Mentalechoes

Once I got home I realised I wasn't going to sleep for a while so I turned on the TV and stereo and put on a dvd. It was Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez, I was in the mood for some serious gore and over acting bullshit to match my attitude. As the film got going, I decided to ply myself with whiskey shots from my Glennfiddich bottle that was still mostly full and sitting quietly begging to be used. The blood splattered, the whiskey flowed, and a couple more lines got done. At some point before the end credits, the whiskey won in the fight for my consciousness and knocked me out cold on the couch. And it was there I found myself several hours later, with the dvd start page on repeat at high volume, and my head feeling pretty much like it was going to explode at any second.

Hangovers when you're 22 are hard things to cope with, but hangovers when you're in your late 30's are cruel vicious bastards that hurt twice as bad, because you should know better than to get one in the first place! So there I lay, for the next few hours sipping water and watching movies trying to get myself together so I could go and get some food.

It was at some point in the early afternoon that I realised The Shark (my red fiets [pushbike] named in honour of the fireapple red cadillac convertable Hunter S Thompson drove in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) had a flat tyre and that I wasn't going to get anywhere without that being fixed. My head had subsided to a dull throb, that kind of pulsating rhythmic pain that feels like it's in tune with your heartbeat, but could be coped with as long as I didn't over exert myself, or have to deal with a bout of constipation in the toilet. I grabbed the puncture repair kit, a bucket of water, the tyre pump and my sony walkman, and headed outside to The Shark to get the poor baby sorted out.

On my walkman I had a DJ set playing by Buren and Lieskowkski, with this one track, a remix of "When We Were Young" by The Killers, which is one of my favourite progressive electronic tunes. The rest of the world was drowned out as I turned my bike over and began stripping the inner tube out from the tyre to find the leak. It became a practice in meditation at some point, the slow methodical movements, with the uninterrupted lulling melody in my ears. I found myself taking great pleasure in the exercise, and the simplicity of the actions. I realised that this was a microcosm of life; simplicity in our every day lives and simplicity in our actions is what gives the greatest pleasure, this way we can experience pleasure every day, and not have to wait for some future moment for it. I smiled at the people in the bus stop opposite from where I was working and felt very satisfied with being outside on a cool autumn day.

All told it took about an hour to fix the bike, as I wasn't in a hurry and I was enjoying taking it easy. By the end of it my headache had passed and I was feeling up for a ride to get some food as chronic hunger was setting in, and I badly wanted something to eat. Maybe a nice turkish pizza with meat would be the go. Picking up my stuff, I felt good, and had a sense of peace, though I knew me and the whiskey bottle would be making our aquantance again sometime later. But I swore it would be different than last night. I always did! Maybe one of these days, it will be!

Padwanna!

Technorati Tags MentalEchoes

It was an unusual party for me, I didn't know anybody there except Rupert, whose sole purpose in life is to attempt having sex with every woman on the planet at least once. Generally this means you don't get to talk to him much once he's got his target sorted out, so I was left to go and make new friends on my own. The crowd was mainly a work one, where everybody knew everybody else and so me and one other guy were the only ones that weren't part of the office. No problem, I started hooking into the gear in the toilets which I always found was a good conversation starter. There was a Spanish girl there, and a couple of Scandanavians, some French girls and a couple of local Dutch guys that had quite exciting and boring lives, all at the same time.

One line lead to another, followed by liberal servings of mixed spirit drinks, and before too long, I was pretty drunk and wired all at the same time. After about 2 hours I realised I was bored as hell, maybe it was the R&B they had put on as a constant drone that was the cause of it, because personally I can't stand this type of music. Or maybe it was that I just couldn't seem to socialise with anyone other than some drunk Swede that just didn't make any sense at all when he was talking at me. I was trying to work out if it was the tattoo on my left forearm that might be causing the crowd to react in a funny way, or if it was just me being self conscious about it. I also found out that Rupert had taken off and left without saying a word. I was a bit pissed off about that, but not something totally unexpected for him. So I decided to take off and head for home.

I detoured past Rupert's place, which was close by and found him there reduced to a state of relative speechlessness as he was going pretty hard at his own gear. I had a drink with him and asked him why the hell he left.

"Thought I'd go down to my local and see if any fanny was about". He said as if this explained it perfectly well.

