the last day of 2005

i woke up at 6 in the morning on the couch with the diaries of Paul Klee (1898-1918) resting on my stomach, reading glasses still on. after being out with the boys last night drinking, smoking and eating, i came home overstuffed in every sense of the word. poured myself a fernet-branca that i promptly proceeded to spill both on my sweater and Paul Klee's Tagebücher. the book i had just bought yesterday while on a stroll to catch a few rays of sun that took me over to the Zentrum Paul Klee for a coffee and a few lines of notes.

frenet-branca is medicine in my cabinet, and after having devoured a huge steak, drunk a few biers, and smoked a cigar... really, the whole of my 55 kilos were overwhelmed! still, there is nothing like a book that i absolutely want to read to bring me back home early. that is, sort of early, a bit before midnight. it snowed last night, and by the time i returned home the town as very silent and wrapped up in a ten centimeter thick snow blanket. i love this snow silence, it does away with the grayness of the winter, and it brings in a cold warmth that is everything of a contradiction, it is pure and simple pleasure, the ones that i thrive in.

the bitters ought and it seems that they do help the digestion of all that animal protein, but the concoction is also rather high in alcohol. in spite of all of this, i must have read over 30 pages before i dozed off, exhausted and satisfied. i have developed a fascination with journals, in particular, artist's journals. Paul Klee is however my latest discovery, and as a writer i am always fascinated by the bits and pieces that make up character. having myself started with painting and drawing at the same time that i started writing, i do maintain a fascination for the image world and am slowly giving in to my absolute need to draw, and to use color. bit by bit, i am putting my life back together. it is a bit like de-fragmenting an hard disc, it is necessary maintenance.

around 8 in the evening when i went to join my colleagues on our friday night weekly round table at one of the most uncool restaurants near the university, i took the trolley bus. it is rather convening that the line that goes by here is the same one that goes to the university, so i enter the bus and somehow get myself totally lost in my own thoughts, and when the bus stops at the train station i do not even look around. the bus drives on and goes past the intersection where it would have turned right to head up the hill to the university. when i realized this i got up and walked up to the driver and notice that i am the only passenger in the said trolley bus. feeling like a totally absent minded idiot, i smile at the bus driver, and remark on the fact that i have failed to get out at the main train station. he tells me that there had been an announcement on the loudspeakers, i heard nothing, saw nothing. this is how loud the engines inside my head do run. he stopped at the next station just past the intersection, and i walked up the two stations to the university instead of waiting the 7 minutes until the next bus up the hill. already then it was snowing, and already then there was this snow white silence in the deserted streets. it was the kind of picture that you want to put on xmas cards: white, idyllic, pastoral even.

at our very uncool watering whole, the one pizzeria without a restaurant website, and where the restaurant owners also are the waiters, we tend to discuss all and everything, especially we are to be counted on for exchanging technology war stories. yesterday we were on to testing the "MMS" capabilities of our mobile phones... nothing that i will ever go into any detail.

for some reason, here i am today looking back at yesterday and in absolute need of yet another coffee. i have no plans for today other than the plans i had yesterday. besides i have a few books to read and a few books to write, and a whole lot of rubbish to throw overboard.

i may log my very own complaints every once in a while, here and there. in the whole, all is going as it ought to be going. i remain one lucky, happy bitch.

Technorati Tags: 2005, bern, blog, books, fernet-branca, journal, paul klee, diaries, reading, stammtisch physik, writing, zoom

bent, not curled!

somebody once mentioned that if i did this or that, my toes would uncurl. my toes were not curled to  begin with, neither is my hair. yesterday while putting on some stockings after having rubbed my feet with a sticky rich ointment i came to think about his toes, not my toes at hand. his toes. i am always speechless when i look at his toes: they are not just curled, they are also bent. one of them is rather bent. a bent toe, what could that possibly mean?

two years of being back on the mat rather regularly and with some assiduity, has my feet  calloused and tough. the only part of me that is tough, the sole of my feet and the skin on my toes. i vaguely remember how very smooth and soft my feet were two years ago after i had been off the tatamis and hardwood floors for over one year. smooth, and apparently uncurled my toes were. my feet were soft and smooth when i was walking the sands of arabia. i was never smooth.

it seems that while my feet where soft, it was my heart that was rather calloused and tough. was it? from all the great and joyous moments of being in arabia, what is it that i remember?

i do not quite know how to describe what i feel right now. it is a mixture of pounding myself with the question of when will i have all the administrative work squared away. it is something of that, it is realizing that i have some difficulty in deciding what to keep and what to throw away. it is going through piles of old architecture and interior design magazines and getting caught in the photography and the imagination. i keep thinking of the house where i was born, and how i want to bring it back to its simplicity, or could i also say farewell to that house? it is talking to my aunt on the phone and crying, it is wishing that i was with family, my family. it is not knowing who my family is. it is hesitation all over again. when i feel myself hesitating, then i think of the man with the bent toe.

that bent toe of his means a world to me. that is, how can somebody otherwise rather  wise and handsome have both such a bent toe and such a delight in teasing me? is he teasing or is he again flirting with me? not that the answer to the latter question really matters, preciously little does matter, much less the fact that his toe is bent.

oracles come in all varieties: gurus, the so called spiritual leaders, the religious leaders, the futurologists, the software engineers, the pop icons, the super-stars, the celebrities and a few odds and ends from jesus to the dalai lama, and passing by the fashion popes of this world. if that was not enough to confuse most of us, then there are horoscopes, numerology, tarot and a few others that i have already forgotten or never heard of. people who read and live by horoscopes as the source of truth are no different from those who interpret the bible literally. lost fanatics, all of them. the illusory search for the truth is a fascinating excursion in human derision.

