FFVII

Haha. One little computer game and SO much creative passion behind it... :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNv1Rkj1X7I&annotation_id=annotation_95142&feature=iv

PS. On a related subject, I saw my ex in town. He ignored me or genuinely failed to recotnize me, but either way, I was in such a good mood, singing along to Siddharta's War of Ideas, that I was totally ready to say to him: "Say Good day, Bor; how did you mother teach you?" and smile. The event didn't chip a single good feeling off me. At all.
           There was nothing attractive about him. He's a middle aged dried-out scarecrow with wattery eyes and ugly hands. Whatever lense my heart held between us to make him seem so lovely once, is long retired.

There's a boy I know, who told me that he wants to become a shaman and as such gain  an ability to do anything, even fly. But to get there, he has to examine the depths of his psyche - namely denial. (though if you ask me denial is the easier of the two - it's a lot harder to, say, overdo something every day.) He said there's something like 4o or 4oo or something days that he needs to NOT indulge in one or three or something things that he holds dear.. Or something. Touch blue things or drink red drinks, that sort of thing. So I've been thinking. There isn't really any ONE thing I'd want above other things, since I'm not a tree, but there also really aren't all that many things I wouldn't easily go without. Chocolate is just chocolate, warcraft is just warcraft, painting and books are just that. In Africa I went half a year without the life I knew and it was fun. Daylight? My  hair, my breasts? Take 'em. Even my eyesight or being able to leave the room are easily compensated upon. That is - all, except Piček. I am by now in the state of living and heart and mind, where it is impossible for me to go without him for even a day. Two days are madness. Three are impossible. That line from Hallelujah - 'I use to live alone until I knew you' - is rock solid. I didn't even know such a state exists. It is so disarming and so fulfilling at the same time, the very thought is like a malady. I could be offered a grand exhibition in Paris, but if people said 'you cannot talk, see or write to him for 4o days,' I'd think there is not much I am lacking so profusely in this life to give up the one thing I love the most for a glimpse at another life. That's not being idiotically sentimental. That's just how it is.

               In the extreeme - gun-to-the-head- scenario, though, I wonder how it would work. Say, someone told me that I could cure his terminal illness by sleeping with someone else, that wouldn't really work for him. He wouldn't look at me the same and if I told him, I think he'd sooner choose to die. Perhaps it could be arranged for the three of us to come together, but mostly I think, if he was ill and someone said 'fuck me and he'll be saved and you'll live together for some time', I'd cut off my finger and said to him - this is as much of me that another man will claim for an hour, in the meanwhile, you hold on to this. 

               Gruesome, I know, but I did say 'in the extreme'. I am not a soppy, defeatist housewife. He wouldn't love me as much if I was. ;)

Siddharta Saga

Other than having heard Rihanna's new album, which was by far the worst thing I've heard in a while, Siddharta has a new magic out. (That was a life-saver, I was about to throw in the towel and give up on popular music.) Its not as psychadelic and kick-ass as it was when they were younger, but it's still easily my favorite Slovenian band.

             On top of it, they have their art done by some Ninja ASSN kid, Blaž Porenta, and that's just ridiculously good. I haven't seen art that well suited - and executed - since, dunno.. Ever, really. I've forgotten how excellent painting can be.(but then again I've gotten myself dragged into poetry, so it only goes to show you never can tell..)

 

I had my headphones on and would try to humm some of the new stuff a little, but I realized Piček's holding his phone towards me, recording it. Because we've been bickering too much lately, I didn't throw anything at him in return. 

            I was ready to drive off and get a dog. I even found one that suited all my chriteria - it was small, short haired, ugly, young, chipped and for free. I would have called him Asterix or Arthas or something, but it seems that The General would have walked out if I did that,whereas he continues to be upset by the fact that I said I was lonely. As compromise, and if we are to believe Star Wars (they say it's a good thing and in such posh wording, it makes you think.) that's okay, we took Tara and went around with some weekend errands. Of course The General with such a lean, young Rottweiler on a short leash is something entirely different that if he was forced to walk a dog like Arthas, but he is meticulously against dogs indoors. Funny how everyone is so fucking clever suddenly and throwing a zillion rational reasons against it at me and I'm the ONLY one without a pet! Only pets I get to connect to is the ones they ask me to euthanize! Perish the thought I'd get the chance to claim a live one!

              *Pout*. 

               Anyhoo... Off to vent on ICC. It's SO helpfull to have something difficult to kill when you're in a just the right mood.

Today I tried to make myself lunch - one of my favorites, plums dumplings - and having lacked one ingredient to finalize it, it was the worst thing I have ever eaten. Which is saying something, considering I ate army food for four years. Runny dough, wet and slimy, tasteless and agresively sweetened afterwards. GODs that was awful.

Weather's bitchy - sky's overcast and air is heavy and my type of blood isn't it's best under it. I keep feeling like floating melted wax. Other than that I love it that it's warm and windy.Good indoor weather.
           I had three errands today and asked Piček to join me for at least one, but he of course CBA, so I went to the library myself, indulging in feeling sad and lonely -and there was a guy on a PIANO in the middle of the street, playing some mellow jazz that suited my mood PERFECTLY.
           That was new.

