Squirrelzilla

"For real, your heart's just made out of paper dude"

It is funny how language works - or rather does not. 

I decided to shave tonight, on a whim, declaring to myself it would be a nice stepping stone from which to jump to the other side of the day. 

So I scrapped the fire off my face and it stopped to burn. I bled - albeit littler than usual - but it's the way things go. And as the blades were methodically and relentlessly butchering my face, as they were tearing through this fury foxy coat, I started to feel naked; almost as if forced to undress before a crowd of feelings. 

And the flames kept burning out, and I kept the claws scratching. Take it away, take it all away. 

So that no one else will.

I felt good afterwards, a sight, a sigh of relief, satisfaction of coming to terms with my own decisions. 

I'm going to relapse, because my face is an arsonist, and I cannot put it away for eternity.

Yet, what I don't know is the language that would better describe the proverbial struggle that comes with every forest fire that goes. 

In English, I'm gonna grow a beard again. That means I am willing to actively infant, nurture, raise anew the source of the flames and let it ravage everything knowingly, by choice, hoping for something I haven't quite figured out yet - before putting and end to its misery when I think it's past its heyday.

In French, the beard is gonna grow on me. Literally. Without my consent, it will inscreasingly occupy more and more space on my face, grow thicker and more intense; and I don't really have a say in this - my only alternative being to murder it before it takes over and starts to, well, grow on me. Proverbially.

This is where the idea cannot fully translate. This is the space between the frontiers, the purgatory where the farthest ideas roam aimlessly, seeking a place to eventually land, unable to make up their minds.

My beard is gone. And with it I got rid of you.

Indeed, I AM completely insane. I gave far too big a meaning to you. In the end, it was nice to get to touch your life a little, but you were no big deal. If you look at the bigger picture, two weeks, they're not going to change much.

But what people seem to be blind to, what they could not get their eyes to see, is not the way I touched your life. But the way you touched mine.

You were the one with the only key to enable my release. You allowed me to leave my cell behind.

And of course it hurts, it hurts to think that I am just another toy in your little box. Of course it hurts to be bound by promises restraining me yet again. Of course I would have loved to have a shot at carving my way into your heart. Of course I would have loved a shot at loving you. Of course I would have loved you.

But I play by the rules, and the rules never allow that. Fine. 

I cope.

Still, I hurt, even so slightly. It's not a pleasant mind pattern, I don't enjoy the pain per se. But I am hurting. And what a breakthrough.

You are, unbeknownst to you, the best escape artist in there. Nobody will ever be able to do what you did, and nobody will hold the place you will forever be assigned to in my heart. That's how things are. In retrospect I will want to take it back. But retrospect does not mean shit when it comes to feelings. Because the very fact that we feel means it's volatile. You catch the flight and hang on as long as you can, and when it's gone, the memories are just pictures devoid of colors.

The world had been lacking those colors. I was seeing the same shapes, understanding the beauty similarly, but I lacked the explosion in my pupils. Now I see.

You did not take the decision to leave, because you were never really here. And I know we could go on like that, I could cling to hopeless illusions and start building a new cell in which I could rest, comfortably numb. But not this time. You took me by the hand and made me feel what it's like out there. 

And truth be told, I am secretly longing I could never let go of your hand. But I can't force you. I can't help you if you don't need help. I won't hang onto you if my chances don't get above the minuses. So I let go.

I will never have the courage to repel your hand if ever it appears next to mine, even if for a mere few seconds, for temporary bliss. I will never be fool enough to refuse a kiss. But I won't be too stupid again. 

You were wrong when you said that you were not the fantastic little thing in my life.

You were right to say I was not the fantastic little thing in yours.

So I'm going cold turkey this time. And I am aware that I will relapse. But for now it seems to me that it's the best course of action available for the taking.

For the first time I am taking my leave, and I don't know if ever I will return. 

With my hedaphones on, listening to Japanese music, nursing a dirty glass of Japanese whiskey, turning my back on the starless sky, pouting, I pour my lines out. 

