Cav's Place

This isn’t working… I’m working on breath alone most likely, because I’m certainly not eating or drinking more than usual but hardly sleep. And it’s not even hot anymore, to say that’s the reason why. I just wake up in the morning after only one or two hours of sleep and have a very hard time getting back to sleep, and if I can do it at all then I wake up again very soon. And now I can’t seem to even get a good nap in the evening anymore either, hardly napped for 30 minutes today.
A part of the reason why that happens probably has to do with the fact that I always keep the window open these days, so there’s noise coming from outside and waking me up, likely mainly the constant chirping of birds, which chirping is nice otherwise but a real problem when I want to sleep. But I’m sure the fact that I’m worried about so many things has a significant influence on that as well, plus the health issues I’m noticing, which are a good part of why I worry in the first place.

On top of the usual things and my heart apparently acting up more than usual, something is obviously wrong with the left side of my head, especially with the front part. A weird sensation, some pain, a feeling of pressure, things that I couldn’t even define spasming… Now there may be other explanations, such as the pain being caused by my eyes being tired, especially since my left eye is the better one and also the one that has to put up with sunlight whenever I’m at the computer during the day, the pressure potentially caused by some sort of infection or inflammation, possibly also pointed out by the fact that I’m getting a lot of zits on and around my forehead lately, possibly from my sinuses or perhaps more likely from a tooth that otherwise doesn’t act up but sent something damaging straight up, and the spasms can be easily explained by stress… Speaking of that, I don’t even know what it is that’s spasming. There are some hard strips I can feel under the skin, like tendons or something, and those in the left side produce a dull pain if I press on them, or even if I don’t, and sometimes decide to start spasming. I know they’re not blood vessels, but I didn’t exactly look into what they are…
Either way, you can imagine I’m fearing the worst and assuming that something wrong with my head implies something physically wrong with my brain, which is a thought I really can’t handle, especially considering my “the mind is exactly as it should be” policy. Of course, the brain is more than the mind, but it’s quite impossible to do anything to it while offering an 100% guarantee that no mental processes or memories will be affected in any way, which means that such a problem would under no circumstances have any tolerable solution, even if I’d somehow end up looking for one. And since I’ve been having growing reasons for concern regarding something like this for several months now… All I can do is panic.

And then, of course, there are the usual constant worries and fears about Andra and the fact that I’m so utterly alone and nobody would even hear me scream. Nobody I’d want to be heard by anway… Even worse that now college students are having their final exams, so I end up even more lonely than usual, as I know a few and none of them has time to talk at all these days. Ain’t that ironic… School destroyed me until I managed to stop going, but it didn’t stop there and now insists on taking away friends as well… Then again, it’s not just school, but that damned so-called “real life” that people keep allowing themselves to be drawn into.
So I’ll sit here and grow more tired, more worried, more terrified and more isolated by the moment, waiting for the inevitable terrible outcome, as there’s always something much worse that can happen, but apparently never anything noticeably better, not to me, not anymore… And I’ll keep choking on tears but never be able to cry whenever I go into the kitchen at night to eat and am once again reminded that I’m alone and notice a lot of little things that create mental links back to the time when I had a life and, more importantly, a reason to want to live it.
Not that I want to stop living now. Said it before, there was a point in dying for about a year after she left, but since then it became pointless at best, and more likely just another defeat. Suffered long enough and I don’t see how dying is going to make up for it, so I keep wishing and hoping for the impossible, wishing and hoping that something will happen in life, in this life, that will make up for all the suffering and make me say, at this point most likely after at least several years of very good things happening, that it was indeed all worth it in the end. But I don’t believe that to be possible, and everything that happened since she left only confirms that. As that quote went, “and when I’m lying in my bed, I think about life and I think about death and neither one particularly appeals to me”.

But at least I found out who the author of a few images that caught my eye during the past months is: Jason Engle. If you’re interested, his deviantART profile contains some additional images, which aren’t on the site. I seriously think this guy is almost too good, especially considering that he says he has absolutely no training and basically just learned as he went along. And he’s only 31, so there hasn’t been all that much time for learning by doing, not when you compare him to the famous fantasy artists, who tend to have been at it for at least a few decades.

