Play, darling, play

Play, darling, play

Play for now

Play for then

Play for life

Not for later

Nor for death

For now will never come again

And soon now is gone

Death lies before us

Then now was then but that now is gone

Existing only in our memories

Later does not exist yet

Soon later is now and now is then

Soon always will be now and now always will be then

Death is always near

But play for now and play for then

Play, darling, play

Don’t waste your life on death.

We Forgot We Were Human - A short story

~~~

In humanity's great rush for the future, we forgot the most important thing that we could possibly forget. However, as we had forgotten about it, we did not think about it, which eventually led us to this.

Poetry does not exist anymore; neither does music or any fictional literature at all, because such phenomenons are all based on emotions and feelings, which do not exist. Not anymore.

We operate as we have for centuries; we wake up, go to work, go home, sleep, wake up, and so forth. No one really knows why any longer, but that is irrelevant. It is what we have done for centuries, ergo the norm, and the norm is all we have to tell us what to do. Without it, we could not function. It is said that humans used to say that about emotion, but we have no need for emotion. Not anymore.

I do not feel. I have never felt, and therefore I am unaware of how feeling feels like. I only know that I have never felt it because if I had felt it, I would have felt it. It is what is said about feeling and emotion; that you could feel it. But I cannot. No one can. Not anymore.

Although, I have read about it in ancient books, probably from the 19th and 20th century. For a while, such books where hidden away so that we would not risk to read them and be 'inspired' (whatever the meaning of that word is) to feel; however, that was soon considered unnecessary as no one sought them. No one cared any longer, because the feeling had already begun to fade. I know that the books speak of feelings because they use those strange words, and they describe them; 'anger', 'stress', 'happiness', 'feeling low'. I soon stopped reading them because they were meaningless; they all took it as for granted that I, too, felt, which I have never done. They wondered why, asked for my emotions, and I tried to explain that I do not feel. They denied the truth I presented to them, and therefore I stopped reading them; they denied the norm, as no one does. Not anymore.

This is where humanity's great rush for the future has led us; this is what happened when we forgot the most important thing that we could ever forget. But I do not care. No one does. I have no opinion; there are no opinions. Not anymore.

This is the story of how we lost the most important thing we ever could lose, the one that makes a human human; this is the story of how we forgot we were human.

~~~

The Light Within

There is an old house down by the moor
It has a rumour of being haunted
Perhaps you have heard the story before?

In which case, I shall not bother to tell it
But I have made some interesting observations
Involving a spirit

Now, you might from this have concluded
That I believe to have seen a ghost by the moor
But no, I am not yet quite so deluded

For, you see, it is not a disembodied person
Which has caught my eye;
It is not it's previous inhabitant, Mrs Anderson

No, this house holds
Something quite more extraordinary;
As is told in none of the tales of olds

At night
The whole house will shimmer
With an inward light

For the spirit of the house
Is the house itself
And not the deceased spouse

You might ponder
Why this seemingly simple house
Is filled with such wonder?

That, I cannot answer
Yet, depending on your preferred ideology
There are some suspicions
Some involving ancient, alien technology

Image source

Sunday afternoons with smoke from incense and steam from tea

As the smoke from the incense
Interweave with the steam
Of the newly brewed tea
And the sun sets in the distance,
Emitting an orange light
Which wraps the world in a glowing light
Coordinating with my misty room
I think of no one in particular
For I have no one in particular to think of
Instead I pick down from a shelf
My favourite book,
Open the cover
And fall down through the pages
To the circus in which I wish I could live
Or to space, to distant lands
Where adventures roam everyday
But as I am there,
Just where I want to be,
A sudden, loud bang
Reaches my ears
And I am yanked back from the world of the book
To my dull, ordinary room
Thinking of no one in particular
As the sun disappears beyond the horizon
Leaving the world in darkness
The tea cup stands empty
The incense burnt out.

The 'normal girl vs. fangirl' phenomenon

I was just scrolling through my tumblr dashboard, and came across this post.

Nice touch with the Moriarty gif, but I have some serious criticism for gallifreyansquid's comment.

1. How can she (I know that it is a person of female gender because I looked it up) possibly know what 'normal' girls think of, seeing as she appears to consider herself as one of these weird 'fangirls'? The answer is, she cannot.
2. Besides, and I cannot stress this enough: There is no such thing as a 'normal' person. What gallifreyansquid does, which sadly is rather common on tumblr, is to completely generalise every person of female gender who does not consider themselves 'weird' in the same way as they do. I am pretty sure that most 'normal girls' think about other things than getting married and perfect outfits. What gallifreyansquid wrote is equal to writing that 'Fangirls just daydream about their OTP and what post to reblog next'. If you have been to tumblr, you will notice that this is not the case; there are plenty of posts that covers neither of those subjects. Maybe there are 'fangirls' who only daydream about that, I don't know, I have not spoke to all of them, but most of them do not. The same goes for 'normal girls'.
3. Yet another fault that is seen both in gallifreyansquid's comment, and in general on tumblr: 'Normal girls'. People of female gender. Fangirls. There is no room for male fans on tumblr. Here we all have a vagina. No vagina, no tumblr. Or, well, you can still have a tumblr and hang out there, but you will be secluded in most posts. Ah, love what an accepting place tumblr is.

