Voy a cerrar el año en Castellano, con la cual quizá sea la frase que más cerca ha caído de la línea de flotación de mi estabilidad mental – al menos que pueda recordar:

A LA BUENA GENTE SE LA CONOCE EN QUE RESULTA MEJOR CUANDO SE LA CONOCE.

BERTOLT BRECHT

The sensation is coming back on a nightly basis now. It is louder and clearer than ever.

I have tried everything (OK, most things): not eating too late, gentle exercise, brutal exercise, no phones 2 hours before bed.

My brain bypasses such efforts effortlessly. Everything is low-key unfolding. In fact, everything is low-key: the anxiety, Sadness, guilt. These are not maniac episodes of despair, these are my new reality.

One gets used to the most extreme things with worrying casualness.

What is your excuse?

It’s all too familiar.

Gratuitous failure is just the first step of complex entitlement.

And let me clarify the above. There’s so many talented people in this world. You have most likely gone through the spasmodic motions of School and possibly University too, with little to no effort. Nothing really got in your way. Your choices allowed for that comfort. It’s only natural that when presented with actual challenge, you crumble and quit.

The world moves too fast. The world is unfair. Unhealthy.

I do indeed apologise, but I refuse to see privilege where there’s in fact hustle. Do other factors play a part? Of course they do, but those were not the unequivocal causers of your failure, while they are a critical part of my success-in-progress.

I choose to embrace my limitations but at the same time, I am taking no hostages. I put everything in the line. I made it work. Self-loathing (to be honest, I know no other way) kept me in check.

I hacked it.

There’s no shortcuts for self-realisation.

It’s taken about 4 hours for it to be unbearable.

This is the only thing I am sure about.

There is NOTHING more VIOLENT than the STRUGGLE of the DISSENTING.

11/08/2014 https://nosonhoras.com/2014/08/11/_sore/

We are living strange times.

For anyone reading this in a few years’ time, at the moment, there’s a global health crisis taking place. This means many things, and has many sides to it, but essentially, it has forced the majority of the world population to stay indoors as long as they can avoid going out.

This is taking it’s toll. Fortunately for myself – and, not that I need to clarify anything but I am thankful, every day, for my particular situation – I am doing just fine, however not all in life is being able to pay the bills and buy food.

It’s often that you can find yourself feeling lonely despite being in good company, and feeling sad, despite having every basic need in your life met to a high standard. However there’s always room to indulge – if you’d rather me use that word rather than any other, since for many I am privileged and to an extent, I should not complain – in some good ol’ misery.

I am finding myself go down that path, as many times before. I remember the first times that I was forced to run down that corridor of filth. It was frightening. It has taken many shapes since, not all of them horrible, some of them luring, others simply disregardable. But exhausting nonetheless.

From the comfort of my privilege I can sit back and mentally – how else? – walk The Downhill Path slowly, as if I was taking a pleasurable Bank Holiday stroll at first, that gets progressively darker and darker, until there’s no path anymore more. The track disappears sudden and dramatically and opens into a black, dark pitched void with no End.

When you first get there, the feeling is unbearable. It’s a cold – freezing – place, but you can feel your chest and cheeks burn. Your bones and joints ache as if you were old. In fact, you are aging, at a speed, unavoidably.

Later, you start getting used to it. Not everyone does, of course, and this ties nicely with the concept of my privileged overview – as long as one can have a secondary perspective on one’s self – because some never get used to this. Why would you, if you could avoid it. After all, the whole thing is part of a big self defence mechanism. But I got used to it. It takes longer for you to notice that you got there because you are now used to the cold. Maybe you are addressing the walk with some external help, cathalist, inhibitor. You name it. This also makes it too late when you finally realise that you are back at the void.

But also, the walk back becomes easier. Most of the times, anyways. And still, with this notion of privilege, that self-awareness that is really not a double edged sword but a regular sword that you are holding the wrong way, you eventually find that it doesn’t always end in there. From your advantageous position you can scout around and look for the Floor Traps.

The Floor Traps are in most cases links to your memory. They all come in many shapes and colours, and are not immediately obvious. But when you get to where I feel I am in life, in time, in age, in history, you will start finding them, as your comfort allows for you to indulge in that lazyness, that knowledge that you have several safety nets under yourselve and that you could go for a pretty long time without due care. And I finally understood where these traps lead, although I have not been brave or foolish enough to go down them into the abyss, following the creaky ladders that surely lead to the true, very Bottom. I have always pulled back in time, gone out to get some sunlight, taken a day off, napped – score a bit of time out to reflect, react and head back up the path before it was too late.

But I know the Traps are there. I know where they lead. As I type these lines, I can feel the very concept of them weight down the back of my eyeballs, blacken my face and fog my sight, in complete silence and loneliness.

I just know.

Today, during an otherwise shit commute to work, I’ve randomly remembered where I was 10 years ago. It would have been impossible for me to foresee my achievements, mistakes and changes.

There’s something similar about it, despite it being a zillion miles away. It’s a time for struggle, but only temporary. It’s a time for pushing my limits, but being kind to myself.  It’s a time for change, but only for the better.

Here we go again. Let’s do what we do best.

La lista de nombres y lugares es interminable. Los conceptos, ideas adaptadas al mercado de lo alternativo, o clásico, u oscuro, son éxitos comerciales en sí mismos. Cada gusto tiene su propio medio de difusión personalizado, lo que lo convierte en algo muy lucrativo hoy en día, con virtualmente toda la humanidad siendo capaz de acceder a esta nueva oferta.

Yo me callo y escucho, no tengo ni la menor idea de lo que está ocurriendo. Cada vez más a menudo. Mi mayor miedo es no dar tiempo a la inspiración para crear cosas nuevas, con tanta rutina y tanta dependencia, mientras de un modo u otro este constante bombardeo de oferta de bienes de consumo consigue siempre llegar a su destino.

Me aterra admitir que el bombardeo propagandístico en todo ámbito del arte cala más hondo que el esfuerzo o fuerza de voluntad para interpretar el propio medio del arte, adoptándose posturas cómodas en dicho consumo en vez de cuestionar TODO.

Eso es el ARTE. La necesidad de poner en tela de juicio toda idea preconcebida y ser capaz de volcar ese pánico constante a un medio físico, el que sea.

When I was a child, I was certain that when I grew older I wouldn’t change my views in the world.

Of course it didn’t happen like that, and actually developing my own way to see the world according to my new experiences has always been one of my main focuses in life.

You would imagine that those memories and experiences then have marked a reasonably relevant footprint and, if anything, that I have learned from them.

However what at a given time looks like everlasting pain, is difficult to recall exactly. Who would want to? Your memory refuses to accurately record trauma. It’s a self defense mechanism, to avoid permanent damage.

This is why, every time I sink to the bottom, it’s not until I’ve hit bedrock that I realise what happened. Before getting to the bottom it’s all wondering and mental replay. Torture, really. Unavoidable, craved torture.

On the other hand, once you are deep down in the seabed of your shivers, the only thing left to do is propelling yourself back to the surface.

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