I try to give an insight in my own life and dealings with rosacea. I also try to gather information that might be useful for everyone with rosacea, especially subtype 1 with burning, flushing and skin redness. I happen to be a bit unfortunate in that I have this condition for a long time already, and unlike many others, I haven't been able to get it into remission. I know it is more uplifting to read about someone who has beaten rosacea, but I like to write about the struggles that come for those who haven't achieved this. If this depresses you or scares you, it is probably best to skip my day to day life update posts here (which are only a fraction of all posts), and maybe stick to the rest of the posts, which gather information. 
I'm having cold urticaria again. It's snowing and bitterly cold, and I do my daily long walks still. A month ago already I had the raised hives on my cheeks again, 2 big ones and some smaller ones, then the temperature went up and the hives went away after a few weeks (!), but the past days they returned again. Buggers! I'm going to London next week and I surely hope they have diminished by then. Although now at least I can show Dr. Chu them and ask what to do. Reading on the matter already told me that all you can do is take antihistamines (I already do, Xyzal) and avoid the cold. I read a couple of quite hysterical posts from mothers of kids with cold induced urticaria, wailing as if their kids had a life changing severe chronic diseases. Which they are of course, if you look at them in that way. It is life changing if you need to stay indoors in the winter, especially for kids. But if you only get it now and then like me, and on top of the burning face, it's not as big an issue for me personally. I have a bit of a hard time deciding whether to stay indoors and prevent the hives from spreading or getting bigger, or going out anyway as I feel like a caged animal basically by the evening if I can't make my long walks. Decisions decisions.. I went out in a snow storm yesterday and had a (fake) fur hat on, Russian style, 3 big scarfs wrapped around my face, leaving only nose the eyes and forehead exposed, then my thick parka jacket over a bear fleece collared sweater, thick stockings which have a fleece inside (yes ladies, in the Netherlands we wear stockings and short skirts even in arctic weather, thick black stockings we like with boots, and this the manufacturers have come to our aide with ultra insulating stockings with fleece on the inside, yessss), but yesterday I put a sweat pants thingy over the stockings, so I was sweating and hot like an oven under all those clothes. Didn't stop the cold urticaria though, did it! So what to do now.. it will be a week of cold and ice so not much chance of improvement any time soon. I'm sitting working in bed most days, blankets, heating on around 16 degrees, fan on far distance (yes it looks positively ridiculous), I even have a humidifier on to keep the indoor air very moist, and my pc in bed to finish work.
Received this interesting email from a rosacea friend who is extremely smart and into the fine tuning of finding out more about facial flushing and redness: "Hello Ladies, I saw a 'The Doctors' tv show today, where a doctor injected an anaesthetic into the neck/spinal column of a Ptsd patient. His significant stressed out state (due to war duties) resolved. The idea is that severe stress induces a permanent change in the brain. In this case, it over activates the sympathetic nervous system. The anesthetic allows the brain to reset to it's pre-damaged state. PERHAPS this type of procedure MIGHT help severe flushers? The flushers who find anti anxiety medication helpful. I am not sure it would help everyone in the flushing world and in fact, it could make them a lot worse. I know I react very badly to anesthetics as they induce vasodilation by activating the parasympathetic system. Recently I tested lemon balm supplements for a few days, and now I have a return of awful flushing and it has activated areas of my face which had not been active for a few years. It is very distressing. My test was foolish, as I use coffee/caffeine as a drug. Caffeine blocks the adenosine receptors, so the result is less vasodilation, but at the same time (as a consequence), they increase the number of receptors.During my recent lemon balm test, I also reduced my caffeine intake, which was stupid. The result was massive flushing, facial pressure and some swelling. I am truly an addict now. I think any flusher who utilizes caffeine could react badly to anesthetics, including the above procedure. Even too much broth makes me flush as the gelatin also activates the ParaS pathway. Anyway, I still think the procedure is interesting and MIGHT help some people. I might write to the author/doctor with the hope he might offer an opinion. Also, of interest in my particular case, I have a lot of trouble with the back of my neck and when this area becomes sore, my flushing increases. I usually have no sign of discomfort until I lay back on my propped up pillows. On active days, I have little sleep due to discomfort and the fact my limbs can also experience numbness. Two MRI's have failed to show any abnormality barring slight disc degeneration which is deemed 'normal' for my age. Which really means, previous bad diet, lifestyle, infections, etc have caused it. Not 'normal' at all. Still there doesn't seem to be any pinching of the nerve. Well, my face is pressurized now, so I will end here. xx"
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I also viewed this video about female figures throughout history. Now, there are a lot of side notes to make, for instance, that the Egyptian woman looks more African than Egyptian, people weren't as dark there 2000+ years ago. Also, the Roman woman seems slightly too big, as does the Renaissance woman. As if they took the very voluptuous (close to obese) Rubens ideal woman, and made that the general Renaissance ideal, which it wasn't. There were so many variables within that long stretch between the Roman times and the Victorian times. 1200's had very different fashions and beauty ideals than 1500's and then baroque and rococo were different from 1800's. Also Victorian times had many more nuances to it than the woman figure they chose here. But well, apart from that, it was interesting to see I think. I used to have a 60's type of figure, lean on the verge of too skinny. We all have lean bodies in my family, but thanks to remeron and some other of my anti flushing medication, I have drifted off to a fuller figure, despite diet and exercise. I think I am now a post 2000 woman, the last one of the video, but with a bit too much flab here and there :) Working on that of courssssse. Most interesting part for me, was asking male friends which bodies they preferred! Us women tend to go for the skinny to very slim figures I noticed. One male friend always says that is given in by gay fashion magazine moguls, who like to see women look like boys. And that it is not representative of what "real men" like in a female body; curves. So I asked 5 nice looking men in their 30s and early 40's about their top 3 of bodies, as portrayed in this video.
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One response: Well about that little show. I thought they were wrong and the gestures were a bit theatrical and misleading too although it was an interesting diversion from the usual stuff. What is my favorite? well some of them looked the same to me, the 'Egyptian' one and the Chinese one for example although with the Chinese one they mentioned small feet but didn't show the terribly crippled and deformed feet they actually had from deliberately stunted growth. The supermodel one slips in as something kind of similar too. The Victorian one was way off - she looked more like a fat Italian bird. Victorians were into pale skin - the paler the better and super-long hair. It was all about getting the complexion right and of course this was for the society ladies who didn't have to work. Not the commoners who had shitty lives of squalor and filth. I liked the so-called Egyptian girls physique. It looked healthy and attractive. Supermodel too and Chinese - those kind of ones. Not the painful skinny or the blimps. Didn't care for that.I asked another friend: "Ok my top 3 is: Ancient Egypt, 20s and Post modern. Oh no, make that golden age of hollywood instead of 20s actually." Also among others the general consensus was Egyptian, 80's supermodel and Hollywood glamour. One Greek friend likes really full women and preferred the Roman body, the Renaissance one and the Victorian body.
A friend of mine sent me this painting, it is from the Renaissance and said I look like her a bit; shape of face, mouth, eyes, just not the nose I suppose. I sent some pictures of myself back where I resemble her a little bit perhaps, to which In was told I look so severe and grim in them. Well, so did she, the great marthyr Catharina of Alexandrië :) Was looking at pics with similar angles, facial expressions, no make up, bare nude face and similar mouth expression so well, she looked similarly solemn and serious (miserable lol?), which made sense once I googled who she was. Liked her description: According to the traditional narrative, Catherine was the beautiful daughter of the pagan King Costus and Queen Sabinella, who governed Alexandria. Her superior intelligence combined with diligent study left her exceedingly well-versed in all the arts and sciences, and in philosophy. Having decided to remain a virgin all her life, she announced that she would only marry someone who surpassed her in beauty, intelligence, wealth, and dignity. This has been interpreted as an early foreshadowing of her eventual discovery of Christ. Though raised a pagan, she became an ardent Christian in her teenage years, having received a vision in which the Blessed Virgin Mary gave her to Christ in mystical marriage. Sounds just like me :)
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For an endless seeming time the church was the school for the common people and many could not read nor understand Latin (masses and services were done in Latin), so paintings in the church or murals, also in city halls and worldly places, were like the billboards of those days. The idea used to be that these paintings had to teach the illiterate about the Bible and more so, sweep their emotions, appeal to their loyalty to the church and the use of visual beauty was an easy way to convey such a message. Also nothing new, when companies want to sell a car, 8 out of 10 times (ok I'm guessing there, not sure about the statistics) they use a hot girl in the add to promote the car. Never an ugly bird, and I don't always see the correlation between product and advertising girl either, apart from appealing to some basic need for men apparently to want to show off and get female attention with their boys toys. Sex/beauty sells etc. But back in those days it was a lot easier to 'educate' the people and educate them into whatever powerful people wanted to, because a big chunk couldn't read, had no way to distinguish fact from fiction and most were raised with the doctrines and truths of the church so it must be hard to break away from all that in -say- the 1400's, when still everybody believed that thunder was a punishment of god and that the world was flat. So well, art is often abused/used there to reinforce some hidden agenda or mythology or message, but at the same time it was the main interest for artists themselves to make their works as life like as possible, with the correct suggestion of depth etc. Artists wanted to showcase their best talents and make artistically challenging works of art, but also had to please their patrons and job suppliers at the same time. Pope St Gregory the Great said it as well; paintings were (in the Renaissance time we're speaking now) the Bible of the unlettered and they were not Biblical commentaries, only political propaganda. And they often falsified history with paintings, depicting wrong outcomes of historical battles or events (historical revisionism or negationism)..jpg)
I also received a rosacea skin tip from a fellow blogger:
I had an idea, that might be useful for you. I know you have really really really sensitive skin, that can be dry and red. I use green tea (very concentrated, just loose tea leaves and water) as a toner, and this seems to help hydrate and soften my skin. It also gave me a nice 'golden' glow which helps cover up the redness. and the caffeine may be vasoconstrictive. There is also evidence to suggest that it can hinder rosacea's development in the skin. You can see the evidence and my before and after pictures in my blog post here: https://ausefulobsession.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/journal-log-7-170115-the-little-things-that-matter-a-lot/ Another way to hide redness, is by taking carotenoid pills (plant pigments that are processed and deposited in your skin, as to give you a 'golden glow), it can be quite difficult eating enough raw produce to induce a golden glow if you have gut issues. To exemplify the possible effects of carotenoids on skin tone (I am not promoting this brand thing, it's an example only), look at this: http://www.ascentaskin.com/ Look at the google images!