Actually, going by tumblr's norms, gallifreyansquid did not do anything wrong. Her comments fit perfectly with all the other special snowflake-ness and sexism that is far too commonly found on the online community of tumblr.

This makes me wonder why I still have tumblr, but I think it is because when tumblr is nice, it is really nice. But there is this side of it.

I cannot produce an adequate title

I try to write,
To create magic
By combining letters
Yet my ability seem lost
The letters drift in front of me
In a blur of my confused mind
As I try to grab them, to form them,
They drift but further away,
Even more concealed in my mind's foggy mist
And I am but left alone,
My wand stolen,
My inability
To practise the magic
Of words
Lasting evermore
Never faltering
Always
Just
Here

Making people feel appreciated

If there is something I am rubbish at, it is showing people in my surroundings how much I appreciate their existence and the fact that they are a part of my life.

That is partly because I do not wish to sound cheesy (for some reason I have no wish to be a cheesy-kind-of-person), but mainly, I believe, because I am afraid to scare them away; I am afraid that they do not appreciate me and my existence, at least not as much as I do theirs (yay low confidence), and if I come up to them and am all like 'HELLO YOU ARE WONDERFUL PERSON I APPRECIATE YOUR EXISTENCE PLEASE DON'T EVER DISAPPEAR FROM MY LIFE', and they do not feel the same toward me, it will make them uncomfortable and they will slowly remove themselves from my life. Which is seriously stupid and sad, because I know how wonderful it is to feel appreciated and loved; to know that at least someone does not consider you nothing but a pain in the ass.

There are, I think, approximately three people who know that I appreciate their existences, which is far less than the real amount of people who's existence I appreciate. Which sucks.

Furthermore, I feel an even greater urge to tell people how much I appreciate their existences when they seem to be a bit low, but then it feels even more pathetic because I feel like I say it merely as an attempt to make them feel better. But it is not like that.

This text is not heading for some clever conclusion, because there is no clever conclusion. This time it is merely me telling a tale from my awkward life. But if you happen to have some clever conclusion, a tale from your own awkward/not-that-awkward life, a comment, or whatever, please do share in the comment section. I like comments; they make my blog feel like it is appreciated. (Yes, I am really pathetic enough to be asking you for comments. And my blog does not actually feel appreciated if you comment, because it is a blog, so it lacks of emotion. Did you really think that a blog could have feelings? That is slightly peculiar.)

If trees could talk

I wonder, if trees could talk, how would that be? Imagine, if you are walking into or simply near a forest, and you hear the trees chatting away.

Would it be bothersome? No, I don't think so. See, just as the whistling of the wind, the twittering of the birds, the sound of a train passing by in distance and so forth, we would be accustomed with the tree's chattering. Never would you walk around in a forest in complete stillness, but you would be surrounded by voices and life.

Of course, that would remove the pleasantness of a quiet and still walk in the forest, but simultaneously it would open up a new, previously unknown dimension. Imagine walking into the forest, sitting down on a big piece of rock, and having a chat with a tree. All the things you could learn, and not only from the tree to whom you are talking; I rest assured that that tree has been talking to that other tree, who in turn has been talking to the third tree, and so on, which might result in you hearing a 200 year old story from Mali.

And meanwhile, in a parallel universe in which trees do talk, parallel-universe me writes a blog entry about how awful, yet rather relaxing, a world in which trees do not talk would be.

Why fandom is important

Since I realised that there are more important matters to focus your mind on than whether the upcoming Star Wars trilogy will include my favourite character or not, I have felt a bit guilty spending time with anything that has to do with any of my fandoms*, because I have almost constantly been having thoughts like 'and while I watch this episode of Doctor Who 100 children are dying of starvation. But why spend your time helping them when you can sit on your fat arse, staring at a screen?', which is really rather unnecessary, seeing as I am unable to help those children from my current position, anyway. But I have been thinking a lot about it in attempts to justify my affection for various fandoms, and now I have found a way of doing it/ found the reason to why fandom is important to me.

