The end of the age of innocence, this day last year.
And innocence is not only in the child's mind. It cannot be measured with age or maturity. It doesn't relate to a key number of landmarks in every human's life-time.
Even in the lack of innocence is innocence.
A white icing dolloped, mini-sponge cake is offered to me. I consume it and wonder why. I don't even like sponge cake. And then I think about my Great-grandfather and Nene unexpecedly...and her room, decorated with Greek and Cypriot trappings. The clutter was a neat and meticulous one. There was barely an inch of wall visible between all the pictures and posters. Her deceased husband's photo hung above the TV and I never forget Patsy-the-piss-Artist telling her he was a very handsome man. A small old lady, with jet black hair was very proud then. She only knew how to write her name, and that she could do in 'eski Turkce' ...Arabic text.

Maybe I shouldn't care about stuff like money. Maybe I should say pish and shake my fist at my persisent overdraft, not bother thinking twice about responsibility, and just go man. Just go. With the world gone so wrong, you can't help but think it's all ending for us sooner or later ...it's only fair isn't it? And what am I doing getting married any way, with the mental maturity of a 17 -year old? Why try to be a wife where there is no need?
Razaul said i looked 21 yesterday. That's gotta count for something.

To think the pain would resonate thus far, and internalise with some deeper hurting. Something you cannot cry out over or cry about. I never thought I would think to regret this time last year. But now I do. I regret...Shmendrik: I am sorry, I have done you evil and cannot undo it. Unicorn: No. Unicorns are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy, save one, but I thank you for that part too. Fare well good magician, I will try to go home.

Happy Birthday, flinch shaped space.
24-years ago tomorrow, you were brought screaming into this world.
Now forever keep your silence.

I blame Park Chan-wook. I blame him and his stupid Lady Vengence, entirely, for no apparent cause or reason other than that I simply I want to blame him. If you haven't watched Old Boy or Lady Vengence, you don't know what you're missing and it's better that you never do, my friend. Ignore all the reviews, or anything anyone idiotly optimistic tells you, because I've never fealt so sick and utterly defiled by a film before.

Owch.

24.
Disenchanted and deeply dissapointed in what I'm growing out of and into.
A feeling of despair and very real emptiness.
Regret.
Hurt.
I dont know if I can pull through this month...I think I might bleed to death. Hmmm...would that be such a tragedy? These days I think I believe too often that my absence wouldn't cause anyone too great a heart ache. Really, Elest isn't filling any great voids in anyones life. She isn't bringing infinate joy to her loved ones. She isn't producing any increadible masterpieces to benefit mankind in the future. She simply just isnt and doesn't, that's what she is and does.

No, it wouldn't be such a great tragedy if I bled to death.

You can't fix the unfixable or go back and change the inevitable. You can't be anything more than what you've become, even if it was all you ever wanted. In the end, we're just left alone with our mistakes, and we get by with all the guilt, and the regret, and the despair, and the crazy nostalgia which is all thanks to nothing and no one but you.
If I could turn back time, would I have done things differently? I don't know. But I am so very flawed, and so very sorry.

Laws don't apply to Israel. As if wiping their asses with the Geneva convention, daily, was not enough, they shamelessly join the Eurovision song contest too.

I got lured into the exotic Yum Yum Thai resturaunt this morning, at the ungodly 9:00 am and was made to sit amidst the lucious, delicious-ness promising surroundings therin, only to be subjected to a diet of fruits, nuts and seeds for the duration of an hour. And I'd skipped breakfast :( At least I got something out of it:

• 3 bars of Divine
• and a sachet of Fair Trade instant hot chocolate, with a happy looking 3rd world man's picture on the back. He wears a hat and glasses, and his name BEs Eusebio Bellen.

Irelevant verdict: With all this hype about FaceBook, no one bothers to read blogs any more.

Meanwhile, in the weird and wonderful world of Elle est Pixi's blog-mind, the most weird and wonderful happenings are amock. (<-- that looks wrong to me but apparently amuck is spealt with an 'o' and not a 'u'. No matter, I shall get something else wrong.)

Surely being bored at work must be one of the worst things in the world, because it entails the brain-cell murderring process of willingly WAITING for the next hour of your life to get wasted away so that you can pack up and go home at last.

And another thing: We don't actually articulate our own names for any purpose other than when introducing ourselves to others, even though it is our own. Throughout our entire lives! As of now, I will address myself in the 3rd person. Get some more wear out of this thing which apparently belongs to me, but is used alot more by everyone else.

Also, as of now I think I will observe more silence. I think I will do this and be more contemplative. I think it may be beneficial to my character.

And now I shall leave you with the thought which follows.
May the Force be with you always.


Literature in general, after all, shows signs of foreign influences and concerns itself with the fundamentals of human life yet fails to exhibit the curiously inbred qualities of fairy-tale plots.
-Maria Tatar

The Nothing-much-to-do Day at work
by: Elle est Sev
This morning I took pictures of Arabella Churchill, her Husband, and the Farmer who owns the Glastonbury Festival field. The farmer also owns cows. They produce lots of milk every day. His wife is a midwife, which doesn't mean that she is in the middle of being his wife and being something else, but that she delivers babies.
They all gave Saif a cheque to build 6 houses in Aceh, for the Tsunami survivors.
Arabella Churchill's husband juggled pens.
I fetched some apples.
He juggled those too.
Then the Farmer who owns the Glastonbury Festival field shook my hand and mistook me for Joniad's sister.
Jonaid calls me sis now and I call him bro.
I had curry for lunch.
The End.

Kimi ni funky monkey vibration

And how are your runner beans this Sunday last month?
Tripping? No, not really. Merely finding ample time to fall in love again.

MIYAVI LOVE ALL ARROUND...AND ARROUND and arround until we're nice and dizzy and the world which is turning too fast for my liking spins faster and faster, and 'Here! You wanna spin!? Spin all you like till I puke! You benign tumor!'
When you stop there is something comforting about having messed up your sense of balance and bearing behind the darkness of eyelids and hands clasped over face.

Ryo is singing waaay too loud for 1:34 in the morning. I'm surprised the neighbours haven't reported us already...but then I guess he couldn't beat the Irish people and their toilet music (the music you hear from below whilst sitting on the toilet) so maybe it's ok.

I'm glad Ryo appreciates Miyavi.
I'm glad he doesn't launch into mad bouts of intense jealousy and male-ravalry-contempt towards him.
I'm glad he doesn't kick arround furniture and grind his teeth over the fact that I adore Miyavi so very much, and think that he totally rocks.
I'm glad he's mature like that, and realises that Miyavi could never be a real threat to our relationship.
Not unless I knew him personally.

I think I will go to bed now and dream about what to do with my hair.

May the force be with you always.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

Alexander Pope

Life is too short to be looking forward to the end of the day, every day.
Ladies, gentleman an hermaphrodites, welcome back to another session of blog-angsting, live from Whitechappel, London. I'm your host, Needy and Depressed. In the multiple personality sense, because We are lonely. This is Needy...say 'hi' to the audience, Needy.
NEEDY: 'Hi!'
DEPRESSED: Not so enthusiastic like, you fool. And you already know me, I'm Depressed. :)

Look ma', I'm writing captions! (shows hands, as though they had something to do with it)

• Two Sudanese children express their joy at the aid provided at Sakali camp Darfour
• Iraqi civilians recieve emergency relief
• A young Sudanese boy gets an emergency food pack
• The Muslim Aid mascot was a benign tumor at the GPU
• Qurbani in Alkay; needy Ruskis receive sacrificial ovine beasts
• 2 African chimpanzees pick each others nits
• An eskimo sneezes in a desolate, dessert of ice; the sneeze echos but no one hears it
• Someone savours a buiscuit; whole moon, half moon and total eclips
• Borris chugs a glass of Vodka
• A Chinese man romances his wife, but the neighbours think he's bullying her again
• A telephone rings in Kofi Annan's house
• Ariel Sharon farts and pretends it was his dog
• A young man falls in love...or thinks he does
• Jermain Jackson wonders if he ate a bad nut
• Leon Trotsky turns in his grave
• and Elest swivels in her swively chair

Life resumes, unperturbed.

I think that Gwidbi could almost be a word, and a funny bald one with thick spectacles and a bit of a vertical challenge. Gwidbi. Now if you'll excuse me, nature calls and Needy must answer.

