Grief

I'm trying to understand myself and my grief. It's been about a month and a half since Hyperion died, and somehow I don't get over it. Through the years, I've had many cats and many of them have died, of course. While Hyperion lived, I thought sometimes about what would be my reaction  the day he died. I thought that maybe I'd be sad but I would quickly look for a new cat. It had been so with Ramses, our Siamese cat. However, ever since Hyperion got sick, the idea of him dying on me was simply unacceptable for me. Now, after he has been gone, I find myself missing him everyday.

My memories of Hyperion extend to all of my senses, but curiously, they are mainly concentrated in my sense of smell and my touch. I remember his smell vividly, often to the point where I can suddenly smell him, and fell at the same time the soft fur of his head pressed to my upper lip. I remember his fur against my nose, the touch of his head against my hand, how it fet when I scratched him, or his weight as he leaned agaings my hand or sat on my lap. The heat of him, the vibrations of his purring, his big paws in my hand or pressing against me.

I still sad as I remember that he's no longer with us, that I can't go home and wait to see him, pick him up and caress him. Yes, no cat has ever been so long with us as Hippie, so is it that why I don't get over his death so easy? I got over breaking up with my ex so much faster and so much painlessly, and yet here's a cat - ok, a great, awesome cat - and I don't seem to be able to move on, see my life without him.

Grief can be so weird.

Thinking about Death

Few words and few concepts can convey such strong feelings in people, such as death. Most people prefer not to think about it, almost pretend like it doesn't exist, taking this unbeatable force to appear in our lives as an unnatural, horrible happening. Whomever wonders about death more than the strictly prefuncionary two minutes during a seldom funeral (and those thoughts must be carefully gathered always around the thought of our own lives, our deeds and how we're going to lead a better, healthier, more pious life), is labeled as morbid. I am a morbid person, then.

As living beings, we experience death from outside, often pairing the feeling of dying with the suffering and pain we know from previous illnesses or harm. Thus we picture death as an extended, never ending pit of pain and suffering where no release is experienced. And indeed, for the living, those of us who are left behind, death brings quite a deal of suffering that lingers and stays with us long past death itself. Death brings thus the pain of loss for something or someone who can't be brought back. Be it the death of a loved one - family, friend, significant other, pet - to the death falling upon our crops, our stock, an admired teacher or a leader, the shadow of death stretches long and painful, drawing a dreadful path of hopelessness.

How can I go on without my true love? How can I ever love again that hard and that deep? What will I do without my mom or my dad? Who willl comfort me and give me those good advises I need from time to time? What will I do without my sibling? Who will be that perfect accomplice and partner in crime now? How can I go on without my pet? Who's happy barking and frenetic tail wagging, or hungry, demanding meowing and sucking-up rubbing and purring will make my day?

Let's face it, no one is replaceable. Even if you had 100 siblings, the death of one of them can beat you to pieces. They are unique. And for those who have pets, even if you had 10 dogs in your life, or 30 cats, could you say that one came to replace another? Never. You remember them all, their kirks and crazy little things.

But death is definitive, unbeatable, and above any tricking or outsmarting. Face it, you can't cheat death. Try as you may to prolongue your youth, or be more beautiful, live healthier, we are all going to end up ceasing to breath. Death is natural - no matter how it comes - it is part of life and part of nature. This doesn't mean we shouldn't suffer, or that the pain we feel after the departure of a loved one or lose hope when a guide or a crop dies is regretable and pety, but it does mean that death should be embraced, accepted and dealt with properly.

It is often said that death means change. Religiously, spiritually, many of us accept that death isn't other thing than the passing of the soul/spirit from one state to the next, thus death becomes the "back cover" of birth. Thinking of it in a primitive way, the human who has walked on the surface of Earth, re enters the womb of the Great Mother (Mother Earth) only to come out from the womb of another mother... say in case you believe in reincarnation. However, as the ones experiencing death from outside - meaning, being the ones who don't die, but are left behind by the one who did - death is also a time of change.

As a loved one departs a big change enters our life. With the passing away of a parent or a guide, we must gather all the lessons we've learned from them, and learn to walk our path without their support. We must learn to find it in ourselves to tap the wisdom they showered on us, and open the source of wisdom inside us, become confident in our own capabilities. With the passing away of a partner, the olve of our life, we must find it in ourselves to love others, love ourself and give to the planet what has been so kindly given to us. The loss can feel unfair, but if we accept death in our lives, shouldn't we be able to grieve properly and then take the beautiful lessons of the life that transcended and spread them in the world?

