way through woven branches

The summer vacations are mercilessly coming to an end - I figured it's time for a retrospective of sorts.

So, on the good side...
As a result of searching for new experiences and new outlets of creativity and emotion, I have started this blog and kept it alive for a fairly decent length of time. I've neglected it a little recently - there's not much to write about and frankly this is also a result of my shitty attention span...
I also took up the guitar and began learning the basics. Of course playing turned out to be a difficult matter and of course I am great lengths away from being able to entertain people with my music, though my parents enjoy even the simple ditties and awkward noises of a beginner guitarist trying to master his instrument.
Just wait 'till I get a proper amp with distortion and overdrive...

On the bad side...
There were two things I had as goals for this summer vacation.
One was to visit the sea. Unfortunately, this never came to pass. The situation somehow didn't allow it - I'm not really sure why, something about cars and money...
The other was to find a part-time job. That in itself is a failure and I feel I haven't even put proper effort in doing that...


A new school year is approaching.
In many ways, it feels like an update, the next patch to my life.
The number next to my class' letter has increased by one - from Class 2-B to 3-B.
The Black split (this is really awkward, so I'll call them Kuro from now on. Japanese for "black") will be applied to Aikido training sessions from now on. The new schedule includes what I call a Black Friday.
The younger group, Kuro, trains before the older group, Rokuro (the "ro" is another symbol separate from "kuro" and means "burden") on the same evening - and after both sessions, plenty of time is left for social stuff.

Like I wrote before, I still don't feel quite prepared - somewhat resigned if anything, but also encouraged by the Black Friday's presence and by the prospect of a bonfire party tomorrow to bid this summer farewell, as well as the upcoming movie marathon, which is also a tradition among the Kuro.

Apart from that, a job opportunity has appeared - a little part-time job, surprisingly enough - for the dojo in Mokotów, a sort of central dojo of our club. Apparently, I'll be doing some detailed cleaning duties. Even my first job is tied to Aikido in a way. It's amazing how Aikido has shaped and keeps shaping my path forward.

I can't promise anything, but I'll write again as soon as I can hold on tight to an insightful thought for longer than a minute... For now, enjoy this helping of trivial life matters as I struggle to find something less banal.

estimate the cataclysm

Okay... so this is a World of Warcraft post, pure and simple. If you don't know about World of Warcraft, you WILL get severely confused by what follows here... If you're a WoW player or even nerd like me, read on.

So, yeah...

The new expansion has been announced.

For a while, I've been reading the speculation and rumours, surrounded by a dangerous amount of leaks and proof... and resolutely going "No, no, no. No fucking way Blizzard is going to pull off all of this shit." It all sounded far out, completely crazy. I really just expected a few new zones, a new level cap, the usual deal - but not something that encompasses, well, essentially 80% of the game.

And it was all true.

I was honestly and truly surprised.

It's a thought that occured to me once or twice during Outland and Northrend...

Those zones are really well done, especially Northrend with phasing and a thread of an all-encompassing story thorough everything, which got especially good in the latter expansion.

But none of that pertains to Azeroth. It's a tangled mess of quests, confusing and poorly itemized, remainders of a fledgling design that pales in comparison to the newer zones.

Azeroth could use a remake, I thought.

And a remake it gets... What a remake, too! Not just going over quests and items, oh no. A whole, enormous, all-encompassing cataclysm that impacts on almost everything. The story continues to evolve, struggling against technical limitations of the MMO status quo and toppling them to deliver more plot to spice up the gameplay.

Some of these revelations still reek to me slightly of simplification, like guild skills or talent changes... but overall, I'm highly impressed by the announcement and how much of the rumours were confirmed.

I will be impatiently waiting until Azeroth is shattered and frantically looking for metal that can serve as a decent background for the Cataclysm. So far, I've only found this and this...

all out of time

The summer is closing in on a rather eventful end and the threat of school looms over me, with its final year, the matura and the community therein...

Usually, once summer vacation was 3/4 done, I was already dreaming of returning to school. This anticipation had steadily dropped over the years and has become completely negative this year.

School has become a bleak place.

I feel strongly isolated and distanced from the people in my school. I have not found my way into any of the cliques in my class. If I disappeared, they'd probably just check if I'm still around like once or twice, then forget.

I am simply not a part of school, of my class, not a part of these little worlds - I don't fit into the puzzle.

I always felt about them as a mass, a sea of mediocrity, with very few thoughtful and interesting individuals inbetween. The portion of mass in my school is at least a decent sample, not rock bottom, a bit closer to the top, but mediocre and bland nonetheless, close to opening their eyes, but still too far away.

