For the nth time, I’m going to start a forced stream of consciousness, it’s not something I wanted to do but it’s something I have to do and this one is a little outside the rules I’ve set myself for this blog but it remains a post in stream of consciousness.
Today I saw a black cat staring at me mockingly. I was sitting there and it was looking at me from side to side, no, I am not making this up. It was a black, stray, fat cat and I had no food with me. I think it must have been Behemoth.
Two years ago, through a strange set of circumstances that I love, I started and finished reading The Master and Margarita. I swallowed it in a few days. This book was an enlightenment for me, combined with a great change.
Apart from the technical details and the historical connections, this book fascinated me because of its fantastic tones, which at times seemed surreal and at other times so surreal that they seemed to be hyper-real.
***
There is a theory that I share with a friend. It is the theory of “it looks bad if”. Which is, Example: You know, if you don’t want to go to a friend’s house for dinner because you don’t want to, you probably love your friend and have fun together, but you just don’t want to.
There are people who are capable of telling a lie.
There are people who are capable of telling the truth,
and there are people who get into a vicious circle where they start to think that every communication is misinterpreted. If I say “I’m just not in the mood”, people will think I’m boring, if I say “I’m tired”… and so on and so forth.
How many WhatsApp groups do you never leave for the same reason? If you are part of the “it looks bad if” cult, then it is bad both if you get out and if you stay. If you’re staying, you’re doing something wrong because you’re not saying you’re not interested, and if you’re leaving, you’re doing something wrong because you’re making a gesture that could be misinterpreted.
That’s a pathology, it’s probably classified as extreme insecure, but I can say that sometimes it’s extreme empathy.
How many times have I decided not to do something, not to say something, because I’ve got to think about what it’s going to mean. But in doing so, you never do a damn thing. How many times have you not done something because you are considered a bitch or pervert?
Do you have any idea the number of times I’ve wanted to say “You’re great” to someone on the street because I really mean that, but I can’t, because I can’t, because you can’t…try! Especially when I see that they are morally down and I know that I would make them smile (that’s in my world) but then I think that I would scare them even more (that’s where the paranoia comes in).
There is a girl, for example, who sits with her child every day on a bench in the small park below my house. Every day, because of my schedule, I pass by at the same time. This image gives me an incredible sense of serenity, perhaps because the sun is shining on them at the time, but I can’t tell her. I just want to say, “Hey, you rock!
Try to tell a guy who is sitting on a bench to mind his own fucking business – which he might want to mind his own business – try to tell him if there is something wrong or if he is reading something that you are reading and so it would be nice to have four frivolous chats if he wants to talk to you and have a drink together. No, it’s not possible, and yes, it is possible, but there are consequences.
Even now I feel like making a list of justifications. I started this blog partly to avoid all that. I wanted to be on a fucking site, free and unrestricted and, above all, without offending anyone. Maybe I still am that way.
For a few years now I have avoided even writing to my mum when I have had the slightest bit to drink. And you know, in spite of that, I have had my excesses, which have had their consequences.
It could be an outline of someone who doesn’t get on well with people or someone who is always scared of doing something. Yes, it is like that. It’s like that, but a few years ago a truck (I’m simplifying) almost killed me, and then I started to think more carefully about the life I’d been leading, and that’s perfectly fine, and I’m perfectly happy with a “normal” life, but at least occasionally I’m free to say whatever the fuck I want. Without extremism in the anonymity of this beautiful poor middle class.
At first I thought I was being paranoid – I told myself that the whole world had better things to do than watch me.
But then it wasn’t quite like that.Every now and then I try to say something fucking and shit happens. I mean, how many possibilities were there?
One of the last books I read was the patience stone by Atiq Rahimi. I loved it and I read it in a day and a half, all at once. I left everything to read. Once again I have to thank an extraordinary contact who shared it with me, a person who has made a huge difference in my life, but who doesn’t know it, and guess what, I don’t want to tell him, otherwise I think, I am afraid that she/he’ll misunderstand. I really had no idea why this book had such an effect on me, and it is only now that I understand why. At first I didn’t really understand, I was surprised that I had such a fascination and attention for this story, and instead it was just egoism.
And if, in this parallelism, my “he” is the social condition in which I find myself – which is a universal, mostly Western condition – then it means that, objectively, I am not well, or rather, for others I don’t know well. Then it is not that I feel so bad, in fact I am not well, I am not sick. I feel fragile, I feel precarious, and I certainly feel analysed by myself, I feel analysed by others, in short I feel like someone who has decided to look at himself and not work on anything else in order not to look at himself. And all these things mean life to me.
Ok, I’m lost, where did I stop? what did we say? and why did we say it?
Ok, this could be the last entry, or it could be the entry which announces the self-destruction of this blog, because I started this blog for a simple reason: to say what I think, without any preconceptions, and I wanted to be able to read it in an unbiased way by people I know and people I don’t know.
