Saw Mono live today. It felt like flying…

Yes, that’s what I did this year, and you know what, it made it the best celebration of all I’ve ever had. You know how in movies there are these really cheesy moments, like when it starts snowing while couples kiss, and you just sit there on your couch and if you’re anything like me, you just go “Oh, come oooon, when does that ever happen in real life?! Fuck you, random cheesy-ass movie!”. Well, there I was, 30 minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, walking in my stupid heels from one corner of the town to another, from one party to another, because shit knows it’s impossible to get a cab on New Year’s Eve and shit knows the one time in my life when I actually feel happy and like being surrounded by all the people I know and all the friends I have, they just need to split into two separate groups and have me run about town so that I get to spend time with all of them.

I was feeling dizzy, I was freezing and hell, my feet were simply on needles - how do some women sport high heels all day long, I will never understand. I finally got to the subway station (thank heaven the subway was circulating all night) and I was sitting alone on the platform, with all my bags spread on some chairs behind me, trying to text people and explain the situation I was finding myself in. The train arrived and I lazily glanced at it, probably with my saddest and most disappointed look. And then I saw the conductor and his assistant waving at me from their cabin. I waved back thinking they were just bored and since I was alone out there they were probably trying to have some fun or whatever. I waited for the train to stop so that I could get in and finally get going. And right when I was about to grab my bags and hop into the most desolated passenger car I had ever seen, the assistant came out and started waving his hand at me again, telling me to come to them. Right then, that was the moment when it all clicked in my mind - “Snap out of it, you silly, silly girl. This is one of those moments, snap out of it and get running.” - and in that second my feet stopped hurting and my hands didn’t feel cold anymore and I forgot all about being tired. I grabbed my bags and started literally sprinting on my high heels till I got to them. Nothing else mattered.

“Hello!” I smiled when I got to them and they smiled back, as if we had known one another forever. They laughed at me a little, they said I was the only person they had seen riding the subway during their last route, and of course I was, there were 15, maybe 10 minutes left until midnight. “Well, if you’re stuck on the road like this, we might as well make it worth your time.” said the conductor. I sat right next to him and stared in awe at the dark tunnels that were unwinding in front of us. I marveled at all the buttons on the control board and I simply couldn’t stop smiling. I know that to them it probably meant next to nothing, they were just amusing themselves with picking up a slightly crazy and lunatic 20 something year old girl who was wearing heels way too high for her own good and was about to enter the New Year all alone in the subway. But to hell with first impressions and to hell with judging and feeling judged. I really couldn’t have cared less. All I could mutter was “Thank you!” over and over again, until the train started moving and I just turned completely mute. “You get really bored of all this after 2 or 3 hours of work, you know.” said the conductor after noticing my fascinated look. He was probably right, but I chose to ignore that. I wasn’t gonna ride with them for more than 5 minutes, and I wasn’t gonna let the trivial facts of life and him having the same job for 20 years steal the magic of that moment away from me. Because riding the subway looks immensely surreal from where the conductor’s seated. Maybe it stops looking that surreal after having done it for years, but for those first few minutes, it’s completely magical.

When I got out, I felt more alive than ever. The new year was just starting and I had the nicest strangest movie-like moment of my life. So looking back on that a few days later I’m thinking that this year has to be a good one. It just has to…

3:29 a.m.

Smoked my last cigarette playing and replaying pretend conversations in my mind - dialogues I’ve never had and moments I’ve never really experienced. My hands are cold. Yours are always warm. And you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. Not well enough and not as much as I’d want us to anyway.

And I’m feeling sick with loneliness.

With each passing year, probably since I started high school, 10 p.m. has slowly become my least favorite moment of the day. My feelings towards this unholy hour obviously decrease or increase depending on the location and the company (or lack of it) but they never stray too far from a disgusting bowl of mixed emotions that keeps on growing and growing and growing, like a horror movie inspired tumor, taking over every inch of my stomach.

