25 random things about me

Don't ask me why exactly 25. Conformism or laziness I guess... this is how it came to me. With 25. And random. So here we go.



1. I like to sleep and dream. I can hardly sleep and my dreams are nightmares. However, I like the idea.
2. I love music when it's in tune with my feelings. I hate to listen to soft music when I am angry, to calm down. Maybe it calms down the singer, but definitely not me.
3. I love my dogs. And whatever other dogs. Actually, I like dogs.
4. I would be a druid, if born earlier. Nature is the only thing deserving a god-like respect.
5. People call me my style 'sarcasm'. I call it 'survival strategy'
6. I hate poetry. I'm too stupid to care that 'love' rhymes with 'dove'. One is emotion, another is bird. Doh...
7. I like SciFi - not as escapism, but as exercise of imagination.
8. I love to be in love. I completely cherish the hunting and killing of the prey. I have a hard time staying in love.
9. Been vegetarian for years; sometimes I revolt against it and eat meat, to remind myself there are no absolute, universal truths.
10. I have the soul of an engineer; I like cybernetics and I love to have a systemic view of the things; everything is interconnected and there are no coincidences.
11. Starting from statement no. 10, I think I can call myself a Buddhist.
12. I like the irony contained in the statements of whoever declares him/herself as 'religious but non-practicing'. WTF is that one?
13. I like order, but I thrive on chaos; I think chaos is the only true opportunity maker. That practically justifies my life choices so far, so it might be a defensive mechanism
14. I am a Cartesian to the bone - I doubt everything, including my own doubts. Go figure how I live .
15. I hope my next life I'll be a tiger; good enough reason to hate poachers.
16. I smoke a lot. I guess I do it because it makes me look smarter. Either this, or I watched too many cigarette ads.
17. I am oblivious to people. They have to jump into my way to be noticed. This might be closely related to the fact that I am a sound misanthropist.
18. I like connecting elements and seeing causalities. See statement number 10 once again.
19. I believe that there are many ways to fuck up your life, but they all have a common element - they start in the moment when you begin lying to yourself.
20. When I was a kid, I dreamt of being a pirate. In fact, the captain of a pirate ship. I like freedom and being rich, so I considered it the best professional choice.
21. I have a huge level of aggressiveness. Since I can't always externalize it, there it comes the self- destructive behaviour.
22. I hate inner ambivalence - maybe because I live with it for a life time. Or maybe not.
23. I consider myself a survivor - I have faith that I would land on my feet no matter what. Or die, of course.
24. I love long walks. They are always planned for 'tomorrow'.
25. Freedom. And just let me be.

Secondhand Serenade

There is one shop in Bucharest called MiniPrix - it sells cheap clothes, offering low quality for little money. The shop is most of the times crowded, although it's almost impossible to actually find really nice things. There are people who go there constantly to remake their clothes stock, because once in a while they can find one or two brand items searching in the piles of junk.

I tend to think this is just a symptom of a lifestyle, in which people just prefer to pay little accepting that they will receive little; and maybe, once in a while, they can find a decently nice moment in that low quality existence. In the economy of the system called 'life', they believe that giving a lot is too risky, so they settle for little.

There is this philosophy - if you dig too deep, you'll end up finding shit, so better if you don't. It fits the same MiniPrix life philosophy... if you keep things shallow, you don't have to work too hard, suffer too much or lose more than you can bear. However, the other face of the coin says that you won't receive too much in exchange also. In this world of small feelings, nobody cares that you can't grow roses on a layer of shit.... they settle for a thin cover of the stinky truths, because nobody actually needs roses. We can watch the wild weeds and pretend they have perfumed petals...

Fear of the Dark

One day I was talking to a friend about change and its value - I was changing the country again and I was excited about this. He asked - 'are you not afraid?'. I said 'why would I be?'. I still remember his answer: 'Those mortals are generally sensitive to and afraid of change and instability'.

I respect fear - it's good for survival. However, if you want to live and not merely to survive, then you should definitely overcome it. The human perpetual quest for certainty and stability is generally understandable, but sometimes it is sad to see how you give up your dreams for a tiny piece of stability. Life offers no guarantees but one - that nothing lasts forever. When choosing, one always tries to minimize the pain and maximize the gain. Nothing weird up to now. What I find generally quite pathetic is, still, how little it takes to define something as a gain and how often we mistake 'comfortable' with 'happy'.

I've always known good things don't come easy - maybe this is how we end up defining them as 'good'.... but this is another discussion. However, when one wants something, it's a pity to give it up not because he/she stopped wanting it, but because he/she is too weak or coward to stand up and face the hardships and the obstacles.

Aquariums are always safe - the water is warmed and it has no currents. Indeed, no adrenaline rush and not a too rich life. But the fish doesn't have to fight for survival and for the daily meal. It actually doesn't have to do anything - it just sits and moves back and forth in the tank, living his life until the day it dies. In human terms, it's like laying down with your arms crossed on your chest, to get used to the position in which you will be, one day, buried.

This is the only thing I fear - fear of living. I am afraid one day I will become too used to being comfortable to be able to follow my dreams, or to accept and deal with change. I am afraid one day I will become too lazy to leave what doesn't make me happy anymore, or too coward to face the truth and lie to myself that 'good enough' is good enough. I am not afraid of the dark, but I am afraid of turning off the light of my soul and make an oblivious darkness inside my heart, dying little by little every day without actually living.

Pain, I wanna do it again

Sometimes you get entangled in your thoughts and you think you are right - this just makes you deaf and blind and you pave the road to hell with your good intentions. You don't see or hear suffering, you dismiss whoever tells you: 'you are hurting me'. You treat others pain as a mosquito - slap it when it makes a noise or when it stings, without thinking that it needs that blood to live.

Kill the mosquito and then tell it - 'Lazarus, come forth'. And cry and walk like a caged tiger screaming 'how dare you die on me?'. You just think and you forget to feel and if somebody screams, maybe to bring your senses back, you just look at it and say pompously - 'I'm doing it for a good cause'.

Seeing the cause and not the people makes you an immutable bastard, even worse when people become that cause. The pretext of love can make one become the private Inquisition of another. Not only the public history, but also the private one is full of torture and pain in the holy name of love. And yet, we do not stop loving and hurting and suffering. And what is more important, we never stop hoping that love will not hurt anymore.

The last unicorn

I like fish tanks. I like staring at them and just thinking of nothing - watching how the fish smoothly move back and forth and up and down and back and forth again. There is such a randomness and yet such a smoothness in what they do over there. Plus, what I like the most is their lack of emotions. Or I don't know, maybe they do have some emotions, but I've never seen a fish expressing anything else but... its own fishiness (is there such a word, I wonder).

I am away from home again. New city and new people - I love change but I get so easily bored. Still, I'm not going to complain about the city (yet) since I haven't explored too much of it. So far, it seems pretty decent, particularly thanks to the vast green spaces it exhibits. Other than this... Lithuanian is not a language I am planning to learn (although it might be a good investment, since there are like 3million speakers in the entire world) so I'm staying as a tourist - partly in and partly out, always able to block the surrounding world through the simple act of not listening.

What's been on my mind lately is my own emotional desert. No, I don't want to say that I am not loved or that I don't feel warmth around and stuff like this. But what horrified me lately is my utter inability to miss. I don't miss home, I don't miss the people from there. I don't miss my dogs or anything or anybody. I know they are there and they are fine and I'm happy about it. But I don't miss them.

Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the guiding principle of my emotions. As paradoxical as it might sound, it doesn't mean that I stop loving what is far away. But I simply can't live my today sunk into missing. Somehow, my universe is fractured into the 'here and now' and the rest. I don't think I am too lazy to go the extra mile, emotionally speaking, and miss those who are away or far from me... I just think I can't give more than this.

Moreover, I start to feel slightly irritated when somebody tells me "I miss you". OK, I believe you, I know, you said it yesterday as well. Lacking any declared change in the state of the universe, it means you miss me today as well.... and my yesterday's statement that "I miss you" is still valid. Why do we need to get through the same things all over again? I talk to my mother through the messenger - 3 lines every second day or more (in which she says the usual crap, that she is fine and that my grandma is fine) and it's more than enough, as far as I'm concerned. But I am being given the entire ordeal that I am a too cold person and that I should (jeez, I hate this word) show more affection. WHY?

OK, I understand that people have emotional needs. I can fully sympathize with this, rationally speaking. I mean, I have my own emotional needs (pretty straightforward, imo - pay attention to me, ask me how I am and whether I am OK, talk to me about what bothers me and fulfill my sexual needs) but it seems I am not aware of even a small fraction the universe of things called 'emotional needs'. Why is the humankind so emotionally starved that it takes a lot of reassuring to make them understand even the most elementary truths?