           I can't really be sad the way it's supposed to be done. I'm way to happy for it. Might get angry, tho... But I'm getting us kebabs for afterwards, when the bad moment passes.

Shutter Island

Watched a bit of Shutter Island. Half or so. I knew more less what the movie was going to be like, but as fine as I am with claustrophobic psychological thrillers, the whole mental degradation process of the hero is not for me. I'm not saying I couldn't watch it - by comparissn it's not even very scary - but I probably better not. My brain is ever on the brink of exploring some pretty coocoo regions in my sleep as it is and the nightmares haven't been slacking since the whole book  thing. I have stopped watching Criminal Minds, also. Don't want to see Hotch go through the whole Dexter thing. Plus the copy of both - the movie and the series - is so poor that latter isn't really watchable and the former is painful to listen to. As much as the OST was meant to inspire discomfort, pirate download of the whole thing succeeded. 

      But all in all it's a good film. DiCaprio continues to make the most of his face and frame, twisting it into something not pretty-boy-routine, delivering one of those performances that once again make the viewer think 'I'm so glad it's not me' and Ben Kinsley is always as much a villain as he is a good guy in every production. Director goes for the whole post-war paranoia, almost mocking the whole anti-communist frenzy.. It may have been a bit overdone, though. Music would have probably been enough to let us all know how very troubled the poor man was, and shooting of the Nazi soldiers might have been enough to stress the absurdity (In all that horror he still regrets coming down to their level in that bad moment..), salted down a bit with flash scenes of frozen cadavers, but lengthily and very detailed graphic imagery of the endless unfortunate souls in Dachau was unnecessary. Twist came around full circle, too. 

Makes me think... The war. Second world war. Personally I am almost a fan of war (Not to mention Warcraft). I like the existential dynamic of it, the whole creative passion men seldom display otherwise. Nothing gets men more perky than the thought of war. Everybody wants to be the hero and to do that you have to kill some other idiot that's coming at you with the same idiotic intent. After all, since we take it upon ourselves to slaughter every other form of life we meet, from trees, bacteria, rodents, down to deer for sport, it's only natural we once in a while turn upon each-other. Look at Celts. They made war a sexy profession. They'd drink, eat, fuck, party around and when they got fat and bored, they'd go to war. Romans did it also. Everyone did, in fact. We try to impose some synthetic sense of tranquility, crime-less and violence-less state and it's just not holding. Men need to kill. It's a turn-on. I could spend my entire existence sabotaging arms of my fellow combatants or Piček's hunting weekends and still achieve nothing. Perhaps more fundamentally pacifistic person than anyone I know, I am still far from being immune to the urges of my species.

             That having been said, there's the WWII. Yes the glorious Pearl Harbor pilots, yes the partisan songs and field hospitals and all the movies with blind soldiers nursed back to the will to live by innocent farm girls.. 

             We went to all sorts of museums and sights during the basic training and I've seen and heard plenty absurdly tragic things, but hey, that's war. You asked for it, expect a few dead. What the fuck did they think will happen? Fight Club? And I realize there have always been slaves and POWs and experiments and whatnot, Japanese side, American side, French side, whatever. The words 'concentration camp' really aren't meant to bring up images of gardens and perky out-door sports. It's where people go to sit out declines of humanity. 

             These days we have serial killers who can perform unspeakably gruesome acts, often onto the least guilty counterparts. An abused teenager won't go against the abuser, nooo, they'll go against the schoolmates who are happy. Housewives, children, happy married couples.. Sometimes for years without being caught. 

            But those are sick men. There is nothing righteous about them. Heck, I can even justify the quadruple digits slaughter of Nazi cooperatives in our own forests, often seasoned by tales of mild torture beforehand and similar reaching out. But that was war'n'consequences. Places like Dachau? Auschwitz? My grandmother came out of Auschwitz with arms broken - experimentally - more than  a dozen times and she was so starved that when she was fed, along countless others, the 'normal' food (Goulash, I think it was), was too much and all their stomachs gave in and they all died. The starved, beyond-words-destroyed people, masses of people, not soldiers or collaborators, or even Jews, the gay and whatever religion practitioners - in the end it was just that they existed that was in some way offensive or an opportunity for someone to be the Devil in human form. If Lucifer was asked why he would inspire something as indescribable as Nazi camps, he's blink and say: "Me?? Are you kidding? Nazi camps are where I go with my popcorn to watch the pros."

Ninja Assassin

Amazing, how having met/read/encountered Susan Sto Lat, I can barely look upon classical tale as if something rightfully wrong. Take Ninja Assassin for example. (The Rockstar toddler is visiting, hence the choice of entertainment). Classic tale. Orphan boy raised to become a ninja, rebelling against the brutal tutelage of his mysterious master only to have to deal with all the more susceptible pupils who didn't see right from wrong somewhere between nearly being murdered to being murderers themselves...