How vegetables can give you that golden glow
"Most of us know that eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day will do us far more good than 20 minutes on a sun bed or two hours basted with factor 10 and sprawled on a Mediterranean beach in high summer. But new research suggests that it will also make us more attractive to the opposite sex. Consequently, it seems far more likely to affect the dietary habits of the young than any amount of hectoring from the Department of Health "Currently we tell them to 'eat well or in 50 years you will have a heart attack'," says Ian Stephen, 29, assistant professor of psychology at Nottingham University's Malaysian campus. "Now we can say: 'eat fruit and veg and you will look better in six to eight weeks'." But he is adamant that he never set out to find a novel way of reinforcing medical advice. "I don't really care what people do," he insists. "I'm an experimental psychologist, not a public health PR man. However, our results suggest that eating well and staying out of the sun would make you look healthier. How come? Well, the key component is the carotenoid, an antioxidant responsible for the red colouring found in, for instance, tomatoes, peppers, plums and carrots. That redness eventually imbues the human skin with yellowness, or rather a healthy-looking golden glow. "Carotenoids are stored in fat under the skin," Stephen explains. "They are also secreted through the skin in serum, and are then reabsorbed into the top layer of the skin, bestowing that golden colour. Alert Guardian readers may have deduced by now that he is talking about Caucasian skins. "Yes, it has been pointed out to me, usually by social scientists, that there is something culturally imperialist about the research," he says. "Ironically, there's almost something racist in that suggestion because the implication is that you can't see the same colour changes in black faces. Of course you can. In West Africa, for instance, skin pigmentation is affected by consumption of red palm oil with high levels of carotenoids. We're hoping to do further cross-cultural studies in the UK, Africa and Malaysia.The original study was carried out in Scotland, where the sun's rays are not over-intrusive. It just happens that Stephen did the first part of his PhD at St Andrews University. There he worked at The Perception Laboratory, dedicated to investigating "the many facets of face perception" – what makes one person appear more trustworthy than another, for instance, or more attractive. In that regard, there has been plenty of work on shape, but very little on skin colour, he says. "There are two main pigments that affect the yellowness of skin. One comes from carotenoids, the other from melanin, which is yellow and dark, giving the brown colour that we associate with a sun tan. Using a scientific instrument called a spectrophotometer, I measured the colour change associated with changes in carotenoid levels and melanin levels in the skin. Then, using a computer programme, I allowed participants to adjust the levels of carotenoid and melanin colour in photographs of faces to make them look as attractive as possible. Participants chose to increase melanin colour slightly, but increased carotenoid colour lots In another part of the experiment, he used a questionnaire to estimate the amount of fruit and vegetables in the daily diet of another group of participants and then analysed skin tones to confirm that what might be called the golden glow was explained by changes in carotenoid levels and not other pigments such as melanin. Just over 80 people took part in the dietary study, and 30 in transforming 51 faces on the computer. They were aged from 18 to 26, but Stephen maintains: "There's no reason to suggest that we wouldn't get similar results from older participants." Any gender differences? "The preference for light skin is stronger in women's faces than in men's. Which might indicate that the tanned and leathery look is not quite so off-putting to women as it is to men.
--I used to eat a lot of carrots and got orange yellow stains on my skin, but not evenly ! Only around my mouth area, which looked kind of sickly... So I am not sure this is the way to go to be honest. The dermatologist at the time said I should stop eating carrots and green peas all day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When you zoom in on the left picture you might see the yellowy stains around my mouth and chin, they were from beta carotene. I really liked her advice and she makes sense, saying that girls with a bit of a blob face should not do eye brows (or no eye brows in my case). I think having the eye brows painted in does make the face look slightly thinner. I see my pictures showing up on all sorts of internet pages about rosacea, so I cut them up now in sections, hoping that stops others using them..
This is just so adorable to me; a lamb who was raised with border collies and now behaves like a dog :)
February 8th 2015I've been reading a book about a Dutch actor, a gorgeous man named Antonie Kamerling, he committed suicide a few years ago and his wife, an actress, wrote a book about it. My mum bought it, then passed it on to my sister who then passed it on to me. Not a great book of fiction or anything, but gripping and insightful nevertheless because of its topic. She did not understand much from his depressions and it shows even now, years later, in this book and how she wrote it. What she did was basically not understand. He was highly educated, very emotional and smart guy and one of the very few good actors Holland had. She never really studied or was good at school and was more into intuition stuff and just a happy go lucky type of person. Optimistic and sweet she seemed. But while reading that book it seemed clear that she let him overrule him intellectually all the time. He had highs and lows, was manic depressive they found out right at the end. But she would nag him when we was in bed all day, and then criticize him when he was hyper and out rushing around all day. Constantly the same discussions, her asking what is wrong with you? Why are you so down? Why not this or that. And after a while he just shut her out. She had no clue. So he would spend all days in bed, only coming out to do the bare minimum for theirchildren, or they would be on holiday and he would want to drop her off at night at the hotel and go out alone, stroll the place and she would cry and start a huge fight.
Truth is I thought all along reading that book that I would have probably understood those dark waves he had better and not pester him about wanting to go out at night. Or spending whole nights up behind the computer, he did that at some point and she was upset about that as well then. Just; she wanted normality, but because they were both celebrities here they didn't want to show the outside world any of that. So they pretended nice weather all the time in public. He would throw massive rows and at some point was allergic to everything she said and did. Then he would be in bed again for long times and she did everything in the house and with the kids. All the way at the end, when he had tried to walk in the sea to drown and then stood near a train track and was too afraid to jump, and he told her, then she finally took him to a shrink. He got pills, he tried some very mild antidepressants before but they made him hyper. Now he got serious pills but, they would take 6 weeks to start working. In the mean time they were sent home. So what did she do? He had tried to end his life 2 weeks ago, and she just goes to work. Leaving him alone. Then he did kill himself at home. This might sound crass and I understand that it is him in the end who is responsible for his actions, but how much control can you credit someone with a serious mental illness with in such a stage? So she comes across as the poor victim by this point in the book, having put up with such awful behavior from him, she is sucked empty, she could have done nothing more for him yadayada. My sister was full on her side and said she wouldn't have done it any better, probably a lot worse and that such people like him just suck you dry. I looked at it from an entirely different perspective, more form his side, mainly because I know depression I guess. She just didn't get it, period. Maybe she should have cancelled all work for 2 months and made sure she was with him all the time, I thought at the end of the book. Go lay next to him in bed and watch movies for 6 weeks, make sure he gets his drugs, if needed administer them yourself, but make sure he gets through those 6 weeks unharmed and see what the meds will do. I feel for him, it might have turned out differently in a different situation perhaps, although we always tend to think that, not always realistically. And although it is very heavy to live with a depressed partner, but I think all you need to do is be there for the other. Not push them constantly, just give them space to deal with things but be understanding and not judgmental and give them lots of hugs and physical contact and do the things with them which make them calm and content when they have a bad spell. But also be on the lookout for when things threaten to go really wrong, and make sure that person gets help, and can't harm himself in the meantime. I'm just like that during very bad health spells, I'm awful to be with then, I think. Just so restless and grumpy but the partners who made life much worse for me personally in the past, were the ones who had little understanding and who kept asking me what is wrong and why I am not more positive, and why I don't go do yoga or golf and all those empty stupid suggestions which all imply; get over yourself now already, ok? Giving you the feeling it is all a matter of laziness versus willpower. Driving you even further into the depression. 
I think when you have someone who understands you and knows what you are going through, that is already a huge comfort. Not feeling the need to pretend and be better than you really feel. I'm not sure how it goes for others but for me these periods come in waves and I also have good periods where I feel relatively happy and energetic and just am a lot nicer to be with. I guess with people like me, us rosaceans who suffer and can't push the darkness away all the time perhaps, you need to seize the day and just make the most of the good spells and get through the bad ones as best as possible. I felt with these people in the book that if he was too chirpy she was worried because he was unnaturally hyper, and when he was in the dump it was obviously a huge problem too. Constant criticism in other words, no matter how well meant, I think it was a lot of naivety from her part and she was more insecure personality wise than him, Maybe she let him talk his way out of it all and made her belief what he wanted her to belief. You need to be a strong headed person to deal with depression because you will not have the same person in front of you from day to day. I got that criticism often actually; that things can change from one day to the next. Not just my moods and outlook but also what I can and can't eat rosacea wise, or even opinions. That is hard to deal with as a partner unless you know where it stems from and how it works and that it is not something to become insecure about yourself. But to read it in the context of the moods the other person is in. My rosacea friend replied to this that he absolutely agreed (this convo was actually taking place in real life exchange and then I thought, it might be something for the blog..). He started an antidepressants and felt like hell the first 3 weeks at least he said. Absolutely horrible and they do say often that the first weeks of antidepressant use put patients at the highest risk window frame of suicide. Your body needs to adjust to all these new chemicals which are primarily attacking the brain structures and neurons and electrons, so you get a host of side effects once your body adjusts to them, but NO ANTIDEPRESSANT ACTIONS yet. Because they only start to manifest themselves once the medication has reached sufficient plasma levels, which can take those infamous 6 weeks. It's a risky thing to go through for a seriously depressed person. You need constant support, I remember taking remeron for the first time and I was at my wits end by then from a horrendous merciless year of 24/7 burning and flushing and sleeplessness and hopelessness and luckily for me remeron is the exception to the rule and starts working within 3 weeks typically, but there were side effects and a lot of doubts about whether or not to continue. The answer should always be yes I think, as long as the side effects are not dangerous, because most side effects will wear off!! Once your body is adjusted to the medication. And then, he relief, more calm, less anxiety, less flushing mostly in my case. It might take trial and error between different antidepressants though to find the right one. Tricky time again. But worth it I think before people really contemplate ending their lives.They need constant reassurance that there is basically nothing to lose and that they need to give the medication a fair time to start doing their work. The friend got that support thank god and was reassured and comforted in the adjustment time. 
