Salisa lohavittayavikant

Come with flute and come with pipe!
Am I not ripe?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion and sharp as an asp —
Come, O come!
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.

– Aleister Crowley, Hymn to Pan

Would things have been any different – much simpler and less taxing and outrageous and convoluted – […] had he been the man seated behind me that night and I made the conscious decision to just turn around? To turn or not to turn.. I went to war with myself but in the end decided to not turn. What if I’d just turned? What if it was him? […] What else has happened in the span of then and here that needed not happen had I just.. turned?

– Salisa, Journal: July 3rd, 2025

Well, that was a marvelously short run. Or more of a hobble or even a weak sputter. No, it wouldn’t have made a modicum of situational difference had I turned. 

Speaking of that night at the concert, I have been thinking about the “striking, frighteningly handsome” chap (entry: June 1st). How to not understate his devastating look and charm? He looks exactly like the young Justin Theroux. The clean-shaven look with killer eyebrows and sleek black hair slightly unkempt. Oh boy, those eyebrows and those eyes and cheekbones. The chin however was more of a straight drop so much pointier lending him a much sharper killer look. The male muse of so many if not all of the world’s panty-dropping lady-boners. Indeed he was even more attractive than Justin Theoreux. Think Bradley Cooper with that slight soft emotional edge but with a debonair hint of that real bad-boy swag. He must be someone’s most prized Romeo stallion… or he could be a male model in-between gigs who just happened to walk into the bar that night. How rich and powerful do I have to be to be able to source such a male specimen – the male specimen – to be present at my party? I’ve read a few days ago that Charlize Theron just had one of the best fucks of her life with a young 26 year-old. He must be a real Romeo stallion. But then again, I’m not Charlize Theron.

Speaking of handsome Hollywood men, just found out that poor Julian McMahon son of the former Australian Prime Minister had croaked via a sudden onset of a highly aggressive cancer. Henry and I just enjoyed our Nip/Tuck run not long ago (season 1 to mid-season 2). He was a real Romeo stallion there too (Grace reading the clinical psychology title – “Arrested Development in the Adult Male” – after her in flagrante office walk-in in episode 5 is still one of the funniest scenes in any medium I’ve seen recently). I tried watching his FBI show a couple of months back but his character was so pedantic and spiritless. Heard his Dr. Doom arc on Fantastic Four and his half-demon king-of-the-underworld Cole on Charmed are much better.

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Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.

– Machiavelli, The Prince

[…] He did mention at the beginning of the call, however, that he went to the Sarah Brightman concert […] earlier in the day. She sang “a few songs” from The Phantom of the Opera. I told him I read the book. He asked “the original novel by Gaston Leroux?”. He said he’d also read it “ages, ages ago” but that he either didn’t remember much or he didn’t like it and said something to the effect of: “I must not be a book person then.” Perhaps he meant he wasn’t book-ish. Perhaps he didn’t take to the ending of the book version.

I rummaged through my old college notebooks after the call and snapped a page of the extracted quotes from Leroux’s novel and sent it to him. I deduced from the date I noted down some pages prior to these quotes being taken as well as the extracts from one book I distinctly remember having read before I met Sebastian that I must have read Phantom of the Opera some time between September to December 2017. I also watched afterwards what I remember to be a film […] it would be the 2004 one with Gerard Butler playing the Phantom. Also a musical and an adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s.

The quotes are:

“And you know that nothing can restrain Erik, not even Erik himself.”

“(swear what?) You know I never keep my oaths. Oaths are made to catch fools with.”

Below them at the bottom of the page a tilltilating Wildean snide tacked on at the tail end which would amuse him – perhaps:

“Wilde: America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”

He responded with a heart emoji.

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… in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a moment in time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry “Let us go hence,” and then the darkness of darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting.

– Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan

Did you know that the word “panic” originated from the fear of the God Pan? Pan-ic: “god causing sudden mass terror or fright.” Indeed, the Apollonian-Dionysian distinction is for the Nietzschean starvelings denuded of any life experiences. I raise you with the Daemonic-Divine amalgamation. Or what Rudolf Otto calls Mysterium Tremendum:

The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its ‘profane’, non-religious mood of everyday experience. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy. It has its wild and demonic forms and can sink to an almost grisly horror and shuddering. It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of—whom or what? In the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures.

