Blue Saturday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0yT1_zMBwk

For many an hour I strayed through the maze of the forest, turning now to right and now to left, pacing slowly down long alleys of undergrowth, shadowy and chill, even under the midday sun, and halting beneath great oaks; lying on the short turf of a clearing where the faint sweet scent of wild roses came to me on the wind and mixed with the heavy perfume of the elder, whose mingled odour is like the odour of the room of the dead, a vapour of incense and corruption.

we live in a less odoriferous world don't we? maybe when there's nothing left to smell then history will really be over

Posted manys the pic of that world iirc, tho with added salt.

yeah the nature side of that world exists for sure in a bunch of places, I was thinking of the metaphors Machen uses there - "a vapour of incense and corruption", i don't know how much that calls to my memory so much as my imagination

tho i can remember smells associated with my grandparents' homes. what i remember from my own childhood home was you could tell if a stranger - usually the TV repairman tbh - had been in because it smelt a bit like smoke and outsiderness

i've been reading a lot about letting go - the need for it, how to do it. a lot of Buddhist-ish pieces. some unhelpful lists. a lot of unhelpful tbh.

i know i shd've started to let go. i know i shd let go. i might've started to. i don't really want to. i probably need to. probably. no, i know i need to.

letting go is like not being depressed. all you have to do is think about something else. divert yourself. forget what you care about. i'm getting good at half of this game. i turn up to work and most days i do a lot of stuff. i got a routine. i am useful.

the letting go i'm not so good at yet. 2 fucking years, that's not good, i shd've made a start by now. if i wasn't such a recidivist, or a navel-gazer, or a stone. i read all the right words about how to place things in a context and accept them for what they were. i think i know the difference between my curdled regrets and reality.

if i'd've cared half this much towards the end then maybe the end would never have happened.

so shamefully i wonder why it's getting worse, why i want it to be worse, why the dreams get more frequent, why the simple fact of buying a christmas present sets me reeling like 16 year-old idiot crush boy me. why i keep wondering what you're doing now and how you managed to cut me out so well.

last week i told myself i was marching forward into the possible like Kung Fu. this week i'm chasing every transparent hope like floaters in the corner of my eye knowing they're not really there but. and by typing out these shadowy feelings i get to pin them down, and watch them stop wriggling, and watch them die. a little.

lol i need to dig out some Lacan and take a cold look at myself

or better yet shut up and do my bloody nvq, i really can't get in the headspace for that. just realised i can't write nvq without writing nv oh the ironing

thread titles that are already admissions of defeat

i want to say so many things but they all sound corny

but I don't think that you would be you if you were already over it and moved on. y'know. you can only do as much as you will allow yourself to, and I think it's slow going because you need it that way, maybe you're not ready to let go completely yet. it's not wrong to feel that way. it fucks things up royally sure, but as long as you keep trying, even when you slip, eventually you'll find some peace.

<3

I want to too! Mostly though I would like to give Jim a very big hug.

Read earlier and didnt think anything to say would help, but yknow. luck.

if i'd've cared half this much towards the end then maybe the end would never have happened.

terrible & destructive thought & i urge you slay it with the knowledge that you cared as much as you did for good reasons

otm

Sr vague do you like it when ppl tell you keep your pecker up

Cause I do, it is my favourite iteration of such advice. Pecker. Excellent.

Has your pecker ever been photographed?

^^^originator of 'because of the wang'

wait wait

keep your pecker up is a saying?

lol

my dad calls people peckerheads

Dander, always dander.

Chin was ok til mine disappeared and i started to avoid refs as a general rule

No it's a crap thing to say unless you say pecker because who doesn't like pecker

the letting go i'm not so good at yet. 2 fucking years, that's not good, i shd've made a start by now.

If important thoughts/growth/being time/things have happened for you over those 2 years, then that was a necessary use of the time.

here's to a less blue new year

the ex wanted to "talk" last night and i encouraged him because he seemed wistful and i suppose i was vainly (in all senses) fishing for compliments or apologies, except it turned into a long list of the mistakes i made and the signs i missed. or ~ cbt mode on ~ maybe that is just my interpretation.

now he is out all day for his new lady's birthday and i am left here being uselessly regretful on a grey rainy day when all the shops are shut and there's nowhere to go and why do i do this

just venting, sorry to do it here

don't be daft, here is the place

New Year's Day is like an extra Sunday slapped down in the middle of the week

gonna adopt a Muppet-based counselling system for 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yaP_kc3y9w

Jesus christ what an ass

Death on the Nile (1978) has made me more sure than ever that the world is a dangerous place populated by lunatic stereotypes. But i am admittedly delicate frame of mind jist nae

Jesus christ tho what an ass

Now for a nightmare world of church, fascist and societal oppression, set to music. Ach my head.

