A Fate Worse Than the Undead

In some half-assed attempt to maybe feel something, or at least distract myself from feeling nothing I thought it would be a good idea to rewatch Romero’s original Dead trilogy. I’m not sure why I ever thought this would be a good idea, it’s not as if watching mindless automatons scramble around moaning lethargichally is the common cure for apathy. Still it’s what I did and at least the anxiety is still very much intact. Maybe that’s a small win of sorts.

And maybe I am not entirely dead, because I still find these to be truly brilliant movies; plot, anxiety, execution and gore with a perfect bow on top. They’re close to movie master pieces. Especially the atmosphere of gnawing anxiety that sets in almost from the beginning and refuses its hold of you long past the end credits. It’s done in that same slow and relentless pace of the zombie shuffle. Slowly, slowly, it’s coming for you, no hurry, it’s got all the time in the world, because you are already lost. It’s awful and it is brilliant.

Ignoring the social commentary and the spectacular gore, there is that one other element that makes theses movies paints such a picture of complete defeat and hell. Especially the last two movies, the existence of only one woman in a world (albeit a small world) of men. Just the notion of being the last woman surrounded by nothing but men is as completely devastating for the soul as seeing the dead come back to life, maybe more so. It’s a world of forever being the minority, forever live under the threat of violence inflicted by you on men (because those are the scenarios painted) and most of all it’s a world where there are no other women. It’s literally like taking all sunshine and all the puppies out of the world and leaving only herpes and cold toes. The notion of having to live the rest of my life without the social interaction with other women is truly a fate worse than both death and undeath. It’d be a slow grinding down of the soul and an eternal depression.

Forever Alone

I don’t think that part was ever the intention, because these movies are so strongly based on a man’s narrative (the makers were probably completely ignorant to the fact that there’s even such a thing as a queer lady point of view) that they don’t even come close to question the loneliness of a world without peers. But for me it’s what turns horror movie into true nightmare.

Maybe what I need is a French Adventure

Sometimes in life you find yourself inside that glass cage of apathy. You are perfectly aware of what happens on the outside. You even know exactly which emotions you should use to interact with the outside. But the emotions have been shelved and you’re comfortable in the place where nothing touches you. Besides what would be the point to venture out when words taste of ash and reality is a grey autumn?

In those instances it’s better to stay put and feed your heartlessness easily digested scraps of brightly lit adventure. Like The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. It’s a charming action adventure with an urban fantasy approach to the early 20th century. A dashing and brave young journalist named Adéle Blanc-Sec hunts treasure and the occult in an attempt to reinvigorate her catatonic sister. It’s a camp thrill with cartoonish characters and a twinkle in its eye. Adéle is hilarious and resourceful, no-nonsense and successful. Plus she rolls her eyes as well as Cara Mason and has no time for a male love interest. Which makes her rare and kind of beautiful.

It fluttered across my cheek like a mild wind, leaving no lasting traces, but for a second warming my skin. 

Maybe that’s the first step to something more.

 

Terry Pratchett is my favourite non-uncle uncle.

Fiction comes and fiction goes, but the Discworld remains. Since I was ten years old I’ve spent some of my favourite escapist holidays on the back of this swimming turtle. By now I’m seriously emotionally attached to this world, these places within this world and a lot of the people who populate it. With age I’ve become aware that this world isn’t simply it’s own, but rather a witty satire mirror of our own. Somehow that discovery was so gradual and so dynamic, the Discworld expansion was allowed to grown alongside me, that the love only seemed to become more cemented and solid. Because even if events and occurrences are spoofed in the novels Ankh-Morpork has become its own beast. This isn’t simply a resonance of the “real-world”, it’s its own beautifully dirty little creature with a strong heart and an independent will.

The level with which I’m invested in this world is both a happy and sad thing. More than once have I wished deeply I could plan and then go on a holiday to this place. I want to smell the stench, wear the tattered clothes and watch the sites watch me. A weekend trip to Ankh-Morpork and then a week or two up north getting the experience both the urban and rural, but always making sure to cover up my jugular real well on account of liking my blood to be mostly on the inside of my veins.

As a result Terry Pratchett feels like my favourite uncle (I’m sorry, Uncle, you’re still my favourite uncle when I’m not trying to make points in blog posts). I’ve grown up with this man always being present through his words and worlds. He’s always been there to tell a good story, impress me and help me see how big the world really is by making sure I look beyond its geographical boundaries.

