Bombardment of blasts form the past

Doctor's waiting rooms would make anyone feel sick in two hours. I was sporting such a bad headache (and I don’t get headaches, I am a tummy-ache sort of a person) I was ready to cry. Also, the downside of having your iPad full of fun games, magazines and all the bookies you might want to ever read, is that when your iPad is unavailable, the world seems like it’s out to torture you. So much for intellectual addictions.
    There was an unsuspecting upside to the whole bacteria-infested happenstance, however … Or at least a curious one. This morning I wrote the chapter in which the power switches back from dDaniel to Mr. Murphy. The issue’s been nagging me for a couple of days now and after I woke up with the clear story in my head, it basically wrote itself. Now Mr. Murphy is back to being the Dream King and dDaniel has been dethroned to Chopin – a sickly, thin boy, unhappy during day hours, creative in music and poetry by night. It may be far from reality, though I think in reality he is simply normal and I have simply taken him as far out as he was on the other side.
    My reward for this – and good I am not overly religious, otherwise this would have been a tad too creepy/asskiss even for Dream Gods – was seeing Pumpkin again. Pumpkin. As if THE Pumpkin Prince. I can’t recall the last time I saw him, though I think I was still in the army and I gave him a hug when we met in a grocery store. (Meaning we were less on stalker-stalkee terms that we were when we started, no thanks to my messed up social skills.) Pumpkin was one of the men in my life ten years ago, when I began writing the Zurnizip stories. My sister & Co. would get hungry very late in the night and they would send me out to get pizza from the only place you could get pizza that late. One night, I was hungry myself and waiting and writing in the corner of the Zamorc pub, watching very handsome hands indeed, doing a strange little dance folding a bunch of pizza boxes. Only later did I look up to find a face of the handsomest boy I’ve ever seen: one with an olive skin of a Balkan teen, sharp nose, even sharper cheekbones, pout mouth and dangerous, deep and dark amber eyes… For years I would follow him around for places we went to get our drinks at – he would shift jobs often, so when we asked ourselves where to tonight, the answer would usually simply be ‘where’s Pumpkin working these days?’… I attempted to initiate a friendship often enough, probably seriously (tastelessly) imposing on him when clearly he was too polite to tell me straight off, and I can only dread what my friends did to do the same on my behalf in hope of getting me laid. The man probably thought I was a sad, fat, nerdy little loon, but still I think in the end we spoke like two human beings. If I ever got to have him, I probably wouldn’t have half a clue what to do with him, but the thought of him always, ever made me feel full of hot, fast, thin bright red blood. Not to mention he inspired one of my best picture books.
    Took me a while to realize it’s him when I saw him. If he recognized or even remembered me, I can’t say, and it’s not that I blame him, I’ve looked better; possibly out of range of sterile neon lights.) I had no idea he’s still in this town (though, frankly, where else would he be?). Not all of his boyish, cursed-prince-of-a-savage-land looks were gone. He was a man now, slightly taller, thicker than I remembered, with thinning black hair and a shock of eyelashes and a large Bosnian nose over a thinner, larger mouth. Don’t get me wrong – still a well enough looking man, but – not a golden-eyed boy from my stories. In fact I only began to recognize him, because he got upset at the nurse (he was always like that, bit primitive, bit too quick to get aggressive) and after he left all the old women began saying how rude he was. Riiight. As if they weren’t all wishing he was rude to them. (Not that I’m defending him, I’m just saying that after two hours of being sent back and forth for dumb reasons when you’re sick, your mind starts going ‘fuck this’ and you want to throttle the next person that treats you like you’re less than shit because they are the ones sitting down and you’re the one having to stand.)
    Funny how some people, as real people, fall so completely out of your memory, regardless of how very important they were for your creativity when you were young … And funny indeed how real people just don’t seem like a good enough reason to rejoin Facebook.

.... The next Morning.