Because of course my heart is made of paper. It is brand new. So I need to take extra care of it.

I have your smile in my eyes, your laugh in my ears, your body tattooed on my brain. The look in my eyes when I look into yours will be the first ever memory I will shelter in the little box.

You are the most beautiful girl I've ever met. You are the special treatment I needed to successfully suck off the venom. 

I will be grateful for life. And for starters, I will leave, as a parting gift.

Because we've both started to worry about the same thing.

Me with you is starting to scare you. You have begun to admit that I was dangerous, for if you are the best escape artist, as a break-in specialist

I'm in a league of my own.

I won't have you go through the trouble of me. You deserve what you think is best. And you don't think it's me.

So let me dismiss myself gracefully

Before I'm too far gone.

So I am hurting, and that hurts. But if I can hurt today, and as painful as it may be, maybe it means that I can feel again, maybe it opened the crack to the other side as well.

Maybe, and just maybe

If I am hurting today

I might be happy the day after tomorrow.

Maybe I can.

____________________________________________________________

No, I can't help it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYhHY77j9L8

Inside of this machine

So curtain call already, uh?
It did not take long in the end. I carefully tried to weave my way through the mud, but I stumbled upon a crack. It was easier than I expected. I still thought I was gonna be given a few more shots at this thing.
Anyways.
I fell early, so it is unlikely the wound is that severe. There certainly won't be any scar this time. Yet it was an interesting test bed. My mind collapsed, but the rest seems fine.
It is a pity, because now that I've crossed to the other side, I have to keep going. I don't have the luxury of a choice anymore. There is no turning back.
My eyes can't seem to figure out any direction.
There's mist everywhere. A huge , thick blanket of grey surrounding all. I'm right in the eye of the cyclone and can't even see my feet. But if I don't move, I won't ever move again.
Which way then? I have my pick of choices.
But none looks good to me. None looks promising.
I'm doing a really good job sheltering the little box. Our brains were designed to learn from experience. It's what I've always called intuition.
It's not some godsent ability. You remember the shapes, the environment, the parameters. They're always different, but somehow, the patterns remain similar. The only thing that needs some adapting to is the opponent. But in a given situation, when you've made more than enough blunders, you will know before even knowing.
That things are bad.
And my built-up experience is right.
So I had a nanosecond to jump on it and wrap myself around the little thing. I took the blow. I'm suffering.
But it does not have to be broken yet.
Let it see from the inside. Let it learn fear, anguish, disappointment, mild despair.
Let it see defeat. But let's not lose it this time.

There are two main parts of me. The first is just the little life-awkward kid who grew up and got beat, over and over and over again until he broke. The second is the persona that was shaped to replace the first, to act as a surrogate for as long as the first needed to get fixed. He took way too long to fix. He took too many years to find the fitting piece. So the second developed by itself, became a self-sustaining entity, and took over.
The first part came back. And they cohabit together, if they're not thriving. It's a mess, but an organized mess.
The second is a little insane. The neural network used to create it was damaged at the time, and it breathed bugs, loopholes, flaws into it. It snaps every now and then.
It has been going rogue for hours now. The sight of blood.
The second was designed to be, in every respect, a better version of the first. Stronger, calmer, colder, smarter, better. An upgrade from the raw and rough draft. A clean version birthed after trials and tribulations - but with all the red ink removed. And I realized today.
This was THE crucial mistake. The thing I had been chasing, hunting down forever, at the core of the looping pain. The writing was on the wall.
It has not experienced anything at all. It has memorized, not felt. He knows what is theoretically good, but can't ever quite make sense of it. It's a well-crafted imitation of a being.

It cannot deal with red ink because it's never seen it flow on the ground, crying from its veins. It's never tasted the bitterness of its own blood.
And now it's gotta take it all in at once.

I am my brain, and if I don't understand much of what I am and how I work, I know one thing: it won't be able to see it through. I did not put him here for that purpose. A powerful scarecrow that, against all odds, began moving by itself. That's all it was. But now it's right here in my head, and it's hurting. Spouting nonsense, crawling on the floor, damning a world that does not even exist.