Now that I have come to know the Blacks and grow close to them - by contrast, the incredible bleakness of the mass has never been more obvious.

I don't feel higher and superior.

It is not easy to have your eyes open and see the swamp you're sinking into.

It's much easier to sink blindly, to accept the swamp and drown.

It's difficult as a sensitive person to live in a world of banal thoughts and simple emotions.

I don't feel like going back there. I don't feel ready to face education again.

think for yourself

The long-awaited date has come.

15.08 has passed.

Everyone is returning to Warsaw.

Soon enough we'll be meeting again on weekends, there's a birthday party scheduled for 22th of August...

I will be lifted out of my stagnation into the sun.

Meanwhile, I've been playing WoW and watch a lot of stand-up comedian sketches.

My two favourite comedians...

George Carlin.

His style has two sides. He sees through the rot in our civilization very clearly, but on the other hand, he knows a lot about those things in life that we share, like when you think there's one more step while walking down the stairs or when you think all Thursday that it's actually Wednesday (both have occured to me).

Ways to Keep People Alert
American Double Standard

And... Bill Hicks.

He's far more cutting than George Carlin. His favourite topics (with some overlap with Carlin) are religion, civilization and the inherent corruption in both, the truth about America and the truth about drugs and his own philosophy of life.

Positive Drug Story
Play From Your Fucking Heart

I really enjoy stand-up comedy for some reason. Mostly when under that "comedy" cover there's a cutting, thoughtful world view coming from people that actually form their own insightful and informed opinions.

Of course, the motto there is thinking for oneself... I can't say I agree fully with Bill's support of drugs, but I agree that people should be free to choose their poison and that allowing beer and cigarettes - fine drugs much like any other, can ruin your health (and alcohol CAN RUIN LIVES just as well as any other drug they love to warn everyone about) - makes stories of drugs ruining someone's life hypocritical.

Hope you enjoy these comedians. It's worth noting that Tool led me to Bill Hicks via them tributing him in the Aenema album - in the attached art and in the song Third Eye.

sexuality 2

This is a bit of an addendum to the sexuality opinion I wrote recently. It was meant to be a post scriptum for the blog post below, but it grew long enough to warrant its own entry.

I remembered a certain teacher from my high school (liceum) who I won't have classes with anymore (a shame, really - hot and interesting to talk with).

She's a particular type of woman. Highly sexual, doesn't avoid the topic or indeed enjoys it maybe a little too much, irritating the less sexual students in my class.

She's not dumb - she has troubles with talking correctly, but otherwise likes to at least think she's intelligent. I haven't been able to judge fully objectively how true is she...

But I definitely noticed one thing.

She enjoys the topic of human sexuality. She enjoys talking with students about it, steadfastly and frequently reminding them that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being aware of your sexuality in any way, from masturbation to any consensual sex.

There was basically no way of avoiding this disclaimer in EVERY sex-related conversation she ever took part in.

See what this is?

This is the result of these feelings, this part of our life being so strongly repressed.

This is something not everyone accepts yet. Some people still look down on masturbation, as if it was something beneath their distinguished selves. (Once again... Pushed through a vagina at birth. Your parents had sex in order for that to happen.) Some people still think such topics are distasteful and should be left alone in the quiet corner.

If we were not repressed at all, if our culture was free from these shackles, this wouldn't even come up!

Mrs Teacher wouldn't feel so obliged to shove this disclaimer into every discussion.
We wouldn't point this out to ourselves so much.

I wouldn't even have to write either of these posts.

We would have been over and done with all this and sex would be a perfectly normal part of our lives, an intense and enjoyable experience between two persons with the chemistry and/or spirit of love bringing them together... or a simple act of mutual pleasure. We wouldn't have sciencists going "Whoa, this masturbation thing is actually incredibly healthy!".

There would be no disclaimer anywhere.

from sinking

All my friends have left Warsaw.

There is not a single soul left here to meet up with. My neighbour guitar nerd left for UK and is trying to find a job and education there. The Blacks have left for more interesting vacation pasttimes than pixels behind a glass.

And it would stay like this for a week.

15.08 is when the first bunch would come back to Warsaw. If my friend will not find a job, he'll come back on 17.08 (I wish him success, though it'd be a shame if he never returned from England). Until then... I'm mostly alone.

Or so I thought...

Until yesterday, I got suddenly contacted by an ID number on Gadu-Gadu (polish IM) that I didn't have on my list.

It turned out to be recently met good female friend of mine, Marysia, whose number I somehow lost in GG profile existence failures.

