On the run- Looking for Yesterday

 A Journey to Yesterday- story in chapters. Chapter 1

Back in Yesterday I had a dreamy flashback of a perfect morning: it was in some coffee shop, with a full cup of course, starting to write and feeling just so fresh and full of energy. Somehow, it was purely a flashback to the wonderland as it's 2016 and it still basically never happened. But since I still see it, like I once saw it Yesterday, I am packing my bag and run out on a mission: I'm looking for Yesterday! Anybody out there wants to help me?

 Recently I have undergone a lot of changes which not necessarily served me well in a matter of 'future'. To be frank, I stopped writing even my personal diary. There is this space in between whatever's in your head and a piece of paper. What's in this space, sometimes turns to be hard to chew. In regards to whatever had been happening in my head, I regularly practise mindwriting. And on some level, it works just as fine as if one had swallowed three bottles of whisky and finished it off with a pack of Gauloises. Oh, and RebBull of course, always RedBull. 

 But mostly mindwriting has one quality none other activity really has: it brings up images which had been previously deeply buried and forgotten. I had this flashback while walking through Drury Lane some other day: suddenly I saw faces of two of good friends of mine next to me, laughing and crossing the street towards Holborn Station. The point is, I have never been there with these particular friends, surely not at that time of the year either that time of the day. Then I realised that mindwriting can be dangerous: it may actually bring over the memories of somebody else. 

 Thrilled by my recent discovery, I decided to jump onboard of a time machine and find my real Yesterday. I was hoping it was going to simply lay down behind some corner of my mind, resting and waiting for resurrection. But the truth, my dear readers, turned to be more complicated. As usual. 

 After crossing several avenues of my mind, I finally reached the door of Mr Frank. I kept repeating myself that if he still keeps compulsively holding his nail file I would just leave. But Frank, my once regular imaginary therapist, opened the door wearing a fluffy dressing gown and slippers that he got from Mr Charming for Christmas five years ago. He seemed much more calm and collected, and a steady smile on his face made me thinking that he might have overdosed his incense sticks fumes. But he seemed to be also happy to see me and at the same time, not surprised at all. Maybe he had been also thinking of Yesterday, of old times when he has become created in my mind, before I offered him an independence from my imagination. Although, he did not seem to get carried away by being an autonomous unit- his apartment was just as tidy as it used to be and his favourite armchair was still in the same place where I put it. He offered me a cup of tea, and almost everything seemed like an old Frank, the Frank of Yesterday. 

There used to be a funhouse- a memoir

 I always had a feeling that the new year somehow starts in February. You see, I ought to hate Januaries. Simply detest them with no reason, treating them as something unnatural and lacking a specific shape. Maybe that is why celebrating Chinese New Years always came to me as rather handy. Especially this year, which is, indeed, the year of a monkey. Making it my year and the same time, the fourth year of existence of Monkey Seduction.

 So where is the meaning? Let's go back, my dear readers, to where it started. To Shoreditch, next to an old-school butchery shop, to the place which no longer exists. I have done this trip myself a week ago. I was staring at empty windows and a door which is no longer that door, trying to recall endless cigarettes smoked in this passage, between one article and another. The office of my first internship, and my first position as a writer. This is where the idea of Monkey Seduction has begun, as  tool to help me familiarize myself with wirtten English, to become what it is now: my last exit to paradise, my ultimate place of a miracle which did not happen. My Monkey Seduction, a medicine for my soul. There used to be a funhouse, this place in my memory, long evenings-nights with bottles of Desperados, and London, so modern and so so of nowadays, as some of us even has smartphones already, and Youtube was just so cool. There used to be a place to belong, and an illusion of creation, elusive, buried, done, thrown out. 

 But this is not meant to be a sentimental goodbye, but a stubborn 'go ahead', without a care for grammar, wthout any clear explanation. Chased by a black force through the streets of London which used to be my love (oh London, the one I wrote so many peoms to!), I escaped the magma of their evil fingers to what I thought I knew. The memories, the start, the hope. The hope which was still there where I left it, can you believe it, on a shelf at vintage clothing shop. I used to visit this shop on my way back from work. Now, four years after, the shop is still there. And the place, which used to be so much of a place, is no longer there. Has turned to the eternal feeling of detachment serving to me every morning. 

 Then I left the shop, once again torn and detached, with a cigarette in my hand. In my pocket, there was my lost hope reclaimed from the second hand outlet, and on the back of my coat- a shadow of black force, restless. I looked at it through my left shoulder. I smiled. I am, indeed, not yet given up. 

