Just no

So your evening went a bit south. And here you are, trying to make the best of it. And there they are, a person of thoroughly questionable character, sending good vibes your way. Do you shut them out, like a sane person would? No. You squint enough not to see the fine print and take the momentary gratification at face value. Because if you keep to the very middle of this road, you won't see the potholes. Or that it leads to into a cesspool. And you don't need to. It's just tonight.

People are so pathetic. And by people I half-heartedly mean someone less generic than that.

State of the Turnip

So, eight months have passed.

I went to Croatia. I settled into the new flat and did what I could to make sure that I get some peace and quiet.

Dated someone for about 2 months. Obviously it wasn't a complete success, since I'm writing this in the past tense, but it was a nice experience overall, and trauma-free.

Family's good.

Issues... still present, but shifted. A big one seems to be gone. Not sure how, but it really does feel like you're cured when you can't even be bothered to tart yourself up for a meeting with your kryptonite.

Right now I'm in a weird little situation. I'm not 100% sure what it is, which gets confusing and occasionally upsetting  Usually I play my cards close to my chest for maximum deniability, but here I went back and forth on it so much that I don't know what to think anymore, Even worse, I lost track of what I've been putting out there, signal- and message-wise. Maybe there's something to be said for flying blind. I don't know.

Going to see Simon Amstell live this spring. Birthday gift from friends. Something to look forward to.

...and sleep is here. Finally.

...Most of the Time

On second thought, that Beautiful People Say Yes thing could use a qualifier. I just spent an evening in an apartment full of stoned strangers, and I can't say that the experience enriched me in any way. Thankfully I react to awkwardness with a sort of giddy hysteria, but still, were it not for the fact that I latched onto a friend who literally makes people feel comfortable and welcome for a living, I'd have gone fetal.

So that's this year's Easter.

Repent

I went on a blind date. It was arranged by a committee headed by a girl I've never met in my life, who knew the other guy, somehow learned of my existence, and took it upon herself to hook us up. She's also a staunch Catholic, and while masterminding the whole deal she would sometimes take the time to say that she can't talk about it too much, or she'll have to go to confession. I am not making this up. It was reason #2 for why I went along with it. Reason #1 being my new motto: Beautiful People Say Yes. I took it from a David Guetta* number. Which tells you everything you need to know about the extent of my decline.

The guy turned out to be very nice and kind of handsome and (I think) into me. I turned out to be dead inside. Ana claims that the one thing he was missing was unavailability, but what does she know, stupid Ana, she's not the boss of me.

There is some truth to it, but I feel it isn't the whole truth. And I'm clinging to that, desperately.

* well ok, Sia, but the association still stings

Let's see how fast this thing can go...

Last night I went to an Amanda Palmer concert. I don't even like a lot of her music, but she is an experience, and she delivered. What's more, I am now crazy about this song:

It absolutely destroys me. Almost the way that one Iron and Wine number does, except it's also the reason why I can't listen to it, whereas I can't stop listening to this one.

I'm having major issues with my new neighbor blasting horrible music through the paper thin wall. It's been my #1 problem for the past two months, which I guess means that I don't really have any serious problems at the moment. Still, home stopped being a refuge, and for a closet introvert that kind of sucks.

It's also fall now, which is usually when the membranes get thinner for me, and I start jonesing for some... progress. So things are a bit raw.

Wow, this turned out to be a bit of a bummer entry. Then again with a song like that, what did I expect.

I think a major upset in the status quo would not go amiss. Supposedly a lot of people fear looking back on their life on their deathbed and feeling that they have wasted it. I don't care about that - if I'm on my deatbed, I'll be dead soon, and therefore beyond caring. Getting hit with that realization at, say, 50 though? That scares the bejeezus out of me.

On the other hand, the Chinese probably would have something to say about people looking for something a bit more interesting in their times.

The day I stop playing both sides of the argument is the day that happens.

