Some sweet maternity photos

... I really wish I could show more of these, because I think they are so true and lovely :D Let me just say that pics where they're holding the newborn are too adorable. Not in a chocolate-box cheesy way, because they are both dead tired and the baby is either unhappy with me or so excited it keeps barfing up milk. But just ... very genuine. Which makes it perfect.

Listened to a good lecture yesterday and will go to another tomorrow. Shot a string concert today. It was way better to shoot the rehearsal, obviously, but the show was okay, too. I spent the two hours lusting, fantasizing about things that may be taking place in all those halls and ballrooms around the concert hall, where I was sneaking like a sniper, looking for vantage points ... Fucking while a live string concert ... that would be a first for me. Mental note..

I'm sorry I can't show any of the maternity photos I've taken on Sunday, which I think are great, but they are really personal, so, that much about that. 

Arrrr, and I really DON'T want to see the latest Star Wars trailer, but I am soooo starved for a good fiction movie...

THE STIGMA OF BEING ALONE

Sitting in a very men's bar between the train station and the school, rainy Monday, big city, long train ride and the big buildings around me, that I can see through the window pass calendars with pretty naked ladies on them and beer posters, are either very modern, glassy, cold and uninviting, or brick brownstones full of stories and industrial ghosts. I haven't told many I'm here, so I have a few hours to kill over ... interesting coffee and, thankfully, not an ozone of smoke, since smokers have all been shunned out. The wifi code is 'summer night' - the barkeeper apologized they are all nostalgics here..

Full trains may be full of excellent faces - my favorite part of humans - but they are also full of fucking dumb conversations, if your iPod just happens to have better things to do than help you out. So. I write.  I've had it up to HERE with women (and men) and all of the 'Hear me out, Sally' columns that write their own questions, who go on and on about having great lives, but all their friends are already married and with kids and they are freaking out because they're still single at thirty. Or not even single, just, ALONE: they were in relationships but it didn't work out or they are in relationships, but it's not working out, what is wrong with them, what is wrong with their partners, will they ever find happiness... Just. Shut the fuck up, you losers. 

People who marry four fucking times. People who spent 30 years whining about loneliness in a relationships. People who full VOLUMES on being slaves to their kids, their jobs, their frigging Facebooks. This is why I hate people. They are an insult to the miracle of being alive.

Do you have any idea how many insanely small odds had to align for you to be breathing right now? No, because you’re stupid. Because the time that should have been spent understanding is spent getting attention you neither need nor deserve. You are already HERE. You’ve already won!

First of all, love and happiness are not the same thing. 

Marriage and happiness are not the same thing.

Kids and happiness are not the same thing.

Being properly fucked on daily basis is not the same as being happy. Even if you do it in a really fast car.

Being alone and loneliness are not the same thing.

Not even close. House, dog, god, job, hobby, car, coffee, these are not building bricks of happiness.

And they never will be unless you are able to wake up in your own head and think: I love my life. It's so fun to be me. 

The society we exist in, privileged, healthy, western society is going through an amazing transformation, one like we've never seen before. One that fifty years ago when they were still hanging black people for looking at white people too intently could not even imagine. Many other cultures dipped their toes in some of these (Greeks encouraged homosexuality, Indians admit to the third gender, Taiwan enjoys cross-dressing....) but only we are on the doorstep of simply saying: if it doesn't harm anybody, live and let live. Love and let love. How you identify yourself, how you express yourself is A GOOD thing. It is not a threat. Least of all to anyone’s peace of mind. I know several gay people who are fucking retards, but they would be emotional retards even if they were straight. I also know some really nice gay people. I think *I* am a nice gay person. I’ve never been told I am not. Nobody called me a freak because I am gay. They called me a freak because when I was in first grade, I said Earth is a planet and we all live in a galaxy. But as gay, I am a nice person. I am also a nice bisexual person. I also once happened to be a nice asaxual person of a track record of ten years, for no reason other than simply not liking screwing. Everyone was doing it, so I made some efforts to see what the fuss was about, in case I was wrong. But it wasn't for me, at a time. And I was and remain, somehow, blessed, immune to peer pressure thorough my entire existence. (To which I hope I am at a half or so.) 