When You Need a Friend, but say 'Don't worry, I'm fine'- the Loneliness of our Time

 'I am lonely, will anyone speak to me'- this is how, in 2004, a thread dubbed later 'the saddest one on the Internet' begun. Posted on a technical forum moviecodec.com, has since created a massive movement built on the unity of people who, in loneliness, turn to the Internet for help. But sadly reading the comments posted since that, coming from various users from all around the world, the question whether the development of the media cure loneliness seems doubtful. 

 There are several definitions trying to state what loneliness really is, but the most adequate seems to be the feeling of constant isolation. While it can be cause by lack of company or a sudden loss of a close person, the feeling of loneliness usually disentangles us from the surrounding environment. A person who develops a feeling of a constant loneliness experiences difficulty communicating, enjoying people's company or asking others for help when needed. The main problem is, loneliness is a spiral: the longer you cultivate it inside you, the more you immerse into it, until it is starting to be almost impossible to break through and simply emerge out of it. 

 The affliction of disentangling

 While the chronic loneliness is perfectly curable, it is still a serious affection to a human mind. It can be a symptom, or a beginning, of a serious mental illness and leave a long-term damage to one's emotional life. To better understand chronic loneliness it is important to understand what does it actually do to one's life. 

 The main emotion developing while in loneliness is best described as inadequacy. A lonely person will often experience the feeling of being incompatible with their environment and people surrounding them, even if they remain close friends or family. They will often feel misunderstood and will unlikely share with others. Therefore, the lonely person will, surprisingly, stray from company rather than search for it, which can be perceived by others as a need of staying alone. The feeling of non-belonging is a serious issue able to affect a person's life in long-term. Feeling constantly inadequate, they will develop the belief that they bother people surrounding them, and might even lead to events that could confirm it. A person suffering from chronic loneliness might appear unreliable or careless, while in reality keeping promises or acting accordingly to the rules of human interaction becomes overwhelming for them. In effect, a chronically lonely person becomes socially disordered, what leads to their separation from the surrounding community, By the community, on the other hand, such behaviour might appear as a deliberate neglecting of the social bond, and even lead to the exclusion of a lonely person. Such an event, of course, will confirm the belief in their inadequacy and will push the person even deeper into a spiral of affliction and distress.

   Chronic loneliness can lead to a severe depression as well as be a symptom of it already. 

 When your friend suffers from loneliness 

 What to do, or how to act, while dealing with a chronically lonely person is important for human relationships as well as for their mental health. But, many people simply cannot read the symptoms of a chronic loneliness. The answer is not ignorance though, but a belief shaped by society, according to which a person surrounded by good friends, and in general liked, we are usually reluctant to believe that indeed, deep inside, they feel utterly lonely. Here there are some signs that one of your friends has been affected by chronic loneliness:

 They never ask

 And if they do, these are usually stupid questions. They won't ask you to lend them five pounds because they forgot a wallet, a start immediately apologizing if you offer it. While asking you out, they will outline that they do not want to bother and they will completely adjust to your schedule, even if you know each others for years. Sometimes they will make up a stupid excuse about a reason for the meeting or calling, even if you used to go out for a pint every Tuesday. They will never openly ask for help, and even they used to be confined to you, now they will answer your worrying questions with simple: I am fine, don't worry. 

 All these might be symptoms that your friend started feeling inadequate. They won't ask you out because they feel their problems might be a burden to you, and because they have an unrealistic image of being irrelevant for others. 

Saudade imensa

 Once in a while there is a reason to recall the phrase 'Saudade imensa'. There isn't, sadly, any other adequate term to describe what it brings. Whoever first used this phrase, surely knew what I know: this breathe steamed on the window before it blows away, the emptiness of a cup after coffee, hopelessly awaiting another filling. This reason to look away, with your eyes trying to catch the point which is fading away, like a view from a running train. The tusk of a heart after a glimpse on a random picture. Saudade imensa, the only way to say what I feel. 

 Sometimes it is just a minute, a little dizziness which makes you separate from the crowd, and hold onto an empty page while trying to write down the unwritten, undescribable. It makes your hand shake, your pen to fall out of your hand. All you can do is watch, watch it all sneaking out in between your fingers, to melt and pour itself down your feet, uncatchable. Irreversible. 

 There is no such medicine in this world able to cure Saudade imensa. For it can surpass the bottom of the river in its' deepness. It is stronger than days of summer, larger than hunger for life, more penetrating than soft rains of September. Saudade imensa is unfigthable, unbreakable, untameable. Once it comes, it holds your heart forever, swinging it in their open hands, swinging it to sleep. 

There Will Come Soft Rains

Sara Teasdale, 1884 - 1933

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, 
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone. 

The Transformation

 As some of you remember, Monkey Seduction has been created in 2012 as a personal diary with a string attached of a jump into another reality. But every reality has a limited time and sphere of existence, and cannot endure within the understanding of our lasting desires. Therefore, I feel obliged to inform you that there will be changes. But once again, let's turn back in time to help me explain. 

