It's January 3rd 2011, I'm just returned home after a few years living abroad, and I'm some weeks away from making one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make in my life, that decision being to end the relationship I'd been in for the past five years. It was mainly over in all but deed, but it still was a painful thing to go through. But on that January day I found myself unable to sleep, and took to the streets to make my way somewhere - anywhere - but here. In the pre-dawn chill I looked inward and outward, ahead and behind, and felt completely lost. Making my way downtown, lost in thought, I soon decided to hop on a train that would take me to a small city by the sea. Upon reaching it, I meandered for a while, taking in the bitter cold that stung me in the face, until I came upon a tiny beach - no more than an alcove, really.
I sat down in the sand for a moment, as small waves lapped upon the shores, and this tranquil rhythm brought me an enormous sense of peace. Soon thereafter I took off my shoes, rolled up my pants, and waded into the cold water. As my feet plunged into the shallow waters, I was at once taken aback by how cold it was, and yet I did not flinch, and took some more steps into the calm, chilly water. The sun reflected upon the surface and its light seemed to dance like molten gold. As I stood there looking down at my feet in the water, somewhere inside me a glimmer of hope blossomed, knowing that whatever storm came my way, I'd be brave enough to weather it.
It's December 25th 2013 and I'm going through the worst year of my life : barely six months before I was having the best year of my life, engaged to be married to one of the great loves of my life, and though my job left me feeling deeply unfulfilled, I knew that I could move on from it and to better things whenever I so chose. Just before summer, though, and in the span of a week, all of that was gone. Whatever defences I'd managed to build up throughout my life came tumbling down, and I fell into a chasm from which it would take me a very long time to crawl out from. In the meantime, I found myself broken, broke, desolate, all but destitute. For the first time in my life I had nothing, no money, no hopes, I wholly depended on my family, and I couldn't even afford the smallest christmas gift for my son. This alone broke me further, and little did I know that things wouldn't get any easier.
It's close to new year's eve last year, and I took stock of not only the past year, I also looked back on the years from 2014 onwards, a period of time that was at the same time a new era for me, a time where I managed to eke out a new life amidst the darkness wherein I dwelled, and also a time where I - ever trying - ever failed at my very many atempts at creating relationships - lasting ones, at that. On top of all this, I had a number of issues regarding my health, both on a mental and physical level. And if in some cases I followed up on those issues and sought the necessary treatment, in many other cases I just let it slide. I delayed it all, thinking that I could maybe eventually get it all sorted out. And so I decided that this year that now approaches its end would be the year where I'd get it all sorted, I promised to myself that my health would be my number one priority. I'd outlined a number of initiatives to implement and follow in my life, and yet... I did nothing. I'm not ascribing fault to the year we all went through, atypical as it may have been. No, all inaction, all the choices I made and did not make are on me. No one put a gun to my head and made me follow this course of action. So many promises... so much nothingness acomplished.
It is now, because it's always now, and as I look to the coming year, I can already acknowledge some of the many difficulties I am bound to face. So I make no promises this year. Instead I choose hope. I hope that next year I finally learn to treat myself with the kindness I deserve from my own self. I hope I can get some - or most - of my shit in order, and I hope that I somehow manage to get my priorities sorted. I hope that vision of me of which I dreamed of just recently can again surface in the coming months. I know what I have to do, and I hope I have the strength and the wherewithal to reach those distant shores. I hope my mind allows me the impetus needed to take these hard steps, and I hope I can understand what rewards lie at the end of that far rainbow. I hope I can do so much more than I did this year, I hope I can discover new music and I hope I can find the patience to finish books again and I hope I can find the mindset to watch some of the stuff I've got on hold. I hope I can write more here, and I hope I start writing down all those ideas I sometimes come up with and think I'll remember then later, only to completely forget them.
I hope, I hope, I hope. Let's see if hoping leads me to doing.
"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
[This is a recurring dream I had these past two nights. If anywhere in the multiverse I commited this crime, I deserve to suffer in hell for all eternities to come.]
V and me were returning from a day at the beach, our first since we started dating some weeks prior. We were on the train, returning to the city, and as it crossed the bridge she looked out the window, taking in the last light of a sun that slowly set in the distance. It had been a happy day, if uneventful at that. I guess that's a good thing, all things considered. We'd not stayed long at the beach, a few hours only, but I can still picture every moment we spent laying in the warm sand, our eyes not escaping each other's. I can still recall the heaving of her bosom, as it rose and fell, when we sat reading in the shade, and my eyes wandered from the page to her. I can still taste the juice of the grapefruits she was eating when I stole a kiss from her. That's how in love with her I am.
She gazes longingly out the window, her eyes bearing a certain sadness we knew not to speak of, at least not now. As she sat there, her hands on her knees, my hand reached out to hers, and she made no motion to hold it. It wasn't as if she hadn't acknowledged it, or refused it or dismissed it, she was somewhere far away, lost in a reverie that almost transported her out of her body. I'd come to know them these past few weeks, and knowing why she'd retreat into her mindscape sometimes, I slowly learned how to navigate those waters. I let my hand linger on top of hers for a few moments longer, and as I was about to remove it, she gripped it gently, and with a shy smile I saw her return to me. She ran a hand through her hair and nuzzled close to me. I could tell she was tired, though the day had not extracted a heavy toll, we were both of us near sleep as the train lulled us back home.
I was listening to her breath as her head lay on my shoulder, feeling the warmth of her, feeling the nearness of her, taking in the sacred silence between us. 'Hey V', I said, and she lifted her head, slowly, carefully, and brushed off the sleep off her eyes before looking at me and replying 'Hey'. I smiled at that and then followed that with 'can I ask you something?'.
'Sure', she said. Nervously, I asked her 'do you like me?'. At this she paused for a moment, a very brief moment only, and exhaling deeply, she held my hands and said, 'Do you mean am I in love with you? Do you mean if I love you?'. I didn't - guess I maybe couldn't - reply but she continued, 'Not at this moment in time. I don't know if I ever will. But I don't know if I ever won't, either.'
Deflated, my hand started to slip from hers. She gripped them tighter and looked deeply at me. 'But I want you to know that you're the one I chose to be with, and I hope that we somehow make something out of this whole mess. I'm choosing you. Ok? And you know we have to take this slowly. You know that. You know why.'