Time: 15:16
Place: Work
Doing: Some Annual review-angst blog mongrel of a task
Reading: ??
In general: God of Small Things & Akuma no Ororon. Again.
Hearing: Mr. Children, Hana-Memento Mori
Feeling: Like a razor blade
In love with: No one
Hating: Do you want me to start??!!
No. Indifferent to: Ororon and Miyavi

Had the most heinously shiKKKt (with a tripple K) weekend in the history of crap weekends, and I've just noticed that my blog has turned into something really angry and pissed off at the world in general. This is because Ell est. As in am. Pissed off at the world in general.

But the sun is casting smaller, less troubling shadows, and the wind is carrying spring warmth even into the early hours of the evening, oblivious to us in the minutia of our bitter, politically charged, self important lives.

So what on earth am I supposed to do about it? The human condition dictates that man is born and will die alone. The earth's history dictates that our lives don't amount to a mili-second in the life time of the universe. And every satisfaction every achievement in our miniscule little personal-bug-existences, important only to us, is ultimately the death of our desires and ambitions, what the F** is there to do, really? REALLY?

I hate myself.
hate myself.
ate myself.
te myself.
e myself.
myself.
yself.
self.
elf. Lo and behold, 'tis the upsidedown half pyramid of self deprecation.

Because the paths to the Lord are inscrutable
Because the essence of his forgiveness lies in his word and in his mystery
Because although God sends us the message
It is our task to decipher it
Because when we open our arms
The earth takes in only a hollow and senseless shell
Far away now is the soul in its eternal glory
Because it is in pain that we find the meaning of life
And the state of grace that we lose when we are born
Because God, in his infinite wisdom, puts the solution in our hands
And because it is only in his physical absence,
That the place He occupies in our souls is reaffirmed

--Pan's Labyrinth

Yes the West has liberated women, but at what cost? In our society terms like ‘gender equality’ have only served to eradicate every last trace of chivalry without having any affect on the underlying chauvinism of a culture which remains, and always will remain, patriarchal against all our best efforts. Realistically, we’ve simply traded our old female oppression for a newer, more sinister one. So when UK media are up in arms about Iran’s treatment of our women, I find their use of words very interesting.

Reading the paper today is like treading through a battlefield; the language is so loaded with landmines. And as if the petrifying anticipation of being blown up any step now wasn't enough, every so often some idiot sneaks up behind you and goes 'Boom!' to add shock value.

Do you know what I have to say to those living off shock value and fire stoking? This: Firstly--When did the public get so stupid that you think you can pass off a headline like 'A mother on parade in Iran's propaganda war' and assume we'd fail to see that you're playing the same propoganda game? And Secondly-- What gives Britain the right to play the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations card, when Israel and our mightier-than-thou allies, the U.S, are wiping their asses with the Geneva convention daily, while the world sits on its hands? We all know that the Geneva convention doesn't apply to the captives, with no state of war between Iran and Britain. And that even if it did, putting British marines on Iranian TV doesn't come close to breaking the convention in comparrison to the monstrousities committed against the Iraqis in their own lands.

Apparently some defence analyst, Paul Beaver is convinced the Iranians are 'playing to the West' because 'They know our weakness for things like fair trials, democracy, and respect for women.' Let's ignore the respect for women part for a brief moment, but fair trials? With British soldiers being cleared over detainee abuse and murder in Iraq recently? Fair trials?! I laugh in your general direction, you insolent little turd.

Elle est still angry at the world

Today's subject: Human Traffic. Resumes. Following from our last blog,
Cambodia is just one of many countries.
These attrocities just one form of the injustice our world is built on.

And get this, no matter how many laws are signed, Cambodia's corrupt powers-that-be has no intention to interrupt what has turned into a 'tourism' industry worth millions a year. The country is now an attraction for pedophiles keen on exploring new avenues after other South-East Asian nations such as Thailand and Vietnam. And here is a bit of irony to make you weep: the country's sex trade grew in the early 90s to service UN troops overseeing the transition to the current democratic government (shock, horror, an all too familiar feeling of disgust) After they left, brothel owners realized they could make good bucks catering for foreign tourists and local pedophiles, and Cambodia's child-sex trade was born.
How refreshing.

We Teach All Hearts To Break

I cannot reference the above quote to any author or source, because I've nicked it from some 60s graffiti immortalized in photograph by Peter Sanders, who I hope, will not sue me.
I’ve done so because it is relevant to what we are. It is relevant because our kindness, our yearning for innocence, our intrinsic despair necessitates hurting those we wish to protect the most.

For our children, for our younger siblings, for our most loved ones we build the illusion of a world which promises great things in the years to come. In our effort to keep them innocent, we cover their eyes and ears. In our need to keep them dreaming and believing, because we stopped long ago, we deceive them. We prepare the painfully hopeful, unassuming victim. We set in motion the events. We, who have been taught, teach other hearts to break.
And yet disillusionment is just one more harrowing experience that man must rise above. And in the breaking is something great, something which offers all that was innocent, and all that was good, and all that was worth hoping for, without the ignorance or the illusion of childhood. It takes one choice, and I think we owe it to them and to ourselves to give our all to help them make the right one. All it takes is to inspire.

In a world where the mammoth degree of pain and suffering is so overwhelming, inspiration has become a dire need. Inspiration to dispel the helplessness which turns to lethargy; to remind us that with every life lost, with every cry unheard or ignored, we lose that much more of what makes us human.
Snap. Make Poverty History style.

Today 19,250 children under the age of 16 are trapped in Cambodia's thriving sex industry. Yet, 19,250 is just a number, and we've become too desensitized to terms like 'child trafficking', and 'kiddy porn' to be remotely moved.
The lethargy sets in after a brief shudder or frown at the thought, and you swiftly navigate to another page.
…
Are you still here? Do you also feel that the 21st Century's stupendous technological advances are hollow boasts of our humanity, if slavery is still not something of our dark past? Well you're probably right and wrong. Right because they are, and wrong because that's not all they are.
I'll tell you why: the choclate bar you're having today is feeding the People Trafick industry. That's why. Because we've come to depend so much on our little comforts. Thant's why.
Oh we love being spoiled silly by those fashionable brand names. The glamorous faces of multi national corporations, banks, imperialist scum. They tell you they're doing their bit, buying fare trade coffee, funding micro finance projects in Bangladesh. I'll tell you another thing, they're lying to you. The only chocolate made from cocoa beans not grown and harvested by child slaves are the ones that say on their wrappers. They're probably more expensive than your Mars bar because get this, reality check, the only way you enjoy your chocolate without other people sufferring is if you pay up. fare and square. As for coffee shops, don't get me started on murder-funding StarBucks. And Banks with their charitable work? Investing in Micro Finance means Anjola Begum working like a slave at her new handloom or selling one of her kids to pay off the high interrest rate for her loan, so that your bank gets it's money back two-fold...or make that five-fold. And where does that go? God knows, except the 'interrest', yes that miracle money that just miraculously turns up in your account each year doesn't look too innocent, does it? No of course that' not the only way it works, there are all kinds of creative ways in which our comfort has been built on the backs of the poor in a strategic fashion which allows for us to be blind and deaf to it all.

Let's try this for a sexy advertising slogan: 'Do you wish to inspire or be inspired?' (Colgate grin) Then stop drinking Coke. Stop eatig McDonalds. And buy expensive chocolate. Boycot StarBucks, stop recieving interrest, and if it can't be helped make sure you give that money back to charity each year. And don't listen to me! Go out there, find out what you're really eating and buying. No we can't change the world by ourselves, but we can be aware and accountable for our own actions. We can stop supporting this, one person at a time.

Not being able to wake up for Fajr is a horrible grimy feeling you can't wash off. And on the asside from the spawner of all bad-feeling-days are thoughts of what has been rearing it's ugly head throughout my week.
How can something trivial and childish have such a great hold on one's life?
How do those little hurts you thought you burried long ago, come back with the immediacy of a paper cut?
How can you flinch over and over again at a single wound?
Sitting here, thinking about the pros and cons of dying young, has made me realise that the worse off are those that are left behind. They have that tragic injustice about them, young deaths. Like something perverted. And that disturbing power to affect and stay, even with those who are not closely related or associated with them.
Why is this on our agenda today?
Because of the culmination of last week.
Because of that disturbing power.
Because years later, the image of an angry boy with bloody nose and golden tan can raise ghosts from somewhere deep down.

Why on earth would I still remember what you looked like?

