Check-in to mid-2018

A few minutes since the vacation time started, but my eyes are still on the phone in case there are last minute closures. The weather’s around 30C, full summer mode’s on, but my balcony always has the nice breeze and the cute swan family view, the combination of which is a proved relaxation therapy. Better than my grandma’s valerian tablets…

I haven’t been to a long vacation since December. It so happens that my perception of time gets structured by “before” and “after” certain vacations especially the ones where I expect to see and live through something utterly new, stunning, unexpected… The place I am going soon does not even have a “lonely planet” guidebook, which I hope is a good sign. So just to leave a few contemplative scratches in this digital space of mine about the period from December to July, before starting the next phase with another travel adventure, here is what I wanted to put down below.

It has been a blast. These 7 month period was a continuously ramping up wave of so much hard work, fun, adrenaline, opportunities and new people, who would suddenly fill in the gaps I would never expect to ever be filled again.

It was the time of crazy parties and nightlife, endless laughter, sparkle and dance. I think the last time I have been there was in 2004, when I was barely 20.

It was the time for appreciation, when what you do for years suddenly gets noticed. Not a big deal, I know, and happens with most of the people every now and then, but it left me with a warm chest and loads of motivation to do better and be more.

It was the time when my endless raving about Rotterdam being my home actually materialized in a real home, another very human “not big deal”, but when I think about an average piano player from a small developing country doing things just on my own, it is not so bad after all. And I am so totally done with unpacking furniture and other random purchases, that I will stop here and just procrastinate a bit (when it comes to decorating the new home). Just a view of a carton box sends me into convulsions nowadays ☺

Most importantly it was time, when someone just suddenly gave me back the lost belief in all-in-one decency, strength, fairness and proper human relationship when it comes to just being there for you for nothing much in return, not even a friendship. I am scared to believe it actually is possible, so I end up being surprised and ready to cry at every occasion this is being proved to me. The scary part is, I am not sure I would survive losing the feeling again…

And it was the time when in spite of all the sarcasm, wisdom and all other heavy crap collected along the years, I started breathing in the life again, in all its intensity, consuming and enjoying every single moment. And hoping that this cycle will last slightly longer than the others that came and passed. Mono no aware.

No more messages and calls, so I will just put my camera to charge and start packing. And trying to memorize this feeling, it feels pretty much like happiness in the moment… 

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...

Between two suns

Episode 1

***
The hot summer air makes my eyesight fuzzy, Lisbon city center floats a bit, blurring outlines of vivid and colorful buildings surrounding me. Still through the yellow heat I spot the tiny bakery at the corner with flashy sign and blinding variety of sweets on display. Would I ever be able to go past indifferently? Getting closer I press my nose to the glass like a curious child, and examine the pastry. Pasteis de nata, a childhood friend said. Try it, it is good and very local, you will get the feel of how the Portuguese dessert tastes. The bakery offers a deal:  6 for 5 euros, but I buy only a single one. My mind quickly runs the habitual test question: is there anyone around you need to share it with?
 - Wanna share? - Oana shakes her head in a negative answer and I bite into the crunchy crust. It willingly melts on my tongue into a mildly sweet liquid remotely reminding of lost childhood memory...

***
- So?
The young woman with soft oriental features talked in a calm tired voice. She seemed to be concentrated on opening the apricots freshly picked from the tree and removing the stones. They were sitting in a small terrace in front of the old village house with grey crumbling walls. It was late evening, with the sky breathing the bluemarine into purple red. The mountains were silent.
The girl was about nine years old, with a braid below the waist, button nose and big almond eyes full of life and expectation. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor and staring in an open worn-out book in her skinny hands.
 - So, - repeated the woman. - Imagine a situation, where I am no longer there and there is only you and your younger sister left together. Imagine you have a single piece of bread and that is all for several days. How will you share it?
The girl blinked for half a second and blurted out the fairest answer she could think of. - Half and half, - she said in a first-benchers' tone and instantly got a funnily proud face.The woman paused and sighed.
 - You have not grown up yet, she murmured with the same tired voice. The verdict transformed into a painful sting and landed on the fragile 9-year-old perception: the girl felt hurt and disappointed. She causiously looked up from under her eyelashes into her mother's tanned face and waited. For the right answer.
- You should take the smaller piece and give her the bigger one. As you are the elder and you can bear hunger, while she is younger and it would be much harder for her...