just last night i was telling a friend who came over for dinner about the one scene that had occurred at the very spot where we were sitting. it was the kind of scene that i had imagined existed only in fiction and cheap novels, and that certainly nothing like it would ever have happened in the so called real life, and most certainly not in my real life. surprise!

there, sitting across from me, once upon a time sat a man whom i had dared to like. he looks at me and with that smile and expression that  can only mean contradiction, tells me that he had informed himself about my birthday because he wanted to be sure that i had the right horoscope, and that he hoped i did not mind.

if i had a mind, i would have minded. but, in that moment, i had no mind, i did not mind. had the fact of looking up my birthday remained an isolated instance of esoteric meandering, then what would have there been to mind? in retrospect it is rather easy to assess the past: that was the first indication of that one human's inability to deal with reality and his absolute belief in oracles. the case still fascinates me. never before have i met somebody so bent on control and so devoid of the capability of responsibility for what is nothing more than the random nature of life.

last night this friend of mine and i we ended up going through the repertoire of our experiences in relationships. it was a rather enjoyable and down to earth honest exchange of views and experiences. no wonder that the one with the bent toe, after some giddy interaction of ours, comments the exchange with a claim that the pleasure is all his. pleasure is always mine, and a bent toe means absolutely nothing.

(to be continued)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Technorati Tags: fluage

you know, curtain time is curtain time. period.

it was 18:42 and my neighbor rings at the door. i am still in pajamas, yes! she tells, asks, implores that if i want to go see the musical show boat, then i should be at the door of the theatre at 18:55. i said ok, i will be there. i was there at 18:59 and could not find her, my ticket had been left at the garderobe, but i first went to the wrong side. i listened to the overture just outside the door, and in a minute pause i was shoved into the theatre just before the first act started.

between 18:42 and 18:59 i brushed my teeth, showered, got dressed and turned off the computer, left the house, locked the door, and waked up to the theatre. it was  a new record for me.

i was frankly quite surprised to see such a big production in berne. it was good. the best was seeing a fellow i know on stage. i remember when about ten years ago he quit his job as a teacher, was unemployed and living from thin air. he and i still worked on a project together, and on occasions i see him in the bus or on the programs of the local theaters. then all he wanted was to become an actor. he has succeeded.

Technorati Tags: ego, expression, dream, theatre

silex

boxing day is what they call this day. to me, it is running like yesterday: i got up close to noon after having gone to sleep shortly before day break. i call this mode, the free running mode. it reminds me of the times when i delved into laser physics, and sometimes operated the YAG in free running mode. i mean, it was one with neodymium, sixtieth on the atomic number, silvery white, a member of the lanthanides.

got up, the usual thing, coffee with soya, e-mail, mobile messages, and a fully qualified vegetative state. the phone rings and on the other side the voice says " i am at the airport, and i wanted to call you while i had a bit of peace and quiet."  he is in paris, flying to frankfurt, and i sit here in this grey place, on the green chair, and i can barely hear his voice, it is indeed a bad connection. it is christmas, and those who know me, know that i hate this time, and some do ignore my pleas to be left alone at this time. i wanted to feel loved, i feel loved. i feel cared for, and i feel like i am a part of this world, also of his world.

i thought, and thought is something i ought to avoid, that i would be spending this xmas week in paris. after much "hin und her" and after the roof really caved in on my return from italy last week, after i almost got on the next flight bound to faro, i decided to stay put. after all, this is about my brown pants, and these pants are not yet repaired. i am on free running mode. this is when i let my natural internal clock reset itself, i make no appointments with anybody. no alarm clocks either. i close the door, and shut the world out, except for blogging and bloglines, i withdraw. i do not even check the weather reports, one look out the window: grey. fucking grey, that is enough. yes, it borders on depression.

yesterday in a fit of "don't be a scrooge, you bitch!" i exhausted my free allowance of mobile text messages  (sms) and sent anyone with a mobile phone number somewhere in my mangled up electronic address books, well meaning and sincere good wishes for a peaceful christmas. what on earth do i have to gain from anything else? this morning i got a few cryptic messages back and am wondering to whom all did i send my good wishes. before that a few friends echoed back, from istanbul, from amman, from wherever they happen to be, either by choice or hazard.

my friend at the airport this morning was on his way to go spend a few days with his aging parents in frankfurt. somehow i had the idea that it would have been nice to go there too. his parents are older than mine, and i like them very much. somehow i censored the idea, there are too many reasonable reasons not to do it, and so many good humanitarian ones that would make this a gift to all involved. above all, it would do me some good to be with his parents. thinking is perhaps a practice that i could abandon.

in my trickle of communication last night i also mailed a short note to my muse. a while ago i got an echo back from him claiming that the pleasure is his. ah! the pleasure is ours.

Technorati Tags: floue, fluage, free running mode, freedom, friendship, muddle, muse, scrooge, zen

a letter to three wise men

there have been three very wise men in my life this year past. at least three. all three have mastered the art of being with another being, accepting that being, and in a gentle fashion pointing out to the being, my human being, my own insecurities.  all three of you in one form or another have shown a facet of that warmth and acknowledgment that i have sought all my life, and that i never knew where to to find only because i had looked for it in all the wrong places. i had looked out there.

just the other day when the dread of the christmas seasons was nagging at me, one of you said "i have nothing to hide" and i caught myself being lost in my fears of rejection. i took a deep breath, winked the fear away, and realized that there was no moment more perfect that that one.  there were logs in the fireplace, i was away from worries and concerns, i felt that i was in paradise and yet i knew that my senses did not understand that particular world of this recent past. i confess, there is much that i do not understand; my spirit is tired of having my brain constantly trying to understand. your father is dying, and i keep wondering what i would feel if my own father was dying, and seem to feel nothing. yet i sense your concern, you mention your tears and your emotions, and i know that while capable of being present to that which you feel, i have little to no access to any of what you feel.