'Ok', I said. 'But what if I fall in love with you? What if I do love you? Where does that leave us?'. A sort of intense silence fell momentarily between us while she pondered my words. Then she pursed her lips, her face brightening slightly, and she said to me 'Then I hope you'll show me your love and make me feel loved. Maybe that's how love grows between us. Maybe we grow stronger together.'
I don't know what anxiety is to other people but I am told it's not ever exactly the same for anyone of us but I know what anxiety is to me and it's so many different things it's not only the feeling of constant exhaustion or feeling incapable of getting out of bed it's not only not going to the gym because I do not want anyone to look at me or crying myself to sleep no anxiety is also getting out of bed deciding I am going to have a good day and then going for a long walk and feeling ok with the world but then as I turn a corner I realize, shit, I have an ex that works near here and I hope I don't bump into her because I don't want her to see how much I let myself go how fat I am how I now have a hobo beard how broken my voice sounds and though we never loved each other we liked each other just fine and we had great sex and how we ate sushi and drank wine and as I think all this of course I bump into her and she's visibly fazed she never saw me like this but recognition is semi instant and we stand there for like half a second not knowing what to do not knowing what to say and I break the ice and say Hi Izzy and she says hi and we kiss each other on the cheek how are you, I ask, saying that she is looking good (and she is) and she smiles, and says things are good, and she says I look good too (which is a lie) and I smile, and say things are the same as they always are and then an awkward silence filled with so many memories and I tell her I really have to go that it was good seeing her and I tell her that it is good to know she is happy we say goodbye and I make a mental note never to go that way again because that is also what anxiety is to me.
What a strange title for a post, right? And all this based on a probably very personal Mandela effect I experienced when I first saw the movie. Now, the movie premiered in the US in August 1986, so that meant that either the movie premiered here later in the year or maybe even in 1987, so I'd have been either 9 or 10 years old when I saw it first. It terrified me, and though back then I loved horror movies, mainly of the slasher variety, nothing could've prepared for the kind of horror I saw here. I don't think I'd ever seen a movie whose horror element so deeply focused on the body mutations as much as this one did, so for years afterwards it lingered in my memory, and though by the time the sequel got released I was far less impressionable, a couple of things remained with me, one of them being very vivid memories of some of the mutations Jeff Goldblum's character went through - including the bit where his teeth start falling off - and the other being a very detailed image of his naked physique, especially of his genitalia.
I can picture him still, lean and built, very well defined and contoured, a hairless, smooth body, and his dick - well, I guess it wasn't that different from many others - but... in my mind, not only was his body somewhat grey-ish, but especially I have this recollection of his junk being grey hued too.
And this, as a kid, made me feel quite disgusted, and I developed a distaste for Jeff Goldblum, so much so that I wouldn't be able to appreciate any movie he was in for years after.
Well, there's the thing right there, about, erm, his thing : at no time since then, in all the times I've rewatched this movie, can you actually see his dick. And as far as I can look up online, NO ONE EVER has seen it in this context, and the closest there is to this is a bit in the movie where Brundlefly (the gestalt creature comprised by both the titular fly and main character Seth Brundle, played by Jeff Goldblum) decides that, having transcended humanity, he has no need for some dangly bits, and he removes them? and keeps them in a jar in the toilet? Something like that.
As someone who's very much a not a dick fan, I'd rather not have this (probably) imaginary image in my mind, but I'm guessing it'll be there for as long as I live.
It's not very often that I do this, especially not these days, but sometimes, sometimes, I forget and dare to hope, even if for the briefest of moments, and then, then, reality slaps me in the face with a ten ton hammer.
There'll be more, and sooner rather than later. I've been feeling somewhat depleted since returning from Switzerland, and though I tried to write a couple of different posts, those'll be for later.
For now, Terry Pratchett said it best, and I'll leave his words here.
Venus shone brightly in the very early hours of the morning as I made my way to the airport. I'd soon be boarding a flight to Geneva, and I'd decided to walk to the airport, some forty minutes away from where I live. As I wended my way there, I got lost in thought, thinking about the last time I'd gone to Switzerland, back in 2012, and the never realized promise of that planned trip, and then the outcome of my time spent there. All the while, images flashed through my mind of times I'd been there before as well. In no time, I was near the airport, and the first wisps of dawn began to appear; soon the day would break, though I'd not be there to witness it. Maybe it was the nerves getting the better of me, maybe it was everything that had been in my mind the weeks before, but I caught no shut-eye that night, and not very long after I sat down in the plane, I fell asleep, sleeping through most of the flight.
It was rather unenventful, though on the odd occasion I woke up, I ended up thinking about the plane crashing, and wondering about whether or not it would be a quick thing, and if I'd suffer a lot before dying. Nice, happy thoughts.
So, only carry on luggage meant that I left the airport fairly quickly after landing, and soon I'd find myself on the bus that would leave me in central Geneva, Cornavin to be more precise. The bus stop was in front of a record store, and it took all I had not to walk in. Must fight temptation. (I actually managed not to go in any of the record stores I went by, a small win for me.)
When I'd previously stayed in Geneva, I always stayed at Le Grand-Saconnex, a municipality located to the west of the city centre, and I'd always make my way down either by bus or by walking there, so in due time my feet started to get a feel for the city. Time did not erode this feel, and as soon as I stepped into Cornavin I knew exactly where to go, and how to get there. I was only going to stay in Geneva for a few hours, though, before I left for Nyon, so I had to make time count. I crossed the river Rhône, walking around the city, taking in the view, before I sat down for a wee while. It was really hot, and me being me, I forgot to bring those Swiss Francs I still had from my last visit, and I didn't want to pay steep exchange fees, not right then, anyway, so I didn't even buy a bottle of water.
Eventually, there I was, making my way to the Parc des Bastions, littered with people exercising - which made me feel very aware of my non-ideal shape - and with people lazing in the shade, the tranquil trill of birds filling the air with song. A breeze blew gently, abating the heat that made its presence felt. I sat down for a while, resting my weary feet and taking in the scenery.
