Will strangers hear our names, long after we are gone and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved?

My muse is a fickle fiend and a fantastical fountain of inspiration. It’s 1am, I should be in bed but my muse’s kiss is inescapable. So I write.

Many years ago – he would say “many moons” – I loved a man. I loved him the moment I laid eyes on him. My boyfriend at the time was too self-involved to be loving me the way he wanted to and the moment I met this strange new man, I fell out of love completely with my boyfriend. I ended it two weeks later, never regretted it, never looked back.

I was thirsty for this man. I would have done anything to be closer to him, to be near him more often. I wanted to melt together with him until our minds and hearts were one mind and one heart. He was about 18 years older than me, a whole adult person older than me but I never felt the difference. Not once. Neither did he.

Within weeks, we were close friends. For months, we would be around each other constantly and with every beat of my heart, my love for this man grew. I have a notebook full of poems. One poem for each time I blushed because of him. He was (is) ill and one night he almost died on me. And even as I was dying on the inside, I knew which pocket his medicine was in, what to do. I did everything I could to not let him go and when the paramedics arrived, there was little for them left to do, he was almost okay again. Every time his condition became threatening, I could literally smell it on him, that moment when things were about to get nasty. If he forgot to take his medicine, I remembered for him.

Yet fate would not let us have our way. He was bound by forces so great even he, the Survivor, the Zen Master, the Warrior, the Poet, could not stand up against. I think he loved me, on many levels, but sometimes even love loses the war.

Tonight I found old pictures of him. About two decades ago, they were taken. Not just in a different time, but in a different universe. He who always smiles in pictures anyways, smiles without the burden of a loveless marriage. In these pictures he is a young man, not much older than I am now. And I realised: I would have fallen in love with him then also. His incredible energy, his goofiness, his gait, his sense of adventure, I would not have been able to resist their hurricane for even one second. Nor would I have wanted to. I would have fallen for him, just like I did a few years ago. Just like I might do again 30 years from now.

I find it strange, how this man fits into my life. It seems like in every conceivable scenario, it was inevitable that we might meet and fall in love. And never live that love as more than friends.

He giveth and He taketh, people say about God. I don’t know about God but I know this: Love giveth and Love taketh. Love works in mysterious ways.

In an odd way, my love for him and his forgiving, open, accepting nature are so huge, I’m not even sad about this love that never happened. I have been in much worse situations of the heart and this one, which meant so much to me has healed over as if by magic. Is it possible to love someone so much that losing them doesn’t hurt? It appears to be a paradox and yet…

Live long and prosper, o ye who know love, peace,

Anna

I cannot do this alone, I need my mommy and damn it, I don’t care who knows it!

Do you also have certain things you know you should stop doing, but do anyway? I sure have. A bunch of them. Most of them don’t really get me in trouble. Buying new mascaras about four times a year has never harmed anybody, physically or mentally. That I know of. I’m letting go of one of these things today.

One of the things I tried for a while was internet dating. Yes, I admit, I’m one of those losers. Internet dating may have lost a lot of the stigma these days, but only if it works out. If it doesn’t, you’re a still a loser, an internet dating washout.

Of course, being me, I had to try internet dating with a twist. I signed on a gay and lesbian internet meeting/dating platform thingy. I was well fed up with men and decided I would try meeting women online, since they don’t scour the streets of Zurich in packs, very much unlike the gay men of the city. I figured if I ever wanted to actually find a woman I knew for a fact was gay or bi, I’d probably have to go the internet way. So I set up a profile, set my sexual orientation on bi (I wasn’t going to lie and say lesbian just to get more attention, I wanted to be honest), mentioned somewhere I was more inclined to meeting ladies these day and hoped for the best.

I got in touch with a bunch of… men (straight people also populate this site). All of them completely nuts on one level or another. Definitely not boyfriend material. Not even one-night-stand material. And considering I’m completely emotionally and sexually starved these days, you can trust me when I say I rejected them for a reason.

I also met one girl. She was a pre-op male to female transexual, working in IT and studying… something or other. I’m not one to discriminate. I really am not. But I just didn’t click with her, at all. She freaked me out big time, almost started stalking me, clamoring for affection and attention so much that I just had to cut her loose. And I didn’t like her teeth. They scared me.

