Three or four days worth of brainvomit.
I smiled with my mouth, not just my mind when I read this …
INTERVIEWER Do you have any long-range ambitions or regrets as a writer?
GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ I think my answer is the same as the one I gave you about fame. I was asked the other day if I would be interested in the Nobel Prize, but I think that for me it would be an absolute catastrophe. I would certainly be interested in deserving it, but to receive it would be terrible. It would just complicate even more the problems of fame. The only thing I really regret in life is not having a daughter.
… just like I did sometime in the 80s, when I read that Bob Dylan said he’d always wanted to be a cinema usher.
All I can do is be me. Whoever that is. Bob Dylan
I like those (often purely intellectual) journeys to places where conventions are dissected and compared to the person’s perceptions of reality.
Who are men, that they can insult men? Who are these people who wear pants and dresses and sneer? What am I talking about? I’m talking about human helplessness and unbelievable loneliness in the darkness of birth and death and asking ‘What is there to laugh about in that?’ ‘How can you be clever in a meatgrinder?’ ‘Who makes fun of misery?’
Jack Kerouac – Desolation Angels
Considering all the commonalities of ‘the human condition’, we misunderstand each other incredibly badly.
Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
The Buddhist answer is the simplest one, I think? ‘All life is suffering,’ which doesn’t mean we get to sit sadly on our arses if there is something that can be thought or done about it. I like this article very much, because it distinguishes between the sort of depression that needs meds and the sort that needs a brisk walk etc. And this is an interesting one, by a Nichiren Buddhist psychiatrist. I need to read about Islam and Christianity’s views on mental illness. Please feel free to educate me.
Here is my new favourite word, which lazarusandlithium used casually in a blog post the other day. I googled it and suddenly my day got better. I’ve decided that it solves the how-are-you conundrum.
Person: How are you?
Me: (with a huge smile and maybe even an airpunch) I am TENEBRIFIC thanks!
Person: *thinks* Can’t she pronounce ‘terrific’? Is it something to do with Tenerife? Wtf do I say now??
Person: Er … glad to hear it … oh look at that butterfly, the weather’s lovely, oh shit I’m late …
Person: *scurries off*
Me: *stroking imaginary goatee (or real goat)* Muhahahahaha etc.
It comes from the Latin for dark – tenebrae. And it’s been bottled (I’m rolling my eyes to a dangerous degree at this). Gloaming is twilight/dusk, pike is a fish, a weapon or a hill.
Dark dusk fish.
Dark dusk dangerous pointy thing.
Dark dusk pointy hill.
I’d love to know what it’s made of. I’m thinking either minced glow worms or Fairy Liquid (English stuff for washing dishes).
I’m not sure whether I started writing this post on Friday or Saturday, but I do know that yesterday (Saturday) was the best day I’ve had in ages. I did a lot of housework, read stuff, watched stuff, ate stuff. I took a sleeping pill and for a change, it worked fast.
This morning I woke up (and by ‘woke up’ I mean that girldog beat me up till I woke) blurry and headachy. I’d had those exhaustingly vivid and irritating dreams – thank you lamotrigine – and it took me ages to locate a very few brain cells and to function vaguely. I don’t usually waste much time getting even more depressed by questioning why I’m sad at any given time, but I did, for bloody hours. Butterflies, ffs, it was mostly due to the time of the year, the colour of the butterflies and one of those sad, sad associations that I don’t want to think about anymore today.
Tonight; it’s tonight now and in 20mins time it’ll be Monday morning. Tonight I am lying here feeling utterly bleak and being thrashed from the inside out, by lamotrigine heartburn. It’s ludicrously painful, but it’ll only last a few days. I’m on 300mg of lamotrigine now. In the meantime, I am totally enchanting. There’s the rash on my forearms and feet, a scowl on my face and I keep burping. I am charm personified today.
Got distracted, then slept and now it’s properly Monday. Anxious as fuck for no good reason, and sad – sadder – saddest.
And that was this morning and now it’s afternoon and today is good bad angry sad fried fucked and every molecule I have is vibrating wrong. I’m doing all the right damn things, even took girldog for a good run on her own, because hyaenadog’s spine issue means he needs gentler exercise. Urghhhhhhh. Etc. I am too jittery to write now.
Off to do more sensible things. Bah.