Reformation Wall
Not very far from there would be my next stop - Plainpalais. A somewhat momentous place for me, once upon a time. It is, after all, the location of that fateful last goodbye, but not only sad memories came to mind, I was also filled with memories of wintry days gone by, drinking warm mint tea and wolfing down slices of quiche. I stood there, now on a summer's day, then in a winter's day. For a small while I coexisted in both the days, then and now, winter and summer. I shook my head, and moved on. Time to head back to Cornavin and catch the train to Nyon. As I was leaving Plainpalais, I went by a street that I'd been by any number of times in the past, and to which I never payed enough attention. However, this time something seemed to pull at me, and my gaze turned towards it. I crossed the street, and realized that a door, semi askew, on a walled area was actually the entrance to a graveyard. Now me, I am not the biggest fan of graveyards, and yet into this one I went. And how I never ever noticed this place before is beyond me. I ventured inside, partly expecting to enter one of those graveyards that's chock full of graves and mausoleums, and yet what I found inside was the opposite of that. To be sure, there were maybe hundreds of graves and monuments to the departed, but rather than the sombre and musty fixtures one would normally find, I was greeted, so to speak, by a wide green area with the graves strewn thereby. A pleasant place to be, you'd find people engaged in menial conversation, sitting in benches, or lounging by the shade of the trees. I stayed there for a small measure of time, so my feet and legs could catch a much needed rest, and afterwards I'd be on my way to Nyon proper.
The graveyard by daylight
Arriving in Nyon, a smaller city than Geneva, a city that I don't know quite as well but of which I know enough to make my way around, I walked around the area for a bit, before making my way to H + Z's place. Last time I'd been here was in 2012, and since then they'd moved to a different place, though not very far from where they lived. Z welcomed me heartily, and after a spot of freshening up - it was very hot and I'd been walking for hours - I excused myself and slept for a bit until H arrived.
Nyon is a quiet place, or mostly so, with people living a fairly content village sort of life. It has a peace unto itself that I find endearing, and by lake Geneva you can dip your feet in the water, or even go for a swim. Me, I prefer to listen to the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore. This was a peace I needed, a peace I could not find back home. And if only temporarily, my soul feels lighter, my souls feels cleansed.
It's almost time to head one, one last day of tranquility before the maelstrom that awaits me back home annihilates these few days of peace. I haven't left yet, but I already miss it here.
This is how things go - one moment I'm feeling completely at a loss about what to write here, then the next my mind can't stop buzzing from all the thoughts I want to write down here. And today, I'll be writing about a particular subject matter that I guess I never really wrote much about, or wrote about at all. To be fair, I have written a bit about videogames here and there - but I don't think I ever wrote about 'The Legend of Zelda'.
Ah, but before that, let's begin at the, well, beginning and work from there, shall we? We first have to go back to 1991. We could have gone a bit earlier than that, but when it comes to what really matters here, '91 is the year to go to. So in '91 a number of important things happened, chief among them my parents finally separating. It had been in the coming for a while now, but early '91 - I'd say either January or February - was the moment when it all fell apart, when we all started falling apart, and we had to leave the life we had behind us. We moved back to Lisbon - to the place where I still live to this day - and though the gates of hell would be opening some eighteen months hence, I can't help but think of that year's summer as a very pleasant, almost idyllic one. We'd moved from having that terrible presence in our lives - my father - to being in a place where we were mostly happy, and a spring that led to a summer that led to a christmas where things held much promise. That summer, in particular, was a summer where for reasons I can no longer remember now, we actually had two working VCRs, which meant very regular visits to our local video store so we could copy those movies we rented into other tapes. It was also the summer where my grandmother got my mother a car for her birthday, a Citroen Dyane - this teeny tiny car where somehow five people snuggly fit in. I have memories of being inside that car, and you could even pull a bit of the top down so that the warm summer breeze became almost like a gentle, refreshing gale as we drove around. These memorable summer days would extend their sense of well-being and of a better future into christmas that year, and that was also the year when the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) finally arrived in these shores. There was nothing else I wanted for christmas other than this, but man - was this thing expensive. I can't remember just how much it was going for, but I don't think it was cheaper than a current gen console, and if you adjust for inflation, then it does become even more expensive. And yet... somehow I convinced both my mother and grandmother to get it - I might even suggested that because it came with three games - 'Super Mario Bros.', Tetris' and 'Nintendo World Cup', it could be a christmas gift for all the family because it had a game for all of us. Not sure if my siblings loved that idea, though. Be that as it may, my life long love for all things Nintendo began that day. These three games that came bundled with the system, though, provided a number of hour of fun out of the box - 'SMB' was a delightful, innovative platformer romp, 'Tetris' is still my favourite puzzle game of all time, and 'NWC' was... well, it was something, all right. I've never played a 'football' game quite like that one.
As with everything, I eventually came to want more games but a) new games were also very, very expensive, and b) I didn't actually know anyone else who also had a NES so I could borrow games off. And because things still weren't as bad as they'd start to get, from late summer of '92 onwards, I somehow managed to save up to buy a game, and there were no shortage of games I wanted to get - 'Super Mario Bros. 2', 'Faxanadu', 'Burai Fighter', or 'Nemesis' being some of those that I wanted desperately, and would eventually get. And then, on the fateful day I was to make a purchase of a brand new game for me, as I stood looking at the display where all the games were, something catches my eye. I knew the name, of course. But there was something different here. Something... special. So before I go into that, let me tell you that NES game boxes were usually rather simple affairs - there are the famous original black boxes, which include an image of real in-game action, so you actually see what you get, there are the absolutely horrid covers - 'MegaMan 1', for example, is infamous for being a nightmarish mess - and then there were those covers that commanded your attention - 'Castlevania' or the aforementioned 'Faxanadu' being some of the very best.