At the moment I have, once again, a really screwed up sleeping rhythm. Even if I go to bed at a reasonable time, I wake up around 1am, unable to go back to sleep and then I usually occupy myself until around 9am, when I start feeling overwhelmingly sleepy and sink back into bed to sleep for another, oh, eight hours or so? My doc says it might be the antibiotics I’ve had to take for the last 10 days. Anyhow, tonight was another one of those nights and I went looking around that dating site again. I’m not sure exactly why.

I haven’t been there in about 3 months (because it worked so well the last time) and I’m quite convinced that I am absolutely and utterly unattractive at the moment, given my diminished state. It’s not like I even think something could happen at the moment. By the by, on a quick tangent, Mr. Cello from work turned out to be engaged. Engaged at barely 20, yuck! Tangent over.

But I did click around that dating site and stumbled across a tall, dark and handsome stranger who looked okay. We got talking and after about 3 minutes I knew it was never gonna happen. He’s in one of those fighting fraternities (he swears it’s not as bad as all the clichés make it out to be but I found their website and it is) which is almost a deal-breaker right there. After some more talk, it turned out he’s looking for a 24/7 Dom/sub BDSM relationship. Oh yeah, did I mention he works in IT, studies IT, lives with his parents and is 25? I swear I couldn’t make this shit up if I wanted to. I told him we weren’t on the same wave-length but he insists we are, it’s just that I don’t know how sub I am yet. I told him: “Honey, I may occasionally be a switch in the sack, that doesn’t make me feel the urge to clean your dishes or iron your shirts.” He said: “If you’re just kinky in bed, you’re not really kinky at all – but since you say you do get kinky in bed, I’m sure you’d enjoy being in a 24/7 relationship”. I went “sheesh…” in my head and rolled my eyes. Later on he left me a message saying “Invite me to a drink on Monday at 5:30pm and I’ll re-examine our wave-lengths, you’ll see how well we match”. I told him I was busy (which is true) and that he really wasn’t being a gentleman. When the hell did being kinky give somebody the right to be a jerk? I just think it’s hilarious how some people try to lure your inner submissive out into the open by giving orders (and in this case, get a free drink out of it). They think it’ll throw that magic switch and suddenly you’ll be fully converted! You will realise this tone, this making everything an order instead of using normal phrases, is all you ever dreamed of (as if orders alone are what defines kinky)! It will make you cream and open your eyes to The Truth, which is that you were born to wear a harness, stuff a ponytailed dildo up your butt and let HIM ride around on your back (don’t ask and I won’t tell). That, and iron HIS shirts.

For certain couples, this may be a reality and I congratulate them on having found what makes them happy. But this guy? He was just trying to find a replacement mummy for when he moves out, one he could fuck whenever and however he wanted because his juvenile ass has never heard of consent. Gosh, there are so many things wrong with that last sentence, don’t you agree?

Often enough, I am amazed, in real life, by how much I attract the nutcases, the potential psychos, the weirdos and just plain the deeply emotionally disturbed. It’s just insane (no pun intended) that I attract the same type of people online. I don’t want them. And I’m trying hard to break the pattern and figuring out what it is that attracts them to me, because I sure as hell never turn out to be attracted to them. If I never have to deal with one of those basketcases in my life, I will be a happy woman.

Sure, all of us have been hurt (some even injured) on the road of life and love and given the right conditions, I am fully open to taking all of that in and helping as best as I can and building something better in the time that our roads happen to be the same. But I am not your shrink, your mama, your guidance counsellor, your secretary, your emotional waste basket, your Domme or your slave. I don’t want to help you, first and foremost, I want to love you. And that does not work if you see me as a blank canvas you can project all your hurt, twisted views, neuroses and fantasies upon. You need to get real, then you can get with me.

I know, cherished readers, that this does not concern you directly and that none of you (that I know of) are among the people I meant in this post. But after tonight, I just had to friggin’ vent! Actually, I am going to go over there right now and delete my account. Internet dating is not my way to go. I want real people in my life and I want to meet them the old fashioned way: in the real world.

I have no idea how long it’s going to be until I am better. Neither do I know how long it will be until love reappears in my life (I just hope it’s not thirty years from now). I am tired, I am unattractive, I am busy trying to make ends meet and busy trying to survive this fucking zombie wasteland of thirst for health and something good in my life. I understand and acknowledge that all this is not contributing to finding new love. I hate it but I accept it. Maybe one day things will not be so hard? Maybe one day I’ll learn to cope better, instead of erroneously expecting to be happy and healthy. Yes, maybe my expectations are just way too fucking high.

Sorry about the ranting.