I found myself wondering how many fans can someone have before becoming unable to have meaningful interaction with them. Started by thinking about musicians, remembering a bit of the interview the members of Nightwish gave before one of their concerts here, where they were saying that, even though it’s not a nice thing to do, they have to pretty much ignore all e-mails they receive, as otherwise they’d be spending ten hours per day reading and replying to them and wouldn’t get anything else done. (This was before Nightmail.) But it applies to anyone else just as well, be it actors, athletes, writers, painters, activists and so on.
I’m not talking about the public figures who simply choose not to have such a meaningful interaction with their fans. If they do what they do for personal reasons, or simply for the results, and don’t even claim that they work for the enjoyment or request the support of their fans, I think they have every right to ask to be left alone. I’m also not talking about using staff members to sort through messages and only pass on a select few or even reply to some of them themselves. That’s no longer direct interaction with the public figures themselves and the existence of these intermediaries makes even the answers supposedly given to the fans be questionable. No, I’m talking simply about the direct interaction between the public figure and their public, such as meetings, replying to messages, getting involved in discussions on official forums and participating in events organized by fan clubs.

Meaningful interaction usually requires direct contact with individual fans, not simply throwing some greetings or platitudes towards a group, so it takes up a lot of time. Due to there being many more things you can do in person, it may take less time to meaningfully interact with a fan in such a situation and you could sometimes also achieve similar results with small groups instead of just individuals, but getting into such a position requires much more effort, both on your part and on part of your fans, plenty of whom won’t be able to reach you at all if you require meeting in person in order to interact. So that leaves the Internet, and specifically replying to messages, as the generic method of meaningful interaction with the largest potential number of fans.
So we need to change the question and ask about messages. How many messages could such a public figure read and reply to before this would take a noticeable toll on their personal and, more importantly in this particular situation, professional life? Not that answering even this question would be easy. The amount of time available varies greatly depending on what exactly it is you do, different messages require different amounts of time and effort to read and reply to, but there are also messages that require no reply, though some of them, such as the generic praises and critiques, do require at least browsing through in order to get a general idea regarding the way in which people perceive your work, which is useful information even if your motivations don’t include fame or public approval.
Still, the more clearly defined the question, the more likely it is to get a suitable answer. And, in fact, asking about this particular method of interaction can get an answer that’s less influenced by other factors, as reading and replying to messages doesn’t exactly require scheduling or setting aside a significant amount of time, as would be the case for actual meetings or even on-line conferences, because it can be split and squeezed into any moment of the day or night. Actually, at times it would even be relaxing, inspiring or otherwise beneficial for the public figure in question to take a break from their work and go through some messages, so this certainly seems to be the best method to meaningfully interact with the largest number of fans in the vast majority of cases. But even this has a limit, and that limit is the answer to the question.

I couldn’t tell you what that answer is, however. I only know that there very obviously is such a limit, so I have to move on to the even greater question: What should such a public figure do once they end up having too many fans to be able to meaningfully interact with them? Of course at that point it becomes quite mandatory to get some help, have some staff members go through the messages, release press statements, answer frequently asked questions and so on, but that actually only widens the gap between the public figure and their public even further, as the chance of direct contact is greatly reduced. So what should they do in order to make up for this, assuming they care, or at least pretend to care, about their public? How should their demeanor and their work change once they cross that line?
Trying to answer this question normally leads to a lot of speculation, with each person saying what they’d like their favorites to do, but I think most would agree that such public figures should do the opposite of what they usually do when it comes to details about themselves and their personal lives, making a fair bit of information public, becoming open books, and therefore allowing their public to feel as if there is a connection even when meaningful direct interaction is no longer possible. This could also have the added benefit of getting some of the paparazzi off their backs, as there’d be little point in trying to find out information that would be made public anyway, not to mention that the one who first makes information public gets to present it their way, thus also preventing the scandals generated by tabloids spinning tales. Of course, some public figures thrive on just such scandals, but I’m not talking about them here…
The second thing I believe such public figures should do is focus more on their work and perhaps, if we’re talking about creative work, put more of themselves and of their lives into it, make it more personal. This latter point goes well with what I said in the previous paragraph, while the former should result in an improvement in the quality and/or an increase in the quantity of their work, therefore being sort of a compensation for the fans, a way to show they still care despite no longer being able to meaningfully interact in any direct way with enough of them.