And yet... yet nothing compared to the cover of 'The Legend of Zelda'. A square, silver shield, against a golden backdrop. The shield, quartered : A key, on the upper right side. On the lower left, a lion, rampant, facing a heart on the lower right. And in the upper left, the shield reveals a flash of gold, that of the cartridge itself. I'd made up my mind then and there that this would be coming home with me. Naturally, as soon as I got home, I flipped open the lid of my NES, shoved my new game inside it, and turned the power on. It took all of two seconds for me to fall in love with it, with the classic Zelda tune playing in 8-bit glory. I then press start, and enter my hero's name - it will always be Link, though it's completely up to you what name you decide to give to your champion - and as soon as my character appears in that very first screen I'm faced with my very first interaction with a non-playable character (NPC) who gives me some life altering advice : 'It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.', thus giving me my first sword. So began my first trek into Hyrule, its premise a simple, yet utterly classic one : in a world consumed by chaos, an unassuming hero rises up to the challenge and drives the darkness away, rescuing the princess in the process. Oh, do not for a single moment think that Princess Zelda is your typical damsel in distress. Far from it, she's a fully realized character in her own right, often providing the hero of its age with much needed assistance, because neither of them would not be able to do it alone. So off I go and... well, I clearly had no idea what to do next, so I started exploring, something that the game actively encouraged. Very early on I found myself facing far stronger enemies than me - I want to say they might have been the dreaded 'Lynels' but I might be wrong. So : if you wander around without the proper items, without being somewhat levelled up, without any kind of recovery medicine, unless you know the game inside out and have some serious skill, then things are going to get tough... so you somehow have to start making sense of where to go and what to do. And let me tell you one thing about this game - at the time I played it, it seemed absolutely massive. Not only were there tons of zones to explore, there were secret areas littered throughout the whole overworld. Fortunately, the game's instruction booklet did provide you with enough info to get you going and it also gave you a map to the game, minus some secret areas that you'll have to figure out for yourself. In time, I came to complete this game, and I've returned it very often indeed - I've actually replayed it a few months back. With this, my introductory plunge into Zelda games, I'd come to follow somewhat closely this saga throughout the years. I never played the second game - 'The Adventure of Link' - but the third entry into the saga is only of my all-time favourite games - 'The Legend of Zelda : a Link to the past'. It takes everything the first entry did that was awesome to begin with, and dialled them up to a thousand. Again, this was a game whose overworld was absolutely gigantic, itself spanning not one, but two whole worlds : the light world and the dark world.
My next Zelda game would only come a number of years later, when I was first living in London. The people who I lived with had a Nintendo 64 and one of the games they had was 'The Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time', which, again, elevated everything done in the previous entries to an absurd degree, and that game - yes, Water Temple and all - is still as close to perfection as I can imagine. Everything there is just so right, it's just such an overall amazing experience, and every few years I return to it. And then... then I didn't play a single Zelda game until a couple of years ago. Oh, it's not like I didn't want to, it's just that I didn't actually have any of the then current consoles Nintendo had. What with 'Final Fantasy VII' on the original Playstation, I actually became a Sony consumer, though I kept pace with what Nintendo were doing.
And what they were doing with Zelda looked absolutely amazing to me, in their myriad platforms - both handheld and at home. I confess that there were a couple of games along the way where I nearly buckled and bought a GameCube or a Wii, but I ended up not getting any of those systems.
But during summer 2018, I gave in. For the past few months before that, I'd been immersing myself into a lot of Zelda lore, mainly through Dark Horse's wonderful series of artbooks that provided an in-depth look on the history of the games - all of them -, on the art of the series, on all the artifacts and characters throughout all games, and on the history of the multiple timelines of this wonderfully realized world called Hyrule. I decided to get the Nintendo Switch so I could a) get a current gen console that would allow me to play the most recent entry - 'Breath of The Wild' and b) play all those games I'd missed out on, a few standing out in particular : 'Skyward Sword', 'The Wind Waker' and 'Twilight Princess'. But what do you know? None of these games could be played on the new console. What a strange thing. So I was stumped for a while there. But I did find out that you could play all these games in the previous gen console, the Wii U. And so I went and bought one, and a copy of the HD remaster of 'Twilight Princess' to go with it. It was something I had to do, I felt antsy, I felt like the time had finally arrived.
My experience with 'Twilight Princess' - the only title I'd actually buy - was an amazing one. It's closer to 'Ocarina of Time in terms of playability and feel, again touching upon a theme that's common to pretty much all Zelda games - a duality between worlds, timelines, seasons, light and dark, man and animal. I loved playing the hell out of it, though some bits I found excruciatingly hard. And shortly after that, I shelved the console, and didn't play it again. Sometime last year - or was it this year? - I finally played 'The Wind Waker', a highly divisive entry when released because of its art direction - instead of moving to the realism that began with 'Ocarina of Time', the art was far more cartoony, and the game was derided even before it was out. And guess what? It turned out to be one of the very best in the series. It's a gorgeous game, with simple, yet refined mechanics, a sprawling storyline that requires you to sail all over the worldmap, and a memorable final fight with Ganon, the main baddie of the series. Though I actually had to play this game on my PC via an emulator, it still played beautifully. Another entry I played was the handheld exclusive title 'The Minish Cap', a game I knew next to nothing about, but I ended up loving it a lot. It's a far smaller title, to be sure, but it's still a very good Zelda game.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago and I suddenly had a hankering for some Zelda again. So out comes the ol' Wii U, and what with me searching the web for walkthroughs and tips, and all the searches I did when I was trying to know more about the RG350 I wrote about some time back, I ended up finding videos on how to mod the Wii U, via the Homebrew app. I did me some research, downloaded all I needed, and as soon as I tried to see if things had gone as planned I get an instant fail. Welp, back to the drawing board. I watch the tutorials again and again, make sure that I'm following all the steps, and then I try again. 'What do you mean it's not working?? Sigh. Let's try this again. Ah, I see. I have to unzip the file to this file here, and not to that one there. Sure. Sure'.
And what do you know? Modded Wii U with all the *ahem* free games I could want, all them Zeldas I'd yet to play. So I start with 'Twilight Princess' again - loved it immensely, and all the things I found super hard the first time were now perfectly doable. The same for the HD remaster of 'The Wind Waker', playing it again with my original playthrough still so fresh in my mind helped me enjoy it all over again. And then? Then I wanted to play 'Skyward Sword', but that'll have to wait. I need to actually get some special motion controllers in order to play the game. So what did I do? I moved on to 'Breath of the Wild'.
Ah.
