As someone who genuinely feels no affiliation to any of these identifiers, it’s the easiest task in the world to respect others. And I suppose I understand where you’re coming from, dear, but I refuse to play the game of false equivalencies and pretend that everything is worthy and equal, be it art, philosophical ideals, and people most of all.

Concerning Catholicism, though, as I’m sure that that is what this message is pertaining to, I respect its believers to a point, as I do many others of various religious belief systems. There’s a great many tenets taught that are viable to the benefit of all. What I was directly referring to, however, is the system itself; one doesn’t have to look into its past to see the corruption it faces in the present day, but if they were, they’d quickly remember that its churches the world over are built upon the ruined temples of other religions, and the ensuing indoctrinations of the conquered peoples.

I fail to see the tolerance there.

The Crusades, and its direct opposition to one of the ten commandments. Not to imply that I’m against murder (trust me, I’m definitely not), but to base it on religious differences when the texts you supposedly live your lives by demand the opposite of you?

The Spanish Inquisition, the mass murders of countless women that followed, and the views the church still holds today of women as second class citizens. Tell me, have you ever read the Malleus Maleficarum, their bread and butter and companion to the bible during those days? I have it in my possession, and I tell you now that I’ve yet to read a more evil text. They shun it now of course, but the bible itself still places the blame of “original sin” on women anyways.

I could go on and on and on about the faults of its hierarchy, but to return to the present, we are now witness to the Church’s corruption in regards to child sexual abuse, perpetrated by the middlemen we’re supposed to look towards for guidance. We even possess the knowledge now that the Church has been aware of this problem for many hundreds of years, and instead of turning these monsters over to the law, what they’ve begun to do in the last century is to send them on holiday for a quiet little retreat before reassigning them to another part of the world. No one is ever held accountable, and the abuse continues.

But the hierarchy is responsible, directly complicit in their silence, and it comes as no surprise to me that the previous Pope runs and hides the same week that these matters are exposed in a documentary. Don’t even get me started on him.

So, as you can read, I fail to see any purity in those men, let alone any redeeming qualities worthy of respect. You can read about this stuff just about anywhere, though, so I’ll stop for now because writing about these matters darkens my soul.

Only my earlobes are pierced so far, and no tattoos yet. I also have a self-administered brand on my left wrist that I may touch up again soon.

As for what I plan to do in the future, a sleeve on my left arm of the water colored variety (ideas are slowly being penned out); splitting my tongue; a lip piercing on the side that wasn’t ruined from a dog tearing it apart, perhaps a “reverse” monroe over my beauty mark that’s not as prevalent as I wish it’d be, nostril/s, bridge, eyebrow/s, hips, and a fuck ton on my ears. That’s not even counting the subdermal implants I want along my collarbone, and a few (or five) extrasensory implants I’d like in another location that doctors unfortunately won’t perform at this point in time.

You know, to get things started.

I take it you haven’t read much of the “journals.”

I’ve been diagnosed with it since I was 14 or 15 (prior medication makes the details a little fuzzy to recall), later placed under 72-hour hold (suicide watch), and institutionalized for almost two weeks (wanted needed to stay for at least a few months), but heavens no, not depressed at all.

Well, besides my 5-string Ibanez Soundgear, Sophia, I also own a guitar and a violin, but both are in poor condition since I got them second-hand. The violin especially, since it was found at a park. No one claimed it after exhaustive effort, so it’s in my closet at the moment.

I do plan on purchasing an Ovation acoustic-electric guitar though, as well as a Korg—probably the microARRANGER—and a cello, since I wouldn’t be content simply emulating its beauteous sound through effects pedals/synths and the like.

This obviously isn’t mentioning the various bass guitars I’ll be buying, or the different amps/cabinets/heads I drool over, though I will say that the end-all-be-all bass I truly desire is the Music Man Bongo 6 bass, with some kind of Mesa Boogie setup, but those things run at ridiculous prices. Still, once you hear them live as I have (DIR EN GREY’s bassist Toshiya plays them) you’ll realize that you’d be hard pressed to find anything more versatile.