Live long and prosper, cherish the ones you love and who love you and hold them a little closer today, peace,

Anna

He’s a maniac! He’s an ARTIST!

Hi folks,

Wow, I wrote a post mentioning Vanessa Hudgens, Zac Efron and High School Musical and I get 44 hits in a single day. How did that happen? But I’m glad – like every writer, I like to be read.

Anyhoo, I’m just putting up a little post because I’m procrastinating from a ghostwriting assignment. I have no idea which end is up and which is down with this particular one and I have no idea where to start. So it seemed like the right thing to do was to delay having any contact with the material for a little while longer. My work ethics are so admirable and my methods so effective and productive, I should write a self-help book, shouldn’t I?

In case you are wondering why there is a giant WALL-E widget to the right, it’s because I went to see the film last night and now I’m hopelessly in love with that little robot. I am not one who goes to see every animated movie that is coming out (I regret having been to Shrek 3 and I have yet to feel the need to go see Ratatouille, even if I’ve heard it’s brilliant) but I knew WALL-E had extracts from Hello, Dolly! in it and I can’t miss a movie containing those tunes.

So I went to see it and sure enough, it is one of the decade’s best movies. Not just animated movies, just all movies. In the past few years there were a lot of crap movies out that became hugely successful but it seems to me like 2008 truly brought us some rare, original (i.e not remade) gems. WALL-E is one of them.

I can tell you it was a good thing I went to see it alone because I sat through the entire movie, suppressing shrieks, squealing happily and just generally making a complete fool out of myself. No? Yes.

The movie starts with “Out there…!” from Hello, Dolly! –> shriek, sing along

WALL-E has a pet cockroach, Hal! –> giggle, sigh, giggle

WALL-E folds up into himself when he’s scared –> ooh, aah, sigh, ooh and aah some more

The way WALL-E meets EVE –> gasp, shriek, squeal, ooh, aah

Discovering that the Axiom’s computer is voiced by Sigourney Weaver –> pointing at screen, clasping hands over mouth, shrieking, squealing

By the by, I was the only one sitting in that cinema who knew it was Sigourney Weaver before the end credits rolled. I’m very proud of that. What can I say, simple things please simple minds.

So there you have it, that is why I have the WALL-E widget up there. He is so darn cute, I could just eat him up! The movie is truly fantastic folks, you have got to go see it! And then see it again. And then buy the DVD. Wait, that’s me. I wish the movie all the best and I hope it gets a bunch of Oscars. In my humble (and crazed) opinion, it should beat out Titanic and the stupid LOTR movies for the most Oscars. It’s that good.

Maybe I should watch Finding Nemo, finally, since it’s by the same author/director as WALL-E. Lordy, I am in love with a robot. Just when you thought I couldn’t get more pathetic, I lay it on even thicker, don’t I?

And now I’ll go hold my head under a cool tap, take some painkillers (I’m still ill – antibiotics and painkillers galore in Anna’s bachelorette pad) and then try and wrap my brain around the origins of World War I and whose fault it was and what do the historians say. Ghostwriting is so much fun. Yay. Woohoo. Yeehaw. Not.

Live long and prosper o ye soon-to-be WALL-E converts, peace,

Anna

ps: major bonus points if you find out what movie quote this post’s title is and double extra super deluxe golden star bonus points if you get why I chose it

Gimme, gimme, shimmy, shimmy! (update)

First day in nine without fever, woohoo! Let’s celebrate by writing a blog post.

Let’s talk about entertainment, shall we? Entertainment often works in mysterious ways. But sometimes, just sometimes, entertainment is also a perfectly manufactured product. Like High School Musical.

Yes, you read right: I said High School Musical. Just when you thought I couldn’t get any weirder and ecclectic, bam! I pull something like this out of my bag of tricks.

The other day, I was researching something and stumbled upon a Wenn news item about Zac Efron, the leading man (boy?) of Disney’s HSM franchise. There was a head shot of him next to the article and it looked a lot more manly than any other pics I’d seen of him. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t purposedly look at Zac Efron pictures. It’s just that occasionally I do see a headline with him on my celeb gossip blog Celebitchy or I see a picture of him either in a magazine or on the newest HSM posters. I do go to the cinema a lot, remember? The same goes for his co-star Vanessa Hudgens. The most in-depth information I knew about her was that someone leaked nudie pics of her on the internet. Yes I saw them, no I didn’t like what I saw.