after paradise and back home and on the eve of another christmas, i call you thinking that you were on the other side of the alps, having been much too confused to have listened attentively when you told me that you were flying earlier than planned... calling you just to hear your voice. just to say without saying it that i miss you already. it is good that it is so. you were on a train. we are always going somewhere. the call got cut short, you called back, i missed the call. my own thoughts are so loud these days, i do not hear the phone ring. i rang you back, it is good to hear your voice, it is very good to hear your voice.

last spring one of you took took me in his arms, held my hand while we walked along the river, and surprised me. for the first time in a long time, i felt that it was all right to walk hand in hand with another along that river, and that it was quite alright to be alone. it was as though when you took my hand, i felt how very foreign the idea was, and how very pleasurable it could be. i had accepted and made peace with sunday walks alone and in all solitude. it was spring, and then there you were, holding my hand. before i knew what had happened, and while my body was still much entangled in the delights of yours, something happened that i did not understand. i feared the intimacy more than ever, i was not ready. at the same time that you withdrew, we both discovered how very deep our mutual affection is. alone was a peaceful state that you surprised me in.

the third man, the first, the other, you are a muse of mine, you are a teacher of mine, you are a father. when you are my muse, i always feel that i am abusing the goodness of your heart. when you are being my teacher, i know that my impetuous ego will listen to you. this autumn, it was in the warmth and peace of your home that i discovered how very in love i had fallen with the picture of you and your daughter. it was then that for the first time i could feel a very old injury that has drained me since i was just a little girl like your daughter is now. for days i could feel it, and for days i could not articulate what i had felt. you asked me how i had slept, and all i could come up with is that i had slept well and that i had had a nightmare.

i did not fall in love you with, i fell in love with your daughter, not the girl, but with your relationship. i had wished i had had such a father as you. it was so much easier to see my need in the picture of the two of you. to just look inside and search for the wound was an impossible task. was it your confession of your own disorientation when her life came to be? i do not know. all i know is that in that summer of my red-haired flirt in the province, what i could not deal with was the very idea of you and the sheer acknowledgment of my existence. i wrote to you then, it was personal, very personal, and infinitely impersonal.

it is christmas, the celebration of the birth of another semitic bastard, a celebration that i could never quite understand, and one that i refuse to understand. my childhood memories  of this time of the year have something of the flavour of some clown in red dropping down the chimney to leave gifts that i could not have wished for, had neither wanted nor could appreciate, or something about brotherly love in a quarreling family of hypocrites. feeling like the semitic bastard that i do feel like, one with no right to live, i sit here and write to three wise men in the grey silence of this place. why is it that i do not like christmas?

i have my difficulties when this time rolls around and i am thousand miles away from all those that i call family. family is perhaps what this season is all about, and family is what all three of you are about. while the father of one is dying, the other is with his own daughters, and the third sends me a sign of his good wishes, an impersonal sign. that impersonal sign brings a very personal warmth.

on christmas eve a friend and i got together for dinner and a movie right here in this lit up grey place. we discussed his recent trip to tokyo and osaka once more, this was the third time that we went at it. we also discussed his new gadgets, my new studio and garden, and he held a brief and effective plea for keeping my bed, the one on wheels, the one that i tend to give to the guests while i sleep in what he calls a child's bed. he being a lawyer, he held a good pleading speech for all the great features of said bed. then once we had rested my interior decoration challenges, he moved on to ask me about my plans, and why, after all, had i decided to not yet leave the vicinity of the zentrum paul klee. the answer is so simple, it ought to have struck me dumb long ago.

five years ago i said that i would in five years time return to my beach and my house in the algarve. the minute that i had said that i knew that i had created a breakdown that i would not quite easily remedy. my life is the web of my own commitments, but what is it with the algarve? i was thrown into this world carefree and without commitments. a few traumas along the way and i did my best to keep commitments to a minimum. i would not even commit to my own life, for almost 50 years i drifted without commitments other than the one of raising a child into adulthood. the child is now an adult, and i am back at square one: what is it that my life is all about?

this is where this one other story of a woman and three wise men starts. the algarve is fine and wonderful, and nowhere on earth does the air smell sweeter. still, it all started with one word when i returned to switzerland after my year in new york about ten years ago. i returned to bern and i looked everywhere for one word: discipline. i looked high, and i looked low. that is when i met one of you. one thing led for another, and i found myself living in germany again for another two years, and once more i return to the alpine village in helveticum. in germany i did this and that, and a lot of experimentation. i started a firm, then i gave it up and joined one of you as a colleague. i had just started looking, and i did not know what i was looking, and i did not know how i would know that i had found what i was looking for. was i looking? ah! the thing with aikido is simple, it is mine. as one of you once said, it is not that the man is my guru, it am just interested in what i can learn from him. yes, that is exactly the relationship that i have to aikido. aikido is not a man, but then relationships are independent of gender or life form. aikido and i, it is not about being this or that, or grading, or a warrior, or a samurai, it is about what i learn from it. it, aikido and my teachers, aikido and zen. discipline. it took me several years to discover that i had found what i was seeking.

for all the wrong reasons, i have made the right decision; i have narrowed down my choices. i am here now, it is a commitment to myself, it is about me wanting to do what i want. it is the only commitment that i have. i do not think that i can make this very transparent to anybody outside of my head. yesterday my lawyer friend wanted to know about my plans. why here? why not lausanne? why not zurich? i do not know. i just know that i am here now, and that there is a whole new year ahead, that i am cleaning up a lot of things that do not work in my life. it is all about what giving form and shape to the content of my answer to my accountant's question of what it was that i needed to do what i want to do. no, i do not do new year's resolutions either, and the end of the year is a good time to look back and write the history that only the winners can write.

then, there is nothing more than to unfurl the silence and ignite the peace. that stone, it does not react. sometimes i just know.