It's time for the first to come back. It's time for him to take the second on his shoulders and go wherever.
As long as they go.
He might be inferior, less talented, and weaker at life; but for all intents and purposes, he has the one thing that will let them get out of this mess. The experience acquired from countless iterations of internal disasters. He knows how to deal with leaving a trail of blood behind. And he knows it's important.
Because someday, someone inside my head might get back there- and it'll have a path to follow.

Intuition. That's my only weapon now. That's my only hope that the first will get the second to a safe place while the second tries to protect the little box.

At the moment I really don't know if they'll succeed. Ominous is the task, but I have a hunch that some way, somehow- the first might find a way through the mess.
Or die for good trying, this time.


Tonight another important chapter is coming to a close. Actually it already has, but this once I have a chance to look the chapter in the eye before getting myself out there on my suicide mission.
I don't know if it will do me any good or what.
It was short, microscopically so maybe- but it sure did have a permanent effect on my whole being.
And so tonight I say my farewell to that line in my book.

One that made me bleed more ink than ever before for a single line.

Goodbye.


Oh Jesus Christ I'm alone again,
So what did you do those three days you were dead?
Because this problem is gonna last
More than the weekend

Comfort Zone

I've been riding life's rollercoaster for a week now. It has been a fairly interesting time span, during which I've had the chance to experience the thrill of oxygen flowing right into my lungs without slapping me on the face. A big ball of brand new fresh air recoloring my entrails - a nice changeof pace from the stale, dry and smothering substance I had to take in for years. However the wagon has not yet started to fall.
It's not the first ticket I've bought, I remember the ups and downs; I have some recollection of the dizzying and numbing feeling of getting closer to the sun and the fear of falling nowhere fast.
I have never been one for adrenaline. But I've been enjoying it so far nonetheless.

I know. I know. We all know.
I need to calm down. I need to gain some much needed perspective out of all this. I've always complained about being on the outside looking in. It would not be a bad thing for me to step out for a second and reflect.
I am getting ahead of myself and I'm becoming delusional, borderline insane. My world is trying to swallow the bitter universe, but this illusion of grandeur will bring doomsday about if I don't do anything to hit the brakes- for there is no way my world's stomach could take everything in.
I don't want my existence to belch again for some time before eventually vomiting the surplus of happiness. I don't want to be empty, to lose that consistency of my being once more.

This ride is already among my three most memorable ones. It has to be. Because it is the first one I chose not to step away from. I had a choice for once, and I still took the chance. So that one's gonna be on me, whatever the outcome.
Most importantly, because in the grand scheme of things, it's had a significant impact in a ludicrously minuscule time frame. I am changing right before my eyes. More than in a long time. I am regaining things I did not even remember existed in the first place.
Maybe that's inaccurate.
Maybe I'm just getting new things that were never there before.
And for all that I am thankful.

And I know, I know the fall is gonna have an Icarus feeling to it. But I don't want to prepare for it. It was my mistake last time - it does not hurt less anyway. I'll cope.
I am willing to.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Of course I know I am not in love. I have learned my lesson and haven't forgotten it. I know I am not Hugh Grant.

But who can blame me for being disoriented? After all these years, how could anyone blame me for being a kid on a trampoline? I think I deserve a little bit of that, I've earned it. 

I've earned the right to be genuinely happy, if just for a couple hours a week, even if it ends tomorrow. Even if it ended yesterday.

I have a fundamental right to taste the thrill and bathe in it. 

I finally possess the ability to try and be ecstatic for a little while. 

Please don't take that away from me. 

Not yet.

Not yet.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I was beyond repair, without caveat.

And she is not going to repair me, because she does not want to, and she would not know how to do it.

But she's been showing me something essential; something that no one else could have discovered;

She's been proving that I can be fixed.

Thank her for the quantum leap.

*Hey listen, I think it's started playing some feelings on its own?*

Fries have never been French

Mais quel monde de merde.

