"You can become an archangel or a serial killer without anyone noticing, but everyone will tell if you're missing a button."

-E.M.Remarque (not perfectly quoted, but I don't remember)

Art; the extension of Faith

Dance. Like ripples of water through the emotions of the human body. Like expressing the universe with the flickering of a wrist, with the tilt of a shoulder. The language of the body perfected into the language of music, and ultimately, to the beat of a universal heart, the heart of the world.

This is the one thing I cannot express in words. No matter how poetic I try to be, or how accurate, or however well it can have you understand what I mean, this is the one thing I cannot, never, reproduce. Quite litterally. For with my leg I will never dance. And is it the forbidden fruit that sweeps my mind away, or the passion, the immersion, the ability to close your eyes and let your body drift on the ocean of existance or be tossed between the waves of chaos, that makes my eyes tear at the thought alone?

Dance. An embodiment of the concept I call beauty. An expression, an art, but most of all a path to the insides of your soul and the discovery that it is no more separate from the universe than a molecule of air is from the air itself. The world does not matter. Not the one you see or feel through your eyes or your ears or your skin. What matters is the flow, the beat. The beating of the heart of what some would call God, but that I have no word for.

There are no words.

Shun, I summon you!

You can now get your Spore Creatures as figurines, and however silly and however disappointing that game was, I feel a slight tug at my heart at the thought of getting a tiny Shun to guard my desktop.

I wonder what having a figurine done costs, generally? Wouldn't it be awesome to make the roleplaying characters one has played for a while? Or make them before starting, so they can be used as "tabletops" for those annoying situations where it matters if you stand to the right or the left of the shooter. If I was filthy rich, this is one of those ridiculous, environmental-destroying things I would do, I imagine.

I also read an interview with a scientist, who, shockingly, unveiled that scientists do not believe Spore to be very scientifically correct, while on the other hand horribly fundamental catholics have been known to protest against it (not to be confused with the impressive amount of intelligent fundamental catholics who don't believe a stupid, fluffy game to be insult enough to their religion to raise their voices). What surprised me, however, was how the interview revealed that EA actually had made claims before its realease with hopes that it would be a "tool among the scientific community". What? The lady scientist said that the prototypes that had been released earlier were much more likely to ever be used in a serious setting.

So like many, many others, I wonder; what the hell happened to this game? Halfway towards a groundbreaking, mindblowing game about evolution, about the very cornerstones of intelligent life, Maxis suddenly decided, screw this, let's make this based on five-year-olds, yet illogical and boring enough to make sure no five-year-olds ever play it. The question on everybody's lips is (or were, when they released it, I'm just slow) when did they turn into Microsoft?

Shhhhh!

Ah, secrets secrets. I have one. No surprise there, we all have secrets, but what I mean is, I have a specific secret that I will tell you about later, but can't now. I'm all for secrets, because they make life that much more interesting, and I hate ruining secrets because that wastes a lot of work and ruins a potentially awesome moment. But how difficult it is to keep secrets. I just want to wave my arms around and bounce and tell everyone, no matter how unrelated a person and how little they care. Because a secret is really only fun at the very moment it's revealed. Like the huge plot twist of a role playing game; that's what I'm working towards the whole time. And I try to make my writings unpredictable just for that feeling I'm hoping to achieve when the monster reveals its true form and intent. To see people suddenly discovering THE SECRET, that's one of my greatest pleasures of life. It's a feeling I love, when things fall into place and I can see, so obviously I want to share it.

You realize this rant is all about me trying to ease the feeling of wanting to wave my arms around and bounce and tell everyone around that secret I'm having right now, right? Don't worry, in some weeks it will all become clear. It's no big deal. It's just that it's a SECRET! :)

Cycle of life

I'm in some sort of period where I get loads of ideas for new creative stuff, like drawings and writings and stories of all kinds. But nothing gets done. I've been wondering for a long time if my circles actually follow the calendar, as in my female calendar of monthly pain; if not only my body but my mind and my creativity is governed by this highly unwanted touch of biology. It's humbling, maybe, to in this way be reminded that I am also, only, human. But hell's balls how bloody fucking frustrating it is!

Report from the frontline

I'm in one of those periods where I feel like a normal person. When school is okay, I get things done, I clean my house and cook real food and go to the bank like a responsible adult. While it feels awesome and I actually function, it also feels a bit like walking around in a dream, in someone else's perfect life somehow. Is this how it is to be normal, I think? Is this how people live their lives? And I waver on this line, between thinking too much and just going on.