I don't know any nice crossdressing or transgender people, or at all, but I think I would be a little afraid of them, because they always dress so nice and have such good style and I dress like a hobo and wear mountaineering shoes when I go to the capital... What. They're cozy. And it's raining. Blow me. No, really, blow me, I'm wet and not in a good way. It's really raining.

I am waiting for society to stop pushing the YOU GOTSTA BE IN A RELATIONSHIP TO BE A COMPLETE PERSON bullshit. All the other stigmas are lifting. There was a time when a woman who preferred reading to cooking was considered hysterical. There was a time when a man who preferred teaching to making money was considered the black sheep of the family, the weak son. Society rejected oddballs, because those shouldn’t reproduce. Which is, of course, something everyone MUST do, otherwise there is no point of being alive at all.

I can't wait for this one to fall. Proving your worth upon a bunch of parasitic little shitheads that call you a bad parent if you don’t keel over trying to serve to their every whim. Clean after them. Feed them. Clothe them. Entertain them. Protect them. Educate them. Make sure they don’t grow up into serial killers or rapists or politicians as if you had any influence at all over biology, which you don’t. But you must. Or you’re not worth anything.

I know I am not a normal person, I am genetically distanced from wanting to reproduce, I don't like kids, I don't even like other people very much. My parents are similar, so I know that's inherited and I'm grateful. I would hate to feel bad about my choices. I know some do. Some must continue to explain themselves. I also possess a high level of whatever brings masculinity to a woman's psyche, meaning I don’t feel the need to scream to be rescued by a prince all the time. I don’t stand out like a butch Russian Olympic hammer thrower with two thick braids down my manly chest. Men used to scream feminists and suffragettes are all ugly and butch and will destroy society. Ironic bit was, nobody was happy in that society, least of all men.

I never needed anybody to make me happy. I had me. In storms, in the dark, I had me. I conquered the fucking world, on my own. Loved it, too. I've had parents and grandparents who would buy me anything I asked for and all I ever asked for were books, because my feet at the time were too small to really walk very far, over continents. I was loved. I loved back. I respected every gift. I could see their intentions were pure. I could not see how someone in the same situation could be so miserable and unfulfilled.

Because gifts, touches and smiles only get as far as the skin. You cannot shove happiness into one’s skin. Happiness has to already be inside. It’s a one-way ticket. You can’t have it if you hate the hole inside your doughnut.

When I felt like fucking I fucked. When I didn't, I didn't. When I wanted to marry, I married. When I wanted to divorce, I divorced. When I wanted to travel, I traveled. Penniless. And far. And long. But when I felt like coming back and working a normal (okay, maybe not quite so normal) job, I did so. 

Never did the fact others married, had kids and settled down concern me in the slightest. Those people never settled down - they've always BEEN settled down. And they were always really nice people. I know people who make amazing parents. I am very happy for them.

I do not allow them to whine. Do what makes you happy or shut the fuck up. Not in a thousand years dare blame someone else for your pathetic excuse of a personality. Are you alive? Than act like it. Are you Malala? A child, shot in the head for fighting for her school friends? No. Are you Stephen Hawking, sick since he was a student, and still fighting to elevate the IQ of the world? No. Are you Gandhi, a cute pervy old dude in a diaper, starving himself and smiling for peace when his countrymen are being slaughtered by millions by colonialists? No. So what the fuck is your problem? Who are you waiting for to make something of you? A comet?

Oh, I’m sorry, you’re stuck in a terrible conflict of your own heart on whether or not you should marry and have babies or should you wait for true love? Ye, right, that’s what will make you a decent human being. That there is true meaning of one’s life.

