A Life in Faded Green and Rusty Black

I wish you were here to tell me what is important.

There goes a set of cups,
a carpet,
a curtain,
a candelabra,
a ceramic cat,
a spotless new coffee pot on the big blurry heap
of things that are just things.

A lifetime of things.
Some to be nothings,
some to be somethings.
Ugly things, pretty things,
cheap things, expensive things,
whose price tag is printed in your secret language
and written with dust and fingerprints;
with tears and private smiles.

I wish you were here to tell me what is important.

Is it the chair with a missing button?
Is it the chipped plates with flower prints?
Did you run your fingertips over the surface and feel like home,
or did your partner pick them up against your will?
Did you hide your treasures at the back of the cupboard,
or are they unwanted things stashed out of sight?

One thing on the heap,
one thing in my pocket.
It's like a morbid game show.
"Step up on the stage!
Guess, out of these hundred objects
which one your loved one's ghost would haunt!
Speak up!
Lean closer to the microphone, please."

Please,
I wish you were here to tell me what is important.

Locking your Door - About Asking What She Was Wearing

I can't come up with a good way to formulate an introductory question... let's try with;
When a woman is asked what she was wearing, the night she was raped, can that be equated with a house owner being asked if he locked the door the night his house was cleaned out?

Don't shoot me down, all questions are allowed to be asked! Now let's see.

Crazy people exist in all areas and groups of life. I'm fairly sure that if you looked closer at the group "fairly sensible people", you'd find some crazies there too. Thus, in the group "men", we're bound to find a decent amount of crazies. (We're using the term loosely here.) These crazies are likely to, when presented with means and opportunity, do things the rest of us find uncivilized, offensive, or outright inhuman, like rape or murder people, or steal everything not bolted down.

When a crime is committed, in our current society we assume "reasonable" precautions have been made by the injured party. Did you call the knife-wielding drunk guy an ugly ass motherfucker? Did you lock your doors and keep your pure gold ingots in a vault?

Ideally, we would all be prancing around in a conflict-free world, where the worst violence ever recorded is soccer players elbowing each other in the nose when the referee isn't looking. A place where people don't lock their doors, never wield knives or call each other anything, and can pole dance around the flag pole naked for all anyone cares. Surprisingly, we aren't.

Society is made from agreements, silent or outspoken. An agreement to not rob or murder each other, because it makes life better for everyone. I pay tax so that your mother can live somewhere when she gets old, because when my mother gets old, she'll need somewhere to live too. Some things are easy to check. Is person A paying tax? Yes, check. Some things are very difficult. Is person A hiding a 13yo child in their basement, taken from the next town over? Uhm, probably not, but who really knows? Has person A raped someone, will they, or would they if presented with an opportunity? Eeeehh.

So what does the law say. Person X lives in a neighborhood plagued by thefts and vandalism. They frequently leave their house unlocked and have no security systems. One day they return to all their possessions gone and their dog kicked to death. Law says it's still theft, and whatever else the law says about kicking other people's dogs to death. Although person X probably won't get their insurance, if they had any, the thieves and dog-kickers will, if caught, get their punishment regardless. Entering someone else's home and taking their things is still illegal, even if the door is unlocked. How about leaving your possessions in a public area? Person X takes their stereo system, puts it in the front yard, and goes inside to sleep. In the morning the stereo is gone. Say the thieves are caught. Will they still be convicted of theft? How about if the stereo system is left in a public parking lot?

The law may say this or that, but public opinion may say that the fool who left his door unlocked only has himself to blame. So the public blaming women for wearing this or that doesn't really surprise me, and maybe that's the price to be paid. Self-righteous masses are dumb as shit. The law however, is a different question. The law would still be obliged to help the dude get his things back and punish the thieves, and similarly, rapists must be pursued with the same prejudice regardless what anyone was wearing. Right?

I feel it could be argued that a person carries their private space with them, as in, a person's body is counted as their house or their apartment in terms of rights. In that sense, for rape, you can either argue that the stereo can never be in a public parking lot, or you can argue that if you go to a public parking lot at night dressed in... actually I don't know if it matter what you're dressed in, at a public parking lot at night, even a SWAT stamp on your back might not keep you safe. But I get sidetracked. If you stand there, in the dark, alone, is the stereo in your house or in the parking lot? That's where I feel the question lies. Do we put a certain degree of responsibility on regular citizens to avoid crime, and how does that apply to rape?