… and of course as soon as I wrote that down, I go to bed and wake up 6 hours later not with one, not with two but with three ideas for stories, witnessed in utter detail through storeams. The question is will I be able to write them down as excellent or will they make zero sense? Run, forest, run. I am so anxious to write them before they fade, I haven't even had the chance to brush my teeth and I could swear I smell my shmorn charcoaling.

The second story takes place in the dark night on some remote world, like another planet or an abandoned country. Something is there, in the dark and a large freight container with a probe is neatly set to test it. Another unit, a vehicle with crew, watches from a dark distance with their lights off. Very quickly something very large and powerful completely annihilates the probe and moves closer to destroy the car, too. It moves in a ship of its own, the very last inch of it hitting the car as it prowls by. Chase ensues and the car (I am partially in it and partially watching this as if it was a cameraman), which is an armored blue thing, tries to hide in an urban area. But in the garage they enter, there is a very large metal door and a woman, wired with explosives and detonator climbs the podium in front of it to give a speech. The drivers of the car know that the second they move she will push the button. It turns out she is a lovely, blonde, well educated, used-to-be-completely-normal wife or widow of one of their unit, recruited to become a suicide bomber in the fight against -  the likes of us (who aren’t even really sure what is happening). She walks down to the car and around us, dragging the long colorful wires with her until she circles the car and we are sure it’s over, but then she untangles it again, walks through the big metal door and detonates there. The explosion is so powerful it knocks the iron gates towards us, tearing the car apart and we have to flee on foot. Now I switch to a tourist who is trying to smuggle out one of the members of the armored car crew. It’s still night, still kind of raining and I arrange for my mum abroad to purchase two plane tickets. Although it’s mandatory for all foreigners to avoid planes, because planes agitate people, I assure them I used to be a flight attendant. That gives me an idea. I dress the soldier woman, who is still in a bit of a shock and myself in pretty red stewardess outfits and go get the tickets. Another problem is that all people who appear simple must be tranquilized for the flight. We don’t want that to happen, because we worry the injections might be overdoses. While my passenger is sitting, waiting, worrying, and the woman behind the counter who wouldn’t calculate the difference between the paid tickets and their money goes away for a bit to tranquilize a mongoloid girl passenger, another clerk approaches me. He’s like Dr. Reid from Criminal Minds and he’s nice enough to calculate my debt, which is about 40 or 60 bucks. Not much, but more than I have. I ask him to lend me the money which I will mail back ASAP, or blow him for it or whatever, just to help us, which, I sense, he wants to, because he knows otherwise the lady I’m trying to help will die. I woke up as we walked through the boarding gate into a reasonable safety, although I dunno. Lots could happen afterwards.

The first story is more start to end and it’s closer to Name of the Rose and Vampire Hunter D – two search entries I wrote into Wiki just before I went to bed last night. (I was cold as a stone, by the way. It actually hurt and felt numb at the same time.)
    The story began in a castle – like monastery, though in present time, on a heavy dark day. I was a part of s sort of hunting party. It was normal times, normal people, we were mostly talking about the landscape and economy and stuff like that. Then it became kind of clear this is more like a prison and we are visiting. I know because one of the party members suspected this and he got locked away for a while. I was in the cell with him, so when we were allowed to come out again, we agreed to participate in the hunt. And we could have sworn that at least one of the members of the party, wearing hooded robes, had death’s instead of a normal face.
At first it looked like we are going to hunt game, we mostly even wore olive outfits, but then we sort of had to use mailman scooters to ride around which in a hilly forest roads, full of old cones and wet spruce needles isn’t so easy. Some did great, of course, even across fields and clearings. I had a jolly good time driving around, the air was nice and warm, and even though the sky was so dark and packed it looked like it was about to rain any moment now. I had no intention to shoot anything, but then I saw, down in a valley below me on the left, that the hunters and villagers were chasing a banshee. They chased her into a power line, which she tore, but kept dragging behind her, until she pulled most of her chasers up on the road where she was ultimately overcome. I realized we were not hunting animals at all, we were hunting mythological monsters.
Upon rendezvous, most of my party members have slaughtered something and dead things were now on display in the castle yard. We were going to clean up and have a feast. However, now almost all of those who had killed something wore robes and they were taller and thinner. I watched them climb the stairs and as light hit their faces, I could see monsters, demons and fiends. Those of us who followed, some were pushed off walls, some were simply pushed into dark corners or wells, some were stabbed. One, who tried to joke when a demon leader asked him what’s inside of his body and said my internal organs/ intestines, got his head broken off. I knew that, once I was in the room where this all began, I was fucked. If I don’t come up with something. But what? They started talking about religion and so forth and for a while I listened to the prison noises, then interrupted the head speaker and said there are … I dunno … some other truths or something and that I don’t really believe in any God so intensely as to see the world according to anyone but myself. This made them all go quiet and they proclaimed me a heretic and thus one of them and I was safe. A girl in the midst of a demonic hunting party in a prison of last righteous souls…