Why is it that we pay so much attention to the words and not to the facts? Why do we tend to act like facts are interpretable but words are not, when I believe exactly the opposite? Why do we tend to place an emotional burden on the ones we love, under the name of "emotional obligations" and give them an entire guilt trip through the simple act of loving them?

On the other hand, why do we connect facts with emotions so much? I have to admit, I am myself fascinated with emotions, but I find them appealing as a six-legged four-headed creature - great to look at from behind a safety glass, but pointless to come too close. Looking around and being reproached for too many times that I am ... let's say emotionless (in various ways, from a sad "you are too cold" to a yelled "heartless bitch"), I started to doubt the social basis of my own construction and wonder whether I am or not a 'freak'.

My first thought was to go see a psychiatrist. A friend of mine explained me, in a highly elevated language, that my 'problem' might be rooted in my childhood and that a shrink might help. Absolutely - I mean, a psychologist helped, when I had a mild depression and I managed to understand the underlying mechanism of help.... so why not a shrink. Well, since this would have to wait till I get home, I decided to play on the net and get myself some personality tests. And I was happy to know that there is a name for people like me, according to the MBT (Myers Briggs Test) - they are called INTPs
(http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html and more specifically http://www.personalitypage.com/INTP_rel.html).

I happily put a badge on my blog - I mean, I am not the only one like this. Apparently, there are more 'emotional monsters' in this tiny universe, who appeal to reason and logic and not to emotions and are, in various degrees, 'insensitive'. I am perfectly aware that this will not excuse me in any ways from now on from my 'emotional duties', but at least I am in peace. I'm not the last unicorn....

Il Nome della Rosa

The other day I was trying to choose a bottle of soda from the shelves of the supermarket when an old lady asked me to give her a jar of honey from the upper shelf and to read her the price. Of course it was too expensive for her to buy it before the pension day and of course I couldn't resist her attempt to comfort her crave for sweet honey with some cheap salty black olives, so I bought the honey jar for her. No, I'm not saying this to point out what a generous great creature I am, but for two other reasons.

First, I hesitated a lot. I didn't want to offend her, I didn't want to make her feel that this is pity and that she is somehow disabled. I never thought of how delicate one should be in order to make his charity not to look like an insult. Sometimes we give from the bottom of our heart to the ones we love, but we do not know how to do it. Giving is an art and the one who does not possess it turns giving into humiliation.

Second, I was surprised by what she asked me - she wanted to know my name and she introduced herself to me. Her name is Gabriela and she is 83 years old. No, she didn't ask me for my name to mention me in her prayers - this would be nice but oh, so mushy. But she gave me a memory and she wanted to know my name, to individualize me... If I were to be cynical, I would say that one jar of honey bought me individuality. But I can't be cynical. Quite the opposite, I am sad. This is all I could do, and there is nothing else. One act made me feel like I am giving with all my heart, and this is how compassion should look like. Make this a habit and it's gonna become a pain in the ass, a burden, and all the meanings in a gesture of compassion would be forever lost.

In the end, I am who I am - not God, but Irina. My name defines me just as much as the colour of my eyes; I can always wear lenses, but my eyes are forever green. And my name is Irina, this is who I am... that Irina who writes a blog and bought a honey jar for the 83 yo Gabriela, in one supermarket from Bucharest, Romania, Europe, Earth. In AD 2009...

Love is all around

There is so much time of our life we dedicate to loving, thinking about love, searching for love or suffering from it that we all end up, eventually, thinking what the hell love actually is. I wondered about this myself and I ended up with a potential answer...

One of these days I was watching a presentation about phantom limbs and about "learnt" paralysis (http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html). It somehow seems that our brain creates stable paths between different areas, connecting certain stimuli with specific responses, through the pure repetition of the the succession of gestures. Like this, somebody who had a paralyzed painful limb eventually amputated still feels his limb, as painful and as paralyzed as when it was attached to his body, because for quite a long while he felt as such.

No, I did not come to the conclusion that love is like the phantom limb symptom, but I saw a potential answer coming from this medical presentation. We all differentiate between "falling in love" and "loving" and attach a certain stability to the idea of love. If falling in love can be a temporary loss of reason, to put it like this, then time cements this falling and transforms it into real love. Or some crap like this...

However, what if it's a simple chemical and, later on, neurological thing? What if we "fall in lust," due to some hormonal and chemical signals we exchange with our potential mate and, if this falling gets actuated, we start to create stable paths of communication between the visual and the emotional area of the brain? What if we actually teach ourselves to associate a certain person with the idea of love due to simply practicing the connection between the respective areas of the brain?

To me it seems like a quite decent explanation for love - I've never understood (in myself and others, not to be hypocritical) the idea that "love endures". Hell, I was talking about this in an earlier post and I was highlighting about the intrinsic connection between "lasting" and "enduring", on one hand and the concept of "true love" on the other. Why does love have to endure in order to assert itself as such, is a different question. However, how can we actually endure a lot of shit and still think that we love?

In almost everybody who can say "I have loved" you can check this - after the couple has been going through a lot of crap and of mutual miseries, resulting from living in common long after lust has ended, they still say that love is what holds them together. Some separate and leave, sick and tired of this endurance of love, but they still miss their former partner and attribute this feeling to the idea that "I still love him/her". But what if, in fact, it's nothing about love but it's just a path your brain created, in those times in which your chemistry was talking too loud for you to be able to hear your reason? What if that path, which became, in time, dug into your brain makes you think that you actually "love" somebody? Or (and this is even better) love IS this path and we just invented a name for it and then transformed it into a cultural pillar of our social and moral life?

I can only hope it is like this... I mean, wouldn't you want to invent a medicine against "loving" and against "missing" and live through rather short but fulfilling and rewarding relations, which can end when the "falling in lust" ended and leave no regrets, no disappointment and no bitterness? We lie to ourselves that "at least we feel that we are alive if we suffer from love", in order to allow ourselves to live on without permanently wondering "how could I be SUCH an idiot?" But I, personally, would swallow any pill that would allow me to stop missing. And yes, I would slip such a pill into my actual partners glass, to stop myself form having to deal with their past.

Thank you for smoking

I read on the pack of cigarettes - "Smoking Kills". No shit, huh? So does life, why don't they put a warning in the maternity hospitals and more warning in people's bedrooms? "Life Kills". It does it in the same insidious and ugly manner as smoking, if not worse. So keep smoking, you might even get away with dying easier.

Lost in Translation

At 7 am I am not sleeping - and not because I just woke up, but because I couldn't fall asleep. I spent the entire night going in circles and being depressed. The efforts of the last months proved to be completely useless. I tried so hard to run away from my previous life and rethink everything while being on my own... and I so miserably failed. Not in the execution of my master plan, but in its core - this is NOT what I wanted.

Sometimes you spot a problem and make it the central point of your life. Finding a solution occupies your time fully and you toss and turn till you find one.... and then you become obsessed with putting it into practice. You think and rethink it and fail to see major flaws - so you start making it real. And once it's up and working, you look at it, and you realize - WHAT A FAILURE!

The wave of disappointment is mixed with shades of anger, of rage, of doubt. Facing the nothingness most of the people offer, you suddenly realize the meaningfulness of what you just gave up. You know that in your life some people are there to stay, while most of them are just poor players on a stage of shadows, coming and going - but when you realize what people are important indeed and that you so hastily tried to take them out of your life, you start understanding what makes the distinction. Some people stay and try and make efforts to stick together even when times are harsh - and you end up blaming them for the harsh times you are going through, both of you, but fail to see they still love you (love being that thing that's left when lust has gone).

I've been through very hard times with my boyfriend. We hated each other, forgetting that we used to love each other. And out of that hate, I wanted, like a caged animal, to run away. But now, when I am away, I miss him badly and I can only admire his resilience. He is a bulldozer and that killed me for a long while, but the same style made him endure the harsh times and still love me. I do not know how to define love, because it can take many shapes - but very few shapes are real and lasting. I do not know if an enduring love belongs more to its kind than a fling - however, I do know that I miss him a lot and that I don't want too much to continue this experience of being separated. Things were not perfect and they won't be - but, like in any Hollywood movie, the good guy wins the girl in the end. And he is the good guy here, I just realized it... it's all about the point of reference. Maybe that saying is right - that the key to a successful relations is to have low expectations. When you benchmark a person against your expectations, everything looks gloomy.... but when you change it, and compare what that person offers to how life is without... I dunno, blame Stockholm Syndrome if you want, but all I wish for now is to go back home. And my home is a person, not a place. I miss you, my dear.

