filled with water. I violently grabbed for it and tossed it on to the flames. Luckily there was enough there to seriously dampen a large portion of the material that was set to incinerate. Then with all of my nervous strength I yanked the curain off the railing and ground it under foot into the well spread out water puddle on the wooden floor.

I stood there for long seconds doing nothing; not thinking; not acting; just standing there looking around me. Then I opened up all the windows and began cleaning up.

The curtain, of course, is ruined. It was very expensive too. I’ll never be able to afford one like it now. But taking stock of the place, everything else is fine. Had I have been but 30 seconds slower, this place would have turned into a raging inferno, as the entire building – all three floors – is built of out wood, carpet, curtains and more wood. I’m unlucky, and yet lucky on the same side of the coin. How the curtain came to rest over the light bulb I don’t know, as I don’t recall moving it. The only thing I can think of is that it shifted when I turned it on earlier tonite. Surely it couldn’t be anything supernatural. Could it?

If this is the start of the week, I wonder what bodes in the coming days?! If I was a superstitious person I might be worried as this is a fairly ‘in your face’ sign. But I’m not superstitious, only very spiritual, and Buddhism doesn’t say anything about burning curtains being significant. Luckily I’m not Catholic otherwise I would have to take it as God trying to talk to me, and since he was trying to do so through an expensive burning curtain I can’t replace, I would definitely have to say he is pissed at me for something. If he wasn’t he would have just spoken to me through the television like he does for Americans. But yeah, I’m not Catholic, so it doesn’t mean a thing… I think!

Still, having said that, this does have me worried somewhat. I think I’ll hangoff signing up for that skydiving acrobatics course I wanted to follow. Seems like the timing might be bad. I wonder if there is still space in the Yoga Knitting for Beginners class then? I’ll give em a call tomorrow and see.

Padwanna!

I decided to have a late dinner tonite, a midnight supper as it were. The hunger pains got to the point where I couldn’t ignore them, so I decided to cook something quick; a couple of spiced beef mince rissoles and a diced up vege burger. I am fairly impressed with vegeburgers at the moment, they’re the product of soyabeans and good old fashioned manmade know-how, which is why they taste so good. I’m impressed by how far food technology has come from the days when vegeburgers used to taste like wet cardboard, and looked like compressed baby shit.

The television is on in the background, MTV is playing. There is some Hollywood breakup special show being shown. Periodically I glance over and watch comedians take the piss out of the very public breakups of some of todays hottest stars. It reminds me of a circus with trained monkeys dressed up in brightly coloured costumes. It all seems to skin deep and fake that after a while I just can’t watch it anymore, and so I turn the television off.

The silence feels good.

I look out the window in the computer room now and take in the view of the dark road outside, lit by intervals of street lights that seem to lead me purposefully to a large advertising billboard displaying a beautiful woman and some beauty cream product. It’s nice to see her sultry smile, and I wonder what the real woman is doing right now, and if someone is actually looking at her smile like that in a room somewhere.

It’s cold tonight though. The skin on my arms and legs prickles with the coolness of the air that seems to grab at me from time to time. My central heating is on, and apparently it’s 21 degrees, but it feels colder… much colder. Perhaps it’s the darkness which makes it feel that way. It’s always colder when it’s dark, even if you are in a heated room. I notice as if for the first time that I am sitting here in the flat in the dark except for one reading light that’s on next to the computer.

Light versus dark.

I hope I don’t dream tonight. My dreams are nightmares and they are recently they have been getting stronger. I always seem to have nightmares these days, I don’t know why. I can’t remember the last time I dreamed something happy and nice. Most nights now, around the time of the witching hour I wake up from a bad dream with feelings of dread, and that I am being watched. Some nights I have to scream myself awake to leave a place in my mind that terrifies me. I’m becoming used to the nightmares, but not enough that I lose my fear of the dark in my bedroom.

Not to worry, they’re only dreams, and dreams can’t hurt you.

Padwanna!

