Dream no longer

Did it again. Let myself live in a dream. Lulled by a dream. It never ends well, I should have known. Always breaks and then hurts more than before. First, there is hope. Such a dangerous thing. Hope makes you imagine, remember, and think about 'what if...' Then, kindled by kindness, unexpected support, caring... a dream emerges. A dream that it may last. It may still be beautiful.

"I went downstairs for my Christmas gift"

Well aimed. Well indeed. Used against me in different forms before but now it did not anger, no. It saddened beyond words. It sunk deep. Will it always come down to this? Always the same defense. Always the same weapon. My gifts scattered on the floor bored holes that made the loss final.

"I went downstairs for my Christmas gift"

Choked me with pain of a shattered dream. I let it grow too much. It sent too many sharp shards right through me when it fell apart. I got too close. Too close. Could not speak. All the joy I felt that morning evaporated so fast as if it never had the right to have been born. Hurt even more with the hopes nursed for that day that went dead with the dream. No strength left to fight it. To rescue the day. Wasted happiness. Wasted joy. So many wonderful moments that could have happened never came to exist.

Awareness, constant awareness of what this day and the days to come could have but have not been has left me empty. They will never come back. We killed them. I am crying for the lost joy, for the laughs that were taken away, smiles extinguished, love suddenly gone. We owe them the laughs now, never to be repaid. They deserve the joy! Why was it taken from them like that, stupidly?! Why did it have to hurt so much that I could not escape it?

Refused to come with us. The devil wins. Took the control over him and changed his heart. Why did you let it happen? I know. Too much good has transpired. The evil one got anxious and restless. You did not fight it. The sentence snarled at me had a purpose. To give an excuse. To shut me up. And it did. It served well. I still cannot speak. I'm walking empty and longing. Missing the warmth. The phantom of the warmth I dreamed I felt...

Cannot accept the lost dream. Cannot accept the lost joy. Cannot forgive myself for being so weak.
Feeling so heavy and sick, I cry myself to sleep. The devil laughs.

Hurricane Irene

Why write about this? So many words have been written and spoken that it feels almost wrong to say any more. And yet, there is this need to say something. After all, it's been the first hurricane I have experienced in my life - even though, technically, it slowed down just before reaching NYC and became degraded to a tropical storm from category 1 hurricane...

I was going through this 'experience' alone with my two kids. One day after returning from Poland. What a nice way to be greeted, New York! I spent the whole Saturday unpacking, cleaning the apartment, trying to make sure we have all kinds of emergency supplies, listening to hurricane news, and freaking out from time to time. My older son was a great help - surprised me so much with his mature behavior, willingness to help, no complaining about the tasks I gave him. He made me feel better, not alone.

Yes, Irene did not do as much damage as some predicted - although it did have an impact and many people are right now sitting in the dark, some have their homes flooded, transport is still far from being back to normal. But this is not the point. There are some other things that have been striking. Apart from the fact that I was alone but I don't want to go there. It's completely pointless to say anything about that. The thing that I wanted to remember from all this is people's arrogance. So many were joking about the situation, so many ignored the warnings, so many are unhappy that MTA takes so long to be in service again, and even more joking now... Some people appear to think they are invincible. They are the center of the universe just because they live in New York. Nothing can touch them. They want to run in the hurricane. Surf in the hurricane. Go kayaking in the hurricane. They need to be at work on Monday because, well, you know, nothing happened... If you call this hurricane 'lame' - do you mean you are not happy with it? Would you prefer to have a decent one, one that would ruin half the city? Then it would not be lame. You are unhappy it ended too soon? Unhappy that you bought all these things for nothing? I just cannot understand. Being in New York is not a guarantee of safety. Where does this self-assuredness come from? "We can weather any storm because we are New Yorkers and nothing will break us." Yeah, we must be so much better than the Japanese and Haitians and any other poor suckers that could not defeat some natural disaster.

I don't know why but I have a bad feeling that this attitude shown by some New Yorkers may prove deadly one day. It may be the undoing of New York. This city is not indestructible, its inhabitants are not invincible. I'd like to be happy that we are safe but I cannot stop feeling that we did not pass the test. And the more we joke about it and belittle it, the deeper we sink.

C-word

After months spent at my desk, with nowhere to look but at my computer, enclosed within four tight walls and no view out my foil-lined window, I find it hard to work when I actually have a view to look at. It's raining now, the air is fresh and the green outside looks more green than it has any right to do... Or maybe I forgot how intense colors may be. I changed the location but my computer followed. Oh, yes, I brought it along, of course. We've become very close over the years, closer than a person should ever get to a thing...
I would gladly go outside now and let a hundred raindrops roll down my face. Some part of me is craving this cold and wet sensory experience. But I'm too lazy, too afraid, too busy with everything, whatever that everything may be. I have mastered the art of shielding myself from all kinds of experiences for the sake of control. It was never my conscious choice. It just somehow developed without me trying hard or even ever thinking about adopting that way of life.  It was only much later that I learned the loses are great when you do that and the control does you more damage than good. I also learned that once you start, it gets such a good grip on you, it won't let go. It feels as if it wasn't me anymore, it has a life of its own. So what is there to do if you did not truly make this choice and then you cannot change its consequences? I just realized how ironic that is. I would like to stop my tendency to control everything, I would like to break free of my shackles, I would like to start feeling with my whole being, but I feel utterly powerless and clueless as to how to do that. I guess I should be happy it took over only some areas of my life, ruined just a few things for me. I can still control the rest, right?