DOES this make ANY sense?

LOL.

I’m gonna keep the third one for myself. I need it to answer a long-nagging-question and finish a book. Some stuff in my world should be alright again, after that’s done :) :)

PS Oh, wow. It snowed all night and there’s actually like an inch of snow on the rooftops.

From "Baker on Judgement day", musings of a paper pagan about Murphy:)

The truth is… [Paper] Pagans have always avoided dreams, because – although, ironically, employed by the Dream king to protect stories – Pagans are supposed to believe in all the things substantial. That includes stories. As Heritage. Not hearsay. A story needs the vessels to preserve itself and whereas dreams are an endless supply of ideas and fiction, they are also the entirely without dimensions. Not even their timing is real. Upon waking, not a single evidence of them remains, not even reliable memory. As much gratitude and loyalty as pagans owe and pay their Oneiric patron, they never really liked him. If faced with impossible decisions, Pagans would chose to do what they can in the real world without him as opposed to going into the dreaming to read there. Any number of books they could open in those libraries would ultimately prove, in fact, empty.

Tried to watch the latest Twilight four times by now, but I just can't get to it. I can't believe how can someone make such a terrible movie?? It's like all the creators - all the setting, the scenery, the costumes, the light is arranged to such perfection and then a bunch of people are placed in the middle to ... just ... staaaand... there ... not .... moving.... And saying weird things in an out-of-place monotone, usually as if half the dialogue is already missing.
         And you got to love how she looks pregnant and feels the kicks from a single cell embrio.

Am back to watching Glee.

The weekend was lovely, me getting plenty of rest and Warcraft, I've read four books by Chelsea Handler and really didn't like them. (Once you get pass the fact she writes about people she's tapped and drinks she's drank, there really isn't much left to read about.) Will switch to Bryson's at home and some feisty fiction. I drew some other illustrations for the bookie-in-the-making and selected some of the old photos from my trips to add. I'm restless to starting to arange them in InDesign, but first things first. There's still plenty of tedious research to do...

Watched Name of the Rose again. Well, half of it; the movie is a neon long. But I like it, especially because unlike the novel, it ends well. At least for the boy, not so much for the books. And I like how some of the issues are handled. I like the portrayal of Jorge's constant scold – of laughter, of ‘idolizing the reason’…  Sick old fuck. How women are spoken of as if they were bacteria, admittedly the wombs of all the men, but sinners for it and thus disgusting. Christ. I love the way reality of cloisters is portrayed onscreen – what a dense, miser, horrible world that must have been. Still, it was better than the outside. It makes sense why pope wanted to abolish the Franciscans, who lived by the poverty oath and why the lovely were considered so filthy and corrupt. Compared to that entire gruesome monastery, being able to touch someone warm and beautiful and honest meant the world to Adso when he got laid to someone else than a fellow friar. It would make sense how those poor people lived in such terrible conditions: nobody ever taught them better. The Christians hid away all the knowledge, burnt all the midwives and herbalists and kept people in ignorance and in fear with silly stories and ugly statues. Nobody knew you *have* to bathe, you *have* to clean your home, you *have* to avoid fluids, you *have* to isolate the ill from the rest… That must have been such a terrible, terrible time to exist. Especially for the books. Originals got burnt, after being “translated” (read: heavily edited, forged and censored) so that it’s almost impossible to tell what the antique authors wrote, exactly.

