A Clockwork Race

We've become cheap about more things than respect. People begin to live mechanically, taking one day after the other like they're never going to end, like we've got nothing left except the monotony of sunrises coming before sunsets. We get out of bed, we pull ourselves together, and walk outside into the fog. How much of yourself do you think you can find in the fog?
And we kid ourselves, we feed on bite-sized chunks of illusion. We go to a movie, we walk in the park, we wear sunglasses and we go shopping. But do those things make us alive? Everyone who's bored simply finds something to do, but does that constitute living? Does that constitute being free?
I wonder where exactly along the way we've lost our clarity of mind, our sheer joy of living. I wonder if we've ever had those. Is the entire human race prone to idleness or is it just the carbon dioxide coming out of the exhaust pipes clouding our judgement? How have we become so attached to our precious monotony that we're content with nothing more, and nothing less but our daily activities?
Why does nobody feel the need to go cliff-diving? Why does nobody feel the urge to smile to people on the street? Why does this fog we're stumbling in make us all reject the possibility that we matter as individuals? Why have we lost the faith in our power to change the world? Why does the vast majority know so little and care even less?

What are we doing with our existences? We've got a limited amount of time on earth, and we're wasting it because we haven't got the nerve to step up and step out of this suffocating cage we call a living. Let's work together, let's shape our cage of human limtations, let's expand its soft aluminium bars. Maybe, one day, someone will even unlock it.
Moreover, it's hard not to hit the "repeat" button in such a world. You lose interest, you lose focus, you lose all feeling except that tiny twinge of fatigue. You're forced by this invisible hand (who demolishes personalities and builds cold politeness) to be a human like the rest. How much more will people hang on to their schedule and bend to the unwritten rules of the system they live in?

So, what time did you say you're waking up tomorrow?

P.S.: "With the moonlight to guide you/Feel the joy of being alive/The day that you stop running/Is the day that you arrive" - Enjoy the Ride, Morcheeba (album: Dive Deep)
P.P.S.: The photo dates back to 1964, and it's University Square in Bucharest.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, R-E-P-E-N-T

Respect is an abstract concept for people nowadays. We're so cheap when it comes to wasting our unlimited resources that we've forgotten how good we felt when the big R was around. It all starts small, within us. We lose respect for ourselves, for our primordial status as human beings, and for our nature. So, we resort to plastic surgery; we take a beating but tell the doctor we banged our head against the door; we let ourselves be humiliated everyday by someone who is a little less cheap but a little more selfish about his self-respect and who places himself above you in some made-up, inconsistent hierarchy. We become trampled under the feet of our own will to cut back on our expenses. It's all economics, our failure.
From then on, things can only go downhill. Once you've lost respect for yourself - or simply ignored the initial acquirement of some - you've also lost your status as a human being. You are now officially "Lucy"'s daughter, the australopitaecus in original form, and you have bred many species within your race. You might be the Ignorant, you might be the Rude, you might be the Meek, but you're still regressing.
You're still part of a movement you've started somewhere around your stomach. Now you're burping the fumes of self disrespect all over the place, infecting everything. You spit on the street, you throw a wedding on the street and ignore your neighbours' pleas to turn the music down, you seek revenge by slamming a shameful grade in the register next to the name of just another collateral victim.
Slowly, you're turning into a hyena, losing whatever regard you had for all things holy to mankind like honour, culture, kindness, gentleness and - God forbid we forget - cleanliness. You have no respect for neither the dead nor the living. You eat your way to the top of yet another chimera of a hierarchy.
Let's hope against hope that there is hope, that the metaphorical cancer of modernity hasn't spread so wide inside our body. Let's try and be human again, even if it means silly things like not littering and smiling to children on the street.
Let's repent for freedom..., whatever that means.

I wonder what they meant when they said "repent".

We Are One or Stand by Me

Contrary to my other posts debating heavy [right.] problems of today's troubled society, this here post will not be for all brains to understand. I wanted to let my readers out there know that I have found something, something very few people find and even fewer keep. I've found idiots.
I've found the most intelligent people on the planet. I've found dancers and singers, writers, elves and vampires. I've found the world, and I've found love.
When I look at what I've found, I feel as though I'm looking into a mirror. They breather; I breathe, and every movement that they thus make is like one of mine. Every gesture, every sigh, every image, every fight is like my own. I've found mirrors of myself that keep shifting place, I've found independent souls like mine, wandering the earth.
I've come across beauty, I've come across bliss.

But really, I've just come home.

P.S.: Yes, all that concluded after the sleepover. I love you people!

Suspicious Minds

Boy [this is just something I've picked up from Holden Caulfield a.k.a. the guy in Cathcher in the Rye] did Elvis know what he was singin' about.

