Ivy making home at your feet and in your heart

You can tell it mends the twisted thoughts, the broken parts

With your back in the roots and your face to sunsets

All you have is nothing more than a concept of no more starts

Envision all that’s never to come

and with a lively hum and dying regret

let go of all that’s gone, to come

all dreams with chances unmet; all – not just some.

Mari and I took a walk down memory lane today. Well… we tried.

We tried to somehow get to the forest behind our houses. We used to go there every day when we were kids, pretending we were forest people who could hear secrets in the wind or whatever. We were those genuine country kids who wandered around all day long, discovering and rediscovering every rock and plant in the village.

In the forest there is a small dam. I remember it was the ultimate test of courage to jump over it. Those who could jump would then go deeper into the forest and those who could not would have to find something else to do. I had to find something else to do. The chicken that I am.

Finally, when I got the courage to jump I could join The Brave Ones to go eat ants (yes, dear reader) and climb trees on the other side of the dam. Fun!

But since today the earth was wet and branches were knit into impenetrable walls, we did not get to the dam. It’s a shame. But I will fix this.

I tried to google my home forest and found a picture taken in that forest by one of my childhood friends:

It’s almost here. I’ve got yummies in the oven, PB on the way with extra champagne and a headache sneaking at the back of my head. It’s all looking good.

I think Al and I are going to have a quiet evening together, with PB passing through, and then we’ll go and greet the new year in city centre. It’s only 5 minutes ride on the bus and we’re there so why not.

But you never really know how quiet an evening you’re going to spend until you wake up the next morning. Last time I thought I was going to have a nice quiet evening I woke up getting flashbacks of me and H staggering home at 4am, eating snow along the way. Not to worry – the thick snow had just fallen, so no yellow nowhere.

So what will the new year bring for me?

I will have my first meaningless and stricken with hopelessness twenty-something birthday.

With any luck I will graduate from university and get my BA degree.

Summer has to be spent working, but with the recession and everything I have no idea whatsoever how that’s going to work out.

And in autumn I will have to decide whether or not to go to school again. I would love to go and study something that I will actually be able to benefit from, something practical that will allow me to work with my hands. But, yet again, the recession has teeth and they might bite hard.

So who knows. But it will be a pretty interesting year, that 2010.

Exactly what I needed – another totally pointless pastime to get me to station Braindead.

It took me a long time to accept Facebook. I didn’t see much of a point in being there (actually, I still don’t). I watched my sis play Farmville and felt bad for her, seeing her ploughing and planting stuff on a virtual farm like it mattered somehow to do it.

I said to myself: “Maria, you are so smart to stay away from nasty habits such as playing Farmville, because with your nonexistent willpower you would surely be stuck at your computer at all possible times, planting pumpkins and whatnots, earning points and money that have no real value anywhere but in your little head that doesn’t grasp the big picture. Good girl, yay.”

And then I decided to give Facebook a chance. And since I found absolutely nothing to do there, I thought: “what the heck, I’ll just pop into Farmville for a sec and see what all the fuss is about.”

Surely you can see where this is headed.

Yes, I’m a Farmville junky. I cannot resist planting little raspberries and strawberries and cotton and daffodils and wheat and buying cows and sheep and chickens and putting them in the den and getting presents and putting them under the Christmas tree and harvesting apple trees and lemon trees and peach trees and getting money for it all and buying more stuff and sheltering animals and hatching mystery eggs and Jesusiambonkers.

It’s a definite favorite of mine. The taste is sublime and the process of drinking it has some sort of fanciness to it. You think “I’m fancy because I drink Martini”.  Well, not exactly. But still – a bit. It’s not cheap, it’s not your everyday drink for the night (although that would be kind of nice, right), so it has a certain special quality to it.

My first Martini was in highschool. We had these long breaks between lectures – sometimes 3 hours – so what else could we do but go to a pub. Almost every time we had a break we went to get Martinis. And then it hit me: why go to a pub to get three rounds of Martinis if I could buy a whole bottle from a store for the same amount of money? It was a friggin epiphany! Highschool math can really come in handy sometimes.

And so it began.

Although not really. But still. Truly. Absolutely. Affirmative! There’s so much. And that’s what it is. Will be. Always, babe. Never bad. Because there’s just too much of it. It won’t let it. Nonsense!

Got the email instructing me to complete my registration.