There is one thing odd, however, that I notice… In the movie (well, the story; novel, too) Brother William is utterly restless until he finally finds the library – and then he’s on his turf. I know how restless I am as well, when I venture someplace and I can’t get to the books. We gravitate to the tomes as if they were oxygen. I know how I would feel if I was in an institution where I KNEW there was a library and couldn’t get t it. It would twist me like an addiction. Funny that. I suppose if a grand, bright library with a good view and an endless shelves of all shapes and sizes and cushy seating arrangements, too, is my Heaven, then I suppose being on the outside looking in would be my Hell. That which gives us wings can equally bring us wishing blindness, eh? How religious of me.

Uldum irrigation... don't ask.

I haven't played WoW for so long, it took me 45 minutes to stop admiring Uldum irrigation after I logged in. The morning blissfully went for my favorite WoW occupation - archeology - to take my mind of work for a moment. With this bleak, gray winter, it feels like Egypt is the one place where I would really be happy. Just give me an orange desert and a thorough well.Well, and WiFi, obviously. 

Though still ill, we drove to some behind God's ass valley high up in the mountains to photograph the snow castles. Really cute. Somebody even did the Angry Birds scene. We didn't stay long, just about 400 shots or so, because I didn't want to risk getting worse. My tummy just stopped feeling like I have a chilly ten pound ostrige egg in it. The General followed me around, making sure I didn't get trampled or walled in, impersonating a popsicle. He was grumpy (of course he refused to wear double winter socks and three sweaters like other mortals) as his feet, hands and jaw froze. Then again I mentioned that we were only there for an hour and that's pretty much how the weather is when lately Drej and I walk our muts for twice as much *daily*. Men. Half the time on the field they're thinking about their lover's safety and the other half  about being neatly tucked in and snuggled, cushy warm. And possibly watching something with guns in it on the iPad. 

Would you look at that wooly mammoth?!! I'm talking of course about the baggie pendant.

Writing about trees and drawing for the bookie. Easy tasks, as my brain is still heavy as a brick. House arrest is no fun. I got so bored I cleaned the fridge last night and I don't clean fridges. Not literally. Also the tea I'm drinking is like cold runny bitter iron.

In a tradition of winter haikus that we usually duel with, Drej & moi, there's another one about snow recession:

One snowflake doesn't make
A snowstorm, says the plow;
Don’t even wake me.

Ena snežinka ni snežni vihar,
reče plug in doda,
ne me budit (do pomladi).

Nice. Now I'm under a house arrest – which is only ever fun if you *have* to go somewhere. If you're really bored and unfocused and yearn for a bagel, then this sucks. All my ideas about spending five or so years in my lonely wooden tower usually last about a day – then I pick up the phone and call some of my girl homies and we hit the coffee&cake place down the street.

    The real bitch about having my immune system (the nurse mentioned I visit twice a decade and even then it’s usually because I’ve crashed something), doctor tells me, is that all those tiny little fuckers that get into my body, instantly hit a wall of guards and most DOA – alas, a viruses are the most advanced life form in existence, some stay hidden, dormant, sleeping cells, stuck to the remote, lazy little corners of my vascular mess. Three years later, I am a carrier to about twenty infections, just waiting for one bad day. Not even my strict diets of chocolate, coke and kebabs can keep me up forever. General is so pleased: he claims I got sick when we climbed the Pyrewood hill, which is not something chubby old ladies are supposed to do. He now has me under house arrest. Normally I wouldn’t notice any difference, but being ill also means you feel like *. Nothing much I try to do engages me. Not even eating. And that’s def con five.

My antibiotics should come available tomorrow and although tempted to storm this one out by sheer will of force and fatty sugars, it’s only so much gasping and crying when peeing I can take before admitting defeat. And instead of a neat spring apple juice, my pee looks like a two week old tea, thick, brown and with funny bits swimming in it. Not to be too sentimental about a pee, but it was easier to pass water when I was in a desert, drinking things camels passed.

Vid Valič & Denis Avdić stand up

I'm old, I admit it and I seem to be sporting a latent peepee infection, so about fifteen minutes before the show I was kind of wishing I didn't have to go, but the General only needs a hint of such behavior to call things off, so I wasn't going to admit to feeling poorly. It WAS a bit funny, though, to be in a full theater and sitting just by the door. I kept thinking what if someone dropped the chandelier or shot someone and all those crazy hysterical people would try to crawl over me… I am NOT fond of full theaters. If possible, I always sit in the front row and pretend I’m alone, if not invisible.

But the show was hilarious. Two and a half hours of laughing to sex, drugs and politics jokes (oddly enough those seem to always be the funniest) and mocking the showbiz colleagues. It’s so rare seeing the General laugh out loud and I am of course very easy to pee myself. You’d have to be there to get it, though I loved the remark about why do we seem to fear the gay so badly. Are the gay men ten feet tall, 400 pounds, hairy and bald, running around naked with their twelve inch erections in their hands, chasing random people in the streets screaming: BLOW ME!!??!... BLOW ME!!!! …


Although both were super funny, the little one, Avdić, was soooo good with dialects and mocking famous politicians... Though Valič's wish that women's orgasms were like the count-down traffic lights (he called them tiny personal New Years) instead of an endles mystical wanings and crescendos... That was uper funny, too :D At least to us, chicks.

Doodling with the watercolor pencils, getting ready to do the winter illustrations for the bookie. Now I have a suitable portrait for Ilona Day Gaiai, one of my hitherto unused, yet fully fledged, manga characters :))

A friend today asked me what my definition of success is... Do I want to be rich, famous, known for ages, revolutionary, overwhelming, praised… And the fact is I really don’t. I wouldn’t mind it, but that’s not why I do what I do. I write simply because I really like it. I photograph because I find it disciplinary to pursue such a seemingly done-to-death form of art, until it IS art. But the simple truth is my definition of success is the luxury of options. The less that limits you in the things you try to do, the more successful you seem to be. Can I go to North Korea on my next vacation? No. I am too poor, too little connected, not enough important yet – hence – I need to wire up my game a bit, and this option, too, will present itself.

Bored. Wrote a poem.

Losers

I know your type, my quiet tall, dark stranger
I've met the men who always have to win.
I know that in the grand scale of ambition
For you 'to feel' bares the same bane as 'to sin'.
I know the shades you cast are cut to the perfection
And the thoughts you utter marvel in,
Statues could be made to stare at you
Marble, cut in awe of those who win.
The face may be a gem, may be a triumph,
The scent, the voice, the hair may be, the skin,
Like nothing ever so terribly created
Armor on the men who like to win.
The thoughts, the swords, the cars, the ships, the horses,
Matters all on just one side of a grin
On the other side are tiny honest secrets
Insignificance of hearts of men who win.
Just one touch from you and blood burns or stops flowing
A star might die if you sent your lust within
What are floods and earthquakes to ideas
Born by the men who always win.
To lose an argument would be to burn the world,
Nothing sheer of death on an entire nation would wear thin
The need to prove, the urge to harness logic
Bent, men who cannot stand, they shouldn’t win.
I know your kind; I know the beauty of your cruelty,
I recognize you think you have to win
I would follow you home, my only stranger
But even I can’t find where to begin.

Watched Criminal Minds and in it there's a line by Dante:
There is no greater sorrow than to
Recall in Mysery the time
When we were happy...

BUT.
That's for pussies. As all dark things go, from this it follows:
There is no greater majesty
Than to recall in joy
The time in which things started getting better.
(Or, more poetically, when things started standing up.)
That's for kick-asses.