I waver between kicking myself down again into death and darkness and depression where I can wallow in the fruits of creativity, where nothing gets done and I hate the world and postpone any kind of contact with it but there is so much more to it. Or between taking another breath, stand up, and do the dishes and go on being a normal person in a normal world filled with normal people. Always on the edge, always fighting to know what is right, what is home, what is me. I stare up at the clouds and waver between sky and heaven. And here I am, balancing on the spider silk line between ignorance and despair, squinting my eyes trying to take it all in and protect myself at the same time.

Is there a way I can be both corporate queen and goddess? Must I choose between the depths of my mind and the plains of society?

And love? Love keeps me in line and tips me over in favor of the normal world and the normal people. A safety hatch or a prison? One I stay in voluntarily, regardless, no matter if it hurts. Because who can ever be sure that there will be another high if I let this one go?

Rememberance

I realized it's been almost a year since he returned and that I still do miss him. I can still feel his smell if I try, and there has been times, especially when I'm back home, when I catch the glimpse of something white and spin around, only to remember it's impossible, or when I wake up and hear a sound I misinterpret as his steps and expect him to come into bed with me. And yet, it isn't just my imagination, is it? Even if things return to the Lifestream, they never completely disappear, do they? Maybe he thinks of me, at the same time as I think of him, and somehow we create a link for just the shadow of a moment. His soul is being poured out into new living things as I write this, maybe somewhere in them there is something of him that reverberates through space and reaches me? No. Not maybe. I know there is. And I know as long as I remember him he will be around. So I tell him I'm sorry I couldn't save him. And I promise him I will remember him as long as I live. And I hope he knew all this long before I had any need to say it. No. I know he did.

A small hole

I thought I had most of Kirya planned in my head when I started writing it, not uncommon when I'm writing longer stuff. At the end of chapter 18, however, I realized that I, like Shemhazai, was without direction, and that I was dangerously close to losing that link to Kirya herself that I'd fought through 17 chapters to build. She's a very difficult character for me to hold on to. I realized that where I'd thought I had a small hole in my planning, easy to fill, I had a gap the size of Australia. But despair not. It took a while to work up the courage, and then I dedicated every moment my brain wasn't occupied for two days to stitch something together. That's how it feels, like picking up pieces, maybe like pieces of a map that someone's cut up to fit in envelopes then sent to me in the wrong order. I have to stitch them together, and then I look at the map and go wow, this is awesome. So then, making an uncut, unstitched copy of the map, I wrote chapter 19, which funnily enough you won't get to see until I've written 20 and 21. The side effect is that this story is getting longer and longer, but also that I finally feel I've pinned Kirya down to who she really is. So have faith that there is a plan, and it is coming along nicely, and, wow, it is awesome.

Somewhat out of synch then, I post ch16-18. I didn't post them before because before my fantastic stitching, I was convinced they were crap. That's usually my sign that I need to think about where to go next. And, well... I hope this plot still intrigues you. Let me know what you think of the new twists and turns... if they are twists and turns.

What do you think I think of you?

Was walking back from the store with a Coke (I'm still keeping to my three-day rule, it's even been five days since I bought the last one) when I thought, what do people think when they see me? I mean, just as a curious thought, how do they preceive me? Because I felt awesome, walking in half-dark with my fake leather jacket, perfect hair, Coke in one hand and the other in my pocket.

I mean, if they think at all, what do they think? This is hard. Thinking like other people is hard. As a writer of course I can fabulate, but privately I have no idea. Cripple? Because it's really obvious I limp, especially when I'm carrying something in my hand like that. I don't think I dress agressively enough for anyone to think dyke. And I think they can see I'm a girl at first glance, if nothing else they will assume I am from size. Corporate bitch because I'm carrying a Coke? Fashion disaster because I don't dress like the 60% of this town that wear black or the 90% that wear cloth coats (yes they overlap, a lot). Ah, and also foreigner, or more probably, Asian? Because in Sweden, people tend to be divided in those two categories for some reason. Or maybe that's just me.

"What I think isn't as fun to analyze as what you think I think of you."

Also an observation related to my store visit; the trend of my head-turners seems to navigate towards broad-shouldered guys, short according to scandinavian standards, probably crew-cut, who looks very serious but are quick to laugh. Those of you who have seen my father, shut up. I know. I can't fight every stereotype.