            Criminal Minds POV: HOW hard it is, exactly, to abuse a small child day in and day out and NOT create a sociopathic sympathy invalid, able to do only harm to others until, often soon, they die. Seriously. Short speeches that are suppose to make everything right because they include the words 'honor and family' and long beatings that are suppose to.. What, exactly? How is such a school for ninjas simply not a harem for a psychopath to abuse to no end a whole group of kidnapped and imprisoned preadolescents, inflicting upon them every sick form of torture the man wanted, unable to be taken seriously any other ay himself? HOW is that not beyond disturbed? If something like that happened where we could witness, a man killing children and beating them to cripplesy, just so that they'd not think before hurting others, would not exactly be called "Honor." As if "Honor", "Family" and "Blood" were something a psychopath had any right to use at all. No adult would fall for it, of course. That's why they have to be children. Poor kids fall for that kind of BS.

Am looking forward to Alice in Wonderland. The first few minutes of what I saw (Marton Csokas?? hello?!) were adorable!

Today's somewhere around the official start of spring. My once-was-best friend's birthday is also somewhere around here, but I've only ever known it's somewhere here, never down to specifics. Another amazing thing.. These people, these men, some of which were closer to me at the time than my own flesh and blood, feel SOOO distant now. I know they exist, I know they are well, but to have any desire to meet with them again? Everybody knows that following a good story for too long is never a good idea. We were young and wild once. The same rules applied to us few and as mad as they were, they made us feel grand. dDaniel may still have plowed before me, a gay prophet in his own right, but as he has become a normal person, I continue to be me. Not that I'm dissappointed or that I wouldn't wish him all this comfort, but he chose a different life and I have plenty to remember him by. After the book comes out, he won't be named again. Slowly and gradually he will drift out of my stories, which continue relentlessly and unafraid, replaced by more curiously flawed heroes. :)

      .... I really have to finish 'Heart is a hungry vampire' some day. Re-living the beginning of my affair with the General is SO warming.. :D

Funny thing indeed how a healthy relationship makes everything seem stabile. A friend just got a baby and they're calling her Ronja. I think they even read the book during labor! I've never heard ofsuch a thing and that name's just... imba :D One thing Piček's taught me above others, is that frenzied, mad adventures with hysterically erotic love-affairs are worth an entire life-time, but they tend to happen once, when we are in our fashionable prime, and they don't really last very long. It's usually enough for normal people. dDaniel's first boyfriend must have qualified. We've gone through him like a stellar storm, fading first into memory, then a dirty secret and eventually into a long-ago youth's folly. People like me, obviously, and the General, graciously, have to do a little bit better than that. We were infants once, and were wild. We were young and we were wilder. And now we're here... And it feels like we're just warming up. 

             You have to give it to the General.. Thinking about him becoming a law enforcer (his memory for faces, voices and details is absurd) isn't thinking of him as some village Officer Crabtree ('Allo'Allo, of course) but sooner a commendable agent of the Interpol. But my powers are such that I won't allow him any closer to harm's way than him being a postal engineer. Why would he have to prove himself to anyone? Being a slave to a posh job, even if it is humanitarian, takes way to much toll on one's peace of mind in the real world. I'm a woman: it's my job to keep my mad cushy and safe. Graciously.

Lila Prap

Lil(jan)a Prap(rotnik)'s super style

Bit in a hurry (though it at least got me out of the house again after nightfall) I drove over to pick the brain of the hardnut illustrator. Hardest to be precise, as she's one of the few, if not singular to be exported greatly and also has a fiercely unique and recognizable style. She's basically a genious of small children illustrators and to meet her (despite the fact I've known her all my life, I've just never actually spoken to her) was bound to happen. Her mate's not boring either. How I've missed interesting intelligent people in my company... Being in a magnificent relationship tends to overcompensate and you stop going out. Or perhaps if i'd had gone out more often, it wouldn't be quite so cool anymore.. haha and I've noticed how much I still consider myself to be a kid! When she offered me whiskey, I felt quite shocked actually. Me? Drinking booze?? LoL, I'm well over thirty. I know, right? My USound doctor was surpriced too :p

But oh yes, we are growing old. The first time I went to have my body scanned, I only had one small flaw (on my spleen, a sort of birthmark. It's enlarged as it is, because I had a bit of anemia in my teenagehood and it had to work double shifts :) and the third time I went I had two and now, 5 years later (and I haven't gone for 3 years) I had 5. Minute, insignificant thingies, but thingies none the less. My poor old body. Considering all it has to put up with :p

I keep wanting to go back to editing "Heart is a hungry vampire". The urge will soon pass, which is a shame, because the ideas I'm getting aren't half bad. There's the scene, for example, in which it's actually shown hot Sepp calls Cole to ask him to meet him and discuss what's wrong with the school and him. Knowing Gorgo asked Cole to help her investigate, Cole brings answers (at some point even considering Sepp and the Red King were in fact one and the same person, if not from two different stories then of two consecutive lives..) and Sepp's amnesia is explained (this time in a bit more plausinble scenario: in the attempt to create better soldiers, Academy offered the General and other elites to scrub their brains and rid of all useless details and memories which could be better used for combat information.. Not sure whether the memory of Gorgo qualifies for a useless detail, Sepp agreed and was tricked, or, possibly aware of the risk, underwent the therapy anyway, certain that even if he forgets her entirely, she'll find him again and being the sort of the person he is and the person she is, their story would be none less dramatic)... Ahh, my sweet sweet sociopatic general.. If only I could decide on making Cole blatantly aroused by the presence or keepng it still a PG13 fable...