At times writing this book makes my head swell up and keel over and I find myself morosely drooling into the keyboard, stoned on too much cultural information. General has to listen to me recite about buildings and events every day or I have a hysterical fit and I won't even admit the things I tell the dog, which has the supportive initiative of a yesterday’s cold coffee. I’m not saying I don’t learn very many interesting things about my realm, I’m just saying shoot me. Shoot me now. There’s only so many times one can listen to Video games to vent…
On today’s doggie walk (and you wouldn’t believe if I told you there were almost Styrofoam droplets of sleet on the ground in wee traces!!) Drej explained to me the rules of a doctoral dissertation. For about an hour I wondered what I would write if I had to write one – though of course I could never do it, because I write perky and dramatically even when I’m writing travel guides (No, really.) – but if I DID, I’d write about the underdogs on literature. Snufkin may not qualify, but Snufkin will get a tattoo, whereas the likes of Petyr Littlefinger in The Game of Thrones are a prime example.
Which reminds me. I need to eat and I need to shower and I need to see the last fifty episodes of Bleach that I’ve been slacking on. Oh, Byakuya… Oh, how I enjoy you stoically slash through villains and then pretend like you didn’t just die, defending you fragile little sister. Oh, those slate violet eyes. How I would write sexy stories about you, if only you weren’t my size and half my weight and didn’t have a disposition of an old granite statue on a cold winter’s day.

I hate movies that are produced by environmentalists. They are all so fucking stupid. There's a new one out about too much light and of course it's putting everything – the cities and the non-cities into the same bucket of light-polluted end-of-days bullshit… A movie clearly made by people who have a) never spent a single day in their existence without seeing false light and b) probably never even been to anywhere but L.A. or New York or Vegas. I will never understand what these idiots are trying to achieve – make us lament a planet that was never particularly friendly to begin with and feel bad about out ten minutes of evolution that we are being tolerated within? Trying to convince us that we should exist as cavemen? Certainly – if that served a single purpose at all? And what would happen, if we all went back into the caves? We would, within a year, eat everything that this planet has to offer and then drown in shit that we cannot manage. There have been times that all this that they so vehemently preach against was indeed a lifestyle – it’s called post-world wars periods. Go see how fucking the planet was when there was no way to maintain us. Or would they just prefer to see us all gone already? Don’t worry; we’ll be gone soon enough. And then there will be no more climate changes, air pollution, species extinction, because our planet just doesn’t roll like that. Before we came this world was made of silver crystal and unicorns.

And as if the world wasn't ignorant enough, Wiki has shut down for the day hours...
Rats :/

Alcatraz ... meh ... and I'm glad I'm not the only person who couldn't watch Lana Del Rey "sing" on SNL ... 'cause that was plain 'someone stop her, please'

An interesting thing I fundamentally dislike: a gyroid. 

Though on a related subject, Alcatraz show came out… and I am not convinced.

I can see now why they had such scriptwriters’ issues… The script just sucks. Most of the time people seem to not really know what to say, or do, or whom to stare at, or remember what to say and half the time when they say seems to belong to a different scene entirely. Oh, sure, there are plenty close-ups on people with amazing blue eyes, but even though there are plenty characters to like, and dislike, and more than a couple eerie sequences regarding that curious piece of marine real-estate, I just didn’t get it. Okay, so this is going to be a show about a cop chasing criminals? Or about an experiment gone bad? Or about how nasty prison is/was? Or government hide-ups and the likes, evil in the name of greater good or something? Honestly, I didn’t get it. I’m gonna keep watching, because I can’t get enough of Jorge Garcia and I couldn’t watch him in Lost, so… I hope to Gods of all that’s celluloid and downloadable, it gets better. I couldn’t cope with another Terra Nova.

I love the way my dad and the General talk about war stuff when I ask them something - like they were actually there. They know all the names, all the locations, they checked all the sights later on, know all the urban legends of why someone killed someone else, who were the traitors, where the cowards were hiding, how the reinforcements arrived over which ravine and so forth... Down to the materials they used to make make-shift guns and the stuff they were eating. I only get to ask one question at a time per day, because they already tell me way too many things to write town or remember. Also, most of the stories are fucking depressing. I'm still deciding whether to include the war route into my book. The chapter is mostly written, the idea is kind of good, but still, I just don't know.

Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus

Been writing about monks today.  There are plenty very cool cloisters still active in this country and albeit antichristian, I am very fond of the romantic aspects of these institutions. Of course the coolest by far is the Charterhouse Pleterje folk, the Carthusians. These little dudes insist in their pristine white robes and pursuit of total contemplation and silence - not unlike pretty much the extremes of most mystical religions, but it’s still impressive to have them so close-by. For a little while I was worried I won’t be able to write anything substantial but their location in the chapter, but they of course have web sites like all earthly mortals everywhere. There are other orders to mention, but inevitably the wiki files led me to once-was my favorite book on the subject, Name of the Rose. I found myself smiling, being able to still fully remember the last line in three separate languages without even thinking about it. I remember it, because it used to haunt me. I read this book long before I became a book zealot, so the fire in which the library burns, haunted me for a long while. It was only with my buddy dDaniel that I realized the difference between us, pagans, burning books and the truth – burning of the shelves. The last line means something like: ‘The once-was rose stands firm in its name, but it's only empty names *we* are (left) holding…’ Yeah, it sucks to be a sentimental historian sometimes :D

Salmon Fishing in Yemen

Finished reading Salmon Fishing in Yemen and of course it depressed me, because the book doesn't end well at all and I am such a sucker for happy endings that I am actually hoping for the movie to come from Hollywood and be a sort of a romantic comedy. I didn’t mind the old sheik dying – Drej warned me about that – but everyone else was a bit unexpected and quite disarming. Like in a proper novel, and this is probably what makes the book so good, you only got a glimpse of a bright, stolen moment, an excellent story, but before and after which the characters return to the murky current of the real life. I suppose the one who got out the least changed was the fuckup Wife. The rest suffered too much of a loss to ever be the same again. I thought in case of Harriet quite utterly pointlessly. Unlike sheik, who died in the best possible moment and possibly quite happy and at peace.

    Funny how I nearly died in a desert flash flood and didn’t even know it at the time :) Then again it was the desert – I probably nearly died of many things and didn’t know it at the time.

So, since movies don’t need to invoke catharsis, they can simply entertain and inspire and show pretty, pretty scenery, I am going to watch it only if someone assures me everyone (except the sheik and Mary) lives happily ever after. It’s just the sort of a dreamy person I am.

PS I came up with a recipe for pancakes last night and actually dreamed about it. General argued with me that they way I did it probably wouldn’t be very good, and in the dream everyone hated it, kept throwing it away, vomiting or having diarrhea, but to me it actually tasted really great – despite the fact it had a lot of fructal acid, which hurts like a bitch if I try to swallow.
    The pancake is called Biblioteca Corvinia and it’s made of five thin pancakes set into a sort of layered cake, first one painted purple and thin with blueberry jam (purple being regal color), second with chestnut mash 8because his eyes were brown), the third with bit of coconut powder, to remind of late march last frost on the fields, fourth with mild saffron jelly (that’s complicated, but trust me) and the last one, the top one, sprinkled with sweet lemon juice – to add that sort of bitterness that makes everything else for the better later on :D

Few more Tamara with bijou pics...

I like the way I did some of these catalogue pages for a draft. I am always so torn between the story, the cool elegance and the sheer impact of the object for sale... :)

Bit of a fashion shoot, since the day was so shiny :))

Tamy with Rosa semi-precious stones bijou :)

PS

We've invented a new color last night. It's called The Unexplained Love. CMYK - wise it's 89 / 61 / 34 / 14 and RGB it's 39 / 90 / 122.