Man, man, man... one thing about all the Zelda games that I've previously played is that the learning curve is rather forgiving. It's actually a fairly easy process to just get from place to place and adapt to it and its surrounding threats. Obviously, some paths can lead you to secret danger, but that's not a common thing that can happen. This one right here... damn. That learning curve is a rather steep one. I got killed a number of times early on in the game because everywhere I went I was being tested, and rather than choosing subterfuge I opted for the heads on confrontation. That didn't, as expected, go down really well. So I eventually decided to go for the sneaky route, sometimes going the long way around an enemy encampment, or some roaming monster, to get to where the map showed my destination was. All the while I was taking in the world around me, finding it to be larger than any other game, everywhere I went seemed to just go on and on and on - and then I realized I was still in the first area, the game itself having a number of other areas, some even larger than this first one. On I plodded, making my way across the lands, levelling up and tackling the shrines, finally moving on to the Divine Beasts, getting the Master Sword, and I'm now taking care of the sidequests before confronting Calamity Ganon.
However, let me tell you something about this game : I don't think I've ever played a game that so sparked this sense of wonder in me as much as this one does. I'm about a week into the game, and though much of the main quest is done, there's still so much to do and to explore, and so much of what I am seeing - from the northern lights to severe thunderstorms, to life-threatening bogs and quagmires to far away islands that you can only glimpse from the shore, to massive statues and razed battlefields, to deep, yawning chasms to deserts where the garb you have equipped can make the difference - has left me completely dropping my jaw. I am almost always in awe of something on screen, be it either some new plateau I discover, or even when I'm, well, running away from those pesky Guardians - I'm not yet a believer in my ability to destroy a single one of them - this game has so much beauty in it, it's so carefully and lovingly constructed that sometimes I just climb up a mountain and let (in-game) days pass just so I can see the sun setting and rising.
And the physics of this game are insane! One of the things you're able to do is slowing down time if you pull out your bow and shoot an arrow if you're jumping or gliding from a great height, but if you want to pull off the same move from the ground, you can shoot a bomb arrow into the ground, quickly deploy the paraglider and then ride the updraft so you can achieve that vantage point on the higher ground. All this in quick succession, in a couple of seconds, makes for a graceful dance of death, raining down righteous hellfire on them bastard Hinoxes. On the gliding I just spoke of, it's such a thrilling thing, to jump off the highest cliff, and to paraglide down to the ground; or alternatively, you can jump on your shield, and literally sled down a mountain.
I'm already hopelessly in love with this entry... I foresee dozens of hours yet to be poured into this game, and somewhere in the near future a sequel to Breath of the Wild will be coming out. At that time, though, I'll have to really go for a new console in order to play it. I'm eagerly awaiting that day, though.
[So I woke up today to the sound of the alarm blaring, and a reminder on my phone that today's the anniversary of our first meeting, because of course this is an old reminder on an old backup of an old phone, and it'd obviously pop up today, though I don't think I actually remembered the date at all. But I do remember that first day, tentative, testy, tetchy, the both of us. Fourteen long years ago, and yet it doesn't seem an enough number of years, because I feel I've lived at least two full lifetimes since then. Had we known what we'd come to know, I wonder, would we have called it quits then and there?]
(You're the truth, not I.)
And then, because these things tend to be somehow linked, I woke up with a melody in my head. Not a familiar one, but one I knew I had listened to before - but where? when? I tried to hum it, and it hung there, just at the edge of recognition. I couldn't put words to the melody, so I began to realize that maybe this was something instrumental rather than vocal. I had this faint idea of a melancholy tune, and a part of me knew that this had been played to me in a somewhat intimate setting - somewhere with very few people. An image of people sitting around a table, all eyes on a lone figure came to my mind. I can't now remember the person's name, and I highly doubt that I memorized it at all, but in my mind's eye this moment was relived in full detail. Sometime in early 2000, I had been living in London for a few months, and feeling wholly miserable the whole time. I missed home, missed my family, missed my friends... and I hated both my work and one of the people I lived with. There were very few moments of joy back then, especially in this particular moment in time.
But there was this one day where me and this couple I lived with went to visit some of their friends at their place, themselves having moved to London a few years back, and this proved to be a great moment of home away from home, and a completely unexpected one at that. Besides the familiarity of listening to your own language again - though I did listen to it daily, but only from the same two people - it also helped that we were treated to some very good traditional cooking, with some very fine wine to go with it. Something I realized early was that I was the youngest person there, aside from the children, and because my own son was still very wee - and very far away - this did leave me far more emotional than I would've expected. At the end of the evening, as we all huddled 'round that table, a strong drink in hand, listening to stories of old, seemingly out of nowhere an accordion was produced. And this nameless figure that played this most melancholic of songs, wrought tears straight from our very souls; not an eye in that room remained dry as the notes swirled around us, tugging deeply at our heartstrings. What song this was I never knew, nor will I ever. I just look at it as the soundtrack to a happy moment, twenty years ago.
And that's the end and that's the start of it
that's the whole and that's the part of it
that's the high and that's the heart of it
that's the long and that's the short of i
that's the best and that's the test in it
that's the doubt, the doubt, the trust in it
that's the sight and that's the sound of it
that's the gift and that's the trick in it.
Twenty years ago, that boy that sat at that table, looked so much like this man I am now. Oh, a lot less gray haired, to be sure, and my heart and mind not yet as broken as today. And yet, that distant echo of me still reflects unto this day. I wonder, twenty years hence what reverberation of me will make itself be felt, that of now, or that of that twenty years past? We'll have to see, won't we? After all, there are only twenty years to go.
I wanted to do this post its due justice, so instead of writing it down when I first thought of it - which might've been more emotionally honest, if not compeltely factual - I waited for a few days until the words smoldered inside me. So the genesis of this actually begins a fortnight ago - it was my dear friend Sérgio's birthday - and as always we ended up reminiscing about days past, days of our youths, and a time period where everything was so deeply condensed, where we felt so much so earnestly and so very much to the depths of our cores that it truly became a highly formative era for us. I kept on musing on this - for the nth time, really - as I got home. And last week, we had a pretty huge thunderstorm over Lisbon, the kind that is all rolling thunder in the distance, interspersed with flashes of light in the night skies, and every so often a jagged lightning would rip through this midsummer welkin and illuminate us with its terrifying presence. This was, for the longest part, a thunderstorm devoid of rain, but eventually rain started falling, in slow, fat drops that were as like to bruise you as to leave you wet. As it fell, so languidly from the sky, I felt its warmth upon me, and memories of that time I spoke of earlier came flooding back to me - pun intended.
