Dress rehearsal... of sorts

I'm dead to the world - a little bit more now than I've already been usually.
I rode to a fleamarket today, one of the last times before the long, dead winter months - technically that was yesterday as it's nearly 3 AM now and I can't sleep once more. I always used to think of night time as "in between yesterday and tomorrow", but without a "today": October 9th was yesterday, October 10th will be by morning; right now it's "in between days".
My bouts of insomnia happen about every other night and usually I don't get up but just keep lying around for some hours. But maybe it's time to change a few things; fortunately I can sleep or wake at any time I like, and even my gym is open 24/7, so I could go there right now.
I didn't talk to anyone all day, just like on most days. Except when praying to Satan and when talking a bit to myself, the latter I think is done by most people who spend most of their time alone.

The reason I'm more dead to the world than usual is because I just deactivated my Facebook account. All of a sudden FB wouldn't let me use my name anymore, I couldn't log in anymore without changing it, nor could I change it in any useful manner. When I first registered there, about 5 years ago, I tried to use Diana the Warrior just like here but it didn't work (wouldn't be "approved"), so I settled for my alternative name, Gladiatrix Satanae, which is Latin for "she-warrior of Satan".
(Technically, gladiator/gladiatrix means "sword fighter", there's another more general Latin word for warrior, bellatrix, but I find it unfortunate for a name because "bella" also means beauty in Italian and some people might confuse the meaning there, and calling oneself beautiful would be the most ridiculous and embarrassing thing; it's something done by the sort of people who wear dresses and makeup, not warriors!)
When forced to change the name I tried "Diana Satanswarrior" but that didn't work either; I was about to give up but then it turned out when I changed only the first name I could log in again. Now that gives "Diana Satanae", which makes little sense. It's "Diana of Satan", but the warrior part is missing and it sounds quite ill matched. And anyway, what's a "real" name? Diana is not my real name, it's a name given to me by the hoe that once shat me into this world and the memory of whom contributes quite a good deal to my insomnia and bad dreams.
I never really liked the name, especially for the horrible shit the Germans make of it, they pronounce it more like the -diana part in "Indiana", but more German sounding: "dee - ahna", with a very long "ah" sound in the middle, it sounds very, very ugly and I often have to correct the same person several times in a row which gets extremely tiresome.

I don't have any name more real than Gladiatrix Satanae, or Satan's Warrior, because that's what I am. I'm a warrior and belonging to Satan; furthermore I don't know who or what I am. I'm glad I know at least this much, and life is a quest of finding it out.

Being more dead to the world... being off Facebook is like a dress rehearsal for my actual death, of sorts. A good exercise, I guess. I said so often that I meant to update this blog more often and it's in fact a more reasonable place to put my thoughts, even if no one reads it. I have practically no contacts outside of Facebook. Will anyone miss me? I highly doubt it. Will anyone try to contact me by other ways? Even much more doubtful. But who cares - I'm here for Satan and for myself, and there's no one else to ever rely on. I never really needed anyone else, and no one ever needed me, and at least in this regard I'm fortunately truly free, unbound by anyone or anything, free to move on whenever it should happen.
Needing to breathe, to eat and drink, to sleep, are obligations enough. I've never really been of this world and can't relate to the pleasure most people seem to find in it. I am truly alien to it,and still I don't know why, or how I ended up here although I don't belong.
The quest continues.

Apeirophilia - because anything is possible

Yes, apeirophilia seems to be a new word I just made up. I couldn't find it anywhere yet but it's a legitimate word nonetheless since it conforms to the rules for every phobia there may be a philia.
Example: Arachnophobia -> arachnophilia. Who doesn't love spiders?! :D

Apeirophilia is thus the love of eternity and infinity, and I have it.
This is a continuation of the topic of my previous post, which was centered on the article about apeirophobia I had found.

As opposed to sharing such a phobia, myself I'm absolutely fascinated with the infinite. To explain my fascination, let's look once more at some of the reasons given in the article for the fear of eternity:
"Where does this fear come from? A realization that an eternal afterlife could become infinitely repetitive? The recognition that one lacks control over their own destiny?"

