Good Morning Dave

Hello my friends,

So, you have found your way to my new blog. That makes me very happy. I’ve been a little behind on posting on my old blog and I realised that it was not only due to my chronic lack-of-time-to-do-anything-worth-doing at the moment, but also to my not really liking livejournal’s style anymore. So this is Anna’s blog, 2.0, new, improved and shiny! I’m hoping for it to be more interactive than my old one. Anyone can leave comments, there’s an email address on top of the page you can use if you are new to my blog, a nifty list of links I recommend, a better archiving system (for there is one now) of my previous posts and a prreetee pictshuah I took myself so you can look me in the eyes when you’re commenting. Grand, is it not?

So onwards ho to new blog horizons!

First of all, let me start by explaining a little more about what I intend this new blog experience to be for me and for you. The title “The Golden Lasso” was not chosen because I’ve recently taken to riding bulls and wearing chaps, but because of a very special lady called… Wonder Woman. One of this dame’s weapons is, you guessed it, her Golden Lasso. Not only does it stretch to any length, it also gives the wielder the power to control whoever is caught by it. Furthermore, whoever that is can only tell the truth as long as they are surrounded by the Lasso. I try to be Wonder Woman, the Lasso and the Captive and I see my readers similarly.
I want this blog to be about truth. I noticed that in my last livejournal posts I kept editing, rewriting and plain deleting stuff that I had a feeling might be too much for readers to take or might reach the wrong people or would simply shed an unadvantageous light on me and my feelings. This blog is an attempt to say “no more of this chicken shit crap!” I trust each and every one of you that has come here and I know you will understand my words. For everyone new to the blog (and I do hope there will be some), which means any one you guys give this link to or who stumbles across it, they will see me as I am and they will have to cope, or not. I, however, won’t hold back. So there, you’ve been warned
Then again, this doesn’t mean I’ve decided to stop taking advice and just throw caution to the wind. Your opinions, thoughts, feelings and bits of advice mean a lot to me, so please make your voices heard, either by commenting directly or emailing me. I get loads of emails all the time, but I now try to answer personal emails within three days. Your pleas for me to shut up and quit blogging won’t fall on deaf ears. *lol*

Now that we’ve got these preliminaries out of the way, let’s really start, shall we?

I spent the long Pentecoast weekend in Munich, getting pampered by my parents. It was too short, but very sweet. Come to think of it, when I was there I read through my (handwritten) diary that went from 1994 to roughly 2002. My goodness, what an angry and sad teenager I was most of the time! It would never have contained such a phrase as “getting pampered by my parents”. It almost scared me to see such a helpless and yet, literally, screaming girl in front of obstacles I didn’t understand.
At the moment I keep fussing about my upcoming 22nd birthday, thinking “I’m getting old!”, but really, I prefer myself much more this way and with the, little, wisdom the years have brought. I noticed something the other day: I was in the train musing about how I would love to be there in say, 500 years, and how sad it is I can’t. It occured to me that most people however never seem to think about these things and therefore live very much in the moment, in the time that is given to them. Frankly, that’s probably the better attitude towards life, isn’t it? At least, that’s what all the songs say since some bloke in Ancient Rome first said “carpe diem”, right? Looking at myself now, I think I live more in the moment than I used to. Not always, mind you, but a little more. Since my hospital-stay in 2005 I’ve come to value the life I’m blessed with a lot more. I’ve come to taste the life I’m blessed with and that makes all the difference.
But back to my weekend in Munich. A lot of very pleasant things happened, but I’m just going to tell you about the most pleasant and the most important one. In short: my mother finally told me she did, in fact, love me.
One of the eternal dark spots in the difficult relationship with my mother was that she always kept me, emotionally and physically, far away. This started to change a bit in 2005 but I was not ready for it then and had too much concerning me and my health directly, for me to worry about that unsolved problem. The first time I ever felt that she might truly love me was when I moved out. She insisted on driving me to my new home after the bulk had been moved there with the help of my father and brother. We were alone in the car and I still remember how strange it felt to me that she drove me, instead of my father. I was very energetic that day and when we pulled up to the house I was about to jump right out of the car when she looked at me and said “you know, I *am* a little sad that you are leaving, I didn’t think I would be”. I was stunned. Happy, but stunned. It took me a few seconds to find a proper answer and even then I think all I managed was “I’m a little sad too”.
And though our relationship improved a little during those months, the real problem was never really touched. Things take time.
Since that summer, my mum and I have, separately, each experienced a lot. We both, however, found new friends that taught us new things and gave us new insights on who we were, are and want to be. What in the past two years was only brooding has now hatched into a beautiful, fluffy chick. My mum has finally found out what the reason was she could not let herself love me and why she always made it difficult for me to get through to her. For reasons of discretion and respect for her I will not disclose the details of our conversation, but it ended with the words “that I do, in fact, love you”. There’s no way to accurately describe what this made me feel but if you imagine a sunshine, rainfall, a glittering rainbow, a pond and a meadow with a singing girl running through it, you will get a pretty good idea. The fact that this conversation took place between a Benefit and a L’Occitane counter makes it all the more Hollywood-ish and memorable.