I just have a lot of love and appreciation for the man and the Discworld. After having spent my day on the couch watching Going Postal (I still giggled more than once as Moist spoke and I had to shake my head once and then twice to not hear Jeff) I had to get it out. It’ll never be the brilliance of the books, because moving pictures doesn’t have the same kind of magic, but I was entertained and it made me want, crave and demand a new novel. I guess I’ll just have to hang on a few more months before it’s time for Raising Steam. I’ll be waiting.

AC/DC of Fandoms and Ladycops.

There’s an AC and a DC to fandoms. Sometimes the fandom and the fiction just spurs endless creativity in you, it makes you productive and it makes you want to be productive. You write fic, you discuss, you just submerge yourself and become part of the fandom. Then there are those times when you sit on the sidelines. This doesn’t mean you love either the fandom or the fiction any less then when you’re full of creativity. It just means that sometimes you become a consumer. You devour anything you can get a hold of. Gorge yourself on what the fandom produces without perhaps counter-producing anything of your own.

They’re two sides of the same coin. Love and adoration can’t always wear the same face. And a fandom that inspires is as important as the one that fulfills to a point where you become content in consumption. But I’d lie if I said I wasn’t a little uncomfortable when I find something I feel like I can’t contribute to. It makes me feel a little ungrateful. My flailings do not feel heavy enough to be able to become dialogue between me and the rest of the fandom. Still there are times when that’s all I’ve got to give. But I’ve got those in abundance. They’re everywhere. And maybe that’s a contribution in itself, the positivity and pleasure.

Due to the new teaser trailer I’m currently reading all the N&N fanfic and being that ultimate consumer, hence the post. Not quite sure what it is about that verse that makes me so passive though. It’s just one of those that I adore, completely, but I only want to take from it. Greedily I suck up what others have to give, but give nothing back. There’s a nasty kind of entitlement in that, but I seldom come across something that’s actually aimed at a target audience where I’m the main demographic so I can’t help wondering if that’s part of my reluctance to partake. It’s just one of those rare exceptions where I don’t have to twist, turn or queer the content to feel satisfaction. Maybe it’s the equivalent of six hours into a roadtrip when you’ve spent six hours behind the wheel and then get to give it up for a friend you trust and go sleep in the backseat. I drove through the first and second season of Rizzoli and Isles, I stayed awake through the painfully bumpy road through the teenage wasteland that was the first three seasons of glee, I’ve yawned deeply but kept awake during OITNB’s bisexual love triangle and done my best to fight off the Sandman and keep my focus on the road as I watched Orphan Black’s queer lady take ill. But now it’s my time to sleep, and snack and not focus on the road, but rather give up control and that I can do so knowing I won’t get driven off a cliff or into a ditch. I can nap and when I wake up, because I will wake up safe and sound, we will still be on the right track.

I don’t know. Anyhow here’s the trailer. It’s enjoyable.

the hammer cure.

The past month I haven’t spent more than 2-3 days in the same place. It’s been a gloriously nomadic existence. Now however I’m paying the price for this splurge and gluttony with my geographical freedom. I seem to have developed a kind of motion sickness in reverse. This sedimentary and concreted life style where I now have spent two and a half days in the same place and know I will spend many more is making me a little ill. Or not ill perhaps, but uncomfortable, aching. My blood is pounding in a way that has nothing to do with adventure, lust or freedom but is simply the pounding of the scared and seemingly defeated. And this is a complete exaggeration of course. But I can’t help feel a little uncomfortable in my own skin when said skin is so very settled. It never goes away completely, but it does indeed get better, much. I just need to find something new to settle my mind on, build my thoughts around. Until that happens however I will be twitching and trying to think of places to escape to. It’s a matter of realising that freedom and comfort isn’t the same thing as running around the world like a headless chicken. The reasons I feel trapped are all in my mind and it’s only the momentary shocks of new sensory input that distracts me. And it’s just not possible to shock yourself through life. Or at least I doubt it is. Anyhow, the high is always followed by a plateauing. It’s a given.

Currently I’m using classic Hammer Horror and sugar as the self-medication that I need to get over all of this. It’s actually semi-effective.