You are impossible, Delilah

That's a nice place you brought me to

I inadvertently reenacted a scene from Weekend today, with minor adjustments, but right down to an actual line lifted from the movie and uttered (also unwittingly) by my companion.

There's a pattern again. Different than usual, but just as bad. This one actually seems easier to break though, and I think I'm going to try.

Rucola

Found my footing on all fronts, sprained an ankle in the process. So not laying off weepy McLachlan just yet.

Ouch

I dreaded coming back here and reading what I wrote that night - I was so drunk I could only remember that I barfed SOMETHING into the Internet, but had no recollection of the actual content.

It's not good, but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Small favors.

I'm trying to settle into the new flat. It's not going great. Nothing has collapsed, per se, but a lot of things started wobbling at once, and I found myself without anything to hold on to. Case in point: I was actually looking forward to getting back to translating a horrible 6-hour-long artsy film called HITLER, because it was familiar ground. Structure.

Listening to a lot of weepy McLachlan stuff today, a bit surprised at how comforting it is. Just something I know well, I guess.

Again, nothing bad is happening. I just can't seem to find my footing for the moment, and one of the wobbly bits traditionally terrifies me.

Enough self-indulgence, back to work.

Fault line

I feel like today was important, but I also feel like I need to make this brief, because my body is not entirely complying with the recording impulse.

Today is the last day in my previous flat. I had to pack all my stuff into cardboard boxes and sign the new lease agreement. Then I got to spend the first hour in my new apartment and see just how much of the office building I see through the windows (all of it), how many trees (none), and how many cars I hear driving down the busy street right outside (all of them).

It was not a good day. There's other shit on top of that, but it shall go unaddressed.

Then in the evening A came. We bought some munchies, some rose wine, and went to the new flat. A talked. A lot. Then we had a conversation. Not about the flat per se, just about life. I drank most of the wine because she's ill. A thunderstorm came. She left. I felt... so much better. Things would be ok.

Then stuff happened, but it's inconsequential. The story really picks up when I was with B, looking for a cab to take them home, and talking about... stuff. Stuff that I decided I would talk about, on this particular day. Stuff that made us forego the cab and go for another drink somewhere else.

And we talked. About various things, some of them perhaps more vital than the trump subject, but... it was an important moment as well. There was a pretty rudimentary connection. Here I was with a good person who, as it turned out, had my best interest at heart. Which should have been obvious, but it wasn't. And it will be from now on.

Were, I to write this tomorrow, I'd probably do a better job, but I felt the need to mark this moment now. Today was important.

Reemergent shapes

Going to see a promising flat the day after tomorrow. Hope it pans out.

One of my instant imprints from a while ago popped back up under somewhat different circumstances. Potentially debilitating, but that's life. If nothing else, it will provide me with a poster child for getting in shape.

This is my head right now:

At one with the moment

We watched the Simon Amstell standup, and it was actually... well, it certainly was well-crafted. You could see how much work went into breaking it down into small segments that flowed into each other pretty seamlessly, and how aptly placed the callbacks to earlier bits were. A lot of it struck so close to home though, that I found myself drifting away from the humor towards some sort of internal scoreboard, checking off whether I was more, equally, or less fucked up in the currently discussed capacity. The whole thing's on the Internet by the way:

We're running, and everyone else I think is one with the moment, one with joy, one with the universe, and I'm there, as we're running, thinking 'Well, this will probably make a good memory...' Which is living in the future, discussing the past with someone who if they asked you 'Oh what did it feel like?' [you'd go] 'I don't know, I was thinking of what I'd say to you.'

That one gave me the longest pause, because it's pretty all-encompassing, and therefore related to all my other... peculiarities. I think I'm still a bit ahead of Amstell on that front. It's not a crippling mechanism - usually - but it felt very weird when I realized that I had had the exact same thought literally three hours before.

