There is no time- there’s never enough time. Our lives will run out and we’ll still be running around, trying to remember something that has long ceased to matter. So many thoughts cross my mind, some might even be worth writing, but what do I know, I’ve lost myself in tomorrow’s frantic pursuit.

Last night I was thinking, what is it with me and love, why am I always on the look for it, when it’s so very rare and euphemeral? See, I wouldn’t consider myself romantic. Valentine’s day leaves me unimpressed or irritated; I prefer my flowers alive, ideally in a garden; hope no one would ever buy me a teddy bear or suggest we watch the sunset on a first date- unless we’re on acid; I’ve laughed in the face of people who uttered improbable compliments or resorted to unnecessary sentimentality too early along the way.

Now, maybe it is all little more than an adverse reaction to everything, possibly even a sign of insecurity. But you can’t change the fact that I like my passion raw, spiced up with lust and just a hint of crudeness. Which is why my secret wish to spend most of my life in a constant state of infatuation makes hardly any sense.

Losing control, I guess that’s what it’s all about. A power freak, who struggles to keep everything in order, yet furtively willing nothing as much as to break free of the chains and live madly, carelessly, randomly, engrossed in something totally inconsequential and at least partially made up- since I normally need to initiate or enhance the process with a bit of imagination. Still, I must tell you, it seldom works to the desired effect. Pathetic, isn’t it?

Today I won’t go on boring you with more attempts to self-analyisis. Let it be; I am what I am and, when I manage to take a step back and look at myself, the mess I witness shocks and amuses me…

I wish you were here
Even for a short while.
I wish you were someone else.

I wish I'd never met you
Wish I could escape
My minds' prison,
The paper bridges,
The agony.

I wish you were lost in a maize,
Where only I could find you.
I wish you were naught but dream
So only I could want you.
But there's no time,
There is no space.
Crawling on the ground,
Our desires.

And deep inside
I know I'm happier in your absence,
I'm whole.

Because you never understood
-Or cared to see-
The fears that burnt my thoughts,
Those days
When I would cling
Onto your shadow,
Those days
When I would long
For just one touch,
A sign,
A promise of unhindered comprehension.

How could I trust you?
How could I doubt
Your every sentence?
Where did it spring from
My hope to enter your reality?

How could I picture you
Sharing that longing,
The trembling fantasy
Of random meetings
In places far away
And unexplored,
When you would only offer silence
For an answer?

And I, the fool,
Why did I ask
My endless questions?
Why did I let obsessions blur my sight,
Wasting your time,
Uncovering your reasons,
Why did I beg for more
Than you could give?

I wish I was here
Even for a short while.
I wish I was someone else.

Notes from an ordinary day

Early morning. I get up and make coffee, hoping I won’t have to meet anyone until it kicks in. Force myself to open the blinds before switching on the laptop. Sometimes it’s easy to forget which one is my real window to the world.

Short visit to grandma- it's her birthday today, but she's depressed and refuses to celebrate. We're the same, you and I, I tell her: stubborn survivors with self-destructive tendencies. She laughs, seeming slightly better. I leave, feeling guilty for being ever busy, when all she needs is company.

Outside there's still snow on the pavement, but the thermometer says 21. Old men are sitting in what counts for a park in this latitude, talking politics. The pigeons have begun their mating rituals. Why does everyone remember sex as soon as the sun’s out?

(I'm not referring to myself, here; my obsession with sexuality is weatherproof. This has nothing to do with desire, of course, it's more like a philosophy. I remain true to my- personally defined- duty to challenge taboos and stereotypes. Foucault would be proud.)

On the tube, I listen to Janis Joplin. I wish I could sing like her, though if I did, I'd probably be dead by 27. A cute guy is looking at me; he can't be more than 17. Get shy and pretend I haven't noticed. I’m late for work- as usually- and struggle to write a boring article, whilst fantasizing of beaches.