Baby steps

Is it the last frontier? Is it the end of the starting line, where the linear and narrow lane disappears and makes room for wild nature?
I don't have the blueprint for what's reflected in my eyes. I've got to make up my mind about crossing that barrier or just finding a way around the upcoming mess.

How long has it been since I last soiled my hands? When was it again, last time I tumbled and got knee deep into the dirt?
It looks pretty steep. I don't have the vigor of my young days anymore. It's gonna be tough fighting an uphill battle.
And what about all these holes on the ground, the fallen branches; memories of the someones who walked that path before me and did not fare so well? And are we gonna talk about the bruises and scars on my own body? The ones I suffered walking though up to this point? It has not been an easy ride man. Not at all. I mean, you guys know all about my collapsing - more times than I would care to admit. My legs are a mess. My clothes are drenched. The scene reminds me of a weird flashback. Kaneki before facing Arima. Or something similar. I've made it here, somehow, god knows how.

I thought I had given up?

I mean, it was pretty obvious to me I was just looking for a way to get out. What happened? Do I really have to climb this mountain? I cannot even see the tip, for fuck's sake. There's mist surrounding it, and it seems to be draped in weird and creepy noises. I'm back on my feet now, so it's the perfect opportunity for me to just turn around and run towards the exit.
Then I can rest. Let's rest a bit, right?

If I jump over this sign, I know what's gonna happen. I'll get hurt, again, big time. It might open the cicatrized skin. I will pour blood like always before. I will have to grovel, I will have to run. I will not have time to breathe.
Don't I deserve some breathing space?
If I go, I will suffer. And it's not a pessimistic account of what is to happen. It's reality. It is what will happen to me.

But, I sustained these wounds, and I'm still standing, aren't I? So who is to say I can't take a couple more, now that I'm replenished?
I'm gonna fuck up. It's gonna end in a bad way. The kind of bad I remember without making fun of.

Hell yeah I'm gonna give it a try.
My eyes are red because I still have too much blood to clear out. My mind needs to cleanse. My soul needs to purge. It has been drunk for years now, it's time to bring it back.
I am not afraid to get hit, I have the strength to get back up. And I know this haphazard piece of environment won't lead me anywhere. It's not the point. Because it's either get through or lower your head and turn back.
I am one to see the brick wall and still punch it until all my knuckles are wrecked.

The scenery looks nice from here, and I know it won't be quite that beautiful once I get entangled with this level of reality. But the grass always looks greener on the other side, that's common knowledge.
I don't need the grass to be green anyway. It will soon be sweating of blood drips, so I don't think its extent of greenness will matter too much anyways.

I've won once, I can win again. It was not to happen in game 1, or 2, or even 3. It did not happen again by game 5.
But I will have many more chances.
And I know I can convert one of them, at some point. Life has been exposed, so I know. I know there will be a solution.
I can pull it off again.
So look out stars, I'm back. And I'm coming for you.


So here I go, but let's not make the mistakes that doomed our knees in the first place this time.
One step at a time, alright?
One step at a time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEOGuR5CD3Q

Move 78 - The tree with the red leaves and the little box

I have so many songs in my head that I can't hear the thoughts in my ears shut up. I was not programed to deal with that stuff. It's outdated data, the kind I am not equipped to analyze anymore. I am at a loss for whatever.
It's already been three years I threw all this over the bridge and decided to go forward. Not backward. Yet I've been walking ahead with head turned around all this time, haven't I? Out of fear, because the task of starting over is daunting and the memories are haunting. Yet I had worked out a system, I had managed to shape myself into a normalized engine that processed things like an extremely well human being. Made of flesh, blood, but without a feelings box to hinder the whole.
Well fast forward to the future present of my past, and I'm in the middle of a predicament, aren't I now? For something is showing where the hole was left pillaged. And a grave digger may have found a seed. Or may not, for all I know.
But the landscape has changed.