...
I have no right to claim a share in what only rightfully belongs to your family alone. After everything that came to pass in our lives between childhood and that summer, you are nothing to me. Nothing.
So how do I explain how it is that even though I couldn't care less or give a thought to you any more, your shadow still lingers over things. Stealthily.
How do I kill the you inside me?
This you insdie which makes no logical sense.

Elle est made funny faces to herself on the crowded train home today. She then beamed with pride and inside giggles, because nobody noticed. Everyone was lost in trying to maintain their personal spaces by gluing their gazes into middle-place, and receding into the back of their minds. But Elle est was in the present, and she found being squashed so funny and enjoyable that she squashed her nose against her arm to inside giggle more.

On the way home I noticed:
a man with very clean ears and another with arm hairs
a woman chewing gum
a long hared, head-phoned man’s hair band on his wrist
a mean looking man who was probably nice
a baby with a teddy bear-eared hat
fat juicy grape fruits at the Turks
the first watermelons of the season and daffodils.

I chased the last rays of the sun, and the sky got lighter near the flat, and there was one shiny star in it. If you stick your face into your arm, the world could look like a Kandinsky or something abstract.

Elle est was having a crisis about marrying the end of innocence, and dreams, and carefreeness. It lasted weeks until today. But she was very wrong, because everything in this world is a state of mind. A self-made reaction bubble to any situation God has laid out for you to live through at any given time. And at the end of the proverbial tunnel, when everything is illuminated, you look back and are full of love and regret. Love for a loved one who is so lost, so helpless, and so precious with her troubles. And regret for not having made a different reacting bubble. For not being as strong as her.

Allah, forgive me and make me full of wonder, like a child. So that even this state of weakness appears as the actual good thing that it is. The no-mans land. The beginning of the Elle est who will find. Who will experience. And who will hold onto with all her might, her faith for herself. And through her own eyes and not anyone elses.

Neo: You already know if I'm going to take it.
Oracle: Wouldn't be much of an oracle if I didn't.
Neo: But if you already know, how can I make a choice?
Oracle: Because you didn't come here to make a choice. You already made it. You're here to try to understand why you made it.

-Matrix Reloaded

...Sky's clouded over now. Pish :(

El est still really kicking herself for missing the eclipse on Saturday, is reading: The God of Small Things --Arundhati Roy. Again.

There is something hopeful and Arthurian in a Golden Age sense about everything today. It's in the slow, noble, Gladiator soundtrack carried-away movement of the clouds across the sky. It made the dirty puddles near my flat look pretty as I left the house, and it was ringing in the London Travel anouncement man's voice at Kings cross: 'Ladies and Gentleman, there was once good service on all underground lines. One glorious, fleeting day, in the times of yore, when line ran by line in blissful harmony, and among passengers there was much rejoicing...but this morning we have some minor delays on the district and circle lines, with planned enginereing work continuing on the northern line between Camden Town and Charing Cross...'
He didn't actually say that.

But the sky is almost-childhood blue, the grey is just as illuminated as the grass, and on the glowing green or dusty, heat-waves-bouncing-off smelling illusion of tarmac and concrete, puffed up, male, fop pigeons dance round and round and round in blissful foppery, as if they didn't look ridiculous and the females weren't ignoring them.

In any case, I've decided that I'm too young to complain about housework.

Michael's Carribean accent seems to be getting more prominant, and I badly miss manga. Otherwise I am so happy, because today was sunny and now it's 05:56 pm yet the sky is lighter-flame blue! This means more day-light and spring! And this means Summer which means an even more happy Elest bunny, dragging the carpet and cushions and lantern into the back balcony! Badu style! It's like camping, but better!

With that said, Elest is having a quarter-life-crisis over the duality that is Peter Pan syndrome, driving home with a vengence, and the term 'Married Woman' aimed within immediate proximity of where ever she may be. I ask you, how can one be a 'married woman' without being a woman? Surely one would have to stop being a girl first. Pish.

This is why I been nagging at Ryo about playing a game all the time. If he doesn't want to, I'll entertain myself some other immature way. Hence I'm badly missing manga, pregnant-woman-craving style. Just need to get paid first (A pox'o the accounts people in this company.)

I'm off home now. Off I say.

Near the end of his life Aquinus experienced Infused Contemplaion. Thereafter he refused to go back to work on his unfinished book. Compared with this everything he had read and argued about and written - Aristotle and the Sentences, the Questions, the Propositions and the majestic Summas - was no better than chaff or straw. For most intellectuals, such a sit-down strike would be inadvisable even morally wrong. But the Angelic Doctor had done more systematic reasoning than any 12 ordinary angels, and was ripe for death. He had earned the right, in those last months of his mortality, to turn from merely symbolic straw and chaff to the bread of actual and substantial Fact. For Angels of a lower order and with better prospects of longevity, there must be a return to the straw. But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser, but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

Countdown to 'married bliss' (note the tone of sarcasm)
Day 4

My red nose stares at me from its box. I will care for it till the 16th of March, and if we grow attached to one another, I may adopt it.
Post watching Blood Diamond that diamond ring is weighing down my conscience. Another one of those sneaky, sometimes bad, often just funny feelings regarding becoming someone's wife. The best thing to do in such a state of mind is this:

Close your eyes and imagine the perfect world.
And no matter who you are I can wager that what you feel is beyond the sun on the inside of your eyelids is nothing that belongs here. And that's why everything is alright, really.

Believing in summer

Humans are fortunate in that we are among those species whose life-spans allow for them to witness the death and rebirth of the world around us over the passage of seasons, throughout our life times. Unfortunately for our lifetimes, however, it, unlike us, does not have a life-span to accommodate our spiritual and ethereal existences which stretch back before our births and far after our deaths.

Maybe belief is intrinsic rememberrance.

'How about summer? You like summer, right...?'
'I don’t know. I don't even know if it exists anymore.'

Waheeyyyy! It snows!!

When Tarak wraps up in his coat and scarf and little hat, he looks adorable.
Kamran: 'Tarak man, don't dress like that, you look cute.' (like it was a bad thing)

Upon that note, I got snowballed on the roof this morning.

Spent the journey into work this morning trying to bluetooth the Miyavi-SPAZ gif to random people in the tube. This is because mornings do not agree with me, and they make me do very strange things. This is because I am a goth, and everyone knows that mornings do not agree with goths and alternative types. Ask Sarah and Zephan.

And as if the early morning, and having my blue tooth invitations being rejected by random strangers was not enough, the first thing Saif saw when Elest walked into the office at a reasonable time to show up, were her NewRocks. I'm worried I'm gonna get called into his office at some point or worse, answer to Faaria later on this week :( That little Chink is scary!

Spent Sunday wanderring arround central by myself, trying to go to places and do things I used to enjoy or feel most comfortable doing, to make myself feel better.
Wasted a good hour in Forbidden planet and the anime DVD section in HMV, then went to numerous lingerie shops before returning home with no anime, or manga and with a mamoth loneliness in the pit which is between my stomach and my heart.

I miss my family. I miss all the things which used to inspire me. I miss all the things I used to enjoy. I miss you. And I can't write any more.

She wished there were another commandment, an eleventh etched into the tablets: Do not change.
(J. S. Foer)

Not being able to start writing tonight has taken us down the path of blog history, waaay back until the last two digits on the post dates began to read 05 to the sound of songs from the last summer of uni. There is no such thing as coincidence. Every occurance is a scene tailored to perfection, a result of the events set in motion, by the hand of the divine artist. If I can suck meaning out of the absurd, so can I from the signs which stare me in the face every moment of my life.

Dominos. They follow suit...one by one...until everything I seem to have built, piecing together scraps subconciously or out of delibarte desperation to survive, till now has collapsed. The dust rises, obscures the view for a moment in mid-air above the rubble, then settles...and you come face to face with how it all started...and even before, with those days

When the object of Ell Est Still an Undergrad's effections was Edward Ellric and Ororon;
When an encounter with Joshua Bradley was the most exciting thing of any day at uni;
When we used to sit outside Gordon's office coz he was great and we were just bored;
When we spoke in Shakespearian, and Beckettian and were always inspired;
When I submitted to the manic and the depression that came and went like the tides which rise and ebb for reasons I could never understand, and made something beautiful out of it;
When the world, reading back now, must have been so much more poetic, and innocent, and full of expectations and dreams and curiosities of so much still to learn, to feel to experience, to lose..
...And I wish that then, while there was still time, someone had laid a hand on my shoulder that last summer, made me stop a minute in my frenzy to dash off, to get carried away with excitment, and said: 'Go back to bouncing to anime theme songs with your little sis, and mulling over your Joshua Bradley crush, Elest. Keep chasing dreams that are always a thrilling one step ahead...keep your innocent head in its clouds.