 In winter 2012 I had a misfortune to work for a magazine, which was targeting everybody and nobody, and, for money, was creating a reality which was aiming to appear as the only right one, full of glossy colours which were not available to achieve even with a camera of the best smartphone. Monkey Seduction was supposed to be a cure for a painful gap between the lies and grey soil of reality we lived with our bills to pay. And, it exceeded my expectations. 

 Speaking, actually my life itself exceeded my expectations. As some of you remember, it was often hard and sometimes getting stuck at the rock bottom, but never boring. For three years I was blogging from my house in East London, often enriching my stories with pieces of adventures of my flatmates, neighbours and friends. Whether it was good or bad, as life will probably reveal soon, in 2015 my life has gone through transformation. I have seen clearly what is real, and what is not worth it, what is to be followed, and what is just a glossiness of a morning cover, hanging there to fall on your head one day (sometimes, unfortunately, literally).  

 Since it's 8 am, I guess I should shut up now and stop talking but start acting. I prefer a small progress rather than a revolution, but yes, it's a time for transformation. Don't worry, I'm not saying that I'm quitting prozac. This post is just to ensure, that no matter what happens here over the next months, it will always be real. Real in an alternative, Monkey Seduction understanding, which is the only one I cherish and accept, the only one I will always live, give and share. 

Break your lace, Tonya!

 On one day in 1994 I was watching figure ice skating championship, as I always used to do. It was a real feast to me, the day when it was coming, and I was looking forward to it long time before. I am certain about it, even though I cannot remember it very well. But that day, in 1994, I remember it clearly. There was a girl with a braid in a red dress, who suddenly stopped in the middle of the ice and started to cry. Her lace was broken. This is what I remember: her lamenting face, and the lesson- that no matter how far on top are you, your dreams can always fall into pieces.

 That image came back to me after more than twenty years. Only to discover, that I didn't know the real story behind it. The story of Tonya Harding.

 Let me tell you a story about two girls. One of them used to call another one a princess, but it was not a fairy tale they lived in. Despite that, a princess she said, with a cheeky grin on her face, but that's the way she was, another one used to answer with laughter. The way she was, spiky, distant, reserved you would say, but benevolent, as the other one always said, reliable and always standing out for her friends. The way she was, the other one liked it, even though she knew there was some 'old rivalry' between them, as she laughed, such a long time ago. But what she didn't know was that rivalry may pass away. While jealousy always remains. Because jealousy, you see, is way more dangerous than rivarly. Jealousy means you have something she never will.

 My mom always said we should be cheering for girls from former Soviet Union. A life of a girl from behind the Berlin Wall was nothing like of those on the west. It was not meant to be, that's the matter of history. But I was just a girl in front of TV, born on the wrong side of the world to be a princess. I admired American girls, girls like from the movies, girls born in Disneyland, with good names to conquer the world. The girl with the broken lace was called Tonya Harding. And she was the real American dream story, that story which was never meant to be mine.
 For years all I remembered from that moment was her braid, and a dress which I believed to be red. And her face, her face in tears when she realized that her lace was broken. Her American dream was broken.

 I cannot recall the circumstances when the crying face of Tonya Harding showed up in my mind once again. It was twenty years later, while I was charging my batteries at home during a break from realizing my own American dream, or rather a mere European-crisis version of it, with all the exhausting upside downs to be a part of it. Maybe it was her laughter when we've last seen each other, something like three months ago, and that look of her blue eyes when she said 'princess' once again.

Spookhall

 I have been seeing Spookhall for most of my life. Sometimes, if I get lost in my dream, I suddenly find myself in front of the entrance, and despite the immediate resentment I always end up in there. The Spookhall is not a place like any other. It is actually, a storage for an excess, an exceeding of utility, a gathering of objects imprisoning the sad fatality of material being. It is a storage, in fact, for medical and chemical goods, wastebags, washing liquids and first aid kits, cleaning towels and syntetic powders, hygiene products, sanitary pads, mops, brushes, buckets, shits, suffocating stocks of granola. It makes me feel sick. I want to grab the very first paper roll and stuff myself through my throat. Like I would do everything not to soak through mould of walls of the Spookhall, and what they are bearing for me in my nightmares. 

 There are always the same frosted windows with a blurry vision on disgusting plastic boxes filled with chemistry, and a clock which always stops at five. There is a sound coming from the inside, a monotone, overwhelming tune of a wind lost in a dark. In the town I grew up I heard once a sound like that, coming out of the old meat factory, bringing a choking smell of a slaughtered pig. This is how Spookhall is like.