Gardens and bricks

Imagine having a garden. A nice, tiny little garden in front (or at the back) of your house. That must be quite a lot of work, taking care of it all the time. Removing the weeds, watering the plants, and so on, and so on. Depending on how much you like your garden you can spend any amount of time on it.

But some people don’t have time for gardens at all. If they have one, they would rather not spend time on it. These people will put bricks, instead if plants, inside their garden. Bricks don’t need maintenance, they don’t tending. After placing them you need do nothing at all. But they are not very pretty, are they? Nobody wants to have a garden full of bricks.

A strange experience

So I’d better write it down here before I forget.

Yesterday night me and Brian were talking when we noticed a guy yelling loudly outside. That by itself is not unusual on Friday night, since a lot of people walk home drunk. What was slightly more unusual is that this person took off his pants and starting waving them around, after which he was unable to stand and decided to sit down and take a nap under my room.

On Brian’s initiative we decided to go down and check if the guy was okay, and to see if we could strike up a conversation. Quite a strange idea if you ask me, but it was quite interesting. At first the guy was very defensive, but when he realized we just wanted to talk he tried his best to talk to us in English. Which took forever, since his English was very crappy. We tried to talk back to him in Japanese, but he insisted on English.

In the end we did talk about some interesting topics. We talked mostly about the Akihabara incident (a couple of weeks ago a guy went around in a truck ramming people and stabbing them at random), and how it affected Japan. The guy was convinced that most people in the world are bad people, and that the world is going downhill. When we told him that it’s not just Japan where this kind of senseless violence happens, he told us that, of course, in foreign countries this happens, but Japan is supposed to be safe. Japanese people cannot accept this kind of violence, he said.

In the end we talked for a couple of hours, and it was getting cold when the guy finally went home, still without his pants. I hope that we managed to convince him that not everybody is evil.

On the move

The world is shaking, but not physically. Break time is over. Things are slowly starting to move again. It will take some time before the buildup of momentum reaches a point that I am happy with, but life is definitely on the move. Today marked the end of the break. Looking back on today, a perfectly ordinary day, an amazing amount of things happened today. In every area of my life a big development happened. At work I heard two incredible things and I cannot talk about them here. They will the way I feel about work a lot. In a positive way.

As for social life, I had a very happy day today. I’ve actually been quite depressed for the past few weeks, but today I felt great. Nothing on my mind at all. Lots of things to worry about but somehow they didn’t seem to matter today. I can deal with them. My happy day had a nice ending too; I received a message I didn’t expect. I love the unexpected

George Carlin died. I didn’t even know who he was one month ago, and now he’s dead. We introduced a show of his to Mika on Saturday, and Mika was the first one today to find out that he died. A strange succession of events in my opinion, even if it means nothing.

Future prospects. My philisophy is always this: wait for your chance, and you will know it when you see it. Don’t force it. There is a right time for everything, and no good will come of it if you try to grab your chance when you’re not ready for it. Proof of this presented itself today, and it helps me to become more confident in myself and in the way I live. I don’t expect anything from the future, or any particular chance I might get. But chances will come. And I will recognize them.

My life always has periods of huge inactivity followed by periods of huge activity. I sense that my life is building up towards another peak. The next phase is approaching. Time to take the chance and move forward. Carpe diem.

Asleep

I am going through life as if I were asleep. Everything I experience cannot get through to my brain. Instead there is a huge wall between my brain and all outside life. There is even a wall between my brain and myself. Nothing seems to be able to break it. Stress at work doesn’t break it. Tiring myself out on my bicycle doesn’t seem to break it. Getting lost at night and ending up in farmland doesn’t seem to break it. I know why I feel this way, and I know how to fix it. But I willingly choose to feel this way. This is my choice. I will wait.

Here are some pictures I made while trying to relieve my boredom last night. They are not very good, but I thought I’d share them anyway. The cycling was actually fun, in a rather unconnected kind of way.

One exposure

Take a look here. It’s a website containing only the best works of the best photographers/artists there are. Each picture is screened before it’s placed on the site. It’s a very elite group, and as a result of it the quality is unbelievable. Although the genre of images on the website is a bit specific, each and every one of the photo’s is amazing. For example, take a look at this one. Really cool stuff. I still have a long way to go before I can match that…

The creature from hell

There I was, sitting in front of my screen. The room was dark. The only source of light was the screen, giving off a cold, white light. It was late. After midnight. The rain was making tapping noises on the roof. Suddenly, I heard a noise. It was a vague buzzing noise, and I couldn’t quite locate the source. Then, out of nowhere I felt a horrible feeling on my foot. I reacted as fast as I could, but I was too late. There was nothing there now. But I knew what had happened. One of the creatures had injured me.

I was in need of medical attention. Severely wounded by the horrible creature that attacked me, I had no choice but to wait helplessly for it to strike again. I sat there in front of my screen waiting for the creature to appear again. But it didn’t. I waited for hours and hours, ready to strike with my hands, the only weapon available to me. But to no avail. The creature did not come.

I gave up. There was nothing there. I decided to resume my activities. I isolated from the world and resumed my task. But then, suddenly, I felt a strange feeling on my right hand, a faint tickling sensation. I did not even look down before I struck. I clapped my hands together in the faint hope that the creature would somehow be slow enough for me to kill it. My attempt, uncoordinated at best, did not give me much hope. The feeling on my right hand was gone, and as I looked at the back of my right hand I concluded that the creature was gone as well. I had struck before it had a chance to sting me.

The struggle would have to continue. I was ready to prepare for war. I needed to get serious and get the big guns out. Only a few meters away, my electric painstick, capable of killing hordes of creatures in one strike, awaited me. It was hidden in a secret compartment in my room so that the creatures would not find it. I was about to uncover it when I noticed something. My left hand had blood on it. Horrified, my mind ran to conclusions. Did the beast attack me again without noticing? Was there more than one? Was the attack more deadly than I imagined? There was a significant amount of blood there, right between two of my fingers. And then it hit me. All the pieces fit together, and the conclusion formed in my mind. I looked at my right hand again, and as before there was nothing to see there. There was nothing to see on the back of my hand! I slowly, surely turned the palm of my right hand to face towards me. In my mind I already knew the horror that would await me. And it was true. Lying in the palm of my right hand there was the creature. Covered in blood. Dead. Now all that was left for me to do was to expose of the body. And that I did.

I turned back to my screen, resuming my work. This creature was the first of many. But I am ready for them now. Let many more come, and their blood shall stream from my hands. This time, I will succeed. Let them come.