This year’s first heat wave is just ending and I’m taking the opportunity to bunch together several updates. All of them will be personal, but there frankly seems to be very little chance of me writing anything else during the World Cup, or at least during the group phase, seeing as I’m watching all matches and there are three of them per day.

The heat wave properly started on Friday, with highs between 34°C and 37°C until yesterday despite earlier forecasts saying we won’t get more than 32°C during the first half of the month. It ended last evening in a pretty impressive manner, with a thunderstorm. The rain was heavy, I’m quite sure there was hail as well, there was a fair bit of wind… And I’ll fill you in on the lightning later. Either way, today it’s better and the forecast for the coming days mentions highs below 30°C and a lot of storms.
I assume we’ll get far worse than this in the coming months, so it was only an opportunity to “train” and make sure I’m still able to handle high temperatures as well as I usually can. And that went well enough, with the exception of mornings, when I can’t quite manage to keep myself from waking up, nor can I get back to sleep after I do wake up. Sweaty and itchy balls are a good part of the reason for that, but I was never quite able to properly manage my body temperature in the morning, so I wake up feeling hot and thirsty, but it goes away after a while. Seems to be better now that I took to sleeping naked, but I’m still sleeping too little, even with an added nap between the second and third matches of the day.
The computer seems to be struggling a little with the temperatures though, as I’m seeing the CPU core temperatures go up to 68°C and the GPU temperature go up to 58°C without me being in a game. But I’m sure the coolers can do more than that, and in fact there were moments when I heard them speed up for a while and then slow back down, so I assume it has everything under control. A little worried about the UPS though, as this model doesn’t monitor its temperature and I think it gets quite hot under these circumstances.

Lightning struck the building during yesterday’s storm. I was just looking out, everything turned electric blue for a moment and I could just make out that “electric” sound among a deafening peal of tunder. Next I looked, it was saying network cable unplugged and my switch had the port going to my computer turned off. The network guys replaced whatever fried on their end today, but the port I used for the “in” cable on my switch was fried as well. Sacrificed itself to stop it from going further to the computers I guess. Luckily there are two desktops, one laptop and the line going in, and there are five ports, so had one free to move the “in” cable to and the rest seem unaffected. But one more of these and I’ll need a new switch. Still, much better a new switch than a new computer!
It was quite an impressive moment, but the results weren’t exactly pleasing. Just goes to show that there is a weak link and I should take some precautions, as I rely on the UPS to take care of any power surges potentially caused by storms and tend to forget that the Internet cable can become a potential threat at such times as well.

Some may consider this to be too much information, but I’m just writing it for myself. A while back I was going to take a shower, got undressed and then decided to brush my teeth as well. So I ended up unintentionally taking a good look at my naked self in the bathroom mirror, which then became intentional as I was surprised to realize that I wasn’t exactly bothered by what I saw, from the neck down at least. I’m still thin as ever, but I seem to have put a little muscle on as well, so now it no longer strikes me as a crappy look. I guess that, even though I don’t do much, sticking to this little schedule of working out for so many years did produce some results.
It wasn’t something that I particularly cared or even thought about, but I took it as a given that I really didn’t like how I looked, so this was surprising. That still applies to my face and, more than anything, to the lack of hair on my head, plus that of course I’d still like to magically replace all of my skin with one that has no problems and also looks better, but even the problems I know seem less obvious lately, which is a bit surprising since normally they’d flare up in the heat. But, speaking of skin, the angle also helped, seeing as I’m so terribly bothered by obviously raised moles of any size and also by dark flat ones of significant size, say starting from about five millimeters, and I unfortunately do have two of the latter, but they’re not visible from that angle.

