Lines in the Sand

I was around 18 or 19 years old at the time and in love with this boy. Perhaps "in love" isn't the right expression.  

"In lust" would be a better term. 

Although there were plenty of real emotions behind the lust as well. 

It wasn't a relationship and it wasn't just a friendship. It was what today would be called "a situationship". I smile when I think of all the labels of today and on this being so modern. Apparently it all started with the advent of the smartphone.

Nah...some of us elite underdogs (particularly from some of the old subcultures of the days gone by) have already lived through most of it...

...androgyny, polyamory, alternative sexuality...blue hair (although mine always turned out somewhere between violet and grey).

This boy...he's still around. Our paths split long ago, across continents, and have never crossed again.

Yet we both live within 500 km of each other, and we both know it.

"Nothing really matters!"

He meant: Everyone and Everything is Expendable.

He enjoyed watching my reaction at those words.

I had to listen to the same tune not too long ago from someone who also fell between two states of interpersonal definition. Another situationship falling between the cracks of the traditional and the absurd.

Did he also enjoy the metaphysical squirm it elicited in me?  

Probably.

No way to know where the truth ends and the lies begin.

The games those people played with my mind, is why I've always hated that narrative. All artificial and manipulative. Rampant narcissism.

Today, and for the greater part of the last 12 years, that isolated, philosophical hatred has turned into irascible disgust.

I've been hearing parts of this morose and pessimistic tune in my work environment, the creative spheres, social circles and everyday routines.

Like the guy with his false whistling and that woman who sings the beeping tune of another woman's smartphone as she strolls around in the shop. Nothing to do, nothing much to say and no interesting thoughts, yet they continue to make a noise nonetheless. At times it crosses from mediocre into the realm of the malicious: Like the guy on his bicycle shouting from across the road, as he rode in the opposite direction. He was righteously annoyed at the acquaintances who'd parked their car temporarily on the bicycle track.

Entitlement, selfishness, justified maliciousness. It has all become so prominent that it has begun to slowly infiltrate into some of the more intimate, inner circles of family life.

It's possibly the hypocrisy and corruption behind this mentality that continues to feed my rage.

Coming to the end of 2025 I arrive once again at that moment of New Year's Resolutions. 

Of course just mentioning this timeless tradition of throwing out the old and ushering in the new, gives birth to a plethora of negative narratives.

New Year's Resolutions are overrated! Nobody sticks to them so why make them? There's too much social pressure! It's just a dumb trend!

Well, at least we can't cancel this one entirely by putting the "commercial" stamp on it as we do with Christmas.

My reply: Speak for yourself!

I'd say other people's opinions are highly overrated. Most don't believe a word they say and change their rhetoric based on who's in front of them. Most of these same people are guilty of putting that exact same pressure on others to comply with their narrative; and frankly, most are indeed too stupid to carry any kind of relevant conversation.

My New Year's Resolution is simple:

LINES IN THE SAND

I draw them and they embody the words of an Afrikaans quote ages ago back in my Fatherland: Tot hier en nie verder nie.

What does this mean literally ? (My youngest daughter has discovered the word "literally" and literally uses it all the time now!)

It means I have no more patience for diluting my values for the sake of other people's fragile, mental compositions.

The death of my father back in 2024 was also the death of that little voice on my shoulder urging me to "be objective", to "turn the other cheek", "to temper my tempest". It's rather ironic in many ways because he wasn't a calm man either. It was only in his older and wiser years that he changed his trajectory from training me to "be a man" into preaching that I should "be more feminine". Naturally, as one can imagine, we clashed many times. He was still my best friend. I miss him greatly and even more so at this very spiritual time of the year. For now, the rustling of the birch trees is too faint and his voice is silent. And yet the little death of nature through the winter solstice opens the mind to what once was and what is yet to come.

Poetry aside, it means that time is passing and not having a plan is akin to being the cricket and not the ant in that famous fable. 

In this case, for me, it means that I'm angry and that, that anger needs more than my rigorous physical training to subdue it. 

I'm angry at the fake friendships and fake connections throughout the last 14 years. Angry at being dumped when I needed the help the most. Angry at the prejudice, nepotism and misogyny in the various office jobs I've had to do to pay my bills. Angry at being expected to give physically, emotionally and mentally without asking or getting anything in return. Angry at dumbing down my intellect to appease someone else's inferiority complex. Angry at the brainwashing into ideologies that I don't, and never have believed in. Angry at outright betrayal when loyalty got tested. Angry at the lack of common,family values. Angry at the loneliness and isolation that all of the above, and so much more, has created.

If I hadn't grown up in a vastly different place, time and around very different people, I might have felt as nonchalant as the average Western European about the unspoken social as well as familial dysfunction so prevalent in this part of the world. But I have plenty of equal opposites to compare it all to. Obviously I cannot rant about specific people, situations or instances because it would simply be food for gossip. What I can do, however, is turn it all into one, old school pertinent question.

Who died and made you king?