10 p.m is the hour of doubts and uncertainties, similar in mood to that moment when you stop for a quick second in the middle of a crowd thinking that you’ve lost something while not being able to detect exactly what, and worrying that with each step you’re moving further away from the “crime scene”. It’s never a good hour to be outside alone, because the streets are neither full, not empty, and there’s this horribly unsettling combination of tired people who are dragging themselves home to bed and happy up-beat people who are going out to party. Nothing seems to be in balance, not from my point of view anyway. I stand on the subway platform waiting for the train and I feel like there’s no place I want to go to (even if I have to actually be somewhere regardless of my apparent apathy). Sometimes I wish the train would transform itself into a magical creature, much like Falkor, the furry luckdragon from Neverending Story or the cat bus from My Neighbor Totoro, some sort of weird fiction inspired character who knows exactly what I need and will come to my rescue. Because I don’t want to go home or anywhere inside, but I don’t want to stay out either. I suddenly need a place in space and time that does not exist according to our human definitions, that has no “in” or “out” connected to it. It’s as frustrating as my bags. If I take a bag out with me, it’s always too full because of all the useless shit I put in it, and it makes my shoulders hurt, but if I don’t take one with me at all, I feel naked and out of balance. The ideal, in my case, would probably be taking a bag that’s completely empty, but then where’s the use in that, right? I don’t know, does anyone get what I’m saying, or am I just making weird comparisons that make absolutely no sense?

Anyway, 10 p.m. is a bad hour no matter the location. If you’re staying in, it’s that time when you’re not exactly sure if you’re going to bed or staying up for a movie night or another cup of tea and a chapter from your favorite book. You feel a bit tired, but not tired enough. And if you’re at a party, it’s near the beginning of a party, when you can’t actually tell if you’re gonna have fun or just dread the whole thing. Or maybe you’re out on a date or with a friend, and you don’t know yet if you’re going home or sleeping at the other’s place or hell knows what. It’s that moment when parents tell you to go to bed or someone fills your glass with some more vodka or a stranger in the bus station asks for a cigarette and you stop and detach yourself from whatever’s happening and you start thinking about all the people you’ve lost on the way, about past fights and past joys. You feel alone, but not in that wrenching sort of a way, no; in a manner that’s very calm, almost content. You wander and you wonder and nothing seems to make sense but it’s not scaring you, just making you a bit weary and unsettled. Sort of like how you feel before you kiss someone for the first time. 

10 p.m. is bittersweet. Really. Time seems to just slow down and noises seem to go mute and you just stop and look around you, at your desk, at your room, at someone else’s room, at the streets or the buildings or the people sitting next to you and you think about who’d direct the movie of your life, if your life would ever get to be presented on film. You pick the songs on the soundtrack and replace some of the people you really don’t like with actors you really like who’d be great at playing the roles of the people you’ve established you don’t like. And after a few seconds you realize how silly all this is and you smile randomly and tilt your head to one side, thinking that, most likely, you’ll be the only one who’ll get to direct the movie of your life. Ever. So you think about making changes and then you think about how tiresome that is so you get to postponing those changes for another day. Maybe you’ll just start making them at 10 p.m. tomorrow.  

I don’t know, who ever does.

Today’s very obvious conclusion is that patterns are excruciatingly hard to break. Maybe it’s one of the hardest things people have to do as individuals. It’s never easy to follow your own advice and to make those changes that you yourself know to be important for some sort of self improvement. And breaking your patterns is a big part of moving forward. But I don’t know what it is about humans and this sick pleasure we take in starting to feel okay with the bad things that harm us and put us down and with this overindulgent negativity that just seems to slowly take over our every action and interaction. I mean, I’m well aware, we start fearing the good and the positive because those things never seem to last. At least when you hit rock bottom you know you can’t sink any lower and there’s some sort of relief in having that kind of certainty. But making this certainty the defining element of your comfort zone can never be okay in the long run.

I feel like they completely failed me in school. They should’ve told me about all this shit before teaching me math or chemistry. They should’ve talked to me more about fear and about change. But then again, how can you really get these things if you don’t properly face them yourself? 

Screw this. I still have tea. 

I marvel at people who tell me they have good, steady relationships with their parents. Because they’re either monumental liars - be it to those around them or simply to themselves - in which case I just marvel at their ability to maintain appearances or to formulate self-indulgent fantasies, OR OR they’re incredibly lighthearted people who just go though life in a continuous automatic IDGAF mode and thus don’t really trouble themselves with this kind of things. In which case I marvel at their ability to selectively ignore annoyances. 

Either way, I find them truly fascinating.