Nothing came to mind as a reply, so I decided to drink more instead of continuing down that line of conversation. I'm not quite sure how long that went on, there was more lines and more drinks, but at some point I decided I wasn't going to stay there until the sun came up. Rupert and I had a bad habit of having some messy nights together that ended sometime around midday the day after we started. I was determined to not have that happen because the crash that followed was a nightmare to deal with. So I call a cab and told him I was leaving. All the while he keep trying to convince me to stay.

Padwanna!

* Part 3 to follow next. 

Friday night was a pretty big night. I met up with English Rupert(*1) in the far east of Amsterdam at a house warming party for an aquantaince of his. I got an invite by proxy, since I was'nt a friend of the guy whose party it was, or his girlfriend for that matter, but Rupert had arranged it beforehand so apparently it was cool for me to turn up. After all the fucking around and trying to get it together, I was only 2 hours late, which is pretty good by my standards. I tried to get a tuk tuk earlier in the evening, but because they only have 8 of them for the entire area around the Amsterdam A10 ring highway, they told me I would have to wait for an hour and a half; not surprisingly I told them to go screw themselves. It took all told a 10 minute walk, 30 minute tram ride, and 15 minute taxi to get to the party, which seemed like a fair deal considering the quality of women that were there.

Rupert was dressed in his usual slick English style; expensive denims, Sombre collared shirt, and a devastating sexy brown leather jacket that attracts women like bees to sticky flowers. I've never worked out why women fall for Rupert so heavily, it's not like he's a Greek Adonis, but he does have a very brown tan from his time spent in a local solariam, and highly refined sense of dutch language. When I met him at the party he was already fucked, yet I still managed to catch him at a fairly compus mentis state, comparted to what was to come. We'd done a trade in the bathroom area for a gram of good gear for 50 euros, which was my usual party mix for a friday night, and the start of my night to come.

Part 2 tomorrow(*2) 

Padwanna 

*1 Rupert isn't his real name, it's actually Reginald, but I'm not using his real name to protect his identity. 

*2 In an effort to write a new post every 3 days, some posts will broken up into multiple peices to make it easier to read, and also to make it easier to write, especially when it's 1.30am on a Monday morning and I have to be up and at work by 9am the same day.

A lamb and homunculus sat across from each other in a room that contained nothing but themselves and a door. The homunculus looked at his own form and then looked for a long time at the lamb, and said, “Please tell me, what does it feel like to be alive”?

The lamb looked at the well crafted limbs of the little man and replied back, “Like nothing you could ever understand, and like nothing I could ever explain to one such as you who does not know what life is”.

The homunculus thought about this for moment. As he did so he looked at his little hands with warped little fingers and flexed them into a fist, and relaxed them again. It felt real enough, which made him think that perhaps being alive was more than tactile sensation. So he asked the lamb another question. “Please tell me, what is your purpose in being alive”?

The lamb turned his head backwards and forwards slowly. That was a difficult question, one he had never thought about it before. “My purpose is to eat grass, and grow wool, and walk where my master leads”.

There was a small silence as neither of them spoke.

“And that is all”? Asked the homunculus.

“What more needs there be, aren’t these things enough”? Said the lamb.

“But does not being alive encompasses more than mere day to day existence”? Spoke the homunculus. He felt incredulous that so complex a being who had a heart and mind and soul thought nothing of his own nature and place outside of the room.

“Why does there need to be more to life than living happy day to day? What then is your purpose, if these things do not satisfy you”?

“I was created in an image of my creator, I was imbued with purpose from that moment. But I do not know what my purpose is for they did not tell me. I was placed here and told to wait, and then nothing further. I did not even have time to ask him if I had a soul, for they just left. Can that which is artificial have a soul”? Once again the homunculus clasped his hands into a fist and marveled at the interplay of muscle on bone, and tissue on muscle. Would his creator make him so perfect in his body, and yet forget to give him a soul? He did not know the answer to this, and it saddened him.

“You ask questions that do not need to be answered. Be satisfied with what you are, and exist your existence as you are meant to, for in this way you shall be happy”. The lamb told him, with an authority born from conviction that his way of thinking was the only way.

“No, that I cannot do. For the question burns inside of me, and I must have an answer”. And so saying, the homunculus stood up and walked over to the door, opened it and walked through. The lamb watched as the door closed behind him, and he wondered whether he should follow the little artificial man, looking for his answer. No, the lamb thought, there is happiness in grass, and being led by the master. And that’s exactly what he thought about: grass.

Five minutes later the lamb forgot the humonculus ever existed.

Padwanna!