So up until now, I knew what Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens looked like, that they played in HSM and that they were a couple. And that was it. My research a few days ago then took me to Efron’s imdb listing and just out of curiosity, I looked through his bio a bit and at the trivia listed there. There is a ton of stuff (HSM fans are working hard, I can tell you that) and I didn’t read all of it but it was enough to pike my curiosity. I decided I wanted to know what all the fuss is about – it hasn’t gone unnoticed by me how big a smash hit the HSM movies are – and went to youtube. Often, when there are episodes of series or movies I would never dream of buying but still want to have seen (although the term “seen” can be disputed, given the size of a youtube screen), I go to youtube and they are there, cut up into a number of parts. It can be quite informative. So I did the same with HSM 1 and it turns out at least 4 people have uploaded the entire movie. That’s a hell of a lot of people. Usually, when one is lucky, there is one complete movie upload available. As I said, HSM fans seem hardcore.

I wanted to watch the first 10 minutes. I ended up watching all of it. HSM is hooking and addictive like no other musical of the past years. Zac Efron used to be a metrosexual douchebag to me. Vanessa Hudgens a moron playing coy. It’s possible they are like that in real life, but I wouldn’t make such a judgment call again after seeing them perform. It’s simply amazing how they turn it on. They pop and sparkle and yet they seem so relatable when you see them act in HSM. These two are professionals, there is no doubt about it. And Disney has got one hell of a casting crew.

HSM is the perfect product. It appeals to a vide variety of audiences, it’s spunky, stylish and systematic. Each song has got a great hook and stays in your mind. All the songs are made in such a way that there is something there for everyone. Hip-hop, pop, rock, show tune, they’re all represented and that is what makes it so appealing, to everybody. I am completely fascinated by how well this product is manufactured. To such a degree that although I know this is a carefully thought-out designer product, made specifically to trigger the world-wide audience responses it got, I can’t help but love it. Usually when I see something this manufactured it smacks foul to me. High School Musical? Sirupy sweet, completely addictive. It’s Soma from Brave New World, it’s living flesh for the entertainment zombies we are. It’s despicable, rationally, but oh so good in a twisted way we shouldn’t explore because that would make it fade in our esteem, something we can’t, just can’t let happen. Because we want more HSM, more, more, more!

Interestingly enough, the Harry Potter movies were constructed in a similar way, also attracting millions of people all over the world. I never managed to get into the books (though I did try with several of them) but I did watch the movies almost two years ago. My then-landlady/roommate had a 11 year-old daughter who had the movies and one time when they were away on vacation, I snuck into her room, borrowed the DVDs and watched them. I wanted to know what all the hype was about. Frankly, I didn’t really find out. Sure, they look pretty good. The effects are fine and the actors are well-chosen. But the stories just didn’t draw me in at all. After that, I thought HSM could just be the same, in worse. And I also thought I was too old for that kind of thing.

I was wrong. What makes all this even more fascinating and suspicious is that the problems and lifestyles presented in HSM are very, very different from what we know here in Europe. Highschools are just not the same here and I daresay much less importance is accorded to the whole highschool process. Things that seem essential, crucially important to American teens (their highschool drama club, sports team, who sits with who in the cafeteria) are hardly even present at highschools here. If there even was a drama club at your school, no one at university cares the least bit about you having been in school plays. Or having been on the sports team. There isn’t even such a thing as getting into university on a scholarship because you were good at a sport in highschool.

As for me personally, even the human problems American teens seem to have to deal with were never an issue. At my highschool, there weren’t those standard cliques that are always depicted in television series or movies. No jocks, no cheerleaders, no drama clubbers, no science wizzes, no marching band. No popularity contests, no segregation of geeks. This doesn’t mean we were one big happy family. Far from it. The intrigues, bitching and gossiping also happened. There were also groups of friends and cool people vs. less cool people – although the competition aspect of it was very small. And the cool people at our school? They went out on the weekends a lot, drank, had lots of girlfriends and boyfriends, smoked pot and somehow still managed to be good in school. Or not, in which case they were regarded a bit more as rebels but no one really wanted to be them, because being them meant flunking and that was really unpopular and frowned upon. I never felt the need to be like any of them, I just did my own thing.

This is all to say: the concepts HSM is built upon are foreign to me. I have no first-hand experience with them. I know them through TV, movies and friends who have been through that. I didn’t even have relationships while in highschool, all I ever knew was being in love with unreachable people. And yet, HSM also works its magic on me. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a perfect product.