The Sound of Silence

It's been a long month since I haven't even thought of my blog. I somehow felt I used all the words in the world and have nothing more to say. I wanted to leave Germany peacefully and silently, like I lived there. And every day bringing me closer to the end of my staying there made me realize that I don't want to go back to my home country. I knew the German stage has ended and it's about the time to start looking for a new place, but no way I felt like going back to where I grew up.

There were times in my emigrant experience when I missed speaking my native tongue or meeting my old friends from back home. I felt many times alone and isolated and that's when the idea of going back home sounded a bit appealing to me. I kept thinking I could call people and talk for as long as I wanted, not being limited by the minutes spent on international phone conversations... or I could (even better) go out with them, just to hang out and have a drink or watch a movie or chat... in this line of thinking, the country I left because I felt as being too much limiting my choices became the country in which I was free to be a social creature. And I was missing this more than many other things in those times, so the decision to go back home came naturally, in a way.

I bought a car, rented a place back home and headed for my trip of independence. With my personal life going through some unclear times, I considered it wise to be back home and think things over in a more clear manner. Change is never a bad thing. Driving two thousand km's with three dogs in the car sounded like a bit of adventure, and I never refused things of this sort. When my car engine exploded on the Autobahn, the adventure started to look a bit unpleasant but ... it's all well when it ends up well. So we kept moving, after a short interval spent in a small Bavarian village, where I had the opportunity to contemplate living in the country and to turn off any fantasy of this kind for good.

At Szeged, civilization ended. The four lanes highway going around the cities, like on a normal trans-European road, became a two lanes country road, where you had to cross small towns and cities, driving behind a long line of trucks. It all became worse after crossing the Romanian border, so any sort of home sickness that must have brought me back here, started to vanish. To make a long story short... I am home. Sweet home, Alabama.

Oddly enough, I feel more dislocated than ever. Times which were promising to be fun and alive and entertaining are actually boring and lonely. I look around and I fail to understand people anymore. I spend long hours to solve simple problems and this makes my heart shiver, reminding me of my Italian times. I feel insulated on a grey deserted island, where I understand the language but nothing else from the surrounding world. I do not hate, I just feel paralyzed - I wake up and I do not know what to do and where to go. I have no desire to call or to meet people and I have no places I know of where I can take a peaceful walk. I stay for hours in front of the TV screen, watching the pixels hit my eye and not getting one layer deeper and I feel deadly bored.

I must be feeling like a prisoner after release, but I was released in a place where I do not want to stay. In the world where I had no limit, I felt trapped by the vasteness of my horizons - anywhere equals nowehere. Strangely, I feel the same nowhere here; the surrounding universe is neither hostile nor friendly, just looks and feels more deserted than the place where I knew nobody else. There, loneliness seemed natural - here, being alone is weird, since I am alone by choice, at least apparently. However, this is how I feel - I do not refuse the contacts, I just don't feel that I want them.

As you get older, it is probably harder and harder to get to know and to accept new people. I look at new faces and at old places and I feel ... silent. Even writing this post made me feel somehow clumsy. I do not know what to say, words have left me and I'm caught in a limbo of silence. No hostility in me, no revolt - just a paralysis of senses and of mind, in which days flow one after another and I live in an expanding, pointless, today.

Blühe, deutsches Vaterland

After three long and painful years in Italy, here I went to Germany. With a car loaded with clothes, books and my three dogs, I left the sunny (and lethal) Florence for a nice quiet village on the German-French border. One night of travel, and we arrived to a nice house with an ugly yard, which I was expecting to cradle in another nightmare - I didn't know if much worse than the Italian one but definitely was not expecting it to be much better either.

The German landlady took 10 min of her time to explain me how to sort the garbage and showed me the calendar with the schedule of the garbage collectors. I felt a wave of amazement and a strange happiness warming up my heart. These people can actually plan something in two weeks from now on... while in Italy you can't basically look further than tomorrow and if, God forbids, something unexpected happens today you only have a horizon of uncertain dates and possibilities of when that thing can or actually will be solved.

Being used to hate as your only mean of defense, I started to hate Germany as I was hating Italy. "Those Germans" replaced "those Italians" in a well pre-made discourse. But hell, "those Germans" were giving little to no reason to comment upon or get angry with. The Internet connection broke down, and I had a sudden panic attack - if this happened in Italy, it would have taken anything, from 3 days to 3 months to get it fixed, and a lot of friendly conversations with nice Italians who couldn't solve it for various reasons: it has been solved (nope, try again), somebody is there working on it (where, do you use ghost workers, I see nobody), the technical infrastructure has an unknown problem (it's a damn wire popping out there, come glue it back), it's a holiday (you advertise as continuous and uninterrupted client service, why the hell are you on a break), it's a strike (to hell with your labour union), it's due to the storm (I didn't know my Internet subscripition was made to "God inc.") and whatever other reason that Mediterranean creativity could come up with. Well, in Germany it took like one hour of talking to the client service and voila, my net was back and working (and it took one hour because it was a very complicated problem, which I managed to solve only by being a non-German and lying shamelessly to the client service operator).

As days were passing by, my wall of hate was being reduced to nothingness. How can you hate a clock-wise mechanism in which your problems are getting solved without you having to sweat on them? How can you hate a small village in which you go walk your dogs in a huge nice field, where the lawn is mowed regularly to define the access path? How can you hate NOT hearing your neighbours (I still have the traumas of the Italian lady with an amazing pair of lungs and an unstoppable need to yell at everything that moved around her, from husband to kids and from pigeons to the pans and pots in her kitchen)? How can you hate the restaurants in which you pay exactly as much as you calculated and have no surprise taxes, fees or whatever else the waiter could think of when writing down your bill?

I still have hate reserves, but I save them for Italy - and yes, I still have reasons. My Italian card, purposedly required for as being "internationally valid" which doesn't work in Germany because they gave you some unknown V-Pay circuit instead of some boring Visa or MasterCard (and yes, it's your fault you haven't checked); trying to take the car out of Italian license plates which lasts "approximately a week" (I sometimes wonder whether they don't use some sort of computers with a very high random operating factor - today they are on strike, tomorrow they wake up late and so on); my Italian university, where my superviser barely remembers my name and, if asked for advice, he sends me a short letter of moral support but no academic idea whatsoever; and I could go on for a long while but hell... it's all behind now.

It's the first time in my life when I feel well in a place. So far, I was finding reasons not to, but here... oh well, I feel happy here. It's the first time in my life when I don't want to leave a place and, ironically, I'm supposed to be leaving in less than one month. Where? I have no idea yet... I might go home for a few months, although the simple thought of it starts to give me creeps... I might move to a different German city, and the idea is more and more present in my head... For a long while I've been disconnected from places - I could go anywhere and, oddly enough, this anywhere actually means nowhere. All places are equal, but none says anything to you. There are different degrees of comfort, but basically it is all the same - I ended up as a globalized mut without any home. When you feel the world is yours, and you can go any place, there is a complementary, but rarely mentioned, feeling of being a nomad, free but way too alone.

I've always been fascinated with nomads and always tried to become one. I've been afrain of ties, roots and responsibilities. I loved the feeling of being able to leave any place in any moment. And I do not know whether I am getting old and aiming to become just a pilgrim (always having a home to return to) or it's just a temporary feeling of belonging which would suffocate me in a few months or so.... but I don't want to leave this place. I walk on the fields every day and I watch ever step; I create memories of a place which will stay in my heart as the home of my soul, in which the feeling of home is not given by the past connections and ties, but by the present happiness and the dream of a possible future. A home by choice, this is what the little German village became for me. I do not know if I will ever return, but I know I'll be missing for a long while the corn crops, the football field and the jasmine from my neighbour's yard.

Pictures from an exhibition - Poets of the Fall

In the last couple of days I've been in the "movie mode" - I felt like watching a movie or two. A couple of days ago I spent one hour and a half watching "Grimm love/Rohtenburg" (after a real case) and like three days after thinking about it. The movie is pretty well made, although a bit Hollywood style, but my main question was, after watching - "why on Earth would somebody want to have his penis bitten off and then served as exquisite dinner dish?". OK, I can pretend to understand the desire to be eaten, but I fail to understand the quest for horrible pain and mutilation just to have a very particular steak on the table that night. Since the answer to this was not really at hand, I had to leave the questions open and tried to watch something else, to somehow wash away the feeling of being awe stricken and tongue-tied by the hideousness of the dark corners of our mind and soul.