There was a time - this time I evoke here - where me and S and another, distant but never forgotten, friend of ours - N - were exposed to so, so much that would come to develop us - either in the music we listen to, the books we read, the aesthetics of all these worlds that sometimes would crossover, so to speak, with others that would send us down unforeseen paths of knowledge that seemed to just lie behind that elusive corner. This time was the time of the LeFanu and James and Stoker and other Victorian inspired poetry that made up so much of Dani's lyrics for Cradle of Filth. This was the time of Johan Edlund's writings of mind-altering drugs and the music it inspired. It was the time of My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Samael, Moonspell, and a time of Thomas Mann's 'Doctor Faustus' (as well as his son Klaus's 'Mephisto'). It was a time of the first female voices we'd come to adore - Liv Kristine of Theatre of Tragedy, Kari Rueslatten, and later, Ann-Mari Edvardsen in The 3rd and the Mortal, Anneke van Giersbergen in The Gathering. But probably - thought not quite surely - this was also the time were one Darren White would make his presence known to us, and become prevalent as the years went on. We knew of Darren through his then current band Anathema, and that triptych of 'The Crestfallen E.P.', 'Serenades' and 'Pentecost III' - all in these few short years - proved to be an immense boon to us. These were works filled with felt and emotionally raw lyrics, Darren's growl intoning them in a lovelorn fashion, and the instrumental side did its very best to layer it with the most melancholy of sounds.
One day, though - probably through Terrorizer, Metal Hammer, or Kerrang, the word came down that Darren and the band had gone their separate ways - a new record had been in the works, tentatively called 'Rise Pantheon Dreams' - but none of that would come to pass. But what did come to pass?
Ah, well... at least for me, Anathema became a deathly dull endeavour, and I've rarely liked any of their output since, but Daz and some lads he knew quite well would come to produce some bit of magic once more.
So in 1996 we'd learn that together with Paul and Benjamin Ryan, as well as Paul Allender, an ex COF trio, together with drummer WAS and bassist Steve Maloney, Darren had created The Blood Divine, in essence a continuation of some of the themes carried from his Anathema days, as well as a ground for further sonic exploration. That year's 'Awaken' was certainly one of the musical highlights for us, and in due time, they were sure to grace these shores of ours for a gig, and of course we had to be there. Now let me tell you of a ritual of sorts that was quite common for us back then; just before the gig itself, earlier in the day, there'd be a signing session with the band - some of these were fairly crowded events, if I'm remembering correctly the COF session was hell, and maybe Paradise Lost's was heavily attended as well - but some, like Tiamat's - there's a story or three about that one - and TBD's were fairly low key, which - in this particular case - made for a spot of conversation with the band. This session being not very attended - insofar as I can remember - we ended up not only being able to talk with the whole band, but to hang out with them afterwards, even sharing a few drinks in the next door dive. And wouldn't you know, back in the venue we caught up with the guys and they recognized us from earlier, and we talked for a while longer, even joking with the lads that they could play some of the earlier Anathema tunes, with Darren amusingly suggesting to Benjamin that maybe they could do 'A dream of wolves in the snow', a COF song where Darren sang, and a song that is arguably one of the best in their celebrated debut. I actually wanted them to play a specific song - 'Warm Summer Rain' - but no female singer in their entourage meant that it was a no-go. Listening to that thunderstorm last week, my ears turned to 'Awaken' once again. Guess what song I just had to listen first?
As is yours, reality
Warm summer rain Will we never, ever breathe again?
'And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.' - 1 Kings 19:11
I don't often have conversations with God, but sometimes I do. I've always struggled to find you, o Lord, though you are all around me. I can't see your image. I can't hear your voice. But you must be somewhere, God. I surely hope so.
I don't often talk to you anymore, Lord. But sometimes you speak to me in your mysterious ways. I heard you yesterday, shortly after I woke up, and I mumbled something. Something so familiar, and yet - and yet so distant from me. I recognized the mumbling as poetry, but not the words, rather the cadence of it. In my younger days I used to know some poems by heart, a bit of 'The Raven', most of Hamlet's soliloquy, certainly Yeats's 'When you are old' and Davies's 'Leisure'. Maybe even 'I wandered lonely as a cloud'. But it was none of these I muttered, unknown and trembling words failing to coalesce. Throughout the day I found myself following this process, to no avail. I could see the shape of the poem, as if from afar, I could almost taste the words in my mouth, and though I knew this to be a poem that somehow revolved around nature or birds in flight, nothing in 'Leaves of grass' sated this fleeting ghost that sought to possess me. In vain I looked to songs, books and memories, but as the day wore on, I didn't come any closer to revelation.
And Lord, I heard you again today, as the memory of that evanescent poem lingered still inside me; I heard you in the song of another, a distant trill that heralds an outlier, one who still pursues the fading art of knife grinding. As that faraway song flew to my ears, so too did the words fly to my mouth and I at once started to recite Gerard Manley Hopkins's 'The Windhover', a beautiful - and very challenging - sonnet :
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
I never wanted you elsewhere, Lord, not in your house, not in the souls of your believers, but in the trees and in the waves, I never wanted you in your book and in those who'd defile our mother with its words, but in the touch and presence of something I'll never again have. I can only remember, Lord, and eventually, hope.
Some bits of what I'm about to write here I've recently discussed with both my dear friends Hugo and Sérgio, though not at the same time. We talked of a need to leave the life of the city behind, to move to somewhere where time seems to be standing still, a place of yesteryear, a place of a simpler and probably more rewarding kind of life. Maybe it's a place where the comforts of modern life do not abound, and maybe it's a place where it's sere geography will be a test unto itself. I don't know, it's a need I feel. These past few weeks I read up on and watched videos of some of the most unhospitable places on earth, some inhabited, some not. I saw videos that made me wish I lived on Pitcairn or in Tristan da Cunha, my fascination with Yukon and Alaska - some of it inherited from the works of Carl Barks, some of it from books like 'White Fang' and 'Into the wild - grew deeper, add to that my dream of spending the rest of my days in some far hill in Iceland, and that image so firmly etched in my mind of living in a near desert state took a further hold in my soul.
And then, because these things have a way of becoming true - in a sense - not only did I end up dreaming of these unknown deserts, but also in things I read, music I listened to, and memories I dredged up from god knows where, they started to permeate my days.