Technorati Tags: aikido, christmas, ego, egoism, father, fluage, man, muse, paradise, writing, zen

another story

Xmas, the merry making season is around the corner, and my brother and I have somehow missed the point along the way. We share a deep rooted loathing for this season. I for my part resent the fact that it is at this time that I feel the abysmal distance between our parents and us. It is paradoxical: our parents have done all that they can to, in what in their understanding, would make our lives as good as possible. Yet, neither my brother or I have ever felt any warmth in it.I for my part know that I have not felt respect for my idiosyncrasies, or for that which is called my own individuality, I have felt trampled over and tolerated, but never have I felt accepted. I have spent almost fifty years of this life just looking for acceptance. I know that this is how I feel, and at the end of the day only I can take responsibility for these feelings of mine. But what other reality do I have other than that which I feel?
I grew up with the distinct feeling that I had no right to exist, no right to live, and it was only the extreme mercy of those parental units, that somehow allowed me to stay alive. But then the feeling got bleaker, a feeling that grew out of inference from lose remarks here and there, and the bleakness of it was that had my own life not only justified their own egoistical needs, and that if was not for a total commitment of keeping good appearances, my life had long been disposed of.There is pain, and there is reality in this disconnect.My life is truly insignificant; it is the result of the uncontrollable lust of two teenagers welded in collusion and isolated in their own world. Our parents have no other friends other than themselves. It is them against the world, and us children, we were minor incidents toward which, morals dictated certain acceptable behavior. Their world is such a perverted world, and it is so damn hallow! It is a world full of morals, and void of principle or warmth. It could be that they are happy in their world that seems so wretched to me. My pain makes me bitter. I am feeling like a dreadful ungrateful bitch, almost...I feel dreadful, yes. Yesterday on returning home from being to paradise for about two days, the ceiling came crashing on my head the minute I entered the house. I found myself reacting to mail, and reacting to the state of disarray in the place, to say nothing of the state of disarray in my affairs. I wanted to call the friend whose warm arms I had just left behind in paradise, but somehow I did not know what I could have told him. Would I have told him that is just my insecurity that makes me call and seek reassurance in the warm tone of his voice? What was I to tell this generous and warm man? Was I tell him that each time that I wonder into that space that we share, I find myself in paradise? Was I to tell him that I fear getting attached to him, because I fear most losing him?Unable by fear to call my friend in paradise, I called my friend in Darmstadt, the architect. The architect and I go back a long long ways, we are life friends, there is no fear of loss, no fear of deception, no fear whatsoever. The architect and I is another wondrous chapter of this little and insignificant life of mine. My architect friend in some ways does represent my own defiance: he is German. Our parents hate Germans, all Germans, because in their world all Germans are Nazis. This is not my won interpretation or inference, they have told me so much in their own words. One of my subtle and unconscientious acts of rebellion was to marry a German, a friend of this architect. My Darmstadt architect and I do share a passionate artist' soul; he paints, I write.One of my most prized possessions is one of his paintings. To me that painting of his is all about the artist not yet born, his and mine, both. It is a painting from times when we discovered that we could trust each other, we had nothing to hide from each other, or anybody. We could share anything, and we have. We share each other's choices and differences, we respect that that makes us individual and distinct. We can be with the sheer intimacy of our art, and we can be with the physical reality of our distance. My Darmstadt architect has accompanied me to the place where I was born, he has met some of my family, not my parents. We have taken measurements of that old house that I asked my parents if I could fix and use. They said no, they had their reasons.
But I am not a dreadful ungrateful bitch. I am a lucky bitch. I am grateful for my life. What difference does it make that my life was an accident? What does it matter that my life is mine, and not theirs to control? My life is here and it is not for anybody to control, not even I. My life is here to me to live, not to control.Feeling like the unwanted leftovers of a feast was never much of a warm feeling, yet that is exactly how I have felt most of my life. It is time to rewrite the script. It is time to accept that paradise is right here on this earth, right here.
When I got a mail this morning from my brother and the last line read "Here is hopping (sic) your suicide plans go as wished!" I called him because I wondered what it is that I had shared with him about the story that I am writing now. I had said nothing, still that line made me wonder if I am starting to forget what I talk about with my brother.

Technorati Tags: christmas, family, life, paradise, schemata

let me get this together...

i got up, had my potion of coffee and soya milk with brown sugar, and then i started doing some maintenance on the IT hardware, updating software, synchronizing the life blood of my life to the hard disc, and finally getting my PowerBook iTunes music shared with the rest of the network. in the process i realized that there was software that i need to get uninstalled, and a whole truck load of updates. really, i like paper. whatever happened to good old paper. paper and stone, those i love.

five hours later i am still in my pajamas, and the file transfer over fire-wire is still not finished... the kitchen sink  is a mess, and i have forgotten when i last cleaned up in said kitchen. i feel stressed to the break-point, and this is not about tennis!

how is it that in a world of abundance, we are constantly confronted with scarcity?

the phone rings, it is a friend in paris... he reminds me that i wanted to go to paris to spend xmas, if not with him, at least in his apartment, but at this point i do not feel like moving my arse anywhere, and may opt for a "zero-block" holiday season in all solitude. after all, slowly i am becoming an hindu, i am starting to respect cows more than people, or some other distorted religious idea has infected my mind. no, i do not know, and i "don't" care either.

why scarcity?

yesterday i got two letters from the local authorities with whom i have the  pleasure of dealing with. both of these letters were written in a tone that made me wonder what the price of basic civility is these days. i could only much too sarcastically, and through the bitter lessons taught by experience, conclude that in these days when the public administration is so stressed to save and cut costs, that it is the high price of civility that has made public servants totally forgo of its use.

