November

A typical November, full of anticipation and anxiety. And though all positive, it still keeps me on my toes for hundred million different things, some of which matter a lot, and some - do not at all. I can almost physically feel every other of those thoughts flying around by the autumn wind. Getting philosophical recently.

It is a pre-Christmas syndrome, hard-coded in the consciousness as the time for unforced honesty and harmony with yourself. Time for redemption, letting things go and wholeheartedly asking for something new and light in the upcoming year. It is so conditional, yet so sincere somehow. But in the end, isn't everything sincere to some degree conditional? So back to unanswered questions: long-gone and elementary topics such as our behavioural patterns, post-trauma search for purpose & identity keep coming back and making me uncomfortable. I thought I have done this so many times. 

It is still a vicious circle of unnecessary drama, uncontrollable hormones and extreme dependency on how the surrounding society sees you. Because ultimately, the society, including family and friends, is the one that rates you, accepts or declines your image - without their perception you are ultimately of no importance, if anyone at all. Someone just for oneself that has not passed any validation. Even the individual artists with extreme viewpoints on this are applauded, but aren't they also highly dependent on the view and appreciation of those who gives them the applauses?

It is weird, this validation need, as if knowing on our own whether we are good or bad is not enough. The public resolution is needed to officially exist - this is a fun person, this is an intellectual one. It does not even have to be true, if you are not comfortable with what you are, you just project yourself differently. Afterwards you get used to that new image and stay there, driving the real self to the state of deep irreversible amnesia.

And if you develop this hypothesis a bit further, you land on the concept of the happiness pattern imposed by the society layer on your already validated self. You go after rated achievements, tick the checkpoints, indirectly ask for approval, then do whatever and be happy with it. Because your projected image now has to live the life the society has framed around it. Whether you want that life or not. If you do - then you scored in this one of the worlds. If not - well. It seems less painful to live through it when you convince yourself this is what you really needed and start enjoying it at its full. It is a sort of "happiness on autopilot". And it is like a drug.

I think happy are those, who do not know they are addicted. And also those who recognized it on the face and made it through by understanding what really it is they are after. There should be a lot of people who are genuinely happy with no autopilot functionality, but generally that has costed them something precious.

I did not make it through either. I am one of those, that got knocked out of it against my will. And what strikes me is: it really is like Matrix, but the blue pill is morbidly absent. So once I am out, it really is hard to get back in. And it is scary to get back in: the aesthetical self screams, the ethical one wears the judge's wig. (I am Gemini, I am supposed to be bipolar, ok?)
Smells a bit like a teenager.

A typical November, full of anticipation and anxiety.
There is the instinctive feeling of an upcoming closure, pressing on "self-performance review" buttons, out of my volition. But hey, I am gonna cheat on my demons this time and instead of the annual review with me, myself and I on "Achievements and fuck-ups 2017" with the full peer benchmarking exercise, I am gonna pack my backpack, switch on the "lousy globetrotter" mode again and go hiking around Amazon (the real one, with trees) and up to Inca Trail Track. I planned it as a soul-searching adventure, but Ms Paris shook her head in dismay and protested: you haven't lost it! Maybe you got it slightly damaged.

Ms Paris's opinion matters, so I gave in and repositioned: soul-healing venture for saying hello to Inca's old spirits, ayahuasca (maybe) and the mountains - emerald green, serene, ancient. The pagan highlander in me believes that the part of my identity is forever tied to the mountains and the Gods living on their top - the global citizen of 21st century likes to extend the idea of mountains from Caucasus to just "any mountains", as long as they are high, half rocky, half green. So I can keep visiting the Gods on the top...

Evening schizophrenia

I have this little girl living inside my head. She is the kid version of me, the one I did not want to let go when I was growing up. You know, big-eyed, long waivy-haired with lucid skin and loud laughter. And though I placed her there to keep me entertained and, well, remind me of my true essence, sometimes she overtakes the kingdom and starts being the ruler creating all sort of a mess around. And we end up at a negotiating table: me and myself…

This is what I imagine, when I think about making peace or being in harmony with myself. And since lately I feel like more work needs to be done for that, it just means the little girl is unhappy about something.

Lately I have put a lot of effort in creating the stability and complying with the accepted standards including all the needed checkpoints that are considered normal at a certain period of life. I am not doing as bad in that as I totally could, knowing the enormous potential I have in destructing things at their root. It takes a lot to build the stable ground and learn to stand on it – mostly it takes a lifetime.

