Careful Ben, don't jinx yourself

For the longest time this blog was me musing about what I thought/imagined of love, friendships, death God, depression, and the bipolar. A few months ago the depression just vanished. Not a recession like previous times, or an ominous dark cloud always hanging over my psyche waiting to pounce when I least expect it, nah, it's gone.

With it went the neurotic nature, and my memories and personality got a reboot and reverted to the pre-depressive state. "Good news everyone!" Right? A big hell yes and a small no....
The yes is for so many things, full control over my mind, I'm happy again, the love for life is back and all inhibitions are gone! And that is all that matters! The appreciation for life!

The downside is for some reason I'm always too busy to do what I love a lot of the time. To gain control back over my mind I had to cut down impulsiveness and keep my mind really busy away from emotions and other distractions. I stopped writing, no poetry for almost two(?) years, no creative writing. Still haven't recovered the flare for those yet. I have months cut out to recondition my body and discipline it again, reflexes that need to be conditioned back or overridden.

Analogy time; in the temple that is my body, mind and soul, I spent over 2 years trashing everything I'd collected over the years and misplacing them, and introducing junk I don't really need. Now that I got the control room cleaned up nicely with a few knobs to be polished and a few bits of furniture to replace, I have to throw out most things I collected in those two years as i restore the rest to their respective places. Simple reason being, they were collected by a different person that is now dead. Somebody i no longer acknowledge.

Anyway, I plan to publish all posts in the drafts that I removed from the web because of the content, like The Razor. Wrote this one sometime in 2010, not sure the month but I was in a really really dark place at the time, the worst depth of depression where a semblance of control could only be achieved by transferring my thoughts to words. There are about 50 posts in my draft that need to be vetted before publishing. Some I'm not sure will ever be finished but I'll publish nevertheless.

The contents in future posts will continue to be my thoughts in my "new" life and maybe I'll try my hand at poetry and creative writing again, but the personal details will be a bit more obscure as the web has become more hostile over the past two years with anonymous blogs purely intended at malice coming up. Guess if I can spare a few fucks about such bloggers I'll pen a few words describing the bitter taste they leave in my mouth.

So, that's pretty much it! Needed to break the silence after months of not writing anything here. The writing flow is among the things I'm working on recovering, don't fret. Keep it here on my yen where i try to keep it real, even when I'm dreaming [you sound like a broken TV station - Editor].

The razor

In my place i have this razor. I've had it for months. Its dark in colour and amazingly sharp.
I once nicked myself with it and due to the sharpness i never felt a thing, just blood and a thin sliver of separated skin. I know i should get rid of it, not because there is any risk of tetanus or hiv, but because of the shadow.

I really don't have any creative name for my bipolar and depression. It is just a cold shadow that engulfs my soul whenever it feels like it. Makes me hate myself and my life. Most of the time i don't even know when it comes in, i just find myself over a flyover over a road willing myself not to jump a few milliseconds ahead of an oncoming vehicle.

Death is a close friend, keeping tabs on when i'll do it. Always hovering and waiting. He must have gotten excited that day i nicked myself in the dance of death. A game of chess with my life. I came to with the razor having broken skin, albeit slightly. This close and they'd both have their way.
Sometime i think death doesn't want me to go to heaven. He won't take me the way he does others, an accident, a sickness or even murder. He knows i know the exact spot on my wrist, where there is the ever so slight pulsating of the life flowing beneath.

But he knows i love life and i love; the only barrier between us. He's had a taste of my blood and together they convince me to take the easy road.

As i walk the road of life, i hear their voices sung to the tune of the razor.

Meat!

I rarely re-post other people's work but this one is worth a read.

The premise is two non-biological aliens discussing contact with human beings.

A dialogue by Terry Bisson 
From "Alien/Nation".

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars."

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I 'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat."

"Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea the life span of meat?"

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

"No brain?"

"Oh, there is a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat!"

"So... what does the thinking?"

"You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Finally, Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"So what does the meat have in mind."

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the universe, contact other sentients, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat?"

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there? Anyone home?' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"

"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear, or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say?" `Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the universe."

"That's it."

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you have probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

"And we can marked this sector unoccupied."

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotation ago, wants to be friendly again."

"They always come around."

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe would be if one were all alone."