Mentalechoes

The Light Fantastic.

For some reason I’ve got this expression in my head. I’ve never even read the book so I’ve got no idea about its real meaning, but I do love the imagery that these words evoke.

It’s amazing how life quickly settles back into a routine after something really majorly big happens. A week after the biggest emotional blowout I can remember in the last few months, the dust is settling and life is once again sliding back into a predictable pattern. An equilibrium seems to have been reached. When I look around at what’s left, there isn’t much. Now that I’m here, I can’t say I’m surprised.

My mother once said to me that, no matter what tragedy strikes us, the sun will always set in the evening, and it will always rise again in the morning; and the world will continue to turn one day after the next… no matter what. At the time I felt I knew what she was talking about, because I was old enough to have lived a little and experienced some curved balls that life can throw at you. But it’s during times like these now that I really understand her message. I had a few days in the last few weeks when I really thought I just couldn’t face them, or make it through. And yet, every night the sun would go down, and whether I slept or not, the sun would rise, and I was still here. Eventually after enough sunrises and sunsets, you find that you’ve been taken away from whereever it was that was causing you so much grief in the first place. It’s one of those things that it doesn’t matter how hard you pray for it, the ground will not open up and swallow you, even though you hope to god it would.

It’s ironic now to wake up in the morning and find that life has become routine once again, without anything more interesting than a new sandwich for lunch that I haven’t eaten before. It’s a welcome change from days that would literally change hourly, and that I could barely keep up with. And yet at the same time, this return to a routine seems to have taken some energy out of living, making me feel less alive. I can see now why people who live dangerously say they feel like they live 10 years for every day.

In many ways we do define our lives according to the major events we experience. Always looking back on our past, seeing the emotional peaks as they spread out over our memory, filled in between with long periods of routine. I guess that’s why the Tibetans and Nepalese cultures have such a good understanding of life; their landscape is a mirror of their lives. Giving them a perspective that the perhaps the rest of us lack. Or so they said when I was there.

Padwanna!

I don’t think in my whole life I can ever remember such an intense January as this one now, in 2007. The January of the year I turned 12 was pretty close because my family moved from a small country town with only two television stations that started at midday, to a city by the coast where they had cartoons starting at 6.30am right up to the start of school. Let me tell you, that was better than sliced bread, free ice cream and a whole week of christmas days. But even the thrill of getting to watch Robotech before trundling off for a heady day of learning, can’t compare to the last four weeks.

In some ways, I think the experiences of this one month will ripple through my life for the next 10 years. It’s not just the bizarre love triangle that I’m talking about, but also a deeply painful reckoning to do with the man who pretends to be my father. All of it has combined into a single catalytic period of time that has led me to literally change my whole perception and outlook on life, and my part in it.

If it sounds deep, it’s because it is. I feel profoundly changed at some subatomic level of myself. I see the world in a different way. The easiest way to describe it is like walking out of a car crash and seeing your surroundings clearly after being deeply disoriented.

It’s hard not to get swept away with everything that is happening right now. Some days, I honestly don’t know which way is up. But I’m making an attempt to take back control of my life and not feel so much like a leaf blowing around in a very strong wind; always at the mercy of the elements surrounding it. Unfortunately it’s always easier to say than do, but then again, isn’t that true for nearly everything in our daily lives? Right now I’m making an effort to bring my life back to a state of calm after the emotional torrent that has swept me up from where I stood in it’s path. I hope it all works out, but I guess I will just have to wait and see.

I still wonder why though, did it all happen now?

Padwanna!

I don’t think we fully understand the consequences of our actions, until we are truly forced to face them. Or at least, I feel that’s how it works for many people, because if we did, then there wouldn’t be so many fucked up people in the world.

Right now, I’m being forced to face the consequences of some decisions I made, and I’m finding out that for me the cost was too high. The really screwed up part, is that if I could re-live that time over again, I would probably make the same decisions again.

Does that make me stupid, or bloody minded, or a masochist, or maybe even a thrill seeker? I don’t know. Maybe I never will, because it depends on who you tell the story too, as to what kind of judgment will get passed. All I know is, the cost has been too high, yet I would do it again.

And that’s something that can be very hard to live with.

Padwanna!

Where have you been?

It might be a question you would ask of me, having not seen me in two weeks. It’s also a question that I have been asking myself, because really the last two weeks have been a blur.

In answer to your question, I’ve been absorbed in an emotional experience that was as hot as fire, and cold as ice… fire and ice… creating a torrent of opposing forces from which came both intense pleasure, and aching pain.

I thought that I had experienced everything I ever would in terms of sexuality, and sensuality; I thought there was nothing new to the dynamics of relationships for me to learn; I thought I controlled my own surroundings.

Two weeks ago my life diverged from its predictable routine when I fell into a emotional reality defined by three connections; mine and two others. It was one of the most intense periods of my life. Nothing can compare to it. Because of this experience, I am more than I was before.

But there has been a price to pay for running in emotional overdrive for such a long time. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I knew it would be like that in the beginning, but I wanted to go with it anyway, because I craved the experience; experiences I had never known before. I only hope that there is something left to salvage once the fires have finally died.

Padwanna!