But I seem not to be able to cope with the well-defined stability when it is already built and all I need is to keep my balance on it. It feels stagnant and so complete and perfect, that I do not have anything to do with it any more other than to pollute it with my sheer presence. I know it sounds dramatic, but that is how it feels. That is how she feels, the artsy side of mine… And then she takes over, crushes my balance and destroys my ground. She asks for more, instantly devaluing all the assets put together in so much time and effort. What was initially the point, suddenly becomes naught and hangs with heavily pressing emptiness in the chest. I sink to the very end. And frankly, it is not always my inherent choice, it just tends to happen all the time.

Looking at it from the past, every time I got up and went up the mountain again, I ended up building my base somewhere higher, at a risk of a less oxygen, but the trajectory of the movement over time was upwards in the end. Upwards, as long as I refuse to give up. Perhaps, I am starting to get it: the praised stability eliminates the change and evolution of me, which in my subconscious understanding is stagnation. And I am apparently intolerant to it, so I make myself move, if not upward, then rolling downward to the abyss into the overarching mess. I wonder when this went so wrong :)

And I wonder if the simplicity really is the ultimate sophistication, why can’t I simply enjoy dealing with simple things? Why do I need to be complex myself and attracted to complexity? To be challenged to solve it as if a huge puzzle or an endless math problem with multiple unknown variables, practically impossible to solve (also because it has so many solutions, one might spend the whole life trying to derive them all)? Or maybe, I still believe there is more value to be derived from the complex elements than the simple ones? And because once you get to know the beauty of the complexity it is hard to stay intact with simplicity? Questions, questions…

I know answers to some, and I do not want to know the answers to others. I just want this kid to calm down and finally hold my hand. I wish I could promise her all she wants.

P.S. I cooked a nice meal for myself today. Wow. Evolution is on the way. 

Unsorted Reflections

I am constantly trying to convince myself that I have no war to fight with my age. Someone in my circle wisely noted a few years ago that we are always alone and tet-a-tet with our ageing, but I keep stubbornly believe, that I do not feel any big difference within myself. Are there changes in my daily life? - Hell yeah, and with every single year the speed of UNsettling instead of settling is exponentially higher. Are there changes in my personality? - probably not so much, some things just get easier to do, despite still being hard to digest. I suspect the concept of soul callus is actually true —> what does not kill us equips us with lots of unhealthy coping mechanisms and dark sense of humour.

This is a self-summary in a style of stream of consciousness if I may, and in case you are not interested in my twisted, narcissistic and biased thoughts, please, stop reading at this point. The reason I share it is because I feel extremely extroverted at the moment in this pretty warm weekend sitting in my newly cleaned and decorated (by my awesome roommate) terrace to share my impulsively floating thoughts.

With age, our luggage seems to grow and this comes true for both someone like me, who carelessly surfs on the life waves without being scared to make the millionth mistake and hit the ground with the freshly polished nose, and my friends who are extremely careful with not making mistakes which would mark their lives in a way not desired - basically they avoid labels. What feels refreshing and also childishly exciting through some vague despair, or only light sadness (as Russians say), is the fact that we start moving over and on things that would be considered alarming, gruesome, not right or unbearable. We pass through some moral borders without considering how big a shame it would be when we were 18, and how big of a disappointment that would cause to our parents. Is it really the age or the experience, or is it really this hidden feeling of ticking time no one likes to admit? We learn to say no, especially us, who weren’t so good at it before, we learn to distinguish that tipping point, after which the damage is beyond bearable and after which it does not matter who else suffers but us. We blur the outlines of things and remove the extreme judgement of good or bad, replacing those with the hue of understanding and sympathy with every other personality we would hate just a few years back. I feel like I get to know less and less what I would have done if I were in place of X, Y or Z - if you had asked me when I was 20, the answer would have been so clear and non-compromising.

I also thought about it from the perspective of myself getting mellow, or being broken to the state of non-repair, but I do not think that is the case after all. I am not a cheesy princess (well sometimes maybe!!!, but not in general), so, I guess the reason is the shift of values with the more accent on the time. It is the NOW that matters, it is of course the quality but also the quantity as well, as there is less time left with anything. On top of the shift I was always a victim of being highly aware of passing time and me not keeping up with it, that probably became the partial reason of the numerous fantastically stupid mistakes I made. In sum, I think they threw me back by ~5 years or so. But at a certain point I got to understand that it would be useless to fight myself instead of trying to find a common rational edge and make peace. So, my point is, I am getting this weird flexibility and evaporating sense of judgement to whatever there is. I think it makes some of my close people nervous and the others proud. I still make choices and I do them quick to minimise the hesitation. I am still up for the emotional volatility, though sometimes it feels like there is not too much energy left for it. But that is temporary, it always gets back to the same radiance level (without low-LSD dosage, just saying) - I love the life too much to give up on its vivacity.