[…]

‘The numinous’ infuses the rational from above, ‘the sexual’ presses up from beneath, quite wholesomely and normally out of the nature which the human being shares with the general animal world, into the higher realm of the specifically ‘humane’. But though the two things I am comparing are thus manifestly opposite extremes, they have a closely corresponding relation to that which lies between them, viz. the reason. For the quite special domain of the ‘erotic’ is only brought into existence as the reproductive instinct passes up out of the merely instinctive life, penetrates the higher humane life of mind and feeling, and infuses wishes, cravings, and longings in personal liking, friendship, and love, in song and poetry and imaginative creation in general. Whatever falls within the sphere of the erotic is therefore always a composite product, made up of two factors: the one something that occurs also in the general sphere of human behaviour as such, as friendship and liking, the feeling of companionship, the mood of poetic inspiration or joyful exaltation, and the like; and the other an infusion of a quite special kind, which is not to be classed with these, and of which no one can have any inkling, let alone understand it, who has not learnt from the actual inward experience of ‘eros’ or love. Another point in which the ‘erotic’ is analogous to the ‘holy’ is in having in the main no means of linguistic expression but terms drawn from other fields of mental life, which only cease to be ‘innocuous’ (i.e. only become genuinely erotic terms) when it is realized that the lover, like the orator, bard, or singer, expresses himself not so much by the actual words he uses as by the accent, tone, and imitative gesture which reinforce them.

The phrase ‘he loves me’ is verbally identical, whether it is said by a child of its father or by a girl of her lover. But in the second case a ‘love’ is meant which is at the same time ‘something more’ (viz. sexual love), and something more not only in quantity but in quality. So, too, the phrase ‘We ought to fear, love, and trust him’ is verbally identical, whether it refers to the relation of child to father or to that of man to God. But again in the second case these ideas are infused with a meaning of which none but the religious-minded man can have any comprehension or indeed any inkling, whose presence makes, e.g., the ‘fear of God’ some thing more than any fear of a man, qualitatively, not merely quantitatively, though retaining the essence of the most genuine reverence felt by the child for its father. And Suso means in the same way to distinguish ‘love’ and ‘love of God’, when he says:

‘There was never a string so dulcet-toned but ceased to sound if stretched to a withered frame; a heart poor in love can no more understand speech rich in love than a German can an Italian.’

– Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy

The individual has nothing, really, to do with love. That is, his individuality hasn’t. Out of the deep silence of his individuality runs the stream of desire, into the open squash-blossom of the world. And the stream of desire may meet and mingle with the stream from a woman. But it is never himself that meets and mingles with herself: any more than two lakes, whose waters meet to make one river, in the distance, meet in themselves.

– D.H. Lawrence

This happiness is not for you… This happiness is for those who have not in them what there is in you.

– Tolstoy, War & Peace

Bomb “threats” in Phuket on its third day streak. One comment on a Facebook post I can no longer locate says something along the lines of ‘Must be a Brit or an Aussie.’

I was perusing an anthology of essays earlier this week and happened to be struck by a line courtesy of A.A. Phillips: “In the back of the Australian mind, there sits a minatory Englishman.”

Such glibness about it all, isn’t it? Am I not be allowed to be glib? I hate dickfests. Always have, always will. Isn’t the golden standard enumeration of the greatest television shows of all time just a bunch of men dick festing-fencing-flexing with each other? Mad Men, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad. Give me a fucking break. No depth, very little breadth. Old boys’ club. Dicking around to fend off their own impotence. If anyone would like to flex their dick, I am available for target practice.

Maybe I overreacted. Maybe Sasha was right when he said that I was “in love.” You know how I’ve always been a highly private person. Always tight-lipped about my personal life. But we’re post-suffrage, guys. Lay off, yes?