“So why don’t you have a girlfriend then”? Was the blunt question put to me as I was filling up a coffee cup with hot chocolate in the kitchen.
“Well… because I don’t want one”! I replied to him in an offhand manner.
“Are you gay”? He fired straight back at me, in that disconcertingly tactless dutch manner that the dutch are infamous for.
“No I’m not gay, I just couldn’t be bothered with all the hassles of another cross cultural relationship again”. It made sense in my head, but I guess it didn’t make any sense to him because he screwed his nose up in a way that said he thought I was speaking bollocks!

Well maybe I was, and maybe I wasn’t. The truth is I don’t really know why I don’t have a girlfriend, and so if I don’t know, how was I supposed to answer the question. But he had me thinking about why he asked if I was gay. This seems to be something that gets asked of me from time to time with enough regularity that I wonder if I, in some way, I give off some sort of subliminal gay vibe.

It’s not like I haven’t had offers from potential girlfriends over the last few years. But somehow for one reason or another, it hasn’t worked out. Either because of them, or because of me. Which is to say, they weren’t what I was looking for. At some point during the dating process, some sort of criteria wasn’t met, and that would be it from my side.

“Did you used to have a girlfriend”? The collegue asked.
“Yeah a couple of years ago, but she’s left the country now, and lives somewhere else with someone else”.
“And you’ve not found someone else”? It sounded to me like an accusation, but I figured it was just this guy.
“Err… yeah… no, I haven’t”.
“Is that a yes or a no”?
“That’s a no. There’s really not that many free women around you know”.

It’s true too. Dutch people seem to pair off early, like around 15 or so at school. By the time they get to 19 they are already giving advice to each other about how to keep a long term relationship fresh and the sex interesting. I have no idea how they manage to find life partners on one date as a kid, but they do. Seriously! When I was 16 a long term relationship was the whole weekend. Once I started having sex at 17 it was measured in hours. It wasn’t until I became 19 that I had my first really seriously relationship that lasted all of a one year. How dutch people can get into relationships so early and stick with them is another one of those cross cultural idiosyncracies that totally baffles me, much like quantum physics and how Britney Spears music is popular. At any rate, if you’re a 30 something single foreign guy in Amsterdam, you’d best sign up to expatica.com (a foreign expats community site) to improve your dating chances otherwise you better get used to living in a desert!

“You know what you’re problem is”? He said to me as he hit the button on the coffee machine to dispense a strong cappucino into a new white plastic disposable cup.
“I’m way too good looking for this country… and I’m way too funny”!
“No, that’s not right”. His face deadpan serious as he said this. I wondered if he even was aware of the fact I was being sarcastic. Probably not! “You’re looking for a dream. Why don’t you try looking for a woman instead”!

I walked back to my desk and stared out the window for a while, waiting for an answer or sign from God to fly past. Was I chasing dreams? Was I chasing anything at all? I didn’t really know. But it kind of nagged at me how he was close to a mark that I didn’t even want to admit was there under my surface. I decided then that I was going to do something about it and make it easier to meet women and date them. Dropping a couple-a-hundred items of the criteria list was a good place to start, I thought. I’ll get around to it soon too, I made a promise to myself.

Whether I do or not is another thing entirely!

Padwanna!

You can almost drown yourself in shit if you try hard enough. I mean, man… it’s just so easy to keep layering shit on top of shit that eventually you can’t breathe anymore.

Worrying about every day shit; worrying about shit at work; taking shit for doing something wrong; copping shit for doing something right; giving yourself shit trying to work out if anybody even likes you for who you are. It goes on and on.

Sometimes, you really have to sit back and just say, I don’t give a fuck!

I don’t give a fuck if life isn’t perfect; I don’t a fuck if I’m not living up to all these standards imposed on me from the people around me; and I sure don’t give a fuck about trying to conform to the world outside my front door.

In the end, I think it’s conforming that makes the most shit in our lives. So really, we just have to take the attitude, I don’t give a fuck about all the shit to do with conforming! Cause really…

I DON’T GIVE A FUCK!!!