imagine that i get an inquiry about my private life, and what i plan to do, and that i am to give an immediate answer. there is no citation of a legal code that would in any way make it necessary for me to comply, and i know well enough that there is no consequence for me if i do not reply, no deadline either. remember, i too have worked as a federal public servant, and i do know the procedures, an office action does require a deadline and it must be based on the whatever law applies to the situation. still, the "authorities" write without justification, a second letter asking for the information, and that they really need it, before even 4 weeks have elapsed. gee, i have nothing else to do than to answer inquires from some half wit public servant who was also kind enough to start  criminal charges against me when i got married to the fellow from whom i am legally separated now, but not yet divorced!

now he wants to know why i have not yet filed for divorce, really? i have not filed for divorce because i have not filed for divorce. that was my answer, however i took care to use slightly more juridical language. really, how uncooperative can i be?

surely i have an ax to grind about having been faced with criminal charges because i married a non-swiss, a fine human being, and with a totally confusing immigration status. i then had to hire a lawyer, and although the charges against me were dropped, it was not the state that paid my legal costs, i did. that the marriage did not work, was perhaps no surprise to anybody, not even to me, but then i have also been married to a swiss, and that was by far a much worse marriage and a rather abusive relationship. why must some fucked up half wit public servant pick on me because i have married a foreigner and the marriage did not work? relationships work and they do not work, it is not a matter of nationality, culture, or even mutual respect. sometimes, they do not work, and we all make or have made that experience some time or other.

i know that this is switzerland, and that the extreme right xenophobes often occupy such public servant posts, but really, if there are undesirables in this country, the one i married last century is not one of them, the swiss who physically abused me, is much more undesirable. that foreigner whom i married in a moment of loneliness and hope of better days, when i was ill and weak, he never lifted a finger to hurt me.

why is civility so scarce?

Technorati Tags: abuse, bern, berne, civility, discrimination, foreigns, fremdenpolizei, harrassement, politics, society, swiss, switzerland, xenophobia

it is all about my pants, it is.

it has been a while, and i have been perfecting the elusive mastery of making myself scarce, this is something that i plain suck at!

what is new?
not a bloody thing. nothing ever changes, and nothing remains the same. you go figure.

my life is taking quite a few turns, and mind you, it is all about my pants. my brown pants that i bought one year ago or longer, desperately need to be taken in, and just hang around in a state of unsewed  neglect. life is sweet, it really is.

yesterday when my local phone company, the one providing the last mile gives me a call with some bit about liking to know why i do not use them anymore, i decided that i had had it with the likes, and that i was going to go into different directions, and not only in what regards telephony. so, today i got myself a skype In number, and will give this a try. remember the time when  conference calls were charged at a premium? not only did conference calls cost an arm and a leg, but you had to call in some central number, for me it used to be some freaking number in new york city since that was where my company was located at one time, and then you needed an access code, and eventually, we all somehow trotting in from the different time zones to listen while one talked. those times are gone, and actually that was not too long ago.

more recently my colleagues and i do conference calls using skype, some of us have zero-rate fully web, computer to computer based telephony and others are on a regular phone à la last century. or was that two centuries ago?

how am i?

oh yes, even my dearest brother sort of has stopped calling me almost every morning. for one thing, i shifted the furniture and functionality on the pied-à-terre and if i am sleeping, i just do not hear the phone. to add to my unpredictability my default time to get up, 5 or 6 in the morning, has defaulted all over the place, and is at this point something wonderfully theoretical, that perhaps  i get to about two days per week. my brother seems to be getting his shit together, and gaining some joy in this life, and i have been too busy, once again, restructuring this life of mine. so, i really do not know how i am. i am here, now. and i am having a great time, but then i always do. the latter statement makes me suspect that indeed i am a masochist. after all, going through therapy has been poking itself into every unhealed and painful wound of my life, and i am discovering that there are a lot of them. each and every time that i am faced with those painful experiences, and whatever i made them mean, it hurts. i enjoy this life? yes. you go figure.

i am also elated that i will be giving up the pied-à-terre at the end of february. after all, it is time to get a place with more light. i will miss the neighbors, and i will miss the glamourous walls, i will not miss the depressions. i like spending time in italy, and that i am doing.

Technorati Tags: 2005, alone, altstadt, decadence, depression, ecto, ego, fluage, obstberg, pants, skype

today...

there is something totally inspiring in waking up early, stealing away from the room to not disturb a friend sleeping in the second bed, making myself a coffee, showering and getting dressed and ready to go. meanwhile my guest also got to his feet, and dealt with his own shower without instructions  or words.

i liked how today went, and now i am still up because i promised to have some work done by tomorrow, and i am not happy with the material that i have to work with, so i rather wait for a miracle to happen and have the raw material turn into something fabulous. well, this is the nature of hope. hope is vain, and hope is a waste of time. nothing will help me other than try to make the best with what i have. tomorrow i have again an early appointment: between now and then there are 8 hours, and i ought to also get some sleep.

last night was great, too short, and i too distracted by my own preoccupation. my visiting colleague lives in paris, he was here just for the night, and he drove back this morning after having given a seminar at a university in southern germany. he and i know each other from the times when we both were in germany. it is good to have time to talk with him and discuss our world. his always challenges mine, and vice verse; we remain interested in nature and the physical world at a rather fundamental level. he says that he does not want to do "pop physics" and somehow i know what he means by that...