High on life, again.

Shit son, there are no limits. I’ve once again proved that breaking them is not something that is either painful or even particularly hard. It’s another form of breathing and it will improve your sense of well-being by a hundred percent. Everything is as it were before, except for my perspective and that means nothing is as it was.

Now I’m fucking overwhelmed by my own assets though, by my own materialistic possessions. I have the ability and I have the resources to do everything. After two weeks with my life in my backpack, this becomes a marvellous addition and expands my freedom in a way I didn’t think going back to my sedentary life would. It’s not the same thing as sleeping on platforms or picking cities at random that you want to see and experience. But looking around at all these things that I own I don’t feel bogged down by them, rather they feel like a whole new world of experiencing another kind of freedom and some of them even feel like awesome tools to obtain even more of this freedom.

Maybe that’s partly due to my own definition of freedom, which is movement. It’s options. That’s freedom to me. Options and a world where you allow your own impulses to be something position. Where the breaking of norms or even the fulfilling of them doesn’t hold any particularly positive or negative value. It’s just a moment. Freedom is a moment in which the moment is ruler. A glorified “Carpe Diem” perhaps, but still.

The privileges though. Holy Sharknado on a stick. I’ve got so many fucking privileges that it’s almost insane. I’ve been travelling up and down, left and right, across many many borders and my skin, my appearance results in a casual glance at my passport that lasts for a whole of five seconds before I’m dismissed and forgotten.

What a difference fourteen little days can make. Before my little Eurotrip I was struggling and had been for a while, but now I got it back. I get to be high on life and possibilities again. Mostly because I’ve spent fourteen days not constantly trying to repress who I am, but simply rolled with it. In daily life, the mundane kind where you have to hold down a job, buy milk and pay your bills on time I fight my impulses all the time. Each day is yet another day of fighting like a fucking bashee to not let the impulses that run through my control my actions. That takes a lot of energy out of you. On the road like this however the impulses are on top, they rule it all. I don’t have to fight, I don’t have to even argue against them I just let go and ride the wave. For me that’s like the alcove for the Borg or sleep for other people, this regenatates me, revitalises me. I find new energy and to spend fourteen days not fighting yourself also gives you a whole batch of new confidence. It also becomes tangible again that there are no limits, there are only possibilities and what impulses are is actually an abstract possibility. You don’t always have to fight them, because sometimes it’s worth to grab hold and twirl them around your fingers, clutching them to your chest as if they were priceless pearls and maybe even engage them. There’s life in impulses too.

Rose tint, blue skies, but no tears.

“It’s a goofy thing, but I just gotta say-“

For the past two years I’ve lived in the same place. I’ve stayed cemented. And in the past year I haven’t done anything that really challenged me outside of my comfort zone. The closest I got was last summer when I went on a roadtrip through England. That was fun, not because England in any way serves newness or a challenge, because it’s really grown to be a second home. But the challenge came in the driving itself. Now it’s not every day that you get to drive on the wrong side of the road or have that responsibility of being sole driver on a trip like that. It was challenging and a helluva lot of fun, but my comfort zone wasn’t truly challenge just mildly tested. And I’ve gone round and round in the same tracks ever since.

So perhaps it is no wonder that I am twitching and aching to be on my way with this Eurotrip that I have planned. And when I say planned I mean not planned at all. I have a Interrail Pass and a ticket down to Copenhagen tomorrow. Beyond those two points there are no plans. There are no restrictions. It’s me, a decent enough budget that should last 2-3 weeks and a set of clothes that will last me a week before I’ll have to find a way to either do laundry or turn them inside out and hope people’s sense of smell is severely damaged.

I need this like fish need water. I can hardly remember the last time I did something that went beyond sleep and eat. I can’t remember the last time I allowed myself a rush and allowed myself to not care about conventions and just go do my thing. It’s moments like these that fuel me for the rest of everything. It’s also moments like these when I get to become a travelling philosopher that I find the strength to be able to deal with my own mind when the mundane and anxiety later on will strike like lightening.

And to make sure this post doesn’t end on a serious note.

I’d throw my pie for this show.

This weekend I got a little lost in Netflix new original series Orange Is the New Black. And boi was that a pleasant experience.