The natural choice was a horror, of course. Like a horror in which nothing is real, because this is why we like horrors - how can you fear a Freddy Krueger, actually? So I went for the last production signed Lars von Triers - "Antichrist" - advertised as an "art drama/horror". Oh well... I have to confess I've never felt sorry for spending my boyfriend's money, but this time I was overwhelmed with remorse. I can't think of anything that would have made a worse purchase than that movie ticket.

It starts well... like a story of losing and coping with grief. So far so good, you are even ready to believe that taking your patient/wife to the forrests for a curative trip is actually a current therapy practice. The first sign of doubt appears when a a blood-covered fox, which is disemboweling itself, turns to the main character of the movie and says something like "chaos reigns". One can assume it's because of the little bell hanging on the fox's neck and, given that you actually came there open heartedly and paid ten euros for the ticket, you don't rush out of the hall. WRONG, you should have when you saw the first sign, because from there on everything turns into a gory involuntary comedy.

Shortly put, there is some sort of feminist cry for the women murdered all along the history for the simple crime of being women, mixed with a wierd desire of the director to have close shots of (very unshaved) genitals. And I can only blame it on my luck that the leading female character has an urge to section her clitoris with a pair of scissors - in the end, it's been just a few days since I watched another movie with self-removed genitals.

After these last two experiences, I think it's about time to face the bitter truth - I have the soul of an engineer and I do not understand art. I also don't understand humans, but this is minor and irrelevant, who the hell cares about humans? ;). So, I made up my mind ... from now on, I shall only go to movies which are about either Godzillas or some invasion of the killing tomatoes. I am just as sick and tired of art for the sake of art as I am of living for the sake of not dying. If beauty is the destination of all these trips, then... for fuck's sake, let's not forget the journey till there. The risk of slipping into absurd and grotesque is way too high and, instead of bringing the beauty in the eye of the beholder, you poke the eye out to roll it in your "art".

Das alte Leid

"Once upon a time, a blade fell in love. It was a thin sharp blade, a bit naive and a bit adventurous. She liked impossible challenges, so she fell for a bulldozer - the others around her were so shapeless...She was looking for another blade, but there was none left - or maybe she was not that lucky to meet another. She just kept running into shapeless or too-simple-shaped beings. Some were beautiful but empty, some were too complicated, some were too afraid to be near a sharp-edged blade. For a while she tried to live without adventure, without a thrill... but that was not a life, was merely an existence and the blade kept dreaming of waking up to life. And one day, she met the bulldozer.

Dancing around him with her shiny blade and showing off the beautiful precious stones of her hilt she made him fell for her also. In all the movies they watched, fate was near the daring ones, so they hoped fate would be helping them as well. The love was so big and the task was so impossible that the blade decided to put all her efforts into achieving it. Not that the task was too clear, but the blade thought she finally found what she wanted. So she came after him, in the world where the bulldozer decided to have a tuning and become bigger, stronger, better.

Time was passing and the blade was happy. She felt safe, because she didn't have to cut her own way through. She felt strong, because she was no longer bearing the heaviness of hitting and being hit. She felt beautiful, because she was in love and she was being loved. And time started to fly.... As months were just passing, the blade noticed some rusty spots on herself. She wanted to dance, to clean her shiny metal and be again shiny and happy - but looking around she noticed she was locked in her case. The space around was pressing her and that's when she realized she was hanging on a wall as decoration. She thought an accident happened, so she cried and asked for the bulldozer to come and take her down from the wall - but when he came, he told her that this is her place. A bit surprised, a bit not knowing what is going on, the blade got back to hanging on the wall thinking this might be an accident or who knows...

Time was flying like a hurricane but for the blade it was slow as a snail. Little by little she started to forget who she was. Her surface was covered with a thick layer of dust and all spotted from the passage of days and months. Her hilt was not glittering anymore - the precious stones were now light-tight and she looked at them, and at herself and she suddenly thought: "this is such an ugly piece of metal". In her heart, the dances and the light and the fire were not forgotten. And so she asked the bulldozer "let me go, let me be what I used to be... I will come back to you and I will charm you with my flares". But the bulldozer said this is not what she should be... this is not what bulldozers find appropriate - she has to learn to be blunt and she has to stop complaining. It is not dignifying and completely unreasonable... in the end, she was having what most of the she-bulldozers would ever want.

Her soul was falling like on a descending convolution. She didn't want to see the dust on herself, but she couldn't take her eyes away from it. She wanted to get back to what she had, at least to what she had when she met the bulldozer. Tearing herself apart, she hoped she would be happy again. But every time she looked at the bulldozer, a new feeling was growing inside her - hate. She hated him and herself for what she turned into and she was hating him more and more, as he was reproaching her what she turned into. Sometimes she was crying and whispering - but isn't it what you wanted me to be? Yes, the bulldozer was answering, but you also have to be happy; why are you sad, I am turning you into a decent creature. You should appreciate my effort... in the end, I could have taken a she-bulldozer and not have to go through all these troubles.

All the blade wanted now was a strong fire - she wanted to be melt and remoulded. She didn't care into what, just to stop seeing that ugly piece of metal that was, long ago, a thin shiny blade. She just wanted her freedom back - and if, while ago, she would have just taken her freedom back in a simple act now she couldn't anymore. Her sharp edges were now chippy and worn out, her steel was now opaque and dirty as any cheap metal and her hilt was now shapeless. All she had in her heart was hate and doubt - she couldn't understand what went wrong. She couldn't believe somebody would just bend her till she becomes beyond recognition for the sake of some abstract ideas. She was angry with herself for not seeing that the bulldozer was merciless - she just thought he meant well. And maybe he did, but ... who cared about it anymore? And although she felt like in the middle of hell, when looking carefully it was actually the mid-afternoon of a very regular day of her life. And that's when she decided it is time to go dance alone...."

I do not know how the story ends. I sometimes see the blade in a dream and she is getting stronger and stronger. I even saw her smiling a few times. And when she will visit me again, I will tell you her story from there on - for now, all I know is that she promised she will turn back into a blade. An older one and maybe less shiny and more cutting... but a blade, again.

Time to say good bye

How do you know when it's time to walk out of something, be it a work place, a relation, a country or whatever else? When is that moment when you give up all hopes and withdraw your investment? Moreover, once you "kinda" understood what is the solution, when do you start putting it into practice? I assume there are no easy answers to this and no universal solutions - everything is very personal and very much depending on the circumstances. Short term relationships function on a different principle, and this is a very relative statement. Let's not forget that, in the end, no long term relation is as such from the beginning - they all start as short term ones.

Little by little, you get entangled into a relation till you end up forming a "couple". With time, you become so much a member of the couple that "we" becomes the first word that comes to mind when you want to say "I". Whatever you desire, plan, want to do, decide to change - it affects the other as well and you start acting "responsible" (jeez, I hate this word). In return, you are supposed to receive the answer to your other needs. In very cold terms, each relationship becomes a business - you invest something and you expect a return for your investment (to specify: business is here used to define a relationship of mutual exchange, in all the possible terms - emotional, sexual, social etc). You, each of you being in a couple, gives up a certain share of personal freedom in exchange for the other doing the same, for commonly agreed decision and, in the end, for mutual profit.

This is, I believe, the biggest trick. You expect a profit (again, it can be an emotional profit - you feel happy, a sexual one - you feel satisfied, a social one - you feel accomplished etc) but you miss the point that it's very hard for both to maximize this profit. Maybe it is one of Murphy's Laws, I do not know, but it might be that there is a constant maximal value that this profit can take. Once you reached this conclusion, the next step comes easy - if you want to maximize your profit, you can only do it by lowering the investment and, if possible, maximizing the return.

In simple terms, the cooperation for mutual profit becomes a competition for who makes the most out of it. One is winner, the other one becomes by default the loser. He/she starts feeling that what is invested into this relationship is not bringing back much; sometimes it becomes exactly the opposite and it brings back a double-edged frustration - you are frustrated by how much you give and you are also frustrated by how little you receive. I assume this is the first step to the end... when you start telling yourself "it's not worth it".

From there on, strategies vary. Some I assume are winning strategies and you manage to make the business work and reach a mutually satisfying balance of what you give vs what you receive. These would be those things called long lasting marriages... and I have seen in my entire life only one which worked (my grandparents). The fact that it was built on mutually accepted frustration is less relevant in the end - they were content with how things were and they built a family, a house, raised a grandchild and so on. Not fairy tale, but a nice real story, ending with the death of my grandfather after 52 years of marriage (so, we can't blame this for his death;)).