Technorati Tags: freedom, friendship, god, life, physics, hope, truth

Picknik auf dem Eis

Picknik auf dem Eis
uploaded by intutum.

still faithful to my old shoes.

i am none of this, some days i am just here

i recently stumbled on a few lines of self descriptionn by a blogger that go like this:

"I am married to the love of my life, Lorna. I live in Pooland in a Bananaman style home with my wife and step-son Rocky. I have two grown daughters. Lorna and I have 6 grandchildren." (names and places were changed)
why does this sound all too nice, distant far and remote to me?

it may have nothing to do with the fact that i am thousands of miles away from Pooland and that Bananaman style means nothing to me, but this is a good place to start: place and style. the love of my life, what is the love of my life? what! what, not whom, i dare declare.

my family has kept me occupied during the past weeks. i have a family; it occupies me. it could be that i eventually decide to blog about it, and then i may not. while today i visited a public school and held an interactive hour with a class, the students aware that i was a writer wanted to know all about it. i told them about my passion for writing, and i told them that i would not reveal my pseudonym. i was there to share with them about life, not to sell my stories. once i had declared my clear intention, it was the whole room and the teacher that opened up to me. i came there to sell nothing, i was there doing my job as school commissioner, to share about life, and to answer their questions.

besides all of that i just finished reading Andrej Kurkow's "Picknick auf dem Eis" (in the german translation from russian) and Michel Houellebecq's "Platform" in the french original version.

that bloggers declaration and the two novels just read make for a good story itself. while kurkow (kurkov) tells the story of a pragmatic approach to life where morals and ethics are the concerns of the affluent west europeans, houellebecq masturbates in cynical moralism. neither of the main characters in these two novels would ever have made such a declaration "i am married to the love of my life", although houellebecq's hero may indeed have thought for a while that he had found the love of his life and while ready to follow her to the other end of the world, some terrorist decides to throw a monkey wrench into those plans of theirs. shit happens. how shit happens is what makes the detailed stuff  of novels, and writers amused at creating plausibility in the process of mixing in the experienced with the imagined.

what i can clearly say about the two novels is that i have immensely enjoyed reading both. they are the kind of stories that i would have gladly written, had i had had such inspiration, still neither corresponds to my gender, and both have something in common with you and i, we are alive and kicking in the XXI century, we share the experience of our times, and these are times that our ancestors did not share with us, these are unique times during which we once again re-interpret what it is that makes human experience, human. all said, all done, that blogger with his six grandchildren is part of it all, still i wonder what planet he may have come from. it all sounds so idyllic, romantic, and perfect, it overwhelms me.

Technorati Tags: alone, houellebecq, kurkov, kurkow, literature, XXI century

lunch

lunch
uploaded by intutum.
what is flow he asked. what is flow?

feeling mellow and blue, just being here now.

Technorati Tags: fluage, italia, milano

I miss Alexandria

I clearly prefer the Atlantic, but then that is only because I know it better than the Mediterranean. Although I must confess that I fell in love with the latter somewhere around Alexandria in Egypt.

I am not very wise, even a tad unwise, but I do like koans. I have a healthy disregard for religion that does not prevent me from practicing Zazen (Zen Buddhism Rinzai or Soto). To me it is a question of spiritual well-being, not one of religion. If I have a problem with religion, then I am even more critical of anything esoteric. You may call it some deformation due to having a keen interest in philosophy, in particular, eastern philosophies, and a tremendous amount of ignorance to go with it.
Let me add a bit to your understanding of koans. At first when you hear one, it seems contradictory or paradoxical, it is in bringing harmony to the apparent contradiction that one discovers the essence of the lesson. One could also say that in reflecting on a koan, one balances a paradox.

While our society, and most self-help books, will try to convince you that you have to be perfect, well-adjusted, and a dream of a person before you can find some warmth and intimacy in friendship, my own experience tells me that we are somehow all a bit needy, hurt, and just looking for a bit of peace in this world at war. We all have an history, we have lived, we have loved, we have been hurt, we have hurt, and hopefully we have learned something on the way.

All humans are complex by nature, and the last thing I would try would be to enact complexity. I would simply be overwhelmed by the task.

Technorati Tags: alexandria, alone, human, journal

from a friend

He dies slowly,
who does not travel,
who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself.

He dies slowly
who destroys his self-esteem,
who does not let others help him.

He dies slowly
who transforms himself into a slave of habit,
repeating every day the same course,
who does not change mark,
does not dare to change the colour of his clothes
or does not talk with persons he does not know.

He dies slowly,
who avoids passion and its trurmoil of emotions,
just those that bring bright to the eyes
and restore destroyed hearts.

He dies slowly,
who does not turn the page
when he is unhappy with his work, or his love,
who does not risk the certain or the uncertain
to go beyond a dream,
who does not afford, even once in his life,
fleeing from sensible advice.

Live today!
Risk today!
Do it today!
Don`t let yourself die slowly!
Don`t prevent yourself from being happy!

Pablo Neruda 

(sent via E-mail)

Technorati Tags: flyinglizard, neruda

nightmares and other illusions

on thursday night i had a nightmare. rarely do i have nightmares, and when i do have them, they are ugly, scary, and make any horror story that stephen king ever wrote look, feel and sound like a fairy tale. all the nightmares that i have ever had invariably involve my family. whatever psychoanalysis is doing to me, it is uncovering some of my worse fears. i have no clue, however i do suspect that the nightmare and the psychoanalysis are related.

being in france is good, being in strasbourg is better. being with aikidoka is great, being with people is something that i may never master. i think that i now remember something about all of this being an exercise in egoism in its purest form, that is, self-discovery. yesterday when i said to somebody who drove us to the train station - thank you for all - i meant exactly that. nothing less, nothing more, all. what does all mean?

all is not perfection, yet all is complete. all is not wonderful, yet is is neutral. all. nightmare, aikido practice and a hard tatami for three nights returned me back to my life refreshed.

monday was a heavy day on the program, still i found time to read a bit more of houellecq's essay on lovecraft, and the man himself. after this reading i woke up from what was almost a nightmare, and certainly an unsettling dream. after this i had to find some amusement in having dreamt something rather unpleasant while reading a story about rather unpleasant dreams.

on sunday i had a glimpse of my muse's being that once more touched me. how can i be so very fortunate to be inspired by such wonderful and loving being? human or not, a muse is a being. where is my reality? where is my muse?

i like it that the work for this week is clearly cut out, and i like it that the way things are going, even if it not all too evident, and by far nothing is too easy, somehow it works.  it flows peacefully.