Friend wrote me; You really should find a re-enactment society. Which is an overblown term for a kind of history geek group. You'd have such fun with the costumes and the craic. Whenever I get a chance to dress up I do it! let the fantasy out! Me; Maybe I'd like to be with some theater company who do plays in Victorian style etc. I know a Dutch writer, Floortje Zwigtman, she actually publishes novels that are often set in Victorian times and she does the real dress up, costume wise, but the crowd she has that with... just a lot of woolen sock, feminist, 40+ type of ladies. Drinking tea and being vigilant about getting all the details of their frocks just right. Not really my thing I think, but I love going to those flea markets everywhere and buying old clothes or parasols or pictures if they aren't too costly. These pictures (real pics, no prints) I bought too, in authentic frames and dated, all late 1800's early 1900's (see pics). And some others I love from that time.
Haha I can just see you among those miss Marple lookalikes, oh the Tory heartlanders ... that peculiar little stiff-lip thing "Oh Agnes, there's been another murder at the vicarage - how dreadful. How will I ever sell the stables now?" You don't fancy sitting there drinking tea and then gazing down at the world with pursed lips and a frown? haha. In a big frock? with tulips growing out of it? you sure? well, I think that's as good as it gets for that type of thing unless there's a bit of younger blood involved. Maybe a literary fan club that goes a bit further and you have costumed events too. Live it over a bit. But it's like I said - organize a youthful version, Jane Austen dress-up for all the bookworms. You're on to a winner. "Oh Mr Darcy!" haha
No way I would be totally out of place among the Miss Marples, oh oh oh.. I'm too anti social to organize such large gatherings...the fun for me wouldn't be to just dress up and sit and drink tea and be fetish freaks about it. There is a book I love, called Casanova in Bolzano, it reads like a stage play almost, thrilling stuff and for a while some years back I rewrote it into a proper stage play setup. Never finished that, but was seriously thinking of playing it with a group of amateur stage players or just some friends if anyone felt like having some fun with it. I'd prefer something like that I think, something more practical to dress up for and something to work at with such a group... Anyway, who knows some day. 
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| I used my UVB lamp too long on my leg unfortunately, skin burn! Should use it only a few minutes and not too close by, but I lost track of time.. |
Jojoba trial updateI felt after a while that the cheek I put jojoba oil on just got more red overall.. Also had p&p outbreaks. It took a good week or more, maybe two, before I saw that pattern because initially that cheeks seemed calmer and less red. But at some point it got pretty obvious that the one I didn't put anything on was calmer and had better skin structure too. Very sad about that as I still want to find a moisturizer which doesn't make me burn, more red, flushed or broken out and all of the above actually. That being said, the jojoba oil didn't make my cheek burn. That was a major thing in itself. I chose jojoba oil because it is more like a wax, less of an oily sticky oil, and because it is supposedly most related to actual skin sebum. So most natural and least likely to give a reaction. Also my derm suggested it. I didn't use the jojoba oil on the T-zone areas once I had seb derm flaring again. I have a special made ketoconazole cream from the pharmacist for that. So the jojoba oil might actually worsen seb derm, that makes good sense as seb derm mites feed off sebum. And oils. But I used it only on my cheeks, and my seb derm stays located in the creases around mouth, nose and forehead and chin for me. Now that it is so cold and winter I have the seb derm flaring again and am using ketoconazole cream every day yes, morning and evening. It is made in a neutral wax like substance called cetomacrogol and the pharmacist left the preservative out of it, so it only has an expiry date of a month.
Yes rosacea can make your skin very dry and coarse looking and rough structured... If you have that on your cheeks, and not close to the T-zone, I doubt it is seb derm.. Although it could! If you scrape your skin a bit and yellowy flaky grease like skin flaks come off, i think that increases the chance of it being seb derm, but even then, that could also just be rosacea sklin. It's a nightmare to keep the two apart, but when you have both, I think you generally can see where one ends and the other starts. Like; rosacea can flare for me but also calm down again within a few hours, whereas seb derm doesn't and has a more marked outline. So sorry that your skin got so sensitive.. i hate it too, it's like I need to protect MY skin all day instead of it protecting me. Very tiring. I have the dry old skin build up too and after a while it just won't come off unless I scrub it and it looks awful and makes my skin look and feel stripped with some acid. So so sensitive. I'm seeing dr Chu this Thursday and will ask him about it, see what he says as my skin epidermis seems totally diseases and crazy.
I was in a perfume store this weekend looking for a similar mineral powder with a blush effect, bit darker than the Victorian Corpse White tints I usually wear (jokes) and as soon as I stepped in this wave and fume of perfume rolled over me and I got so badly flushed. I mean, I was already red to start with but this just kicked it up a few notches and a lady helped me who had the biggest mask of make up on and I could see her looking worried at my skin.. I needed out and they only had a very dark terracotta color anyway which makes me look like an Inca (no offense intended) so that wasn't worth the big flare in the end... Just makes you feel like shit.. I didn't even feel like staying in the city for outside strolls, just wanted to be in the car and go home. Aircon on in mid winter haha. What a pity party. 
I've been preparing for my England journey, starting tomorrow :) I'll go to see Dr Chu in London on the Thursday (flying tomorrow on Wednesday), then travel to York where I will stay a couple of days and meet a rosacea friendand just do some sight seeing. Will also go a day to Newcastle probably. Then back to London on Sunday evening and flying to Holland again on the Monday morning. I just bought a special seat in the plane, long problem thing as they gave me an aisle seat which has no ventilation fans there, so I had to buy a special more expensive seat in the middle (has fans right above your head). Means as a bonus I might have no people sitting next to me, soooo I can use my laptop. I know, old fashioned old fashioned, I don't have a smartphone and sat in the train with the big laptop on my lap and a stranger came standing next to me, grinning and said; isn't it time for a smartphone for you lady?? No, not really.. So I drag this ultra heavy (but modern) laptop with me everywhere. And it needs some space to be used, so I guess that extra expensive chair might be a good buy after all, also because I'm not there yet when I landed. Need to take a train from London Luton to the city center and then the subway to Hammersmith. My friend said about the extra 16 quid: "Worth it for ur comfort" 16 euro well spent usually. I had to find a B&B for the Sunday night near Stansted airport, and just booked one for 45 pounds which is a fine price for there, so I am all sorted now with B&B's, train tickets, plane tickets. The 3 nights in York only costs me around 90 pounds, it's located in the city center, so I'm also happy with that. Let the journey begin :) I will try to make some nice pictures of the surroundings and share them here. Have a long long list of questions for Dr Chu as well and am hoping he won't run too late as I see him at 1:30 pm but have a train to catch at 5 pm at London center. It is a set train time, because those were the cheap tickets and I think I already bought them 3 weeks ago or so. In Holland you pay the same price for the train, whether you buy it a day, a week or a minute in advance. In England however I was warned that train tickets are very pricey and that you want to book them well in advance to keep it affordable. In hindsight, I should have bought a flexible ticket.... would have been easier and saver, I have that set time from London to York and might have to rush to make it at 5 pm if the doctor runs out too late, as he has a tendency to, or I'm in trubbble, so inexperience it was because an open time one would have been a lot better for heart rate and blood pressure, in hindsight. Just looked at the fares basically. Spoke with 2 acquaintances from manchester actually last night for dinner and they told about a friend who traveled in a near empty train with one of those tickets I have (they also hate the train system and never go with it, no need to leave Greater Manchester anyway they said, and there were about 2 people on the train, late night one and the conductor comes round and says; you've got the wrong train mate. Had a ticket for a train earlier, gave him a 145 pound fine. So I better not risk that :/ I remember reading and following that poisoning saga of the Russian spy Litvinenko in 2008. Interesting stuff (well to me), they used a poison so intricate that doctors failed to spot it while he was in hospital, polonium. Radiates from the inside and kills all your cells slowly but surely, but isn't strong enough to penetrate the cells of your skin, so it's almost impossible to detect with normal radiation measuring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko
http://www.theawl.com/2015/02/how-do-i-fight-the-man
And another error businesses make is according to him that they think they need the best people for the job; the best analysts, best investment bankers, chuck them all together and then you are supposed to have a dream team. But he compares companies with tribes and they will only flourish when there is a realistic representation in it from real society; so a company needs 2% of lazy people and 4% of cheating people for instance, and others with different capacities. To counterbalance each other and stimulate the company to come with the best end product and make the company more sustainable. Not sure he is right there but it's an interesting idea I think. The exceptionally bright did destroy the advertisement and investment banking business. All put together in one business they are like inbred in some way. Unbalanced. 
