1351

Written as txt msgs for a friend who was unfairly committed to a psychiatric hospital for a couple of months last summer. I never was very good with text messages, much less so with coherent ones, so I settled for faintly surreal, to remind her of home... not exactly shit-hot writing, but the memories are precious

#1

Solar burn on the winds of interplanetary insects;
a storm of light;
I can't get this buzzing from my mind;
those beating wings...
the ghosts of insects pass through me,
semi-corporeal forms touch my skin like smoke;
drifting shadow trails linger,
clinging to my hands

#2

I woke up this morning and the sun was gone;
dead air,
and the stars extinguish;
a cooling universe slows to a halt
as it enters the final stage of terminal entropy
all worlds have now burned out
we raise our hands to empty skies

Please, please, tell me that this is a fiendishly clever parody. I no longer have the ability to tell for myself. Didn't I, at some point, swear blind that I wouldn't look at these anymore?

Okay, I'm going to try to keep this brief.

While I do tend to follow certain inherently predictable patterns of behaviour once I've got them started, my presence here and now should not necessarily be taken as an indication that this journal is back on full-time duty. Resurrecting it is primarily intended as a means of aiding contact with certain individuals that I've rather fallen out of touch with and have been missing a great deal.

Now, back to the backstory.
For several months after this journal cut off I went through a period of extreme depression (of the enervated "life is so futile it isn't even worth moving" variety - I even gave up the harder end of my habit, which should indicate to those who know me exactly how off-colour I was feeling).

I eventually started to think that it might be a good idea to pull myself together. I decided that shifting all my computers over to Linux would make a good project with which to motivate myself. This proved to be both fun and productive (incidentally, my distro of choice is Slackware). I became involved in the open source community in various small ways. I started working again, self-employed doing odds and sods of design, mostly for the web, which, although not really my trade of choice, did involve the rather fun process of becoming familiar with new web design standards and learning my way around php. I bought myself some nice new hardware, notably including a Fuji Finepix S7000 (nice digicam - 6MP, good range of SLR features) and my laptop, Strange (an Acer Aspire 1502 LMi, at the heart of which beats an AMD64 processor). This gave me an ideal excuse to compile my own kernel. :)

That takes us up to the middle of summer '04. For various reasons, some of them to do with the pressures of work and personal life, but mostly to do with the complete absence of any personal space at all, I ended up going to a party at a friend's squat and sort of didn't leave afterwards. Large quantities of fun ensued, a great deal of chemistry was consumed, and some friendships which I have come to place immeasurable value upon were begun. Obviously some bits of the experience were better than others, but there you go.

A few months later, as is the unfortunate nature of such things, we got evicted. Some of you (whose addresses I had available to me) received mail from me at this time, just in case I dropped off the face of the earth permanently. Obviously, this sort of situation isn't ever going to be a particularly happy time, although fuck knows I had the least to lose under the circumstances... anyway, the unpleasant details aren't really the kind of thing I'm inclined to write about in this kind of public forum.

We found somewhere new a couple of weeks later, in early December.

I've learned some shit.
Life goes on.
My veins are doing fine.
And I stand by my belief that drugs are important.

Also, if you ever want to really learn to despise humanity, I suggest finding a job as a sex-chat line worker. (This fact won't necessarily stop me from moonlighting in that particular line of employment again, but by gods I want more money for it next time.)

And the broke period that seems to last most of January in between paying off the excesses of the festive season and getting your next reliable pay cheque really sucks.

Peace out.

Okay, so I'm still alive.
Let's not make too big a thing of it this time, yes?

I started with this LiveJournal shit at the end of November 2001, mostly because a lot of my friends were doing it. I'm a sheep like that.

It seemed like a fun idea (the inane quiz memes were partly responsible), possibly useful (I was experimenting with various kinds of journal-keeping at the time, for dream records, magickal rants, and writing experiements), and iit also looked like it might provide an interesting medium of communication with like-minded folks at the time, the people I knew on here were (mostly refugees from a certain occult e-list).

I was also in the process of coming out of the medicine cabinet, to the concern of some of my friends and acquaintances, from whom I'd largely kept the details of my heavier drug use. The LJ thing gave me somewhere to rant, bitch, whine, and generally attempt to explain the situation.

And, possibly the strongest motivating factor, I thought it might do me good to have somewhere where I could regularly write in public, but without too much pressure to make sure it was all good stuff.
( Read more... )

( death test result )

Dear Diary,

My chemical of choice and I have been running into relationship issues.

I've recently recovered from from some repugnant stomach bug probably transmitted by the equally vile human creatures that infest this city. It hit me on the way down, when my immune system was totalled, and left me debilitated for a week. I can think of infinitely more interesting ways to cause nausea and constipation, and I can entirely do without the cramps and sharp pains.

Obviously, it would be unfair to blame the drug for this. It's not her fault I got carried away and ran myself into the ground, and it's not her fault that the bloody primates carry disease.