However, this is one story and it started long time ago. Times have changed and people also. We start wanting more and being less able/willing to accept frustration. The array of choices is wider and the social pressures have considerably diminished. Being unhappy is not a state of mind one is any more willing to take for the sake of a relationship, whichever one it is. And what happens from here on... I will discuss in a later post, because now I'd better go get some rest. I've said goodbye to one country and I am planning to say goodbye to a man. Yes, I am tired:)

Happy Easter! Can I crucify you tonight?

And now, time to rehearse the Easter scene, kids! Hurry up, take your positions. You got the honour to be Jesus for tonight - let us try the Golgotha first. Bear the burden and keep walking, this sounds like some good intense fun. OK, action. Walk and smile, bitch, we have a show to run here. Sweet pain, I wanna do it again... walk three steps back and let's re-shoot this scene. I think you are bleeding too little, we've got to try harder.

Yes, this is the solution - keep talking while you whip. Blame, hurt, swear - we need no special effects, just push those thorns a bit more and let's watch how it bleeds. Get up from your knees bitch and stop begging for mercy - who do you think you are? Oh please, stop these disgusting tears... stand and let's whip you again. We are not done yet, the best part is yet to come. And what is most important - you know it and you walk towards it on your feet. How dare you say you can't anymore, you can't take me anymore? I am God and I do it out of love for you.

Just bring those fucking nails and let's get it over with. Who needs a Resurrection?

Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a slow torch burning
I was a key that could use a little turning

So tired that I couldn't even sleep
So many secrets I couldn't keep
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep

It seems no one can help me now
I'm in too deep
There's no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here no there

Can you help me remember how to smile
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded
Life's mystery seems so faded

I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows
Here I am just drownin' in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train

Everything is cut and dry
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don't believe it
Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughin' at the rain
Little out of touch, little insane
Just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train never comin' back
Runaway train tearin' up the track
Runaway train burnin' in my veins
Runaway but it always seems the same

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psP1bKKEtHg

Wollt ihr das Bett in Flammen sehen?

While digging in the blog-world, I ran into a really funny one (by funny meaning here a bitter, cynical manner of dealing with the "shock and awe" moments) . Seen from the perspective of a man, the blog tells us about various sexual and not-so-sexual ads posted by various ... should I call them men? ... on various dating sites - http://whywomenhatemen.blogspot.com/

Somewhere on the border between surreal and disgusting, with a touch of "how the statistically average man looks like and what is going on in his two braincells", the blog is a discrete invitation to both laughter and frigidity. Why? Because you DO run into all sorts of... people(?) and, during a life time, you hear some weird stories and you have to drink the glass of imbecility to the bottom sometimes. There are no guarantees you are 100% idiot-proofed, regardless what safety measures you take.

Moreover, outside the virtual reality you end up hearing real stories of real relationships. I'd be damned if I manage to understand how and why (and where have the good old strong relations of our grandparents gone), but I somehow ended up with the conclusion that, basically, each and every relation is just a story of misery and who fucked up who in a better way. And no, I do not mean anything like "sex" (which seems to be the biggest fuck-up in basically all the relations I've come to know of); I mean who screwed who, in what circumstances and so on and so forth.

In the same pathetic-to-hysterically-funny manner, the sexual life of both singles and non-singles seems to be more of a wanna-be than of a reality. Singles keep complaining they have nobody to have sex with, while those in a relationship have a wider array of complaints. If you are single, you have to date and hence, to find a suited candidate, invite him/her out, do the bla-bla dance and get laid. Of course there is the simpler way, namely just to get laid with whoever stands in front of you and seems slightly available, but hey... we want romance. Does it get any easier if you are not single? HELL, NO! On the contrary - having a stable sexual partner seems to be the best way to make you non-sexual (with variations on the theme - I am bored, too much routine, I can't date somebody because I would be cheating, nobody would date me because I would be cheating and so on).

I kept wondering, while listening to beautiful, smart and young females, what the hell is wrong with the world. Relations in which your beloved guy is too suffocated to have sex more often than once every now and then (no, I do not know the actual frequency but I somehow doubt it can be called frequency and not better 'random acts of mercy'); relations in which your beloved guy has gone for some time, in search of his personal freedom or whatever, and you end up having some random sex with some random persons; relations in which you stay like a nun for a year, because his PhD and your PhD are in different places, and it is too expensive for him to come pay a visit; relations in which you sleep in the same house, room or even bed with your better half, but you have sex sometimes between once per trimester and never; relations in which trying to buy sex toys proves to be a sex-killer, since the cost of the toys is too expensive for one of the two (generally, the not-so-interested one); relations in which you watch a porn and mourn, while your partner is writing a very important article.... should I continue?

Does this make us less sexual beings? I wouldn't bet on this - all the hormones relaxing somwhere in a remote mountain spa, very very far from you, are beemed back to you the second you see/meet somebody desirable. If you are single, you might think you are lucky (well, actually wait till you get to the first date and ... write on that blog after;) ); if you are not single, it becomes even funnier - you want to have sex, but doing it with the regular partner would be too much (not like you should change the routine; plus, it raises questions); doing it with the desired partner is barely possible; doing it on your own seems to be a working version, till you run up into a solution for all your problems (and I mean all, who the hell thinks that you can have sex without solving all the other existential questions?)

What should you do, if you actually plan to have a sex-life ... stay single or not? Adam, choose yourself a wife. Oh... let me try to make Eve first ... you might have a wider array of choices ;)

Stairway to Heaven

When a woman starts by saying "I am not feeling too well", you should know something bad is coming. Whether she is severely and innocently fucking up your plans or it's just her PMS... you cannot know from the start. But do not expect anything good to follow the unfortunate sentence...

This is what happened to my plans to visit a nearby city today - the girl who was supposed to come up for the trip together with her boyfriend, called me in the morning and started with "Hi, I am not feeling too well". Since I am myself very familiar with this strategy, I started to look for alternatives in the back of my mind while in the background the second, third and next sentences were smoothly flowing. I said "get better soon" while thinking "bite me", hung up and lit a cig. I had no intention whatsoever to rot in the house today, having a car with a full tank at hand and a sunny spring day ahead. I called a friend (boring as death, but less boring than driving a couple of hundreds kilometers alone) and we went to the closest point of attraction the map showed us.

The road was a beautiful drive on the sun-lit Tuscany hills and through the forest, but nothing was announcing the small miracle called San Gimignano. I do not fancy too much medieval cities - the too narrow roads and the walls almost merging from two sides over the streets give me a feeling of suffocation. I get bored after the second building from I don't know what century and even before the first museum (which I graciously skip visiting). So I was glancing through the shop windows and taking a picture now and then.

My ear got caught in some sort of a whispered music and I suddenly had to walk that direction. I see the world, but I understand it way better through smells and sounds. San Gimignano smelled like incence, wet stone, laundry and trees and sounded like a corner of heaven. Behind a church there was this small piazza, a square surrounded by walls and with a beautiful acoustics. This guy was playing some Bach at the harp in one corner of the square and the sound of it... just broke the time and made it freeze into one sunny second.



I sat and smoked on the edge of the well near him, and dreamt. Life was unbearably light (like Kundera was saying) and the light was unbearably alive. The harp was talking with the voice of the forest, of the hills, of the clouds. The background tourist humming was not able to cover the sound of a fairy-tale, but it was maintaining that thin red thread connecting my mind to this world and allowing me to be there, but everywhere else as well. And when the music stopped, I got up and left without looking behind. I thought the day gave me more than enough already, I didn't want to bother the memory I just grasped.

The city was more generous to me than I imagined and the path led me to the inner yard of a former small castle. The smell was changed now - it smelled like grass and olive leaves, and a bit like still waters. Another old covered well and more music - this time a guitar, playing some Spanish strain... a bit more pushy and daring, more vivid and wild like a hot wind of spices, the music spoke of a different Heaven. A Heaven of touch, of skin and lips and arms, a place of togetherness. The harp invited me to solitude, the guitar reminded me of people from afar. Two moments, two sounds and two places made San Gimignano look like a universe in miniature, like a medieval lithography of the entire world.





Eeeee.... e basta per stasera.

And if I go insane, please don't put a wire in my brain

Having lunch in a grad school cafeteria can be a traumatizing experience. I was hungry today so I decided to take my chance and eat in the "mensa" of a very famous Italian graduate school. Well ... that... hurt.

I've never liked the prison/church/sanatorium atmosphere that I encountered there every time I had to pay a visit. The Institute is situated on one of those beautiful hills surrounding Florence, but it is quite well insulated from the outside world. It has all the facilities one needs to study and nothing even remotely resembling living. Surviving for the noble purpose of producing a research - for sure. But living... not really. What strikes me the most is that I've never heard anybody laughing out loudly. There is this constant background humming, of moderately low voices, but not even accidentally somebody raises the tone to say something. No, no... I DO NOT mean yelling. I mean just somebody bursting into laughter, or saying something to somebody a bit farther. Or some uncontrolled giggle in the library. Just the civilized voice, a bit louder than whispering but not too much, only for the neighbours to hear.