'Because though you cannot even imagine now, the boy who sat next to you in Japanese class today will change your life. He will touch the bonds that you share with your friends, with your family, with God. He will test your faith...he will shake the foundations...he will change you. And you will never be the same again.'

Say what sense? What sense can you make of your sacrifices now?
With this maddenening despair I've learnt how to survive...and I hate it.

I am so sorry.

'When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.'

Jaques-Yves Cousteau

'We talk' he (Goethe) wrote in middle life, 'far too much. We should talk less and draw more. I personally should like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic Nature, communicate everything I'd like to say in sketches. This fig tree, that little snake, the cocoon on my window sill quietly awaiting its future - all these are momentous signitures. A person able to decipher their meaning properly would soon be able to dispense with the written or spoken word altogether. The more I think of it, there id domething futile, mediocre, even (I am tempted to say) foppish about speech. By contrast, how the gravity of Nature an her silence startle you, when you stand face to face with her, undistracted , before a barren ridge or in the desolation of the ancient hills.' We can never dispense with language and the other symbol systems; for it is by means of them that we have raised ourselves above the brutes, to the level of human beings. But we can easily become the victims as well as the beneficieries of these systems. We must learn how to handle words effectively; but at the same time we must preserve and if necessary, intensify our ability to look at the world directly and not through that half-opaque medium of concepts, which distorts every given fact into the all too familiar likeness of some generic lable or explanatory abstraction.

The Door s of Perception - Aldous Huxley

'Islamist'
No doubt you have heard the word far too many times. No doubt you've felt like hurling your house slipper at the television set everytime it's been used in the news. No doubt you've engaged in fleeting but violent thoughts about every news reporter who used it so off-hand as if he or she knew a rat's ass about Islam. No doubt you've cursed the Western media and scoffed at their hair brained, ignorance which capacitates the grossly ironic notion of inventing a term that negates terorism yet is derived from the root word Salam- meaning peace.

I too have felt the same way, my friend.

'Neither agreeable nor disagreeable,' I answered. 'It just is.'
Istigkeit - Wasnt that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? 'Is-ness.' The Being of Platonic philosophy - except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of seperating Being from becoming, and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the idea. he could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quiverring under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have percieved that what rose, and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less than what they were - a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in wich by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.
I continued to look at the flowers and in their living light I seemed to detect the qualitative equivalent of breathing - but of a breathing without returns to a starting-point, with no recurrent ebbs but only a repeated flow from beauty to heightened beauty, from deeper to ever deeper meaning.

The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley

'One who goes to bed with a blind person will wake up cross-eyed.'

--Turkish proverb of the day.
This is not politically incorrect, it's supposed to be about the friends/company you keep. ...Ok, it is a bit politically incorrect, but only in a harmless Turkish way.

I am safely in the office...After a close call to bash out my own brains, induced by an increadibly lethargic Sunday, the highlight of which was trying to take a sneaky picture in the underground, of a little Chinese woman donning the most amount of Burberry I have ever seen on the person of a single person. I do declare, she must be the spearhead of a new breed of East-Asian Chavs. Did I succeed? Alas, no. Her little husband was in the way, and they got paranoid when I suddenly whipped out my phone. Who in so much Burberry wouldn't be?
Why was said Sunday lethargic?
Caught daily in the eye of the most heinous draft in the office (between doors is our station) + not wearing enough to bed + no coat or warm clothes = Something coming on + Night nurse and Grandma's paracetemol = drowsy, drugged out Elest.
Ryo, however, would simply call it the following: The insensibility of the Elest "Eleeeest! You need to take care of yourself!" ...Because he's such a dad.
Unfortunately, Elest is the type who learns the hard way, or otherwise never...as with everything in her life. Who needs advice when pain can drive it home to you. And if the pain hurts good, then you're just hopeless. Hopeless, mind you, doesn't necessarily make u an artist though if gross generalisations can be taken as truth, it comes pretty damn close.

17:20
Damn Japanese IQ test, been sitting here for a quarter of my luch break and still I got the fed, the theif and the little boy on the wrong side of the river! How on earth did Huden abla do this?

Highlight of my work day: Saif taking off Michael's tie, while Michael is in the middle of a serious report to the CEO, re-knotting it, making michael take off his jacket, putting it on him and then telling him to make sure he hangs it when he gets home.
Ha ha ha!...ahem.

Nah the real highlight was Saif's speach at the end of the Tsunami Two Years conferance.

I'm off. Off I saaay!

You don't wanna go there,
Let me lead you by the hand.
You don't wanna be there,
Over sea and onto land .

As I look into your eyes,
I pay no mind,
I've found a way to get inside you;
I'll give you peace of mind.

I don't see you falling
I don't see you falling
I don't see you falling beautiful
Sometimes.

Be There : UNKLE ft Ian Brown

'One who tells the truth will get driven out of nine villages.'

--Turkish proverb of the day.
This has no relevance what so ever to the following blog, it simply is, as are many things, and it sounds funny in English.
This notion of 'is' suddenly, and without warning, discovers to mine innner eye, someting to mull over, because I write deeply meaningful verse or prose about my as yet deeply meaningless existence.
Are. That seems to be much of my predicament. To be. Period. Like this --> . The human condition is that man is never pleased with his state in life. The truth is that each and every one of us has a little bit of King Haggard in us. And every so often this realisation of not being in the right place, surfaces in my murky, black pool of the concious and subconcious. Basically, in lay-man's terms, I'm finding my life to be increasingly inadequate. I'm not actively living it, I'm passively living it. I'm a passive liver who has let the chords of priority slip, and that wild beast has gone a rampaging every which way. I've also got a pink rubber band wound arround my thumb.

Conclusion: It is absolutely vital that I start writing again. And when my debts are cleared and I'm somewhat more stable, financially, I must only work part time, so that by the end of this year we will at least have an agent.

Tripped into the office at 11:45 today, snuggly-bugging nose into the-opposite-of-goth scarf my mommy bought me. Now, I Sit at my desk, pissed off at a certain individual sitting across me, and I'm still wearing it- security blanket like. Which is funny because until now, I thought Nyamy was my security blanket but turns out he's not. Turns out he's my little-thing, who I can't mother right now because i'm in pieces.

And from the dark depths of goth-despairing, I wonder if this is a good thing. I wonder if everyone of us needs to be pieced apart every so often, throughout our lives, so that some greater wisdom and realisation which only comes with pain, can penetrate between the gaps while they are still raw, and when the pieces weld together again, we may mend into something better, stronger...and though perhaps less pure, more in search of the purity and truth we have lost through realisation. And in finding it one day, we may become something heartbreakingly akin the once perfect, innocent beings that were complete and did not know it.

I know now what this means: 'When I was a child I used to cry when night fell, I have travelled far since, only to reach the same point.'

--a badly reconstructed rendition of something : by some Sufi sage whose name I can't remember.

And because it is relevant,
Here is the story of my first realisation of tawheed...
or for those of you who are not muslim:
Here is the story of my first realisation of the oneness of a single divine entity, which has to be within yet beyond everything of our world...

When Elest was very little and she was Sevim Ceren in blue fluffy nightgown, pink, bare feet and milk bottle dangling from between her teeth, she didn't speak much. She would silently go about her buisness of being little between the things which happened in the world which still belonged mostly to grown ups. In her solitary little-ness, and bare-footed-ness and silent, wide eyed observation over the pacifier, eventually she began to grow very attached to her milk bottle, from which she was never without. So that, upon the note of security blankets, Sevim Ceren's bottle was that and a thing she had come to depend on for comfort without conciousness, because when you are little very few things are concious.
Until one evening...
Sevim Ceren's mommy was emptying out the dishwasher after dinner, in the kitchen of their home in South Carolina. Sevim Ceren, bare foot and in blue robe as usual, was silently following her arround the kitchen, waiting for her milk bottle which her mommy had taken away to wash and re-fill. This time however, mommy had put the (little did she know, but was about to find out) dish washer un-friendly milk bottle in the dishwasher. When the matter of the bottle's dish washer un-friendliness was revealed to them both in a shapeless, lava-lamp-wax form of melted, milky plastic, mommy was surprised, but little Sevim Ceren was devastated. And the wide dark eyes which oridnarily observed above her pacifier were stricken with something between grief, betrayl, and absolute, frightening loneliness.

