Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Kissing Strangers

It's the darndest thing, but most of us are out there trying to kiss strangers, as uncomfortable and as discombobulating as the experience usually is. We watch a show and fantasise about how it would be like to have this piece of fiction in our lives because of the character they have created on screen. Which has nothing to do with who they are. And has nothing to do with who we are. Or what we need.

(Which is nothing, if you dig down deep enough. Nothing and nobody. At least, not in that way)

A stranger always feels strange. They stare at you with indifferent eyes because you are simply a face, a not very interesting face, in the crowd. 

And in the intimate setting of a smoky bar, a stranger, with their liquid, whisky-infused eyes, looking at you less indifferently, is still strange. Everything about them is strange, especially this need for fake intimacy brought about by longing and loneliness and the search for any port in a storm.

Because you have no idea that you are holding your breath; waiting to exhale.

But after the high, the hangover.

After the loving, the morning after.

It feels like a desperate scramble to feel something, to make something out of nothing, to pretend for just a few minutes longer.

It is madness but you can't see it if you're caught up in it. 

It is madness because it leaves you emptier after than before.

It is madness because it is not nothing, and you can carry this not-nothing for life.

A lifetime of scars, of empty encounters, of dwindling into nothing.

Kissing strangers.

It's unbearably sad. 

It's hopelessly desolate.

It's always strange.



Monday, August 24, 2020

Focus

I became scattered because I allowed myself to be. I had 10 shows in progress on Netflix. I would pick up a book, read a few paras, then put it down and pick up another.

My mind could not focus on anything. It was as if it shied away from looking too long at any one thing, and could only nibble here and there as I drifted.

I remember reading the first Malory Tower's book - and the speech Miss Potts or Potty gave Darrell about being wholehearted. She was copying Alicia who was brilliant and could dabble in this and that and still come out on top. And she did really badly in class, probably for the first time in her life. And Potty gave her a speech about being wholehearted that has come back to me. I find the wisdom contained in it very sage.

I forced myself to finish watch 10 Miles of Peach Blossoms until it finished and was off my Netflix list. I accidentally clicked two Southeast Asian movies that I ended up hating so I simply let them run their course while I faffed around the apartment doing other stuff. (I was clearing clutter on my Netflix).

Now I have only three in my "continue viewing" list and am sorely tempted to click on other stuff I want to watch, but I'll wait until I've reduced this to one. I will get through my seventh viewing of The Untamed (after a while it just becomes familiar and comfortable) and I will finally finish Nur (the funny thing about it is that I find the villain so despicable that I cannot bear to watch it because of him).

I'm reading Kathryn Mannix's book about dying properly (Dying is an art...and she's not talking about it that Sylvia Plath way) which I find oddly comforting and although I've lined up a few other books to follow it with, I think I'll wait till I finish this one before I move on to the next. Committing to review the books for a new blog helps keep me on track.

I had planned to answer emails today but my little kitten Jinny has taken up most of my time. Hopefully she will be weaned soon and less dependent on me. She's still very tiny so I cannot leave her alone with the other cats for fear that they will do something to her. Boom Boom has made herself a mother figure, but having had no kittens before, she's a sort of clumsy, affectionate, well-meaning mother.

I've been trying to move the art around in my apartment in a bid to brighten things up a bit. 

I need to go make milk now for Jinny to have her last feed for the night and change the water in her hot water bottle so she can sleep all nice and cosy.


Later for you.