Privacy is completely gone in our society; there are camera's everywhere in all big cities, if you have a mobile phone and have it switched on, it will trace you everywhere always. Instead of tribes people we are now boxed people. We live in a box which is our apartment, we watch a box which is our tv, we get into a box which is our car, to move to another box which is the work place to spend the rest of our day there, only to return to our own box at night. At work we are boxed again, in an organisation chart and everything we do is boxed in by rules and regulations of how we supposed to be. We are the tribe of the box people who are completely under control. The irony is that people keep telling themselves that they should think outside the box. But how can people do that, when their whole life has been boxed. You can better start to live inside the box and find creativity and some sort of freedom there. But then you have companies who send their employees out to those motivational boot camps where they are urged to think outside the box again. Because it isn't motivating to be told exactly what to do, how to think and where you will be in 5 years time. Boxing them further in by telling how to dress and what to say at meetings etc. Work ants. And you see the most outrageous effects of that. Samsonite 'invented' the trolley, the suitcase with wheels, in the 1970;s and you wonder why it took them so long to figure that one out, giving the big company staff and given suitcases existed for ever and the wheel for a good few thousands years already as well. And Gilette, who had the normal razor, then they had one with 2 blades and then in the 1990's they felt they needed to improve and innovate again and spent a good 600 million dollars on innovative commissions of their best people, and all they eventually came up with was a gilette with not 2 but 3 razor blades. How many people and time should that take, just put another one between the two, but it costs hundred of millions of dollars to figure that out with ant thinkers.
March 4th 2015I had a lovely week in England, and had a pretty lousy week being back home. Just adjusting to boring life again, but I am settled in now and back to work and the daily grind etc. My skin hasn't been great. I have to admit that I have been eating rubbish food now and then, nothing too bad but not as strict as the past months either. And it shows. More red, more break outs, more easily flushed. I also haven't been using my UVB narrow band for vitamin D production at all the past weeks, so I will start that up again. My Australian friend has even more health issues than me and she somehow manages to ward off depression, most of the times. I asked her the other day how she does that and she said she lives in her mind a lot of the times. And just enjoys watching the world go by and getting wrapped up in other peoples stories online or in movies etc. She demands little from life and found a comfort. We have both a calm life, maybe boring even at times, but we also have the head space and the time to think, read, write, watch this crazy world and life we both live in right now. That is also something (or so we try to tell ourselves at least haha). Make connections with other people. It might not be as glamorous or rich and full of things as we all expected. But there are people who have everything seemingly, careers, love, kids, money, and who still are depressed. It's what you make of it yourself I think.
-Pakistanis speak Urdu, English and other regional languages and NOT Arabic;
-Pakistani men do not go around wearing 17th and 18th century headgear in markets;
-The only Urdu heard in the film is from a group of wild-eyed men protesting against an American diplomat, calling him 'chor.' Chor in Urdu means robber. And the protest rally was against US drone strikes. How did that make the diplomat a chor?
-And how on earth was a green Mercedes packed with armed men parked only a few feet away from the US embassy in Islamabad? Haven't the producers ever heard of an area called the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad? Even a squirrel these days has to run around for a permit to enter and climb trees in that particular area.
Also watched another war movie called Lebanon, very claustrophobic and resembling Das Boot (movie from the 80's) in a way, as it was shot mostly from within a tank from the Israeli's, when embarking on their Lebanon war. It got a golden Lion at the Venice movie festival but I didn't really understand why because the story line was quite dull. Maybe it was the intend of the Israeli film maker, who participated himself at the time and felt regret and shame over it, to give these Israeli soldiers a human face or something, but they mainly came across as stumbling, inadequate, non comrades in a hot small tank. And in a way that made it fascinating at the same time; it seemed so real and so undone of action drama purpose. Just a shit hole where these young soldiers had ended up in and they were paralyzed by it and it was all one long nightmare, also to watch it. 
A friend wrote me back about this:"Well I do think holistic medicine can be very successful yes and basic medical treatments are based on herbal essences, just mass manufactured and given the corporate seal of approval. Blasting cancers with radiation also works I suppose but kills the body's immune system in the process and sometimes the patient too. Also the pharmaceutical industry is more interested in milking cancers then curing them. The general sickness and rise you see in cancers and allergies and so on is part of the process of modern life. So you get sick from something they tell you is good then you get pushed along the chain where you are just at another phase of the consumption cycle and a number in a mass market for something. The underlying causes are never questioned and I think that's where holistic medicine is coming from ... not getting to the later stages but yeah sometimes it's just way too late to start thinking healthy when the health is gone. There's a lot of cranks out there on all sides of everything. They haven't found a cure for you and they don't even know what's caused it so they're no better than the holistic advocates are they? really. You can get immune-suppressors from natural ingredients like nettles which do the same job as your expensive pills. In fact that's probably all that's in them but they've junked it up a bit. Some stuff requires clever advanced tech yes, the really serious illnesses, I know that, but there's a lot of corruption and quackery going in the official meds. They're not the law in my book."
Me: "I have to agree in a way, it annoys me a lot as well that the whole pharmaceutical world seems so corruption and money geil (that's Dutch btw) and I know that a lot of synthetic meds are derived from plants themselves; wasn't paracetamol just a plant from nature as well? I have plant derived herbs I take at times, Lysine, boswellia, viola tricolore, all anti inflammatories, vitamin C as an antihistamine, vitamin D for good immune function, fish oil as anti inflammatory, zinc and magnesium as well, there are many more. I've got shelves full with herbal pills worth a Pakistani year income here. I think they can work fine to help with a lot of things, smaller things, but not with a failing heart that needs surgery, not with advanced cancer no. Most people seem to have gotten that from years and years of shitty unhealthy food and pesticides, or all those estrogen mimicking substances in our plastics and fake wood we walk on and the simple things perhaps even, like 'them' replacing simple glass bottles for milk and fruit juices with plastic ones, which extract chemicals from the plastic inside your juice which your small children drink with their school lunch. And you might get it too from all the preservatives in food or the chemicals in deodorants and make up and the list goes on and on. The paint in our houses, the shitty stuff they spray on apples to keep them look waxy and also on furniture and which off gasses for years if you are unlucky. None of those causes will be eliminated in life so it comes down to damage control and I realize that they rather make medication which just suppresses the symptoms and won't touch the cause because that would mean they were out of business when they do that for all illnesses. It's corrupt and cynical and ugly and awful and about patents and ugly profits. Not all medicine out there is simply derived from plants though and given a fancy box however.. That's the problem perhaps, it would be a lot easier then to say no to chemicals and yes to mother nature, which always sounds the best and it makes me feel better too, if only on a psychosomatic level. I just get annoyed by self proclaimed health gurur's telling what others should do (often mumbo jumbo without scientific base) and they tend to also exist in the natural health corner. Once you've got the cancer you are already too late perhaps for small corrections; juices and coffee are small corrections in my book. Chemo is terrible, they blast all your cells both good and bad and the procedure itself could kill you just as easy. They need to develop better treatments but I do think they are trying to... Maybe not the profit making pharmaceuticals, they might try to stop all that advancement even, but at hospitals and labs they are working on a better treatment. Something to only attack cells that went haywire as in cancer, I read some other advancements they are on its tail, it just takes for ever it seems. It's not an easy illness to tackle though when it are your own cells that attack you."
"The tendency of people to be fearful of those experiences they call apparitions or assign to the “spirit world,” including death, has done infinite harm to life. All these things so naturally related to us have been driven away through our daily resistance to them, to the point where our capacity to sense them has atrophied… Fear of the explainable has not only impoverished our inner lives, but also diminished relations between people; these have been dragged, so to speak, from the river of infinite possibilities and stuck on the dry bank where nothing happens. For it is not only sluggishness that makes human relations so unspeakably monotonous, it is the aversion to any new, unforeseen experience we are not sure we can handle. The person who has not, in a moment of firm resolve, accepted — yes, even rejoiced in — what has struck him with terror — he has never taken possession of the full, ineffable power of our existence. He withdraws to the edge; when things play out, he will be neither alive nor dead. To discover the unity of dread and bliss, these two faces of the same divinity (indeed, they reveal themselves as a single face that presents itself differently according to the way in which we see it): that is the essential meaning…"
My face is flushed so will soon get away from the pc now.. I'll add some links which made me laugh lately :)
Oh and I also read this article: Why Oklahoma Lawmakers Voted to Ban AP U.S. History
This week in things we wish were just a Colbert Report sketch, an Oklahoma legislative
committee overwhelmingly approved a bill that would cut funding for the teaching of Advanced Placement U.S. History. The 11 Republicans who approved the measure over the objections of four Democrats weren't trying to win over Oklahoma's lazy high-school juniors. Tulsa World reports that Representative Dan Fisher, who introduced the bill, lamented during Monday's hearing that the new AP U.S. History framework emphasizes "what is bad about America" and doesn't teach "American exceptionalism." It's a complaint that's been spreading among mostly conservative state legislatures in recent months and has some calling for a ban on all AP courses. Earlier this month, the Georgia state Senate introduced a resolution that rejects a new version of the AP U.S. History course for presenting a "radically revisionist view of American history" and minimizing "discussion of America’s Founding Fathers, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, [and] the religious influences on our nation’s history." It says that if the College Board does not revise the test, Georgia will cut funding for the course. The exam has also sparked controversy in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Colorado, where students in Jefferson County protested last fall when a school-board member said the course should be modified to promote "patriotism" and discourage "civil disorder, social strife, or disregard of the law." The conservative lawmakers' issues with the course, which was taken by 344,938 students in 2013, can be traced back to retired high-school history teacher Larry S. Krieger. Two years ago, the College Board released arevised framework for the exam, which took effect this fall. Krieger was incensed by the changes. "As I read through the document, I saw a consistently negative view of American history that highlights oppressors and exploiters," he said during a conference call in August, according toNewsweek.