And tomorrow, we're checking out Harry Potter at the cinema. I've heard various opinions and from the looks of it this may be a poor use of money, but we'll see. The movie is not the only important thing here - I appreciate any good company.

So, yeah... in a twist of events, I was spared from absolute boredom. It wouldn't have been that bad anyway, I guess. My family can be quite enough company, but of course it's not the same thing.

threshold of transformation

And at long last, I have obtained a new instrument.

The piano is already sold. The money from it went towards this wondrous piece of modern musical technology. 750 PLN, which as of writing amounts to 182 Euro or 156 GBP. A J&D production, obviously a Les Paul lookalike with two humbuckers. Yeah, it's not THAT amazing, but I enjoy its sound, it feels good to play on and it's at a decent price for starters.

Of course, the guitar itself is a start... but at the time of buying, we didn't bring enough money to buy the rest - I'm going to get all that stuff tomorrow. I have to buy strings (the ones already attached are slightly rusty), an amplifier (I have a particular one in mind), a cable and a guitar stand. I'll probably also get a string-cleaning kit.

In any case, I feel proud to have this guitar and feel it's also an obligation I made to myself and my wonderful parents who supported me with the decision and sold the piano they had bought so long ago to fund the guitar set. Now that I have a guitar, I'm going to enjoy it as well as learn as much as I can. If it ever ends up gathering dust in a corner, I might as well garrote myself with its strings - but I'm fairly sure I'll enjoy this too much to put it aside.

jamaica

There is a rondo in Warsaw, where an artificial palm tree is planted upon a little grassy mound. A palm could not survive the middle of a city. It serves as an unusual decoration in the busy city to be admired on your way through the rondo.

Yesterday or so, my two friends (called Pawel and Agata) called me with greetings from Jamaica. Of course, they couldn't be on Jamaica. I played along anyway, somewhat mystified by them having found a Jamaica somewhere...

Today, however, I was with them at the swimming pool and they invited me to their own little Jamaica - the tiny grass mound with the palm on it. An isle of calm in the sea of asphalt, between the busy streets of Warsaw.

I was quickly sold on the idea.

It seemed to me mostly like some kind of "zany" and "crazy" "hijinx" typical of all teenagers at first, but when I arrived, I found out part of the true nature of this "Jamaica".

People driving through the rondo, closest to us, with windows opened... reacted in various ways. Some of them kept hiding behind cold walls of indifference. Some merely glanced.
But some were amused. We would give them a greeting, a wave, a nod, "greetings from Jamaica!". We would joke about the drought, about us being too poor for real vacation. If they were receptive, they smiled in response, waved, even talked briefly before driving on.

It was the most positive thing I have done recently.

For the people who shared a greeting and a brief chat with us, our Jamaica may have been a highlight of their day, something to improve your mood, something worth mentioning or remembering in the end of the day as an interesting experience. It should be interesting to see young people with vivid imaginations trying to send out some positiveness into the sea of gray.

We obviously intend to return to our Jamaica. We might print out and hand out jamaican flyers with "Have a nice day!" on them. We'll bring more Blacks to Jamaica, maybe bring instruments and spice up the place with a bit of music. We'll come there again to transmit some good vibes.

This idea is probably something that occured completely naturally to my friends, but there was a similar action somewhere else in the world, which was just as positive and constructive as our little idea, only on a much larger scale - the High Five Escalator.

sexuality

Inspired by Daine's post about women on the Internet from his and Katie's blag linked on the sidebar and mine and Katie's comments, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts regarding human sexuality.

It's a sad thing, really.

For centuries, sex was a strongly repressed taboo in European culture. What we have today is a result of this repression. We snapped out of it and there was a very strong backlash - and yet we're still struggling with the powerful stigma left on us by Christianity. Signs of it are inherent in our language, our ways of thinking, methods of censorship, behaviours...

To this day, there is a significant difference between promiscuous women and men.

If a man has many successful and enjoyable sexual encounters -he's a winner, a conqueror, a real man. On the other hand, a woman who can claim this will rarely find the claim to be seen in positive light. No, she's more likely to be made out into a slut or a cumdumpster.

Vulgar words, for the most part, can all be related to sex in one way or another. Not only that - the very existence of double entendres and puns in such a MASSIVE amount shows how difficult it still is for us to talk about sex in frank and straight ways without either sounding like doctors, sounding immature or being vague.

There are still plenty people who cast those who have an avid interest in human sexuality in a bad light. Crack one too many "perverted" joke and you get the "pervert" or "swine" thrown at you. Admit that you masturbate - you're a disgusting wanker. Admit to owning folders of porn or watching it on YouPorn or whatever... Same pattern there.