I really want to take into consideration the fact that, in London, she sometimes isn't as powerfully herself here as she was in Wales. She and her experience can come across as smaller, dirtier, less transcendent, and somwhow cheaper. Sometimes she makes me feel the same way.
( Read more... )

We've finshed unpacking.
Of course, we all know what that means, right?

( try it here! )

Stolen from twentytens

( I would be.... )

I just found my favourite tattered old needle exchange membership card - the item which provided me with the moniker 1351. I didn't find it anywhere during the move, and feared I might have lost it for good. Turns out it was between the pages of my copy of "Nova Express".

I'm proud to present my very own, excessively long (104 item) pointless musical taste survey, comprising entirely (although not comprehensively) of artists on my regular playlist. Acceptible responses include: Yes, No, Who?, You Like WHAT?, and a 500 word dissertation on any given artist's merits or lack thereof.
( you may now turn over your paper )

Look, it's Sunday, I'm stoned, and I've been unpacking boxes all day. Pointless surveys are about the upper limit of my intellectual reach right now. Might compose one of own, though.
( Read more... )

Lonely nights belong to me. Midnight blue skies out in the garden, every horizon sepia tinted by city lights that serve to obliterate the stars. A waxing moon hangs between cloud reflections, and I am unable to make out fishing wire, invisble lines to suspend it from the sky.

There are no voices here. The room is empty of the flickering presence of boxed and chattering fools, but it is not silent. Keys clatter beneath my fingertips, and the turbine hum of the computer sings an accompaniment in white noise. The occasional scrape of reptillian claws on wood or glass, crickets chirping in the distance. I note my breaths, hurricane microcosms measured in smoke, and my companion sighs in his sleep.

The lingering flavours of tobacco, hashish, and peppermint fade in a mouthful of clear water, pure enough to taste of nothing at all, a momentary sense of cool moisture.
I finish the bottle, my lips chasing droplets.

Painted boards beneath my feet. Invisible to the eye, a particle of dust ceases in its frenzied brownian dance to come to rest on my skin.
A lizard tongue of flame breeds tiny embers. Fragile plumes rise to the ceiling and race to heat my throat, all I am able to smell in a room I know to be heavy with incense and the musk of dragons.
A frail breath of outside air seems as tasteless as the water.

So, I settle down to watch 'The Dead Pool', one of the Dirty Harry flicks. I'm a fan of Clint Eastwood pictures - and did anyone else notice that the Avatar in Ultima 9 seems to have been modelled on him?

Without drugs, certainly without hard drugs, TV becomes a more inviting option.

About 5 minutes in, the first death involves a poisoning. You see, this rock star (Jim Carrey in an early role) is having a hit and...

Exactly.

Some days, I just don't seem to be able do anything without having syringes paraded before my eyes.

Fortunately, a nice man with a very fast motorcycle later delivered some hashish, which should at least sustain my base level semblance of functionality until the I can get some of the good stuff into my veins.

I'll be surprised if I don't cave soon.
Given that I now have money (to the point of even having paid off most of my overdraft - not that I expect that to last),
Given that I know where to get some. And that I already have some of the purest stuff on order from a source outside the city.
Given that the only remaining causes for my abstinence are common sense and work ethic responsibility, neither of which I have in abundance.
Given that I've been screaming for it since the last shot, a little over a week I think.
Given that I have no desire to be sober.
I don't give it very long.

After all, even the TV wants me to do it.

Cyber Goth -- I pity the fool who threatens you.
Between tweaking on caffeine rushes and chain
smoking, you are way too good with computers
and all things high-tech. Throw some morbid
humor and way too much electric blue eyeshadow
into the fray and you've got a jittery,
demented, and very capable person on your
hands. I'm never giving you my e-mail address.


Which Gothic Stereotype Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

While I was off-line I finally picked up the purple violin I put down a deposit on a couple of months back. (It's made by these people, and a very lovely thing it is too.)
Now I have to learn to play the thing...
At least I know enough to avoid making the archetypal vile screeching noises, and I'm working out various scale positions. Still, I'm going to have to obtain some reference material sooner or later. Time to break out Google, I suspect, but if anyone has any reommendations, let's hear 'em.
Oh, and I'd also appreciate suggestions of entities, archetypes, and egregores with associations with the instrument - tolerant ones, preferably. *g*

Going to have a bath.
Yep, definitely a bath.
Hot water! Bubbles! LOTS of bubbles!!

Well, the move is finally over. *relief*
Absolutely ALL our crap is now in London, and we even got back most of the deposit on the place we were renting.
This is the first opportunity I've had to go online in a while, so apologies if I haven't responded to any attempts to get in touch yet - I'm on it.

Among the first things I noticed upon my return to the world of online geekdom is that, in my absence, I've recieved some charming (anonymous) comments to a few LJ posts I've made in various places.
( Read more... )

In other news, I've also just found out that a friend, supplier of excellent pharmaceuticals, and all round good bloke who I've been unable to contact for a while and was getting worried about is not in fact AWOL - his phone died. More relief all round.

I am not feeling like myself today.