Some things are ‘shoot me now’ and some things make you melt like toffee

I wonder if people realize, when they read things, how they've been written. Written and printed and set. Some of us still have the image of a deep dark room with a small, book-stuffed window and a large dripping candle in the winter evening (Right, Puškin?)… And of Gutenberg, setting his mighty print tiny letter by letter. And then authors mention their learned colleagues, doctors of literary science and other esteemed authors, and you think – this sounds so very far away from the notepad and pen most of us write like, feeling like schoolgirls…

    Well, let me tell you how we roll.
    I have learned colleagues; I have literary doctors of science for friends. We meet in pubs and discuss all the heavy worldly subjects, such as vibrators and crazy small dogs. Just last night the three of us sat down to work on a book cover. It was serious business and we got some very cool work done, see?. But this was in thorough lack of Siberian winters, decadent French pubs and/or fits of epilepsy or pistol duels. There was half a cake and a moment in which I pretended to try and hit people in the head with a pancake pan as she walked through the door, which nearly resulted in half the cake becoming half the coat. General has been napping up until then, but he hastily retreated to his den, saying you never know what three crazy, lusty artists would do to his unconscious body. A day before Drej complained  that our flat is so cold, when she turned on the cushy portable heater, just as it began radiating some warmth, I asked her to turn it off, as it got really hot and stuffy. Now they both came dressed for Siberia, but alas – the room was warm. So warm in fact that when we went to bed, General and I slept far away from one another, unused to such heat and stuffiness :D The dog was a bit uncomfortable also.

    There was lots of laughing, debating, teasing, provoking and puppy YouTube videos, while we watched the graphic design out of one of my old ‘this is the make-up I would like on a model, please’ summer sketches and Drej’s text. The way she does it is slightly annoying, because she just hits three keys and does some clicks and InDesign obeys her COMPLETELY, talking very smart graphic designer talk to which the rest of us usually reply: Ahhhhhh! And try to look wise and learned. Drej had the strenuous challenge of having to capture her novel in just three lines, while I had cake. All in all it was a funky old evening and we created a book cover. It’s one of those things that make you really grateful someone meanwhile invented friends. And posted puppy videos on YouTube.

Drej's book 'Explain love to me' (Pojasni mi Ljubezen) should be out in March. It's about a love triangle from the prespective of all three angles :) 

 And to top that, Drej and I coined our first mutual haiku today (during the doggie walk, wondering if we’ll have any snow this year at all)

Even the winter is in recession
I think to myself
And put on flip-flops.

And this cool things meant for paper are done. :D

If you can believe it, today are collective birthdays of Elvis, Stephen Hawking AND Kim Jong-un...  not to mention Alma-Tadema. My favorite painting is by him :)

Well, since the start of this year I’ve been working very avidly (read: disciplined…-ly) on my new, travel book about places to see and stuff to do there and other serious shit regarding my pretty country:)) I try to enweave all kinds of lore among the instructions and plenty of the stuff I write about one way or another crosses swords with a historical character with a cool name. Korvin. His dad’s campaign inspired the last prince of Cilli – once a vast realm, now my home town – to be assassinated and a cute little happy story about a king under the mountain seems to be inspired by him. Not much of this would really captivate me, because if anything I’ve read about all kinds of kings aplenty, but this dude actually managed to start a very powerful library. He even seemed to have his very own Aal.

On the hormones pills again, I am so horny I find fairly much everything arousing. Watching hentai and Dirty Dancing doesn’t help. Oh, look, a hot king of old, horny. Oh, young Patrick Swayze half naked! Horny! Oh, look, my husband’s home, horny. Oh, look, dog! Horny. Look – air! Horny!!  So you can imagine what my short story – the ones I write on a side track to went - about the Hungarian warlord is like. There’s a little bit about Budapest in there, some mention of Doboš cakes and lots and lots and lots of……
    Am impressed I got into a haiku writing duel with Drej and didn’t mention sex once. Not even in a lyrical way. Off to have coffee&cake now with the homies, and I’ve also managed to shoot a photo of the General beard-less! Go me :D But now I’m … again … :s  Hopeless. 

How can you not look forward to more of this?