a man and his chair

A bright sun beats down on the cobblestone square around the arched, blue domes. I come out into the open from the tunnels filled with people, food shops and gambling machine booths and cross the space in front of the entrances to the Centrum station of Warsaw's subway - "metro", as we call it.

The square is already bustling. The crowd is not very thick, but there are plenty of people hurrying along, on with their little lives, in their little worlds - just like me. I take a newspaper from one of the people giving them out, then head on to the wall on the square's side, lean against it and begin reading.

It's 9:40 in the morning. In twenty minutes or so, most of us should be gathered and we'll head out to see the animals kept in the Warsaw zoo. It's a long time, enough to read through the paper.

A man brings a chair to the centre of the square.

He puts it upside down, on a stack of other bits of furniture, from what I could see. He grabs a pair of sticks and begins a strange ritual.

He beats on the legs of the chair, creating a slightly disorganized rhythm of clacking, clattering and crashing noise. The sound permeats the square. Not even my earbuds can block out the noise completely with music and rubber.

And he bangs on and on. Noone accompanies the rhythm he creates. It's way too fast for footsteps to match up with. It's a hustle-bustle that only a thousand footsteps could match.

And I wonder...

What is his purpose here? Does he really think he'll receive money for this... noise? It's nothing like someone playing on an accordeon or a guitar... It's just noise. I don't believe I have ever witnessed him getting any money. As I was told later, neither did my friend.

On the other hand, maybe he is stating something with this noise.

Maybe that's really how the "rhythm" of our cities sounds. A disorganized jumble... Thousands of legs, beating down on pavement.

Maybe he wants to enhance the jumble that already fills the little square of Metro Centrum. Maybe the noise is meant to be like another thread woven into the musical composition of the bustling mass of humans.

I will never ask, so I will never know. All I can do is just watch as the man beats out his noise on the chairs restlessly.

Or go back into the tunnel and get myself a Mirinda.

edit: This might be either my memory failing me, or the man changing his setup - in any case, I've recently been to the Metro Centrum square at the same hour. The man was already there. He had a single chair, a box for donations and two sticks. The chair was upright, on its legs, and the man was striking a metal handle that you normally could move the chair by. This might have been different from what I saw prior to writing this post, though...

Memory is a fickle thing.

drift

An interesting pattern... After a week of lonely boredom in my house, starting with Monday this week turned eventful and somewhat exciting.

It all started with the previously mentioned get-together. We had a pleasantly lazy time. I had the chance to sample a macaroni with something rather suspicious poured as a sauce on it. It didn't taste particularly well. We then spent the rest of the day lazing around until the evening, when the PlayStation 3 borrowed from our host's friend arrived. Then we pretty much watched movies 'til everyone was falling asleep and called it a night. The following morning, we prepared and ate a breakfast, then left to our homes.

Save for two of my friends, apparently. So the next night was spent at one of my closest friends' house, or more precisely - a little, tiny tower hut. It was even lazier than the first meeting, and one of our friends (who's a girl) had to leave due to a misunderstanding and following quarrel with her parents.

This is something I'll stop at for a brief moment. It's a somewhat sad thing. There were three of us - me (18 years old), the host (15) and the girl (13). We heard and were told that one of the arguments against her staying was that she might get abused or raped by us.

We know her for a year, we've met many times, we trust each other... and yet her parents paranoically reached towards this. Regardless of whether it was an excuse or argument, I told her to say this: We didn't like being considered irresponsible persons and potential rapists.

In any case, we split ways the following morning...

It was all such a lazy, drifting experience. We didn't really do any exciting or zany things, so to say. We just... spent time together, in both cases. It was pleasant. I probably didn't entertain myself as much as I would at home, but the others made up for it. It was a little boring, I'd say, but a lot better than being alone.

And it was the first time for me to spend more than one night in a row sleeping somewhere else than my own home or any organized trip.