The journey from my place of work to my home involves two trams, one interchange point, and a short bike ride on The Shark (my fireapple red pushy named in homage of Hunter S’s first convertable in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). It only takes about 20 minutes if I’m lucky with the changeover. Yesterday I was, I got out of the 51 at the transfer stop and the 50 was waiting for us. I walked across the platform and managed to find a seat in the unusually crowded tram next to the window. A strikingly beautiful woman of about 50 sat down next to me. I could tell she was foreign because she was looking very intently around the cabin and out the windows much like a tourist does on their first trip. We got to the second last stop before I was getting off and she says to me, “Excuse me but do you speak English”?

I had to suppress a laugh, and fight the urge to joke, probably better than you do seeing as you’re American. I said that I did, and asked her if I could help. She pulled out a notepad that had the word WATERLOOPLEIN written in capitals on the top of the page.

“Do you know where this stop is”? She asked casually.

“Yes, but this tram isn’t going there. You needed to get on another line about 5 stops back”. She looked as if I just slapped her, so I knew there was a problem.

“I’m supposed to be meeting my friend to see an Opera in 30 minutes. I haven’t seen her in 5 years. I can’t miss this”. Some tears started to well up in her eyes and I felt genuinely moved.

“Okay”, I said, “can you afford a taxi fare of about 20 euro?

She eagerly nodded, “Yes, money is no problem”. I believed it too to look at her. She was very obviously a woman of considerable substance. So I said to her to get off at my stop and I would call a taxi for her.

I took her down to the road, and called her cab, and when it arrived I told the driver in dutch the destination she needed. Before getting in she took 20 euros out of her purse and asked me to take it as a gesture of her gratitude. I just smiled and told her to keep it and spend it on some drinks with her friend. Just make sure she had one for me, and that would be thanks enough. Before she got in the taxi, she gave me a quick hug and beamed this incredible smile at me and said, “Thank you! If only the world had more people in it like you”.

I waved as the taxi pulled away, and she turned and smiled. That smile was last thing I saw of her; that smile made me feel so happy, that for a few minutes, I had not a care in the world, it made my whole day.

I wonder how she enjoyed the opera?

Padwanna

Due to Beta Blogger being completely fucked up and losing all of my new blogs, and deleting old blogs because it doesn’t fucking work at all, I’ve moved Mental Echoes to this new url

Mental Echoes

I apologise for any trouble or inconvenience this puts you through. And to the readers who left comments on now missing or fucked up entries, I’m very sorry!

In time I will the new blog to the main page, and relegate the fucked up blogger one to an archived location with a link to get to it.

Sorry all! And to the blogger team… thanks for fucking up mine, and hundreds of other peoples blogs.

Padwanna

Well for some reason I am having tons of problems with blogger right now. Some of you will have noticed that blogs are going missing. This isn’t me deleting them, but blogger deleting them for me. And what’s worse, I am also having hideous connection problems in trying to get entries uploaded. So please perserve with me and hopefully it will get sorted out soon. At least I hope so because this is totally pissing me off!

Padwanna!

It seems like 2007 is going to be one of those years of new everything. My old blogger blog which had served me faithfully for a year and half all of a sudden completely and totally fucked up. I couldn’t upload new postings and worse, old postings were getting lost along with the comments that people were making! This of course was total shit, and couldn’t be tolerated! I mean I’m pretty relaxed about a lot of things in my life, but not my blog, because it’s my art, my legacy to the world, my connection with humanity! Oh no, when blogger started fucking with my blog, it was time to take drastic measures.

And so I did, making this here new blog that you are reading now. Youse all… all 5 of you! Well no matter, it’s not quantity but quality that counts I’ve always said! And youse faithful readers are all of the very highest quality! No matter what it says about you on toilet walls in seedy bars! It will take a while to get the layout and user feel-good factor just so, but yeah, if it means being able to post reliably and not lose your adoring comments which I just crave to read, then it’s going to be a fuck-sight better than that old dead horse of a blog I was flogging for no results and hence no reason!

I can’t help but think that my blogger issue is a small scale reflection of my wider life right now. So many things are different, with me and with people I am close to who surround me. I almost fail to take in how much life has changed in the last week if I stop thinking about it. It’s funny though, I’ve talked with a lot of people since NYE and almost everyone has said that 2006 was either a really good year or a really shit year, there wasn’t anyone that said it was just ‘okay’. Most everyone says that 2007 is going to be a year of radical change for them. I’d almost start to believe it’s the new age of aquarius or a Nostradamus prophecy coming true.

Maybe it’s got something to do with us all coming into the last few years of the first decade of the new millenium. I mean lets face it, this is the time period that defines the decade in our cultural history. Everyone will look back these few years as the benchmark for style, music, fashion and culture. I always feel that life starts to gain a momentum from here on in as we approach the beginning of a next decade too. The changeover of from one decade to another are always a transition point from one unique cultural definition to another. Which is why we can always point to a decade and say it had some particular feeling about it. The 70’s were rock, sex and long hair; the 80’s were glam, high tech and synthesised; the 90’s were grunge, underground rave, and a generation of apathetic kids all reaching adulthood. I’m still trying to work out what this decade is about. It doesn’t even have a name yet. What do you call it? The 1’s? Personally I like ‘first decade of the new millenium’, but it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like the others.

My feeling is that 2007 will be a year of change. I don’t even know how to qualify that in any meaningful way, except to say that there is an energy right now that is affecting a lot of people, and lives are moving in unexpected ways. I figure the best way to approach this is to be open to new things, and be positive when you see the landscape altering in front of you. After all, change is natural, it’s how you look at it and accept it that will determine whether it’s good or bad.

Padwanna!