Realization.

Its easy to get bogged down when you're too busy. Today, for the first time, I saw the Christmas time in my head. Seeing my parents, the meerkat, and friends. It felt good.

Giving in.

I always knew I was different. When every one I knew was playing football on the street until dark (they were other times) I was in imperial Rome, listening to Caesar, or Middle Earth or at the other side of your common variety wormhole. I held the lines against rampaging alien broods, seduced princesses throughout the Multiverse, crossed the Gobi desert looking for Alexander's treasures, learned swordplay with Masamune-sensei in medieval Japan, helped capt. Nemo navigate the Nautilus.

Eloquent, I was. Popular, I was not.

So I accommodated. I gave in. I thought no one would be interested in it, so I kept it close to the heart. Things changed with Chuck et al, but it was a slow boil. When I met women, it was a similar story. I always thought this was something odd, dirty, something to be ashamed of. I have to say that some of my relationships managed to reinforce this idea to no end. (This set of concepts can also be extrapolated to a number of other ideas, like those of you that know me will know....)

So there I was. Pretty sure I would have to have a Geek-cave, somewhere musty, wet and slimy, to keep what I liked, never again to see the light of day.

And then the meerkat came. Someone that was beautiful and true and honest and pure. Someone without an ounce of repression and malice. Someone that takes me as I am, no more, and no less. I need not to moderate, to put the hologram of normality on. I actually think I tried to shock her at the start: 'this is what I am, take it or leave it.' And she took it.

Words elude me at time to describe how much I love and care for her. She is everything I ever dreamt and more.

I love you, Jo. Here's to the future.

:)

Things.

Today I opened an old book and a bookmark fell out. Old think, just an old train ticket, but it made me think. In the distant year of our Lord 1998, I bought a bookmark in Lisbon. A narrow rectangle made of papyrus, it had the Latin alphabet, and the Egyptian hieroglyphic correspondent. I kept that bookmark for 10 years, and it followed me for dozens, if not hundreds of books. Many times I thought I'd lost it, a few times I made trips on purpose to retrieve it from somewhere.

And then, on my last house move, it vanished. I have no idea where it went. I still don't, to this day. At the time, I was going through a lot, and a simple bit of papyrus wasn't high on my list. With the possibly exception of my flip-flops, and a pair of Bermuda shorts, they were my oldest, continuously used possession, but, at the end of the day, it was only a thing.

Things are things. They mean a lot, they are sometimes irreplaceable, but they are, at the end of the day, things. People matter. Family, friends, loves. They are the important things in one's life.

I'm honoured to love and be loved by a number of people, the meerkat most of them. I miss my bookmark, but I don't really mind, at the end of the day.

Wherever it is, I wish it all the best. And if someone found it, and is using it as a bookmark, I could hope for no better.

If my frinds had titles, what would they be?

They might be something like this:

Tania the Wise
Carlos the SoulBrother
Hugo the Artist
Cai the Grey (as in grey areas, she's a lovely pale white in real life)
Freya the Strong
Anna the Lovely

Joana the Everything

No idea where this came from. I'm going to bed.