The book fair was last week, so I went on the first day, which was Wednesday, as there would have been fewer people and lower temperatures than on the following days. Unfortunately, nothing caught my eye, which isn’t exactly surprising since I actually found myself looking solely for books in English that I’d want to read, not even having a good look through the few other things that I usually spent a little time browsing, and that bookstore I found there two years ago, which focuses on mainly fantasy and science fiction books in English, was once again not present. Yet there were two more places where I could have found something interesting, but all I found was disappointment caused by not finding anything interesting.
It was even worse when I actually stopped by that bookstore after leaving the fair, as they’re relatively nearby and they announced discounts for the duration of the fair, just like last year. I fully expected to find at least a few interesting things there, the question being only whether or not I could get myself to make a purchase. Yet there was nothing I wanted. I sat there long enough to have a good look through just about everything, despite the feeling of “I’m in someone’s home and am bothering” generated by the fact that I was the only customer in there and they were apparently checking their inventory, yet I simply couldn’t find anything I wanted.
That sucks. According to the original plan, I should be reading at least four more books this year, none of them being translations. (According to what I’d do if I’d have access to a practically endless supply, I should be reading at least a book every two weeks, and preferably one per week, but that will never again happen.) So I was certainly counting on getting at least two, if not actually four, during this fair. Yet I didn’t get anything and I didn’t even see anything I wanted, so I was left with a really bad feeling afterwards…

We’re only hours away from the start of very likely the strangest and riskiest World Cup edition in recent history. And I really don’t see how at least the first part of that statement, about the strangeness, could possibly be proven wrong. Unfortunately, I also don’t exactly see the second part, about the risk, being proven wrong either, though I certainly hope it will somehow be…
This push to forcefully globalize every aspect of football creates more and more dangers each time. First it was only for the matches themselves, when highly unsuitable referees were introduced simply because FIFA wanted to grant each continent what it considered to be its fair share in that aspect as well, but now having this edition take place in a country like South Africa is a threat to the security of the players, staff members and fans, as well as to the likelihood that fans will be able to enjoy what they’re seeing.
Quite frankly, while we could never have managed to build the stadiums, from all other aspects, such as security, organization, culture and the entire system required to manage something of this magnitude, I think even Romania would have been a more suitable World Cup host than South Africa! And that’s saying a lot…

Anyone who watched the Confederations Cup should be well aware of what I mean when I mention the reduced likelihood of fans being able to enjoy the matches, or even the reduced likelihood that players will be able to properly play the matches. I’m obviously talking about the constant dreadful noise generated by the thousands of vuvuzelas used by the South African fans, which drowns out commentators, players and coaches alike and is quite frankly very annoying, especially since it’s heard constantly from the first to the last moment of every match, and likely also before and after.
It was apparently decided that, despite all the protests, these instruments can’t be banned because they play a key role in an authentic South African experience and they’re deeply rooted in the culture of South African football fans. Well then, I’ll say that means the South African football culture is incompatible with hosting an event of this magnitude, because neither the players nor the viewers from other countries signed up for this “complete South African football experience” that FIFA decided can only be achieved with the help of these instruments. So if FIFA decided to get everyone over there for its own interests, it should at least try to make them feel somewhat at home, because this is its fault and not the fault of the South Africans. In the end, the South Africans do what they like if they’re allowed, just like anyone else would, but FIFA should have reminded everyone that this is an international event and not just a South African one!

