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...

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 :)

Late Night Blah

At a certain point it is impossible to distinguish the dream from the reality...
In the end, there is no real proof we are not just a hologram in someone's stupid experiment.

Current life flow of rapid events, extreme decisions, abandoned hopes and new unexplored opportunities come together in an entangled story, that would beat quite some books I have read myself. Everything is so momentary, that the realisation of the change is as vague as morning blurry sensation of something you can't remember, but definitely saw in a full-colour dream just a few minutes ago. Changing the whole value system, broadening the limitations of what was never accepted is always weird, yet now liberating. And I happily embrace that, accepting deep down inside the possibility of never-ending new beginnings. Each time with a few more grey hair, hidden under the soft reddish witchy hair-dye. I do not have another choice but to leave with an only suitcase and no memories: compromising on perfection tends to make my life far from the fairytale I am after. Just that.

And to relieve the overwhelming confusion with all the happenings that I have difficulties to sort out to set my life rolling again... I get Rotterdam skies, as a reward, painted in colours of my heart. I get cherry blossom right beside the place I now call "home", I get people I love, people that inspire me and people that I missed for a very long time. I get the harbour at dawn, shrieking seagulls, shiny city lights in the night, evening trains sliding through polychrome tulip fields...

The void opens up, letting in the Dutch wind and sparkling stardust of freedom. I lean back tiredly to the station wall, surrendering myself to the evening sunshine. And suddenly remember, I have to tap for a train supplement ticket.
 - Mevrouw, - he calls softly when I am almost there, - wait, Mevrouw, I have a spare ticket.
He is holding out the supplement to me. I cautiously look into his blue eyes behind the glasses.
 - And why would you give it to me?
 - Because I don't need it, I have one more.
His smile is genuine. He is probably as old as my dad would be now and he lives on in his own dream, where he just gave away a spare ticket to this strange tired smiling girl. She is probably the age of his daughter...

At a certain point it is impossible to distinguish the dream from the reality. You just have to float on...

London Notes

When travelling to London and back I made a few notes, which are mainly my feelings on the paper - as unpolished as they are in my mind. I decided I want to keep them, unlike many more that I later lost, deleted or simply never wrote down.

The first time was like in a dream, so intense that I missed the plane and had to stay overnight in the airport, napping on the uncomfortable benches. 

The second time was well-prepared, with polished admiration and smoothly increasing frequency of heartbeats along with the landing airplane. Only the insane blooming of the city with the colourful wings on the both side of the river could match the extent of the skyrocketing emotional fireworks in my whole human being, as if I was a child at my first Christmas. 

This time it was different, as if both the city and me grew up and needed to find the dolce vita in details. I sank into the deeper layers of the reality in search of clear molecular emotions. The ones I am taking with me like flashcards pinned on memory.

The comfort

I am still half asleep and feel slightly weightless in the morning, a bit in the air, wrapped in the soft and calmingly tender blanket. The latter seems to demonstrate the names of all the cities I would want to visit in an interesting calligraphic font. The poster of Woody Allen’s Manhattan musical is right above my head: I did not know Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton cast in that one, accompanied by Gershwin's music. I am alone in the bedroom, yet I can distinctly feel his warmth next to me and his odour on the pillow. I can hear him typing something next door, in the living-room and drinking English breakfast tea. Without milk. 

It is going to rain in London today...