White Noise

Wake up at 3 am, thirsty, disoriented..Take a look at your phone, nasty habit..In your drowsy state, foolishly decide to answer that blinking message..Believe you are capable of summoning reason, that water will magically reinstate your mental abilities..

Using Facebook as a notepad is my new level of lazy; I’ve been breaking record times on social media lately in fact. I clicked the one thousand’s like on some random post from a random publisher on the site a couple of weeks ago, and it sincerely felt like the highlight of that night for me. 

Aside from procrastination, I have recently found a sudden interest in superheroes and fairy tales. When series, movies and books started failing to fill those humongous voids in me, I turned back to the oldest trick in the book, daydreaming. 

Daydreaming isn’t an easy task when charming princes and farfetched fortunes stop being fulfilling. Beyond that point, daydreaming becomes an art in its own, it starts requiring chunks of imagination sprinkled with intellect and a shy sense of adventure. It’s hard to break free from clichés in this field. It takes absolute, irrefutable boredom to push yourself in the direction of making art out of what you’d always taken for granted. Suddenly you start focusing on your imaginary expedition and before you know it, you realize it has taken a life of its own; it needs to be nourished now. 

But what is art’s worth without a muse? And what’s the definition of a muse if not a torturous creature voluntarily subjecting you to mind games and psychological disconcertion? A muse has swag but does not realize it. It knows it has got something over you, but is unable to label it, for if you knew what swag is, then you probably don’t have it. 

Usually, the fact that someone is interesting doesn’t automatically make me interested. But in some rare cases, you may be the most boring or neutral person to the rest of humanity, but to me you’d be the incarnation of some sort of cerebral heaven hemorrhaging intellectual stimuli and heartbreaking inducements.

Am I too lyrical tonight? It’s the muse effect. 

One of daydreaming’s many side effects includes an obsession with finding the best way to manufacture heels for mermaids, because yes, there are many, many ways to do it. It also starts seeping into your regular dreams, the kind you involuntarily have while sleeping. Combining your newfound daydreaming habit with an insatiable taste for independent movies might also increase your chances of having nightmares versus pleasant dreams, well unless you don’t consider the fact that you had deprived children of available noses when they needed them in your dreams as vicious. 

Stop by the grocery store on your way home..Get basil, you need to fix yourself a cocktail as soon as you step into your place..Pick an energy drink on your way out from the fridge next to the register..It’s raining..Stand under the rain, sipping a Red Bull, and decide to revisit the nonsense you had typed at 3 am last night..Cheese, all of it, cheese..

I started counting on my new hobby to get me through the days. It felt like an automatic approach to compensate for the infuriating way my soul is being eaten every day. It felt right to let the daydreaming take over while I, little by little, lost my ability to defend the remains of my worn-out soul. 

Creative daydreaming can only last for so long though. When the candlelight flickering on top of your muse’s head gets blown out by unexpected winds, you start giving up on the very lifeboat you’d began to rely on to save you from the oblivion of giving up in the first place. 

The best way to save face is to explain how your senses were clouded by midnight thirst..That’s what your silly mind, fuelled by the flying effect of energy drinks tells you at least..Trust your contaminated instincts and type..

It’s about time you acknowledged your defeat. You are just as boring and pathetic as they come. Temporary brilliant solutions or none, you have failed in the end. 

Cheese..More cheese..Who are you really? No really! 

Go home, resigned..laugh your daydreaming out..Build an imaginary shrine of the muse in your head..Decide that the best fashion to drown your sorrow is older than the oldest trick..Make cocktails, you’re becoming good at those at least..

*Author’s note: this dismantled, devoid of any - and I mean any - sense or purpose, is brought to you tonight by Jack Daniels, DeKuyper and Davidoff.