This post hasn't progressed any thinking, the entire space went just to explain the question, but honestly I just started thinking about it so there's a lot of thinking left to do.

The Free Speech of Art

I'm going to write more in what I'm calling "Chain of Thought" style, where I'm bringing up a subject I've been thinking about, and just let the writing process crystallize as I type. Meaning I will have come further (hopefully) by the end of the post, and you can see my path through my reasoning.

Here's our initial question: Should Art depict real life, or should it promote new, different, and/or "better" ideas?

Easy answer: both. Not necessarily at once. But in a non-offensive way, while provocative is fine. It depends on how it's done. If it's done with good form and common sense. Okay, maybe it wasn't that easy.

My problem with this question is the same as the Free Speech ideal. If I truly, madly, deeply hate person X, then telling everyone how terrible this person is, while not lying, is theoretically perfectly fine. Lying is not okay, but everyone's got bad sides, bad days, mistakes and skeletons in their closets. Where does the line go then for invasion of privacy? Where does my rights to free speech end, and his/her right to her own person begin?

(If marketing is everything, and it often is in our modern world, then bad publicity is still publicity, so should X just shut up about it? It's perhaps a bit bad mannered to speak ill of other people, but it's basically an entire business these days so we can't expect younger generations to be more restrained than we are(n't) now. Anyone working with information and marketing knows how powerful just a suggestive seed is, when well planted. And what's seen can't be unseen.)

I have seen people argue that Art should strive for a higher ideal, most recently a reader complained at a graphic novel aimed at teenagers and young adults that it begins with a young woman waking up after sleeping with a man she's just met. The writer argued that that's reality, the reality these teenagers are already living in.

I have seen people argue that Art should depict reality, be grounded in situations people can recognize and relate to, that if it's too esoteric and abstract it has no value, it's just paint splatter. David Lynch comes to mind. And the depiction of Dali in Midnight in Paris when he's obsessed with rhinoceroses.

And I've struggled with a story I want to write, which touches on pedophilia. I have written about rape and murder, torture, incest, genocide, the list goes on, and to me personally pedophilia is just another subject on the long list of complications life can include, crassly seen. But that is another discussion. My problem lies in that the subject is so stigmatized that I'm afraid even to write about it alone in my room. This should not be true for any subject, of any type, for any person. If something is hidden away and not spoken about, we can't make democratic decisions about it. Even writing this, I'm worried that if/when anyone reads it they'll judge me as a person writing about these things not having experienced any of them, but this is how we learn, by communicating, exploring, discussing. This is how we become a more enlightened, understanding, nonjudgmental, progressive people.

So do I believe Art should have no boundaries? If someone wants to paint a vagina on a square in Germany, that's fine, if someone wants to hang paintings with beaten women on their living room walls that's fine, if I want racial slurs on my wedding invitations that's fine.

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: in a perfect world, none of these things would be offensive. Eccentric, perhaps, but not offensive. The problem with them lies in the context. We live in a time when certain parts of the body are supposed to be private, when violence against women is a societal problem in I think every culture on the planet, and where race have been used as an excuse for horrific acts past and present.

I sense a circle argument. If Art is judged as offensive because of it's context, then we can't separate it from that context, and thus all Art, whether it's created as depicting reality or not, will be interpreted as commenting on reality. As in, Art is forcefully made both into the opposing sides of "depicting reality" and "promoting a future". The drawing of a young woman having sex with a stranger is only offensive if it's interpreted as both. And even if we're drawing table spoons, incest rape is going to associate back to humans and reality and future, and there we are.

(Can we as humans create Art that has nothing to do with either humans or the world around us? That seems impossible to me. By laws of... I don't know what to call them, logic maybe, anything a human thinks could probably be called a human concern.)

We have voided our original question. The new question is, censor vs. TFS (Totally Free Speech). Except that's not a question, it's an interstellar nuclear war.