At 2 o'clock they serve lunch and the disciples of science come to eat in the "mensa". They gather in small groups, based on two criteria - ethnicity and research interest. People are rarely quiet or alone - they need to make their networks, so they interact as much as possible. Still, they do not stare at the others. Of course they would notice their supervisor passing by, and then the ass-kissing job will take over, but otherwise... they are all ears and eyes to their group. If you start listening to some conversations, you find out that most of the conversations are either political debates or discussions about a thesis. Even when there are those gorgeous spring days, when the view is breath-taking, nobody simply stares at the scenery - at most, they start taking pictures of each other with the mobile phone, under the blooming magnolia tree.

The girls are almost all trying to be pretty. Dressed more or less casual, they try to prove that you can be both sexy and smart (I would like to point out that shaving those armpits might increase your chances .... and yes, this is for the girl who ate at the table in front of me today. Please, pretty please, do not EVER, under any circumstances, mix again a spaghetti dress with ... those things. However, thanks for keeping me slim and fit). I didn't manage to figure out why exactly, since most of the guys start looking interesting after at least one month of "robinson-crusoe-ing", but let's say it's just a matter of taste.

I tried once to go to the Friday evening bar, suggestively named "Fiasco". I do not know if it was purposedly called like this or it's just a weird concidence, but that bar is the best proof that there is life after death. Thanks God, they have alcohol and a table football. Oh yes, and a pool table as well, but after a lot of alcohol football does come easier. An evening spent with a bunch of highschool cheerleaders might be more rewarding. I can probably write a short novel about how each beer added improves the general perception, but I'll stop here. It's simply too boring to even yawn.

Today, while eating those sad spaghetti and staring at the people, I remembered Slawomir's skeptic eyes whenever we were talking about academia. I was at that time pissed that he is not more interested and active in my academic growth and development. He was my supervisor, he was bound to do this. Well... now I start getting an idea why he was so slow with this. He always helped me when I asked for help, but kept the incredulous look on his face. I noticed the same expression on my own face, while reflecting about my academic future. I know that having these ideas one year before getting my PhD is like wondering whether you actually want to be a parent in the 8th month of pregnancy, but they say it's better later than never.

I do not have any closing thoughts, I have not reached any conclusion. I'm barely starting to ask myself the questions... but who knows, maybe they are right when they say that half of the answer comes when formulating the right question...

My world is miles of endless roads
That leaves a trail of broken dreams
Where have you been
I hear you say?
I will meet you at the Blue Cafe
Because, this is where the one who knows
Meets the one who does not care
The cards of fate
The older shows
To the younger one, who dares to take
The chance of no return

Where have you been?
Where are you going to?
I want to know what is new
I want to go with you
What have you seen?
What do you know that is new?
Where are you going to?
Because I want to go with you

So meet me down at the Blue Cafe

The cost is great, the price is high
Take all you know, and say goodbye
Your innocence, inexperience
Mean nothing now

Because, this is where the one who knows
Meets the one that does not care
Where have you been?
I hear you say
I'll meet you at the Blue Cafe

So meet me at the Blue Cafe

Pictures from an exhibition - This is not a pipe

And there I went, to the Korean Film Festival. I tend to like Asian movies when I don't feel like screaming after the first 5 minutes (I fail to really grasp the humour and whatever is supposed to be a comedy irritates me to hell and back), so I considered it as starting with the right foot. The first movie was a pleasant experience - called "Secret Sunshine", it was a delicate story about a woman in pain, about accepting and forgiving, about faith and rebellion, about sanity and madness. I liked how the emotions were depicted - rather suggesting and giving a wide space for interpretation, the movie was not at all an attempt to shove something down your throat.

Not that I don't like Hollywood movies, but they scare me a bit - when the actor loves you can see it on his face, hear it in the background music and, in case you didn't get the idea yet, he would eventually mention a few words about it. I appreciate that at least they don't sing, like in the Indian movies, but still - I like to be allowed to understand myself what is going on there and to set the limits of what I define as pain, love or whatever else. One more reason to like the Korean movie mentioned above.

They say it's essential to know when to stop - I didn't, so I went to the second movie. This time, I ran into some sort of a teenager-ish comedy/fantasy, on a sci-fi background (some crap about time travelling and sending a cyborg back in time, if anybody wants to know about it), too loud to even allow me to peacefully take a nap during the screening. OK, I confess - I finally managed to fall aslepp when on the screen it was the Tokyo Earthquake moment, so right in the middle of falling buildings and rifts opening. I guess it was a nervous reaction, but I was happy because I managed to sleep without snoring and because I woke up in due time to see the crappy ending of a bad movie. Yuuuuhu, indeed.

Have I stopped after this one? Hell no. I decided to go watch the last movie of the festival, namely the most recent piece of work (and of course of art) by Kim Ki-Duk. The movie called "Dream" managed to bring me on the verge of laughing with tears and crying with laughters. Shortly put, the starting idea is nice - he dreams and she enacts, while sleepwalking. He dreams of his ex whom he still deeply loves, she performs on her ex, whom she deeply resents. I started to have an itch in like min. 10 of the movie, when the (how to call her... maybe shaman, maybe witch-doctor... whatever, imagine the wise woman in a position of spiritual authority, ok?) spiritual counselor started to babble some nonsense about black and white as being the same colour, with some Matrix II type of discourse.

I decided to ignore the signs and kept watching. I lasted to the point in which "he" is supposed to stay awake, so that "she" does not do anything stupid anymore. I didn't manage to understand why exactly he decided this when she went to prison for murder (I mean, for God's sake, how could anybody imagine she can run out of prison and do whatever he dreams? This would have been THE time to sleep and dream at will, but whatever... call me a Neanderthal), but I kept watching. The climax was the fight with the sleep. I can understand a metaphor but... for phuck's sake, don't they sell coffee or Red Bull over there? Why do you need to start the self-immolation process, when you can simply go for a walk or drink a Nescafe? Isn't it simpler to mix 4 spoons of that brown dust with some sugar and drink than to stick needles in your skull or scratch some symbols with a knife on your legs? Can't you take a walk, do you really have to smash your feet with a sculpture hammer?

I understand that you can make art for the sake of making art. Well, I actually understand better having sex for the sake of having sex, but again... let's not get into details. Shouldn't the image (and imagination) have some decency to keep in touch, at least once in a while, with common sense? Long ago, I thought common sense should be protected and defended against academia. Now, I start to believe the list of enemies is a bit longer. This is not a pipe... try adding some tobacco into it.

Songs of love and devotion

I would like to have a word with the idiot who introduced the idea of "happily ever after". I would actually like to crack his freakin' head, not to mention my own for buying this crap. WTF was I thinking of... what?!?! What was I expecting, what did I believe in, what did I work so hard for? For happily ever after... yuppi! All the relations I've had, seen or heard of were relations of power. At the beginning, one tries to mold while the other leads. And for as long as the order of the world is not shaken, all goes smooth. What was I expecting - peace and happiness?

What do you do when the order of the world suffocates you? When people who know you tell you that you look like an animal in a cage, brought on the verge of self-destructive behaviour because of being locked for so long, and yet too afraid to jump into the freedom again? Where do you start winning your freedom back and how do you do it? Step by step or in one big chunk, which you are not too sure you can actually swallow? While you decide what to do, how do you negotiate with the power at home? Your heart belongs there for so long that everything still hurts. Still, the same heart remembers how and what YOU used to be, when you were free.

In the meanwhile, everything becomes an overt fight for power. Every centimeter that you want to take back (which you happily gave up years ago, in the name of some illusory love and peace) must be fought for. Everybody becomes a victim for himself and an aggresor for the other. You look in the mirror and you can't stop wondering - what have I become? What is a relation - a test for setting new standards of how low you can get? A dart board in which you mercilessly practice to see when you get bull's eye, but you scream every time the other hits? How often do you remember that you used to love? And when you do, do you miss the target or keep throwing back, aiming for the softest, most hurting spots? Or you just cry louder, thinking where is the person who used to love you also?