As for security, I think everyone is quite well aware of the problems. There’s a significant level of crime, including organized crime, a good part of it violent, and the number of homicides that take place there is really shocking. And let’s not forget the huge number of HIV positive people in South Africa, many of them not even aware of the disease, which creates a different kind of threat when you consider what this huge number of fans, most of them male, means for the local sex trade and that people will skip using condoms even under normal circumstances, so even more so in the insanity generated by the World Cup.
So, while still hoping I’ll be proven wrong, I don’t think it’s a question of whether there will be more than what could be considered an usual number of tragic events during this edition, but only of exactly how many more and how tragic. And, while those are only risks that ultimately affect those who choose to go there, the risk of an HIV pandemic after the fans will return home is truly frightening.
And then you also have things like this, which show the kind of environment those teams need to train and play in and highlights other risks and health hazards faced by those who go there…

So, while I know pretty much everything is being done to reduce the risks and therefore don’t really expect something of catastrophic proportions, I do expect a lot of bad things to happen, some of them only being noticeable after the World Cup will be over. But I’m posting this here now so I’ll be able to compare the end results with the expectations. We shall see.

I believe I can now safely say that my expectations were met, as in she completely ignored my request and left it at that. So I should probably calm down regarding this issue right about now… But not about anything else, since this leaves me with the same worries and uncertainties, the same mood and the same problems.
Sure, if she’d have somehow accepted it I’d be replacing “ignored” with “terrified” up there in the title and the rest of this post likely wouldn’t exist because I wouldn’t be able to think of anything else. But at least it would have been a change and, assuming she’d have actually said something as well and I wouldn’t have died of shock right away, I’d have seen later if it’d have been for better or worse.

As it is, I get to spend my time realizing just how lonely I am and being angry at the woman living below me who decided that the “weeds” behind the building need to go, so took it upon herself to rip out nearly everything that was more than a few centimeters high. I’m not sure if she’s also the one responsible for a similar “operation” that took place behind the fence that’s behind the building, but the effects are certainly very similar.
It used to be a pretty nice place in front of my window. Granted, the one I live in seems to be the only column of apartments in this entire group of buildings that doesn’t have a tree in front, but even so it was pretty nice to see a whole lot of green. I’m not talking about the little flower garden this woman set up in front of her windows, but just about the wild growth that was beyond it, around and especially behind that fence. Yet somebody decided it had to go, so a while ago I woke up one day to see pretty much all the trees and bushes that were behind the fence simply gone. Then nothing more happened until recently, when two people came and in two days tore out pretty much everything else that was left behind that fence, usually things that had grown right on it, turning it into something that looked somewhat like a hedge. They even pulled on little trees until they simply ripped away the crown and left the stump there! And then they piled everything up and walked away. But that apparently wasn’t enough and now, in two other days, this woman did something similar on this side of the fence, ripping away everything that was left growing on or around it and saying she’s just getting rid of weeds. At least she took them away instead of leaving them in a pile, but that doesn’t count for much…
Well, those “weeds” turned this atrocious barbed wire fence into something I didn’t mind seeing whenever I looked out the window, kept some of the dust from being blown in here by the wind, kept moisture in the ground a little longer, provided some additional oxygen and even cooled the air a little during summer. But I guess that to some people a barbed wire fence, a huge pile of dead vegetation and whatever that ugly thing is between these buildings is a far better view than some pretty big and green wild plants. And of course that says nothing about the other benefits those “weeds” were bringing, which nobody seems to care for.

Now that I let that out… I’m getting back to being really lonely. Nobody around that I’d actually want to spend any time with and apparently people aren’t even logging on Yahoo! Messenger much anymore, so there’s nobody to even chat with even if I stay logged on for several hours per day, just in case someone would eventually come on. It’s a very “nobody would even hear you scream” feeling…
Even the few people I was talking to now and then are too busy with “real life”, whether that involves things they choose to do or, most often, things they somehow end up having to do. So I must once again say that I’d really like to bump into someone who’s in a similar situation, with no “real life” to speak of, that I’d really get along with, and preferably could also actually spend time with. (All right, so Liz may partially fit the “no life” part of that description, but that’s not what I’m talking about…)
So… Anyone who spends a lot of time thinking, dreaming and living in her own world, reckons she’d get along well with me and has a whole lot of free time available, which would imply, among other things, no school or work and no more than a small number of friends, please raise your hand. Though, of course, the “get along well with me” part already means I’m addressing a very small and perhaps even nonexistent subset of humanity, and that’s only made worse by me further limiting it to females mainly aged 20 to 30, though being a couple of years outside of this age range could also sometimes work without me feeling too weird. But I wouldn’t feel at all comfortable around anyone else…