xxp right, and whereas most Sundays you only need to ruminate on one past week and dread one future week at a time, for this bonus Sunday you get to do it for entire years or lifetimes at a time

to state the obvious, fuck that noise

un-xxp Muppets otm, good luck darragh

xp

wasnae sure if that was about The Sound of Music or Ireland for a second there

ah sweet, the Herzog verzh of Bad Lieutenant's on tonight

Well i think my background in one feeds my trepidation twards t'other

APS in all seriousness all the best but cbt bedamned that is intolerable behaviour imo and i dont care what else

xp watched that three times this year with unsuspecting compadres, reaction mixed but who cares rite

tbh in case i sounded saintly and put-upon i was trying a little to get the knife in back, but obv it didn't really work because who's the one who made the decision and who's the one who has other options now? right right

haven't seen BL, not sure i'm in quite the place today buuut

today seems apt, i am gonna nurture my inner Bad Lieutenant in 2014

also hell, it's not like fault mostly ever lies just one way, but rubbish behaviour is still rubbish behaviour

oh it's on after my bedtime, not that that really means anything in this day and age. some other time

further to today as Sunday-of-the-year, ought to be doing the work I didn't do last year because I was in Friday-of-the-year mode, "eh I can catch up on all this over the break and come back fresh" (hah)

on the other hand I have about 6000 unplayed games after the Steam winter sale, which might be a more expansive head-filler, more able to block up all the cracks that unwanted thoughts creep through

Jesus christ tho what an ass

Exams start on 6th btw but ive projects due too

I'd forgotten what a sadistic trick the post-Christmas exam is

darragh I have been enjoying the pictures on this property ad from your fine isle, a couple of them seem to indicate a slightly unusual living arrangement: http://www.daft.ie/searchsale.daft?id=447453

HNY in orbit

Argh, sorry to hear that, Spacecadet. In my experience, "talking after the fact" really isn't helpful for understanding what went wrong, and should be avoided on any level except "here are your things, pls can have my things" until possibly a year after the breakup. At least. There's that whole "but I neeeeeed clooooosure thing!!!!" which never really is, and is often only a chance to re-open stuff that was starting to heal.

However, I just kinda have to say... um, mileage may vary, but isn't "new ladyfriend" etc kind of stuff that really should wait until *after* you have definitely completely stopped living together? I mean, it sucks when you get stuck living together months after the breakup, but really. I don't know who initiated the breakup, but in my world, bringing a third party into that kind of awful situation is bad news all round, and reflects really badly on the person bringing a third person into an already awful situation. Sorry, just my 2p. I don't know your situation, but I would not be OK with that.

Not feeling very celebratory myself at the mo for various reasons, but yeah. My life is a month of Sundays right now, so what's one more.

At least there's coffee.

Take care BB. I know you're right, as i.o. was right several months ago too, and I am a terrible one for not doing the things I ought to. I tend to get carried away with useful thoughts of positive steps and build up an impossible fantasy of how I'll suddenly start doing all these amazing things and also, oh, effectively become someone else entirely, and then I file it all away in the "so not gonna happen" part of my brain, and go back to doing everything exactly like before.

I wished I could've sent you the sea I was reluctantly staying near over Christmas. Only Dorset but I saw a (small) sea arch (from a great distance) and thought of you.

At least there are reduced-to-clear Polish cherry jaffa cakes.

I don't want you to be someone else entirely, would miss the current you tbh. Your living sitch is basically a cancer tho. Get shut of him.

cherry jaffa cakes is a pretty decent consolation.

also what BB and io said re: washing that man right out of yr hair

In best Auntie Orbit style, pls consider that I have stroked your hair and called you "sweetie" and given you a speech about how things get warped from living w unhappiness and that lots of the perceptions that come from those times aren't the kind of "real" you want to hold onto. I am of course totally unqualified to dispense lyfe advice but that's never stopped me before so onward 2014.

(Dorset/hair-washing threads converge in sudden need to hear "Sheela-Na-Gig" by PJ Harvey, loud, on repeat)

A sea arch! Awesomeness! I'm so jealous.

Echoing what IO said: I don't want you to become a new person! How disorienting would that be! I want you to stay your own thoughtful self. But "your own thoughtful self in a non poisonous situation" would be a far preferable option. It's tough to get up the courage to do this huge revamp-your-life type decision. It seems like an almost impossible set of individual impossible things that together are in-the-realm-of-fantasy to overcome them. But, y'know, changing one little thing at a time is in the realm of scary-but-not-total-fantasy. And from experience, I know that once you have surmounted the seemingly insurmountable things, it's so much better on the other side, that you will say to yourself "why the hell didn't I do that thing months/years ago, it looks so easy from this side!" But, you do things when you are ready to do them, and not before.

(Says a woman who spent 4 fucking months getting up the courage to ring the boiler engineers, during the worst winter of 100 years or whatever, because: crippling social anxiety. So who am I to talk about not living in impossible situations that are making things worse? But really, things got so much better after I rang the boiler people and they sent someone, that I could not believe it had taken me so long and so much pain (literal pain, of freezing showers in February!) to do it. Except, yeah, I can still see the whole reasoning of why I couldn't. And though I can laugh at it now, the actual crazy-logic, wow, winter is still cold and my flat still has damp, but it is so much better with a boiler!)

But yeah. Sea arches. I am also being jealous of cherry jaffa cakes but then I just remembered that I have ginger biscuits. Oh yeah. Chocolate covered stem gingers.

Are those Sainsburys Taste the Difference, because they are the best

Sainsburys Taste the Difference all butter Belgian Dark Chocolate Coated Stem Ginger Cookies, oh yes! The actual gold standard of chocolate covered ginger biscuits.