I will publish my personal correspondence on June 23rd because I stand by every word of it. Maybe I don’t want to be a mere milkmaid anymore:

But let’s not talk about this further because it is a sore point and a sordid premise. I guess one last thing I will say on this topic is that the lynchpin to all this or at least on my side perhaps lies in a kiss. It took me almost forever to unearth it from the perennial vault of useless episodic memory and you know how I loathe kissing in general and always have with any intimate partner but Anton – sore and sordid as he is – was undoubtedly the best kiss of my life and he delivered it with such intensity and desire that wouldn’t have made sense otherwise had he not known me before. I think people reveal a lot in moments of vulnerability. For example, I figured out that his English was absolutely fluent some days ago when in a moment I shall not indulge with or divulge to you out of love and respect he slipped and used flawless phrasing on the spur of a moment – a repartee to a developing situation that shows flashes of witticism and the full mastery of the English language (“occupied”, “full”, “engaged”). But this is neither here nor there. 

He who does not suffer does not enjoy, just as he who does not perceive cold does not perceive heat either.

– Miguel de Unamuno

It is upon judgments of this sort that the lives of men turn; for probability, not intuitive certainty, is the guide of human life.

– William Knight

[…] I know you think I am borderline hysterical or delusional. But I can assure you in my hearts of hearts that I am neither of these things. It takes days and weeks even to consider all the likely possibilities and ultimately arrive at one single conclusion of the many threads that tie all this together. I’ve turned things over and over in my head to figure out how bad things were and what sort of things I’d become an unwitting party to. That is not obsession, but risk assessment and threat containment.

[…]

Do you not find it at all plausible or just a wee bit convincing that some people can be a fervent and consummate romantic? That they would die for love? That they would kill for love? That they would abject [sic] and humiliate and sabotage themselves and their future for love? That they would endure pain and torment for love? Because I wouldn’t have been in this predicament if it weren’t for love!

[…]

I am not spiralling and I don’t wish to argue with you on these facts and theories. Treat them however you so wish. I don’t need anyone to be convinced of them to know that they are true. I do not judge truth by their appearance and even less by their reception. My suspicion of things is leaning towards one explanation and not the others and that’s good enough for me at the moment (although it is constant re-evaluation). I already feel myself mentally re-stabilised and even a bit re-aligned and that’s a win for the day. I am still moving ahead with my projects and my hobbies as if nothing has happened (the result of direct engagement and not living in uncertainty and fear). 

And lastly about such theories and ideas – I do not believe in facts. Facts are fragile and fungible. I however have much faith in theories and in ideas. In considering them and holding them together in my head even if they are at variance. Just because I state a suspicion does not mean I “believe” in it. It means I “consider” it. That it might be or could possibly be true, but I am not arguing over it. That contest takes place in my mind and not with or against other minds. And these truths and theories and ideas to me exist in a gradation and not as a singularity. They are ranked and weighed. They are statistical possibilities. They aren’t objects that adhere to or represent reality but are representations of the underlying realities the manifestation of which we experience as perception or objectivity. But now I’m naval gazing late into the night.

Always your bunny [hugs]

The Raving of a Mad Woman

An electric bolt seems a cold thing, yet a stroke of lightning will consume more at one flash than an ordinary fire would consume in an hour.

– Francis Grierson, 1911

Sasha called me as soon as his parents passed on the message. All came spilling out. I think I started sobbing even before he managed to say much of anything. His voice, the gentleness, the soulfulness. It has been ten years, hasn’t it?

I didn’t intend to tell him much of anything. Just thought we could meet up at the gallery and then I’d spill. But he knew me and he knew people, well too well, so then I started telling him everything.

[…] I said to Henry today: “You know if I didn’t have such an active imagination, none of this would have worked on me.” But this is what they do. Strategic ambiguity, psychological warfare, and as I’ve written before: “standard operating psychological mindfuck procedure.” And they knew me for years. Or he did. And so it worked. Of course it would work. What chance do I have? The relentlessness of it, the alternation between threat and cruelty and affection and relief, the opacity and deniability and constant guessworks, the escalation to intimacy (sexual subjugation) and the withholding of the continuation of it. And of course, the intellectual and creative seduction techniques. Carrot in the mouth or stick up your ass and on and on it goes. I said to Sasha […]: “I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.”