Let me elaborate: I was sent by a lovely mother to go out shopping. I was delighted by the prospect, despite the crappy area of the supermarket - I got to buy chocolate cream! [Nutella, in case anyone's wondering. It's my secret drug.]
And I had already, after an arduous search, retrieved the objects of my desire. Nutella, peanut butter [I'm a virgin when it comes to peanut butter - and almost everything else. My mother thinks it's a disgusting thing, and I had money. I thought I'd give peanut butter a chance...We have reached an acceptable, though not promising symbiosis.] low-fat cheese [for the most brilliant pancake filling ever, courtesy of my Mum], some sour cream. I knew something was missing, but I couldn't remember what. I texted my Mum with a simple question: "Need any milk?". She called back, said yes, and I had to step out of the line.

I said "Excuse me" to the only lady behind me and simply went round her, being extremely careful not to bludgeon her with ym shopping cart. She, in return, gave me the most disdainfully reproachful look I think I have ever received.

I'm a nice kid, I smile, I'm polite. I smiled, I was polite, and she was still mean. I mentally threw a swearword at her and her jaded look as I hurried down the aisle and put her out of my mind. I got the milk - both requested cartons, you see, it was pancake day - and rushed back to the line. The best choice was behind the mean-assed lady that had stare-abused me earlier. I approached her burgundy clothed back and sat there. She threw back another ugly look at me as she lay on the counter her 4 bags of chips and about 20 coffee packs. Those small ones you just plop into water and wait around for until they dissolve and give you the unhealthiest drink in your life, second only to the gut-liquifying, stomach-burning, diluted tar that is Coke. Like I said, she threw me another disgusted look [like I was the one buying all the packaged chemicals] and moved a step forward.

I kept thinking that I smelled. I didn't, I'd showered. I sniffed my amrpit - Rexona all the way, everyday. So no, it wasn't the smell, it was the simple fact that I was a younger person stepping out of the line, out of that perfect little line of people.
The lady went away, with her pudgy smudged eyes averted, I hope - I cared not enough to look.

My revenge was a retribution. Behind me, was a little gypsy kid, buying some sort of pen or pencil. I let him jump line and come in front of me, just because I felt like it.

Eat that, black-eyed lady.

Because we can't go on living together with suspicious minds.

P.S.: Let the little kids jump line, and just don't care if they stare. Those people are barren.
P.P.S.:"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen.

Bludgering Brown

"OMG!" the schoolgirls go.
"Scandalous!" the parlour moms exclaim
"Who?" the working moms ask.
"She probably deserved it,"the men of the world say placidly.
Only the women who are bludgeoned as well empathize. And only I have a fit of mirthless laugh.

Rihanna was beat up by her very own Chris Brown. No joke, people, this is serious as they get. The picture was just released and Rihanna's pretty pucker had the shape and size of an elephant ear. So we know he's been working out.
All irony aside, it is parlour-lady scandalous that in our day, age and not to mention social status, a not-21-years-old-yet man sees no wrong (or simply ignores the wrong) in striking a woman. A not-20-years-old-yet woman.
The fact that they're both icons of the modern world makes it even funnier: the angels we pray to for looks and talents such as their are rolling on their clouds laughing.

"You wanna look like this?"
"No, but I do wanna have his right hook."

What we should do is throw the little Michael-Jackson-follower behind bars for some time hoping to rid him of his violent habits. No bail, please, we all know he can pay that and be out and running (in his case, biting, was it?) faster that you can say "expensiveplasticsurgery".
For Rihanna, I feel sorry a bit. (Stressing "a bit". I find it hard to empathize with people who are so incredibly far from what I am and do, it's a fault of mine.) You meet a guy who can dance you to Neverland Ranch and sing you well into a comfy mansion on the hillside of dear old Hollywood. He looks like a prince, probably is smooth, ergo you fall for him. The next thing you know he's "borrowing money from you and spending it on other dames and betting on horses", in the immortal words of Marilyn Monroe. So guess Chris Brown isn't all that special: at the end of the day, he's nothing but a mean-spirited horse with an appetite for kicking.
And Rihanna's nothing but another abused person joining the pool of homeless kids, moms who leave their husbands, children who kill their parents, dogs who bite their owners and Whitney Houstons/ Tina Turners.

So, today, for the world, we have Rihanna's swollen picture staring at us with a pained expression. Today, she was just an abused lover.

The difference is somewhat made by the possiblity of plastic surgery, but that's another story.