...

Yesterday for the first time I did something I could never have imagined doing. I regretted this, and for a split second I wished I'd settled for something else some time and place before. And now, I still regret but not everything. And I do not wish, because of the pieces I am in. Because if I had settled then, i would be living in comfortable ignorance, while now i am hurting, but the pain is the same as being awake...like washing with water so cold it hurts, and it's good.
And if I had settled then, I would not know now that the only consolation is in non, the only comfort and company is in solitude, and the One is between the lines of the clear cut, the shadows of what is blaringly obvious, and the gaps which are still raw and which will weld together and mend soon, so that I will forget this realisation i saw through the shatterred window of my inner mirror which distorted the world before everything else could make sense.

'look ma! No strings!!'

Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you
It's the wrong time
For somebody new
It's a small crime
And I've got no excuse
Is that alright? Yeah...

Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be cheating on you
It's the wrong time
She's pulling me through
It's a small crime
And I've got no excuse
Is that alright? Yeah...

Give my gun away when it's loaded
Is that alright? Yeah...
If you don't shoot it how am I supposed to hold it
Is that alright? Yeah...
Give my gun away when it's loaded
Is that alright
Is that alright with you?

-9 Crimes : Damien Rice

...And it is followed by a great deal of pain!

Hello. Today i am OWCH!-ing. However this OWCH!-es less than the OWCH of missing my family.
Speaking of losing innocence last night with Sarah got me wonderring whether I am capable of losing any more. And I know that finding out will either result in losing more innocence I did not know I had left, or just simply be too sad to avoid going into mourning.
I haven't done this in a while. Instead I've bottled them up and turned stone cold.
And that is why, now that Aslan has breathed on the witch's grotesque statues, I wake and find I miss my last and only conncetion to innocence and immaturity. The little one who is not little. The mature one, who brings out the Peter Pan Syndrome from the depths of Elest with pangs of torrential weeping for sorrow and for joy.

Saimecanii.
...

Never should we allow our youngest siblings to grow. We should do all in our power to protect them from what corrupted us and turned us adult.

'The fact is that I find in the day's light, in this diffused, pale almost shadowless luminosity, a darkness deeper than the night's.'

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller: Italo Calvino

...

Elle est Still sober, may God be praised, is not a pessimist. She feels sad about many things, because sadness is a beautiful, comforting place, and she has rather dark inclinations, which is why we (in the multiple personality sense) are goth, but she is not a pessimist. Thank you.
Having said that PMT and the odd depression doesn't count towards pessimism either. They just mean that we are female and we are an artist. Thank you.
Speaking of which: to add to the list of things which should never be under-estimated, such as feline affection and onigiri, there is PMT...

...Because it is a great sorrow that emanates from the merciful hidden soul of that place and that source of life and of love in the world, that God has retained in the fragile, female frame. And though we may never know why, what for and what it is saying to us, it is a sacred cry from the core of our human essence, and it is a reminder in the darkness of monotonous dawns and when stone hearts turn brittle in the banal sound and motion of tube trains, when nothing else could wake you.

I'm going to keep a tally of the amount of times I need to get up to shut the door after people who come in and out of this office fail to do so.
I've spent most of today in the eye of the most vicious draft, very productively producing report after report for the staff news letter, most of them concerning Somalia...CURSE, THEY DID IT AGAIN!

UB40 had this song, where the lyrics went something like, '...there's brother killing brother, people living on their knees, biting sugar coated bullets for the pain of this disease.' I don't know why I rememberred that today...but it got me thinking that one step after another, and eventually the turns you took disconncet you so severly from who you were. Standing here now, I wonder if the person I was, saw that eventually some good would come of this. And I wonder if that person was here now, would she still see some hope, or would she think it more wise to step away now, before I'm lost for good.

It's not the people I love that I'm trying to avoid and sugar coat the truth for, it's myself. And everyday I'm forgetting more and more, why.

Welcome back holy dark.

The woman who says 'mind the gap' at Mansion House station, sounds like she's saying 'mind the duck'.

I haven't gone out with the girls since last Sunday, and am feeling very...errr...cut off? In any case:

• Moved into new place at Earls Court, alhamdullah... Woohoo!

-this means we've moved up the property ladder, so to speak, and are residing amidst the cream of society, and this is good, because my poor, beggarly, self-destructive artist-ness is a romantic novelty in such an area.

• Got a job and working with Muslim Aid, alhamdullah... Woohoo!

-And this means we are using our creativity for the greater good of man and against universal sufferring, which makes us socially aware and as compassionate as an existential mindset would allow.

Why? Alber Camus, The Outsider, that's why. And that's probably the worst thing about existentialism...the fact that in a selfish world of utter human isolation, there really is no room for compassion.

Hello, I haven't blogged in over a month.
Why?
Life.
'Twil throw at you many a thing, like things, like pancakes which fly, and you will be overwhelmed by all these flying pancakes, all flying at you like a school of fishes (but not with wings), and you will not know what to do with them, and in your panic and confusion and struggle to catch as many pancakes as you can, you will spill the maple syrup all over the place, and everything will be sticky and mushy and damnit, who gonna clean this mess now, huh?
...
I've been back in London for over a month, and as of Monday I'm finally going to have a propper place to stay, where I can stop living out of a suitcase. Where I can put my clothes in a cupboard, have my own bed, and prance about the flat in my underware to my hearts desire. Where I won't have to worry about my presence being intollerable or tiring for others and where I will also have my own time, and space and strangeness in which to think and collect my pieces if they are collectable still.
What sucks most is that a week ago, in spite of the uncertainty and nervousness, I thought I knew what kind of a turn my life would be taking from now on. Lo and behold, I was wrong.
Now, return ticket gone, penniless, homeless and with my parents pissed off at me, I'm in London, and I don't know. I just don't know.
However, instead of looking at it like its some huge drama, which it is, I can just concentrait on getting a job as soon as possible, and hopefully figure things out from there.
As Asma said: a year from now, there is no way you will still be in this situation. Things will change. So don't worry.
The scary thing is, a year ago I couldn't have imagined all of this would happen. And I'm dreading what else is possible in the space of a single year.
2007, I aint particularly looking forward to you, but you know what, give it all you've got, coz I'm so down it's starting to feel like up now.

On a lighter note; to Shakila's amusement, Elest got chatted up by the waiter at Taro today.
Once upon a time that would have made me feel good. Those blasted pancakes, how they change you.

You left it, I sent it
I want it back
You left it, I sent it
I want it back

If I had you here, I'd clip your wings
Snap you up and leave you sprawling on my pin
This plan of mine is oh so very lame
Can't you see the grass is greener where it rains

You left, I died,
I went and you cried
You came, I think
But I never really know
I've served my time
I've watched you climb
The wrong incline
But what do I know

Accept it, Don't let it
Turn the screw
Accept it, And let it
Scream back at you

Now this applies both equally to you and I
The only thing we share
Is the same sky
These empty metaphors
They're all in vain
Like can't you see the grass is greener where it rains

And I lie behind you
And a cradle you in the palm of me
And I pat your hair down
I think will we sink or swim?
'Cause we could do either on a whim

In the garden Snake was a charmin'
And Eve said let's give it a try
Now lead us not into temptation
But Eve is the apple of my eye

-Eve, The Apple of my Eye : Bell X1

'But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Elliot calls 'hollow men'(...) there's one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are precisely the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki's childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intollerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course, it's important to know what's right and what's wrong. Individual errors in judgement can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned arround. But intollerant, narow minds with no imagination, are like parasites that transform the host, change form and continue to thrive.'

-Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

As dificult as it would have been to deal with narrow minds on a single front, said parasites have unfortunately penetrated too close to home. As Hamza Yusuf said, when asked by a suspicious non-Muslim colleague if he was trying to convert him: I'm still trying to convert Muslims first. My appologies to anyone whose feathers are being ruffled as I type away, our reality is a Muslim world where 'Muslims' brandishing usurped ideals and theories cut from reality, are murdering innocents, because some ugly, robed ponce, called the Pope, has no sense of history, nor diplomacy. Another narrow mind. And thus evil begets evil. And we're fighting a war against ignorance with Islamaphobes and stupid people who shame a handfull of enduring sanity by calling themselves Muslims. (I'm sorry, call yourself a Muslim by all means, but do it in the privacy of your own home if that is the only way you know how.)