When will there be completely and utterly okay to be completely and utterly alone? And not considered like you are a mental patient or a socially unacceptable, awkward specimen for whom there is no hope? “Surely if she has no children she must be a CEO or a Nobel Prize winning scientist, otherwise, why would anyone...?”  It's already becoming acceptable, after the right to vote, the right to wear pants and the right to cross a street without a male escort, for women say fuck no to the kids. But fuck no to having to co-exist? Because nobody sane can do so, right? We consider alone-ness to be utter, almost disease-like condition, pathological loneliness. There is nothing worse than being alone. Mark Watney wasn't going to lose it from starvation as soon as he would from being away from everybody else - he was so desperate for human contact he watched bad TV shows just to feel like he belonged.

You belong in a cave if you plan to live alone. And even hermits and holy wankers atop of holy mountains only do it so that young boys and girls climb there and say 'gosh, you must be so holy to wank alone all this time'. 

Crazy cat lady, right? Hansel and Gretel witch, right? Gordo the Weirdo. Because nobody normal could possibly want to be alone. Right? You must have some ghastly skin condition or something. Why else would you sleep alone? You must be a prime character in Trainwreck, a whore or ugly or, perish the thought, fat. Because if you don’t starve yourself, do yoga, spend money on nice clothes, you must be giving up on anyone ever loving you, right?

Who would CHOSE to do that? Sleep alone in a bed they chose? Wake up alone and have breakfast and a shower on their own. Walk to work alone or with the dog or meet somebody for the doggie walk and just hang out. Hang out with people you like without desperately trying to fuck them. Or try to marry people you fuck for fun. Who has coffee on their own, go to the movies alone? Eat alone. That's so.... Pathetic. Right? Not even nuns and priests are alone, they are always surrounded by people of community and they have characters from magic books in the sky to talk to. 

People freak out at the thought of social abstinence. You can't explain it when you tell someone I feel like being alone for the next five or ten years. It may change, dunno. It may not. I may be alone always. It feels comfortable and I'm happy. No, I am not in a cult. I am not screaming a political statement. My vagina is not a temple. I am not on a hunger strike of marriage because it’s now legal to marry your favorite lamp post. I'm married to me. I love myself. I love my life. Burn down my house to the ground, steal my car, hide my dog, wet my clothes. Ban all vibrators. Put me on an island. It's still fun to be me. Yes, I need dentists and I need someone to get the viruses out of my computer, but I don’t have to marry those people. There needn’t be skin between us, money is just as polite.

Biology, which we call tradition, society and so on, programs us to co-exist. That's why the greatest fear of people who feel like killing other people isn't punishment but excommunication. The instinct draws you into the crowd, safety of numbers, into the rules that make things easy in the long run. Living in a commune, such a town or a big city – which nobody is forcing you to do, there is plenty room in the countryside, believe me, makes things comfortable, clean and safe, and fast. But we are about a million years away from being co-dependent on others. I am not talking about living on the moon. Yes, I can operate a lighthouse, but I am not talking about leaving, intentionally, as a recluse. NO. NOT AWAY. The contrary. I cannot get enough of the toys and tricks modern living offers: I love social networks, blogs, art exhibitions, libraries, busy streets, full trains, winning a free bag of broccoli in my local supermarket, photographing passers-by, eating food others prepare, using tools others have designed - I am just not tied to the umbilical bungee cord that feels like I am chained to SOMEBODY ELSE when I walk out of the house and like I am being pulled back when I go home. I am able to enjoy all of that ON MY OWN. I love my friends. I make sure I see them whenever I feel like it. When it was time to fall in love and get married again, I loved that, too. I felt like it. He smells nice and is very warm. But I didn't completely undress my own self and became someone's emotional slave, addicted, tied to a room, reduced myself to a half-person when I decided to pair up. I didn't do it because I settled down. If anything, I am more me now than I was beforehand. I do not wash dishes or socks, I don't iron, I don't vacuum, fuck having kids, fuck shaving my legs in winter, I walk my own dog and I still go to the movies or coffee alone when I feel like it. I can still leave town alone. I can still wake up and my first thought is: good morning you awesome person, you, what are we going to fuck up today? I equally enjoy sex as I do masturbation. If I had to choose between sacrificing myself or my husband.... Well, okay, I would choose him because he's a better person, but that's just how I roll. I respect society and its rules to almost no exception - I would never endanger a woman with a child, would never even disrespect one. I have great hopes for humanity. I simply cannot abide people who wouldn't sustain sanity for a week if told to exist just as themselves, depending on themselves, enjoying themselves, feeling good about how complete they are.