Ex-boyfriend calls; we make plans for the night, faithful to our silent agreement not to talk about anything but the present. When we meet, we act as if we're still together- only without the fighting. When we part, we go our separate ways. No questions asked. Which is hard, yet not as hard as to suddenly cut contact. You don’t just stop loving a person; it's simply that other things get in the way.

On my way home I think of a story that’s part of a story that’s part of a story…Nothing that hasn’t been done before, but the potential implications are limitless- to Imagination's delight. A stray dog comes to smell my shoes, then nods in approval. I bet you're the one who woke me up last night, I say. He waves his tail. I smile, all memories of loss and pain and sorrow evaporating, albeit temporarily. Aren't Fridays great, for some reason?

It is the time of year, a time for reflection, doubt and the occasional self-pitiful glance in the mirror. Prone as I am to exaggeration, I shall resist the temptation to dwell on my unresolved dramas. Tell you how chaotic my life looks right now, how nothing is wrong yet nothing feels quite right. Perfectly conscious of the fact that it’s all in my head. I blame it on the time of the year. With last summer’s, echo fading, and the next one still out of reach.

When we were younger, we could somehow find reasons for hope. Things to wait for, however far and uncertain. Trust in some vague, improbable ideal, the spell that would turn the world upside down, blessing us with a new point of view. Now our childish naivety is evaporating fast and, whilst our skin has grown thick and our hearts harder to break, it’s hard to find a meaning to hang on to. No distant light on the horizon, no absolute moment of magical release.

We no longer expect salvation to come from outside, we cannot assume someone else will bring the answers we’re seeking, or even hold our hand and stay close as we continue this desperate search.
We can’t even believe in our hidden potential anymore. Yes, we have built our walls of confidence and masks of aggression, but the faith in our superpowers and indisputable uniqueness is shrinking with every passing day.

And what keeps us carrying on our pointless existence? Could it be simply the fear of dying, nature’s determination to ensure preservation of the species, however unwilling the species in question might be? You’re nihilistic, they always say. They think it’s wrong. They think we’re meant to be lighthearted, joyful all the time. They consider happiness something permanent, to be chased even if its pursuit inflicts the worst kind of suffering.

But if you spend your life struggling to be happy, happiness must surely come with death, right? Which leads us back to what I was trying to say: life does not really make any sense, so why waste it looking for patterns or following principles? I mean, we’ll all die anyway, and that leaves us with very little to lose. So, we might as well mess things up a bit, while we’re here.

Notice how pessimism goes full circle until it annihilates itself. In contrast, optimism only ends up crashing into some formidable obstacle it refused to acknowledge.

For your dreams to come true, you first need to wake up, she said. But all my soul desired was sleep, the deep sleep of cats, the guiltless sleep of infants, the untroubled sleep of fools. I craved for oblivion, its promise of relief and total apathy, or else to let it all burn burn burn; burn the cities to ash, the tired faces, the misery of everyday routine, the broken statues and the devastation of forsaken heroes, all the things we could have been, but we shall not..

Burn all these worlds of fantasy that tear our hearts in two with 
their untouchable perfection; burn the ephemeral glimpses of happiness, killing us as they withstand our every effort to freeze them in time and memory; burn the passing years, the wisdom that comes with age, erasing all traces of innocence; burn innocence itself, for why does it exist if not to torture us with its sweet promises of inevitable frustration?

Burn joy and sorrow, since none exists without the other; burn hope, and longing, and regret; let anger reign and rage control our minds; let us, too, burn in a merciless fire, forgetting how it all began, our meaningless existence, the looming ending- always nearer, grotesque yet mesmerising, a cause for celebration and despair.

Are you, too, fighting the eternal battle? Caught inbetween the irresistible force of a raw, cynical intelligence sworn to disregard all notions of sentimentality, and the pressing irrational urge of a spirit that seeks to fly, whatever the cost...

Something is missing. Again. Don't ask me what. Spiritual thirst. An absence eluding description. Striving to trace its outline with my fingers in the darkness. I fail. I always do.

Normally it's a relief to blame it on all things unattainable. Say it is them I require to feel complete. I'd be satisfied, if only I could get that flat, that job, that person... Maybe I'm spoiled and ungrateful; perhaps I suffer from low self-confidence, and hence the assumption that nothing I manage to get hold of can be good enough.