I don't know about the experiences of others in regards to discrimination, but for Elestkimo, discrimination was the Turkish Government, and the random 'Oi Osama!' remark she could laugh off. Nothing that could touch her...this was until recently. I allude to the Tragic Hero metaphor again, because they really do stab you when the armour comes off, where it's most sensitive (think scar tissue sensitive), and it hurts. I swear it hurts. And you feel helpless, and betrayed and misunderstood. And when you finally stop pitying yourself because what you've lost is lost and you have to move on; you know that you can't stand about and not do anything. But biggots don't get converted and stomping them out would require brute force which will achive nothing as they themselves have demonstrated already...
... perhaps we just have to try yelling louder than them.

Yay! The Rant Board is back! Now y'all can shower me with praise or hurl insults and vegetables at me once again, just like in the good ol days :) And then there was much rejoicing, Bible style... as always, because Bible style never goes out of fashion.

'Molly, who am I? Whay am I here? What is it that I am seeking in this strange place, day after day? I knew a moment ago...but I've forgotten.'

-The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

Words which are very familiar for some of us, less so for others, but non the less speaking to the essence of our human predicament. It's moments like these that the Goth lives for. This and lots of pain, darkness and chaos. If the Goth can find non of this to angst over, the Goth will angst over not having anything to angst over. So when a Goth is angsting, it's probably best to not worry so much, and just simply partake in the dark and deep thoughts they choose to express if they are of the expressive kind. If they are not of the expressive kind, they will probably go sit on a roof for hours on end or under the bed where it's dark. When this happens you should let them be for a few hours and then climb the roof/ squeeze under the bed with them and just share the silence and darkness.
Be absolutely certain of your feelings for a Goth though, because if you do this, there is a great danger of the Goth loving you, and when a Goth loves you it is perhaps the best and worst thing in the world.
The worst: because the Goth will discover the deep tragedy in loving others, and will mope about that too.
The best: because a Goth's love is one of the most genuine and selfless specimines of that human emotion that is talked/sung/written about too often yet rarely really lived.

This is because Goths are Goths. and Goths are Goths because they were either unloved growing up, or they unloved themselves growing up, shutting out all human affection, because they are convinced they don't deserve it or that it's not real.
In retorspect then, at the heart of the Goth is a lack or loss of love. And if somewhere along the course of their grey, moping lives, they encounter it and it penetrates their thick walls, they will cherish it like King Haggard when he saw the unicorns, and thought he was going to die because it made him happy for the first time in all his life of unhappiness.
In truth, we are all looking for unicorns, Goths do so more actively and angst over the lack of them more openly. But I can promise you, when every one of us tastes the hidden disillusionment in the reality of their extinction, we each die a great yet silent death. The ordinary human being will only notice a slight sadness, a discontent from time to time. But us Goths spend the rest our lives mourning that death.

What's worse?
Being naieve,
or realising your naivety and being someting bitter...with a heart that's stronger, yet that much more harder?

I almost believed the latter, but thought's of Shakila's mysterious Baxter, and what he represents of all that is tragic but beautiful in the eyes of the divine perceiver, have made me realise otherwise, because that's how the Universe speaks to you;
through the poignant things people say for themselves without knowing that you, in your own world with your own ghosts, will find a consolation, as though it were tailormade for your hurting. Because the world, though ugly is beautiful like that, because it was fashioned by a beautiful hand.

Now, if I give in completely to your gift of disilusinoment, I will kill the voice which has spoken thus far, heedless of all that threatened it and submit to your selfishness. And though there is no love in the world as you've left it to me after all was said and done, I'd rather hurt to believe in something better.

To Write a Synopsis

It's as hard as you think squared. Basically think of a 100-odd page novel which consists of two storries with very vague connections and nothing really being fully revealed but implied. And then try to turn that into a 2 page and-then-this-happened-and-then-this-happened for some bald, bored literrary agent who'd rather have a story ruined for himself instead of reading the book. A pox'o how things are done, it's a travesty!

Pish! 'Zounds! and and what ever else Jacobean curses you can think of.

Naturally this one keeps having the urge to hide back between the pages of a Murakami, or subject herself to some Miyavi on the iPod...because the best way not to think is by always having something on loud in your ears. Alternatively there is standing under the shower in meditative blank mind mode. I think I fancy that right now.

I had a thought today. I'm gonna be banned in Saudi if I ever get published (inshallah). Perhaps I should go to Dubai while I still can.

Shower here I come.

Miyavi insanity all arround.

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music
And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart

And it breaks my hea-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aart
And it breaks my hea-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aart

-Fidelity

Regina Spektor has a weird video clip.
She also has a huge clevage.
I draw attention to this simply because it really is huge and not because I suffer from cleavage envy or anything. After all, being flat rocks. And it rocks because you can run (or stomp like an Elest even) without feeling self concious, and do all sorts of fun boy things.

I rememberred a few days ago that at some point in my life my friends called me 'Sevski'...when I asked Tas if she remembers why, and who'd started it off; She said it must have happened during the time we were studying Stalin and Trotsky in Russian history during year 11, and Ruqeya a.k.a Jade, was the culprit.

Meanwhile, I had lots of time to think today -during the long trek from the neighbourhood beyond the hills, over the hills in the dark, and finally home- and I've concluded that life is very weird.
Now, take a moment to look back on the what you've lived thus far. Go on, humour me. And bear in mind absolutely everythig...where you started off, how you grew up, all the changes, all the people, all the crap, and getting through it...till now, and then size it up one more time in retrospect to you at this moment...you think: Damn! I never saw any of that coming at any one point, and who would have imagined.

Now to get out of this mess.

Dear God, thankyou! Hyde's lost weigth, and looks good again.
And Tetsu has a bulldog which doesn't suit his pansy grin.
And you just know I have too much time on my hands. ...either that or I wish I had a car coz feeling this exhausted after going out and about in this damn city leaves me incapable of doing anything vaguely productive afterwards.

The adventures of Boris resume..
Late one evening Boris sits at his favourate corner in the pub gazing very intensely at the empty rum bottle on the table in front of him. The rum bottle sits there. Boris stares. The rum bottle sits...ordinary like...nothing special. Boris stares, all beedy, evil eye-balls. The rum bottle sits. Boris stares. 2 hours later the bottle is feeling very intimidated...but still Boris stares.
8 more hours later, when the pub is shutting up for the day, and the bar tender comes to shake Boris awake, we find out Boris had actually been sleeping with his eyes open.

Mizika caliyor, duyunmu sandin?
Al yesil bayragi gelinmi sandin?
Yemene gideni gelirmi sandin?
Don gel agam, don gel, dayanamiyram.
Uyku gaflet coktu, uyanamiyram.
Agamin oldugune inanamiyram.

-A Turku (folk song (and one of many)) about the historical Yemen war from which too many Turkish soldiers didn't return. No I shant translate it because it'll sound rubbish instead of tragic. But it's relevance is not merely the poetic appreciation kind...
Apparently my great-grandfather went to war in Yemen straight after he got married, and his wife waited for him for 7 years. After which he finally returned.
I find that amazing.

AAAAND, aparently my great-great-grandfather was sent to some Arab country during his army service, when the empire still had it all (though barely clinging) and he married an Arab girl...hence why they called our family 'Arab-ogulari' meaning Arab-sons...hence why our generation is showing vague signs of not looking Turkish.

Hearing: Perfect Moment, Hyde
Doing: The Violinist and Alexis Jezeabel, Elest Bint-Mustafa
Sitting: On Bed
Feeling: ...WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU...I SAID, I CAN'T HEAR YOU, THE MUSIC'S TOO LOUD...

Just remembered something I thought of, walking down Soho with Shakila that day we all had Haagndazs for the last time (and you remember what happens next, right Sha?) and I told her it, because it's a great and indisputable truth of truths. I think it was after she said something about being a disgrace to the neighbourhood.

Elest: That's nothing to be ashamed of babe, you should be proud.
Shakila: Well I aint alone, so should u.
Elest: Oh yeah.

any way, it was thus:
Every White clique should be penetrated by a loud and rude ethnic minority!
Somebody's gotta teach these people how to really laugh.

'nuf said bruv!

Today was Zafer bayrami, in Turkey. This meaning it was the day they celebrate the Canakkale Victory. This meaning, in 1914 with a broken army and very limmited arms, we kicked English, French and Greek hineys to kingdom come, and saved Istanbul.
So how do Turks celebrate? They drape tall buildings with massive Turkish flags and building-sized pictures of Ataturk, the dog of dogs. 'Why?' -you ask, since Ataturk had jack to do with it.
Because every good Turk believes that God's gift of a victory to the Turkish people in WWI was all thanks to Ataturk's great ass, on which he was reclining at the time, while others were giving their lives for it. So lets all praise him.