How can you be in a relationship if you continuously wait for someone to miraculously draw you a map to your own insides? Stupidity of that just sucks balls. 

I've made a list of horror comics I can read to get my mind out of the fire. Literally :D I keep having nightmares about the city burning. This way I'll be able to have nightmares about gruesome acts of violence and loss like normal people :P 

Will review them later:
Wytches
Nailbiter
American Vampire
Locke & Key
Revival

Požar Cankarjeva Celje (On fire)

Nearly had a mini heart attack when I started hearing shingles fly around and smelled smoke. I know by now how it sounds when something is awfully on fire. It was about one in the morning. I did what any rational human would do: grabbed my camera and the phone and ran out to see where the danger is. Sent out texts with a photo of a burning building to the General, a fellow photie, my sis and Drej that I probably won't come to the doggy walk in the morning, as I'll be up all night. About half an hour later a really weird thing happened: one of my eyes fell completely out of focus and I got awfully dizzy. I think it was the numerous blinking blue lights. I had to slap myself and have a glass of water to calm down. Then I returned and circled the place until most of it was over. Was gonna publish a bulk of pics, but fellow photie told me to stop fucking around and offer to sell them to the archive and newspapers. Mostly so as to stop diminishing professionals. He's right. I do diminish professionals, because I disdain most of them. But him I like. So I did what he said.

The closer I was getting, the more a firefighter was losing control of his hose and at some point nigh washed me away. 

People leaving with their possessions in garbage bags ...

And that's why I always go into battle with a big heavy frying pan

My Maja and I went to see Crimson peak - SPOILERS AHEAD, BEWARE - probably a slightly more scary movie than what we usually go see, but to be perfectly honest, i really liked it. Not my top 50 liked it, but liked it a lot more than, say, the Martian. The Martian was so awfully praised and hyped and everyone thought it was so funny and well done and I never got that - I didn't think it was funny at all and when it was supposed to be lonely and desperate it was action and narrative and when it was suposed to be super scientific, it was pedestrian. And I hated Jessica Chastain there, she is always so fucking bland. 

Not here, though. Here she actually reminded me of, what's her name, that crazy actress that always ends up killing someone or herself screaming and crazy eye ... Eva Green. She was cold and beautiful and a little bit costume-driven (costumes here!), but still, you could instantly tell there's something off about her, you just didn't know what. Unlike Tom Hiddleston, who is so scrawny and anemic looking - you could see there's something off and you could instantly tell he's his sister's puppet. Plus most of the time his face is half-lit, which is code for shady character. Mia wasikovska is always a Gem and she plays a clever but lonely heiress that moves to the mother of all shitty mansions ever: a Cumbria hellhole, barren and moist and windy and... shitty, I am telling you. What the fuck was the architect thinking, building something like that? Architects know less than nothing about statics. The house is always sinking, because the ground is clay, the wooden bits are rotting and the iron bits are rusting and the stone bits have red clay oozing down ... There are also some gruesome CGI ghosts in it, but they don't really do much other than jump-scare. They try to help, but suck at it. The movie would be fine without them.

