Τετάρτη 21 Οκτωβρίου 2015

Blog no. 16 - A skullful of thoughts

  I think too much. Or at least I think I do.
  Shit, I'm doing it right now!
  It's like my brain is in a constant race with my heart about who does the most work. I get it guys, good job for keeping me alive and all but by any means, slow the fuck down, will ya?
  From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep it's just a constant barrage of thoughts streaming into my head like a hailstorm of apple sized balls of conciousness. Quite random too. One second I'm happily thinking about all the stuff I'm gonna do in the future and everything's happy and rainbows and unicorns and all of a sudden everything's grey and I'm suddenly contemplating my life or, as my stupidly philosophical self would say, lack thereof and the rainbow is actually a huge scythe and the unicorn is, well, still a unicorn. Those things creep me the fuck out, like how the hell could you put that sharp of a horn on a creature and call it adorable? But then I'm back to being all smiles again. It's exhausting, both mentally and physically. Do you know how many muscles you need to smile? I can't be bothered to look it up right now but it's gotta be a whole lot more than keeping a straight face. Sigh. (sighing doesn't take as much energy I think so technically I'm allowed to do it.) If I didn't know any better I'd say I'm bipolar, but I do know better and I'm just kinda fucked up.
  I think the problem is not that I think too much, rather that I overthink. A lot. When I'm walking down a street I'm so aware of my environment I will never ever bump into anything unintentionally, even though I always wear my headphones to keep my ears busy and listen to the soundtrack of my life. That level of awareness though, it's the level of awareness that people go to the mountains and stay with monks for a year and a half to achieve. I don't know, maybe it's the fact that I'm always listening to music so everything kinda gets postponed while I'm adjusting the fucking cable or attempting to rap an overly sweary Kendrick Lamar song, being from the ghetto and all. That was sarcasm by the way.
  As I was saying, I overthink about stuff. When I'm ordering a pizza I have a manuscript of what I'm going to say so that I don't fuck up any of my sentences.
"Yeah hi, I'd like two medium sized pizzas. Yes, with bacon, mushrooms and cheese. No, no green pepper. The one without the green pepper is more expensive?" Shit shit shit this aint in the script what I'm I going to say. "Uhh green pepper is fine, then". I guess I like green pepper now.
 Overthinking has made me miss quite a few opportunities. It's a curse, I'm telling you, a stupid, cock-blocking curse. Why the latter you ask? Alright, let's say you're at a party. It's kinda lame, not many people are dancing and the music is, well, crap for lack of a better word, but you're drinking a beer with your friends, chatting about some funny story and you're not having that bad of a time. You see a girl sitting by the bench with two of her friends, having a quiet conversation, much like you actually. She's a really pretty one at that, blonde hair, nice face, cute smile. You're thinking about talking to her but your bladder decides that you had two beers too many and you're also starting to get really cold all of a sudden, as if the North fucking Pole shifted positions with the equator. You wanna talk to her but you're not in a position to do so, as you're dancing to the rhythm of your near-busted-bladder and your hands are trying to generate as much heat as they can to stop you from shivering and, frankly, looking like a wuss. So you're saying "I'll talk to her in a bit, I can't do it right now." All of a sudden this asshole swoops in with his friend and starts chatting your girl up. Your girl! The love of your life! The mother of your future-non-existent children! But then it all comes back to you. While you were thinking at every possible embarrassing scenario, doing the math to come up with a percentage in which you either piss your pants, drop dead from the cold or, well, both, he's just taking a shot. He might not do everything right, he might not have thought what he was going to say to the last point but goddammit his leatherjacketness took the damn shot, while you're sitting there, arms on sides and hands in pockets, pondering about what you were going to say to her. He's not the asshole after all, you are. For being too scared to face a potential failure. For always wanting the perfect setup, and a great pickup line to go talk to a girl, as if that ever worked for you. That story was totally made up by the way, and it definitely didn't happen to me about two weeks ago. Yup. Completely fictional.
  Either way, this brain thingy is either hurting me too much or helping me too much. Sometimes you gotta take a swing, and even if it misses you could at least say you tried. I should think less and do more. I should not calculate my every step up till the point of no return. I mean, even if that works once in a while, isn't it funner knowing you actually put your resourcefulness and quick thinking to use? That shit might actually save you in the future. Emma Stone might spontaneously call you and tell you to whisper dirty things to her. What are you gonna do then, smartass? Read your pizza manuscript? Use your goddamn instinct and leave your brain to rest, not everything needs to be planned ahead of time. Live a little! If not for yourself, do it for poor Emma. Once you're done thinking about stuff, that's when the real thinking begins. 