I think a lot about what would be when my folks pass away, if my brother passes away before me, if my boyfriend passes away, my friends, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about my own death. Aside from envisioning and wishing for the best possible death (so far my favorite is heart attack, so I hope that's what takes me when the time comes). Have often thought about my will, and have been trying to imagine a way to tell those I'd leave behind not to be sad.

Death, we want to grasp it, understand it, see into it, so maybe we won't fear it anymore, but would that be wise? If we lo longer fear death, would be life a fuller life, or would we rush into suicides, since death is no longer a dark, terrible thing? Would wars matter? Would death threats be effective?

From the heights of pseudp-philosophy, I turn back to the old wisdom of the lands, and think that death is not only natural, but necesary. It is the death and the burried what turns our lands fertile and allow the crops to grow. It is death what keeps population alive, as it makes space for the new generations, but it also gives space for development, evolution and revolution. As old ideas prepare the land for the new ones, it is in the path of the old lives that the new ones spring, and from the old lessons, that new experiments dare to conquer the fears of the past.

Would you dare to think a bit more about death?

Dreams

"What do dreams mean?"

That's a question that has a place in everybody's mind, or almost everybody's mind. The very word "dream" is often related with some utopian state which people wishes to achieve, even if that's not likely to happen. People "dream" about becoming rich and famous, or finding their "One" and getting married, have a family and live happily ever after. Some dream about getting laid with some extraordinarily beautiful person, or get to lay over 1000 people, getting power in the company or in the political life. Some "dream" about getting away with murder, either figurative or literal speaking.

Some people think that dreams are the gates of foreseeing, and that the future can be told from properly decyphering the message bottled in the hazed webs of dreams. Others take the psichoanalytical approach and believe that dreams tell you things about themselves. Burried traumas and dark secrets.

I believe dreams to be a sort of mind-gate where you are receptive to many things, both about yourself and about the outer life.

Today I read Dragonfly's entry, where she spoke about her dreams often being nice. Well, my dreams are hardly "dreams", but pretty much most of them are nightmares, and even the nice ones are nightmares. (Yes, I believe in dreams I'm a natural born Gothic Writer.) My dreams often depict gory scenes like beheadings, brandings, body carvings, and even live burials.

Unlike a friend of mine, Pilar, who has been killed in her dreams, I've never been killed, even though I have been buried alive (once). I, however, have often killed people in dreams, some of those murders being particularly enjoyable.

The matter of my dreams often find their way to light through my writings, delievered from the prison of my psyche and into the chaotic, murky land of words and the jumble of other many minds. How many of you do that? What do people do with their dreams? build up some "dream-journal", or maybe someone even compose a grimoire or a "book of shadows" with it? Do people ignore them or vivisect them to find the key to their inexisting happiness? The usual code used for reading dreams, where birth is death, death is marriage and marriage is birth. Where the falling of teeth means problems and the falling of hair means betrail.

I've dreamed of people who have died, who mean the world to me, who could make me walk into Hell to seek their deliverance, gamble with my own salvation to secure theirs, be ready to give up my chances to give them a second chance, just to see them happy. Fuck, I'm such a Dean...

I dream of people in my past too. Dead or alive. For some strange reason, some of them appear usually at this one floor, dark wood house, where the painting, something between light sky blue and aqua-green is heavily chipping away leaving an overwhelming amount of darkened old wood exposed. The air is moist, carrying the scent of mouldy beams. Naked walls and amateur made doorframes in thick wood all over, no ceiling as the beams of the roof are visible, cracks here and there let the air and the cloudy sky light come through. Rooms open to other rooms, some around one huge mainroom, and others opeming from other rooms. There's not one hallway, but only room after room, after room. There's no outside, even if there are windows. The outside is a huge greyish whiteness, much like the sky when it's about to rain.

I didn't expect to find him, Dmitrij, in there. Long hair, blond and ... curly. His hair has always been flax, but here he was, tall, slim and sporting long curls around his face. There was contempt, both from me and from him. Our glance said everything. Annoyance, resentment, anger, thirst for revenge, or in my side, the demonic desire to make him fall and suffer again. Tie him down and lash his face, his eyes with his own belt until the flesh of his eyelids thins to a bloody veil, and the muscle is gone, rendering him forever blind.

However, aside from shared thoughts we could both hear even though they were never spoken, we never got to torture. Well, he has never been prone to it. I'm the Dungeon Master, and have always been. Thoughts flew from my mind to his and viceversa, carrying hateful, disdainful messages.