At The Mercy of My Fingers

I know you are going to say this is just too much! We have better things to do than reading a blogger’s jabbering every other night! But I can’t help it, my fingers just won’t rest, they refuse to stay away from the keyboard. I have tried, I swear I did. I must have clicked on those stupid solitaire cards over twelve thousand times tonight, and yet my fingers don’t seem to have had their satiety. My pink little mouse that looks as if it is a hand-me-down from an 8 year old girly girl has been begging me to stop restlessly clicking on it for over 2 hours, and yet my fingers refuse to keep away from my broken laptop.

Something in me has woken up from its deep, long slumber this week. Something in me has shaken me up, and like a somnambulist, I found myself picking up on my reading where I had left off. The pleasure of those books must have ticked off the ink swelling in the tips of my fingers.

Something in me has realized that fantasies are just what they are, and reality must set in sometime. My feelings about this statement are ambivalent. I am not sure how much I prefer living my reality as opposed to dreaming my fancy.

I am trying to take serious steps towards fulfilling the promise I had made to myself, the one in which I swore to live more, to do more, to be more; but as the saying goes, one hand cannot clap on its own, and without a serious entourage and excellent company round the clock, I am afraid my hands not only won’t clap, they are also tied, tied to a bittersweet reality that keeps me going in vicious circles of fabulous far away friends, and omnipresent insignificant everyday companions who make me feel like a cat lady.

Tonight I can’t help but imagining myself some 30 years from now still sitting in this chair, sipping from this same hideous cup of coffee, only by then I would be ordering decaf instead; I foresee uncontrollably shaky hands in my future and a pile of heart medicine. I see glasses so thick they seriously could pass as the bottoms of coca cola bottles. I see a big house filled to its brim with books read once and only once, with rusty yellowish notebooks scattered all over the place, and with little, almost invisible insects crawling and making tiny nests inside the walls of an imagination that never knew where its door knob was.

I see neighborhood kids practicing their prank skills on me. I see myself tutoring students I wish I could spank to make a living.

I see nephews and nieces coming to check on me every once in a while. I hear them complaining about the stench of the house. I see myself cracking the windows once they have left. I see myself trying to look presentable and driving my 2005 Polo – 30 years from now – to Sassine Square. I see young waitresses puffing and rolling their eyes at my sight.

I sit here seriously wishing I knew how to change this inevitable prospect, and whilst my imagination aids me, my reality refuses to cope. Somehow I wish the world would rearrange itself to suit my lazy ass. And to end this with a somewhat less pessimistic thought, just wait and watch it do it!

Alternative Curriculum

I am sitting here, unaware of how I got here, of why I chose to be here in the first place. As I try to make my recollection, I realize that I decided to come here, I even inquired on how to get here, and drove in a daze with only one purpose in mind: being here.

I have only been here once before, and considering my poor driving skills, it is far. I believe the memory of the vibe this place had given me the first time around brought me back. It gave me the sense that this is the kind of place in which I need to be in order to clear my head, to refresh my crowded thoughts, and to try and simply, relax.

None of the above has been achieved though, and for a very simple reason: I realized thoughts cannot be organized, feelings cannot be disciplined, and the myth of the brain and the heart getting along has been deemed as such for the right reasons. As for the relaxation part, I feel even tenser than when I arrived.  

All the students surrounding me with heads buried in their books made me think back to my school days, and more precisely, to my school books. I sit here wondering what most have spent a good part of their time wondering. When will we ever use these useless equations throughout our miserable life? Why would it help to know the name of that body part and that one’s function? How is memorizing stupid outdated poems going to help with life’s entangled problems?

Tonight, here, I would like to take a shot at creating an alternative curriculum; one that I believe would help much more with life’s path, at least in the way life seems to me, here, tonight.

I propose a class that would make math look so last century, and I would like to call it “how to lower your expectations”. Take that algebra.

And how about replacing science with “the metaphysics of luck”, “the alchemy of hormones and how to control your stupid impulses” and “beauty and the beast”?

Instead of literature, I would go for “the art of winning an argument”.