"Pervert" - I dislike this term and how it gets used. It's enough that you crack two "indecent" jokes, and you're branded a pervert. ("indecent" - what's so indecent? A vast majority of humans were shoved through a vagina into the world at some point, anyway - and guess what has to happen for a human being to be conceived?) The term "pervert" is completely watered down this way.

You know what really IS perverted? Rape. Sex should always be an act between two people who desire physical contact. If one of them is completely against it and is forced into it - that is truly perverted. It can't even really be called sex.

The post on Drama Llamas I've already linked covers another result of repressed sexuality on the Internet.

Another thing...

Why is it that bloody murder and violence, things DEFINITELY far more gross than a nipple or penis, have lower age limits on them? I mean, blood is okay, but human flesh or love between humans - oh, hell no.

Remember that incident where some singer tore off another woman singer's cloth and exposed her nipple? The resulting soccer-mom outrage concerning how their poor kids might have seen a God FORBID nipple? Come on, what's so damn special about nipples that might endanger a youth's fragile psyche?

Why is it that even mild "porno" stuff such as Hustler or whatever is 18+? A guy needs it the most when he enters puberty and develops a newfound curiosity about the body of the opposite sex - which, incidentally, usually happens BEFORE 18 years of age.

All this just causes unnecessary awkwardness around something that should be an inherent and natural part of being a human and serves to create a poisonous, lingering aura of wrongness about something that is completely fine. Even the most liberal of us have problems breaking completely free from the shackles imposed on us by centuries of conditioning, engraved into the very core of our culture. It's really, really sad.

chasm

Discovering that you can actually feel about and relate to other human beings can be a difficult revelation, even if it's less of a revelation and more of a sudden realization. It's not like I never could - it's just that I only recently began discovering the importance of this.

Sometimes, however, I find myself snapping back into a sudden state of regress.

The wall I'm scrupulately trying to tear down I suddenly put back up again. I isolate myself and start looking inwards. To those who try reaching out to me in this state, nothing is shown, no answer is given. They meet nothing but cold stone.

I've felt this twice so far.

It's an odd state. It's a warped form of enlightenment. My eyes are wide open, but what I see and what I hear doesn't reach my core. Nothing can really reach me. All that remains is a stampede of poisonous thoughts.

In one of the cases, this state was reached completely at random, without any emotionally logical stimulus, but in the other, it was a generic reason I won't talk about.

It's a destructive reaction . It's not easy to return from. It's not easy to explain to others.

In a recent, third case, I somehow fell very close to that state, but then took control of it and turned it into... something else. My eyes were wide open again. It felt as if I was looking out of a window, carefully steering my body. I half-consciously pitched my voice much lower like in every case, but I did not withdraw into myself completely. Rather than isolating my mind from my body, I drew them closer.

I did not say hateful things to those I care about this time. I did not run away into myself.

None of these states are truly me. One of them is a repressed echo of what I could have become by this time if I didn't meet the Blacks. One of them is something else altogether, even though similar.

I still haven't found out who I am exactly.

The absurdist, cheerful and snarky Wikt known to my friends.

The deadpan, cold-warm, insane Zark in WoW.

The pseudointellectual smartass writing this down.

The antisocial cynic in the chasm.

Maybe they're just all facets of me. Maybe they're different aspects of a whole.

That's all for today's fauxlosophy.

high hopes

This summer is probably one of my small turning points in life. I've started a blog already, something I've been holding back on.

Another thing I've been holding back on, I have already mentioned in the first post.

Every time I visit one of my guitarist friends, I can't resist the urge to borrow their instrument for a while and play around, trying to figure out a recent song that's stuck in my head. There are a few bits of songs that I already remember the frets for - not that I could just say it off the top of my head, but when I have a guitar in my hands, I remember.

It's always like this. My neighbour friend is a bassist, but that's not an instrument for me. Two friends of mine from among the Blacks own electric guitars. Sadly, one of them is lefthanded and so is his guitar. I can never resist...

They don't especially mind, and the bassist has suggested that I should at least find out if my interest is not just a passing thing.

So I decided... I'm going to step forward and give it a go. Soon, I'm buying an acoustic guitar. Those are not as costly as electric guitars, don't need amplification and I like their sound. They're vaguely similar to electric guitars in some aspects, too.

Maybe the story with the piano won't repeat itself... (Incidentally, we're selling the piano off.)

edit: Uh, yeah... actually, I'll be getting an electric one after all, I guess. Because I won't feel good without distortion.