Artistically, my end-goal is to write novels of varying genres, release them through Amazon’s self-publishing incentive, KDP, and create companion soundtracks for each book, releasing those at a name-your-own-price model through Bandcamp.

End rant.

I read both. Not very many, but I’ll list the ones I’m currently reading below:

• Batman — most of The New 52 stuff, though I have to wait until I catch up on the other issues/series I didn’t read before I continue, since The Court of Owls stuff is happening across the entire Batman universe. The Red Hood is where it’s at though. Having beat the perfection that is Arkham City, I’m also really enjoying the Arkham Unhinged digital comics, and the expansion/backstory of that IP.
• Deadpool — Come on, he just finished murdering the entire Marvel universe a month ago, including The Avengers! How could anyone not appreciate that?
• Rurouni Kenshin — Kinema-ban (Restoration)
• Vagabond — easily the greatest manga ever created, in my opinion; every single page is gorgeous, and though I initially hated this fictional portrayal of Musashi Miyamoto, he eventually won me over.
• The Walking Dead — self-explantory.
  

Like I said, not very many, but quality over quantity and all that jazz.

Any recommendations, by the way?

You see it fit to inform me of something I’m already well aware of. It’s kinda cute. When posting anything from the band—which just so happens to be one of my favorite bands, one I waited 12 hours in advance to see live, a few feet away from Kyo—I prefer to keep capitalization and the like exactly as it was intended at the time of its release; after all, I wouldn’t post Я to the Core with the R the “correct” way, or Egnirys Cimredopyh (+) An Injection reversed, now would I?

That’s a toss up between Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, honestly, with Sleeping Beauty ranking third. My favorite song is easy though, and that’s He Lives in You from The Lion King musical and the second film. Everything about it is just perfect, and now I feel like listening to it over and over again.

I’m also a fan of the majority of the r&b/soul covers in the ending credits of the Disney Renaissance films.

Oh, did I just lose credibility? Oh well. These films were my escapism from an otherwise abusive, fucked up childhood, with the Final Fantasy games taking over that role once I grew a little older and the Disney films of my teens couldn’t quite cut it. So the Kingdom Hearts franchise is a major nostalgia trip on both fronts.

I don’t, no. It was never taught to me as a child, and what little I learned in school was forgotten over time. I assume you thought I spoke it based on my surname being Salazar?

I’ve always felt a strong alienation from the culture itself, honestly, so I can’t say that I claim it, either; it wouldn’t be true in the face of those that are intensely proud of their culture, and it definitely wouldn’t be true to me, who feels no connection to it whatsoever. Such a lie would be akin to me claiming to be male, or straight. The only language from my “mixed heritage” that holds any real incentive for me to learn is Italian, though from what I understand, though there are some big differences, I’ll be able to get the general gist of Spanish once I accomplish that.

Then comes the task of learning French and Japanese, and not necessarily in that order.

As an aside, I’d like to think that I make up for this sad, sad predicament of being unilingual by being a more eloquent speaker/writer of the English language, due to only focusing on one language, but I may just be grasping at straws in an attempt to feel better about this obvious handicap. 

1) Put your iTunes on shuffle. Give me the first 6 songs that pop up.

(Each song title will link to the actual song, if you’re interested in giving them a listen. 505 gets the live rendition from Arctic Monkey’s live dvd because that is one of my all-time favourite songs.)

Gothic Lolita | Emilie Autumn
— Opheliac (2006)

The Art of Coffins | Bohren & Der Club of Gore
— Black Earth (2002)

描写風 | KISAKI PROJECT
— 永遠の夢～for Lovers…～ (2008)

505 | Arctic Monkeys
— Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007)

It’s Casual | Maritime
— Human Hearts (2011)

Forgotten | Cryo
— Hidden Aggression (2010)

6) Do you have any strange phobias?
Nothing that immediately comes to mind, no.

9) Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?
My top five at the moment would be Anberlin, The Cure, Dir en grey, HIM, and Radiohead. Anberlin takes the cake, however; my life was forever changed and ultimately saved due to their music and the person they brought into it.

42) You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?

I answered this already in another questionnaire, here. 

43) What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?
Unwinding Cable Car by Anberlin. Every single time.

51) What is your current desktop picture?
This is.

55) You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?

The boat ride at Downtown Disney or the 30 minutes shortly after returning to my hotel room from Disney World.

You’re really sweet. I’ve heard from a few people that most of my “portraits” look alike, and I feel that it’s likely due to the fact that, for the most part, there’s a half-hearted smile involved. Physically speaking, I feel rather unbalanced at the moment… with stubble, and without makeup, so thank you.

Uh… it’s not so much a question of my preference as it is a simple matter of what someone would get if they were with me, which is both.

Any other questions?

The motive varies greatly, ranging from the lowly need to make it through the night, the ardent desire to reconcile aspects of my fucked up past through creative means, and finally to pure inspiration. That usually comes to me from a multitude of artistic mediums, but no matter what they are, there’s always a certain beauty to them that cannot be denied, even if they might appear hideous to others. 

It’s even more enjoyable to me when conversations spring up in my head out of the blue, and I’m then left with the task of peeling back that thin veil separating my conscious mind from the scene that’s unfolding, so we could just chalk it up to the inner-child’s need to discover the unknown.

If you or anyone else has any questions, regardless of what they are, feel free to ask. :)

If I had to guess, right now it feels like my mind soul is most often preoccupied with artistic expression, and my mind muses on the validity of suffering to improve the output. I have severe clinical depression in addition to a few other problems, so I wrestle with the notion of combating it with medication and whether or not that would change who I essentially am, and thus, what I can create. This isn’t new, as I’ve read about many artists who have felt that same ambivalence. That’s not to say that I haven’t tried it before, because I have, but the results were disastrous… physically my figure withered to almost sickening proportions (photos on here with my skeletal hands in view are proof enough of the damage) and mentally I daydreamed about suicide when the thoughts never crossed my mind before. I think the disassociation that comes with being medicated (at least in youth) makes things easier, because it’s as if you’re viewing life through some hazy television screen, and it’s in a foreign language with no subtitles, and it’s about a subject you have no interest in. So you want to turn it off.

I digress. My mind isn’t concerned with what society typically shoves down our throats concerning things we “must” do, so it must seem like I’m taking my sweet time here in Purgatory when it comes to the rat race, but honestly, the act of creation and the catharsis I feel after the fact is far more important to me. Self-actualization, I guess.

I mean, I conceptually perceive this “transitional” period in my life as Purgatory for a reason.

I also wrestle with differentiating my thoughts, emotions and impulses, especially when it comes to deciding which mirror my true self. The pursuit of an individual who mirrors/compliments/understands me is also forefront on my mind, and obviously my heart as well. I’m such a romanticist I could puke.

It might humor/frighten you to know that a disaster such as me intends to pursue psychology in the near future, but setting my soul straight obviously comes first.

I could go on and on but I’ve already taken over an hour searching myself to dish this out, so if you have any other questions at all, feel free to ask.

I wouldn’t be much of a romanticist if I haven’t. :P

I have, yes. Still am. It’s my belief that truly great romances never fade and absence cannot confine them to mere memories, no matter the passage of time. It’s not in their nature. But one has to recognize impossibilities for what they are and attempt to move past them.

Only 168, and while a certain special someone insists that’s a lot for a personal blog, I know of people with plenty more. I just wish my followers were more sociable, and that’s coming from me, a person fellow dwellers of Purgatory refer to as a “hermit”. :P

So feel free to ask anything and everything, people!