Lack of control is something I dislike as well, but one way or another there's nothing we could do about it. If instead of having an eternal existence it would turn out the materialists were right and there's nothing after death then we'd have no control over that either - or in that case even less control, I should say, since there'd be no more chance to ever again control anything at all (since you obviously first need to exist in order to control anything).

But as for eternal existence becoming repetitive... here's a guy explaining in this interesting video that mathematically, infinity does include infinitely many copies indeed. But note that the numbers he's talking about are absolutely crazy huge - vastly larger than a googol (10^100) and even vastly larger than a googolplex (10^10^100), and see for yourself in the linked Wikipedia articles how insanely huge those already are.

But note that the video is titled "Is anything possible?" (and also that his name is "Sharkee", which is just a coincidence I guess and I don't know why, LOL). And this is the reason why I love infinity: for the infinite possibilities! Just ignore the copies, why bother with them? No harm in them, just let them be... instead focus on the rest.
In order to fill up an infinite universe, those infinite possibilities will certainly come into play too. As Sharkee says in the video, anything that has a probability higher than zero to happen will happen. Since I'd think a multiverse is a distinct possibility, even in the opinions of many physicists, infinity means the multiverse exists. Which means if anything is impossible in this universe due to its physical laws, there could (and probably would) be other universes in which the same thing would be perfectly possible- and thus the title of the video could be answered with Yes, anything is possible!
Anything. All the wonders and all the horrors. And being the dark soul that I am you know I'm not biased against the latter. I'm a free and forever rebellious spirit, and a good measure of rebellion is needed, and of some creative "thinking outside the box", since I'm still caught in my rather lonely position:

- On the one side, materialism: "Only matter exists. After death there is nothing."
- On the other side, mainstream religion: "We all are one in god."

NO!!! Both are the same bullshit, and I reject them both, nearly equally. I do hate the tyrant god a lot more though than the prospect of nonexistence, but in both cases my current existence would be meaningless.
I do believe in my future life, and in a place for myself - which can not be with the tyrant god! - and therefore I love infinity.
How narrow minded is it to believe there are only two possibilities.
When there can be INFINITE possibilities!

Apeirophobia - a Fear of Eternity and Infinity

Lately I came across this article which at the same time both greatly puzzled me while on the other hand it also explains a lot.
I'd been wondering for so long now why all these materialists so vehemently insist on the idea that after physical death follows complete nonexistence, although it would evidently render the existence prior to it entirely pointless, and their insistence never seemed a purely rational, fatalistic concession, as in having no hope to survive the death of their bodies, but much more like the dogged defense against who-knows-what unthinkable corruption... or terror.
The latter must be the answer then, and this terror is called apeirophobia.

I never even heard of this word before;Wikipedia doesn't have it, not even in its comprehensive and partially very bizarre list of phobias. (A fear of flowers? Of certain colors? That's weird. But one of the most ridiculous to me is a very new phenomenon called "Nomophobia" - I don't even have a mobile phone! LOL)

What is described in the article about apeirophobia is truly curious to me, needless to say that no such sensation ever occurred to me and it's very hard for me to conceive of it. I've never been scared of open spaces but rather the opposite, I'm very prone to claustrophobia, both in a literal and figurative sense: the fear of being trapped, hitting dead ends, having no way to go.

The author of the article, Bobby Azarian, says in it, "The largest number of years I could imagine failed to make a dent in infinity. My primitive brain filled with an existential angst. The idea of living forever was even more unsettling than the idea of no longer existing after death."

This appears to me somewhat contradictory (which isn't saying anything really, as being contradictory is normal human nature) in that the idea of ceasing to exist is also unsettling him - but eternity even more so. Yet in this case there probably can't be any further alternative besides these two possibilities...

He goes on to quote someone else as saying, "Now I’m in my 30s, and the thought of eternity still freaks me out. It usually hits at night when I’m trying to sleep."