Ahh… I feel soooooooo much better! )

heh heh… I can even laugh again!

Padwanna!

Ever notice how life seems to flow from one liquid moment to another, and how we ourselves change to occupy the space that we are in during those moments?

Ever find it funny how, no matter how much time you have lived before the present moment; no matter how much you have seen until now; no two moments are ever the same?

Maybe moments can look the same from arms reach, but they aren’t when you look at them very closely and really see the details.

Maybe that’s why we all think time passes so quickly, because we only pay the most marginal attention to the details of each moment. Our attention actually being off elsewhere on something much more distracting and meaningless.

Moments are so free form, like liquid, that they shape around the people connected to each other, altering all our perception, all at the same time.

In one moment I can take the form of a lover; a total prick; a best friend anyone could ever want; an annoying asshole that should learn to shut the fuck up; a really funny guy that doesn’t take life too seriously; a person who just can’t get life together; a nerd; a spaz; a person epitomising cool; a fashion victim; a fashion statement; a person who has life totally together; a visionary; an idiot; a fool; an employee; a drug addict; a fitness freak; a son; an uncle; a grandson; an idol; and a memory.

In this same moment, I look around me with my minds eye and I see the different faces of the people I am connected with. I see a mother; a father; a son; a daughter; friends; best friends; strangers; hated bastards; an intellectual; an artist; a total bitch; drug addicts; a hero; a failure; a sex object; lost loves; old loves; anonymous voices; and many many memories.

Liquid moments.

Liquid lives.

Liquid time.

Liquid.

All flowing in one direction together; all swirling around each other; saturating everything with everything.

Perhaps it is this liquid nature of reality that allows us the biggest gift that reality can give us; the ability to change and be something different in the space of a single moment.

Liquid has no set form, it morphs and shapes itself the dimensions of the space it occupies. Maybe free will is nothing more than us having the ability to choose how a moment will be formed when the liquid of time flows into it.

It’s beautiful, to think of ourselves as being silvery droplets suspended in the liquid ocean of time, moving inexorably forward from a past, to occupy a present, to then move on to a future… one single moment at a time. Each moment totally malleable, and capable of lasting a lifetime or being over in hummingbirds heartbeat, all at the same time. Maybe that’s why when you have an orgasm at the same time with someone that you truly love, the exctasy can seem to last forever and yet be over so quickly, you wish you could capture that moment and hold on to it for the rest of your life.

for me, to think of life like this means that death is simply a flowing transition of our liquid essence from one ocean to another; our consciousness moving from this stream of time to the next. There is no ending or beginning to the flow of moments, and there is no beginning or ending to our liquid essence.

I find it fascinating that from one moment to the next moment, we carry the sum of our existence – our hopes, hurts, dreams, and experiences all encased in our mortal body – with us. It’s this totality that makes moving from single moment to single moment, so heartachingly painful and gut wrenchingly difficult, and yet at the same time, absolutely effortless and the simplest of all things in the universe. Because after all, time flows, and will always do so, and we are part of the liquid of time.

I hope you all are feeling happy today, and you all can find a moment of peace that you can stretch out for a whole heartbeat and a whole lifetime.

Padwanna!

I’m once again on a “get rich or die trying” kick! It kind of started this afternoon when I thought I had found the perfect business online opportunity in Bris-vegas that nobody else was doing. As it turns out, someone else is doing it, but not really in any professional way. I started running some figures through my head and worked out that if I could get just a moderate client list then I would be making around 30 grand a year (Aussie dollars). Not really enough to live on, but certainly enough to supplement a part time job, doing something else which would be a lot more fun than grinding where I am right now.

Chances are I won’t do it. There are a whole bunch of reasons why, but top of the list is -1- I am not living in Bris-vegas right now, -2- I don’t plan to move back just yet, and -3- I am really frigging lazy. Chances are it wouldn’t have worked anyway. But maybe it might have, I don’t know, and probably never will!

