Forest rim

Dandelions: nutty by nature :P

Gloomy much?

Nicotine makes addicts

I heard sth fairly interesting the other day, in some debate regarding vapes. Someone was talking about how addictive nicotine is, though it's the smoke which harms the body, so vaping is a less nasty way to be down for ciggies, if you've gotsta be. That said ... a lady stated that if you're too young when you start - if you're exposed to the addiction to nicotine too early, several parts of your brain will start to act like addict's and you'll be prone to other urges for substance later on.

Let's consider this for a moment. a) I've been exposed to cigarettes since ... ah, about 10 years before I was even conceived and then consistently until I was 30, by consistently meaning I was day in and day out surrounded to three or four or even more people who smoked a pack a day each. b) I am constantly obsessively in need of various escapisms. Buttons, books, chocolate, watercolors lately - I think about those all the time. I also yearn alcohol all the time and psychotropic medication that would deal with my overly active imagination and overly emotional responses to events. I resist them, but I yearn them all the time.

Hmmm .. could at all those two be connected, I wonder?

"You may live a thousand lifetimes, each different at the start, you will still always fail those who love you the most, always suffer long after they're all gone and in the end, none of them will matter the slightest bit. "

First tiny panic attack of 2018. Can’t really remember the last time I had one, in 2016 maybe, when I couldn’t find G on a simple trail in the mountains, because he kept walking too fast and was always one turn away? … I saw this one coming a mile away. Good thing, too, because I almost peed myself, in public. The General was on stand-by the entire time, he could tell when my palms began to sweat, when I began to shake and couldn’t finish my sentences. He didn’t try to calm me down dismissively, didn’t try to stop me when I said I need to leave the room, I’m choking. Didn’t try to rush me up the stairs when I said I needed to sit, because contents of my bladder threatened to evacuate. Those fucking stairs, man, they felt like they’re leading up to a Chinese mountain monastery, they wouldn’t end! And I live on the first floor! … Took a tiny nap on the kitchen floor while he made us some food. World felt so large, I felt so small. It was bound to happen. With a little luck all that mess is over now. I mean, I know it’s not. But I’ve exhausted myself on that project, my brain is locking down to keep me creatively sane. G believes I should take on another menial job, something behind a machine, a complete no-brainer. I agree. Just leave me alone, give me something to do and forget about me for the next couple of months … 

LoL, I TL;DRed my own stoream today, and dreamed I just wiki-ed the rest of the story to see what happens in the end.

       Fucking dreams.

      (In the dream,) I used a shuttle taxi service to get from the station to the port. A kid driving it was using the time between clients to drone-film neighborhoods to try and catch the discrepancies between poor station area and kinda posh seaside area, though you could really only tell a little by the space between houses and the cars. He had a couple of regulars, some of which he also had to drive up to collect, so more or less eight or so people, mostly old ladies, drove with him every morning. While we were still alone we talked about mockumentaries like Making a Murderer and American Vandal, later he tried to observe the other passengers. This was supposed to happen every morning for eight days. by day five I was so bored, I went to Wiki to write the review the kid's project and simultaneously read the summary, to check what happens in the penultimate episode and what is the big finale. (Very little.)

       Fucking dreams. 

Do you wanna hear sth really shitty? My talent for painting refuses to wake up. I can't open it. I can feel it RIGHT THERE, I am subconsciously surrounding myself with literally hundreds of drawing pencils and watercolors, paper and boards and canvases - they are stacked in a crescent pile wall all around me. Every day I take something and decide to make some X-mas presents or random gifts or just greeting cards or something. I succumb to flipping through endless pages of Pinterest in search of inspiration. Having given up on any original concepts, I try to plagiarize something cute and innocuous, something everybody likes to make greeting cards for family. And I can't. I can't even copy what I see right in front of me. I used to be able to forge Van Gogh in my sleep, do realistic portraits from memory. I can't forge a fingerpainting kitten. It won't unlock. Most of my creative energy was going into a delightful project and that's been shot down, so ... the rest refuses to come out and play. 

Took me over a year to start taking portraits again after that bad client experience with photographs. Like part of my brain died during a stroke. It's the damndest thing, a very specific creative depression.

... Of course, it could just be my novel hogging all the attention to itself. It's been known to happen. But I doubt I'm that lucky. 

It occurred to me today why I don't really want the General in my dreams. I dream about him all the time, even if he looks like other things/people, it's the same man. And my dreams are fairly indulgent, they often make an effort to arouse, inspire or entertain me. However, when he's there, same as he does when I'm awake, he holds me back, massively. Today was a perfect example. I watched the Bohemian Rhapsody, so I dreamt of Rami Malek. We were driving somewhere uphill, not sure where we were going, but I had a ginger kitten with me, playing with its pink paws. He drove fairly badly, cutting the road in blind turns, speeding, and I found myself thinking in General's voice: because you find this guy attractive, you forgive him for shit you'd never forgive other people. Later, when we arrived at my parent's house there was another kitten there, sickly and grey. I thought, since I already have two at home and am adding ginger to my collection, I am almost certain we can cram the sick little one as well. If I bore of them later when they've grown up, I can always bring them back to the vineyard. Rami Malek, in General's voice, reasoned that if they grow up in the apartment, they will have no sense of living outdoors and something will eat them or run them over. 

They are fucking dreams, man. I just want to have a lot of kittens and fuck Rami Malek, is that so much to ask?!