This notion is quite familiar to an extent - I think we all have such certain things that creep up as we're trying to sleep. Different things for everyone I guess. For me it's often memories of my tormented childhood and my so-called "family". Other times it's about being trapped in a human body. To an extent the exact opposite of the materialists. I think about all that awful goo inside. A jelly-like mass confined on the inside of a skull - and they think this mass is what they are?! And they don't mind that?! I don't know. And do you ever think about that we're literally full of shit? No, I'm not saying we're all a bunch of liars. What I mean is, when you go to the bathroom and take a dump - there's lots more where that came from, and it's in there all the time. Wherever we go we're carrying a load of poop around inside us. I think that's pretty disgusting. I wouldn't want to be such an organism forever. It's actually pretty humiliating to be something like this, and I hope to have a more dignified existence someday. This as an aside - so to me it's bad memories and thoughts the disgusting nature of the human body which creep up in sleepless nights.

I may look further into the subject of apeirophobia though as it kind of fascinates me. I can see it can be quite tormenting to people and I don't mean to belittle that, but I think it doesn't need to be. Because what people don't take into account is that with the death of the body we will inevitably change. Life is a process, death is a process, and both are not processes we're merely observing but they happen to us, which means we're part of the process - part of the change taking place. Like, when you think back of your childhood, back then you probably thought about what it will be like when you grow up, and you may have had a bunch of very unrealistic ideas about it because you couldn't really imagine being an adult - because it was outside your own experience. But eventually it simply happened that you grew up, and now you may think back of "what silly ideas I had back when I was a kid!"
As a kid you probably couldn't have imagined the way you'd be now as an adult - I know I couldn't have.
I missed out on so many things I only realized or learned about much later, and they have changed me. But the change doesn't stop there. It probably never stops, probably not even once we reach the afterlife.

The article further quotes someone as saying, "I feel that we are all insignificant compared to the universe," and, "The thought of the distance between galaxies is unbearable.”

 This idea of feeling insignificant next to infinities of space and time is something I've heard quite a lot - but never felt that way. Rather in the contrary: Having the ability to contemplate these concepts, to mentally grasp them, actually makes me feel quite empowered. The knowledge that there is so much more out there than this sad little human-infested world, such vast, infinite space, is a very comforting thought. I'm not afraid of losing myself in the infinite. I feel the need for so much more space, smothered by this overpopulated world, so overpopulated and light-polluted that I still haven't been able to really stare out into cosmic infinity at night and finally behold the Milky Way.

(Warning: If you happen to suffer from apeirophobia you might rather not want to watch this video. It's called "Powers of Ten", a brief journey from the subatomic level out to the edge of the observable universe and back.)

Nearly as an afterthought: I found this bit here about an interview with Richard Dawkins (one of the most famous proponents of materialism) which surprisingly seems to confirm my idea that apeirophobia may be what motivates them.

(Hubble Ultra Deep Field. May not be suitable for apeirophobics either...)

I don't exist, and if I did I'd be a tree

Well yes, I'm writing this blog so it seems I do exist after all... but apparently a lot of people believe that people like me don't exist.
I received the link to this article a little while ago and meant to write about it myself ever since. (Much workout, much fatigue, much stuff going on.) Because this article is about me - not personally, but about people who are asexual just like I am.

When I read it I recognized much of myself in it, although this guy in the article realized amazingly quickly that "asexual" is the term for what he is. Myself I may have had lots of additional complications going on - being very introverted, even autistic-leaning, and suicidal for hating my then weak and useless body, etc.
But what once more shocked me about the article, even now, is the extent to which asexuality is still unknown, so much even that lots of people seem to have never heard of it or it never even occurred to them that it exists at all!

It really puzzles me how this can be so, since virtually everyone spends at least their first decade of life in this same state! In fact when asked about my sexuality, which happens sometimes since I'm obviously gender-nonconforming or at least extremely masculine (and probably most often deemed a lesbian), this is what I usually tell people when they can't make sense of "asexual": Just think back of your own sexuality when you were about 5 years old. You didn't have any sexual feelings then? See, and in me this just never changed. It's this simple really.