Such normal, plain, ordinary things... I still don't know the extent, the depth and possibilities in a world of social interaction. I am still somewhat cynical towards this kind of life, this simple, banal way of existing. I can only see and understand the point while I'm still in the experience. Even though it's been two years or so already...

forward

Yeah, this was written at a late hour. The sky here is slowly gaining a bluish tint, marking the slow arrival of the day - which, in my head, is still "tomorrow", despite being the same segment of 24 hours I'll wake up in. And I have to wake up in about four hours from writing this... to meet the Blacks and head out on another long and hopefully enjoyable get-together.

I was staring at my blog, at the blogroll I just experimentally added... (Sadly, the blogs are particularly specific - two of them are strongly related to my favourite game, World of Warcraft and one is in Polish.)

Then, something occured to me.

Several years ago, under this very address, I had a blog.

It was one of those brief ventures into blogging that I quickly abandoned...

I have changed vastly since then. I saw it in how I constructed my blog this time around...

I also see it when I look back at my past.

There are so many things that make me cringe with disgust and horror at how stupid, immature and blind I was. It may have been years ago or actually not so long ago... but in general, I was always worse than I am.

I think it's a good sign.

It means that I'm moving forward. If I weren't, I would either not notice any gradual changes, or in fact find the past something too good, something I wish to return to.

Of course, there are also regrets of the past. During winter, I had a really good opportunity in front of me to get closer to a girl I was genuinely interested in... and I let it run past. There was never a better moment.

I should never stop, I should never try and turn myself back to how I was. This is building myself on experience. Experience and using it properly are what makes us develop ourselves and go forward.

Never close your eyes, never turn your back, never stop thinking.

Forward.

seacats

The other Japanese bit of my interests aside from Aikido is the subculture of anime and manga. I don't delve too far - I do not have shelves stacked with anime character figurines, I don't share a bed with an anime character hugging pillow. I just watch several series, read a few manga and treat them as works of fiction not unlike any other.

For the first time, though, I was tempted so much by a series that I actually came to the original source for its anime and manga - a visual novel. Basically, the equivalent of a book, but with illustrations and sound effects... I would not call it a game - it shares similarities with the form of a game, but is 99% passive - just like a novel.

Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (When the Seacats... I mean, When the Seagulls Cry)

The story centers around the family Ushiromiya and their annual family conference at the island Rokkenjima in a remote archipelago. Eighteen family members gather at the mansion on the island, eventually isolated from the world by a typhoon. The head of the Ushiromiya family - Kinzo Ushiromiya - is proclaimed to be approaching his death, and his children gather to discuss splitting the inheritance of their Father's wealth, a major part of it supposedly obtained through mysterious occult and black magic.

The grandchildren are joined by Battler Ushiromiya, who has not visited the conference in six years. They find themselves interested in the legend of the Golden Witch, Beatrice, who reputedly lives on the island and rules it during the night, resulting in various ghost stories. The children contemplate the epitaph of the supposedly long-dead witch underneath her portrait in the main hall, which describes a bloody path to a "Golden Land" and Beatrice's revival.

During the typhoon, on the morning of the second day, mysterious and inhumane murders begin to occur. They appear to be murder mystery scenarios at first, but none of them seem to be possible to a human. Battler and the rest of the family refuse to believe that it could be the work of a witch, but nothing else can explain the horrible deaths.

The basis of the entire story is the problem of anti-fantasy versus anti-mystery. The anti-fantasy stance, favoured by Battler, assumes that every murder can be explained within human capabilities, and thus does not require a fantastic, magical explanation. The anti-mystery stance obviously states the opposite. Even if you can prove the scenarios are possible for humans to set up, this does not disprove that a witch didn't do it. You can prove the existence of witches, but you cannot prove they don't exist - a simplified form of the Devil's Proof.

The story is a battle between those two stances, a mixture of horror fantasy and murder mystery, and an extremely pleasant mind fuck. I think the two-three weeaboos that may be by any chance reading this already heard me praising its glorious name on high, but just in case some other weeaboo comes across this - I strongly recommend Seacats. Any of the three formats presents the story just fine, though the anime and manga adaptations have barely gotten off to a start while the visual novel is far ahead.