Some time ago I started a course which necessarily involved very intimate sharing and putting oneself out there, indirectly doing exercises in introspection, looking back at things that happened in the past….. It sounds like a teenage challenge, but I can assure you that it’s something that, at least for those of us who participated, we took very seriously and everyone struggled to get through it.
In the beginning it is something for you, but it is more like a group thing. I am still on the course and I can assure you that it has been a life-changer for me.
When I started the course, I thought I was doing well, except for some tinnitus. Today, I am no different from what I was before I started, but I can see myself, and that makes me feel dizzy and unstable. The “tests” of this course, if you want to call them that, are not known in advance, and although no one is obliged to participate, it is clear that you immediately start sharing very intimate feelings with people you have never seen, but who may be your friends or whom you may meet the next day on the street.
When you start the journey, you foolishly think you’re focusing on the future, “I’ll be more confident in the future”, but when you haven’t digested it all (and nobody has) you start throwing up and analysing. It has happened to everyone. Ah, of course, as usual, these things bring up people thare are generally called weird.
I assure you that for me at least it was very liberating, but of course I, like others, could not really plunge into everything uninhibitedly…. This is partly because I still have many years of earthly society to live, and partly because the rules require us to do this exercise and it is not a listening group. And because coming to terms with my own self destabilised me, I decided to get to the bottom of it, and this blog was born. It was born because this group was working, because I was sharing and it didn’t matter who it was with but it had to be a person who was willing to listen and here you can choose to do that or not, no one is forcing you. Two friends over a beer are obliged to listen to each other – yes, you should – especially without judging, not here. If you don’t like it, just shut up, and then you won’t even have the displeasure of having to empathise, of having to confront everything you know about the other person. You can and should just focus on the fact and make it your own or better understand how much you are into that emotion, not into the other, not into that specific event.
***
This blog was born ‘just’ for that. And it was not meant to drive anybody mad or to fool anybody else. I say this because I’ve entered “it looks bad when” mode. I’m sorry if I’ve caused trouble, upset and, most importantly, I don’t think I’m who you think I am.
There are no names, no age events, the blog has no ulterior motive other than to publish my thoughts.
I’m really sorry if this has happened. I’m really sad about it. I feel like a shitty person.
***
So why this post, which goes against everything I wanted? Because I got two emails with the last post (the first two actually). Actually a dozen, but the others were blank, so I think it must be a system error or something.
A few days ago I received Bibi’s comment, when I received it an alarm sounded, but I thought it was impossible and too improbable. Then on Friday, on another platform I came across the same text as Bibi’s.
Then I don’t feel reconciled to myself. I have this feeling of judging myself, of self-destruction, of thinking that maybe I was wrong to write this, to post that, that I could have prevented this thing from coming into contact with that person… in short, 1000 rounds, but what a drag. The “it looks bad” theory is off to a good start. Now, if it’s not her, fine, if it is her, I’m probably not what she thinks I am, she might think, but what the hell do you want, but who the hell thinks about you! And that’s fine, that’s fine.
Well, if the lyric we’re talking about, which was shared in a comment and then later on, had been a nice Lou Reed lyric, a Madonna, Elvis or U2 lyric, I wouldn’t have been suspicious, but instead.
I also have a shitty memory, for example I never remembered birthdays, I never remembered my mum’s and dad’s birthdays and only modernity these days saves me from these dramas and thanks to whatsapp groups where people have 6:30 as a priority to see what is being celebrated today.
The other day I saw the advert for ‘Soul’, the new Disney cartoon, and I thought, you see, I was just obvious in choosing the name. Instead I’m trying to remember if this poem that was shared with me had come to me before and if I had ignored it and unconsciously brought it up.
Because then it talks about the soul, in a nutshell, it talks about a lot of things that I’ve talked about in previous posts, feelings that I’m sure are shared by a lot of other people, and the poem clearly talks about it in an authentic way rather than the boorish way that I used to.
In short, it started the time of You’re Like Shit and You’re Shit edition!
Looking inward is something that makes me feel very fragile and vulnerable. Maybe in this moment of low clarity I’m babbling.
@Bibi: Thank you for your sharing it is really valuable. I have always underestimated Pessoa and hope to catch up soon. I feel guilty that I received this thought of yours, in case it is you, I will treasure it jealously. Don’t ask me more, it is not important whether I am a he, a she, English, French or Finnish. It is important for me to continue this project and I am glad you liked it. Above all, if it is you, I don’t think I am the person you think I am. It is important for me to be able to share concepts, feelings that make me feel out of place in this society. Talking about it is a cure for me, discovering other free + mad people is a medicine. Feel free to share it.
Last thing: whether you are you or not, know that you rocks! As always, you rocks!
To people who consider themselves “normal”: take a bloody day off, don’t open Netflix, don’t go to the gym, stay at home or go somewhere that challenges you and start looking inside yourself, stand before a mirror and look into your eyes. I hope that many of you will battle with this, because for me it means that I’m alive, and if one day I’m forced to analyse myself without fearing, I’ll know that I’m dead.