I woke up this morning and I knew it was all over. I could feel it already yesterday after the evening call with Sasha. One would expect reprieve and even reprisal to come out of such a therapeutic, emotional bloodletting, but it has exactly the opposite effects. I don’t know why exactly. Perhaps it was when Sasha said at the beginning of our call even before I started telling him anything that he was not entirely surprised that he’d get a call from me, that something coincidental had happened earlier in the morning, but insisted that it “has absolutely no meaning or connection with this whatsover.” I started panicking and said I wouldn’t be so sure. Then I started grilling him on this isolated coincidence – or two isolated incidents. Then I started thinking about the Ukrainian scientist cold emailing Henry just a day or two after I told him. […] Did I detect gloating in his voice? Did he plan all this? Did he know, even before I knew it myself, that I would contact Sasha again […] Did I actually reach out to Sasha because of the reason I thought I did? “If I don’t make it out of this alive, you could at least write about it. It could be your masterpiece.” I said to Henry this could very well turn into a roman à clef in 5 or 10 or 20 years when we’d all be dead and he’d perhaps even win a Nobel Prize for it. […] Sasha said to me in his usual soothing voice, “It’s okay, Salisa. I’m involved now.” I said to him that I was beginning to suspect that my re-establishing contact with him had been anticipated and perhaps even welcomed […]. I knew this and yet a bout of fear – the fear of tragedy and insanity and death – overrides all cognitive and emotional controls.

I said I’ve been reading papers […] and I understand the psychology behind all of it […], but none of it helps. Knowing these things doesn’t help whatsoever. What is the point of having an intellectual armour when your biological brain can be so easily hijacked? […]

It took him 9 days to send me spiraling into absolute terror and another 9 days to break through the rest of the barriers. June 1st was the first escalation. Three pressure points all set off at once – the birthday exhibition, the Shostakovich concert (I’m now more and more convinced that my drink was in fact spiked with an aphrosidiac and having felt physically compromised, I rushed out the door as soon as the concert ended), and then the break-in. June 9th was our first call. June 18th which is today […] It’s over. Nine days of Zugzwang and nine days of Mattnetz. Eighteen days and eighteen nights. That’s all it takes. And months and months of planning of course. If not much longer.

I said to Sasha he could “chronicle my descending into madness and complete psychological breakdown.” It might be too late it seems. Perhaps deep down he knew that as well. He said towards the end – encouragingly but not entirely convincingly – that I was still making jokes about it so I wasn’t at that absolute point of sheer despair yet. […] I think if I were to speak with him, say, three days earlier then there would be some fighting chance. If the intervention had come at the right time by the right people, I would perhaps pull through. Though still highly unlikely in any case. But the thought gave me hope.

It started with a Zugzwang on June 1st. But that timed stunt with Kirk that night on his doorsteps? The little outburst and ineffectual power-trip I had the next night and his perhaps feigned tremors and traces of vulnerability: “What do you want me to say? What do you want to hear? That I am deeply in love with you?”. Planting the seed of ideas of his invisible reach to Henry and Sasha. Perhaps even anticipating my re-contact with Sasha. All in the span of three days? That’s Schachmatt. Or even more accurately so, that’s Zwangsmatt. Well-played.

I emailed Henry this morning: “More figurative than realist. I doubt he’d render me as a Zuleika Dobson (the shithead sexist, racist Brits)”. Harking back to that “intimate” reference of 2018. It’s truly over. Whatever game that comes next can be figured as a mere defensive play. The match has been lost. The combined, well-timed assault alternating with seduction in the physical, psychological, intellectual, erotic, and emotional spheres – all carried out with such relentlessness and ruthlessness and with much sophistication and precision and planning and control. […] from a narrative point of view, it would definitely appeal to a gifted mind like Sasha and he could really play around with the idea: is Scarpia a mere character, an actor, a frontman – or is he in fact real? As real and terrifying as the mind’s eye and the mind’s ear would have it.

I remember him saying in a rather upset tone two nights ago: “Why does it have to be one way or another? Why do you have to think that way?”. I think that’s a tell-tale. It’s not one or the other. It’s both. Or rather it’s various. And that’s what’s remarkable and total about it. I can see it now. I can see the brilliancy of it.

But then again, what if it’s not both? And it’s not various? What if it’s singular and consuming and consummate? Remember what Alec Baldwin said to James Gandolfini towards the end of the 1996 film The Juror? […] And what is that saying? The more things change, the more they stay the same? And am I that naive still to think that whatever comes next being figured as a defensive play only applies to what is yet to come and not to what has already come before? And how far back is before? Four months? Five years? Seven years? As Churchill wrote: “the farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” And that makes it all the more horrifying.