I will return on this topic. In the meantime, if anyone at any time would like to drop me a trait, any trait, or preference, or anything at all about themselves or another person, and have me write up two very short texts, one promoting this trait or thing as the best thing ever, the other trying to prove that it's trash and terrible and should possibly be made illegal, feel free. It's a fun exercise for me, and a chance to get praised and insulted at once for you. Be warned, I will take your request as consent for me to say any whichever terrible things with no holdback and no trigger warnings :P

Have fun out there peops.

My People

The world is probably full of people like me, who want at least 5 days a week to be silent stories, stress-free although not necessarily work-free, preferably people-free. Days where talking to anyone at all is an optional thing, as is leaving home ground, and where I can dive into something for six hours straight, whether it's writing an essay or playing pokémon, without being interrupted or having to speak one single word. Where one can really concentrate and create something good. From what I can deduce out of the information available, there are quite probably quite a lot of people like me.

I don't meet a lot of them, because I've been taught that they're losers.

...

Or maybe I do, and we both pretend to not be like that.

Intelligence is a virtue

The threat of mutual destruction as a method to keep order only works if both sides are intelligent enough and empathic enough to understand the assuredness of mutual destruction and the consequences it would entail for themselves.

So I guess that's why villains are so often ridiculously stupid in stories, even when they're intelligent enough to construct huge complex plans. They need to be so stupid, or in other words so certain of their own success, that they can't see the risk of mutual destruction or understand the consequence.

When some religious guidance says doubt is the sign of a healthy mind, perhaps this is what they mean. If you ever find something you're absolutely sure of, that's the time to take a long hard look at yourself, even if it's something you're sure is good... especially then.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. I'm still not sure how you act in a world made of uncertainty, I think it has to do with fear and faith and hope, and it has to do with accepting your part in a universe too complicated for a human mind, and your place in nature, but I do wonder one thing. Has healthy doubt ever started any wars?


In the end, the breaking point isn't fear or faith or hope, or love, or any of those things they always talk about in stories, though. In this case, it's intelligence.

That is not the full story though. Nothing ever is.

Faith in Man

Almost every time we go anywhere we drive by a church that has a sign that says "It is better to trust in God than put your confidence in men" and it offends me. It provokes me. I want to run in there and yell "You put your confidence in men every time you go on an airplane or use tap water! You're insulting thousands of years of brilliant human engineering, it's not God lifting the airplane or cleaning your drinking water it's the hard work, blood and tears of generations of amazing people!"

If there's anything you *should* do it's put your confidence in humans. We've gotten where we are together, and that's what we should celebrate and be proud of and use as inspiration for our future.

Travel Diary - Florida 10 days in.

I may have presented the US in a bad light in my previous Florida post. I can go to the movies for cheap where the space is nice and the sound excellent, the pizza is great, and I did see both a bike shop and three people biking today.

Today was the first day of Storms, and when I say storms I mean that places with this kind of weather tends to have thunder/rain storms, although in this case it means "light showers and exceptionally sudden and horrendously loud thunder". The electricity went out for a few seconds and the first bang nearly blew my head off. First thought: that would have scared the shit out of Loki. I instinctively looked around for him to make sure he was alright. I miss him tons.

I miss some other things, like my own bed, my own space, my clothes... I'm not entirely sure how my reasoning went when I packed but it wasn't flawless. I also have to make some decisions. Things are cheap here but I can't buy everything. There are space and money constraints that I must consider.

I sound super negative but that's not the full story. Good things are just more abstract. And I am slow to get used to things, I think.

Florida

I know I said I'd start again and then disappeared for a week. Bear with me, I'm still getting used to the whole blogging thing.

Also I'm in the states. Pretty cool. I read somewhere that it takes about a week to get into the homesick stage, and true enough, yesterday I started missing "normal" things terribly. Everything here makes me slightly uneasy, although I don't know why. The nature is nice, people are very friendly...