In any case though, below is a pic of Elest celebrating Turkish facism.



Yes that's a Hitler tash, coz I'm so funny.

...and Elest behaving more naturaly in her natural habitat, when caught unawares.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDvAZgIGoVY

A lecturer once said that the most tragic moment in an epic is the arming of the epic hero part.
Now, I'll tell you why it's tragic.
It's the Samson story.
Perhaps Achilles.
A life time of thickening skin against ignorant prejudices,
growing so strong, their cruelty only curls a smile in the corner of your lips,
and then someone stabs you when the armour comes off.

Hello. This is Miyavi.



As you can see, the resemblance is phenomenal.

(No, he's not an adopted friend for Sushi, he's just a stray kitten with a mohawk who turned up in the living room like he owned the place. Hence meriting a name)

Regret is very bitter, and the bottom-far-bellow of very high places, inviting.
The ability to regret dawns...slowly, slowly, upon the world.
And one can find ones-self lying on ones roof at night, watching the stars (I swear there were a lot more when I was younger and wore funny glasses) and thinking: 'Why is Mars not visible yet? Is this secretly not August or have the astronomers lied?'
One can find ones-self in many many deep and dark silences, and under the influence of bad influence mullings.
Funny that cows are such happy seeming beasts when all they ever seem to do is chew and mull, chew and mull, chew and mull...and swat the random fly.
Which says what?
It says, if I'm resigned to all these mosquito bites I must be more aloof than a cow.


A classic Arabic/Persian (everyone including the Turks seem to be wanting to lay claim to this) story follows:

There was once a young man named Kais who fell in love with a girl named Laila, who wasn't particulalry beautiful or amazing, but this is irrelevant...or perhaps it's relevant because it says alot more about love than it would if she was beautiful. Because you see, thanks to the immortalisation of Laila & Majnun (which existed way before Romeo & Juliet, and is at a higher calibre of tale entirely) Laila has been transformed in the minds and stories of men into the embodiment of unmatched feminine beauty (so much so that according to another story a particular sultan who wished to see the legendary Laila, asks for her to be brought to him and upon laying eyes on her is shocked.
Sultan: Majnun loved you? you're not beautiful?
Laila: You are not Majnun.)

...So, Kais loved Laila, but Lail's family married their daughter off to an older, and very wealthy man. Kais, in his devastation and despair fled to the desert and went mad, hence why he was then called Majnun. Many years passed, word of the love-sick Majnun who roamed the deserts still spread far and wide, until one day, Laila's old husband died. Having been set free at last, Laila who'd heard what became of Kais, set out into the desert in search of him. When she finally found him, Majnun did not recognise her.
Majnun: Who are you?
Laila: I'm Laila.
Majnun: ...then what have I loved all of this time?

The Importance of Being like a child: or Cows and Why Not to Underestimate Any Sign. Ever.

-a rant-

There are symbolic dreams -dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities -realities that symbolize a dream.
Symbols are what you might call the honorary town councillors of the worm universe. In the worm universe there is nothing unusual about a dairy cow seeking a pair of pliers. A cow is bound to get her pliers sometime. It has nothing to do with me.

Yet the fact that the cow chose me to obtain her pliers changes everything. This plunges me into a whole universe of alternative considerations. And in this universe of alternative considerations, the major problem is that everything becomes protracted and complex. I asked the cow, "Why do you want pliers?" and the cow answers, "I'm really hungry." So I ask, "Why do you need pliers if you're hungry?" The cow answers, "To attach them to branches of the peach tree." I ask, "Why a peach tree?" to which the cow replies, "Well, that's why I traded away my fan, isn't it?" and so on and so forth. The thing is never resolved, I begin to resent the cow, and the cow begins to resent me. That's a worms eye view its universe. The only way the get out of that worm universe is to dream another symbolic dream.

(Haruki Murakami- A Wild Sheep Chase)

The 'cow' and 'me' here, might as well be Khidr and Moses, the time-traveller and the prophet, me (personally) and the snail in my planter...any two individuals/entities existing in separate plains of possibility or dimensions of thought and experience, but encountering one another, for a brief moment in the same now. I feel sorry for the snail in its pitifully slimy and slow excuse of an existance, and the snail, feels sorry for me; a loud and threatening giant, apparently so busy wasting energy with sensless comings and goings, to know the colours of the different levels of silence, and the shades of every depth of peace.

Likewise, keepers of different wisdoms, the cow's motives will never make sense to me, and my motives will never make sense to the cow, because we both see and experience the universe through our own very separate yet limited vision. Hence the worms eye view.

If our human senses are only capable of experiencing less than a billionth of the material stimuli in the immediate space which surrounds us at any given moment, then in retrospect to a universe with boundless possibilities incomprehensible to any one being alone, cynisims is one of the greatest sins we commit against ourselves. As the Turkish idiom goes, What fault is it of the sun, if you're blind?

One of the Prophet's (sas) prayers went something like this: 'Allah, make me full of wonder'. And that is why Lewis Carol put Alice in Wonderland, because she was a child. So, if you find a caterpillar chasing dragons on a giant mushroom, for Gods sake, don't tell him he's not supposed to exist, that's just rude. Instead you should ask permission to partake, and who knows what many other cows with pliers you may encounter on what wondrous trips, which await to broaden our worm universes.

I wish I could surrender my soul.

Shed the clothes that become my skin,

See the liar that burns within my needing.

I wish I'd chosen darkness from cold

I wish I'd screamed out loud...

Instead I've found no meaning.

I guess it's time I run...

Far far away,

Find comfort in pain.

All pleasure's the same,

It just keeps me from trouble.

Tears and Rain, The Blunt-man.

I know now, where I get my simple minded honesty from.
The side of me which spurs from a nation of painfully and stupidly honest people.
Yesterday Huden and I were getting fresh juice form the juice man, and I said I wanted Pomegranite juice and the guy lowers his voice and goes, 'this isn't real pomegranite juice.' Moments later we are trying to buy bread and the baker goes, 'The bread's so hard, look it's like a rock! it's coz of the heat!' naturally we didn't buy bread or the pomegranite juice ...its seems honesty is more important than losing customers though. And that, I think is a beautiful trait, beneath its painful stupidity.

Yes I am in Ankara...and it is safe to say it has taken 2 days for 'Burn it up, Girl make it hot like the roof is on Fayyaaaaaa!' to stop playing itsself on repeat in my mind. Trust crazy, beautiful friends to turn a bloody goodbye into 2 nights of belly dancing. I mention not the quality time and 'moments' because I keeps special things to myself.

I cried on the plane. To which the passenger sitting next to me could only ask: 'Have you lived in America?' -Ntch, foo!
Righteeeo, the Boris within warns that this is turning self indulgent again. Lets see...do I have anything else to say without dear-diarying?
Yes.
Turkish Grandfathers are cute.
So are Turkish guys.
In different ways of course.
The former are cute in the cudly sense that makes Father Christmas look like a pedophile.
As for the latter...I'm still trying to get over the shock of this.

Philosophy of Boris.

Getting to sleep at 3:00-ish after much wide-eyed cieling-staring in darkness, and then waking up at 6:00, can drive one to mull over many a deep and dark thought.
One such deepness and darkness, as any deepness and darkness, one my encounter in the deep and dark mental pool (with water slide!) may be the deepness and darkness of thoughts of Boris.
Aided by very heavy summer rain.

As we know, Boris had lost a leg to the Second World War. When he was a dashing young blade furnished with many a medalion, he believed this was a worthwhile sacrifice, for country and honour. In time, however, the remnants of his life receeded into whisky bottles at cheap bars, to collect with the clear beads he could never get to, even if he smashed the empty bottle. And at these times, when he had no power but to broodingly watch them evaporate over long hours, did he not despise country and honour? Was he not filled with bitterness, the taste of many years of festerring and regretting?

So how does one keep the purity of ones intentions intact?
How does one remember, and never forget?
How does one remain strong in ideals, when country and honour kick you when you're down?

This here is what I paid, what I'm paying for my sins.
Make this me...and maybe then I will not hate others.
Maybe.

Did I say that I loath you.
Did I say that I want to... leave it all behind.