Funny as hell, poignant to the point it hurts and your eyes get misty, empowering themes and stories full of realism. It’s like the perfect lecture on intersectionality and feminism without ever coming across as a lecture. Mostly I think because it’s sneaky television, real damn sneaky television. The kind where they start off by selling you things you recognise, your assumptions are being pampered and lured into a false sense of nothing will ever change. Only for you to be rather rudely awakened as the stories and the season progress to a point where the tropes you thought you knew are used to smash the tropes you spent the beginning of the season accepting. They spend thirteen episode telling you beautifully tragic and emotionally true stories and meanwhile making you realise that even in fiction there is such a thing as critical thinking and “show, don’t tell”. Better yet they’re kinda unapologetic about showing us that truth is a contextual thing that does not come in one natural flavour.

Featuring an ensemble cast so diverse it is a rare gem in itself and pretty much completely unheard of considering it is almost all-female. It’s a show that deals with patriarchy, gender, respect, love, race, sexuality, religion, standards, norms, injustice, strength, agency, pain and understanding. And it’s an incredibly layered experience because of it. What you see at first glance, what you think you have to accept, is never the end result. It’s a beautiful thing to watch that progress. It’s a beautiful thing to experience, going from slightly annoyed, a little defeated without knowing it to becoming happy and hopeful.

It feels new. It feels fresh. It lives up to the original series label.

But maybe I shouldn’t say more, because half of the experience really was having all my shitty and sad assumptions shattered while getting to enjoy beautifully written and acted television. The story and character development was just off the hook, mind blown a little. In the best of ways, even if the finale did leave me hurting, hurting real bad.

Watch it, even if you have doubts stick with the show, in the end you’ll be pretty ecstatic you did. Or I was. If it weren’t for the intense pain on behalf of the characters I got to know I’d be dancing around my room doing a CeCe Peniston impression.

I would link you to the trailer, but that sorta feels pointless because it doesn’t even come close to describing what the show is really about. But I will give you the intro. Here you go.

I’m sitting in darkness. I can’t see anything. Useless eyes. Not even any shades. It’s utter and complete. I can’t even tell where I end and the pitch black darkness begins. It’s a sludge. We’re the same. I am the darkness as much as the darkness is something that surrounds and beats down on me.

I need a hero. But I’ve got the wrong DNA. I have all the wrong genes. I don’t get heroes. I must create heroes. Maybe that isn’t a burden, maybe it’s a gift. But it’s also a heavy load. It means I’ll never be able to rest, I’ll never be protected. I’ve got to spin spin spin the web that surrounds me. If I stop it goes away. If I stumble it becomes a mess.

Paranoid egocentrism that isn’t neccesarily far off.

It seems like such a queer adventure.

Accidentally watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel this morning and was reminded of how interesting ageing seems to be. Partly because growing old is the ultimate queerness in the culture we’ve created. It’s something no one speaks about other than in hushed whispers containing a lot of death and retirement home comments, it’s mostly a forgotten, something repressed by the collective obsession of static and youthful immortality. Ageing has no room in a world where Marilyn Monroe and James Dean are ideals highlighted and turned into myths and a biological kind of religion. We’re told that youth should be eternal, that our bodies are temples that should do like the Catholic Church and vegetate into a frozen moment unaffected by the passage of time.

So we pretend old age is a side-effect some of us unlucky few might have to endure as a price for the youthful years of potential fertility and strong bones. In turn old people become queer as fuck by simply being. It’s rather glorious in many ways. You become culturally unstable and almost lawless by the simplest acts such as loudly occupying space other than your deathbed. This means there is so much room for adventures, there’s so much room to finally break free of those last tethers pulling us down and holding us tight against the norm. Because no matter what you do, there is and will never be any way in which you can fulfill the current norm. It’s a lost cause that opens up a whole world of new doors for you to walk, roll or hobble through.

Obviously it is like any other adventure, it’s what you make of it. But I still find myself looking forward to this adventure where your existence becomes a thorn in a sick and twisted society that tolerate you at best. A time in your life when such a simple thing as wearing colourful shoes will make you seem like full-blown radical. It takes so little to upset, because your mere existence is a mortal reminder that chafes and burns in people’s minds and eyes.

I find myself thinking about exploring that new terrain with a huge smile on my face.

(Other stuff that makes ageing seem super cool, Advanced Style)