It's good to see that by now there's some information available, but you'd probably rarely come across it unless you search for it.
Definitions may vary slightly, and I personally strongly disagree with the statement, as given in this info sheet (PDF), that asexual people "may experience arousal and orgasm". In my opinion, if you have anything at all going on down there then you're by definition not asexual.
Even more recently I chanced upon this article explaining "graysexuality", a term I'd never heard before, and I think it's in fact a neat description for all those people who are, unlike myself, not 100% asexual.

Everything is not that simple, obviously, and I've been puzzled myself to read that there are asexual people who are interested in dating, and apparently even a number who are willing to compromise for a non-asexual partner... something which would be absolutely beyond unthinkable to myself, but then again, I'd never have any interest in dating in the first place. Frankly, I find humans to be physically quite repulsive animals.
I wouldn't want to live forever in such a body, and so I'm glad we don't...
I don't know if other asexuals also feel like this to some extent, but personally I've always felt somewhat indignant about having to eat, to sleep, and excrete wastes... getting hungry, getting tired so easily, being cold most of the time...
It's a bit of a comfort that there are other animals who all share the same predicaments, although in very much prettier bodies. The ones with pointy fins and pointy teeth...

The quest to see the Milky Way

I still haven't succeeded in it, but although the Terschelling plan has been abandoned since the climate has taken a turn for the worse here in Europe (and the northern islands are generally even colder than here at home), there is new hope. I found a new dark sky map with previously unseen resolution, and thereby found that not too far from home there's a spot in the woods which, albeit not ideal, is considerably more favorable to stargazing than the closer vicinity.

So I rode there yesterday - twice; first by day to explore and then in the evening to wait for nightfall.
I was thwarted by cloudy skies. But I hadn't been in the woods by night in a long time and it was good to be back once more, sitting on a bench in the darkness, listening to the nocturnal insects and having a large moth buzz around my hair.
I soon decided to venture back homeward though since the cloud cover only kept increasing. When reaching an unlit, open field, I saw pools of intense light pollution reflected off the distant clouds to the north, presumably from downtown Bonn and possibly Cologne.
But back in the woods I also saw some glowworms, I had one crawl over my fingernail.
I had a flashlight in my backpack but I didn't use it a single time, I had no trouble finding my way through the nocturnal woods. Only on the most difficult parts of the trail (more potholes and gullies than trail) I rather pushed my bike as riding was too tricky in the dark. I was back home around midnight.

According to the map, even further south from here there are places just as dark as on Terschelling. For the most part they seem to be in the Eifel mountain region and possibly inaccessible, but another one southwest of Rheinbach would be a close second. I have to keep an eye on the phases and rise & set of the moon as well, but I'll keep trying. Clear nights are rare though, and sadly they're usually even colder than under overcast skies.

As usual, I meant to post again much sooner and more frequently but as usual I've been busy...
For at least a month I meant to write a blog post about being asexual, because that's what I am (and so yes,it exists) and it's so difficult for me to imagine how difficult most people find this to imagine - apparently.
More about this next time though.

Naar de haaien in Maastricht!

"Naar de haaien (gaan)" is a Dutch expression whose meaning is along the lines of our "(going) to Hell", but literally it translates as "going to the sharks". And I definitely had to see de haaien!

I hit the wrong week for my trip to Maastricht from July 12th through 14th, it was cold and rainy; summer would come the next week only. Anyway, there I was, traveling by train (on the cheap, so having to change trains 4 times on the relatively short trip of ~3 hours) and staying at the Stayokay hostel on the river Maas for 2 nights. I was lucky to have the free choice of beds in a dorm of 6,so I picked the top bunk by the window from where I could watch the barges passing on the river. Two other girls, about my age, arrived later to share the dorm, speaking Dutch.

