I think, perhaps, sometimes a family is a lot less than people would like. Being alone has it's perks and trials, being in a couple has several to add and then it starts to go yoyo... On the good days, there's cakes and trips and sharing opinions, but on bad days... On bad days whatever kids one has feel like retarded parasites that only ever want to drain whatever you have to give, more and more; and elders and siblings seem to be so bored or frustrated or whatever, that they only ever wish to fight with everyone else, looking for excuses to hate and envy and be disgusted and millions apart... If I was a novelist, I would write a story or a book about someone crammed into a too small a space, with too many people, all moving in the same direction, like a boat - and then suddenly being given too much space, like setting out alone in space or over the ocean... It's how it sometimes feels. On bad days, at least...

         Had a neat walk, though. Although it was short, we tired the poor mutt by bowling apples down the river-side promenade and she probably sprinted something like 5 miles while we only walked two :)) The autumn floods wash down apples and rhubarb (love that word! LOVE it! Course I say it more like Robert and less like Rabarbara :D ) to the river bank, so we have plenty of material :))

          I've stumbled across a Japanese author that may be amazing, but I am very careful not to get myself kicked in to easily... I've gotten trapped in a mental washing machine twice before, reading something that seemed imaginative and neat, only to be led into a terrible ending and feeling not so much chatarsic as like a total shit, best off dead. (Sirens of Titan, for example...) Dude's name is Haruki Murakami and he's so famous that I've actually spotted his works translated in the library years ago.. His opus seems broad enough to cover just about any of my needs.. But like I said. I'll double check this will be pleasing to read. I've had it up to here with brilliant and manically depressing literature. Need perky stuff now. (That isn't Bryson. :))

Sorry for the thorough lack of updates; I've been busy and as per usual, as a coping mechanism, I've been crazy. But in truth I've been trying to slalom pass all the emotions and projects, prioritizing, analyzing and fantasizing... Also, I've managed to finally see the very last episode of Rome - something I've been putting off because I was afraid of seeing all those people die. Ironically, all the deaths there are done rather chatarsically. Marc Anthony's comments such as "Anything to get away from this fucking hangover...", Cleopatra's dialogues with her royal poison mistress, even the final close-up of Attia, a sort of death of all her ambitions, as she sees herself exactly where she's always wanted to be, only to feel like she's dead already, especially when the corpses of Marc and Cleo are impaled and paraded in the victory procession, rattling by... 

            I thought of the perfect role for Gennonsuke to assume, since after his departure from Horses in "Nasty Little Lamp" he's been always present, but rather pointless... And 'shepherd of souls' would have been way too unoriginal. I've got him a new task and it's perfect - it's meaningful, logical and original.... can't get them much higher than that :)) His fate is future dealings with the 'red string stretcher' :) --> *hint*Me*hint* :p

            The weather's been so foul my doggie walks are as uninspired as my commissions,. At least as a result, my wit's thunder-storming. Another friend came up with a preposterous idea, probably entirely unrealizable, because there's no way one would come up with four lunatics to qualify - but just imagine - bumming the national post office to sponsor four postmen to ride the post-mopeds all around the planet, posing for photographs with their Postal flag at every curious stop-point along the way... Just imagine... Each moped has two yellow boxes on the sides... Four riders of the moped Apocalypse... One with spare underwear and overcoats and juice boxes; another with spare parts for the machines; the third with maps and red tape and suchlike and the last with a laptop and a camera gear in one and the crazy Beagle in the other... I mean, how would THAT not be an entirely preposterous Hobbit adventure?! (Oh, I've been reading The Hobbit to the General lately, but I am a little bit out of practice. He only starts snoring after fourteen pages or so - not counting his ability to snore AND be conscious about what he's hearing at the same time...)  CAN you imagine?? The rainy spring in Romania, the nasty border crossings in Kurdistan; the majestic plains of Mongolia, the geishas I would flirt with in Japan... Then a long swim and then either highway 666, or at least the tractor sideway of the said; or Panama or something... Crossing the Amazonian river-field with a moped? Why the heck not. I'm country-kin to people that swam it like it was a paddling pool.. And finally, best for last, Ireland and the rest of Europe and then home... With the way i drive and fall, counting all my recovery periods and the like, it would probably take us 4 or 5 hundred years, during which the Post office would go bankrupt and left us stranded somewhere around the Canary islands, but fuck it. At this junction, I cannot think of a more ridiculous plan :D

     Funny how, having seen my darling Paper evolve from a shy and fat and foolish little book-thief into a rather glorified serial killer over the past 15 years, it's impossible for me to think about such a story within her box - and she's the only one who could pull it off... But she wouldn't bother with something so rudimentary... Funny indeed. Between her, who has lately been feeling like a black hole with everything she's dseen and one reversing in on itself, and this-here me, who is writing this in the comfort of my normal life's next-best-thing, lies the entire universe....

...... :D

Doogie still sick, my decisions still clashing, my predicaments getting clearer...
         ... I am starting to understand that everything that makes me sad is other people's demands that I can't keep up and while trying, foregoing my own ideals ...
         The General may suffer for it at the moment... He can't keep up. But he suffers more when I am sad. So I am going to try and show him what I mean by following my own rules. It's a little bumpier ride than what he has been used to...