'can't get rid of you, can I?'
'you are a nightmare'
'can barely stand the sight of you'
'why don't you just go away from my life'
'you are a hurtful bitch, you do know that, do you?'
'go away, smoke away, die'
'monster'
'of all people, why didn't you commit suicide?'

Hate, wrath brought us somehow to a kiss. A kiss to a caress, a caress to fall on a rackety cot and go at it. Sex fueled by dispair... amazing. can't even begin to explain the monstruous pleasure you get from something like that. Whether such things only live in "dreams", in the depths of hate invested nightmares, whether they reveal an unfinished business, a latent desire or the thirst for acts that would prove to be morally criminal, my nightmares, no matter how tortuous, how tormenting, are... exquisite.

The Real Cost of Driving

Today I'll share with you a few thoughts about a very serious topic. As usual, these things come from me reading the newspapers. I know, a shameful habit. Should grow out of it, right? Reading newspapers, no matter how biased and filtered they are, how the facts are tampered and the effects diluted and minimized, so we all let out politicians fuck our living conditions far beyond our wildest dreams, well, it's not a good practice. People should read... well, actually they shouldn't read at all. Celebrities and Reality Shows should be people's only concerns.

Yesterday, reading the Népszabadság Online, which I don't read as often as perhaps I should, I was shocked by an article stating that food prices would be growing some 12% to 13% next year... in addition to what it has already grown. I read the article, and really, it was talking only about poultry and pork. But it was "fine, because 20% of the consumers prefer imported, more expensive meats anyways". This all due to the Avian Flu. Question: forget my utter stupidity, but how does the Avian Flu affect the pigs? Pigs finally fly in Hungary? Surprisingly, local specialists argued, that it wasn't so bad, because an increase of 12 to 13% on food prices would only affect the inflation 3 percentual points. Then the article went out of the way talking about the producers and how it was so very hard for them, and how they were getting broke because Hungary can't put up with the EU standards of "no animal cruelty" (it seems Hungarians like their food well tortured, well killed, well cooked), then there was no way that given the current market tools producers could... blah, blah, blah... At one point there was a tiny glimpse of something: people don't care for higher quality, but for the price of the food. Why? Well, try being kinda like "poor" and having to "eat". Need food, have little money, what do you do? Buy what you can afford. In the mean time, the producers are getting broke, so more people becoming poor, more people trying to buy cheap food.

But this is Hungary, and Hungary is Schengen Space, EU country, right? Well, today my attention was caught by another article, this time in the Washington Post. The title of the article is "Food Crisis Is Depicted As 'Silent Tsunami'". Not something that would make many go read it, yet I kinda stranded there. I won't quote the entire thing, though I would like to, because I have no publishing or republishing permision, but there are a few things that I would like to bring to your attention. "Food Crisis" is a phenomenon happening around the world. You can feel it harsher in poor countries, and yet is actually something happening world wide. The price of food is growing out of proportion to the point where people can't buy food with their daily earning. There's people making US$0,50 a day, and want to know something else. It's not in that article, but it's in many others: many of those who make $0,50 a day or even less, are children. Kids taken out of school to go work and support their families. Oh yes, in real life, those two quarters don't go to one person, but more than one, many maybe, and there comes a point where the saying "where one eats, two eat too" is no longer appliable.

20,000,0000 children starving.

A child dies every five seconds for causes related to hunger.

There are many causes for this "food crisis" and many scenarios. Some countries do not produce food at all, and are completely dependant of importations. In other countries there is food, but people can't buy it because they have no money. In other cases the farmers grow less crops because they don't have enough money to grow more, and they are not subject to loans. What is happening here? Well, people don't have jobs or they have jobs but they are not being paid enough. People are not given the chance to educate themselves and their kids to ensure a better lifestyle, and then, the means of production and the food itself is cut. Thomas Malthus said in his book that there would come the time when the land would not produce enough to feed the world and so mankind would know its end. Ironically, we have not reached that point, but rather our greedy ways and our pitiful resource and need prioritizing is pushing us to teh verge of the extintion. Because, to add to the "food crisis" factors such as the oil prices and the biofuel are having a bad influence on it. Rising oil prices keep farmers from the fuel to make their tractors and machines work, so they produce less, but then when you take part of the grains produced and make biofuel out of it instead of giving it to people to eat, you are starving people and killing them around the world.