( * __ * )

It’s not enough that this unbearable heat is making me act like I’m constantly PMS-ing, oh no. It’s not enough that I’m sweaty all day long even though I take up to 5 showers a day, that I can’t focus on shit because all I want to do is tear the skin off my body because this summer heat is excruciatingly painful. It’s not enough that I have a shitload of things I want and need to get done and I can’t because all I can do each day every day is sit 1 meter away from the air conditioner trying to keep calm and not lose it. No, summer needs to screw me 24/7. Because now that it’s evening and a tad less hot out and I feel like a normal human again who can actually be active and get some stuff done, now I have flying mutant bugs in my room because I was foolish enough to open the fucking window for air. And yeah, I am fucking afraid of giant flying blood sucking night wasps or whatever the fuck they are. Some people are scared of heights, I’m fucking scared of giant-ass bugs. I can’t even sit in my chair now because they appear and disappear like fucking ninjas screwing with my brain and I’m paranoid as fuck. I’d like to be all nature-loving and whatnot, but I can’t when I’ve been pissed all day.

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I guess that, at the end of the day, life doesn’t look so bad and things don’t feel so hopeless when you realize there’s still some time left for you to discover more, to create more; and that there are so many people out there whom you haven’t met yet, people who might just make everything a bit more enjoyable or at least more bearable, if you can manage to stumble into and stick with the right ones on the way.

But sometimes it all comes down to the little things. And quite often, at the end of the day, life doesn’t feel so weary because you just know there’s some more coffee left in the pantry for the next morning and at least one more borrowed book left untouched on your desk, waiting to be read.

I want Totoro. If there’s one thing I could take out of any animated movie ever created and make it part of the real world, it would definitely be Totoro. I bet nothing feels safer than falling asleep with Totoro, on his big, warm tummy. Nothing in the whole world.

Added at 12:42pm — 3 notes

Let me crawl under a warm blanket and forget about everything and everyone and sleep a dreamless sleep until I fucking disappear. 

And these past few years of my life have showed me that there’s nothing more amusing and more heart breaking than a drunk calling out to a junkie for help. Yet, in all foolishness, here I am, again, with the phone pressed to my ear, too dizzy to stand on my own two feet, obsessively counting the seconds and measuring my own breaths while waiting for you to answer. You’re probably lying barely conscious on someone else’s living room floor, hallucinating your own happiness, too tired to move or to speak. But, for the millionth time… here’s hoping.

Fucking official. Finally. It’s happening. I’m gonna see them live again. It’s fucking happening. Again. Again. Again. Finally! The sheer awesomeness of this, argh!

*dies of excitement*

Ale-chin, I hope you’re reading this. You’d better move your tinny ass and come to this concert. No, it’s settled, you will come, even if I have to drag your skinny legs cross country. You hear me? No excuses this time. None. 

*dies of excitement again*

Roxi! You too! I’d better see your fabulous ass there, lady. I’d better fucking see it there. 

I’ve been gazing at you from across the room for a while now and I think you’re aware of this because, on occasion, I see you raising your head to look in my direction. But all this cigarette smoke stubbornly lingers around both our upper bodies – such a poorly executed wedding veil - and our eyes stay partially hidden from one another, so I can’t be sure. However, I swear, even from here, from across this room, your loneliness feels palpable. I could cut it with a knife or hit it with a hammer. And I ceaselessly wonder if my loneliness looks the same form where you’re seated. I wonder if you’re aware of it at all.

Too tired to talk, I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling. Our unifying moments of doubt, vice and recurring abnegation start flashing before my eyes like random outtakes from a cheap and trivial home-made film. The one we’re sharing right now is in no way different, so I mathematically add it to the rest of them. And, in my mind, all of this starts taking the shape of an undoubtedly flawed algorithm.

When I was very little and someone in my family wanted to watch the news on TV, I used to briefly place myself right in front of the TV screen and make weird faces at the lady or the man talking there. Then I used to rapidly hide somewhere in the room, because I thought that they could actually see me, that the screen was some sort of window through which I could follow them and they could also follow me. I was obsessively trying to tease the news reporters by sticking my tongue out at them because they always looked so dead serious and focused. It was like a constant challenge. But I was also afraid that pissing them off might make them come out of the screen and yell at me or beat me up, so I had to constantly hide behind the couch or the door to make sure that they couldn’t get me.

Today I can proudly declare that I’m all grown up. I’ve passed that stage years ago. Now I know that the lady or the man presenting the news on TV can’t see me, so after I make weird faces and stick my tongue out at them, I don’t hide behind the couch anymore.