Technorati Tags: aikido, houellebecq, identity, illusion, love, muse, nightmare, strasbourg

got to read more!

genève et la lune
uploaded by intutum.


"Je viens de lire dans le /Phèdre/ de Platon quelque chose qui vous ressemble. Socrate dit (je traduis): "Je ne puis encore, selon l'expression de Delphes, me connaître moi-même; Je trouve donc ridicule,  ignorant encore cela, d'examiner  ce qui appartient à autrui".
Cela est proche de votre "I certainly have no  idea if I will ever know who i am, much less whom another might be." "

NOTE: after a friend of mine emailed me about the excellent french above, I must add that the above was not written by me, thus I can not claim the credit for the above. The above is a citation from a private email exchange with another friend.

While I am at it, I must confess to a certain sloppiness in my citation practices within this blog, it is not that I would not know any better. It is not either that I want to in any way deceive the rare reader about my sources, rather it has something to do with this medium being to me a form of rough draft, not a final version, of what to me are rather loose and apparently unconnected babblings. I hold here absolutely no pretense of playing the role of a journalist, or even of a diarist, as such, i have  an attitude rather diametrically opposed to how many bloggers view their activity. That said, let me add that the power of this medium is that you are free to declare its role and function in your life, and the reader has all the choice as to whether to engage in its reading or not.

Technorati Tags: disclaimer, private, citation

furiosity

right now there is a certain furiosity of spirit, an incarnation of the classic, and a desperation with the now. i never took much time to study the classics. after at the age of twelve, having spent a few brief moments explaining Socrates to one lost soul, i wonder that after such an experience, it never crossed my mind that it might be interesting to deal with the old greeks on my own time, for my own delight and pleasure. each time that i meet someone well versed in the classics, i end up jealous. how daring of that person to take the time to study some of the most sustainable texts of human kind!

now i am just impatient. the whole of every thing that i touch right now is going much too slow. i am slow, and the world is at a stand still. i read too slow, i want to know it all, and the input rate is just much too slow. is this greed? most certainly this is greed. we live in times of greed, in times of abundance, in times of isolation. i wonder why "schemata" is literally tugging at me by the balls! i feel that i write too slowly, and i feel that i do not know how to tell a story! i feel, i am not.

it is such a simple story, the narrator and the protagonists are well defined. there is a limited number of strong characters in the story, and the story remains the seduction into the abyss. i always have my fun reading other writer's attempts at looking behind other writer's craft. how many times have i caught myself examining the anatomy of a captivating story? it is thus a special treat to have found the essay by houllebecq on lovecraft. mind you, i have never read lovecraft, nor have i read houllebecq, fantasy tends to bore me; i am the anti-thesis of lovecraft, and like him i have  without trying, suceeded in the marvel of failing life, of not being adjusted and conform, of daring to have my own opinion, and of not daring to go beyond the confines of my world. fuck this here, now, and there! the sun is shining. in due time i will deal with houllebecq.

the sun shines on a tuesday following a rather black monday that torpedoed me into old coping mechanics: reach out and talk to somebody. i dialed the numbers of old and new friends, and i just kept on dialing; i went through quite a long list. some had just gotten home and where preparing dinner, some where starving, some just absent, people do have a life, even my friends have a life, and even this concoction of feelings, struggles, dreams and desires is a life, mine. there is one key to this coping mechanism: the one that has time to talk, that is the one whom i need. yes, this is about need. it is about needing to feel connected with humanity, it is the other side of the dark abyss.

Technorati Tags: classics, conform, consciousness, furiosity, greeks, houellebecq, lovecraft, schemata, writing

black monday, part 2

just got off the phone after a two hour conversation with a wonderful man in my life. he and i were married for a few years in a marriage of convenience that served us both well. we had met some thirteen years ago under the most simple and dramatic of circumstances shortly after our first respective divorces. when we compared notes, we realized that getting married would solve  the remnant legal hassles that we still had pending with our ex-spouses. the marriage served the purpose, and we have had one of the happiest of all divorces ever. when he got married a third time, i went to the wedding. when i call him at home, i ask his now wife to borrow back my husband for a while. when we married, it was a simple civil ceremony, and when we got divorced we went and celebrated with this then girlfriend, now wife. we laughed and joked with the judge about ménage-à-trois during the divorce proceedings, we were complete and happy for the time we could share, it was time to move on.

now, i had not talked to him in the last four years and right now while going through psycho-analysis i am digging up old and very painful wounds. this evening when he started to tell me about seeing his daughter again, soon to be a whole twenty years old, one of the elements of what was so intimately ours dawned on me: something about a little girl. we talked, we shared, we listened. yes, there where the fear is the biggest, that is the path. right now, i am full in the middle of the fear of intimacy. in the middle of it, and being reminded of the miracle of intimacy, all in one day, that is the wonder of it.

if my relationship with my muse is one that allows me to write and work through a story that is not personal, and yet is pieced together from small fragments of my memories, and bits of my imagination, it is also a relationship propelled by both the fear of intimacy and our dire thirst for it. we caress each other's egos, we flirt, we kiss,  we tease, and above all we do not dare. to not dare is to give in to fear, is it not?

i know for my part that i am frightened. will i let fear win?

when i heard our sensei tell us that aikido is a path of self-discovery i knew that it rang true in my ears, and right now i am beginning to appreciate the magnitude and depth of those words. 

i wonder if i will keep on letting good men pass through my life, let them go, and remain alone with my stories?
will i have you and  and be with solitude and muses?
will you accept the communion with my insanity?
will you allow bliss in our lives?

passing through and letting go.
it is impersonal, we just keep on forgetting. that rucksack of yours, it too, it is impersonal. your fear, we share, it is not ours, yet is not mine either, we just share it.

was it not in italy one month ago or so that i said something about the next two months being critical? yes, november is not over yet.