Now this is not the absolut root of the problems, but please take a second to think. Each time you are filling the tank of your car, you are taking away gas that could be put in a tractor to sow the land and make food for people. Of course, if you think small you could say: "If I don't buy it, they won't either because they have no money", but if you stop buying it and others do too, the price of gas would lower and so the farmers, most of which are not subsidied by the Government, will be able to buy it and work the land. You can use other means of transportation such as public transportation or bikes or your own feet, the farmers need their tractors. A lot of people live in the same city they work, yet they use their car to drive down ten blocks and make traffic jams. Other people live in cities, I know this, that have been planned for car driving. Move closer to the office or, really, give public transportation a shot, even if it makes you wake up earlier. Oil is needed. Arabic, American, Venezuelan, Russian... please understand that it is needed, and until we don't find new ways to produce, and I think going back to plowing with horses or sheer manpower is not a choice now, we MUST decide where these resources should go.

I know many of you would like to turn then to the "miraculous biofuel". Since it was proposed, it sounded like a bad idea. At least to me. I've published here two pictures, which are too sides of the same coin. Biofuel takes the food from the people so some can run their cars. Please! Stop that!! Biofuel is not a solution! It's murder!

This makes me think, you know? How dare different organizations forbid certain productive procedures due to "animal cruelty" and yet some politics and some products are allowed even if they are a clear case of "human cruelty"? How many more people must die from starvation so Annie can get her brand new car for her Sweet Sixteen and Johnny can have a car for each day of the week? How many must die so Pablito can drive a block to buy a fucking bottle of water from the convenience store, and Lucía take the car to go work instead of using the metro because she wants to spare her brand new Prada shoes. How many must die so that the fat asses of the world don't have to make the effort? How many must starve to death so that big cities are not replanned and clean technology public transportation means are not improved? Yes, there are options, electrical options to the gas consuming busses and taxies. There are tramways and trollis (is there a name in English for the electrical buses we call trolibusz in Hungarian?), and for fuck's sake, grab that fucking bike and ride it. People pay loads of money to sweat on a spinning bike in a gym when they could pay some bucks for a bike and ride it everyday to the office. Not so much glam in it? Well, dying of hunger or promoting the starvation to death or other people has not much "glam" either. You are in no condition to ride a bike to your office? So you sit through 45 minutes to 1 hour in a spinning class and you can't take the same time to pedal to your office? Give me a fucking break.

You all know I don't have a car, and you all know I was basically holding up due to economical reasons. Too much to pay for, gas, mechanic, taxes, insurance, technical checkings... I didn't have a car because it was not a profitable investment for me. I did planned to get a car when I moved, but not anymore. You may have a car and use it all you want, but I will not have a car so that people can die out there, farmers can broke and people starve so I can wake up 30 minutes later. Fuck no. I will not be an accomplice to this crime. I will not become an accesory to this massive murder.

Yet, let's be clear, this is not a solution to the problem, but allow me to make of this a statement, a sign of what I will not tolerate, and a banner, a flag to tell the world that insensitive producing and consuming must stop. Take a look:

"THE REIGN OF THE MARKET MUST STOP."

On Notes

I was going to write a note on Costa Rican politics for a change, but as I'm sitting here, with some stupid Sara Jessica Parker film going on, I have started thinking about other things. Things that may have to come out bloating from the keyboard instead of something a bit more structured. For some fucking reason the Internet is freezing over every once in a while and that pisses me off. It makes you value those moments when the letters appear on the screen as you type them. Like I said on Hókisasszony, I spent all day yesterday writing in the several handwritten journals I'm keeping. One for Caroll, one for Gabs, and my little treasure of all the meanness and dark, lurking little bits of my heart, my own. I wrote and scribbled and poured my heart into the processed wood pulp of the pages of the journals. Funny, how my own journal is so terribly different from the other ones, and not only for the language it is written on (evidently in Hungarian), or the contents, but also for the looks for it. I'm carrying my own journal now, everywhere I go now whether I write or not, whether I have time for it or not, I just can't leave without in my bag, just as I can't leave without a book to read. Now my journal keeps "Suite Française" company.