Besides, it's slowly consuming my mind, so I just had to write that down... Currently, I'm trying to imagine how would Beatrice work as a boss encounter in WoW, but writing that out here would be going too far. That's a little habit I have for every work of fiction with a high density of fantasy. I just finished the second episode of the novel and, yeah, I really need to let my mind rest for a bit.

a sun that never sets

I was always an outsider.

In my class and school, in the local neighbourhood, in any social circle I had to be in, I was an outsider - sometimes shunned (or even bullied), sometimes merely tolerated as someone who's there, but not a true part of the group.

Because of this, I had very few friends and none of them were truly close. None of them sought my presence for any reason. My social life, as a result, was almost nonexistent.

Until three years ago.

I was at conflict with someone from my gymnasium (Polish middle school equivalent) back then, which arrived at a violent conclusion. I was ambushed, pinned down, and forced with violence to never anger the attacker again.

My parents saw in this a danger to my future and concluded that it was time for a wake-up call. An ultimatum was placed before me. I had to choose between joining an Aikido club or living the rest of my life offline, without a computer of my own.

My first reaction was strongly emotional. I threw a tantrum and chose the latter option in my immature rage. Only after my mind cleared did I realize that the first option is much less harmful for me.

On my second training session in the club, I met the leader of the club, master of Aikido - Sensei. More than a distant teacher, he was very human and very sociable, full of wisdom and wit. His guidance eventually further encouraged me to train dilligently, though I was still slightly resistant to the idea of training there.

Over the years, I started acquainting myself with other practicioners - many of them slightly younger than me. I met people who I occasionally had contact with on trainings and I talked with them.

None of them shunned me or merely tolerated my presence. I felt accepted.

Every year in the summer, the Aikido club organized a camp trip in a remote area - several days of frequent Aikido trainings combined with other terrain activities, games and social interaction. The kids and youths of the camp were split up into groups by age, each marked by a colour. I was assigned to the oldest group - the black group, led by Sempai Piotr ("sempai" in our club's case is someone adult with a high rank in Aikido, instructor, trainer and leader capabilities)

One that would soon be known as the Blacks.

The group grew close together, eventually united under a banner, with a whole microculture of its own, memes and all. We started meeting each other after the camp on trainings. However, the real beginning was soon after, once a new kind of trip was announced for the youths of the club - the Episode I (inspired by the Star Wars theme we adopted during the camp), a journey into the Beskid mountains.

Soon after this, we met for the first time in a major shopping mall - Centre "Arkadia" - in north Warsaw. The meetings grew more frequent. People started changing their main dojos for training (there are several dojos in Warsaw owned by our club). With every Episode, with every camp through these three years, we grew together, meeting more often and often on various occasions. The group grew around a core... a core that I belonged to, together with two of my friends.

To this day, nothing could shake this unity. Our group grew - recently a split became necessary between the younger and older members of the group, to make organizing easier and to provide us with challenges suited to each age group. Even despite the split, we are still united. Two more Sempais were introduced into the Blacks - Sempai Paweł and Agnieszka.

And among the Blacks...

I am not shunned. I am not outside. I am at the very core of the group, among friends who are almost like comrades. Among the Blacks, I have also made true and close friends - one of them has even told me outright that I am their best friend.

I still cannot fully comprehend and accept this fact as normal and not completely unbelievable and incredible - that there are people who actually seek my presence in their group, in their lives, who wish to speak to me, to whom I am important to some degree.

All around me are normal people to whom such social circles are completely natural and normal, but to me the Blacks are a gift, a miracle.

I don't really care if this all sounds idealistic to the point of dripping faggotry all over my manliness. Sappy, rose-tinted and long as this may be, this compilation and these feelings are something that lived in my mind for quite a while, spilling over to my private, paper diaries, shaping themselves up as a blog post I didn't have a place to publish on - until now.

The title is a shout-out to Neurosis this time, another band whose music I highly enjoy.

lateralus (and music in general)

This might already be visible in the two previous posts, but music is an inseparable, most important element of my life. You will most likely never find me outside without my phone and headset. (I don't need an iPod or anything like that - my phone serves just fine as a mp3 player.)

I often express my thoughts or feelings by quoting songs that somehow resonate with those. My communicator statuses or descriptions always quote a song. I do realize it's not my own creativity - but I think the music I listen to is a large part of me or indeed a large part of anyone with my level of audiophilia.