Τρίτη 19 Μαΐου 2015

Blog no.15 - Turn that page

Dear hopefully non-psychopaths,

  Taking into consideration the fact that right now you're reading this, which is a fair hypothesis to make assuming the circumstances, I can see that you're fixated on your computer screen, wondering where I'm getting at and lingering between being casually interested if even briefly disconnected from the outside world, and being all the more intrigued in what's about to follow, completely and utterly unaware of your surroundings. That's the beauty of reading, you see, and the reason we've evolved past to being talking apes. 
  Now what happens if you stumble upon something genuinely good? Something mysterious, something entrancing? I'm telling you, that feeling is in a league of its own. Buying a new book, touching its cover for the first time, opening the first few pages and feeling each small lump of the paper on your fingertips, smelling the fresh scent of your newly acquired companion, all these seemingly small things are parts of a multi-hour trip to the end of the author's world and back. "Brace thyself he who enters, for tears shall be shed and emotions shall be triggered." 
  You jump into your bed and quickly assume reading position: belly facing downwards, elbows on the mattress feet kicked up high and intertwined, head straight forward leaning in the open book, hands delicately handling both sides of it's colourful cover, fingers edging the yellow-ish pages ready to turn at any moment now. And you start your beautiful journey. At first you're getting annoyed easily, by the fly that can't find the fucking window, the car that keeps screeching as if it hasn't been oiled since the middle-ages, the neighbour's dog who won't shut the fuck up, but as you're getting further and further into the book all these noises start to fade; in fact you can't even hear them after a while. Did they stop? Fuck no, the goddamn dog seems to be in a personal vendetta with every single eardrum in the building. You, however, are safe from all this racket since you have abandoned all the senses not responsible to making your brain decipher these markings on the paper and correlate them with images you can connect in order to create the characters, the story, the world that the author meant to pass on to you. 
  Turning the pages hastily, absorbing every single piece of information presented unto you, imagining the appearance of your new-found friends and enemies, you lose every sense of time and space, so much so that the only time that is relevant for you is the fictional one, and your posture has gone to shit since you first started reading. 
  Your upper body is turned sideways, half-hanging out of the bed, your right leg is bent in the most uncomfortable angle possible and your left leg is swinging at a stable frequency, hitting the foot of the bed on each oscillation. Unfazed, you continue reading as if you're lying on a comfortable mattress with puffy pillows and silk sheets. 
  Unknowingly and unconsciously you are smiling, occasionally cracking up. By the end of the novel your heart starts beating faster and faster, and as you turn that last page it almost stops; at least it feels like it. You read the last sentence, the last word, the last letter and the last point of the book. Turning the page you realize that there is no more, the journey has come to an end. As you're closing the book from it's rear end, you feel the back cover for one last time before letting it slide from your hands, hopefully landing on the bed. 
  You stop for a second to reflect on the story you were just part of, to figure out your emotions. Eventually you start noticing the details around your room. The sun has set but it's August so you figure you don't give a shit. You get up and in one swift motion you grab the newspaper from your desk and smack the fly against the window, relieving the poor blind, deaf and possibly mentally unstable bastard of his misery. At least the car has stopped, it's parts probably committing mass suicide over the fact that there was more grease on their owner's hair than on them. Oh, and the dog is still singing its now weaker and forever monotone "I'll shit on your ears" piece, in Fuck You minor. 
  There's a feeling of emptiness in your heart, a feeling of closure, like saying goodbye to an old friend. You close your eyes and let uncle Morpheus take you in his sweet embrace, slipping further and further into a world inhabited by your thoughts and your thoughts only, now embellished by the wonderful adventure you experienced a few blinks ago. That happens every time you pick up a new book from the shelf, one waiting to be read, to be experienced. And every single time it ends, by the time the sun has set once again and you close your eyes, dreams start becoming reality, reality starts becoming fiction, and you are now the author of your next great adventure, hopeful that one day it will lead to the one that will help you realize what your worth is in this world. And that dog still won't shut the fuck up. 

Happy international books day!

Kind regards,
Stelios Zesiades.

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one."

- George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons