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...