FEAR: Futurist Existential Anxiety Reflexes

As the world slides ever so predictably into a recession cycle, what with superpowers swapping thrones (the US will probably have to concede to China fairly soon, most factors considered, especially with all the war-mongering and military involvement in the Middle East not looking at all optimistic, i.e. no end in sight, they cannot exterminate the terrorist pest infestations, have to keep babysitting immature unstable newborn democratic governments, despair despair); the questions raised based on sex and race on the political front reflect true chaos occurring in this post-postmodern era. Even as perceptions are deeply challenged by the possibility of either America's first black president or first female vice-president, so are well-hidden (as in classic unspoken truths - "you just can't handle the truth if it came straight out") racial and sexist prejudices brought to the surface, making one wonder if either option would make the world any better a place. The most powerful person in the world has become quite ridiculed and powerless within this last decade, and beyond the year-end elections there is a disturbing blank - how is the world going to survive with so much chaos at play? Even if there are patterns in place, no solutions can be found within them...can we as a human race even see how we are going to survive the next decade?

Pessimists can fear for real now, as our existence is so severely challenged in the beginning of this monster of a century. The world is at war with itself, both on a nation-to-nation level and on a planetary level. We have to fight terrorism, global warming, genocide, political dictators/tyrants, drugs, alcoholism, obesity, an aging population, poverty, epidemics, natural disasters...and the list continues. The longer this list grows, the more doomed we seem to be. When does it all come to an end? Should we be expecting the Apocalypse much sooner than what we can ever hope for? Should we forget about making any plans for a happy long-term, long-lived future, and simply try to live the best we can within the foreseeable future, while also preparing to die possibly tragic and horrifc deaths? Do we have a future at all?

http://www.apocalypse2012.com/book/

http://www.apocalypsesoon.org/english.html

Yes, it is frightening, all this mumbo-jumbo, all this fear. Do we seek refuge in faith, hide behind the invisible protection offered by God? What alternatives are there to protect the sanity of the few who have no power against the insanity of the powers that be, and other menacing forces at play in this world of horrors and suffering?

on distance, suffering, worth, the absence of speech and wintermute

when someone like me keeps her silence, it's often not because of not having anything to say, but rather a confusion, even frustration, over what to say that would have the most significance, to create the most meaning and effect.
i do not have the gift of tact, or wit, that obscure ability to translate most appropriately what i feel into what i should say about what i feel or think i feel.
there seems to be no guarantee that what is said will be understood, nor is there sufficiency in the verbalisation of emotions that often are too complex to be expressed in words, because once the thought turns into speech the intensity of the emotion at the root of it all is diluted, almost transformed into a parody of what it should have been.
mostly the intention is to cause the least pain, because i know my propensity for harshness and cruelty, and i know i can inflict great misery. it is immoral to do so upon people who love me, care for me, and because of this will forgive me and pardon my sin.
this is a trap, because when it is demanded of me to verbalise my thoughts or feelings, to spit out whatever my reaction to the problem is, anything, i find myself dumbfounded but completely agonised. yes, i am the typical idiot who bottles it all up inside and just morbidly anticipates the day when i will be given a golden opportunity to explode but will fail miserably to express my incredible anger anyway, when that time ever comes.
i will end up saying something bland and colourless, which i know is acceptable and politically correct and non-offensive to the listener, but feel like screeching curses inwardly. rather schizophrenic, maybe.
it is a suffering that is marginally bearable and utterly masochistic, and i force myself to swallow it down, all the time, even as deep inside i am a railing maniac lashing out at anyone, whoever is the temporal cause or catalyst of my anger.
perhaps it is beneficial thus for me to live alone, be alone, enjoy solitary life away from anyone who may cross me. but at the same time i do feel keenly the distance between myself and the people i need to keep me from becoming a monster. the distance is almost a prison, yet also a gateway, and sometimes it is a pain that can be felt in the gut, or an emptiness within that cannot be filled, which makes comfort food and eating for nourishment a fucking joke.
i may be very depressed but too numb to admit it, because i know keeping myself numb and distant is protecting myself from falling apart. if i just let the agony or suffering get me down, i cannot enjoy anything, and that is damning my life to worthlessness. what would there be to live for?
but it is harder and harder to find meaning and value in everything i do, in the decisions i have made, and in all the consequences. it is more and more difficult to care about finding satisfaction in completing a project or finishing a piece of work. i am just numb and want desperately to move on, make the process less unbearable, less time-corroding, less miserable.
when i have nothing better to say, i tend to give monosyllabic responses or give a reply that will make the listener happy. but silence is not golden. it is rotting me out from within. that is why i turn on the television all the time to make sure i cannot hear myself think self-destructive thoughts, to make sure there is always someone on the TV talking and not the wrathful demons i have to fight down.
when one considers all the suffering in the world outside, the crying starving children of any Third World nation stuck in abject poverty, the victims of natural disasters and tyrannical corrupt governments, this life is nothing, miniscule, petty, a fucking waste of resources.
maybe i don't deserve anything. i am just an idiot brooding over nothing worthwhile, working for nothing worthwhile, feeling ridiculous inner rage for nothing. why do i even exist?
it's cold. can't feel much anymore.