         

Nightmares continue. I'm seeing four doctors today (not because I'd be THAT sick, but mainly because I plan to cluster them together. May be coming down with my period, so gyno may have to be rescheduled.. Other than her, I've got the personal physician to send me to the dermatologist and my annual full body scan, which is more often than not very pleasant. I know enough by now to know what I'm looking at when it's all just shady and floppy on the screen..

             In the nightmare I took a train (there was a famous political couple on the station, she's a trophy wife but she's a doctor, so..) to go to a hospital, because my left foot was hurting a little. A little, but always and I limped just a bit, some days more than others. It was juts one of the minute conditions and I scheduled to had it checked out just because it was convenient. But once there, the head nurse warned me this will hurt and hurt for a week and they began to prep all kinds of simple but painful looking instruments, like a thin hooked nail and scalpels and such. Measuring and scanning the foot they saw that on the top of the arch there's a piece of glass and I figured they plan to take it out, even though it was like 2cm deep in. I kept asking if there is any way to do it not quite so painfully as if we were in the battlefield, but no, they wouldn't give me local anesthesia, even if I was willing to pay for it. They fixed my foot into a handle so I wouldn't move it and this magnificently fat sweaty surgeon - evidentially very good at what he did, because he was really cocky - came, his long greasy hair in a pony tail and he muttered, barely enough for me to make out what he was saying. I kept insisting - though trying to be a brave little soldier - that I am perfectly willing to live with that minute pain or pay for the painkiller and he did offer to give me one but I was really afraid he's gonna charge me some absurd price for it. He kept telling me, in a dismissive way, what this condition is called, but too quickly and as if I wouldn't know what it is anyway. Because he was a surgeon, there was no reasoning with him. He was there to butcher my foot. Then I woke up. 

Ew.

Phase II of the book

:) Jup. It's always encouraging for an author when she comes to the printer and he says - if she doesn't find the money to publish, he might be perfectly ready to invest into something like this. Teehee :D

UNEDITED! (I just poured it out in one go. Gimme another minute to fix it) story worthy of Karen Eiffel

Knowing perfectly well that something this tragic isn't music for anyone's ears, I've - following the tradition of the Battling Bard of Potidaea - expanded my dream, again, into a short story. It's ridiculously sad and yet not really... Who am I kidding, it's absurdly sad.

Okay.. So basically

       "It is both a tragedy and a triumph for a bullet to find itself a warm place to die..."

A young woman, wearing a light blouse and a touch of lipstick, only because all daring ladies in Rome-regarding movies do it, is grateful she has a chance to visit Italy again. She hasn't done it since college and although the passion for art history has never really left her entirely, she hadn't had time. Life got in the way of childhood dreams. Not in a bad way, though, she's been enjoying her job immensely, it just had nothing to do with domed chapels and old temples with the 'groteska' murals and frescos portraying limber young men hunting down extravagant menagerie. Italy was one of those places that could easily be portrayed in smog and hustling and pollutions of tourists, but in the cracks of all that realism were the strange echoes of the past so easily accused of art and lust for life. She has always liked that part so much! Where Greeks felt aloof in philosophy and drama, heavy for a tourists' taste, Romans felt leisureful, decadent and fat. 

             She wasn't going that deep into it, though, she just liked the feeling this trip presented. and the distance it took from what she knew in and out. Some people take their getaways to beach chairs and sound of the sea-line, she liked the stench of damp old ruins and masses in lines of museum tickets. First loves never really go away. 

             This temple was less crowded and strange in some sense that it was almost impossible to place, temporally. Architect didn't seem to have any respect for tradition and so the dome felt romanesque, the shape roman, the material Greek and the purpose somewhere around the tombs of Charlemagne, so the exact meaning of it was an enigma written on the plaque by the door - in Italian. She was peeking for clues into a fireplace-like niche when four more people followed the invisible line of tourist catwalk. Two people, however, were out of place. 

              If she had to guess, interrupted in her surreal tour, they were less vacationers and more one of the maintenance workers and his daughter. He was a large, fat man so tastelessly dressed in jdirty eans that his stomach hung out from underneath a stained undershirt and his hair and thin beard were greasy. He was pulling the teenager around as if trying to find a place to shake her out of sight of sightseers and as crying as the girl was, she didn't try to escape too insistently. Only then did the young tourist notice the man was holding a small dark gray revolver in the hand that hung by the side of his obese frame. The way he was holding that arm was saying the gun weighted a ton.

               Something very instinctive turned a switch in the woman. It would only later on clarify itself to what it really was. Everyone else fled the chapel and she felt like she is perfectly welcomed to join them, for the man's violence wasn't going to take long and the fact that the teenager wasn't hysterical it went to say she's been through this before and wasn't really in any kind of terrible danger. Her father was a brute and a brainless thug, but the child was used to it by now. The trouble she was getting herself into, probably involving boys, was her only taste of rebellion from a heavy trap she ever dared defy.