It becomes a jungle. Hit or you will get hit. Eat or you will be eaten. Hurt first, or you will get hurt. You ache for freedom, you hunger for peace but you do not leave the battlefield. In a sick ego war, you want to win. Your gain is measured in the suffering of the other. "Us" becomes a myth, something that you wonder what was it, when was it, and how was it but you cannot remember. And you'd better not, because it will make you an easier victim. There are moments of truce, but never peace - you are just both too tired to fight, you need a day or two to lick your wounds and come back into the arena called "us". After a while you stop crying - you just scream like an injured animal, and use your last drops of strength to turn and hit again. Paradoxically, still, you do not become immune - up to a certain extent, you learn not to show your emotions, but beyond that level, everything still hurts. You just learnt to be quiet whenever you have no strength to argue. You fucked up and you have to get used to this, to be able to move on.

When do you learn that you need to think differently for each relation you are in? When and how do you understand that you cannot expect this one to have the same perception of the things as the previous one? OK, you obviously do it at a rational level, but when you actually run into new requirements you are just puzzled. Little by little you understand the role the other expects you to play - which does not, in any manner, means that you can actually play. Or even worse, that you actually WANT to play it. I love you, but this is not me. Becoming what you want me to be makes me a shadow, a weird and flat construction. How can you require this to be happy? What kind of twisted love is this?

Why not simply leave and just let everything happen behind you? Probably you end up doing it, eventually. But you invested everything you had, everything you were and everything you planned to be and do into this relation. You want this bloody business to give back something, anything. You have no energy to invest into a new relation for now - you can at most give some pieces of you. And you have no desire whatsoever to try a new relation, you are happy with some half measure. Everything is an experience - cool, then when we get old, we can actually count as "life experiences" all the things that hurt us, made us more reluctant, afraid or simply turned us away from even trying some things. That's some gain, we have to admit ;)

Love minus zero/No limit

How much should you blame somebody for his culture, for his roots, and how much should you put on the individual? What are we made of? Are we what we accumulate through self-exercise, practice, human interaction, or are we just simple carriers of the place where we come from? I'm not even asking about the role of biology - I know how much we act as our hormones dictate us, but now I wonder solely about what we are, not what we do.

I know somebody who seems to have the patriarchal attitudes so deeply implanted in him that they became his skeleton, the axis around which he is built and shaped. What is left if you take out what you were taught to be? Do you become less or more? Or simply different, but too different to be able to recognize yourself in the mirror? As a matter of fact, CAN you remove this part?

What was I raised to be? A good wife, a good mother, a good professional? For what role were they preparing me? For nothing specific... they were just raising somebody who should feel happy with him/herself and this would be it. Should I blame my grandfather for giving me the entire freedom to choose? Should I consider that him and my grandmother haven't done their jobs properly, since I do not see in myself anything they voluntarily planted there? Or is it quite the opposite, since they didn't shove anything down my throat, but only gently touched my soul?

I look at the things I value the most - freedom, respect for life and nature, love for animals and everything alive, non-interference in other people's life - and I do not recognize them as being put there by my grandparents. Some I feel as being borrowed, because I admired and respected them at my grandpa, but I am aware of the fact that he never tried to make me become like him. I am, just like anybody else, built around these ideas - but I do not feel as an artifact or some weird sort of cyborg, I feel them as being me, as being what I wanted, chose and decide to leave there. There are many others small reflexes that I have for growing up where I did, and I know they are memories of my childhood and I try to keep them quiet, not to make them the backbone of what I am.

Maybe we actually take from home whatever fits us best. Maybe that is why I took freedom and he took patriarchy - this is what fits us best. Maybe it is not a matter of what we either consciously choose or we simply take, but it is a matter of how flexible we are, of how much we love our frames of existence or we are willing to change them, according to what life has to offer us. Maybe there are non-negotiable, irreconcilable differences between people and no matter how much you love, you simply cannot be with the other. It doesn't matter whether you blame the other or the place he is coming from.. what matters is that you cannot be more than you are. There is a French saying, that you cannot ask even from the most beautiful girl more than she can offer. Maybe it is as simple as this, and all the rest is just for those prone to philosophy - you cannot be more than you are, you cannot become what makes you unhappy no matter how much you love.

Careful with that axe, Eugene

I am afraid of monumental people, of the people who have no doubts, only certainties. It is in my nature to question things, but I try to do it humbly. If it happens to run into an answer, then I try to understand it as being limited to myself, to my own Weltanschauung. I can share it, naturally, but I do not walk around with a Bible in my hand trying to teach THE TRUTH to the barbarians. I don't believe in pyres for the unfaithful and in knives sharpen to cut the flesh which shows the signs of the devil. You doubt, hence you sin. Death to the post-modernists!

The monumental people are those who naturally take the position of judge and executioner. You ask them to evaluate, they do not give you back their opinion but the truth. The one and only, absolute truth. And if you dare to doubt, like you are doubting everything else, the wig flies and the axe is brought to front. You were judged and sentenced for infidelity.

They do not look at the details unless the details help them sentence you. However, the rituals have to be followed to the letter. A "Thank you" has to be said in a certain moment, on a certain tone - there are no implicit 'thank you's, just the loud, spoken, ritualized ones.

Mistake does not belong to their vocabulary. If, by some god-like act, you manage to make them see they have made a mistake, then they will quickly find the circumstances and blame it on them. The most common - you made me do it, with your behaviour. The unsaid 'you deserve it' lurks in the corner, for you to see it without the living monument having to say it out loud.

What confuses them most is playing. If you play around them, with them... they start getting lost and doubting the marble of their own impost. Hence, their first task is to kill the playing from the roots. You laugh when you should cry - let me twist the knife till you finally cry. What the hell, we live by the rules here... And they will end up making you cry - they are made of a tougher substance than you and you will cry hitting your head onto the wall of their certainties.

Welcome to our museum.

Prison break

I hate this country... I hate it from the bottom of my heart and with all the strength I have left after living here for so long. I simply hate it. It is the loneliest place I've ever been to, it's my freakin' personal desert.. sea of emptiness, festival of solitude. Benvenuto in Italia...

I went home for a couple of weeks. I used to go home or anywhere else like on a mission - my mind, my heart, my soul... they were all staying behind, in Italy. The empty shell was somewhere else, but I could never leave my problems behind. They were coming with me, the invisible luggage - not taxed at the airport but being heavily paid for. The Stockholm syndrome overtook me, I guess. But this time... this time it was different. I went home to bury my dog... and there was nothing I could spare, nothing I could leave behind and nothing I could carry extra. I went back home entirely, all of me in the same piece and without the marks of Italy and my life here imprinted in every pore of my skin. And I finally became happy. The dog of my youth brought me back my youth and my peace, as her final gift to me. I owe you one more, my dear Tofa.

Somebody told me I remind him of a calm sea... I first smiled, thinking how wrong he is, and how many storms haunt these waters, how many currents break the depths, how many dead bodies lie on the bottom. But then again, I understood he was right ... I went home and the sea calmed down. No giant waves were tormenting my waters and no wind was blowing off my peace. I was home and it was good. I was home and it was me again, finally. No more addiction to my misery, no more waves of self-compasion and no ambivalence. Just me.. I met spring home. Not like going in a shelter, but like breaking out of a prison. They tied me back now, but I did remember what I used to be. And my term is ending soon. Thank you, Romania... thank you, Tofa.. and thank you, unnamed guy, for helping me notice and badge the break-out.

Happy counting!

Counting is a fascinating human habit. We count everything - how many times one has mistaken, how many times we got hurt, how many times we paid more, how many times we made an extra gesture. We count and ask for more. Nobody cares what you can offer - we live by abstract principles, by iron rules. You have to pay HALF, your fair share. Half of sex, half of the meal, half of the dog food. The perfect abstract half - your share, established somewhere outside reality. No one cares that you CAN'T pay - you have to pay. PAY, DIDN'T YOU HEAR ME??? You don't have the money? WHO GIVES A SHIT, YOU HAVE TO PAY!!! Make an overdraft or blow a guy in the corner of the street. But for fuck's sake, pay your half.. And yes, I haven't told you today how much I love you, right? But you don't appreciate my efforts, my dear dear bitch... You don't respect me, you don't see my efforts. I hate you, bitch.... I hate you too, my love. Let's go count together, for ever.

Things we lost in the fire

There are those days in which you just want to lie down in a corner and die silently. Make no final statement, look for nobody, share nothing - just go away and stay away. Anything to make the noise stop - not the abstract voices, not the imaginary voices, but the very real ones of the people around you. Asking things from you, making claims from you, having expectations from you, demanding you to be perfect and yelling if you are not, blaming you for being whatever you are. Ripping you off for not living by their standards and trying to recompose you into something that you are not. Pushing you into the matrix of what they programmed you to be, without caring that you do not fit in there, reproaching you every step you imperfectly make, any attitude you might have that does not fit the pattern. In a very simple Pavlovian manner, they reward and punish your behaviour - you are supposed to drool every time to bell rings. "This is the dogma, these are the requirements. Live by them, or thou shall be punished. The Inquisition sleeps in your bed."