That's the way the cookie crumbles! (or something in that category of sayings that imply food falling apart being a major event)

A Most "Revolutionary Road"

Okay, so I went to the movies.
I saw "Revolutionary Road" by Sam Mendes, with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio playing a couple planning to pack up and move to Paris.
All I can say, without much revealing the delicate plot, it that Mr DiCaprio has finally shaken off his "Leo" title. Ageing has proven itself profitable for him as it has for so many actors who find wisdom after their thirtieth anniversary - which kind of makes you hate fate for killing James Dean so young. "Leo" is, my friends, "Leo" no more. He's grown into the great actor we all hoped he was. Let's face it, we all know he blew our minds with "What's eating Gilbert Grape", but it's not like he's done anything as astounding since. But this - this Revolutionary masterpiece - has given former "Leo"-lovers the chance to say "I told you so". He's good, and I'm usually judgemental. He's very good.
Now, for his on-screen-wife, April. Kate Winslet has had a field-year, if I may say so. "The Reader"'s value was mostly of her making, yet she does not dissapoint us in this movie either. She plays the wife-who-wanted-more so superbly, it actually made me rethink my opinion about actresses nowadays. I, for one, am rooting for an Oscar here, because I think she is one of the few valuable people who have stepped foot in Hollywood this century. Call me melodramatic, but she's talented, and there's no argument against that.
Behind the heavy amount of liquor and cigarette smoke Sam Mendes sought fit to decorate the movie with, you will find no happy ending. Nobody's merrier at the end. Weakness and strentgh double back on each other until they creat such chaos you, as a viewer, become confused: are those who live on stronger? It has so many loose ends I wouldn't know where to begin to tie them: the oblivious [or not!] wife, the husband in love with another woman, the husband who calls his wife neurotic for wanting more out of life, the couple who wraps themselves in the blanket of self-appreciation ["We're not like all the others!"] - until they see it's too full of holes to keep them warm. It challenges mediocrity, monotony, hopelessness, endurance - take my word for it, it's a good movie.

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."
Or not. Just see the movie.



P.S.: Grim would have hated this with all his heart.
P.P.S.:"We will always have Paris..." [Bad joke, I know.]

Sincerely Stinging - "Songs From The Labyrinth"

"Cleare or cloudie sweet as April showring,
Smooth or frowning so is hir face to mee,
Pleas'd or smiling like milde May all flow'ring,
When skies blew silke and medowes carpets bee,
Hir speeches notes of that night bird that singeth,
Who thought all sweet yet jarring notes outringeth."

Indeed, ladies and gentleman, the one and only Sting. Identically Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, him and his bedazzling talent paid us a visit tonight.
Released in 2006, his album "Songs from the Labyrinth" contains songs written by various medieval singers. Accompanied by Edin Karamazov's leute, he sung us all into awe.
You would never believe how, in an hour and fourty-five minutes, one man can mix his very enticing British wit, his sly handling of a leute, his mesmerising voice and fantastic originality to create what was just about the most wonderful concert I've ever seen.

To tell you the truth, I hadn't done much research about the new album, so I was basically walking into the concert hall with "eyes wide shut". I saw about six instruments propped up on an uncanny Persian rug, four anorexic microphones in the back and...that was about it. I expected an average concert, doomed by the fact that it was held indoors, marred by its lack of instruments and cursed by the amount of over-sung pieces of music about to be heard.
Never did I imagine that by stepping onto that stage, Sting will have single-handedly topsy-turveyed my idea of a concert.

The minute - no, the moment! - Sting sat down and spoke to us, in his mellifluous voice, of John Dowland, I was charmed, enchanted and blessed never to be able to take my eyes off him. John Dowland, one of the fifteenth century's foremost lutenists and composers, wiggled his melancholic tunes into Sting's playlist: Come, heavy sleep, Come again, Flow my tears, In the darkness let me dwell - all of them and more were revived, renewed and re-gifted to an unexpectant auditor: me. Each song had a story, each song was preceded by a fragment of one of John Dowland's letters to the Queen. His reading made my blood stand still, his singing painted this open-mouthed, idiotic grin on my face which I was not capable of getting rid of until well on my way home. I reached the conclusion that everything - and I'm not exaggerating - was impeccable. Even the lighting gave everything an intimate touch: soft copper colours hit against the sombre darkness of the singers' attires from every angle. Simple, but not plain.

What I saw, for once, on a concert stage, was the naked reality of the performer in front. A history lesson, a revival and renewal of the past, a wonderful idea brought to the world by two very modest men, a choir of young and talented singers - all without the useless paraphernalia involving a concert for someone as famous as Sting. Without a touch of tiredness in his voice, or in Edin karamazov's fingers, they were able to create such a warmly electric atmosphere than I have seen anyone do. By their spirit, making me enjoy every moment of the concert for its uniqueness, its grace, dignity and warmth.

It was well worth skipping my last class - which was, coincidentally, History -, I realised. I needed a walk in the "Fields of Gold".

"You'll remember me
When the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley."

P.S.: You see, that's where he was wrong, though I hate to admit it. I'll be keeping him, his voice, talent and spirit constantly, at the back of my head until I find a better sound. Or feeling.