Overload

2011

Welcome to our shiny brave new world, connect to internet and disappear in a digital multiverse of multiple personalities, talk to people on the other side of the world just getting ready to fall asleep as you are drinking your morning coffee, wave to them via internet camera, take a picture of your toes and put it in a Photobucket and watch someone use it in an ad campaign, rant on a social networking sites, get a blog, two blogs, three, find any information you need in a flash without having to dig through dusty books in a forgotten corner of a library, play poker, send emails, earn money, lose money.

And when it's this inevitable time to leave the house, take it all with you in your pocket as a smartphone, that's as cheap as a monthly cost of broadband in our shiny brave new world, as an iSomething, as an eBook and once again, complain to anyone who listens, how bored you are and how dull your life is, .

It's like we are all turning into spoiled children throwing a tantrum after getting too many toys.

They can't take away our freedom, right?

After reading a couple of books, one set in 16th century England another in 21st century USA.

So back then. Such a limited life! Men were supposed to fight for their country and provide for their family. Women were supposed to marry and provide the family until premature death in eleventh labour. A lucky man had a career to pursue and some time to spend with his wife before she died. A lucky woman had family and friends around to help out while her man was pursuing career.

So now. Such freedom.! Men are supposed to provide for family. Or stay home and raise children. Or not. Or both. Or earn lots of money and burn out before 30. Or stay on a dole and burn out their digital enemy tanks on xbox360. Or stay with their parents forever. Or marry. Or not. Or both. Children are not compulsory either. Or career. Or anything really. Women? Still supposed to have children. Or at least like children. Or hate children. Have some opinion about sprogs at least. Or pursue career. Or both. Or not. Or stay home and help parents of their new boyfriend take care of his children from first and second marriage. Or go out and have fun. Or not be a slut. There's also gay/lesbian option, respectively.

So, confused an feeling like we're failing ourselves constantly, we turn to the last bastion of hierarchy and structure - internet. Admins, moderators, deserved users, paying members, members, guests, dial-in users, modem users, fibreoptic users, bloggers with readers, bloggers hunting for readers, trolls. Choose your category. Submit a request to maybe do this. You can do this. You can not do that. Post any of these and you will be banned. Disappear back to the confusion. Shoo, go away now, the freedom awaits...

Fantastic!

After plodding through a 2000+ pages long fantasy trilogy.

If anyone ever decides to write a fantasy novel, not very long, not a part of a cycle, not filled with heroes walking and talking about walking for so long, just a standalone purebred 300 pages long fantasy with a good story not diluted in pages and pages of nothing happening and real characters that bleed and feel pain when crashing through the window and a definite 'this is it' ending, well if anyone writes such book than let me know cause I'll miss it, buried under a pile of well established fantasy cycle writers populating Waterstone's shelves.

Yes, I still read fantasy trilogies, but I get weary sometimes halfway through.

A theory about hardcore fantasy readers - the genre suggests a well developed need for escapism, so probably they are so shy that when they eventually sneak out to top up on books, they are more than happy to get a brick-like cycle that will allow them not to leave the house for another month. And some authors happily provide more and more of such cycles.

Just to remind all the offended shy fantasy reades - I like to read it too, it's just that I got to the point when I treat any book with 'dragon ', 'mage', 'staff' or 'quest' in their title with suspicion. I don't want another ramblers guide through a land with
unpronouncable name with a group of stereotypical characters engaged in confusing sope-ish personal revelations pn a quest seeking magical staff guarded by a dragon, a 666 pages long book that will end in a cliffhanger, next part available in 2012...

If noone else is going to write a standalone purebred fantasy book soon - I will have to. Just to have something to read.

Shades of Scottishness

Four years in Scotland today and I'm quite settled:

- I can read 'Trainspotting' without an English - Scots dictionary
- I don't expect rain to last long but I also don't expect a week without rain.
- I no longer expect instant hot water in a tap.
- I no longer expect just one tap.
- I don’t even turn my head if I hear Polish on the street.
- I can drink neat whisky.
- I rant, skive, get grumpy, get pished and have a blether.

Wonder what the next four years will bring...

I'm gonna live my life, everyday.

After reading a very unusual fantasy book.

Life is not about being a hero. Life is not about fame, adventures and valiant deeds. Nobody is ever alone no matter how lonely one feels. We are all linked in the intricate gobelin, but it’s the one that shows normal people at their everyday tasks not the one with an adventurer fighting a dragon. We talk and work and sleep and tire from too much and hunger for more and miss what’s lost and love and sing and live. There is magic in everyday, in getting along with people you never thought you will like, in surviving yet another betrayal and carrying on, in looking up from your pointless tolling and finding something worth living for. Like a morning mist shot through with rising sun. Like a smell of a herb garden at noon. Like a lover’s door opened just a crack at night. And the only heroism that matters is reaching for somebody we care for and picking them up from their knees when they fell, too tired to keep walking. Life is all about living, everyday.