               The young tourist was guessing all that with her back to the door and all it would take to get out of this situation once and for all would be to make the next few steps. She knew that if she interfears, she will get hurt. She just knew. But the man began to hit the girl with the gun and the girl fell to her knees, screaming timidly and sobbing and defending herself with her thin arms. The young tourist hung herself onto the man's arm, suceeding in putting him off the aim. At first he was surprised, having been interrupted, but one woman was like any other and he pushed the stranger away and turned back to the offspring, although by then the worst has ben said. Something mean and yet grateful passed from the daughter to the stranger via a moist glance and then the ridiculous molseter pointed the ugly little gun to the tourist. He did it as if the gun was empty, as if he only ever used it for hammering the kids. His daughter tried to run out of the chapel on all fours at the opportunity and he barely just caught her by her foot. Pulling her up, grabbing her hair, he shook her and got angrier still and whatever he was hissing and spitting and cursing at the tourist, didn't come through, until he said, in a strangely self-liberating-from-a-lifetime-of-corset voice, heavily accented: "I wasn't going to hurt anyone today, but if you insist.." and pulled the trigger.

              The whole thing was in fact very noisy. There was even some powdered mist around the gun and a dull thud into her chest, almost directly in the middle - something she observed with twisted admiration. There was a scream but it was already leaving the temple and right after people's bodies blocked the light from the entrance frame, so did the violent blaze blink and make the whole chamber brighter once they were gone. 

               It was going to be a few moments before people start rushing in. Those moments were nice. There was a little bit of fear and some uncertain worry, but the sum of all emotions was almost magnificent. The woman looked down onto her chest, saw the nice summer blouse, white but for some gentle pattern, punctured just beneath her chin, between the breasts, in the middle of the sternum. A very dark and very thick, almost cartoonish geyser of blood spurted the first hiccup of mess and as well as she could - all this while she was falling like a cut down tree, but very slowly indeed - she cupped her hand over it. It seemed to work, because as much as her palm became warm and sticky by the time she hit the ground, no more of the blouse was ruined. 

              With her face to the ground, she was amazed at how neat the floor actually was. It was polished concrete, dark and ice cold, the kind you get if you walk on old clay for a very long time, in some ancient French vine cellar. No spit or gum or cigarette butts that she could see  were bothering her and the smell was of roads and cold earth. People who came rushing in came like dancers, their feet and knees blurred in the sharp contrast of the sun-beam protruding  from the door and although that day wasn't very hot and the chapel was cooler still, the ground's hard void of any kind of alive warmth was soothing and nice. Despite the fuss everything was deaf. She realized  her face has turned so that she was almost smiling. The gun which was left tossed away was within her reach, so she pulled it to her by her other hand, one she could see to be very long and pale, and slowly, carefully  and with much effort she pushed it into her back jeans pocket. She probably wasn't thinking very clearly, but something little about keeping snakes and spiders and things like that bite you, to help doctors fix you, was going through her mind.

               This was so unfamiliar. Only word she could find to describe the emotion filling her top to bottom was 'life'. Luckily she had skin or she would overwhelm the whole temple! This must be what 'life' feels like.. What 'life' sounds like, a distant heartbeat and people in strange languages, never quite near but never quite very far either. What 'life' is like when it's beginning (and when it ends). The matter in her palm pressed tightly against her chest reminded her of a handfullof chocolate pudding,  an analogy as absurd as this whole happenstance was. Warmer than her hand to the touch and so preciously held against her that if she made the slightest wrong gesture, try to move it or fix it, she's make an irreparable disorder, so she just held it there and it was good. She would say to the people who began to kneel down and fuss around her that she's fine, (better tha fine!) but other than the hand to her chest no other part of her body belonged to her anymore. The lips were quiet and smiling. Gravity was strong. Tears running from her eyes onto her hair were happy tears. They really were.

               How she became two people right there, she couldn't tell. There was an odd sense of urgency, but other than that nothing felt wrong. For as good as she was feeling she could just as well have been dancing over a field of sunflowers. There was no need, though, right there in the chapel she felt just fine. One part needed to be someplace else, though.  easily she could expirience both. For exaple, she mused on how stiff and cooperative her whole body was, when they pushed her very slightly onto the hip, pushed a plank underneath her and rolled her back - and she could, at the very same time, muse on how nice it is her hand doesnt fall alseel always placed in the same possition when she's still cupping her wound, sitting on a bus which is taking he home through the night. 

               In the hospital, all she could see were the ceiling lights and mostly up the people's nostrils, although when they cut the corner very quickly, the civilians first replaced by medical workers and medical workers replaced by surgeons, all running, all looking worried and detached, she caught a glimpse of a patient in a pale blue, old pijamas, younger then her, a lot more tired than her, but somehow more used to all this, laying in  agurney of her own. The other girl was on her way to surgery also, but sudden gunshot victim cut in. However serious her condition was, it could wait another few hours. She's been here for weeks. 