But since every Yin has a Yang, not everything is going peachy at the moment, so please let me complain a bit.
I’ve had a sore throat and a nasty cough and general tiredness for the past two weeks and nothing I do seems to make it better. What I really need is a holiday but I’ve got a s***load of work on my hands at the moment and exams in July before I can finally have a breather. I haven’t really found a way how to handle this problem yet. I tried keeping my weekends free and enjoying them the best I can, but it always turns out I have a myriad of things left over from the week that needs to be done on the weekend. So what else can I do? I don’t even find time to go to the cinema! Last night, after work, I went to see “Fracture” and that got me home at 1:45am. Not the healthiest choice I ever made, but at least it was a good film and the first one I got to see in ages! I’m just tired of getting up every morning with a different body part hurting. Sucks.

In other news, I’m still not over Steve. Maybe it’s the general need-for-something-tangibly-positive in my life that makes me melancholic or it’s rooted much deeper than I thought, but I’m not over him. I should be. I’m definitely not. At least a suffering artist writes good poems. Here are two I wrote last night in the train back home, with the rain pouring outside.
There was an Englishman/not English girl couple sitting across from me and I suddenly realised his inflection sounded very much like Steve’s. It was painful to my ears and heart, so I turned up the volume of my mp3 player and wrote, wrote, wrote away.

Summer Prayer

They’re completely different and yet
They’re us two and yes
I still say us and it
Never tasted more bitter

They speak our language and yet
I don’t understand a word of it
You’re still in every breath I take
Did you know, my asthma came back
This summer
This sad, sad summer

Summer never meant anything more
Than spaghetti straps and temperature changes
This year it’s everything we’ll never have again
This year it’s a river of tears, in vain

Catch a glimpse of an ugly girl in the mirror
Her eyes say “I don’t know what I’m doing here”
Her thoughts too loud, too clear
I’m too young to have known such pain
We’re all too young to have known such pain

There’s no one out there who will catch me when I fall
There’s no one in this world capable…, capable of you
And just because none of it was my fault
Doesn’t mean I’m not the one left all alone
Doesn’t mean I’m not standing in this sun’s rain
Getting soaked to the bone
Doesn’t mean I’m not broken beyond repair
Beyond repair, beyond repair

Only this morning you meant nothing to me at all
Tonight I’m almost wishing
I’d never met you at all
You know what it’s like to want to kill the pain, don’t you?

Well, I’m kinda grateful for the pain
And kinda not, I’m almost praying
I’m just not quite ready to let go
This summer
This sad, sad summer
I’m just not quite ready to let you go
This sad, sad summer
I’m just not as beautiful as last

And all I touch may turn to gold
But this heart you touched
May have turned to ash
This heart you touched
May just have shattered like glass

And this woman you didn’t love
May just have loved you,
Way too much
And this woman you didn’t love
May just have loved you,
Just too much.

Poem #2: have you ever wondered what your barcode might be? This is my current one.

Personal Barcode

Two rings to bind me
One ring to free me
One circle incomplete
And an eight for all eternity
A 42 and a 6 6 6
Scabbed wings, a pair
Scarred roots, a thousand
69 vacuui of love in between
Two rings to bind me
One ring to free me
One circle incomplete
And an eight for all eternity
A 42 and a 6 6 6
18 months and it still hurts
18 months and it still hurts

Well my friends, I think for tonight I’m all written out, so I’ll go fix myself some dinner (at least I’m eating healthy since I moved to Basel, must be the bunny rabbits’ influence) of dimsums and raspberry sorbet.
Thank you all for having come here and reaching the end of this post. Thank you for being part of my journey and allowing me to be a part of yours. And don’t be shy to spread the word about this blog.

Much love,

Anna

ps: anything that appears in underlined bold pink is a link that you can click, so you always know what I’m talking about!

current music: Internal Dialogue by Maria Mena