I was at my parents' house, and as I was about to leave, my mother asked if she could show me and dad something she'd been practicing. We sat down in her room, she put on a Russian folk song on YouTube, and sang the second voice to it. It was the first time I've ever heard her do anything like that. She was visibly nervous, and off key at times. At first I had no idea how to react. And then I heard this voice in my head: stay in this, take in as much as you can. When they're gone, you will want to remember it.

So I tried, vacillating between sitting in that room in Winter and listening to my mother sing, and some vague point in the future when this memory would need to be as vivid as I could make it. Unsure whether what I felt in the moment was a direct response to the now, or a bizarre reflection of this projected, inevitable loss.

Maybe I'm not ahead after all.

Custom-made

Had a fun night out. Met a cute fetus. Went urrrrr gurrrr blerrrr at him. Then learned he's straight and charmed the shit out of him. Like a motherfucking Ninja of the Fruitless Orchard.

I'm not even surprised. I just want my superpowers WHEN I ACTUALLY NEED THEM. For once.

Pauli tells me Simon Amstell did a whole standup set about just that. We're gonna watch it on Tuesday. Because misery loves company? Bullshit, everyone loves company.

Because I've no other plans. *drops mic*

Stories

I don't really have this one mapped out... we'll see how it goes.

A while ago I was shown a film called Weekend, which is a gay love story. I usually balk at calling things gay anything (why can't it just be a "love story" and all that crap), but in this case the qualifier is quite essential. More on that later.

Anyway, I thought the film was really good - especially the acting and the dialogue. Real people talking, and not talking. Meanings carried inbetween. I figured it was a cool new addition to my catalog of relationship studies.

A day went by, then two, and I realized that it didn't go away. A buzz in the back of my head, a lump in the pit of my stomach - it was still there. I got my own copy, re-watched a few scenes. Started cutting out clips, and flinging them at people. I spread the word. Finally I rested, satisfied.

Some time after, my mother asked me if I could get the movie for her. I had sent her a song that played over the end credits (it was very much her sort of music). She did some digging around on YouTube, found a couple of scenes, and wanted to see the whole thing. I figured why not, except the Polish subs were pretty horrible, so I decided to tweak the translation first. This of course meant that I had to see the whole thing again, which rekindled my urge to share it with someone.

Today I watched the whole thing with Ana, and here is where - at long last - the Thoughts come in. One of the characters in the movie is a self-proclaimed artist and semi-militant gay... activist, I guess? If you consider speechifying about the societal structure to be activism. It's even nicely played up for humor, when he delivers a drunken sermon on the inherent heterosexuality of narrative in popular culture to an increasingly confused middle-aged bar patron. The thing is, my first reaction was to roll my eyes at most of the stuff he said. And then roll them again once I realized that he also serves as a delivery system for the filmmaker's thoughts on the subject (it actually gets a bit meta at one point, with the guy musing on whether anyone will see his work, since it's just gay stuff - but the character is so well-written that I hadn't picked up on it at first).

I kept thinking that I long for the day when you don't need to have a character give the audience a crash course in Being Gay in Our Society, and highlight the suckage involved. Or preach on the importance of taking charge and making up "our own" - i.e. gay - stories. Once again: why do they have to be gay? Why can't they just be "stories"?

Well, the thing is... maybe they can't. Or maybe they shouldn't. It's been hours, and I'm still riding a wave of crushing melancholia. The thing punched right through me and pulled out a horrible, gnawing hunger right to the surface. I can recall only one other instance of me having this guttural a reaction to a film - and that was after seeing Angels in America.

I get emotional watching... my first instinct was to write "universal", but yes, the truth is "straight" stories. Stuff happens, I empathize, I appreciate the nuances, I revel in the dynamics. But I do not get fucking incapacitated. That stuff gets filtered and translated through my brain, I guess. Meanwhile, this movie bypassed all those checkpoints, and interfaced directly. And I doubt that's because it was just that good.

The sinking feeling will pass, I should have it locked and chained again in a day or two, but I guess I might need to rethink some of my kneejerk reactions towards ghettoization.