I don't like to make a big deal out of my birthday. But I like it.
It has not always been the case.
When I was younger, I did not care much for it.
When the filling of my heart was ripped away from me, I altogether refused to celebrate it.
Ever since, it has been an occasion to look to the sky and in the eyes so as to show him that this particular today, I win. And that I will keep on winning.
This birthday was not supposed to be different.
This birthday you were not supposed to be here.
But well, things happen, am I right?
Life is possibly the worst opponent one can face. Because just like a machine it does not get tired, frustrated, anxious. But you can. And however good your reading skills can be, it will always find a way to refute your brilliant moves. But it makes mistakes sometimes, because it's not perfect; it opens up opportunities for you to take, as if it were probing you to gauge your strength.
So while you might get flummoxed, taste despair or grow seethed, at some point there will be an open crack.
Up to you to dig further.
Usually, I don't. I just don't, because something tells me not to. So I find excuses, I back off, I throw in the towel delusionally talking myself into thinking it's best. And who is to say otherwise? What did not happen can't be proven to have been better. Albeit not a great way, it is a path I've walked down one too many times because something was not right. My gut feeling was saying no.
This time it was shouting yes all over the place.

I did not have the kind of exhilarating intuition I once got with Marion. It was not the ominous one that tried to warn me about Emma - to no avail. There was nothing at all, actually. She was there, she had arrived, and while my brain was computing and my heart was AWOL, my guts did not seem to care. Yet there is no doubt that opened the crack.
And as the night went by, as the shenanigans started to pile on, as I was starting to become more human in a way - and not a good one - my guts began acknowledging the mistake that life had just made, one it had never made before.

It had just given me a shot at something I would be willing to fight for.

And so it became. My guts took over and switched my brain off after all these years. In case of an emergency, it had always been a secret ability that was to never be used. For it to be applied, both heart and guts had to agree. Heart was nowhere to be found.
And that is how the engine was forcefully put to rest.
I was left here, with what is arguably the strongest weapon I've ever had, without any hindrance sealing its power away. It made things easy. And there is a reason for that.
It had played against life so many times that even if it could not read everything out, it knew.
It knew life could not counter that one.
I was not shaking, nor was I anguishing. I was deprived from my thinking functionnality.
And I just played it all out like I was supposed to.

And it changed my world, even if just a little bit.

It opened the eyes of my soul, and I came to the realization that all this time, I was not the strong character who had built a castle of glass in which to stay sheltered and imprisoned. I've been a fragile piece of a human being who had managed to erect too sturdy a monument. In those three long years, I had never once allowed anything to break in through to me. I was never forbidden from tasting the outside, but I would not get myself hurt.
I refused to get hurt.
I refused to be human.

The realm has fallen. The crown is broken. All hail the world.

It did not take much. It was never going to take much of anything, really. I just needed the right thing. And all had always built up to this, to this moment I would know would break my self-induced pain.
It was just what I needed, a moment suspended in time, hanging on by invisible threads forming a safe bubble in which I could blow the seal away.

I felt alive, for the first time in forever. Maybe not forever. But in at least forever.
And I needed not any more. Because unlike the previous turns in my life, this one did not come with the leech element attached to it. It's not something I have to cling to in order not to fall. It is something that gets tattooed on my soul and will not vanish. A triumphant scar picturing a victory over life.

All this time I just wanted to feel alive.

Now as to how, this is quite simple: my Cinderella requirement was met. That is, she took me by the hand to show me the open world. Not the other way around. If this is not what triggered the mistake in the first place, it was the move that decisively gave me the upper hand and the confidence that I would not let this one get out of hand.

Now it might be nothing more. And I would have been glad with just that. I did not expect a door to be open for a sequel, happy with a lacklustre happily ever for now. It took me by surprise, and I don't quite know what to do with it. But my brain's been turned back on, and it has been trying to process too much for the past couple of days.
That's normal, and I don't know when guts will finally tell it,
But it's broken, and it won't be fixed.

This device does not work well enough for what I need. It is too biased towards calculations and not enough towards what I can't see. I need to use what I can't see to see what is right before my eyes.