But what if there's more going on behind the scenes? What if I’m distracting myself? Diverting my attention to what remains out of reach, so I won't have to admit that my hunger is simply insatiable. It has no answer, it has no cure. I was born with a hole somewhere in my mind. What I truly seek does not exist; it never did.

Comforting as it might be to interpret my sense of lack as the need for communication, freedom or creation, deep inside I am fully aware of its true nature. And, sometimes, I wonder, will I ever reach something resembling inner peace? Will I learn to live with this constant longing; will I eventually grow out of it? Or will I die as I've lived, greedy, dissatisfied, restless?

See, I'm capable of control. Gaining it. Keeping it. Staying afloat. Not saying anything I didn't want to say. I haven't even said the things I'd like to say but would be unnecessary. Inappropriate . Embarrassing. If you can remain so gracefully and flawlessly silent, why should I be the one who succumbs to internal pressure?

So here I am. Still proud. Occasionally vein. Always wanting more. A perfectionist, in a rather destructive way. A pessimistic optimist. I've given up on hope- on you- and yet I've left it all to chance. Luck. Fate. Whatever you choose to call it.

It's all there, you see. Either you're right to stick to what seems logical, or there is more to this. More to come. In the near or distant or very distant future- it matters not. I'm patient. Because I don't expect much, I don't suffer. No obsessing and fussing about.

No, I don't actually believe in my wishful thinking; I just like to indulge in dreamlike scenarios. Few details, little consideration of potential implications. A fantasy resembling not a long, explicit film, but an artistic photograph. Underexposed, surreal and slightly blurred. Complete with the essential hint of irony.

The whole thing buried somewhere deep, where no one could find it. Never mentioned in casual conversations, barely acknowledged in moments of self-reflection. I'm supposed to be a strong person. A fighter. A skeptic. Not a fragile fairy-princess with imaginary friends and a secret belief in unicorns.

In this world, they won't let you be both. They disapprove of ambivalent characters. You're forced to become a social chameleon, constantly changing your mask to suit your surroundings. Until you lose all sense of who you are, what you want, where you're heading. Until you're nothing but a ghost: frail, sad, invisible...

Don’t know what they’ve taught you about technology, but consider my proposition: There’s nothing like pen and paper for real, deep, uninhibited writing. Computers are good for essays. Articles. Emails. Announcements. Opinions. Yet, when it comes to torturing your mind until it comes up with something,.. well, not necessarily spectacular but at least personally meaningful, staring at a screen is not half as effective.

Think about it. First of all you’re constantly distracted by flashing arrows, buttons and icons. You’re disoriented by the mere existence of limitless possibilities, most of which have little to do with creativity. Let’s check what’s going on in the world, you say. Or, what if I’ve just received a really important email? Why not chat to my friends, play solitaire, photoshop my self to see how I’d look with blond hair…

And you don’t even have to visualize the letters of the alphabet. They’re lying there, defenseless, underneath your fingers. Forming strange phrases. Trying to imprison your ideas into 26 stupid little signs someone conjured before you. Reminding you that what you’re about to say has probably been said already. Several times. Offering you the lazy comfort of a starting point, if you ‘re stuck; reassuring you with the promises of delete and undo.

So you join the mass production of words and meanings, armed with your high-tech keyboards, and if you make a mistake you’ll simply press a button and it’s all history. No, not history, since even history is written somewhere. Eradicated. Lost forever.

You keep typing, forgetting about the ruthless, liberating vastness of a blank, disturbingly empty page, which you can use in any way you want: scribble illegible gibberish, make a hole in it, or, in a bout of anger, tear your enemy in pieces and burn it to ash. Make paper boats and planes and boxes, or absent-mindedly fill it with badly drawn houses, suns, forests, then suddenly realise that you have your story- it’s all there, in the picture.

Now, if you wish, you may type it. Still, how much do you respect art that can be cancelled with a single click?