Fragile states

I'm exhausted, and there's still 3 weeks of work left, followed by ultra-intense work during the festival itself. I'm coping, but it's not terribly fun.

Found this picture on the Internet today:

Something about that critter's face does a number on me. I know it's supposed to be smiling, but all I'm getting is sad, scared, lost, and alone.

Tile unlocked

So apparently one of the key questions in life is: How hungry are you, exactly?

Which is bullshit. I want to be instantly launched head-first into places beyond questions. Wham. End of story.

Except my whams are all ker-splats.

Enlightenment pending.

Core element

And then all of a sudden you really miss someone. It just pops up out of the blue, and there it is.

Thankfully, it's bedtime, and nowadays it rarely sticks around for breakfast.

Joseph says

I got a bit drunk tonight while playing boardgames, and then watched too good and too touching a movie (50/50) to go to sleep straight away. So let's take stock, shall we?

Christmas is coming. I've absolutely nothing more to say about that.

I had a major health scare which turned out to be nothing at all. I want all my future health scares to follow this pattern.

I'm trying to figure out whether I should get in touch with my childhood friend via Facebook. I've been trying to figure out whether to get in touch with him since... late high school, I think. I barely remember what he looks like. I just looked him up and he doesn't seem to be an active user (doesn't even have a profile picture), so I guess I'll pass. Could be too weird.

There was a thing, and it went as well as could be expected, so that's cool.

This is turning out to be a very uninspiring blog entry, but I'm in no mood to write about the fluff, and the stuff I actually want to get off my chest I won't, because cmon that's private. Oh human condition, why you so convoluted.

50/50 is really good. Yellow Ledbetter on repeat good.

Perspective

Either I am developing some sort of mild social anxiety disorder, or I am only now becoming aware of having had one all along.

A week ago I was invited to a birthday party. Every single thing screamed: go there. I liked the host, but felt I didn't have enough opportunities or platforms to socialize with them. I didn't know any of the other guests, so it constituted "putting yourself out there". And the guest list consisted almost exclusively of gay menfolk.

My reaction? A bout of anxiety. At some point (at around 3 days to D-Day) I had to tell myself I'm not going *wink wink*, so that I would stop stressing about it. And I didn't make up my mind literally until I had to go out this very second to buy a birthday cake, because they were closing the bakery in 25 minutes. And I only did that after calling a friend on a complete whim (safety blanket response) and learning that I couldn't come over to them instead and whine about being fucked up, because... they had a legitimate reason for me not to do that.

Eventually I did go, even though when I put on my "I am a viable sex object" shirt, one of the buttons fell off, which I took for a bad omen. And of course everything was OK, if a bit awkward at first. And of course the coolest people there (or rather: the people I clicked with most) were a straight couple, since I was built to die alone. No prospects materialized, but, you know, the sky didn't exactly come crashing down either, and I actually had fun and a few good laughs - particularly when I sat down to eat some cake and saw this to my left:


And yet I haven't had this much anxiety about anything in at least the last year or so. Shit really freaked me out. I hope it's a phase.

Concrete Jungle Wet Dream Tomato

For the past week I've been trying to write a cover letter. Today my physiological defenses went into overdrive, and just as I completely ran out of distractions and things to watch, my whole body simply shut down. I fell asleep at 5p.m. for no apparrent reason. And woke up at 8.

Finally, I started writing that goddamned cover letter.

Which naturally led to trolling Facebook. At around 9:30 I paused to reflect on how much I adore a certain person.

10 minutes later said person spontaneously wrote me saying they finish work at 10p.m.

At 11 I was at their place. Obviously.

And man, was it a great evening. The highlight was probably a very enthusiastic 20-minute, 2-person tirade on the benefits of cocaine, concluded with one of the most unusual compliments (I hope) I've ever heard: "So yeah, we'd love to do coke with you."

So would I, my friends. So would I.

De profundis

Dziwnie sie gada w kagancu.

Tyle mialem do powiedzenia.