Krieger complained that the framework portrays the Founding Fathers as "bigots" and suggests that Manifest Destiny was "built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority," rather than "the belief that America had a mission to spread democracy and new technology across the continent," as he put it. And instead of discussing the "the valor or heroism of American soldiers" during World War II, the course outline mentions U.S. internment camps and moral questions raised by the dropping of the atomic bomb. It's emphasized throughout the 142-page document that the framework is "not a curriculum." It presents broad "key concepts" and "does not attempt to provide a list of groups, individuals, dates, or historical details, because it is each teacher’s responsibility to select relevant historical evidence of his or her own choosing to explore the key concepts of each period in depth." It also claims, "these thematic learning objectives are written in a way that does not promote any particular political position or interpretation of history." Nevertheless, when Krieger began working with Jane Robbins, an opponent of Common Core, and promoting the issue via op-eds and an open letter to the College Board, conservative groups found plenty of historical interpretations they didn't like. These included everything from more focus on minorities to a reference to President Reagan's "bellicose rhetoric." Their effort got a huge boost when the Republican National Committee adopted a resolution last August that said the framework "reflects a radically revisionist view of American history." The RNC called on Congress to withhold funding from the College Board until it presented a revised version of the exam that "accurately reflects U.S. history without a political bias" and respects the standards of individual states. Some conservatives were also suspicious of the College Board because its president, David Coleman, helped develop Common Core standards. In response to the RNC resolution, the College Board released a sample test, and Coleman noted in a letter that the new framework was developed before he joined the organization. However, critics still weren't satisfied with the exam, and some lawmakers have conflated Common Core and the AP. While taking AP courses is voluntary and schools are not required to offer them, during Monday's debate in Oklahoma, lawmakers suggested that all AP exams are an attempt to impose a national curriculum and may violate legislation that repealed Common Core in the state. Moin Nadeem, an Oklahoma junior currently taking five AP courses, pushed back on Tuesday, creating a Change.org petition that he hopes will convince state lawmakers to change their position, according to Oklahoma Watch. It already has nearly 5,000 signatures. "My heart sank," Nadeem said of the vote. "It’s our right to learn. The state can’t say what we can and what we can’t learn."
It stirred up a little discussion with some friends of mine. One friend, from the USA, wrote me: "So this is a complicated issue and here the info seems condensed; missing. Also, the confluence of AP Classes and common core with the issue which is this: who and why is rewriting American History? Is this happening and should all Americans be concerned? Yes. It's happening. Whether you are liberal or conservative or " super patriot" should have no bearing. The Extreme Political Correctness of our world, our America, land of the free, is akin to a pandemic. Instead of beheading people, it is burning our foundation, language, religion, history and defacing the memory of heroes who fought and died for Freedom for their country. ( which back in 1700's wasn't even yet a country to die for) but the hope and passion for freedom was their ultimate sacrifice. Sailing from all lands in the World to establish Free Life for All. Raised in the North, moved to the south. The North and South: Deep South where I am is soooo different and I'm very glad I have experienced both cultures in my life. The history books here left out Abe Lincoln. Their history books told a completely different story of the American Civil War! Why? Because according to the South: they really didn't lose. In fact there are characters here who still won't give up. I know a guy who has 13 " rebel flags" on his property. This is minor ( kind of) and comical compared to killing off our true history, heritage and transforming it into the language of mythical robots who do no wrong, who, when dying, don't call out for their mamas; instead they bleed PCB-- political correctness blood. Would you not care if Holland's heroes, history was stripped of its truth? If France was suddenly unknown for it's declarations of Freedom: from which America based so much of our own liberties? Amen. "
I replied:
"It read like a fake news item like the Union is infamous for..
It's sad really isn't it? Every country has good and bad stuff happening in the past.. Holland was a bunch of colonial a**h** for centuries, shipping slaves from Africa to America... And trading in everything under the sun. We are taught about this though; both the good and the bad. It would be the equivalent of Germans no longer teaching about World War II and Hitler.. that would be a world wide outrage I think. Utter censure ship. Patriotism is not very Dutch.. I have a hard time understanding it. We are pretty down to earth and no nonsense, as a whole. So hearing the national anthem at schools, brrrrr, very very unusual here. Holland has a riot and protest culture too, which might make for a different attitude too somehow. And of course, Holland doesn't play a major role on the world stage and America does, whether we like it or not :) Perhaps that also makes us feel too self aware and insignificant for national anthems at school time and Blockbuster Movies about our pride and identity. A friend joked about that article and made me laugh, although it's a bit crass: I thought they already do plenty of that? the Pavlovian flag speech before each class and the complete intelligence black-out in the media. But I have to say that I am fascinated by the States.. For all sorts of reasons. That friend invited me over and I would come in a heartbeat if I had a bit more money to spend but what isn't yet might come! I am especially interested in the south yes, and even love the redneck dialect. I loved visiting New York in the past. I remember history classes here about the American civil war, mighty interesting, not just because of what they fought for both, but also because of the differences in mentality. That is bound to happen with a country as vast as the US. If you compare the Scandinavian attitude to the southern European... it's a world of difference, also because of the temperature differences i think and overall different lifestyle and outlook on life."
Another American friend said: "Conservatives are trying to brainwash our children. Not the most educated places to begin with, so why set yourself back even further? Wrap that damn flag 'round your body!We sort of expect this kind of behavior from Texas (LOL), but this really is shameful. I can't believe people are advocating propaganda brainwashing through PUBLIC SCHOOLS." Me: "History is a crucial element of society, whether positive or negative, this reads like a farce. Republicans or not, this is even shocking for their standards. "It says that if the College Board does not revise the test, Georgia will cut funding for the course." But history is always written by the 'winners', isn't it.."
Him: "Hmm. "Winners" or "the Delusional." State representatives can be wildly erratic in their views here. It's sad they have the kind of influence they do over deforming students' educational foundations."
Oh I'm just steaming on, will calm the flush down soon. I got some emails from rosaceans of which I will use a little bit of the bare facts and my responses.. perhaps they can help others. It feels a bit hypocritical now, after criticizing the poor Jess Ainscough for advising other cancer patients about her treatment regime. I advice others based on what works for me and it might not work for others, or it might cause terrible side effects for them and that would make me semi co-responsible. But I can't help but tell what helps me, to a degree. No experimental make believe, but medications and lifestyle adaptations which visibly and noticeably improved my rosacea. Unfortunately every rosacean is different though and as my dermatologist already said last month; rosacea seems to stem from a myriad of underlying causes. What a mess..
Hi there Scarlett, I have to congratulate you on a great Blog. Im sure you really help a lot of people. I have been reading your blog and I dont even suffer from Rosacea !! [..] Kind regards
And: Hi there I appreciate your openness, honesty, and advice for rosacea and facial flushing. I have recently developed debilitating facial flushing episodes that make going to even the grocery store difficult. I use to get a little flushed if I had to speak to large groups, but nothing to this extent. The flushing doesn’t seem to leave it just stays now and is becoming more permanent. I have had laser treatments done on two occasions, but this has seemed to be a real waste of money with little to no improvements. I honestly feel I made a major mistake in having the vbeam laser treatment done some months ago. Before the treatments I had a just a few telangisiticas (sp) and that was that. I am not sure if the procedures could have caused the chronic facial flushing and increased telangisticias. It seems like the more I focus and obsess about my face the worse it gets. Do u still feel the same way about mirtazapine as u did in your original posts? Thank u so much for your help. I would be taking clonidine and mirtazapine simultaneously.
Part of my reply: "I'm sorry for the late reply, thanks for your nice words. Am sorry you are also dealing with the terrible facial flushing. I would try to up the clonidine to 3 times a day. I take also 50 mg but spread out every 8 hours. I find after 8 hours I get red again without it. I also take 40 mg of propranolol at night, but if you could try to use it and find it beneficial you could also take it more often. Yes I also take mirtazapine and find it very effective and good for my facial flushing and burning. But it comes with some side effects unfortunately. Mostly increased appetite and some weight gain but for me the pay off is huge as mirtazapine cuts down on my flushing and redness, and also on anxiety, depression and insomnia. I can control the weight with a healthy diet and walking every day. With the remeron, I found that it takes a good few weeks to see the real anti flushing effects, but a good 6 weeks at least for side effects to wear off. They usually do wear off though.. It's similar to people taking them for depression, the first 6 weeks are terror as you don't see the beneficial effct yet but get a truck load of side effects as your body and brain adjust to this new chemical. For instance, I had nerve twitches in my legs and arms every single night and brain zaps while trying to sleep. Lightning flashes before your eyes, like your brain is getting electrical overload. They all went away. The tirendess and desire to sleep non stop is infamous for remeron but I found that they also wear off. I now sleep 8 or 9 hours straight but feel very energized during the day. That took some time, initially it was hard to get out of bed at all and indeed I felt drugged and so drowsy all day. It will get a lot better in that respect, but I can't judge how much a time and capacity you have to sit those out, especially with your profession.. There are other antidepressants who seem to help people with flushing, Zoloft, Effexor, a few other SSRI's I think. Celexa is mostly mentioned I think as a beneficial one, apart from remeron. But there are other meds which might help you and give way less side effects, I would try propranolol, as I said above, perhaps take 40 mg a day or if needed up to 3 times a day. It should help a little bit at least with the flushing. An antihistamine like Xyzal helps me a lot too and perhaps upping your clonidine dose will help too? It is hard yes to work with this illness. I taught for half a year at university and already had rosacea back then and brought my little fan into the college rooms, it was very difficult.. I said even no to a teaching opportunity later on because my flushing just was too much. I now work as a researcher and can do most of that from my rosacea fortress. But it's a bit of a missed chance, I'd have loved to teach. Perhaps red light therapy might be beneficial for you? there is a rosacea forum that is pretty good, they have a section on red light therapy, perhaps it is something that might help, although I am not raving about it myself..
I do not know about clonidine affecting serotonin. I know a male friend with rosacea and low serotonin levels but I am not sure that would affect your flushing in any way to be honest. Hope this helps?"
I saw the clip of this singer and I like her songs but also that she has a flushed face. AND looks CUTE with it! Awwww
Ever since getting off the plane from England I have had a cold again and flu symptoms, and within a week or so I developed again sinus infection symptoms. Stuffed nose, pressure on sinuses, head ache, mucus discharge. It's been close to 5 weeks now and I called the GP but have been brushed off more or less. In Holland doctors are very hesitating with medication supply and especially with antibiotics. I have to steam my nose (yayy, rosacea loves that stuff - not..) and salt water rinse. Spent some time with a friend who came over for some time. He is an artist, a bit older, eccentric type. He had been through a break up 5 months ago and is still struggling with it all and looking for ways the escape his situation at home. He came over to lick his wounds basically, that sort of a stay. It's not the first time he came over and I already knew from the past that he and I have a very polar wish for temperatures. He is always cold. I'm always trying to keep my rosacea calm. On top of that, we can clash personality wise. He is very sharp verbally and funny at times, but also quite blunt and direct and mostly I can laugh about that, but sometimes not so much.. He likes to mock and ridicule me a bit and usually I can take that up the chin, but this week I was in the dumps morally and physically, also because my rosacea was really flaring quite badly. The first moment he came through the door he started already to complaint that he was cold. I had put the central heating on for him prior to it, but he had set his mind on the wood fire. Which makes me flush! We joked a bit about Yes I will/ No you won't. You go to your bedroom and make it 26 degrees then/No you go to your bedroom and open a window or something. All still reasonably funny but with a serious battle lurking underneath and a determination, which didn't promise a good week.
I read this poem from Oscar Wilde and it's so simple and dignified and touching to me
Requiescat
by Oscar Wilde
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
We had a program on Dutch tv, in the past and still, where during the summer, for 8 weeks and once a week, one guest was interviewed for 4 hours initially. Usually someone who had something to say, a scientist, cinematographer, actor, artist, a whole range of guests. They used to make it a theme night and were allowed to make up their own ideal tv evening, with lots of little clips from series or movies or anything they wanted and talk them together. It made for fantastic tv when the guests were good. You saw the most amazing tv clips and overarching stories. One had an evening about classical music and showed a famous pianist who studied one piece for a concert and then the orchestra started and you saw the bewilderment on her face when she realized they played a whole different piece!! She studied the wrong piece and had to play Mozarts concerto for piano instead. And miraculously, she got herself together and remembered this piece from years back, stacked somewhere in the back of her mind and without any sheet music she just played it :) Many more of such wonderful little gems of forgotten tv. Now, that program still exists but the time has halved and the guests are shallow and the interviewers suck and nobody makes a favorite tv show about a theme anymore; to educate and create poetry that evening. No instead they all show snippets of tv moments they personally liked. For whatever reason, and the past 4 years these evenings are dreary boring narcissistic evenings about ME me me, what do I like and I'll tell you why I like it (I realize btw that this is a bit crass, coming from a personal blogger lol). How does this and that fit in with MY personality and my likes and dislikes. Typical for this day and age isn't it. Why not make an overarching theme? Like they used to, and inform people, show them different links and connections surpassing their own persona, about higher topics, which we didn't see yet? All the magic of that program is gone and they changed interviewers so often, but to no avail. It still sucks. Here is a clip from that pianist, watch her facial expression, it's phenomenal that she pulled it off in the end:I Heard a sweet story last week from my American walk ("let's go for a hike!") friend, she is a professional masseuse and has a friend in her 60's, she had been lonely for well over a decade and now she came over and there was a man of 96 years old with her. He lives in the same village as her and is quite active still, charming even. Appears they are dating! He takes her out for dinner a lot. She had to give him a massage and I was already half wrinkling my nose, asking if that wasn't, uhm.. well unpleasant, rubbing old skin but she said no not at all, besides, it's professional, but this man he still had charisma and stories; he had been prisoner in a war camp twice during wars, escaped successfully twice, was still full of charm and joy and she could tell he once was well built and all that. After the
Some friends from teenage years have gotten back into contact and are organizing a sort of reunion. Am usually not fond of those, but it's small scale with the 5 of us who all set out on our first holidays alone back in '95/96. They want to go back to the same island we went to then, Ameland, and do it over again as adults, well for one weekend. Will probably go, we had fun in the days. Here are some pics of the clan and hopefully that bar still exists and we can soon make an updated one, 20 years later. (notice that white was the color of fashion that year lol). Those girls have been in contact on facebook as friends there for some years but it hasn't been intense contact or anything, some jokes and likes on the side lines. We haven't done anything together since age 17 or so for me, so it is a little bit uncomfortable for me to to have to spend a whole weekend with them all together again, so long after the fact. One suggested renting a caravan and staying there but noooo waaaay I want to stay with 4 adult women in bunk beds and on caravan couches haha. Although my main concern would be that I don't want to bother others with my fan and open window. So we settled on a hostel now with a private room for me :) I can put make up on now and will try how it goes to keep it on overnight, I don't want to show them my bright red swollen mug the next day .. No alcohol for me either, but I hope I can make it a nice night out nevertheless. I hardly ever go out, I can't remember the last time I had a night in a bar or anything like that. I do like that spontaneous stuff and I'm sure it will be fun as these ladies used to be a lot of fun and mischief. Found many more pics, I'll add a few, we did have fun in the days.
Love this photoshoot with Anne Hathaway, posing with a statue. Very dark, but sensual. Some mix of Wuthering Heights and Sicilian mourning for me and Anne Hathaway has a dramatic face for this sort of stuff, especially when shot in black and white. It was a fashion editorial thingelingy for Vogue but to me these pictures way ascend and surpass that, I couldn't care less really about what she is trying to sell here when viewing them. Hard to chose a favorite, probably the one where she seems to blend in with the statue. Although it is still clearly a Hollywood type of thing, a bit too stylized and dramatic at times.
Then for some contrast: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3000407/Portraits-asylum-Harrowing-19th-century-photos-patients-notorious-institution-kept-SHACKLES-visibly-distressed.htmlEven melancholia was mentioned as a medical indication to go there, oh my.. I might have ended up there sooner than later back in the days. Pretty disturbing and saddening photo's, their faces showed so much torment. They seemed to have free reign with them, electrotherapy, lone isolation, chaining them to beds, who knows what else. Dr. Mengele. Or Dickens and it still happens. Read this astonishing news article, this is the USA of course but nevertheless. Shot for wielding a screw driver. Someone with a mental disability!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2999731/Chilling-moment-cops-shot-dead-mentally-disabled-man-wielding-screwdriver-caught-body-camera.html Makes you wonder, back in the days, for what sort of 'defects' people were locked up like that. Many never made it out alive.
A friend of mine replied to this link: "Was so shocking to see those asylum pictures. They threw them in there for all kinds of flimsy reasons and treat them badly. I saw that that one at Wakefield had some religious moral logic to it but the notions and understanding of the conditions at the time was laughable really. Being poor was outright dangerous. (Also some comments on mankind being not the friendliest in general at times). "
I replied: Yeh there are rotten people everywhere... When greed and money come in.. or as Nietzsche would say: "Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'." Or: "Success has always been a great liar." He was a massive grump and pessimist by the way. Like Schopenhauer. I've got a book of Nietzsche with only his quotes and comments on a ton of things, he really had this snidy opinion about absolutely anything. Love reading snippets here and there to cheer me up. I do think everyone has a certain degree of evil inside themselves. Good and bad, and it depends on so many factors which one will come out more. Whether you can suppress the demons yes or no. Some have a more gentle and less erratic and restless character than others, which helps. But there are boundaries yes and when people cross them, that might be incomprehensible to us. Also, it seems sometimes that it is harder for people to show empathy for other peoples struggles when they never went through challenging personal situations themselves I something think (wonder). I know people who are very successful and then post online quotes like "Great things never come from comfort zones", "Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent, hard work gains success. Greatness will come." Or this one is particularly charming: "The only disability in life is a bad attitude". Wow, tell that some seriously ill people, so smug. I know this person has a hard time understanding the depression of a relative, who has dealt with chronic illness on top for a long time. He is always scolded by them, that he chooses to be depressed, has a bad attitude, created his own misery etc. People like that.. that borders on psychopathic to me. Ok, that is a bit strong perhaps, but it seems so easy to me to react like that.... People who are unwilling to even step in someone else's shoes or do the basics of research yet blurt out generalisations and judgements. As if depression is a matter of being a wallower by choice. As if you can simply think yourself out of a depressed mind by thinking happy thoughts. Or showing some determination.
Friends reply: "Those quotes are not only superficial and hollow but they're meaningless and a form of mind-control. A kind of sad attempt to buttress feelings of worthlessness by justifying a crass rationale of materialism. As if that is what defines you because it is the only form of value amongst a certain social group. Other cultures would react in horror to that kind of psychology. Well it's not a recipe for happiness that's for sure. The ancient Greeks spoke of Eudaimonia and Arete. Virtue of spirit. The stoics especially believed nothing external was necessary to achieve that most intrinsic of life goals, in fact by today's standards they would be homeless bums and here we are today screwing each other over so we can have the latest T.V in an attempt to feel good about ourselves. I think it is particularly depressing to live in a go go do do society full of career types, when you are stuck with a chronic, perhaps even debilitating disease yourself.
I saw this yesterday, a kid does a James Bond type of song, bit crooner, Cry me a River, and gets outrageous commentary by a set of judges from England, flown to the New Zealand show, nobody knows them, neither there nor in England apparently nor in the US where they now flew to. But he was ripped to pieces by them, mainly her, with the lamest argumentation behind it.
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Oh and the last one is eclipse in Norway, arrghhhhh!
I saw a short interview with a French philosopher passing by online by chance and he talked about happiness. He said he thinks that 50% of happiness lies in the genetic set up we might or might not have. 40% comes from what we encounter, our attitude, the things we are engaged in, if we have good or bad health. All within that 40%. And the last 10% is relying on the tax papers. Oh no, it's not, jokes :) No the last 10% depends on your financial-social situation; if you come from a rich or poor family and have financial means yes or no. That is a really small percentage according to this dude, his name is Frédéric Lenoir. But what stood out for him was that people feel happy when they achieve things that sets them above the mediocre. Both finding their specific talents and achieving to rise above things, also in love and life. And when we feel we didn't achieve that specialness we all have somewhere, we feel less happy. It is also linked to finding your own individuality and getting the education and stimulation you need for that personality to develop and come out. He links it to Spinoza; finding your profound identity (or nature he called it). And there are 2 fundamental emotional states with this; sadness and joy. When we encounter obstacles in life which prevent us from becoming our profound identity (and I can imagine all sorts of obstacles people can encounter, and for me it's all the confinement of physical conditions like rosacea, but an obstacle could also be to fear losing control or whatever you have at that moment and holding on to it), then we feel sadness and when we have the opportunities to grow then we feel happiness. Growing in all sorts of ways. I wonder at times how many people are actually looking for this. Most just seem to me to stand in a long line and have the same repetitive day to day, week to week, year to year spending of time. Until before you know it you are 20 years further down the line. Spent your years doing what everybody else did. It all depresses me. And I remember it already putting me off as a kid. Especially some aunts who were all about appearance and pristine houses and latest interior fashions, nothing sincere about them, nothing different, vibrant. Just, bland and even back then it just.. depressed me I guess. My mothers brother is a gay man and was a great uncle really, as he was open minded and fun. Exuberant, fantastical, warm, wore wildly outrageous clothes, had just a lot of fun in life and a cheeky sense of humour and treated us like adults basically, which is pretty nice at that age. (He burned himself up though and has Korsakoff's syndrome now and is in a care home). I do struggle with life at times and how to give meaning to it and not just live away the years. It helps that I have this freedom from working from home a lot, I'm not totally lived by an office culture and 9 to 5 mentality and I think i'd have really not survived that culture to be honest. Just felt like screaming there. But how do you give meaning to it and ensure you later look back at things and don't have regrets? I feel a hundred times more limited too in my options in that regard due to not being able to do this or that, and tons of other normal limitations. So it has become more a matter of lowering expectations and finding joy and contentment and some sort of challenge in smaller things but that sounds so new age and mushy. And it doesn't make for all that growing we are now told is soooo important.
Might also explain why some people with the same health conditions become close friends so quickly, it's a huge relief for many. What is weird behaviour to others is normal to all of us. There has even been talk once of some meeting and wild jokes about having ice cube machines everywhere and fans and airco and hats for free and special low carb, no gluten, no spice food and non alcoholic delicious drinks and cold packs and fridges everywhere. It sort of stagnated on the location choice, the Yanks all wanted it to be in the States, of course, and the Europeans wanted it in Italy or something, which has a whole set of impracticalities by itself unless you want to go in winter :) So that might happen somewhere in 2050 perhaps haha. Most don't even feel like getting out of their houses anyway. But at the end of the day, it is a lonely thing to go through when you have chronic health shit. I think all of us know that in the end you can only expect and rely on other people so much with it. People can disappoint you and they will! And when you don't have the freedom to go do exactly whatever you want when things are not going well, that gives a specific type of trapped feeling.
Here is another little art clip:
I've lived in some dodgy places, student houses, and have been lucky with my condo, very low rent but nice little place and location. They can't raise the rent by law more than 1% or something per year for residents who stay in it. But as soon as a new renter comes in, they can crack the rent price way up. The past 15 years people have come and gone of course in the street but I stayed and I now pay up to half the amount some neighbors have to pay, with exactly the same house. But the landlords are usually corporations here. Privatized, yes, so potential cowboys but mine is a Christian organization and they do have very strict morals. Which go both ways. They sneak around back gardens to make paparazzi style pictures, draw arrows on it with fluorescent markers, to send them to you with a letter, stating you need to cut a tree or remove a bag or something like that. But when something is wrong, they come round quickly to solve it.
I watched this movie last week Perfect Sense. I loved it.
I really enjoyed it, it was touching and had an original topic I felt. Made in Scotland, with Eva Green and Ewan McGregor. She is a epidemiologist and he a cook and there is a strange virus which makes people loose all their senses slowly but surely. Although nobody knows that initially of course, as it is a new and unknown disease. First it's only smell, started by a severe emotional spell of grieving over everybody and everything they've lost in life. By then they think the loss will stay limited to smell only. So first she is hurt and wants to be alone, and he is a womanizer who can't sleep with another person in the ebd and they both look unmatchable and miserable and being exactly of each others prettiness level and the 2 protagonists you know with great certainty they will hook up as it goes in the movies, and yes, soon these 2 are madly in love (and you want them to be! They play it so well and top notch) and enjoy all their senses but she is worried that this virus might not limit itself to just the smell. They soon all have it as nobody understands how the spreading of it works. What it made very tangible is how people panicked and missed what they lost first - after smell it was taste, and the cook had to come up with meals that were ultra strong in flavor already when it was just the smell people lacked, but by then they tasted nothing anymore, but came for the sensation of textures. So the restaurant got good reviews based on how the menu had a great balance of crispy and soft and foamy and velvety textures, which they could still sense-. But that eventually people get used to limitations, accepted it, and focus on the things they still have. So they developed stronger hearing and sight, or touch. I wondered how they would have all adapted to having severe rosacea..
These are my own grandmother and -father, when she was in her late 30's. Both my grandparents are from Polish heritage
My grandparents, grandmother with an uncle as baby,
my grandfather with my mother as a young woman
My grandparents with their 6 kids, my mother being the youngest
My grandfather and his 9 (half-)siblings. In total my great-grandparents had 16
kids, but 6 died of the Spanish Flu. Grandpa had a Polish father unlike the rest of the kids
And my grandparents from dads side, photo from 1938
(gran looks just like my sister on the right)
PICTURES TAKEN DURING A PRETTY HOT SKIN FLARE
Nephew thinks 'lekker' in Dutch is just for plebs and prefers to express
his culinary delight with a different word these days haha :)
March 26th 2015I developed a bit of an obsession over the terrible plane crash of flight MH370, in France two days ago. I fly often myself and have been procrastinating by reading a forum where pilots discuss it, just love the mystery whodunit aspect and changing perspectives, now that more facts are given free. It's all pretty futile but I just were always interested in reading up on air crash investigations and planes and technical aspects of it all, decompression issues yes or no, that sort of stuff. These geese are greeting me often in the park behind my house. Swans and geese both appeal to me, geese because they are just bloody funny, the way they waddle (is that the right word for it? That staggering motion they make when walking), their defense techniques. I love feeding them left overs, they circle around you like some pack of hyena's, pushing those fatty chests up your legs and hissing for the food, haha, just great. Swans have a cooler demeanor, but their love for their partner is quite exceptional. There was one famous swan in that theme park we went to last winter, and he lost his partner and it's so sad, he now wails for her and found a spot with a metal thing that reflects his own image and he isn't moving away from it, constantly looking at himself and thinking it is his partner. Really sad. Here you see it doing exactly that:
A friend wants to go out for dinner tonight, we will go here. Been there before with her, they are good, bit hovering between fancy restaurant and 'eating café' as we say in Dutch, surprising menu. I used to love desserts most of all, in student years we had a spell where we went to three different restaurants a night, asking to only eat a dessert, making it a 3 course menu that way haha. Can't do that anymore with a straight face at this age. My skin is still pretty deep pink and glowing, I try to keep it calm during the day, and just hope it will improve again soon...
My skin not great. I suspect it might be pollen season having started. I also lost my appetite which is EXTREMELY rare for me haha since being on remeron and antihistamines. But for a good time now. I try to stick to it and combined with my work outs. Long walks but trying to elongate and intensify them, I notice how much stronger I am by now and how much more endurance I have. I think I'm losing some more weight by now an it feels good. I started the carvedilol beta blocker medication which dr Chu prescribed me. But it made me flush like mad a few hours after taking it. I am waiting for the episode to subside, then try to get my skin stable again and try again. It's no use really to try anything new, may it be medication, or supplements, or anything of which you expect an improvement and want an objective evaluation on, unless your basic skin state is stable, I found at least. I also bought probiotics to try and algae omega 3 supplements as anti inflammatory. A rosacea friend is seeing improvement in his symptoms with red light use. I might try to find my devise back and give it another try soon!!! At the time I received it from another friend, in 2005, ny rosacea was at its very very worst and I felt the red light stirred matters further up, but it was so wildly unstable to begin with that I don't think I gave it a fair test. So there we go, that one goes on the to do list as well! And so we muddle on.. My sister moved places and I spent a good few nights with her, she likes company and then to sit on the couch with blankets (she has a small fan for me in the house, awww) and just watch crap tv and criticize it a bit. She has been hooked on Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden (bit like Days of our Lives I think) since the start in the 90s and still watches it faithfully every night at 8. As a student I tried Bold and the Beautiful and then Days of our Lives out of sheer curiosity for the whole phenomenon, maybe managed to watch it for a few months at the longest, and it was interesting for a little while. The outrageous overacting and twist plots, it got me invested for a little while. I mean, it was interesting to figure the concept out and test it on another soap and see they all follow the same script. Bold and the beautiful has some main characters who have married, divorced, remarried, got cheated on a good dozen of times, then got dumped, then married their brother/sister in law, then cheated him with the father/mother in law, who then had a severe helicopter crash and became a vegetable, all in the time span of a year or two haha. In a way.. isn't it the simple mans story telling and theater craving all in one? We need stories and some people like to live through the lives of people with ordinary life problems. Just, they are a bit more glamorous and slim and rich and have all our problems combined in abundance. Suckers for drama and emotion haha.