Philosophy shall become “the reality of evasiveness”, and civism will go by “the one on one book for etiquette and mutual respect dummies”.

As for geography’s substitute, a special course on “how and where to cultivate the fruit of your decisions” will be conducted by the master of your being, Mr. Ego in all its splendor.

History is so easy to replace, it will become, with the blessing of – for once – both your head and your heart, “guidelines and techniques on erasing the past”.

Regarding activities, a twice a week constructive lesson will be given on “ways to tell a lie from a truth and other practical advice”.

Have I forgotten anything? Maybe. You wish to tell me to shove my curriculum and get over it? Most probably. Do I even care? Of course note. Has this helped me move on with my night? A definite no. Why have I written all of the above? Not so sure.

The lesson: None.

The teacher: An idiot who will never learn by himself.

The one to blame: A system that has probably taught me everything but from which I have learned nothing, and yet, it is still the one to take the blame.

The objective: Filling the blanks in life with elusive meager literature.

The result: Time killed, the acquisition of an illusively mended heart and of course, continuum boredom and loneliness. 

A Slave of Complaint

It has been an ultra redefining week on so many levels. Well I haven’t exactly discovered anything I wasn’t previously aware of, but everything that had been happening with me or around me has reconfirmed some old theories and feelings.

I am a slave of my routine. Anything that interferes with my daily habits one way or another automatically tends to go on a blacklist that ranges between dislike, discomfort and disassociation altogether.

For those of you who don’t know me in person, here is a concise summary: I am your basic heavy smoker/insomniac with no car. That being said, it is quite understandable how a 24/7 coffee shop near home with an indoor smoking section can work perfectly well for me.

I have been almost living in the same spot for the past 10 years or so. The coffee shop itself changed, the people changed, the cab drivers even changed, but I am still the same. I come here religiously, every night, for the same experience, the same enjoyments, with the odd twist here and there of course.

So could somebody please tell me why am I having to undergo a relatively massive change in the space of less than a week? It simply isn’t conceivable in my mind; having to go from devotedly smoking indoors 24/7 to shamefully smoking outdoors 21/7 is just NOT fair!!!! Not to mention that I have lost the place as a depot as well! I know an explanation is due now and it goes – or used to go to be more precise – like this: The fact that I have no car and that I feel lost without my huge laptop makes me carry it with me wherever I go, and since on some rare occasions I actually have plans elsewhere, but must – and I mean MUST! – come to the coffee shop before AND after the night out, I would usually keep the laptop with the staff for the duration of my plans, and then come back, retrieve it, use it and go home with it. Now what do you suggest I do with my humongous laptop when I need to go out?? And how am I to use it before leaving and dispose of it then? And why oh why don’t I get the chance to use after all my boring plans anymore??

Rant, rant, ranting I do best! I know. But in this case, I have earned the right to do it, haven’t I? I mean come on, after all those years, you chose this week of all weeks to start closing at 3:00 a.m.? What does it even denote to close for 3 meager hours when you need an hour to close down and another to open up? Isn’t it enough that I now have to sweat in the heat and shiver in the cold just because I have been dubbed as an uncivilized smoker? I ask you, isn’t that a sufficiently undeserved and uncalled for punishment?

On another note, I may have become slightly superstitious this week as well. It all started when I caught the bouquet my friend threw on her first wedding anniversary. Does catching the bouquet really mean I am going to meet someone and be the next to walk the isle? And what exactly could it mean that I caught it one year too late?

On yet another note, there has been a lot of dreaming going on. Between the dreams of my relatives, those of my friends and my own, I have been stealing cars, secretly buying cars, and attending some very fishy gatherings. I have also been misplacing my clothes and walking on red sand.

Now link the dreams to the rotting flowers, deprive me of smoking altogether, send me to bed at midnight, and drive me off tomorrow to the nut house in a stolen green Renault. How about that?