*drum roll* It is, I believe, because of its similarity to religion. And no, I am not using this simile because my major fandoms happen to include god-like aliens flying around in blue boxes or Norse gods, but because it fills the same need for me as I can imagine that religion does for other people (or, one of the needs religion fill). I have never been particularly religious (currently I am agnostic/atheist), so I cannot tell what really believing in a certain religion is like, but from what I have gathered from my general experience of life and a very brief research ten minutes ago, the main needs that religion fill seems to be:

• Feeling that your existence serves some sort of purpose
• A sense of identity
• A sense of security and comfort
• Guiding in moral principles
• A sort of connection to a higher being
• A medium for socializing and a feeling of belonging
• [I probably forgot something]

Now, as for the first five needs, I have either filled them in another way or have no need for having them filled. It is when it comes to need number six that fandom comes in. See, what makes being in various fandoms important to me is exactly that; I feel like I belong somewhere, and it is a way to meet new people (I can not count all the friends I have just because we happened to like the same TV-show/film). This feels particularly important as I am a severely socially awkward person who experiences difficulties talking to certain people. Equal fandoms provide lots of topic to converse about. And there is that special kind of connection between two people who are in the the same fandom (fandom-people knows what I am referring to).

Come to think of it, it might also fill the second need, at least partially. Just take a look at my first post, wherein I presented myself as both a Whovian and a Ravenclaw. Hm.

So, thanks to this, I no longer feel as guilty devoting a bit of my time to fandom, because sometimes you are actually allowed to think of and prioritize your own well-being, and, as some wise tumblr-user who's username I have sadly forgotten once said, if doing something makes you feel good, whether it is spending some hours on tumblr, baking a cake, watching Doctor Who, or whatever, however meaningless it might seem compared to demonstrating for human right, do it. And my fandoms are just as important as religion; perhaps not to society, but to me.

(This turned out to be a rather confusing, cheesy and generally poorly-written ending, but I am severely tired so we will have to live with it.)

*What 'fandom' means

Not really a source but it helped me whilst writing this

Billy Elliot - the Feminist

What follows now is a review of the film Billy Elliot, which I wrote for an English test in class. It is not entirely spoiler-free, but for your leisure, I will mark the paragraphs/sentences which include spoilers with a "*", thereby ensuring your reading to be spoiler free, or at least giving you a choice between spoiler-free and the opposite. That said, allons-y!

Billy Elliot is directed by Stephen Daldry and takes place in the 1980's. The story is about the young boy Billy (Jamie Bell), who lives with his dysfunctional family in a small mining town in Northern England, where the gender roles are strong. We follow Billy through his fight against them as he fights for his right to dance, despite his father Jackie's (Gary Lewis) strong objections.

When it comes to films alike this one, I think the time and place in which it is set is a brilliant choice. Had it, for example, been set in London and present day, it would not at all have been the same kind of film, as the power of the gender roles are not as strong there in the present day.

In the film we follow Billy through a long period of time, so there are some big jumps in the story's time line, which sometimes works nicely but tends to be confusing, in my opinion.

Furthermore, I think that Jamie Bell, who, as previously mentioned, takes on the role of Billy, makes an outstanding performance for being such a young actor, as he is not only needed to act, but also to dance ballet. His amazing performance really enhances the greatness of the film; as does the other actors' brilliant performances.

As I mentioned briefly earlier, it is not merely a beautiful story about a boy who fights for his right to do what he wants, but also a story about the fight against the norm of what is typically male/female and, in Billy's (and his friend's Michael's) case, working against them. This is portrayed beautifully in a boy who really is not trying to fight them at all, but simply wants to do what he loves to do, and in that way he, more or less subconsciously, makes a stand about his and other people's rights and brakes the norm without even really intending to. *In the meantime, one can notice how his character changes and he becomes more and more confident as the story progresses; from hiding his ballet shoes from his father, to take a stand and simply dance in front of him.

*When it comes to character development, I think that the greatest one seen in the film comes from Billy's father Jackie, which makes a beautiful kind of side-story (which is strongly entwined with the main story), as he transforms from a grumpy, distant father who wants Billy to follow the male norm, to a warmer father who is even prepared to give up his moral and take up his mining job, just in order to support Billy. Characters like Jackie are often what makes great works of fiction as great as they are.

The film shows a beautiful story about the life of a devoted young boy, at the same time as it is a great representation of the society and the norms it is built around, and also displays a fairly large quantity of inspirational characters, which all in all makes it a film truly worth watching and reflecting about.

I feel as though there are a ton of other aspects I could bring into the review, lots of characters and their developments to write even longer paragraphs about, but I feel as though I have now bored you for long enough.

An Apology for my Abcense

In this entry I assume that you care about the fact that I have been absent from writing blog entries for a while, seeing as you are currently "checking" my blog; if you do not care, I advice against your continuous reading of this entry. Move along, move along.

Now, before I go to work on my upcoming, thrilling blog entry, I wish to apologise for my far too long absence. My sole reasons be that I have had a visit of a friend who lives far away; I have begun the work on a novel; I have attended a party (or, more of a dinner with some friends); and generally have had other activities to fill my time, as other thoughts to fill my mind (not to mention that I have been lazy and rather reading Shakespeare than blogging).

But now I hope to back on track, as they say, with regular entries on Wednesday and one of the two days of what is referred to as the weekend; one exception being the upcoming entry today, which I hope shall serve as at least some compensation for my absence.

Yes, I felt a strong need to write this rather meaningless post.