Things I think about Florida:

1. This town is super perfect for bikes. It's 100% flat land here, with big wide roads, warm weather... and not a single bike. Everyone drives. I don't think I understood how much the US is built around cars. There's drive-in everything. The town itself is so incredibly spread out, stores are scattered all over the place, because you drive between them.
2. There's signs everywhere, probably because stores are so scattered. And there's stores for everything, like auto parts, pesticides, pet massages. (Still haven't seen a bike shop though.)
3. Variety. There's much more different types of cars, different shapes and sizes and brands. Low old Americans, next to super polished Toyotas, next to fat pickup trucks. There's tons of different trees, just outside the door there's probably like 10 of them, thick branches crawling across the ground next to thin tall palm trees, next to little fat things that look kinda like pineapples. Sitting outside I was visited by a bunch of birds, and a few little turtles coming up for air in the pond. A crow-like bird taking a bath, a pair of canards, two black turkey-like ducks (that for a moment I thought were attacking me, because they decided to walk by so close) and a beautiful white egret.
4. Store people are very friendly. Every one of them say things like "You have a very nice evening", or "Have a wonderful weekend". It should make me happy, but I'm Swedish and socially challenged and just find it creepy. There's also people putting your stuff in bags in convenience stores. Which also makes me uneasy, because it means I'm just standing there awkwardly.
5. Obviously it's warm, but it's warm in the humid sense. It's lucky most places have AC, although I guess it's not super good for the environment, but I don't handle heat excellently, especially not the humid kind.
6. Stuff is pretty cheap, but in some places there's a sales tax that's added after the price you see on tags, so it's hard to keep track of how much you're spending. Also buying like a pizza or a Chinese food box for 5-7$ I could eat 3-4 times of each. Not healthy but certainly pretty cheap for food you don't have to cook.

Things I think about me:

• Traveling is great for reestablishing that I like Sweden. Even if we've clearly forgotten why we're such a great country and how we became that way.
• My actual location matters less because the things I like to do are mostly not location-bound. Long as I have electricity and internet, I could probably live anywhere. 10h on the plane was fine because I was writing and watching movies, which is what I do at home too. Actually living in a place is more about the... people? Culture.
• Leaving Loki alone for a month isn't so much a problem for him as it is a huge problem for me.
• I have a big need for alone-time. I like people and talking to friends and stuff, but I need a lot of time to myself to feel at ease. It's okay having people around if they're not in the way and they ignore me and my activities.
• Not recognizing any labels or store names is very tiresome. You have to actually look at everything. Didn't quite realize how annoying it was, I mean sure the first time in Lidl many bottles and stuff don't look like you're used to but it's much more tiresome when everything is that way.
• I think of tons of things to blog about, and then promptly forget them once I actually sit down and make silly lists instead.

One important piece of advice: if you for any reason are offered a wheelchair at airports, just accept them. Forget honor, forget whether or not you actually need it, just say yes. It will save you endless amounts of time and annoyance. Trading pride for two and a half hours of standing in line? Hell yes.

Like a Phoenix (Down)

For one reason or another I decided to read backwards a bit, and I met a person that I'd almost forgotten. Hello Old Me, I can't say I know who you were anymore, any more than a pine tree knows the pine cone it came from. I remember spots of it, and most notably, I remember the positive. I remember A Spirit World of Concrete and Glass, for example, from September 2010, I even remember where and how I felt as I crafted it, on the bike. There's also a clear pattern, that 2010 I wrote about the difficult things and how hard they felt, but the years that were truly trash and terrible, 2011-2012, I'm mostly writing about other things even as that's when I failed school and dropped off the social plane as my leg and back got worse and I drowned in the task of trying to come to terms with who I had become (decently packaged handicapped shit, as I thought). But that 11-12 girl I remember. I'm still her, I'm still fighting her battles although I've come a long way.

2010-me, you may be gone now, but I'm glad you left footprints behind for me to find and decipher. I'd like to know you, if for nothing else but to remember what I've survived. Because I survived, 2010-me. I may not have succeeded at everything, but we made it, we moved on to other problems, and we've come to terms with some of the ones you had.

It occurred to me, that with the knowledge of public posting as a filter to sort away the most useless stuff, blogging from time to time may be leaving finds for future me to dig up. Planting dinosaur bones.

So I'm casting a Phoenix Down on this blog, and I don't care if anyone reads it, this time I'm doing it 100% for my own sake! A public diary. The life of a Me. The Lifestream Chronicles.

Human 1.6.0.3

I never feel as creative as when I don't have the tools to create. Frustration at not being able to draw, when I haven't drawn anything in months. Hello? Pen and paper? No way.

Losing my phone is like losing half my brain. It's my add-on. I lose functionality when it's offline.

People like my parents think these things are bad. And on some level I understand that there's a risk involved in installing add-ons and depending on tools. But without tools and add-ons, a program is limited to what it was when it began its existence. By weaving these things, electronics, into my existance, in a sense I'm transcending humanity. That sounds horribly like hübris, but what I mean is, while it makes me vulnerable isn't it worth the risk to increase my skill and capacity, to create and see things I couldn't have done without them? Am I missing things I could have done? Yes. But people who don't are missing these things. Everyone are missing 99% of life. Not enough time, or space, or effort, or energy. It's a question of priorities, of choosing what you forego.

If I had the option to install a cybernetic leg to replace my flawed one, I think I would, not only because it would fix my problems but also because I'm curious. Insanely curious. What happens to a human when the things we call human are slowly worked away, replaced with things that now must be human because - I am still human? Right? "Humanity" is bullshit. It's some kind of made-up concept that makes no sense.

Superpowers: awesome not because you get to go invisible or fly, but because you're transcending the traditional sense of what a human is. In a very realistic sense, you're crossing into godhood. You're experiencing something, you cross a bridge that falls away behind you, and you're seeing new ground. On a planet where most things worth seeing have already been discovered and is readily available, what's left to explore is yourself. What would installing chips with cell-phone like capacity into peoples brains do with us? How would it feel? My wish to face these questions and issues first-hand is like the longing for love. 

I can't wait for the future.

Connections and Copyrighted body parts

I have had trouble sleeping lately, and I've had to come up with things that fill the time and silence that aren't too demanding. The answer has in many cases been doodling, simplistic flash games, and lots and lots of youtube.

What this means is that in a somewhat emotionally unstable state, I have listened to hours and hours of a YouTube caster called Cry (username ChaoticMonki in case you want to check it out) playing games and reading ghosts stories and other shit. He's got a good voice and is good-natured and relatively calm for a youtuber, and listenting to someone reading is nice in this state of mind. And unavoidably that means I've built some kind of relationship to a person I've never seen, and who doesn't have the slightest idea that I exist. You might think "how is this different from being someone's fan" or something. Well, it feels different. I haven't figured out why yet, but it does.

I would be sad if he stopped posting things, like losing contact with a friend. Human relationships are funny that way. I almost like humans best this way. Listening to their voices without them necessarily knowing or caring that I'm listening at all. Just getting comfort from the noise and bustle of the life that surrounds me. I wonder if it's the same way the other way around. That I'm most comfortable speaking to an audience I don't know and don't know if it even exists, like in this blog. Maybe I should start youtube casting. Maybe someday Cry would catch a little clip I made for lols and it would cheer him up on a bad day, and the circle would be complete, without either of us ever knowing anything about it. It would be beautiful.

What do we have friends for, but to ease our pain, share our happiness, and fill the frightening expanse of time stretching before us, second for second, hour for hour. We don't need to know how they look, or what they do when they're not with us, or why they take the time to be nice to us. We pick the parts we like about a person and let that define who they are to us, instead of investigating every corner. We pick together the things we want to complement ourselves, instead of finding it all in one person (which is impossible imo).

In other words, we are all Japanese mechas, and we're building our bodies from the bodies of others. I'm nicking Cry's voice for my in-suit Jarvis, then. You can have mine if you like, it would be an honor to give it, or a finger or an eye. Gives a whole new meaning to free distribution. We are all stitched-together ghouls and we are all beautiful. Maybe you want that image for a background on your holo-screen? It's certainly not copyrighted.

The Full Process (or How to Not Worry by Yeonni)

I don't worry. It has to do with a childhood belief that either things work out, or you give way and find a different place. It has to do with an adult faith that everything is connected and everything is as it should be, as it will be, as it has always been. I can frown and think and stare into the dark of night, but it's theoretical, logical. It's thinking, not worrying. Not when my brother crashed with the bike, not when my dad had a heart attack, not when we stood before the possibility of being tossed out of the place we lived in three weeks time. I get angry and scared and frustrated, but I don't worry.

But it's cold. He's a silly little ball of fur, kind of stupid, often very annoying, and I don't even love him that much. But now I feel it. It's like the hand of death gently resting on my stomach. I feel it, and I keep seeing the image of him curling up in the snow under the window just after I convinced him to go outside for a bit to get some air and exercise, and I keep thinking, how do you live with this? How do people who worry survive? Maybe I'm just sensitive because I'm not used to it. But how do people do this?

So.
Reality check. Worst case scenario: he's dead, and I'll never find the body. No, scratch that, worst case scenario: he's lying somewhere suffering for days and days before he dies, and I never find the body. But that makes no difference for me; I can't do anything about that. Boiled down, only four options exist (where "coming back" and "being found" are the same).

1. He comes back. 
2. He comes back wounded. 
3. He doesn't come back and I find the body. 
4. He doesn't come back and I don't find the body.

In a way, if I don't find a body I can imagine he's alive somewhere, but that's highly unrealistic, and I like knowing the truth more than having vain hopes, so they are ranked in that order. By likelihood of each outcome occurring  ranked by most likely first, I think they're somewhere like this:

1. He comes back. 
2. He doesn't come back and I don't find the body. 
3. He comes back wounded. 
4. He doesn't come back and I find the body.

So my most desired outcome is the most likely. Good. My least desired outcome is second. Okay.

Preparation. If he comes back he will be cold and hungry. Handled. Cat candy all stocked up. If he doesn't come back on his own I will have to try to find him, although it seems difficult. Go looking, put up pictures, post through social media. Not only to find him, but also to be able to say, if things go badly, that I did everything I could.

I was not wrong to let him out. I was wrong to not check on the window more frequently, but I must forgive myself that because it wasn't that cold, and as far as I could tell from the tracks in the snow he hadn't been back to the window anyway.

Possibilities for why he hasn't come back to the window are essentially far too many to handle. But for example:

• Plausible reasons: He may have walked in somewhere and been locked in. He may have been in a fight and/or ran off somewhere.
• Less plausible reasons: He may have wandered into the road and been ran over. He may have gotten stuck somewhere in the snow or woods.
• Implausible but possible reasons: He may have been kidnapped. He may have been scraped up by a snow clearing machine and buried in snow. He may have crawled into a car that drove off with him.
• Ridiculous reasons that for some reason insist on popping up in my head: He's hit his head and forgotten the way home. He's fallen in love with some other human. He's pissed and punishing me for tossing him out.

None of this prepares me emotionally for losing my friend and life partner. Hm.

Preparation 2.0. I don't want to get another cat immediately. That's not only disrespectful, it would also be painful. Being alone is also painful. Hm.

Preparation 3.0. People in situations they cannot control do many things. Like pray. People who lose their friends talk to their gravestones, or their pictures. There are rituals and ceremonies involved in handling grief and loss. It's more difficult if there is no definitive end; sending well wishes to the life after death is kinda odd if you don't know if the person is actually dead. 

I don't believe in the life after. I do believe in some sort of "pool" that what we are go back to, like our bodies decompose into dirt and the air in our lungs return to the air outside. But that doesn't deal with the question of whether the person is dead or not either.

People who are not there cannot hear things you say. People are not emotionally connected just because they want to be. Genetically similar people can react similarly to things, and therefore predict how other genetically similar people might feel or act (like twins), but there aren't that many genetic similarities between Asian girls and male cats. Mothers do not know if their children are dead. Thinking so seems to help them emotionally, but I am not his mother.

Loki is a cat. He doesn't know that I love him. He knows here is food and warmth and friendly protective aliens. He will most likely try to come back, and he may miss me, but he will not blame me if I don't find him, because he doesn't know that I love him. Because cats don't know what love means. I don't know what love means either. 

Loki will not know the difference between if I worry about him or not, or whether I miss him when he is not here or not. I do these things only for myself. Missing someone strengthens your bond to them, and makes you appreciate them. Worrying... doesn't help at all.

Conclusion: Worrying will not help Loki, will not increase his chances, will not make him happy if he returns, will not make me better prepared to face the emotional pain from losing him, will not make either of us understand love any better, and will only be painful. Except for looking for him, the only way to get to any of the options stated above is time passing. Passing that time in suffering changes absolutely nothing.

Preparation 4.0 Final. I'm going to watch some videos and play NDS-games in Korean (that I barely understand 1% of) because it makes me happy and eat tasty food.

Thanks for listening. Bye.

Shhh I'm hiding.

