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.