Welcome to my world, she said...

Everything seems to merge these days.

Towns only have visible boundaries on maps. People network online to the point where they become types not individuals. Books quote one another weaving together into subcontextual web.
Gamers want to get lost in their meticulously created characters. Movies come not even in trilogies but in cycles of sequels, prequels and spin-offs. Nowhere is far away. Nobody is ever alone. Nothing is separate from other things. Even milkshakes lose their flavours and end up as a chocolate-banana-strawbery mush.

I feel blurred at the edges...

Hey I Oh I'm Still Alive

If you never was the only one to notice a rainbow appear on the grey sky you never lived.

If you never spent your Saturday night on a sofa, watching movies, dozing and thinking "This is great!" you never lived.

If you never worked in McDonald's you never lived.

If you never had a box of chocolates with a bottle of white wine you never lived.

If you never run down the street, late for the bus but with a big grin on your face cause it's snowing you never lived.

If you never cried so hard that you couldn't breathe you never lived.

If you never woke up in the arms of someone you love you never lived.

If you never spent half of the Sunday evening looking for an open corner shop because you're chocolate cravings got out of control you never lived.

If you never tried to talk your escapee indoor cat from under the car you never lived.

(...to be continued)

How do you like to travel?

After watching a strange and melancholic movie that compared a life to a train journey.

Is it really? How often do we meet weird strangers in our lives, how often do we have a chance to travel to a random place, how often do we fall asleep peacefully listening to a distant whistle of a train carrying us somewhere amazing, in safety? It’s more like a trip on a circular route bus. Same sights, same sounds, same stops, same people, same conversations... it's like getting on number 10 bus on the stop outside your house, greeting well known people, taking the same seat that's already took the shape of your backside, looking at the same views roll at the same pace outside, doing the same things you always do and finally falling asleep just to wake up on the same bus stop outside your house...

So, is there a way to break the routine before monotony kills the last shreds of your dreams already badly ripped by reality?

Change the bus to a car my imaginary reader and drive randomly, recklessly wherever your confused sense of direction takes you, taking all the strange looking hitchhikers with you. Or jump aboard the transsiberian and let it carry you to wherever the tracks go, meandering acres of wasteland between strange, wonderful places you never knew existed. Or get a dog sledge and let your dogs, who surely know where to go to find adventure, mystery and good camping spots, lead you, cracking the whip above their sleek backs just to keep appearances.

Metaphore is such a wondeful exercise in stretching your imagination.

Lett's buy a ticket to anywhere but here.

Cultural encounters.

After reading 'The Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers' (great title BTW)

Sometimes I miss being a freshly arrived immigrant who is so busy gathering information about the new country that has no time to worry about what might happen and what would have been. You really don't have time for introspections and any brain power left for deep emotions and feelings. You meet new people in new places using strange words in bizzare contexts, start a new job with its own jargon, have a network of public transport to master to get to work, move in a new house with some solutions that don't make sense cause you're used to them being different in your country andyou have to get used to these new ones, go shopping to find the familiar brands of food and deodorants under different names, try to register at GPs practice, tax office, university... It takes all your attention just to survive in the strange new world populated by people blathering in some vaguely englishlike language.

After a year you get used to the accent, inconprehensibility of bus routes and separate  taps for cold and hot water and that's when you start to feel again and think about the future and worry. You get settled and concentrate on having a satisfying job, good social life
and a partner you care about. Emotions hit you again without the protective veil of constant amazement at simple things. You stop to think about yourself as an immigrant.

I understand people, who never get settled, just travel from country to country, year after year. You exchange the feeling of safety, comfort and stability for freedom, exploration and superficility. It sounds alluring sometimes. Other times it sounds scary. But it is a way to live.

Too late for me, I'm already settled, I'm a resident in a cold, rainy, northern land.

You watch your whole life pass you by...

Do you have this feeling sometimes as well, imaginary reader? Like you are constantly standing on the sidewalk watching your own life race past you? Like you want to jump in at last but you’re to scared? Like you constantly struggle to catch up with yourself, so you just stop trying and have another lazy evening instead? And you end up thinking – if only I was faster, stronger, more determined I would, could, should, but I’m not. I’m... I’m not sure what I am actually...

We are so busy trying to find out who we are these days that we ignore the simplest fact - you are who you are and there’s not much you can do about it, really. But you are, at the same time, much more then you think you are. Confusing? Well, you don’t usually think about your lazy self too highly, do you? It’s always the If Only...

Close your eyes, take deep breath and try to fit in your own skin. It will itch, it will hurt, it will confuse the hell out of you to find out that deep inside, in the dozing part of your soul, you are faster, stronger and more determined than any imaginary you inhabiting the top layer of the same soul. You are perfectly able to jump in your own lifestream and have some fun before you drown in it.

Optimism is bad for you.