Searchlights

I'm looking for a little blue notebook. It happens to contain my heart. I carried it around for several years, and each word could just as well be written in my own blood. I stowed it away somewhere. It was only there to be written in, not read. Only there to feel, not be felt. If ever a word escaped, I smiled and apologized and hurried to brush it aside. Today I thought of it, and a few of the words I sealed inside. I need the words. Sometimes hearts need to be felt and read and soak up the blood that has been bled for other causes. To inspect the scars and be reminded that what healed before will heal again. To see the beauty of what has been born through blood and sweat and tears. You won't find my little blue notebook. It is hidden somewhere here closest to my chest. But I need to find it. I need to take a peek at my heart to make sure it is still beating.

From the Candy Snake

Every move you make
every little step
of your rituals
are like chocolate cake



for my soul, my heart,
like a burning flame
for a moth like me,
whispering the name



of your spirit core,
grand and beautiful,
of your time and love
I pray grant me more.



Don't want sugar cubes,
I'll eat you instead;
won't be satisfied
'til I'm in your head.



(Bet I creep you out
like a candy snake,
but you bear with me
as I flail about.)



Want to wear your skin
what's it like to be
perfect in yourself?
Here's a poem from me:



you're soft through and through,
you're like candy floss;
it can't be washed off.
P.S. I love you.

To die a lizard and wake up a dinosaur

One evening long long long ago, a giant lizard died. One day not so long ago, its bones were dug up and suddenly it was a dinosaur. One day at some point in time, a wolf gave birth to the first dog. Every night people go to bed a man, a mother, a wife, a husband, an immigrant or a worker and wake up a father, a grandmother, a widow, an ex-husband, a citizen or an unemployed.

People who don't like themselves feel trapped in who they are. I feel paralyzed in fear of changing. And, true to form, I feel trapped in feeling afraid of the change. I've accepted and to some extend embraced the fact that things and people around me change. But I am Me. I am God. What if I change, and then wake up one morning realizing I've become Not-Me - and by extension Not-God? What if I try to change and realize that I've lost the ability to? Or, horror of horrors, what if I become Not-God, and don't notice because I no longer can? I've seen the incredible powers human minds possess to shape themselves for whatever purpose; the power of manipulation, suggestion, hope, belief. It's like trying to trust every ant in an anthill.

All the little pieces that make up a "me", they're all necessary, right? Like the single stone that tips the scales, one piece might be all you need to remove to make the scales go the other way and suddenly I'm someone else. So what if I let my cramping fingers rest and go along some more with change, and then break one of those essential pieces? I wish I knew which pieces were required. Of all the things I love, if I lost them I would miss them but if I lost me I might not love them anymore, and for some reason that's so much worse. But things that stagnate rot and die. Lizards are alive and well, dinosaurs are dead.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what single part of yourself would you bring with you?

Korean Fun Writeing!

Follow the letters easier to write letters to children, pronounced helps.

- Results -
Pay close the line connecting the dots will stroke your baby infant children's fun.
Fine motor development, cognitive development, drawing animals, the brain intelligence brain stimulation study.
Character shapes coloring crayons. Crayons Child Care Education Child Brain Development.
Anniversary of Self-directed learning toys mom mother baby, we focused on our kids.
Alphabetical cat dead dog playing in red potatoes, cacao children.


Android app for, I'm guessing, learning to write in Hangeul (Korean letters) for kids. Long live machine translation. The last sentence is my favorite. Cacao?

Us in the Future

Got linked this on fb, stay until the end for it to make sense.


The Chase by Philippe Gamer by Premiere-Heure

While in this case it can be forgiven, it still makes me sad that so much people seem to default to that blowing up policemen is fun. I always feel sad when I see those graffiti scribbles that say "cops are swine" or whatever, or when people talk down on them. As if "pigs" chose to be there so they only have themselves to blame for being shot. I tend to like cool bad guys, and cheer for them, but there's a limit to my acceptance for wanton destruction and the line goes where you're killing policemen excessively or for fun.

Killing civilians is fine. You get funny priorities from being a policeman's daughter ^^

An Unshakable Faith

For a long time I felt guilty about my faith shaking about total atheism, because it wasn't necessarily true; I still believed in *something* that I couldn't put words on but that I had a growing suspicion wasn't very fitting of an atheist. I adopted the Lifestream analogy as a way to ground my feelings, and I put up a "everyone has the right to believe what they want"-facade. Then I drifted on in slight discomfort, settling into a familiar tune of suspected guilt, and tried to leave the subject alone.