Dawn rose to a nearly flawless sky the next day but which would change all too soon, and it was cold. Wearing a longsleeved shirt, a hoodie plus a jacket and fingerless gloves, I told myself that it wasn't so bad for April. Of course it wasn't April, but I'd just have to pretend it was...

So I set out on my bike, rented directly from the hostel, which to my surprise had 7 gears but they wouldn't be too much use since the handlebar was so high and close to the body that it forced my hands into an awkward angle at the wrist, making it very uncomfortable to hold especially when riding all the cobblestone roads of Maastricht, so that it wasn't possible to go really fast anyway.

"Witches' Street"!
(Escape in either direction? LOL)

I went to find the main objective for my trip: the Natuurhistorisch Museum, housing a temporary exhibition about sharks! The latter was only one single room, but it was nicely done,especially with the large video walls above that had a great white shark and a manta ray swimming around, giving the impression of being underwater with them. A selection of teeth and jaws, one set of jaws even open to touch, as well as a sample of skin from a zebra shark with its denticles, giving it that sandpaper-like texture.

Jaws.

The rest of the museum was also very interesting, having lots of fossils many of which had been excavated in the local region, including skeletons of mosasaurs and a lot else. Samples of extant species of butterflies and many other creatures as well, and there's even a small but really lovely botanic garden in the museum's backyard, surrounded by a tiny canal. I sat on a bench by it to have a little lunch break (just a banana actually) but then quickly had to go back inside as the thunderstorms arrived...

Some very extraordinary ammonites.

I waited out the rainstorm inside, looking at some Dutch books about haaien (sharks) that were actually meant for kids. I was a bit disappointed they didn't have any more shark merchandise there, I only found myself a bookmark and a magnet. But of course there's still the free booklet about the exhibition which was included with the visit! It's 40 pages with comprehensive information and photos.

Later I still found that "Hoge Fronten" Park, which used to be part of the ancient city fortifications but nowadays is a nature preserve.

With more rain coming, I already returned to the hostel around 5 PM. After spending a while on my bunk reading and talking to two older ladies having newly arrived at the dorm (pointing out a rainbow above the river Maas to the one of them), I realized the weather had markedly improved, and so I set out once more, although it was already about 7 PM by then, to ride my rented bike one last time.
This final ride was pretty much my best time there, certainly making for the best photos too (more of which will be posted on my Facebook).

Last evening in Maastricht,
just about 2 sunny hours.

The next day, of my departure, I walked through the old city center one last time and then across the bridge since the station is located on the far side of the river Maas. On the way there I strolled, looking at some stores, especially one curious one selling lots of extremely useful essentials, such as giant pencil sharpeners but used to sharpen carrots and other vegetables. LOL

I arrived at the station hall just in time before the next downpour. Inside, there was a grand piano free to be played by anyone, and a lady who was no doubt a professional played wonderful music on it.

A last look back at Maastricht from the bridge.

Carved shark with magnet on the back,
a souvenir from the museum.

Happy 4th of July!

Once again I didn't post in a while, and there's both good & bad news.
By far the best news is this:

It's been mine for just over a month now, for a relatively low price at a place selling used bikes - all the other ones were far over 100 €! But I think this one wasn't popular because boys won't like it for the pink and girls won't because it's a men's bike. For me it's just perfect though.

So I already took it on a tour when summer finally came to Germany, it was beautiful, over 90 F that day...

...and now the bad news: That was on June 23rd, and summer lasted only that one day.
So far it hasn't come back. No idea if it will. I wouldn't even mind all the rain, but can't it be raining at 80 F (or higher)? Most days I have to wear gloves when riding to the gym in the morning. :(

I meant to travel to Terschelling this summer, which is an island in the North Sea, but since there is no summer I had to cancel it as it's even still a bit colder there than it is here.

But the other week I'm traveling to Maastricht instead, and on that trip I'll be going by all means because there's something there that I absolutely have to see. It's an exhibition about my favorite animals, those with fins & many sharp teeth...
And I'll certainly have to post again about that.