My French is sadly poor, and though I can say a few things and twist and turn the language to its fullest so I can say all the things I need to say, it's still poor and I realize that when I'm in front of a novel or a novelette like this one, which makes use of a higher, more sophisticated French. I would pack also a French dictionary, but really, that's just as much weight as I can carry around. I must improve slowly and by my own, learning the meaning of the words from the text, reading more frequently until my vocabulary builds up. Kind of like with the English. There is also something else about this book. It was written by a Ukranian Jew woman who came to live to Paris and who was hauled to Auschwitz, where she died quite soon after her arrival. This kind of gives something to the novel, not an Anne Frank flare, but certainly a something, a taste of something... like "Fate" or "Doom" or "unavoidable destiny" like something to the words, particularly after you read the foreword and you know she knew she wasn't gonna survive the war. I wonder, does people know with such certainty that death is breathing down their necks? How do you face it?

The thought of death unmistakably makes me think of Henrik. I must say, I admire him. Was it so hard to die? What does it take for a human being to overcome the pain of ripping away from one's body and scatter around into the airy energy of the universe? If I think of dying, I'm sure the "dying" itself ain't that bad. It must be quite liberating, and it must be the best feeling ever, like the ultimate relaxing, but I guess the "getting there" is the real bitch. Must admire someone like Henrik. But then, he knew he was going to die, or at least he hoped for it, since he was handling the dying himself, but what about Irene? She didn't know when or where or exactly how. That must be... how does that go? How do you get that certainty, how do you feel it? Is it like love, which is never explained and you have to second guess all your feelings to whether this is it until something pops inside your chest and you "know" this is it and it only becomes more and more certain when you realize that it's not wearing off and it's not going away and yes, this must be it because nothing else comes close to it?

Of all determinating feelings in the human range, why can't all of them be as simple as hate? You never question how much you hate other people or other things and whether "this is it". You hate and you live it fully. Why can't love be just the same? I guess because mankind ifds it safer to hate because hate keeps us "strong" while love makes us vulnerable. Same with death. You are not supposed to know it because somehow death is seemed as some sort of defeat. But was Irene defeated? And if she was, what a beautiful sense of defeat soaked her soul that made her write such groping stories.

I bought myself a new bag yesterday. Not like I really-really needed one, but I wanted to treat myself and come a step closer to have a true messenger bag. I've packed it already for tomorrow. I hung my gray dress in the bathroom and I'm still deciding over my black pumps or my ever-present black boots. I think about the dictionary and the weight of my bag again and I remember my poor boss' remark about women packing up a frigidaire in their bags: have a lot of stuff and weights like a frigidaire. I was going to refute that, but my bag is really somewhat heavy. And what can I say? I have in there what I need:

• My journal
• My PDA (wasn't in the original post- Added 2008IV10)
  
• A small notepad
• My wallet
• The book I'm reading
• My nici pencilbag
• Cosmetics bag (the one Mario gave me! Oh, I love that little necessaire!)
• Keys
• Umbrella
• Glass case with my glasses in it. My "sophisticated glasses", you mind. The comfortable ones stay at home.

Dear, I can barely wait to get back to contacts. One thing less to carry around. In tomorrow's bag I carry also a larger notebook, something I should replace soon since it's falling apart since I'll have yet another class at my "Craft". Mondays of April will be all about that: afternoons at my craft learning about procedure handbooks from people who do know about what they are talking about. It's so rewarding, you know? to be around actually thinking people. It makes you feel alive.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, what's in store for tomorrow? Lunch at Wendy's most likely. I believe I won't really be able to lunch with Jets like in the old times. There are no more old times. She has changed and so have I. What is left of our friendship but threads to pic up and figure out? It's fraying. Do not misunderstand me, I still love her, and oh Hyne, how I love her. She's like my sister, the sister everybody takes us for, but we are falling apart. Those things hurt, but we all have to grow up. I was wondering about her birthday present, and I think I have it: a book on the Second World War and a contact lens case. One hitting the motels as often as she does now (so that she has to carry her shower gel, body spray and body milk in her purse), well, sure needs to take care of business if something were to happen to her contacts, right? Even found a glam, very sophisticated, rhinestone case I believe she might find appealing.

I wanted some entertainment for the weekend, so I rented three movies: two newbies and a "sure hit". No Country for Older Men, Beowulf and Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. The first was bad and I have no idea how could that win an oscar. The second was even worse. Someone should have told me it was crappy computer animations. Why wouldn't they just do another Shrek? At least that would have been funny. Okay, maybe they animated it so no one could blame the crappy acting on the actors. The third... I have seen it and I know I like it. Good thing I rented it.

Gara go now. Won't promise you I'll be back tomorrow with yet a new entry, but I'll be back some other time. Until then, remember that perceptions are imperfect, but they are the only truth we have.