Live long and prosper, peace,

Anna

————————–

Edited to add: I just saw yesterday that HSM 2 is also available on youtube. Strangely, I am afraid to go there. I think too high a dosage of this might kill me. How much cute perfection can one take? I wonder when and if I’ll break and watch it too… I’ll let you know what the consequences were.

You couldn’t cast a net over a dead mackerel.

Hi everyone,

I’m quite ill at the moment and not well enough to write a full post that would actually make sense. Instead I’ve posted a new poem on my poetry blog (link to the side), which I wrote while I was in Karlsruhe. For those of you who enjoy my poetry, have fun reading it. For those of you who couldn’t give a rat’s arse about poetry, I’ll try and post as soon as I am better.

Right now, I’m going to pop some more painkillers and watch Gone With the Wind. For the first time in my life. Yeh, even film geeks have deficits.

Live long and prosper, peace,

Anna

I avoided capture by using your Mak’tar stealth haze.

I’ve just finished dousing my delicate, emotionally unstable neurones with Coyote Ugly. That’s one of those stupid chick flicks that I just adore but that also make me want to throw myself out the window because I know exactly: reality just ain’t like that. Then again, me throwing myself out my window would amount to nothing much, seeing as I live on the ground floor.

But back to my delicate neurones. This is probably the influence of the Hashimoto speaking and in a few years’ time I’ll look back upon this post and think “gosh you were sad back then”, but I can’t help it. I need to vent a bit tonight.

Lately things have been going all wrong and all right at the same time. I got selected as one of the freelancers who get to cover this year’s Zurich Film Festival. And about 4 days in, I got ill. I’ve got the whole package: fever, sore throat, clogged nose. Add that to my anemia and the exhaustion from my Hashimoto and you’ve got a girl held together by a thread. In the middle of all that I got to do my first stars interview yesterday and it was awesome. But I don’t really feel like talking about it right now, takes away the magic a bit.

Then, also, I’m going away for a long weekend, to spend some time in Karlsruhe at the 70mm film festival. I’m psyched about that but I really don’t know how I’m gonna hold up. In the meantime, I’ve got two reviews and an article I have to write before I leave.

All this health crap also scares me for the semester to come. I was in high(er) spirits when I signed up for this term’s classes and now I’m wondering if I’m even going to be able to do them. I constantly feel as if I’m running out of time and I hate having that feeling.

I’m also feeling really blue about the whole love thing. I’m in this forced limbo of love at a moment when I could really use a shoulder to rest my head on. Something in me keeps telling me it would all be easier to cope with if I had someone supporting me. But on the other hand, I’m not even so sure about that. I’d rather first be capable of supporting myself.

It’s just that the more this whole Hashimoto thing drags on, the more exhausted I am, the more I wallow and have a harder time reaching up. This dialogue between Cherry and Dakota pretty much sums up what’s going right now:

Dakota: You know, my girlfriend had a theory. She said at some point in your life, you find a use for every useless talent you ever had. It’s like connecting the dots.

Cherry: I’m not that optimistic. I feel like I’m sinking down a drain and can’t get out.

Dakota: She’d say: “When you’re stuck in that spiral, just reach up”.

Cherry: What if there’s nothing up there?

Dakota: Just reach up.

And towards the end of the movie, when El Wray dies and Cherry must leave him behind and has no hope left, Dakota throws her a rope from the helicopter hovering above her head and shouts “Reach up!”. And Cherry, tears welling up in her eyes, reaches up.

I’d like to fancy my situation being something like this. Only at this point, I’m even less optimistic than Cherry is. It seems that the more I reach up, tears welling up in my eyes, the more I actually get sucked into the moving sands that are the symptoms of my illness. Every time I fight it harder, it just sucker punches me harder. And knowing that I won’t stop fighting, because I can’t afford the luxury to stop fighting, somehow does not make it better. It should, but it doesn’t. It took me many years to learn that I could not lift the weight of the world on my shoulders (and even now, I often act like I can before I know it) but when that realisation suddenly became a somewhat fixed reality in my life, I felt better. Lifting this Hashimoto is the weight of the world all over again.

I’m not as strong as I look. I’m not as impassible and invulnerable and untouchable as I seem to come across. I would like people to believe that when I tell them, every now and then. Hell, I just want a hug.

El Wray: Just, just do me a favour, alright? Stay strong.

Cherry: Stay?

El Wray: Yeah baby. Stay.

Live long and prosper, peace,

Anna