Let's begin with the reading, which will later link to the memories. Those who know me will know I am an avid comic book reader, and I read far too many comics, I read far too many comics whose quality is very questionable, but I also read a number of very good comics. Some are new reads - whenever I do find something new that's actually good - but most end up being re-reads of books I loved from years prior. One of those books that I return to every now and again is Craig Thompson's 'Blankets' and this past weekend I almost picked it up again but at the last moment I decided to read his 'Habibi'. I'm sure I've already written about it somewhere, sometime, but this was not a book I really enjoyed that much upon first reading. That's ok, that's actually normal with me - there are a bunch of things I didn't immediately fancy that ended up becoming very dear to me. And 'Habibi' gained a more special significance only around a year and a half or so ago. And it wasn't just because the book itself, no. Rather, it was because of a story dear Sérgio shared with me then that I would come to look upon the book with different eyes. All the things that I found boring - the esoteric bits dealing with calligraphy - became things that wholly engrossed me. It's a book I now read - in its 660+ pages - with great delight, and with a smile whenever I see this page right here:
An inescapable part of this story is the main character's life in the desert, a desert that seems almost timeless, as if plucked from some distant arabian tale, but is set in rather modern times. The desert - and finding love and sensuality in these austere conditions - brings to my mind a time when my younger self fell completely in love with 'Dune's Princess Irulan, as portrayed by Virginia Madsen in David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's 'Dune'. Me, as a kid, wanted nothing more for that world to be a real one, far more real than this one, and most of all - I wanted to be one of the fremen, with their blue-in-blue eyes, tinted thus from prolonged exposure to the spice Melange. I am very much looking to Denis Villeneuve's take on the story, and hopefully next year it'll be out for our viewing pleasure.
But thinking of 'Dune' also makes me think of music, not only Brian Eno's 'Prophecy' theme, but another song by way of 'Dune', without being explicitly so. Now, I' m not a huge Sting fan - I do like some of his older stuff - but because he was both Feyd Rautha in Lynch's 'Dune' as well as the inspiration to John Constantine, there's a song of his that I adore - 'Desert Rose'. It always seemed to me to be somewhat inspired on 'Dune', and I read somewhere years ago that Sting had confirmed it to be so.
From the searing heat of the desert, both that of our world and that of another, fictional world, my mind traverses far away to the biting cold of the north, to snow-capped mountains whose whirling winds whispers names of heroes and gods of aeons past. As my mind's eye surveys these distant, barren lands, looking from on high as if borne on the wings of a mighty eagle, from afar I sense the gentle padding of the wolves through the swirling snow, their baying a call that echoes deep in instincts honed from lifetimes ago. I glide through these lofty peaks, the chill wind willing me to live, and I dream, I dream a dream of white flurries, and warm hearths, I dream a dream of frozen rivers slowly thawing and skies of the whitest blue. I dream...
Some time ago I alluded to the eventual existence of this post, maybe on the Patrick Wolf post I did some months ago. Here and there I might have also mentioned just how difficult - not to mention impossible, for me - it is to dissociate someone from a song or a band. And so it is here, with The National, a band that will always make me think of Filipa, an ex-girlfriend of mine. Now, to be honest, it wasn't through her that I got to know the band, no. That happened years prior, but for some reason they sort of flew under my radar until maybe 'Alligator', and even then I'd not take to them immediately. 'Boxer', the follow-up to that, though, was much more agreeable with my own sensibilities, and I enjoyed it much more than anything I'd listened of them before. But the problem with not really following a band, is like you know they exist, but they're always at the edge of your perception and eventually their output will be something you may not be aware of. In this instance, I wasn't aware that in the meantime they'd released an album in 2010 at all - that was a rough, rough year for me.
So by early 2011 I'm ending the relationship where I'd been trying and failing miserably to make work since 2006, and sometime in early summer, or somewhere close to that, I went out and met up with an old friend, Elaine. She was with some friends of hers, Filipa included. It's not a story I want to tell in full detail, but things did start happening that night. Unfortunately, the circumstances of those events led to a lot of pain and anguish for another person, and it's something to this day I wish didn't happen the way it did. But me and Filipa, we ended up being together for less than an year, ultimately after that initial bout of wild passion things fizzled out, and we decided to call it quits. I only saw her the once after that, and boy oh boy, the same thing that would come to happen as consequence of our first meeting almost happened again that time. What I do have though, are very fond memories of being with Filipa getting very drunk and listening to a lot of music - she had quite the voracious apettite, that one did. It's funny how clearly I can recall some things so well, while others just fade from memory altogether. I can hear her voice still, I can picture her in full detail, but I can no longer remember things like her birthday or her full name. And I can remember being inside her car, nigh on a decade ago, and she was playing 'High Violet' to me - it was my first time listening to it, and that bit where 'Terrible Love' hits right at the start, that was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with the band. I'm not entirely sure why it happened then and not in any of the times before I'd been exposed to the band. I mean, the things that I already liked about the band - Matt's voice, the rhythm session, the melody - were already there, only now maybe even more prevalent. Maybe it was because it was through her, and these songs sort of became testament to our being so in love at the time. Or maybe it was a phrase from 'Terrible Love' that I came to recognize from something that was written to me only months before, in the throes of my dying previous relationship - 'It takes an ocean not to break'. Whatever the reason, I gravitated toward this album, like a fly does to honey, and it became a fixture of my songlist on my phone. It's still an album that I return to with immense pleasure, though I will confess to having enjoyed their next album even more, 'Trouble will find me', which includes my favourite song of theirs, 'Pink Rabbits'. When this special anniversary edition was announced I knew I had to buy it because a) it comes in a groovy marbled pattern and b) it includes the content found on the CD expanded edition, which boasts the greatest version of 'Terrible Love', the alternate version, where the drumming absolutely elevates this song. Speaking of it, check it out below.
It's true, I know, that as of late I've been feeling very, very morose, completely under the weather, beaten, exhausted... and that has translated itself into what I write. Some days I can cope quite well, other days no amount of meds can bring any kind of balance to this mind of mine. But just because I've been feeling like this doesn't mean I've not been having pleasant thoughts as well, far from it.