I discovered the “mono no aware”(物の哀れ) lately. Since a few years it was in my life but never ripe enough to feel its depth. It resonates with me so badly and reflects my 33 years as if a painting, where its emotional palette is used instead of colors. I think I will follow it to its roots, so Japan should get on my globetrotter’s list (as lousy a one as I am) for the next year. And if I stop being superstitious I will make a tattoo with the Japanese hieroglyphs: I am somehow still scared of everything being temporary in my life, even if they beautify my unbearable lightness of being (I have read that book sooo long ago).

This was the brief broadcast of random ideas, collected and not sorted in my head along the promenades made in the South of France. There is always this urge of sorting things into the buckets and boxes to make sense of them, but probably when I finish the final-final sort-out, it would be the right time to wear the sorted bucket on my head, shove the tick-marked bucket list ehmm... in my jeans pocket and get the hell lost off this planet. So, I will take some time before I decide to do that and will leave the things unsorted for a while, thus, interesting to dig in.

Arrivederci 32, hello 33.

P.S. The year in a nutshell —> from a recent conversation:
BFF: What’s up?
Me: Not much, thinking of some serious travelling, need a partner in crime.
BFF: Wow...You travel almost every week, what’s serious travelling? Are you going to Mars or something?…
Me: Not yet...

Elle

After a long walk through Promenade d’Anglais I turn into a park hoping to get a shortcut, but voila – the narrow path leads to a deadlock. When I turn around, I see her. Well, I hear her first, her heels clicking on the ground with quick steps. Then I see her -  une petite madam around 50, with blond hair, dark lipstick, an elegant small black dress and extremely delicate bijoux. She briefly waves at me and asks in French, if there is a way. 

– Desolee, Madam, - I say, mais there is no way out here. - Let’s try around the fountain, she switches to English with the typical French accent and quickly taking the responsibility for me starts leading the way. I notice the blue mascara on her eyelashes and that somehow does not go well with everything else she is. She looks at me and getting back to French asks where I am from. Je suis Armenienne, et mon Francais n’est pas bien. Oh, she continues in French, there are plenty Armenians here, go to any jewelry shop and you can meet them. Her condescending tone makes me feel somewhat awkward not because of being Armenian, but literally because of being. I try to change the topic – Et vous? I ask, you are from Nice?

- Mais non, I am from Paris, mais j’habite ici. Well, I always said we have to live and die somewhere, so I think for me it is Cote d’Azure. It is not the best place, but it is Cote d’Azure, you know? 

Frankly, I don’t. But, of course, I keep that to myself. 

- What is it you dislike about here, Madam? - Oh la la – she says, of course, the mentality, especially for a single woman. It is very hard to live here as a femme célibataire, because if you go around alone, they think you are looking for something. There are always men coming up to me and I say politely – non, partez vous! Mais not everybody understands, so I have to be rude! That is tres-tres tiring. 

I still cannot unsee her blue eyelashes. Somehow that makes her look a little light-minded and girlish.

- ...I lived and worked in Munich for many years, she goes on, life is so different and orderly there. She says something seemingly in German to prove her life in Bavaria to me, but I totally miss it. – Here (characteristic pronunciation of “r”), everything is ad hoc here.  But it is Cote d’Azure – she repeats and gets silent. For a millisecond, I catch a glimpse of her eyes below the blue eyelashes reminiscing about something, she left there in Munich. Or probably, someone?...

We talk a bit more about everything. - Voila, I am going this way now, she says. Make sure you enjoy your stay in Nice: drink wine, go to the beach and don’t pay attention to these men who come by and start talking to you. Say go away, okay?...

I can’t do anything but smile at this little encounters. The ones where in 5 minutes of conversation you get to know a whole life story with exactly as much blanks as it is required for your imagination to build up the character and fill in the missing gaps of their “sujet”. 

The clicking sound of her heels eventually fades in the evening noise of the white city. Enjoy your evening Madam, a bientot...