As it is, I’ll keep worrying, being lonely and occasionally angry… And see if I can use all this time to actually get some work done towards that utterly insane idea that started developing in my mind after a dream I had last year. But that seems highly unlikely, as I don’t have even a small fraction of the skill, the determination or the confidence required to do anything like that, and the sheer scale of the idea would likely be daunting even for a skilled and determined person anyway.

You know, I wanted to end this post there, but I realized I have more to say… This may well be just because I no longer think there’s a chance she may respond to that request, but I was thinking there might just have been a chance for me to be able to talk to her, at least for a while, assuming she’d have put my worst fears to rest quickly and she’d have been at least reasonably open. In part, that’s because my mind is so often occupied with that insane idea lately and therefore I have a slight “shield” that I can get some limited use out of when a problem arises, but mainly it’s because right now I miss what I had with Elena P. more than what I had with Andra.
Being able to just sit down on a park bench, or perhaps cuddle on the bed or couch when she came over, and talk for three or four hours without ever getting bored, without ever running out of topics, rarely disagreeing and never getting upset even when we did disagree, easily weaving in and out of very intimate and very important stories, problems, thoughts, dreams and desires, feeling disappointed when we eventually had to say goodbye because there were still so many things we meant to talk about… I still don’t know, and probably will never know, if it was real from her side as well, but the kind of mental connection that allows for something like that to happen, while otherwise obviously lesser than an emotional connection, is the kind of connection you need the most when you feel alone in a crowd. That’s the kind of connection that makes you think you may not be the only one to hear your screams after all.
Interestingly, Elena P. was in school, even worked for a week while we talked, and also mentioned her family pretty often. And, of course, she had her boyfriend, though he seemed to be pretty much the only other person close to her. So she obviously had a “real life” and normally I’d say that’d be a huge problem. Yet it wasn’t, and not just because she made time for me but because of how she handled those “real life” issues while talking to me. So it’s probably more about what she had in her life than about what she didn’t have.
You see, when people tell me about school, work, relatives, therapy, treatments, parties and other such things, at best I don’t really care and usually I get quite pissed. And then also feel really bad, because I’m obviously of no use to them in those conversations and because I’m obviously not a real friend if I don’t care about what they seem to care about. I ask about these things if I know that’s what their life consists of, but I’m asking because I’m interested in them, not in any of these things. What I’m looking for are their deepest thoughts, dreams, desires and problems and the intimate details of their closest personal relationships. I offer all those things whenever I think the other person could be listening to me, and sometimes even when she’s not, and desire to get them in return, as that’s what creates a bond from my point of view. So I want to know about you, not about the confines that struggle, and unfortunately nearly always succeed, to make you less you.
But that part about closest personal relationships may well be the worst problem. Quite frankly, I just know one person who seems to have something like that and even in her case, while the relationship itself would indeed be extremely interesting to discuss at length, I somehow doubt it’s quite the kind of relationship I’m talking about. And she doesn’t exactly tell me anything about it anyway. Yet talking about the intimate details of her relationship was probably the most important “ingredient” of what I had with Elena P., so the fact that the other people I’m talking to don’t have something like that, and don’t say that much about any potential past relationships either, may well be a far worse problem than the annoying things they do have in their lives. Which only means that we’re all alone and lonely… Just that we are different kinds of lonely, so we can’t even be alone together…

As always, said less than what’s on my mind but likely way more than I should have… Not that it matters much anyway. And besides, in about one hour I’ll be going to sleep and at that time all of this will be forgotten, as the one thing I always miss the most whenever I’m in bed is having her there with me, and the fact that she’s not has turned going to sleep and waking up into pure torture every single day out of these past four and a half years and will keep doing so…