Clicked the link to activate my account.

And this was the CAPTCHA I was presented with:

I know I got my daily dose of WTF.

No matter how enthusiastic I am about some class, sooner or later I am going to sit there, not listening to the lecturer but drawing on my notes. My favorite thing to doodle/draw with is a pen. A blue pen. I have gotten so used to it that when I drew in pencil this summer, I did not know what to do with it. Erasing? What is that?

I doodle chicks. Hot chicks, weird chicks, chick parts, boobs (I am a fan), too skinny chicks, psycho chicks. I usually don’t bother drawing the hands and feet (which has caused me to forget HOW to draw them, oops) and so I draw amputees. Which comes out kind of kinky.

This semester’s best doodle classes: ethics, psychology and the history of the English language.

The cold autumn weather, with menace falling from the sky and other things not nice, really sets the mood on crappy-level. However, there is a cure. Well… for me, at least.

And that would be late-night mini road trips with Eva.

Our road trips started with us getting licenses. Eva had her mom’s car and everything was settled. At first, these trips were what we called ‘field parties’. We (usually 4 people) would drive on some muddy road leading god knows where at nighttime, find ourselves a nice field, stop and dance to good music. We were all alternative artsy people with our “different” music preferences when we started out. These trips really got us all out of our artsy comfort zones and into the whole ‘love for the beat’ thing.

It was no ordinary disco-dancing that took place on those fields. This was Animal Planet. We were the embodiment of natural ecstasy, oblivious to everything but our inner animal. Man, it was fun.

Now it has quieted down. The road trip is a trip on another level. It’s not about wildness but mellowing out.

A few nights ago Eva and I hit the road again. We drove this way, that way, back again – anywhere we damn well pleased and nowhere in particular. It’s so relaxing. No conversation is actually needed, music plays its own part. After 5 hours of driving nowhere, in complete darkness, on remote roads, with music providing a state of Nirvana… it’s all good. It’s like having eaten a bowl of happy-stew.

Just imagine this

and this

and nothing else for hours.

It’s Heaven.

I can officially call myself an escapist.

I started watching Buffy again. Haven’t seen it in oh so many years, and I don’t remember almost anything about it – apart from some storylines – but I have thought about watching it again for quite some time now. And since we finally got rid of that time machine of an internet connection that had been taking us back to the 1990s every day for the past two years, and got ourselves a proper baby, the time is nigh to watch ALL the things I have yet to watch.

Starting with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

When Buffy was first on TV I was very young. It was on late at night and the next day was always a schoolday. Every time I got the go-to-sleep-now commands, but they were of no use. I loved the show. Of course I had activities and restrictions and non-developed biological impulses back then that prohibited the escapist demon from entering me, but today… Oh man, I’m doomed.

You might think that watching all those clothes from 1997, the bad acting (mostly David Boreanaz, I’m afraid), the cameltoes, the visible stunt doubles, the oops moments… that all this might make me say “Hey, that show is crap and boring” and go for a walk or something. You might just think that. And you’d be wrong.

Watching Buffy again has actually given me a better view over today’s vampire-madness. When talking about Buffy, True Blood and Twilight, the basic formula is pretty much the same: you have the pretty girl and the tormented vampire. That’s all you need to give the viewers their high. Add murder and mayhem and voila! a supershow. But hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m not judging. I am loving it. I’m totally over the I’m-totally-over-it period. Sure, it’s childish to take these shows seriously, but who said being childish is bad, right? I sure as hell hope that I will never grow up. Having said that I now remember MJ and feel sad.

From the hey-wait-a-minute point of view (I recognize my being fond of making my own adjectives) I have to say that all the vampire hotties of the aforementioned movies bare an uncanny resemblance to each other. Just take a look. Notice anything… OBVIOUS?

Got epiphany?

I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I’m just saying that we have seen these shows over and over again and we still love them. Which, I believe, says something about the power of our sexuality. Because that’s what these shows bring out in us. And I say: ride the high, honey.

Buffy is the first of many rekindled loves. Blame it on the vamp-craze that is flowing around like some nasty flu, blame it on the boogie, I don’t care. I just finished season 2 and I am in tears and love. Addicted. Hooked. Craving for more. I dread the day I will be watching the last episode of the last season, and the bettyfording of the mind that will come the day after that. I shall be the saddest sight to behold that day. And the week after that. Or two.