But after a little while it feels like a massive waste of time and it circles on and on around the same patterns and becomes predictable and the curiosity is stilled and it gets boring, to me that is. But they still provide viewers with stories, so they can learn through other characters, experience lives outside their own little world, i don't see much wrong with that. It's no quantum physics you learn from it, but not everybody is interested in that I guess. Not totally realistic lives and often too materialistic and chuck full with product placement, but they are the dumb version of Greek tragedy characters in a way; slapped in the face consistently with all the hardships and challenges and (mis)fortunes of the world and viewers are delighted to see how they deal with that, securely from their own couch. And then perhaps be happier with their own lives. Shakespeare is all great but tiring, i couldn't keep my eyes open during Hamlet either. Sometimes a semi crappy movie is more relaxing than a high end one. Each to their own. Not sure I shared this already, a mexican soap, so outraggggeous haha. Have a laugh, this crap was seriously aired, it makes me laugh.People Told Her To Remove Her Birthmark, But She Chose To Embrace It Instead
22-Year-Old Professional Dancer Cassandra Naud Was Born With A Large Birthmark Under Her Left Eye, And Although She Begged For An Operation To Remove It In Her Youth, She Now Refuses To Get One – She Even Says That She Appreciates Her Unique Appearance And That It Helps Her Stand Out In Her Field. The Alberta, Canada-based dancer was teased throughout her youth for the birthmark, which is also covered in hair (hypertrichotic), but her parents were afraid to operate on it for fear that it would leave large scars on her face.
And check this out perhaps, a video from Stromae, a Belgian singer. Now you might already know some of his hits, as there was basically no escaping them for some time (here in Europe at least! And I bet he is famous in Canada too), but he is clever, this is a poignant cartoon-video I think, frightening in a way yet simple. Warning for the dangers of social media in a great cartoon, Must Watch. About the craziness of our very own time era. It has english subs under it too.
I like how the bird shocks and blurts at the rhythm of the strings in that video and its expression. Also, how common all this is! You tend to watch it thinking, oh but this is not about me, this is about others! You see them doing exactly what is portrayed in this cartoon. But it still leaves a metallic after taste. And the other video is a short clip but guaranteed to make you relax :) Had to laugh, also some of the comments below it: "In case you can't sleep". "I think I did it wrong. I'm bleeding through the nose."
Watched a movie called Byzantium. Nice movie. I normally don't watch the vampire or zombie genre but this one seemed to hover between fantasy and a dash of history/period piece and some art house touch with the cinematography. I loved that last bit, the changes between weathered gray and blue in the current day, dowdy beach resort place, and the warm light and colors in the past scenes. I won't say too much about the story line and it wasn't a great movie, but a decent one I felt. The flash backs they used to tell 2 different story lines from different times were most interesting. The gothic bits in the movie were great I thought. And the scene in a cave with thedoppelganger was quite beautifully shot. One of the lead actresses, Gemma Arterton, was however bringing the whole thing down for me. Others might disagree, and she is a jewel to look at, absolutely gorgeous. But that was about it for me. Found it hard to watch her.. As I said, Gemma was stunning (although her upper lip from the side looks slightly like she had a bee sting and an allergic reaction, but she reminds me a bit at times of Laetitia Casta, a French model see pics below. She stood model for the Marianne, symbol of the French revolution and republic and of freedom. And Gemma has exactly her figure here) but a bit of a caricature to me. Bit of cold, one dimensional she was. Look of a superwoman but not the content somehow. More or less a pretty face. If she didn't had her looks, I doubt she would have been cast as she
I vant awllll doze dresssesss now! And be 16 for ever too. Who wouldn't want to become a vampire to love for
There is a boyband called Keane, my sister and I used to blast their cd Hopes and Fears for years in the car and belt all the songs out, very therapeutic, very happy tunes. Not seeing the same quality in the album now that I grew up a bit, but this is a more recent song of them which I do like and the coastal scenes in Byzantium reminded me of the video clip for this song. Same cool colors, seems to work for there. Also some old vintage cars/bikes and scenes brought into modern day life scenes. Haha I once fancied the singer, bit of a porky pie face and nose, but when he was chubbier he was kind of cute. My type of cute and geeky and kind. Married his school sweetheart, he even went into rehab for drug abuse, everybody joked he had a smartie/sweets addiction hehe, such a choir boy type (trying to be Oasis they said with the drug abuse. Sister and me like to sing along with it. Compare the clip with that of Black (Wonderful Life), also depicting the British seaside in a very similar way, an epic clip made several decades earlier :) I bet that Keane made some sort of ode to it or were inspired by it.
I also liked the grimness and darkness in Byzantium. And its a nice twist to standard vampire movies, more Dracula like which I did like, mainly due to Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder. Also the running theme of stories and humans needing them to understand the world, and the Ella/Eleonore character needing her stories, even though she throws them away, that was nice. Although writing your story down and then throwing the pages away is a nice poetry like gesture for a movie but about as bad to me as throwing diaries in a fire. Oh and had to laugh that every time these girls gulp on blood, it leaves a near perfect lipstick mark haha, never gory all over their chin and cheeks :) Comparing Gemma with French model/actress Laetitia Costa, they look alike to me!
On another positive note, I really liked the soundtrack/piano playing in Byzantium. Sounded like something from Beethoven with a twist. It reminded starkly however of the soundtrack from The Hours, from Philip Glass.
Here compare them! Glass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vvyktncO9Q&list=RDQMrysMiOcfZJ0&index=4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmj3nDqKyp0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB0sXWwH_eA
Byzantium:
Also found the original of that fantastic Byzantium soundtrack, indeed from Beethoven, this is just a section of the original and played by a beautiful Asian pianist. Beethoven was full of passion (listen how he alternates calm and sweet melodies with raw pain at minute 2:15). She even looks haunted herself when she plays it, love it (although it's probably staged as a video clip). That's the way to play Beethoven though, that can't be done stone faced and sitting silently. (she might look stoned to you haha, but I'd call it musical trance). Deutsche grammophon is considered one of the very best labels for classical music btw. Great life story he had, Beethoven. Turned deaf in the end, the horror. We used to have pretentious dillema questions at school as teens haha, surprising students with the question: "Do you prefer Mozart or Beethoven??" Most would look at you with a mix of disgust, disdain and smirk, but some would actually answer. I said Mozart back then, I see Beethoven right now. The passion and drama, oh, do I love it! Anyone who hasn't seen the movie Immortal Beloved should watch it I think. Gary Oldman plays Beethoven, god I was in love with him as a teen. Fab actor, he does morph into his characters. Dark man, you can sense, he gives his roles such depth.
Oh and a last thing on that Belgian singer Stromae. This is a great clip I think, very clever and quite deep, if you look for the metaphors he uses in it. He sings about a kid who is raised without his dad. Everybody can make a kid but not everybody can be a dad, he sings. Everybody needs someone to look up to, this one doesn't, the ending the way the kid 'solves' it, is touching and a bit painful perhaps. Here he reminds a little bit of Jacques Brel, a famous Belgian singer who sang about hookers and bars and almost the Hemingway of French chansons. He sings here about fucking things up, she was fantastic, he was atrocious, he has regrets. The video was shot in Brussels I think t is, he is very well known there but plays a drunk, and it was shot with hidden camera's apparently, and you see some people recognizing him but others steering well away, suspecting he is dangerous perhaps. Dark bitter song, think everybody hearing it can relate somehow (also with subs);
And a last one :) This one might freak some people out as he is very feminine in it but he's not gay. He sings that all people are the same in the end, and he cleverly portrays both man and woman, with the two sides of his body/face. Fascinating face too! Too child like and feminine in general for my liking, too skinny too, but a beautiful face, refined. I think it's a great clip, original.
Happy Easter!!
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I had a dinner tonight and despite grumping about my boring life all weekend, du moment that I have to go out and face people, I wished wholeheartedly that I could stay home and just make some lonesome walk with an audio book from Tom Hardy on (reading "The maddening crowd" now). But of course I went and it was warm in there and I had already an utterly red sore skin day. But, there were nice friends, it was a nice group, we had fun, they are warm and smart and funny to me nevertheless. Within no time I was at ease and chatting away and actually contributed in my own ways to a very nice evening.
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Hope everybody had a nice Easter. Oh, I was naughty and here in the village they hide little chocolate eggs for the kiddies. Some are hidden very well, too well for the kiddo's to find so went on a quest and hunt for these forgotten eggs, before the sun would melt them in a messy waste of a good chocolate treat. Fetched over ten of them and yessss.. I ate them all! In one go. It's impossible to feel depressed they say with a mouth full of chocolate. It's true! :)
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April 9th 2015
So red and sore these days :( I don't know what is the reason, either because the pollen season has started, or maybe hormones.
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