                The bus arrived and the city slept as the tourist returned home, going first to the parent's house which was closer and somehow felt appropriate. They would still be in bed, but waking them up wasn't a problem. Light sleepers both, they were the sort of ex-party-goers that being slightly crusty while making coffee-on autopilot and listening to their daughter's trip to Italy was completely traditional. Dogs and cats woke up too and sister came to see what's up and then went to bed to take another ten minutes of her ritual. Mother put on kettle to make tea and father was in the bathroom and dogs were jumping. She managed to pet the both equally with the left hand, the right one still firmly holding the wound pressed down. It's been so long she's almost forgotten why else she'd use it. Because being shot was by far the most emotional expirience she's had, she kept wanting to bring it up, but because her family couldn't fathom it, she first had to explain all about the temples and Italian traffic. 

                After the surgery began, even though there was nothing physical about it, she was wholesomely there, watching the surgeons' hands and instruments twist around in the chest, all bright red on pale green canvas, bubbly organs being pushed this side and that and funny urgency that made them all unnecessarily sticky. She was worried only a pinch, in a curious way, that her heart might be in trouble, considering that despite what they learnd in primary school, how heart is supposed to be on the left ide, it was actually in the middle. What little she knew of guns, she knew enough to add another negative thought to the cornucopia of exhilirated ones, namely that smaller callibers - and that gun was very small - make more mess as they bounced and ricochet off bones. Perhaps those were all the reasons why surgeons looked so serious. 

               Somebody came into the OR and warned them about something. The heart patient which was outside and would have been operated on instead of this emergency, went into a fit. Well what were they suppose to do that they weren't already doing?!

               At home the description of all the pretty places was starting to go in circles. Everyone was up already, excpet the sister was groggy and grumpy and was suggestively led towards the bathroom. tea was ready, some food came up and someone was already unpacking her suitcase onto the dining table to display small gifts, scarfs and some tour books. Dad and dogs were playfully fighting over breakfast and mum wanted to test the daughter's knowlege of art history and made her really burrow through old interestes to comke up with all the names of renaissance craftsmen that made all the great things she saw.

               In the hospital the girl outside the operating room died of heart failure. It was a foolish conicidence and there was no way of knowing her condition suddenly turned so serious, but as soon as doctors heard, they began to slow down a little and intended on saving at least one patient. For the tiniest moment the young tourist though she could see the ghost, if she turned her head towards the brightest part of the operating room, but she couldn't turn the head due to anestesia and besides, everybody knows there is no such things as ghosts.

                In the home kitchen, the young woman began to have a distinct suspition this is actually a moment she needs to savor and make her peace, because it wasn't really real. There was no way she could have made it all the way from Italy on such a shor notice and although everything her eyes saw and ears heard and mouth tasted, as the family finally settled down to a decent breakfast and less hectic conversation - her heart was tuned to a different reality. Her heart wasn't beating.

                It semed quite strange that this would be her final hour, because just to look at it, it didn't come off as spectacular or dramatic at all. nobody was having and grand speeches, there were no desperate hugs or profound silences one might expect from people parting their way on death row. Food was so boring and so familiar, the just right amount of butter on just right enough not-fresh croissonts and too hot tea and dog salivating onto her thigh while she tried to push it away with an elbow. The urge to share the most exciting news - the news about the shooting - gradually gave way, because although she would selfishly enjoy the shocks and startled expressions and the downpour of questions and histeria, she found herself being better than that and just allowed the others to tke over the chitter chatter and listened instead. Some family holiday way coming up obvioustly, because there was strategic preparations for the shopping of it, which was always at least as much fun at the feasts then in the end. The journey to Italy was almost entirely forgotten by now, everyone was glad that she was home, but a new day was beginning and jobs were waiting and could she walk the dogs today instead of dad for a change? That's a good daughter, hehe. 

               It wasn't working. In teh hospital, in the surgery. The surgenons' effort wasn't working. The hardness of the operating table and the cold were becoming a harsh reality superceeding the warm wattery embrace of the anestesia. The pain in fact became so fresh it was the most obvious example of two things being ripped appart - and that was dying. She died long before the surgeons realized it or noticed it or agreed to believe it. In fact she felt like she was being rude for not being able to stop their hardship, their sweating bodies trying to keep up with the fevered tired minds. She died, amazed at how little sadness and regrets she's actually feeling, although all she should have been feeling were regrets and panicked struggle, for life is so nice and bright and the end of it so very ... nothing at all.But she was feeling nothing bad at all. Only 'life', gaining distance slowly on her like an old friend leaving, happy they've met after a long time. 