I am not perfect. Fuck you all, all those you want me to be what you expected me to be. I am not THIS or THAT. Yes, I am imperfect and yes, I make mistakes. So what? Life is flexible, you build it as you go... why would I try to live it your way? Is my way perfect? Who the fuck knows and who the fuck cares... I am happy with what I am and I do not want to take YOU, all of YOU and any of YOU anymore.

The warm wind

It should have rained ... She became wind and cloud today, my dear Tofa and I wish I could feel her coming back. But she preferred to fly for a while, and let me take home just her ashes. I kept watching the chimney, to see the smoke coming out, but it was nothing there. Then I looked at the shadow of the building and I saw how it was reflecting a wave of heat from the incinerator. That's how she went over the rainbow... as a warm wind. How could I think she can become grey smoke? The dog of my youth is now gone for good, not even her little body is with us anymore. And it was the hardest decision ever to nod towards the guy and let him take her and put her into the incinerator.

My ex came to the funeral. It is so strange to see somebody you've shared your life with after a while ... He is a stranger in front of you, and yet such a familiar stranger. None can fake anything ... you can lie to a stranger, or just hide from him. But this stranger knows you way too well, and you can't seem what you are not. Whether you changed or not it's barely relevant... it is still you and it is still him. And in front you lies the dog of your youth, of the youth of both... And you both cry for your lost youth, for all the "could have been"s but were not, for the time you had together and is forever gone.... nostalgia, not regret for not having it anymore. You cry for the little dog who loved you both till death, for the loss, for her and for yourself.

We waited for some time and then they brought me the urn. It was warm, from the ashes inside. And then I took her home. Memories in a box, life burnt and packed and an inscription - "Meet me at the end of the rainbow".... where true beauty meets the eye of the beholder.

In this farewell
There's no blood
There's no alibi
'cause I've drawn regret
From the truth of a thousand lies.

So let mercy come
And wash away
What I've done.
I'll face myself
To cross out what I've become
Erase myself
And let go of what I've done

Put to rest
What you thought of me
While I clean this slate
With the hands
Of uncertainty.

For what I've done
I start again
And whatever pain may come
Today this ends
I am forgiving what I've done.

(Linkin Park, What I've Done)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI8h9Wf7LjU

Immortality and other life dilemmas

Until I was like 22-23 I thought I was immortal. I was having this overwhelming feeling that, if I decide to sit on the rails before the train, something would happen and the train would not reach me. It was the same for everything else - we were living suspended in time, in a world of young, healthy adults.

Then, my first boss died. I still remember the smell of a dead body, that too sweet odor of rotting flesh. I suddenly came to incorporate a new concept - never. I was looking at him lying there, dead and pale, and it struck me - I will NEVER see him again. Until then, it sounded very vague... "never" meant sometime during the rest of my life, which was almost entirely in front of me. In this case, it was different - I was NEVER EVER going to see him again.

I started to grasp the idea of death and dying. But it was still happening outside my private garden. Those I love cannot be struck by death. They are, like me, immortal. Just to disprove my theory (well, his heart condition contributed a lot also), my grandfather died. I was NEVER going to see him again, but this time it was a painful never. And I started to fear death ... not in an obsessive way, but as a steady presence in a corner of my mind - we all die, one die I will die. I should do my best to avoid it.

I lived the last years fearing mortality and having this secret hope that my grandpa's death was an accident, that dying is something that happens eventually. Which is, actually, but that eventually is not suspended in time but actively coming towards us, towards me. I didn't want to get old, I didn't want to die. And I wanted to keep the ones I love around, for as long as I live. And then... then we can all go. But not before, that NEVER is not going to happen to me again.

I idiotically believed Tofa can't die. It was not as it's supposed to be, the kind and loved ones have to live. Death is an undeserved punishment, so it can't happen to her. It did. But her last gift to me was this - I don't want to be immortal anymore. I don't like the idea of dying, but now I somehow realized that I will die, that the day is coming, and I do not fear it anymore. Who the fuck wants to live forever, and keep losing the ones around him, over and over again?

There is no beauty in death, but it is even less in living and losing what you love. Wait for me in the dogs' Heaven, Tofa. If there has to be a Heaven, then dogs are fully worth of it. It might take some time, but one day I will come to meet you. I wouldn't want to stay in a world that will NEVER have you back.

Wait for me, at the other end of the rainbow.

What do you do when you are in pain? Do you cease any form of regular life, or you keep moving and breathing like before, doing all the small gestures you used to do, continuing the daily routine?

What do you do when you feel guilty? Unforgivably guilty for the death of someone you love? For the death of somebody who died (like she lived) waiting for you? Do you still drink your daily coffee, surf the web and wait for the funerals? Pain does not freeze you, death does not freeze the universe. Everything else keeps moving and you keep moving. You cry and you move. In the same day your dearest one died, you eat and drink water and breath as usual. You are alive.

She died today. Yesterday actually, around 7 am. They couldn't tell me the exact hour of death. She was "the dog with diabetes". She was Tofa, but not for them. For me, she was the only Tofa that has ever existed or ever will. She died waiting for me to come home. And I haven't, I planned the trip for the coming Wednesday. I didn't think that death can wait, I simply excluded death from any calculations. Forgivable? Maybe, if I were in my 20s. But I am a 34 yrs old adult. I should have known, I should have listened, I should have thought.

It's strange how we lose the pain through words. We talk about one thing and pain exhales, it gets out of you like through some word-shaped pores. So I will talk about Tofa, pushing the pain out. In the end, pain does not matter - I am alive. But even if this blog has only one more reader, then somebody else will hear about her.

(RIP. Tofa: Feb/Mar 1998 - Feb. 21, 2009)

I found her 11 years ago - April 30, 1998. She was a small puppy and I took her home, for a portion of milk. I thought I'd take her back on the street, where I found her. I didn't, I couldn't. She started to count on me and I couldn't let her down. I did it after, I did it now - she waited for mommy to come till her last breath. It didn't happen.

She stayed with us - she learnt not to pee in the house, then I tried to teach her not to chew my perfumes and books but she kept "reading" and "sniffing". She took my moods without a blink - she loved me like only dogs can do. Me as I am, without any mask, with all my defects. I loved her back, I loved her from all my heart, but I was offering her so little, comparing to what I could have... I always thought there is time. Not true, our time together ended and I cannot keep any of my promises.

For a few good years, she's been living with my grandmother and another dog. I left my home country and I left both of them there. From the 5 dogs I had (6 actually, but one stayed with my ex), I took 3 with me, and 2 I left with my grandmother - the smallest, nicest, sweetest ones, Tofa and Ugly. I missed them a lot, but I couldn't find a solution - I can barely afford the 3 dogs I have with me, and nobody else would hold these 3 (for very objective reasons, they are kind as crocodiles to any stranger, be it dog or human). So I made the most rational choice - I left the 2 nice ones in the care of my grandma and I took the 3 big bad ones with me.

Tofa stayed. She had what she needed and she was loved - but mommy wasn't there, and she was always waiting. I was going home every 3-6 months and she was SO happy... An old dog re-becoming a puppy, playing and jumping like a little deer. You were so gracious, so beautiful... my dear, dear Tofa.

About one year ago, we discovered she had diabetes. We started to give her insuline, changed her diet... she seemed to be ok. But she was not neutered and it was impossible to have any surgery untill the blood-sugar level was stable. About one month ago, she started to be on heat. And from there on, everything went crazy - her body wasn't taking the insuline anymore. She stopped eating and she was fed through perfusions for about 10 days. I knew her state, but I planned the trip for Wednesday. What is to be forgiven here? Objective reasons? None should have mattered, my girl was dying... while I was thinking she is just having a bad episode. Not because I was not informed, but because I ... I simply couldn't see her dying.

She was my first dog, to me she was eternal. My mind couldn't grasp the idea that one day Tofa will die. She did, and I still find it surreal. I can't believe that she is not in the same world with me.

I'm sorry, baby. I am so sorry... forgive me, I know you can. I am sorry for all the long walks I promised you but never had time to make them, for all the love you invested in me and I couldn't return it as you deserved. I am so sorry I was not near you, to help you pass into the other world, to hold your paw and tell you mommy will always love you. Forgive me, my dearest, dearest creature. I won't forgive myself, but who cares? I am alive, while you are not.

Forgive me and wait for mommy for one more time, at the other end of the rainbow.