Morphomoth

...

This be the verse

They fuck you up, your mom and dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin

Because it is you

There is no ruth in this fury
Senseless ire – it renders me speechless –
Breeding only rancour, this foul rotting bitterness,
And passive aggression:
Shrouded in absolute silence.

For two decades, hopefully less –
I have fed these, my blasphemous demons, in secret,
Dumped my grating, screeching, seething convulsions of base emotion
Frequently, fearfully,
Into this well of repression
Dug deeply, violently, desperately buried countless evils
In the name of gratitude, love, or some sacred right you claim.

At times, when rendered helpless victim –
Because I was never born equipped nor taught
How to wrestle with your wills,
Or find reason and calm in our miniscule battles
Only to succumb or withdraw in hatred –

I have prayed for escape, or at least
That the buried wrath would not corrode the love that should be
Paramount. (Are you not all-important, for giving me life?)

Forgive my sins, oh Lord, forgive my sins, for my mind cannot
Detangle itself from the roiling struggle.

And every conflict, every abrasive interaction
I am forced to face –
Proximity breeds contempt, indeed,
You probably feel the same anyway –
Every round cracks open the fault-line, breaks the restraints
Threatens to engulf me in frenzied rage

But I turn away
And run.

Though not before condemnation
Fiend I am, though fiend I toil not to be
In your eyes I question my existence, what I am, how, and why.

I know:
This skin-crawling gaping maw we own cannot be denied.
I only strive to hide my hideous anger behind
The wall we have built between us
And pray for some parody of cold war –
This ironic harmonious silence – may it prevail
In these moments of bleak rationale,
All amounts to nothing.

For Distance, like stark black and white,
Is both Problem and Solution.
While Blood, which we share
Only confuses with its tainted complexity,
Forbidden as It is to be shed.

The Price and Pricelessness of Bliss

It's been a long verbal emptiness for 2 months, a strangely comfortable void among the morphing spaces within my so-called intellect. Funny how one can think in pure visuals without words, sort of like lyric-less MTV. The scary thing is how we, the X/Y/IT generation - whatever you refer to us (the TV/Internet savvy generation) as - tend to have thought processes eerily akin to what we have grown up watching: jerky, randomised visuals arranged to form messages, priming our brains to draw meaning from all the pre-wired cues learnt through repetitive flashes of sound and image.

Are we more brainwashed than we will ever know? Ignorance is bliss, then.

Anyway, I'm just being distracted and rambling, as usual.

The points I originally wanted to record through this post were:
1. about how my personal happiness levels right now are surreal yet ambiguously bittersweet...
2. commentary about the death of a figure of authority who had a huge impact on my life, psychologically, emotionally, and literally, a teacher who broke my spirit and killed my youth...
3. musings about living 2 lives in 2 countries and how the twain shalt never meet, and how that distresses me...
4. how love is blissful, of course...
5. and nostalgia, and how some memories flood back in a strange way...

Well then. As my thought processes have gone distinctly Powerpoint Presentation-like...

Part 1+3+4:

As always, love casts a glow over all aspects of life, and as long as he's around and near, it seems like things will always turn out alright and I will be able to laugh heartily and be carefree.

Being away in AU makes life so much harder, simply because being alone and having to deal personally with all problems without having any support system to fall back on, be it physically or emotionally, truly renders one helpless and depressed sometimes. Distance does cause pain, that is something we cannot deny. Loneliness equals vulnerability as well. Friends are not dependable - who wants to always have to listen to a whining, whinging yapper - so in the end everything falls back onto one's lousy shoulders.

I have a separated life, something exacted by choice, the burden of which is solely mine, and in both lives I seem to be unable to truly belong. Maybe my mind or psyche is coming apart, struggling to cope with what I cannot control. In each life there are deep-seated issues that cause way too much distress to explain in so many words. I escape from one to the other but find no balance. When it boils down to the core of all this internal turmoil - me - what can I do for myself to improve the situation? Other than grit my teeth and find the raw inner willpower, blind faith, instinctive drive for survival and just the bloody guts to break through, I'm pretty much trapped on both grounds, though on different terms and conditions.

Right now my guts are lurching, my willpower seems to be drowning in a sludge-pit of depression and tears, and I just wish so hard that flat pictures and memories of bliss can help me to pull through, even as they remind me of the emptiness and foolish self-inflicted loneliness I have here and now.

In the end, I guess this much is factual about being human. We want substance, accountability, tangible material things that we can count and relish, and really it's all bullshit we come up with to make ourselves look "professional" and powerful, a cover-up for the shallowness of our lives where we resolutely sidestep deep thought about how exactly we are treating each other. So we can be as cruel, heartless and uncaring as all the grey areas in morals and ethics can allow, so that we can kill each other for personal glory, so that we can put down another to proclaim superiority.

And all this reminds me of Mrs Leicester, who is dead!

Death is the great "equaliser" of man, is it not? Death makes all man either ash or fertiliser. Does that not mean that perhaps the higher powers simply impose Life upon us as a great extended joke, a game in a game, one that we play against each other, within one where They play us?