So just the other day I was cleaning my room, and I found a box under my bed, and in it - among other things - were a few issues of The Comics Journal I'd collected back then, featuring interviews with such greats as Charles Vess, Linda Medley, Kurt Busiek, Jeff Smith, Megan Kelso, John Severin and Chris Ware. I gravitated first towards #216, cover dated January 1999, because it had the Kurt Busiek interview, and it's always a joy to re-read it. Bear in mind that these interviews are often in-depth looks into an author's career, and they'll discuss everything from their influences (past and present), how they broke into the field, what they hope to achieve with the medium, how can they improve it, etc.
Reading the Busiek interview, I can't help but find some parallels there between what influenced him the most and what had the same effect on me, especially that '66 to maybe early '80s era of comics, which was the bulk of what I read growing up. Long before I even discovered that the actual comics were pencilled, written, inked, produced originally in America, I eagerly sought to collect and hoard as many of the brazilian editions I saw on newsstands, and it was in those sometimes heavily edited pages, often published without much continuity cohesiveness, that I would fall in love with the comics medium. And while I'm not sure those books were the first thing I actually collected (though I think they might have been), it's probably what sparked an interest in collecting in me. I'm taking a walk down memory lane here, and I remember being very, very young and collecting stickers (mainly football and cartoons), action figures, and sci-fi books (especially the E-A pocket collection), but there's a specific thing to my collecting that definitely began with comics : the gimmick. And the gimmick - it can be a number of any different things - that first got to me was when in 1985 the brazilian publisher Abril started giving out keychains with some of its comics - see them here - and to my 8 year old mind there was nothing that could ever top that. I couldn't ever collect them all, I think some books weren't published here at all, but those I had I absolutely loved to death. Soon after, they offered mini posters, temporary tattoos, screen printed transfers that could be ironed into a t-shirt and all that helped fuel my love for the gimmick.
When I started buying american comics, for a good while all I knew were standard editions of those books, their covers plain, just like any other comic out there, until the '90s hit and gimmick covers became a de facto thing. They could be foil, variant, die-cut, hologram, embossed, glow in the dark, scratch and sniff, interlocking, acetate, poly-bagged, fluorescent, prismatic, thermal-recative and my personal favourites - the chromium covers. I'm sure that beyond these there were even more gimmicks I thankfully don't remember anymore. But I loved all these gimmicky covers and I bought as many of these as I could, even going so far as paying multiple times the cover price just to have it in my collection. And these gimmicks didn't limit themselves just to my comics collecting. Maybe around '93 or so I started getting serious about my CD collecting, and with time I'd be adding digipack editions, limited editions, japanese imports, tour editions, whatever, to my collection. Sometimes I'd have 4 or 5 different editions of the same record and very likely some of them spent most of their tenure in my collection unopened and unplayed. And now we're getting to where I wanted to, which is my preferred gimmick when it comes to my vinyl collecting. Nowadays I'd say that coloured, splatter, marbled, transparent, or striped records appeal to me quite a lot - and I'd rather get one of those rather than a standard black edition.
But way before that... my first gimmick in my vinyl collecting was a little something called shape vinyl - records that are cut to a specific shape, often resulting in eye-catching results. The very first I remember seeing was in some record store (can't remember which) that had a copy of Survivor's 'Burning heart' for sale, shaped like a boxing glove, but no amount of pleading with my parents got them to buy it. The first I owned was actually Ray Parker Jr's 'Ghostbusters', shaped like the iconic Ghostbusters logo, which I very sadly managed to break somehow, and that got me in trouble with my parents because hey, once clumsy, always clumsy. And I can be very clumsy indeed. Some time in the mid '90s I started getting into vinyl again - it took a huge backseat to my CD collection, and it wouldn't be until some special record fairs began popping up that I started to devote some of my income to it. I wouldn't immediately be buying a lot of records, nor was I exactly prone to making impulse buys. But whenever I saw a shape vinyl, I'd get it, if it wasn't too pricey. Some that I can recall owning were a bunch of Iron Maiden ones that now fetch hefty prices, a few Queensryche (pictured above, though these are recent purchases) and others I can't even recall anymore. I loved having these records, holding them, tracing their shape with my fingers, though at the time I didn't in fact have a record player to listen to them. As with any other previous form of my collecting, I sort of always had a grail - in terms of brazilian comics it was Super Powers #2, in terms of american comics it was Grendel's first appearance in Comico Primer #2, I'm sure I might have had some sort of grail regarding my CD collection, but there was a particular shape vinyl that I desperately lusted after and there was a single store I knew of that had it - but not for sale, not for any price. God knows I tried, but the guy wouldn't budge. Rather than selling it, he had it on display in his store - a place that I quite detest, but to where I've been to far too many times. You can see it pictured right here to the right, and believe me - my teenage self wanted this almost as much as I wanted sex. Back then we didn't have things like Discogs, internet was still a ways away from being what it'd become, and even in my first forays into London record shops I never managed to see one of these in the wild. And, if I'm honest, I've barely thought about it these many years, though now and again when I went to that particular store it would always catch my eye, but I never really entertained the notion of buying it again. When I decided to begin collecting again, one of the things I knew for a fact was that I didn't really want to get all of the records I used to have - I had a load of records that I wouldn't want to have now. But I did know one thing... some records I did have, I wanted to buy again. What I didn't know was that some of those records now go for premium prices, so until someone decides to reissue those, I sure as hell will not pay the hundreds of euros or dollars they now go for. Still, in that previous collection there were a few that I could still get at a fair price. One of those - not only because I like the band quite a lot, but also because it's one of my favourite shape records - was none other than Yeah Yeah Yeah's single 'Cheated Hearts', one of the highlights from their sophomore effort 'Show your bones'. I leave you with the Peaches remix below.
Days like these are the days where I find myself feeling particularly thankful for not owning a gun. Days like these this world seems to get the better of me. There's no amount of words I can tell myself, there's no reasoning with me. I see the worst of us being constantly rewarded, and I punish myself for that. I destroy myself for that. I'm so tired. I just... I am so tired of this world. Of everything. Worst of all, I'm tired of me. I've tried so many times to pick myself up, but I just can't seem to. I don't know how to start. I don't know how to anymore.
I'm afraid. I'm afraid of this world. I'm afraid of everything. I've become afraid of something I used to look forward to - that light of the end of the tunnel. I've become afraid of what lies at its end, to where it leads to, to who it leads to. I've never felt like this before. So defeated. So resigned. So afraid.