              Realizing that the breakfast and the time in which she should have gotten her good-byes in order was so unspectacular, was because every day she's had, even the bad days, were all in all so lovely, she didn't need phamphares to walk out of the playground. Her family didn't need to be told that she loves them, because she knew and she lived her life so as to prove it to them every day. Every day she did what she liked and never learned hw to truly regret and be afraid of death, because she was a good person and didn't blame anyone for now owing the world. Whatever this was, the life that she had, the least significant span of tie in all existance, the least significant cog in all creation, was only hers and she got exactly what she thought she should have. Without any ceremony at all, not even a feeling that she's holding back any tears for reasons known only to herself, dark and ugly, she kissed, with smiles, lips or glances her family and dogs and food and books and childhood toys and left, half in a hurry into the new morning after she was done with everything fussy families impose on briefly visiting daughters living two streets away. It was all so funny and so cute and she could do absolutely nothing but smile on her way down the empty alley - again sensing she should probably have wories and regrets because it felt like a polite thing to do. Respecting life. But no. She was just happy. The street eventually vanished and she felt like she was either drifting someplace or faling asleep, fading out of color and warmth, though nothing "special effects" as you would think. Her only real thought, separated from all that the remained of her - emotions - was of a girl she's never met (a girl in some Italian hospital, on a guorney just outside the operating room, aiting for yet another surgery to maybe save her condition this time, a girl nobody realize will die if she gets pushed aside this exact hour), so before her body even hit the ground in that unlucky historical chapel temple, she pulled the hand away and all the blood that's been held in place and may have fooled the doctors she's worth wasting time on, pourd out and down the shirt and out of the body, taking the life with it right then and there.

            

Perhaps I give some people too much majesty. Perhaps it's just as well, considering i often come out as a rude snob or simply a demagog. Generally I don't like people, but if I do, I make (subconciously) a really big deal about it. I tend to idolize. 

                  As casualy as I could, I've sent a text message to another author that I hold in very high regard and got the exact same response that I would give in her shoes and yet disarming. She speaks in the sort of "quit wasting my time and tell me what you want" tone that I cannot just beaut around of. I can't be shy and honored she's recieving me. It's totall bull. She's agreed to meet me, in fact invited me to her place and she didn't do it to recieve a groupie. She wants to talk to me as a grown up. I think. I could be wrong. I'm still afraid. I suppose I would have the exact same feeling about getting the chance to meet Zemotion. She's a lot younger and a lot more timid and I really like her and yet knowing all that, I'd have to constantly remind myself I'm a talented professional just the same while trying to get beneath the fame. Anyhoo, it's uncanny. More so that I really like that feeling of being in awe :p

I'm thinking - except financially, obviously - life is actually really good. I may have hurt the car uninetntionally, causing even more of repair bills (backing onto a frozen snow bank I may have damaged the oil pipe) but at least it turns out I won't have to got to the dentist... *unjinx the jinx, quickly!*.. The toothache that's been giving me nightmares and waking me up all night's proved to be - followed by a gum infection -  pice of sunflower seed from the bread I like - the size of half of my tooth, lodged so deep within, I didn't get it out after two days of insistent brushing. I've given up on the hope it's a foreign object causing my gums to burn so badly, and then I punctured the swelling and saw the thorn. Thing is, the teeth there are so oddly repaired, left right and center, at one part the filling just goes from one to the next, leaving a bit of a space underneath and it's where the seed got stuck. 5 minutes after I got it out the pain and tension was gone, making my jaw feel 5 punds lighter. (Which means I'm gaining weight again, as I've gained 5 someplace else O.o)

hehe, I'm so used to toothache I almost name my teeth by moods. Idiots. But beside that, I'm gonna go put some real food into my tummy and listen to Queen Margot's OST. It started last night (Aleluja!) as I needed a backsound to commemorate my first Titanium Ore mining :P Working on the back colophone.

have I posted any praise of our guild at all? I haven't?? Well! It's not that now that the fuss is over and the opportunity to stack neatly all the junk that failed to fit in other banks has subsided, I am actually not making anything of it, but for two days I was recruiting like crazy. All candidates had to tell me what's theirn favorite book and I expecially like newbies. There's just something about people who are completely innocent. It's like going on a first date at 17. Okay, maybe 14. When there's no expectations what so ever. Just a shy thrill. :D

 
(Piček's DK in the front and yours truly as a hunter in the back. I love those boots.)

The next big thrill/step was abandoning inscriptions - because except for sentimental value, it served almost no person anymore - and skilling mining. I KNOW it's the least original profession ever, but it will certainly make me pay my dept off a lot sooner. Eventually I will probably become a jewelcrafter also. I am SUCH a rip-off :p

What else?

               The book is almost completely finished (on my part). They will start scanning and retouching it next week and the first contact copies will already go to the capital to fish for offers.. If all else fails, I'll just have more debt. Once you get used to the idea of owing mney all over town, it's quite inviting.

                Remind me to have book-markers printed while I'm at it... 

(the quickly slapped together 'what it's suppose to look like' sample, not the finished deal)

On a related note, the world is snowy again, my family is acting up again (always a nightmare) and my skin is starting to show the nervousness of me. If I just worried for all the stuff that could go wrong in the world, I'd be okay... the almost-pleasant worries about the book however, are taking their toll. I know that to an innocent by-stander my routine must seem weird, but I am getting really good at pacing myself. I even know the sort of shows to choose to watch - the more brutal the better - for my brain to seek the exact opposite and reflect optimism and happyiness in the work.. LoL.