Though like Marilyn Monroe said - if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best...

This cannot be my life

I feel so lost. Sometimes. I have no idea what to do. I only know what I want and how I feel, but absolutely everyone around me tells me I am wrong and even when I am certain I am doing the right thing for someone, they say 'just do me a favor and sleep on it, okay?'...  At times I think I am entirely detached from reality and everyone is utterly sharp except me. I am completely blurry. But I cannot try to adapt to their expectations. I've tried that once and it nigh killed me. It's crippled me so badly that I am still not whole. It certainly didn't make me happy. To me everything is simple, and easy. And fun. If it's not, change it. Do something else. I cannot see why anyone would insist on living in a place they don't like, paying for it the money they don't have, HOPING some day, maybe, it will all turn out to be worth it... That's not how I believe things work. I need my change, my shift of seasons, my change of walls. Trying to reboot. I cannot remain stale, and slow, and growing old without any proof of how desperately I am trying to level up to the people I love's terms.. That cannot be what will be (not)remembered about me. This cannot be how I exist.

"The Walking Dead"

Whenever I am troubled, I am of course prone to feeding myself the worst of stories. "Monsters", for example, which I watched yesterday morning, was a depressing deal, but The Walking Dead during lunch was positively impressive. It is something to be said about a show that is a little too good for it's own good. Fuck. Some of the images are gut twisting and that is hopefully not by another party. 

        What the creators of this new - and first - horror show have in their favor above all - and they seem to appretiate that, thank you -  is the timing. I've said this time and again - TV shows are so much more able to slowly build the timeline and pause on moments than movies... Look at Lord Of The Rings - if you wanna see everything the makers wanted to show, you need 14 hours! And movies, when they try to build up slowly to the unimaginable horror of everyone being gone - save for stubborn hope and a couple of creepies - then have to stampede towards the finishing..

       The pilot of this new deal (oddly enough it just got out now and yet I've seen a few minutes of it a week ago? But I think I stopped watching cause it was a poor copy... Anyways,) tells the more less linear story of a young sheriff's deputy (I thought the casting was poor at first, having to deal with him before in the likes of Love, Actually, but Andrew Lincoln has grown a bit older and delivers a very fine narrative through those blue eyes and ivory jawline: from the viewer and onto the shitstorm with ashes on top.) who wakes up in a hospital and then proceeds to find the world has ended while he was out.. It's kind of like 28 days like that. He then spends 15 minutes of getting out of the hospital, while more and more sinking feeling sets and he eventually even finds the first body, so gruesomely mangled (I mean, come on?! Viewer disgression my arse!?) that it's almost surreal and he can still go on a few minutes, telling himself it's probably all just in his head. He then meets some more almost sad looking zombies - still ridiculously surreal, and then The Man and His Son from The Road, coting in his neighbourhood, wise and weary. Then he sets out to find his family. (The lady from Prison Break? Again? I don't like her, but she keeps popping up, so I suppose it's good for her...) A little bit of personal drama there, first because she now seems to be with his friend (talk about mourning period, eh? What has it been - like a month?) and second because they failed to put up signs, warning people out of the city. The final moments put our punctured hero in a tank. The military kind. His horse, alas, gets vivisected graphically... 

         I haven't been looking forward to the next episode of anything like this since Lie To Me. And the fact I can eat during is a tale untold of it's own... But then again I am getting increasingly paranoid and am starting to stock food and ammo in my own house again. Which is admirable, considering I always forget to stock matches and water :))

The gloomy season is here. I think I hate it, although I cannot be sure. Weather is just weather. Sadness is in the brain.

         Funny how, when packing all my possessions, I always begin with books. Cooker comes last. What does that say about me? LoL. That I like boxy things... in boxes? :))

         I've been making a drawing of 'an island house' (trust the General to deal with loneliness head on...) that I will see every time I see the house I am going to live in - complete with the stable for a goat, lot for my trees and veggies and possibly a cat :D I have a list of things I will do to distract myself. Like starting a photography society in the village. I am not used to feeling so lonely, but that is probably how it always feels, stretching and then finally snapping the umbilical chord... Between dad who hasn't said a nice thing to me in ages; mum who chooses to think of me as a gold-digging little shit; (how DARE I accept a gift that THEY want!?) grandma that stabs me in the back twice a year and sister that never particularly liked me, I am really out of family happiness mental bonus. I have so much to do and only a few months left to do it... And the wee beast is still poorly. Back to the vet today. Though she did chew through my only spotlight and am now free of in-house photo shoots for a few days. The new apartment, once it's ready, will have an almost proper studio... if the wee beast doesn't eat my light :P

The last pretty day of the season...

Yeah. I hiked up THAT :p

 

 The samurai Lyra

 This reminds me of that buddhist path that zen poet took to meditate... Minus Lyra running after an apple trickling down. Knocking over honest hikers :))

Belated.. The trip to Prekmurje

Customary, somebody has to drive to the east of the country where my dad grew up to pay respects to the graves there - and we usually do it a few days prior. I actually look forward to the trip, though lately the family relations are so foul, it didn't seem like it was going to happen. But we did. And the trip was lovely! We drove by the smaller roads, often right under the highway, pass all the tiny villages and over the fields.. A few hours of a delightful beelining and, of course, with my navigational skills, getting lost :))