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.