Forlornness

I'm just so incredibly sad. I cannot shake if off... It's funny that I could be feeling angry, upset, hurt, totally infuriated... But no, I feel sad. Sad. Sad. And tired. Very tired.
I could get into that power-struggle game but I know this would just lead to more hurt, nobody wins in power-struggles... Everyone is a loser. It does not solve anything, it just aggravates any problems that already exist and creates new ones.
So I was shown my place. I was shown how little I mean. How easily I can be punished on a whim. It is curious, again, how it did not make me feel weak but only sad. And frustrated. Should I change my life because of that? Should I expect more of this? I have always suspected that the line about equal rights is, well, only a line. Cold hard cash is what gives you power and control. You don't bring it, you are not to make any decisions. All the things you are doing would cost money but as you are doing them, nobody cares - you are not earning, you may just be saving -  and that just does not cut it. The fact that I have given so many years... does not count. I cannot do things like these that were done to me. Although I have to tolerate this now never-ending, incredulous money-wasting, down the drain and up the air, every day. Money wasting that may have dire consequences, which may lead to broken health and broken lives. Far more than what I have ever wasted. But I don't have any power to do anything about that. I can just look. I am expected not to say much about it. It is not my business. I'm not PAYING for this. I cannot make a few phone calls to help get over my sadness and my frustration. I don't hold the power. As I always said, I own nothing, I am nothing. I'm just floating here and there and there is no place I belong. No place I can call mine. It's been shown to me. Loud and clear. It filled my heart with so much sadness I cannot describe it. I cannot lift this weight that seems to have crushed me and pinned me down to the ground. So I will just have to deal with it. Somehow I will have to find a way to deal with it and go on. If I still want to have a life. Some life. I don't plan ahead anymore. There is always something waiting for you to make your plans never come true. You cannot prepare yourself for everything. Planning seems so futile. I've been there before so I may just as well go back to living only day by day, one day at a time.
I just wish I could stop feeling so sad. I would prefer to feel angry. It's equally exhausting but does not make you feel like slowly dying inside.

The study of what?

I watch people sometimes. So fascinating. Every move. Every little grimace on their faces. Sometimes I watch myself. Sometimes I feel so detached from myself I don't know what I feel or want or think. So I'm trying to figure out what's the deal with me by analyzing what I'm doing. It's something like experimental linguistics - you cannot get into someone's head to see how language works in there so the only thing to do is to observe its external reflexes... Unfortunately, it seems that that approach has not been the most efficient in linguistics. Whenever you go you'll find question marks and disputes, and speculations, and no, absolutely no definite answers. Still, every linguist is trying very hard to project an air of confidence and present their ideas as some revolutionary solutions worth a Nobel Prize. I'm getting sick and tired of reading all these old phrases and even more disgusted to find myself using the very same academic tricks in my writing. Not to say that all of these findings/investigations are untrue/uninteresting. It's the need to sell them that turns the process of discovery into some cheap merchandise.
But I digressed, as usual. My problem is that I'm using too many words trying to say simple things. Or maybe trying to say something that should be buried, hidden, forgotten. I just envy people who feel good in their own skin. Envy them so much.

Demons

I hear them sometimes
They whisper from the walls
Little breaths of words
Split-second images
I stare into the darkness
Heart beating faster
Faster

My own personal demons
Sometimes I say...
Just do it finally!
Destroy my life
You've been trying for so long
I'm tired of being
The prey

I feel them sometimes
Reaching down my spine
And up my throat
Twisting and turning
Somebody's screaming
Cold fingers
Entering