Episode 2

***
Evening covers Lisbon with the poles of its long velvet skirt. The sun gets swallowed by the ocean somewhere behind the white sketchy buildings. The Portuguese guitar and the street buzz intertwine into a background canvas, a decoration for my live theater. We walk into that light show accidentally, without knowing. It is happening in one of the old squares and it is vibrant: the light effects projected on the buildings tell about magnificent past, careless present and rational promising future. At a certain moment psychedelic imagination pierces a tunnel to the very center of the subconsciousness and I simply let the light into my inner universe - where the dark matter is still the main construction material. I absorb the light. I greedily consume it as this time it is the symbol of life and hope. This time.

***
The mountains hanging over the village had coarse outlines and reminded a group of old wrinkled men. Mornings started with the sun hitting their rocky peaks, evenings softly evolved into nights when the rocky texture molded into uniform black. One could see the solid outlines on the background of the dark blue sky with scattered stars... That day it was different though. There were no stars, but the night village was filled with light spilling from the sky, illuminating mountain peaks. The light show was magnificent, except it wasn't a show. The village nearby was bombed several hours earlier and the only road back to the capital was cut.
There were three adults and six kids in the yard of the grey village house. The adults were carrying basic survival objects to the basement: water, food, clothing, candles and wood. The two younger kids were noisily busy with a very happy something of their own.
The girl with the braid below waist was scared. The feeling pierced her in the chest and settled itself right in the center of it. The chest felt heavy and ice-cold. She never talked, but was silently watching her mother. There was another explosion that echoed in the mountains and the sky bloomed with another swarm of sparkling fireflies. The younger sister raised her curly head to the sky, cried out with joy and pointed it to the young woman:
- It is fireworks, - stated the woman half-smiling.
The braided girl felt her stomach fall. The realization of the lie, that she heard from her mother first time in her short life pulsed with anxiety. The ice-stone in the chest grew to pump the first and strongest fear she would be exposed to in the next 25 years of her life...

***  
TBC

Colour

Cool Saturday mornings materialise at the end of the tunnel that leads back to reality from the noplace called Dreamland. Rare appearances of the sun put their elusive, but warm marks on the milky curtain outlining the blurred shadows of the maple leaves on it, here and there. 

It was always one of the best ways to slide back into the Saturday morning - watch the maple leaf shadows projected by the sun on the curtains. The curtains seem to be the changing variable, from light white material with fairly tale characters to vibrant teenage orange, then calm grown-up green, and finally, forward-looking and anticipating dark chocolate. The latter never became the part of the morning routine, mostly remaining a decoration in the place that was being made gezellig but never happened to become home.

There is a new temporary home now, with milky curtains with no pretension, as if a blank canvas on the easel in the corner of the painter’s studio. They only reflect the shadows of maple leaves today and now, hinting it is all I have and at the same time it is there to be painted again into whichever colour I would want to take me over. Maybe, the colour of strawberry juice next to my bed filling me with reddish freshness of Strawberry Fields Forever, or the Tender Blue of mellifluous and slightly cheesy music line from the speakers - "…I always hold a place for you in my heart…”, or the indiscreet colour that is implied within the magnetic smell of my morning pillow on this Saturday morning (it tends to be more attractive in the mornings, isn’t it?)... 

“First the colours.

Then the humans.

That’s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try”. 

(Prologue of Death from "Book Thief”)

Those Saturday mornings, full of light, scents, bliss and colour :)