Would you be my Valentine?

Ok, first of all: not a big fan. Don’t really get it. I call it Ballantine’s Day, but that doesn’t really have any bearing on what my actual point is going to be.

Anyway, what I was going to say was this: why do people need ONE day in a year to celebrate their temporary/never-ending/cheesy/chaste/crazy/punch-drunk love in an over-the-top exhibitionist display? Why one day?

Getting to my point any second now.

I have a suggestion, in the shape of a question mark. How about celebrating your love for that special human being EVERY day, every minute, every second of a year, and then on that particular day when all of the others run around like headless chickens with little hearts on top, you just kick back, relax, have a beer and watch some old movies with your better half? Seriously, how much cooler is that? Because we got the love coursing through our veins; if it’s there, it won’t go away so easily, we have plenty of reserves that just get bigger and better with every new smile and every new hug we get from THAT person. It’s enough to go around, it’s certainly enough to cover 364 out of the 365 days of the year.

So how about it? Huh, huh?

life's little surprises

ahh...the incredible joy of being told, at 7:07 AM this morning, that I could go back to sleep, because it's Saturday...such a relief.

The shit we do when we’re drunk. Or in love.

I know I’m not alone in saying, with all the sincerity that I can muster, that when we get drunk or fall in love, our IQ drops exponentially and we pretty much forget everything that everyone’s ever told us NOT to do.

There’s also the unfortunate case when you’re in love AND you get drunk because the feeling’s not mutual and you don’t know any better. The desperate texts, the emotional blackmail – which never works, and even though you know it doesn’t, you conveniently choose to forget (it’s hardly a matter of choice, really, but still), the stalking, the harassment. Oh God, it’s all so humiliating.

What’s even more tragic is that after a while, when we cool down, when the madness passes, most of the time we realize that it wasn’t even worth it. That deity we worshiped is just another human being, just like us, maybe worse, and after all, as the saying goes, we all shit the same. He, he. I just threw that in there for good measure, things were getting a little too weepy.

Of course, as it so happens, to add insult to injury, most of the time we choose to act like idiots in public, as some sort of self-torture because of course exhibitionism also kicks right in. So more bad shit. If you’re really lucky, nobody takes pictures.

What we’re left with, after all that torment and all that drama, is one little question: what the fuck was I thinking?

Pedal to the metal

I hate speed. I don’t mean the drug. The kind of speed that makes everything whoosh right by when you’re driving (or when someone else is – even worse). I never got the fascination, the thrill, the hard-on about speed, I only got the fear. Yes, another fear, go figure.
Do you think there’s some kind of hypnosis-based therapy that could help me get over it?
I’d definitely like to try it.

just because I love this

Dreams

I should definitely start writing down my dreams. I tell you my friends, there is some really freaky shit going on there sometimes. If only I could remember it all when I wake up, it’s so frustrating. Going back to sleep in a big hurry, pretending that the wake-up never happened, doesn’t help either.
Damn it.

indeed

that is all.

The collector

We are all collectors of some kind. Whether we collect stamps, postcards, stories, experiences, things or people, we just love to have some sort of personalized exhibition to enjoy whenever we wish, and share with whomever we please.

Some of us do it consciously, others let nature take its course and live their lives while the collection grows by itself and they just wake up one morning and realize it’s there.

Collectors of people are the most interesting kind. They go through life acting as though they have dozens of different shelves, with boxes and jars and pantries with nooks and crannies filled with all the people that they’d ever crossed paths with – or swords, or hearts – and they can just pick one up and use him (or her) exactly when and how they desire. I think I’ve been in one of those collections myself. Alas, I managed to escape.

My own collection, I should say, is not necessarily the enjoyable kind. It’s more of the kind that you just want to put away somewhere and maybe forget about it altogether, but that’s not really possible. I collect fuckups. Of the human persuasion. Well, I used to, anyway. I seemed to have an unfathomable capacity to attract fuckups, and ultimately get fucked up in the process. Which is probably why I ended up having an incredibly low self-esteem and being scared of so many things I can’t even remember them all, until they hit me in the face.

Now that I think about it, I was probably wrong.

I collect fears. Even worse, I think they collect me.

Here's to all of them:

Kids

Strange how pampering your children can turn them into helpless, barely functional adults, innit? Ok, maybe it’s not always all that bad, but it’s quite … poetically unfair that too much love can fuck it up for them and whoever will have to live with them for the rest of their lives. As my brother quite realistically put it, it’s not normal for a man over 30 to be unable to change a light bulb. And so on and so forth.
So really, how much love and care is too much? Can you ever really know when to stop? Can you really censor yourself when all you want to do is give that child everything he or she needs before they even know they need it?
Cheer up, though. You’ll probably only find out about it when the kids are all grown up and have left home. So until then… take it easy and remember…less is more.

Fatally flawed

I am not going to claim I’m perfect. That would be deluded, self-sufficient and crass of me. On the contrary, I fully intend to disclose at least some of my flaws, as a sort of exorcism on myself, for myself. That might prove helpful, in the grand scheme of my things. Then again, it might not. Either way, I gotta try.

Riddle me this: it is really wrong of me to have an extremely low, to almost non-existent, tolerance for bullshit, stupidity and vulgarity? More to the point, if I stop associating myself with people who display some, or all, of the aforementioned features, am I a bad person? How much tolerance is good for the heart and soul, and when does it start verging on self-destructive? It is, after all, true that a lot of our interactions shape the way we are and the persons we might at some point become. I would love to be tolerant, believe me. I would love to do something better with my spare time than turn my own brains inside out trying to understand how some people function in this world and, more to the point, how they manage to be kept close by people who, at least in my opinion, should know better. Why DO they tolerate them? Do they not care, do they not see? I would bring myself on the verge of despair trying to figure it out.

So, my monochromatic friends, is there a solution to my predicament? Is this my problem, or is it theirs? I can only blame this on my being a Virgo so many times. But I cannot deny that I have a permanent tendency to turn myself into my own arch-enemy. At which point it all starts being all fun and games.

Maybe I just have to find something better to do with my life? I do pride myself in being one of the increasingly fewer (if I may say so) people who still derive extreme pleasure from reading – I mean reading books, actual books, with pages and covers and all that – so it’s not like I don’t use my spare time in a constructive manner and just kick back and torment myself with nasty thoughts about the lesser people. And still…I can’t help being a total bitch when they or their kind come into play.

Help?