In the end I didn't really get all of the story. I got the part where the two, brother and sister, seduce a naive rich girl - though their tactics could get a little less desperate, considering they've done it three times by now - and they need something from her. turns out it's as trivial as money and of course the brother and sister are lovers. This has been done a few times, so it was slightly predictable. Also predictable the brother actually falls in love with the girl and the sister loses it. Less sense made the backstory, in which the kids were kept locked in the cellar and their mother was .... Dunno, in some parts of the story she is abused and plays the piano, in others she's a monster and she ultimately gets killed with a meat cleaver to her face. The sister is then taken to an asylum, but they reunite and he tries to industrialize the mining of their red clay. They need money so they seduce heiresses... Which then they poison with arsenic over time and... dunno, bury them in clay tanks or something. I didn't get that part. There is also a baby, but I don't know whose baby it was, because one of the ghosts nurses it and none of the women are supposed to have had sex with the guy, so it could be the sister's, saying it was born deformed... 

It ends fairly well, almost happily, at least for blonde Americans. The girls' avatar is a butterfly, so it shows she's grown out of her naivete and will thus become a far better writer than she was only on her imagination. Her punchline when she offs the sister is adorable, having finally picked up a shovel instead of a potato-peeling knife. They they leave and that's it. I'd have burnt the house to the ground.  

Hillary Step and stuff

So ye, while reading Into Thin Air, which gets really depressing at times and awfully unsettling, I am a little bit sick as well and it feels incredibly appropriate. I have an odd nerve tension in my right biceps for absolutely no reason other than having caught a cold, and my nymphs are still enlarged and I am sleepy. Also one of my eyes is acting up. This is like less than 1% of an illness anyone on Everest had, but like putting on a costume, I am prolonging this illness while I read. Only have a day of text left, though. Drej suggested I read Hosseini's Kite Runner, but she narrated the plot in detail over the rainy doggy walk and I think it's not for me at this point. Excellent literature for sure, but really not my cup of tea ATM. 

The terrible events that took 13 lives at that one ascend as recalled by the journalist and later the people he interviewed while looking for answers offer some insight, while he continuously stresses - this is a later edition, so he feels bad about earlier editions being poorly backed up by facts and pelleted by accusations - that memory at high altitude is not only unreliable, it's downright messed up. there's a scene in which he recalls a fellow climber slide down towards the camp, but after nobody can find that climber, he thinks the man simply got lost and fell off the ledge. After he talks to another man that was on the mountain, the man tells this story from the other side - that HE was the one who ran into some idiot sitting in the snow and then he fell and slid down towards the camp. Both swear it wasn't them - but come to realize that it was them all along, they were just completely delusional. And nobody could find the Andy guy ever again. I think that's the man in the movie who takes off his clothes, but I had to pee at that point and missed it. 

Nobody ever found out why was it that Rob Hall broke his own time restrictions rule, aware of the storm and aware of the risk, but there you have it. Many factors contributed to the disaster, many small ones. None that could really be avoided, in the long run. Asshole co-climbers, ambitious socialite women and their telephones, tube malfunction that showed there's no oxygen left in the tanks when it was, crowd, many things. None of which you can improve on even today, because last year 19 people died from an avalanche, so there's always something.

This is my favorite part of the route via South Col: Hillary step. Dunno why, I just like the sound of it. Though the glaciers are wonderfully described and I love glaciers, and the Everest one is lovely, I still like the tiny horror that poses so many issues, bottleneck being just one of them. Either way, the book is an easy read and if you are even remotely into sports literature, it's a highly recommended piece. I'd love to get my hands on Anatoli's counter-publication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxuCfDRpUXA
 
Meanwhile I watched the "Say 'I love you'", dubbed in English so I didn't have to look at it all the time while I did other stuff. It's a story of a very shy, anti-social and incredibly difficult-to-be-with girl, whom the most popular boy in school falls in love with. He is super nice, pretty and patient and although I felt like she's messing up a good thing most of the time, I finally understand what it means to KNOW somebody has problems with intimacy  - even just holding hands - and really building up towards their confidence slowly. half the time it felt like she doesn't deserve him, but all the time he knew she just doesn't know how to communicate her appreciation of his affection. I really liked it and will try to find another just as good. It didn't occur to me until now I could watch anime where nobody is trying to kill anybody else. I'm looking at you, Gangsta., you asshole. Though I've gotten myself some horror comic books like Nailbiter and Wytches to level out the load.