-Blower's Daughter : Damian Rice

Listening to: Regina Spektor.
Horrified by: The amount of weight Haido has put on.
Pissed off at: Just innit.
Sadened by: Lemony Snicket's dedications.

Otherwise, life resumes hectically in a suspenseful, cliff hanger kind of slow motion. Embracing reclusive reclusiveness once again, for want of things to tell people...the unsurity is stifling. At times like this, we flinch at things too easily. And thank God for late shifts and crazy work coleagues brandishing light sabers in the overstock room.
Aiden: (swinging it arround) It was so much cooler when we had two of these!
Elest: Aha. it's kinda damaged right.
Aiden: (Puts it away) Yes that's why it's here.
Johnathan: (walks in with books) Hey you, YOU WERE PLAYING WITH THE LIGHT SABER! (drops books and runs over to the light saber hiding place to have a go at it himself)

But all is well in the world with Boris. To him, everyone's the same. and anyone who buys him a drink is better so. In his vodka bottle swims the doubts and fears he will swallow down and urinate out in an hour or so, if he doesn't vomit them first. That is what I think of thinking twice, you twice thought, he tells the worryful wonder.

I wonder if I'm making a big mistake.

...And if there had to be something which could possibly account for this silence that is always louder than noise or words or banter, because it is so full of an absence of all that is greater and more urgent and more desperate and sad because of inexpressibility (which is a word that doesn't even exist in the English vocab because of it's sheer inexpressiblity), it would be thus:

...

And so it is, just like you said it would be.
Life goes easy on me...most of the time.
And so it is, the shorter story. No love no glory, no hero in her skies.
...
And so it is, just like you said it should be.
We'll both forget the breez...most of the time.
And so it is, the colder water, the blower's daughter, the pupil in denial.

The Blower's Daughter -Damian Rice

Hello.
How long has it been since I wrote something here? ...OH MY GOD, THE 5TH OF LAST MONTH!? wow, when Elest makes a resolution she really sticks to it eh? ..bullshit.
(look we've even started swearing here. Tauwba)

So how has Boris been since then?
Boris has been very well, thank you. He's never been better. He's been drinking more, dreaming less and falling on his face less, but drinking more...and smoking some...And sitting on the wall of The Bottle at the crossroads, holding his pint up at the cars that drive by. Every day. toasting life away.
So he's been well.

Working at Borders doesn't put one off books. Though it's very capable of putting one off bookshops. But one may grow imune to it...who knows. Time will tell. Because time knows. Time knows all, the blasted miserly thief. Actually it doesn't...it just pretends to. It's just a useless, fat, miserly thief who knows nothing, but pretends...and gets away with it.
In any case, there are few things about bookshops that may piss one off. Such a thing may be rude customers, but they may do so less so than shelving men's magazinese with gawking perverts standing about, and also coming across certain books like 'The Almond' by a certain Arab bitch (don't 'tauwba' me! She had it coming) who's written a piece trash about the sexual awakening of a repressed Muslim girl. All very erotic...and you just know the West is gonna love that. Oh yeah, we can see them wringing their hands with glee now, coz they'd already bought into the ideaology since Jacobean England started organising the world it had discoverred (I would quote out of Fletcher's Island Princess if I had an excellent memory, but I don't. You know that purrrrr-fectly well, so don't be stupid (she quotes from The Last Unicorn instead.))

In any case, if there had to be a reading list...just innit...of current reads...a reading list of no particular relevance or connection to any thing, time or person...just innit...a just-innit reading list of GOOD books, it would start thus:

Rememberring God -Charles le Gai Eaton
Wild Sheep Chanse -Haruki Murakami

...and end how, I know not yet.

I heeeeeeeaaar Viiiii-OOO-Linnnnnns

Tonight I had a realisation...nay, an epiphany (it all began arround 11:somtehing in the car park of our flats, and ended very promptly).
This is what it was:
No matter how much one tries to fool onesself or justify it, keeping a blog is self-indulgent and a tad pretentious.
-Yes. It doesn't have to start 'Dear diary' or be about Mr. Rochester to qualify as a journal. And fine, we do sometimes talk about deep and terrible things, but ultimately this blog is about me, right? And writing about me on a weekly/daily basis, is an undeniabley self-indulgent thing to be doing, right?
Right.
...
And so there was a 12th comandment after the 11th; 'don't change'. This is what it was:
Thou shalt not subject innocent cyber-space bystanders to the enterior workings of thy twisted mind, nor the mundane trivialities of thine own existence.
...
Thus, from this day forth, Elle est stoned and star gazing decided that this blog will not be about ME.
'twill be about Boris.

Some information on the origin of Boris follows:
Boris, by all accounts is a fictional figment of my father's alliteration...I mean imagination, who's never tired of trying to convince his children otherwise. Nor has he tired of offerring numerous details of said Boris's life, each more outrageous than the last. The truth is yet to be revealed, but whether or not Boris existed, it is certain that he isn't doing any such thing presently.
According to my father, Boris is dead.
You see, Boris was a one legged, Prussian, World War 2 veteran and a very good drinking buddy. After the war Boris used to suffer from very vivid dreams about getting his missing leg back, which would cause him to jump out of bed with excitment in the mornings, only to fall flat on his face.
One day, in his old age, Boris had a car accident crossing the road, and ended up losing his other leg aswell. Not long after, he dreamt that this time he had both his legs back, jumped out of the hospital bed in his usual flurry of excitment, and fell on his face again, for the last time. He died in hosptial of brain damage.

As of tonight, this is the Blog of Boris, whose story above is as my father told it to me. What follows contains the takings of numerous liberties, and fictional aditives which are not good for your health. Wathch for the 'E' numbers, and Lecitin -make sure it's soya.

...And last but not least, to comemorate this farewell to self indulgence, and hello to utter absurdity of Boris-ness, a very bold dedication to the one person I blog about least or never at all, because sometimes we don't do the things we want to do most, so people don't know we want to do them: ...

I'm your host from the Blog of Boris, good night, and farewell for now.

OWWWCH!

iT'S a bEaUTifuL daY aND i'M OWWWCHing aT HomE.
(sniffle)
I wanted to go to Hampstead Heath with Huden and Daoud.
(sniffle)
ha? nO, i dON't wAnt aNy mORe NutELla...it's made me feel sick.
...
...
(twidles thumbs)
...

Right...this calls for some productiveness which doesn't involve me having to move from my seat. ...oi, this isn't my laptop...this is Huden's...where's my laptop? Ah, I spy it under the sofa. The sofa is across the room. Do I get up and get it myself...or do a start wailing and moaning to get Saimecan to come here from the other room? Nah, I aint that shallow. ...So. Do I get up now, or do I wait for a bit? Do I do it in one sudden movement and leap across the room and back to the sofa, or do I do it very slowly? ...Oh damn, now I gotta pee.
(sniffle)
Help!

Today I saw a woman playing solitaire on her iPod.
I'm ashamed to be a part of this.

'The Matrix has you Neo' ...and it offers your mind not a moment of freedom. This is the occupation of Television screens on busses, gossip/beauty magazines (one glance at the cover of someone elses giving you an eye-full of Jordan to last you a week(...why do I even know this sorry little excuse of a woamn's name?)), PSPs, larger than life advertising blaring at you from every corner of the city in which you reside; selling you everything from looks to a life style...
And meanwhile I'm confused about my priorities when I get pissed off at the megaphone man at Picadilly Circus (now). Every man has his own wares. This one is trying to sell me a joke at the expense of religion...and oh, the degree of stigma attached to that word thanks to the likes of himself. But 'which came firts: intolerant preaching or its subject-matter?' -Tim Winters

Yet, one can find wisdom in all things.
Fast, think, wait -Hermann Hesse Sidhartha
...and adopt a state of mind, the likes of which is the iPod-ers very own. for 3 good reasons:

• Because this refuse of a world is always beautiful to the sound of music.
• Because little stinging things are easier to overlook when your mind is in ecstasy...and if they do more than just sting, then they're so much more poetic to those beats; the tragedy rings with hightened verse.
• And Because you can't hear people being stupid or mean to you...so you can't hate them. And even if you can, you still don't hate them, coz their muffled, mean little words are coming from some far off place, too below this higher plain in which you're experiencing something sublime. ...so instead you pity them, and hope that they too, will one day have an iPod in their otherwise drab and meaningless lives.

...and if you can't tell that all of this is an extended metaphore for something else, you should be ashamed of yourself. And you should sit in that corner and think very hard about it. Yes, that one. Now.

(And yes, I've editted this. so bite me, like!)