The dream about being shot (I blame the Criminal Minds)

Tonight I dreamed I got shot in the chest. We were on a trip in Italy or some such nice historical place and we were in this nice domed chapel, like one of the old temple-like tombs with fades walls and funny echoes. A large hillbilly-looking man was pushing and pulling his daughter around and I could see he had a small, cheap revolved in his hand to threathen her. he would never really shoot her, he was just being and arse. I knew that if I intervene, I will get shot. It's exactly what happened. We tussled and then he said 'I wasn't going to kill anyone, but if you insist...' and h shot me straight into my sternum. I was smaller in the dream and my boobs weren't so amazing and I was wearing a light summer blouse, mainly white. After I fell down and cupped my hand over the wound to make sure the blood isn't spilled, I kept the gun and put it in my pocket. Like you have to try to keep the snake or spider that bit you to help the hospital rescuers, I kept the gun. It was a small calliber, maybe a '22 and I knew that's bad. Those bullets ricochet. But it didn't hurt at all.

            My life split into two paralels at that point. One of my stories was me being transported on a gourney and into the ambulance and to surgery and I don't think in that story I was going to make it. In the other line however, I kept walking around, palm pressed fastly to my wound, full of hot blood like I grabbed a handful of warm pudding and would hold it to my chest - any wrong movement and it would spill and I would make a mess on the white blouse. Riding a bus, I went home to my parents, which were happy to see me back from my trip. We would unpack and talk and they would (they just woke up and were in their robes) go about their hastened morning rituals and all the while I felt like bragging, as if 'Look what happened to me!', needing to reap stunned and panicked reactions from them. But I didn't do it. I think by then I knew also that this was just my chance to say goodbye in my own way and get some affairs in order, before the two lifelines combine again and then ceise.

Happy Rhodes.

As it turns out, one of my favorite songs isn't sung by two people at all, it's sung instead by a seriously curious lady called Happy Rhodes. She basically feels like haunting nice people with ghosts of Annie Lennox and Tori Amos, but for reasons all but melancholly, I am truly drawn to her performances. Not just because her split personality singing delivers two for the price for one, but because I can't get enough of what she can do with her voice. Not what she can DO as if weird opera people screaming and twisting and doing all kinds of vocal acrobatics that make no art at all, just showing off.. She sings SO lovely. You can believe upon the first notes you hear come from her she really likes to do it.

            I cannot comprehend music, almost to no extend, probably because I can't even hear it properly and cannot sing to save a mayfly, but when I am not using it as a motivation for an active day dream, a scene I need pictured to great detail in order to be able to paint it - that's exactly what I do: I relate it to my kind of art. Some of it rationally and some of it simply with the cavern of my chest where the compassion lives. I can paint and draw and sketch and design and illustrate, even sculpt or plan, and when i'm not doing it for work or training, I am doing it because I love it. That's how I think singers like this lady exists with her talent: she trains and she performs but mainly I think she loves and plays and lives with it. Nothing pompous, nothing in kitch mini skirts with fake boobs and hysterical stadium audiences... Just... The beautiful songs. The not-exactly-right music. The very much right music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zzcMmfGBjY

Intermezzo

Stuff's been up, but I am working on the book so hardcore, I can't bring myself to spend an hour updating this little thing all fine and neat as it's supposed to be done. So it's ust some load thrown in, because I cannot keep it all in and everyone else I could bug to talk to me about it is offline :p

Oscarcs came and went. It was an awfully boring run, with all the magnificent dresses and hair-cuts and jewelry and speeches so politically correct i can remember maybe two at the most. (Both lead actors, actually.) I'm unhappy my honey Avatar didn't come through, but perhaps Academy decided Cameron has enough Oscars and being the most grossing film to date, is praise on it's own. Am happy Hurt Locker won at the same time, and that the first female director got the award as well. White men really are ridiculously posessive, aren't they?

 

Just because I've seen so much during the award ceremony and Mags told me so much about it, even though it's not the sort of stuff I'm supposed to see (haha, shows about serial killers are okay, but genuine human suffering is a no no if you're supposed to be a children's author. Already my  third story is too gory for adults, but 11-year olds love it. :), I've downloaded Precious and am looking for the book Push even further. That is SUCH a ridiculously scary film... The performances are like being stabbed. I still cannot comprehend some people exist in such states of mental viciousness. I mean, powerty I can understand. I've seen villages poor beyond all reason in Nepal, but still for all their shortcomings, folk there seemed kind of cool. They smiled a lot, were curious, weren't extending their palms to beg, the children were playful and households were open and inviting. I can understand that being sorrounded by the cheapest possible version of a consumer's world is reality-distorting and imposes a certain lack of ... everything on people, but to be so impossibly  stupid and mean? The social workers never have it easy and yet in a place like that? I am wondering if anyone can truly stay as positive as the author or her fictional alternative Blue Rain. So smart and so tired and yet so willing to push... (The actress they chose is amazingly beautiful and it still took me an imdb to find out where I've seen her before. No make-up makes another person. And there is no WAY that's really Mariah Carrey LOL) No wonder the performer Mo'Nique got the award - she feels like an unmovable force of nature, a human equivalent of the Haiti tragedy. She is like a black hole of humanity. Funny how the story leads the reader/watcher to the point when you know Precious will soon die, but between her mother and her son she will live long enough to sever the darkness of the human condition and perhaps make the gene line less doomed. 

I am halfway through. I'm not responsible for tears, if this was paper.Hello.