Religion came up again recently in my surroundings, and the conversations have made me realize that I no longer have a problem with it, personally. It's like the floating feeling has solidified into an unshakable truth about the divine in science and the science in the divine. I can go to church, because churches are like museums or giant monuments of human passion, no matter if that passion brought love or destruction. I can openly say I don't believe in god, because I know what I believe in instead; a pattern, a singular shape of the universe like a single line of the most perfect, beautiful code that could ever be produced. And the discomfort and guilt has more than gone away, it has turned into awe and appreciation and happiness for the amazing perfection that is the world.

I still have questions though. The most pressing question is this: is it right to condone religion? Is it right to not question religion where one finds it, but give it free way? Considering the good and bad religion accomplishes, it's hard to figure out if they balance out. How long and difficult would the road be before we've integrated the good of religion into other parts of our society, and would it be worth it? Are we ready for it?

Like the cells that make up our bodies, every human is now part of the neural (or you could call it cybernetic) network that is humanity (or in extension the creature that is the planet Earth, as of now). It would be foolish of me to say that not every single cell is needed, or that not every single decision is critical. Cancer starts with a single cell. It is also pretentious of me to say that the survival or condition of the human race as a whole is any more worth than a single cell in a single human's body, since our solar system could very well be the single cell in some other kind of life, but as a human, I would want to keep humanity around, for now (although that is not true all days).

What I'm trying to say is, I think the decisions we make concerning the inevitable adaptation of old religions that is coming might be one of those do or dies of our race, where the mistakes of a single cell and the ignorance of the cells surrounding it could spell a slow doom for our creature. But the implication paralyzes me. Personally I will never believe in God, and I will never join organized religion for any other reason than political ones, but my attitude towards others is also a part of this process. No one, nowhere, at any time, is excluded from the process, no matter how small their part is. So what is it? What does the pattern say? Am I to speak, or remain silent? Am I to cross the bridge and join in on shouting at people to come over, or sit down and wait for others to join me?

Who are we, those of us who are stuck between the conventions of religion vs science? Not confessing to religion, neither atheists. There's no word for us yet, but there will be I'm sure, because the symbolic answer is: We're evolution. We're synthesis. We're the future.

To the Future - Mass Effect leading the way

Thought this article had a very nice point, that I've been trying to put words on myself while playing it. It's short so go ahead and read it, but the summary of it is: the gender of your main character - Shepard - has little to no effect on the actual story and gameplay. There's a general limitation on who you can romance, which is quite realistic since not every person of every gender will throw themselves at you. Other than that your gender is basically never mentioned. In a future where people run around with biotic and tech implants left and right, complex AI's bordering on independent life, and fibers you can weave into your skin to make you sturdier, there's no reason why the gender of your soldiers would matter at all, rather you would want the right minds at the right places. Shepard has the mind of someone who gets shit done at any cost, and who can inspire people to do their best, and so she's a commander.

One can argue about the average boob size or the greatly uncommon and revealing dress of a certain news anchor and the frequency of female "dancers" but absence of male, but these are details. There are many things one can complain about in a game, but then again, there's a lot more one can complain about in reality. All I ever wanted out of games, as a female gamer and as a human being who believe we must abandon prejudice to grow as a species, was to see these minds in female bodies, because I know that they exist in real life already. There are women out there who make real commander Shepards, and while they still suffer from the limitations of their biology, there is no reason why that wouldn't be fixed in the future - why that wouldn't be one of the great things about the future. A world where what you are born as put even fewer limitations on what you can become.

Something that someone showed me recently made me think along these lines: If art and culture are to guide us into the future, if we are to learn morals and values and ascend through the works of Shakespear and Jane Austen, then that should be true of all creative accomplishments. Artwork, movies, and now in modern times, games. So here's to BioWare guiding us into the future, by showing us a possible future where it doesn't matter if you're black or white, girl or boy, a saint or a ruthless bastard. All that matters is that you get shit done, stand up for yourself and what is important to you, and are prepared to sacrifice everything if it comes to that.