Yet it has been exhausting. For the scars of my past remain, and while they have been covered up, possibly only temporarily, and don't hurt for now; the memories that are the wounds underneath them have etched my soul with unfogrettable holes. And I don't want to reproduce those mistakes.
So I keep my head just below the clouds.
I would love to let go and dive in them, for they are euphoria imfeelingated. They are a safe bubble in which you are immune to hazard. They fill you with the warmth of the stars without overwhelming you with the heat of the sun. They show you a clear sky above the foggy reality. But beware, because euphoria is a powerful drug. It feeds on your contents to grow, and when nothing is left, it leaves you behind and empty. So when the cloud is ripe, it will pour you down.
And I am not sure I could weather that if I kept my guard down.

So I consciously hamper myself and stand just below, in order to have a split second to dodge if furious hail starts swarming my world. But it's sapping. It gradually crumbles my armor and rusts my sword.

I know that part of myself more than I should. That's the only part I know of actually, because it's the one that has made most mistakes in the past. And I've learnt from them. It's the part of me that has been exposed, tampered with, the one that toppled in the past too many times for me to recollect. And I know of its gullible nature. It will fall for anything. It will bet everything on a whim. Make no mistake, that part is at the core of my being. It is the very essence of who I am, the thing that shows when you scratch off the multiple layers of wallpapers. It is me, so to speak. But me is dangerous to myself. Because me has been stuck in Groundhog Day. While I learn from its mistakes, it repeats the same process over and over again, foolishly thinking what's wrong is not the approach, but the issue parameters. Using it always leads to a similar result. But on the other hand, this might be the most human part of my being; the very recipient of the real world, what bounds my existence to the materiality of it all. It's what is behind my greatest mistakes and my most surprising victories.
It is what was dug out a few hours ago.

Now I am not gonna set it free so easily. Neither will I make the mistake of leashing it. But I don't know the in-between solution.

Today I would like to find something in between.
Because I am not ready to bleed again, but I am far beyond acting so as not to.

I don't want to think about tomorrow, but tomorrow, I will have to think about the today. And while I will be different, the same real world dilemma will just turn into a cancer and grow to disproportionate size.

To oversimplify, I don't know if I am ready for something that does not exist; if I am not ready for something that is mine for the taking, if I am backing down from an illusion, or if I am willing to go for what is mine to lose.
I don't know jack shit.

I've been given a new feelings box, and I seem to know its mechanism. It's pretty similar to the previous one, except maybe cleaner since it has never been thrown away yet.
Now the real question is, do I try to use it.

I've been trying to stay neutral in all endeavors of late, which is like spitting on my very existence. I am not here to stay still. The unease and sentiment of doom only disappear when I put everything in the balance.

They disappeared the other night, the other morning, and it wiped the slate clean. Whatever comes next, I'll face it with newfound resolve. If I decide to bleed, I will bleed a new blood. If I fall, I will face the sky. If I want to turn back, I won't let it change my course.

I am going to take care of this feelings box, I am going to nurture it right this time. The second coming will be nothing like the first. Or maybe it will. But no matter what, it will be different.

The only question is whether I choose to baptize it now, and take the chance of drowning it; as my hopes suffocate and my dreams sink away.

And the real problem is that there is a major discrepancy between my universe and the real world. And the link is pristine, it has never been tested, hence its inability to act accordingly.

And because both worlds have a set of rules that often doesn't apply to the other, I am clueless.
And as my skin burns with the scars of a new beginning, as my brain let itself reach too close to euphoria, as my heart has come back to long for utopia and as my lungs breathe a brand new air of feeling; my guts have taken over at long last and lead the way to something.

I don't know what that something is, but there is something beyond the crossroads.
Now I just need to pick my poison and let my veins run with it.




But whatever happens next, I won't forget that with you in my arms, and like never before and certainly never again,
I felt alive.

And life will never be able to take that away from me. Ever.

So if just for this once,
I won.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfAkM1sSx44