The happy place

Hello I wanted so badly to write about the soup I had for dinner today!

Soup is a category of food which I typically don’t eat, but I have changed a lot lately, and I savour the opportunity to familiarise myself with myself again, and in so doing I have discovered and renewed my appreciation for soup.

There’s a bakery nearby. A French one 🇫🇷⚜️🇫🇷⚜️

I understand why many people love France and the iconic Count of Monte Christo, and the also iconic Eiffel tower, and that even though some fools have built higher towers elsewhere, they are mere copies.

They make levain beads in there, in the bakery: real French bread and baguette. Levian baguette which I can buy on my way home for lunch, and then I can just heat up some soup and eat like a king.

If you picture this, it’s easy to understand what a privilege it is to have what is a small portal to France just next block, where you could even get a croissant.

So back to the soup, I had one today which was very funny, because it was a type of Mexican soup which looked just like vomit.

Just like vomit.

With this rich thought in my head I went out into the evening darkness. There wasn’t one single star visible, and the cold autumn rain felt cold on my skin.

For whatever reason, a smell of sewage filled the crisp air, an overflowing septic tank somewhere? As I walked along the streetlights, past the bakery and onwards into the night I had a strong feeling of thankfulness for this beautiful world with soup and France, and a lump in my throat, a feeling of maybe having opened an old wound.

A feeling, maybe of sewage, or of vomit?

A release which stings the eyes. A strange duality of life.

The world is very strong right now, like concentrated juice: Red leaves together with orange and green ones are crowning the trees, it doesn’t look real. The air is chilly and there are smells from everywhere: perfume, exhaust from passing cars and bread from the bakeries! The food tastes incredibly rich and different and the coffee does too. The coffee smells of coffee!

And I smell! Either it’s a coincidence this week that I smell of sweat, or I always smell, just that I notice it now because I got my sense of smell to smell my smell with now. Who knows? I got deodorant now which reminded me of high school locker rooms. A time which will never come back and for that I am grateful!

I read a novel in Books of blood, by Clive Barker it was part two maybe about someone who got amplified senses to the point where even a fly landing on his skin felt like torture. It feels like that now except not bad but good. Luckily I do not live in a horror fiction.

I don’t think so anyway.

I saw the Demon Slayer film with my daughter the other day and it made a surprisingly strong impression on me! The characters were rich and all of the demons and humans came across to me as philosophers, one said something along the lines of happiness being a sheet of glass and it struck a chord in me, because of how brittle it all is.

Hello I haven’t slept I have better things to do.

Indeed.

Like coughing: Endless nights of coughing. Aren’t they long?

And yet, the terrible feeling of waking up; the nausea, subsided and I felt ready to face another day head on which is my modus operandi, (just like Solomon Kane.).

I have some cortisone, some nicotine and caffeine in the system now, which I believe is why I’m feeling this energy. Quite a lot.

Today on going home from work after many a profound thought, many great ideas, but little to no work done in the traditional sense

in fact it was hard to not only focus but also to think anything. Which is interesting then how come I get such vivid visions in my head? It doesn’t add up? Such strong texts (the veil is getting thinner) I save for my book. Wait and see!

Anyway, today on going home, as I opened the door making my exit, I was overwhelmed by impressions: The mild air, streets sprinkled with orange, yellow and red leaves, illuminated by the bright shining sun, but mostly I was awestruck by a really intense sweet smell, which turned out originating from a churros kiosk some hundred meters further down the street.

Standing erect in the sunshine, feeling all of this, seeing all of this, hearing whatever I was listening to (In Mourning) I had a feeling that I was for some reason getting special treatment.

Following the scent of the churros, I was bombarded by others; of cinnamon buns from the bakery, the intense alcoholic smell of windshield washing fluid from a car passing by at great speed.

There were smells everywhere: of shampoo, of fabric softener, of my own sweat smelling of barbecued pork. All the way home I went in this fashion, sometimes confused as I was trying to trace all of the scents.

Somehow I felt like daredevil, he is blind but he senses the world with type of a batlike radar. It was similar to that but my radar were made of smells.

I felt supercharged like in fact a type of super hero with elevated everything.