Egocentric and human

I'm sometimes wondering (yes, I do that sometimes even though being a mom and a student I don't have loads of time on my hands) how we are able to filter through so much terrible information available non-stop on all kinds of media and maneuver our way in this mass of horror in such a way as to keep being essentially egocentric most of the time. I'm not talking about the old childish 'selfish' thing. This some of us managed to overcome, at least to some degree. I'm talking about the inability to step out of one's little life and be less concerned about our petty endeavors, problems, these mostly not so very dramatic issues (as dramatic as they sometimes feel...). It is not possible for us, little humans, to take the burden of being aware of too much around us, it would crash our processor. We must perceive everything through our own experience, no matter how limited it is. We must obsess about our little world, everyday problems, responsibilities, maybe some reaching a little further into the future and maybe some of them involving somebody else than just us, the ones doing the obsessing.
It's only from time to time, when something really huge hits us, something that cannot be easily ignored that we shake off the state of egocentric little-worldedness for a short while and look around, wide-eyed and shocked... realizing that there is so much happening. There is so much that we would rather not know. Because if we really, truly, and fully 'know' about this we won't be able to find any peace, not even back in our little world of well-known worries. I know it is easy to say things like this and yes, not so easy to fight off the flurry of everyday stuff, smaller and bigger, stuff that sometimes really buries us so deep that we cannot see any light. We do realize sometimes that these worries of ours, at least some of them, are not that big but only when we compare it to what other people have to carry. So often we just stop looking around, get so engrossed in our lives, that we block anything else.
And then we hear a story of a little boy who is abused by his own mother, whose little 5 year old life is full of pain and sadness, and anger, and no love, no safety, no closeness... And then a big earthquake hits some part of our planet. And so many people lose their loved ones, their homes, their whole lives turned into a nightmare in a matter of minutes. The feeling we get then... I don't know, we feel disturbed, uneasy, sick. We feel so sorry for this little boy, for these people struck by the cruel nature. For a moment we forget about our own problems, these thing we need to deal with and so many of which feel like too much, too difficult, so burdensome... But then, we just need to come back. Our instinct of survival tells us to continue with our lives, take care of our problems, stop taking all this other crap so seriously, who can worry about the whole world, right? Donate a few dollars to help the unlucky ones, feel the appropriate amount of pain for the little boy, outrage towards the mother... but we cannot keep the pain, it must subside, we have so much of our own to carry... We can take only so much, don't we?!

Improvements

This one little question has been bugging me for a while now... What needs to be done to change something in yourself that is obviously not good? It seems that just realizing what it is does not make it go away. Even if you do something and you think, "oh, that's no good, why am I behaving like that?" you still are often not sure how to answer that question. So really, can you pinpoint exactly why you're doing the things that you feel have some underlying source in your core being? I mean, you can understand some of it but how accurate is that? Some people say you can only know yourself - it's close to impossible to really 'know' another human being. Others say that you cannot even know yourself and I tend to agree with that other stance. The hardest thing for me would be to write an extensive characteristic of myself. One that would list the main qualities, traits of character, typical tendencies, give some explanation and justification for why I turned out the way I did. I feel it would always be incomplete, always fragmentary. Would other people's perception of me help complete the picture? Maybe they could see something that I cannot? What if I completely disagreed with some of the opinions - who'd be right?
Wouldn't it be fun if we had a machine that would test us extensively and spit out a psychological profile plus possible ways to improve oneself? We could still disagree, that's ingrained in our human nature to question and contest just about everything around us (which can have very different outcomes). But maybe it would help accept some of the things that we tried hard not to see and through a conscious analysis finally come to understand and manage to change the most distractive traits of character, tendencies, fossilized habits of our mind and body?
I don't know. I just feel that I would need to change so much about me to make me a better human being for people around me and for myself. I feel that some things have just gone terribly wrong and I cannot undo anything. I don't want to drown in a sweet blissful ignorance of my own shortcomings and suffer myself for the rest of my life. I would like to start living with a better, improved me. One that will just give me some fucking peace and quiet. Some ease and simplicity, less worries, more joy, a nice, agreeable human being. Is that so much to ask?!

Me

With me everywhere
It never leaves me
Maybe this is how it must be
Maybe this is who I am
Maybe it cannot be any different
Ever

Incurable sadness
Hiding deep within
Most people
They would be scared to see
Too much of a burden to carry
To know me

Unreadable
Not a bubbly happy person
Not somebody who'd pick you up
With the strength and energy
That is so beyond reach
Always has been

Ordinary

I am so ordinary. Average. Pretty but not beautiful. Common. Intelligent but hardly exceptional. Typical. Feeling the feelings that everybody feels. Living the everyday life. The mix of joy and desperation plus lots of the middle so-so states of mind. I'm no different than anybody else. At least not by much, just this one bit different in this and that, again, the average different. We form the mass, the mob that serves as this convenient backdrop that lets the exceptional few shine the more brightly. I believe I was moaning about that averageness of mine in some previous post... I don't even want to go back and read it. The cyclic nature of human mind. We think we thought of something for the first time just to find out later that it has been thought about a thousand times...
Being exceptional is costly. Not everybody can carry the burden, the responsibility of being the envy of the common ones. Of inspiring the common ones to do something a little less ordinary once in a while. Don't we feel grand then?! Oh, my, we did something almost original! Almost creative. It is amazing how self-centered most of us are. We must internalize everything. Grind all the experience and sensory stimuli through our insides. The limits of the insides determine what we make out of the input then...
I think I'll just go back to my acoustic analysis now. Nothing original is going to be born today. No inspirational fuel available. I have just looked to my left and saw the toilet. It is conveniently located door to door across a small corridor from my bedroom. Now it just spoke to me. Save yourself the trouble. Let it go. Embrace your ordinariness. You will only cause trouble if you try to be more than you possibly can.
Smart toilet. Quite out of ordinary, in toilet standards, of course. One thing just struck me. It just cannot be an American toilet. It's so un-american to think that way...