In music, I seek interesting artistic experiences, which bring emotions that resonate in me, thoughts or observations that I share. And... yeah, this whole lead-up is partly to introduce a song that has become a sort of mantra for me, whenever I'm looking for positive and constructive tones.

Tool - Lateralus

Lyrics

the sea

From the start of 2009, I've noticed a certain motif that stalked me through my life, appearing in music I listen to and occasionally even in events of my life.

The sea.

Recently, I discovered for myself Isis, already mentioned in the previous post. One of their albums is called Oceanic and obviously the sea is a theme that appears through the entire album. Aside from that, I've noticed that I know a fair amount of songs that involve the sea. The first songs that come to mind are:

Amon Amarth - Embrace of the Endless Ocean

Iron Maiden - Ghost of the Navigator

Moonsorrow - Sankaritarina

Oceanlab - Ashes (in fact, their entire album is full of oceanic melodies)

After one notices something stalking him, a pattern that appears regularly, a natural thing is to become highly sensitive to similar patterns. I could find many more subtle references to sea and water in the music I listen to, but that'd just make for a long and unnecessary list.

Soon after I started being aware of the sea patterns, I found another major one appearing in my life. At the end of June, after my school year was over, I left for an Aikido summer camp with the Blacks (a story for another post, the Blacks are essentially an age group of Aikido youth that evolved into a social circle of friends) and it turned out the camp had a mariner theme (despite being in the middle of land, with no sea or any major body of water nearby). After I returned, I had set my mind on where do I want to go next in this summer. Rather obvious conclusion there, so... yeah.

The sea brings with it various associations and emotions. About 70% of the surface of Earth is covered in water. Seas are vast and seemingly endless once you swim out far from any land. They are much easier to navigate these days thanks to technology, but still can be very dangerous, especially when combined with bad weather. The sea has the potential to be a fun place to be at, but can also be dangerous, foreboding and lonely. Its endlessness can drive to despair if you lose hope of reaching the shore. The sea is often personified as a woman (a hint of it occurs in the album Oceanic).

In the human past, it was an especially dangerous and mystical place, full of legends and mysteries - in fact, it holds many mysteries to this day, in its darkest, most crushing depths, which even our machinery still has difficulties exploring. It's no wonder that the sea is a frequent theme - with so many stories you can tell of it, so many mysteries and folklore to explore and such a variety of emotions tied to it.

the beginning

I can't give you any guarantee on how long exactly will this blog keep running.

Since I'm not particularly extrovertive, writing things such as a blog has always been difficult for me. For similar reasons, what you'll see here will never be my entire self. Everyone has their most intimate secrets that they wish to keep.

Blogging for me has always been a kind of brief interest. When I was young, my grandmother sought to give me an outlet of creativity. We bought a piano and paid a teacher to teach me how to play. I quickly grew tired and unwilling - now, the piano is gathering dust in another room. It's been many years since that, but I'm still very wary of undertaking new creative activities. My family strongly suggests that I learn to sing in a choir or play a guitar. I'm interested in both to some extent, but the same anxiety is still bearing down on me - will I grow tired of both again and forsake them, to return to a life of introverted lazyness?

The whole problem applies to me and blogging. I've had several blogs over the course of many years, but all of them were eventually left aside, neglected and eventually consumed by Blogger to free up the space.

Yesterday in the evening, a fierce and powerful storm suddenly swept across our village. The power went out soon after the hurricane caused a draft in our house, powerful enough to completely obliterate the glass pane in my room's door. Without electricity, our family could be gathered once more around candlelight and I had the opportunity to talk, as none of us were restrained by pixels anymore. I brought up the topic of creativity and once again, a new blog was suggested (my father, who'll be following this, liked my previous blogging ventures a lot). Determined to entertain myself somehow during what is possibly the most boring and excruciating summer in my life, I decided to at least start this blog and give it a try to find out - maybe this one won't end up being neglected.

The title of the blog is derived from a song title - Backlit by Isis. I recommend checking out the lyrics as well.