And

Then I had sushi, the miso soup smelled strongly of I think umami, the sushis smelled of fish and everything tasted so good, so strongly that it was like the best meal I ever had, and I don’t particularly like sushi.

I love sushi now.

I know that this sense of smell is borrowed to me and bought by the cortisone treatment. I know that it will soon again fade, as all things do. Even as we all do. But here and now it serves only as a reminder to write it down and save, and rather than mourn what will soon be taken back, give thanks for days such as this.

Like I read this once in Count of Monte Christo and it really stuck with me it’s that

There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.

My dog, the red one, she’s licking my face now. Some say that she has got a bad breath, but I don’t know.

Last night I was unable to sleep, as I lay coughing out the remnants of my cold. But the good thing is that I took the opportunity to write the foreword of my book in my head. It will be a book which may not be published before I die.

Today I’ve had strange energy nonetheless because I’m in a high cortisone dose, and I have been drinking considerable amounts of caffe latte, because I’ve figured it out, I know how to work the coffee machine at work now. The steam snout.

But now I could probably sleep as I have spent all of my energy. It’s on yellow now, on energy saving mode, and I have set up realistic goals for myself.

A secret key to happiness I find is setting up realistic goals I will become level 45 before years end.

In Pokémon go

I saw a rainbow today when I was running and it had just stopped raining.

Running is an exaggeration but technically it’s true as I had only one foot at a time on the ground, 

Anyway.

Still I saw the rainbow and further along the track: the sun peeked out between two gray clouds to extra illuminate some Mallards resting on the grass in the park near the waterfront promenade.

They were beautiful and peaceful and the rainbow is a good Omen!

The Mallards are very beautiful and versatile creatures, perfectly shaped for flying and swimming.

This is just the type of thing I needed on a Sunday, to see these beautiful things and feel the badness sweated out and exhaled and to listen to Ava Max Motto

I know that running does this to me, so why don’t I do it more often?

I have had a cold , on closer inspection it’s no inner mystery of knowing what’s good for you vs. doing it. Sometimes the only inner battle fought is just a plain cold.

Hello isn’t it beautiful at the lake when the sun has set? The water is black like really black and it feels dangerous. Like if you drop something overboard, it’s gone forever. This body of water which we were out at just now is murky even in broad daylight, due to the muddy lakebed, at night it’s black like that maximum black, you know? Doomsday black. And yet on the surface it glimmers even so. Like made of liquified black diamond.

It’s just so beautiful and serene, there were a few swans which were upset when coming too near, we saw them flying to seek another resting place. also some Canadian geese doing the same thing, but mostly it was just the gentle sound when the oars broke surface and the also gentle swearing when rowing too close to the what looked like an impossible long cow made of grass which was hard to distinguish from the seaweeds in the darkness.

My hands were slick from fish carvings, but I couldn’t smell anything, (I sometimes feel nothing)

I will not say what kind of fishy business we were up to in the cover of dark, but it wasn’t smuggling.

And so I will write this down as whenever something beautiful happens, it’s a formidable idea to write down, to save it for later in the virtual treasure chest, like a black diamond made out of memories .

There’s an ebb and a flow of things, I would say that life is a rollercoaster but I don’t think it is, like in a rollercoaster you just hang on for dear life waiting for it all to be over, but in reality you also have to join teams calls, fold laundry and pay the bills.

That’s a sad but strong start if I may say so.

Sad but strong but now it’s weekend!

I would feel that all the possibilities were open to me right now, the weekend has just begun, if I weren’t so damn tired. Like a mummy if they even feel the same way, lying for thousands of years in a sarcophagus until some grave robber breaks it open to just to take the golden coins? Or an archeologist which is possibly even worse because suddenly you are paraded around the museums in a plexi glass container on display for all the world to see! It feels exactly like that!

Do you understand that feeling?

I’m recovering from a cold which would kill some people, but for me it’s just some coughs, I’ll be back to normal in no time.

(I’ll never be normal.)

But anyway I enjoy the weather, and I’m feeling good. I will try to be like the sun.

It’s my idol: the sun! Melting ice and sending warm tendrils of light to the whole earth and even some other planets.

Even the moon!