I think this making loads of money and becoming successful is part of this cycle of trying to give my life some meaning and relevance. After all, if you can become rich, you are obviously doing something relevant and meaningful. Everyone loves a millionaire, as they say!

Last week I had the idea to start producing lesbian porn movies for the European market. It wasn’t because I have some fantasy to film lesbian porn or anything, but that it is actually the cheapest type of porn to make, and has the biggest marketshare in porn, so more buyers for your art! I even had a friend willing to become an investor and partner. Mind you, in the haze of white lines that seemed to be getting racked up with startling regularity, I am sure we missed a lot of the fine detail that makes running such a business harder than what we first thought! At the time, it didn’t seem much more complicated than; find some girls, film them getting off, sell it to a porn dealer. As it was, after I had sobered up I decided I couldn’t go into such a business on ethical reasons; my mum would really not understand if she found out, and would probably be very cross with me! Strange how these things always seem to make more sense after a couple of lines though!

So I’ll keep coming up with ideas now about how to become a millionaire until this phase passes and I feel life has meaning to it, and I move on to the next fad thing of the moment. I once heard Arnold Schwarzenneger say, ‘anyone can become a millionaire, they just have to want it bad enough and it will happen’. I sort of believe him, but at the same time I don’t. After all, this was a guy who used to inject horse steriods into his body when noone else was doing it (for bloody good reasons too, mind you)! He’s willing to go a lot further than what I am to become rich and famous. Maybe that’s why I’m poor, I just lack commitment!

I’ll think about this a while longer! Especially about the lesbian porn idea, that seems to at least make me smile.

Padwanna!

I am reminded of that saying – be careful what you wish for because it might come true!

Only a few short entries back, I was bitching and moaning about how life was just a photocopy of days arranged one after the other and I really wanted something to happen to break me out of a rut.

No sooner had the digital ink had a chance to dry and the next thing I know I get a phone call from my Venezualan soul brother asking if he could move in for ‘a short while’. Seems he needs a place to stay for a bit till some personal heat cools down.

So for the first time in a while, I don’t feel so isolated. It seems someone must have been listening to me, because it is a bizarre set of circumstances to be sure that lead to my friend in moving into the flat, right when I was asking for one!

Bizarre, but very welcome.

Padwanna!

Man, did the weekend pass so quickly already?! What is it with weekends that time seems to speed up by a factor of two, making them pass by so fast you barely have a chance to register you were on a break from the nine to five routine.

Or maybe this one just seemed to go by so fast because I got shitfaced on Friday night and picked up a hangover and beginnings of a cold on Saturday, and totally got sucked into virtual reality on Sunday.

The one meaningful thing I did do was get on the phone to a close mate back home. Fuck it was great to talk to him again. He is someone who really has mastered the art of great conversation. For me there is nothing like talking to someone for a real personal chat. Email, and messaging people is good, but really, if you want to get personal, you have to talk. Anything less than talking is just so two dimensional and flat. A voice is warm and brings with it a whole bunch of layers of subtle communication that no ascii text can ever hope to emulate.

And now I go to bed with nothing but a blah-blah-blah feeling about the week ahead. I just don’t have the motivation to face it really. I’d like nothing more at this point than to just skip Monday by staying in bed sleeping and go straight to Wednesday.

I just wish there was something meaningful in my life! Not just days photocopied and redisplayed one after the other in a endless sequence with fuck all variation. It’s no wonder I go out on these excess-centric bingeing benders; at least a hangover tells me I am still alive and something different happened from the day before.

Maybe cabin fever has set in with the snow storm we had! Maybe end of project blues has finally sunk in! I think I need a few days off. I’m seriously at the fucking end of some sort of teether, I can feel it. I’ve got that the-walls-are-closing-in-on-me oppressiveness crawling over my body. Or maybe I’m drying out still from Friday nights excess.

Maybe some sleep will help.

Padwanna!