Hey aren’t roundworms strange? I can’t tell the head from the tail; they don’t even have the structural integrity of over cooked pasta, but otherwise bear a striking resemblance. Elastic like thread seal tape or something?

Isn’t it strange that we live in a world where God would allow such creatures to exist? It’s such bizarre examples as this which make me fear that he’s taken his hands off our fates, if indeed it is true that he is benevolent and all powerful like some say.

Have you heard the all our Gods have abandoned us album, the nihilist track:

All our gods have abandoned us  This is the great esoteric depression  We sold our souls, but couldn't buy salvation

Unsettling

Or they are this reminder of how much of this world I do not understand. So humbling like I needed that; I don’t need further proof. All in all I know next to nothing and yet somehow I am reasonably successful. (Fact is I wouldn’t change my life even with the King’s (even if he wasn’t old)).

I see bad omens every day, if it isn’t dead birds or these apples I wrote about then they come in my dreams.

It’s a general feeling of unease inside like I was infected by metaphorical roundworms causing this sense of unease somewhere in the gut.

I can’t put my finger on.

Like when patting a cat, stroking its belly and then suddenly something inside the cat changes, a warning bell has gone off and she’d rip you to shreds or well at least the hand. At least she would bite it or maybe half heartedly attack it with her claws.

Have you ever logged into Nagios because you know that something is wrong, but all systems appear green?

It’s this sense of wrongness I try to describe.

I am a proper wordsmith.

Hello this might sound fantastical but it’s all true I swear it! It happened yesterday.

The weather shamans had foretold rain this whole weekend, yet there was none. Still I felt the chugging of the lawn mower’s engine struggling slightly with the wet grass, whose clippings had the appearance of stewed spinach.

It’s early autumn here, only the winter apples are still attached to their trees, but for one exception: The reason for writing this post: A powerful bad omen:

Picture this: A freshly mowed lawn, wet grass sending a pleasant smell (supposedly) to the nostrils, bees buzzing in almost every dandelion growing at the roadside, a blue sky; even though they said it’d rain, only a few gray clouds could be seen overhead. And a warmth so gentle that you could wear shorts without freezing if you also have a sweater on.

Then this lush tree, bright green with three red apples still clinging to the canopy (because it is a small one). Blood red. Not like the apple in Snow White, but brighter blood red like artery blood.

It’s hard not to think of the final days of the Roman empire when seeing the decadence which comes next, and having the thoughts drawn also to this famous novel by Edgar Allan Poe; The Masque of the Red Death. Or simply the final supper of these inmates who will soon be executed, maybe on the electric chair.

Because

As you now move closer, eager maybe to take a bite of one of the bright red apples, you see now that they have split open. They are overripe, and should’ve fallen to the ground by now, but for some reason haven’t. In the cracks, there are holes burrowed, and wasps. Tens of wasps in each apple, gorging their final few days away in drunken stupor.

I left them to it. After all considering the time they have left I can think of nothing better for them to do.

I see them for what they are however. How could the warning be more obvious: a trinity of makeshift apple igloos. Bright red. With wasps. Wasps are screaming warning in their own right with their black and yellow stripes, and having three houses like gingerbread houses from Hans and Gretel made out of apple filled with them at this time of the year when they are particularly aggressive are warnings so blatantly obvious that only a fool would ignore them.

Take heed!

This dream I write down and what is significant to me is the lack impression it made on me even though it carries what I believe to be a very bad Omen.

---

I dreamt I was in France. In an apartment.

There was an older lady there with black hair. She was sitting on the floor of a newly renovated room without furniture. She wore colourful clothes; a dark blue dress and a white blouse with a flower pattern.

She had a hammer in her hand. While we were talking, she used it like a fly swatter to smash little tiny pigeon chicks, size of gnats.

When they died there was no blood they just disappeared.

She did it very casually like they were no more than flies to her, but with enough force that even in the dream I was concerned about the parquet floor (but not the pigeons even though I really like them (in the waking world)).

She even swatted one with the hammer against my forehead, but I didn’t even feel it. She didn’t even pause her speaking then.

I can’t remember a single word of what she was saying. I only remember her mouth moving, and a faint smile on her serious face.