Technorati Tags: fear, fluage, intimacy, muse, path, strasbourg, zen

completing your sentences

it was early in the summer of 2005.

once again i am resisting what the universe is offering me.

if my weekend started on friday evening, it was an exceptional weekend. i like my solitude, yet i was among a lot of people this weekend, and for a while i forgot my own existence, i observed, i told stories, and i did not really go into details. the stories were my stories, they are always really, my imagination is too weak to go into the fantastic. i ended up totally confused as to what it is that i am doing these days.

i can play the role of the entertainer, the one who can tell something that to me is banal, and make it sound somehow interesting, that one is the entertainer. yet, what is  on my mind now is that sentence from berlin: it is time to get rid of the bitterness, just get rid of the bitterness. yes, it is bitter, and i do not like bitterness, like i do not like sweetness; i like the bland, the neutral, the unspectacular. i am very tired of playing roles, and i am even more tired of being interesting.

on friday evening i was not playing a role, or was i? my friend, the historian, and i went through a quick update of our lives during the past few months, and a bottle of wine was our victim. saturday morning was tough, but then i wanted to go to geneva, so i did. geneva always reminds me of istanbul for some odd reason. it is a place where i feel at home, and it is a place that reminds me of how very foreign i remain to it all. no, i do not like feeling the blues today, and i am feeling the blues today. there was a time when i loved the blues, not today. oh, the satanic power of fear! it has me today, and i do not want to surrender.

what did we talk about on friday evening that brought tears to my eyes?

that humans manage to fall out of relationship is to me no surprise, what surprises me is that we humans can form long lasting loving relationships. so, is it fear, or is pain, or is it both now?

still, last night when i returned to the pied-à-terre, having forgotten all about my struggles, having been spoiled by my friends, i felt that all was complete, and that i could again fall in love with every tumbleweed on my path. this morning i was the tumbleweed, and i could not fall in love with myself. i really do not like this type of pain, but then, i like no kind of pain.

you asked me to tell you a bit more about myself. the first time i saw you, my first thought was that i had no thoughts at all. time stopped, and three hours later, it was time to go in different directions. do you remember?

in the wonder of this life, i do not know how to talk about myself. in fact, i never talk about myself, i sometimes tell stories, and rarely, if ever, do i tell a story twice in the same way. it is all about me, and it is never about myself.

in our brief passage on this complicit world, all that there is, is a soft whisper of experience. these days i experience need. i meet wonderful tumble weeds all over, tumbleweeds dressed as neat trees, with some pretense of anchoring to the earth, yet all tumbling. what is it like when two tumbleweeds interlace their dry branches? why is it so difficult to just be a naked tumbleweed?

there is something that i like here. whatever the experience of the past few months has been, it leaves me at a new point in life, and once again, and with new vigor, i can say that i do not know. truly, i do not know. yes, i am going back to my offline world, and when i reemerge, will you be here?

what was it that you wrote? i complete your sentences, and i do not even notice that i am doing that. i read what you write, hear the sound of your voice, and i have the sensation of understanding every word, every sentence, and every pregnant pause. fear has me. i feel reckless, and i know it is not in my hands, it never was. i failed control, and fear knows it.

in researching "schemata" i came across a book that i had to read: H. P. Lovecraft.

Technorati Tags: fluage, houellebecq, lovecraft

eid mubarak

to all my friends... i wish i was there too...

learning

last night my brother called back. i had not talked with for a few days, had not seen him online, so i gave him a ring, and left a message on his voice mail. (remind me to have my fixed line voice mail fixed!)

he was a bit at the end of his wits about the trials and tribulations of mathematical physics. yes, we have passed that road, one of the best classes that i have ever took, one experience to never forget. one big difference between my brother and i is that we did not know our sister, she passed away before he was born, i have known them both, and love them beyond infinity. when she passed away i was then ten years old, and that was a day that to this day always invokes tears and an immense sense of loss. she was three years old when she died, and our brother whom she was never to know was born about two years later.

note that i am not much in a blogging mood these days. blogging is an experiment that i continue, and right now there are other priorities. i hope in due time, i will return to sharing a bit more of what is going on around me, and with me. this is a time for introversion.

Technorati Tags: alone, family, fluage, focus, incomplete

exhausted!

ah, yes. where was i?

this morning when i got out, the streets were wet, but do not ask me if it was from rain, or if was from the fog during the night. had lunch with a dear friend, and again, whenever i start talking about the wonderful issues that i am dealing with in therapy, and the emotions start bubbling, i start crying, it feels good and rather foolish.

i had a rather full day planned for today, except it got fuller, and now i am ready to call it a day, and head to bed and go to sleep. i want to curl in with a book and fall asleep and forget all the unfinished work hanging around on my desk. i have waited a long time for what is happening now. this tender flower of my own discovery is still rather weak, and i find myself wondering if it is real.

i find myself having various different conversations with an assortment of people, and i can not but fall in love with each and every one of them. life is  a wonderful wonder, how can it be anything else?

Technorati Tags: alone, fluage, muse

raw, vulnerable, and on the edge

i got home this afternoon feeling on the edge of it all. i called it emotional pain. i turned on the computer and opened the instant messenger program, my faithful friend in montana was online. we started exchanging sentences, ping this, pong that... in the midst of such an attack of totally uninvited guests, emotions, it was good to get anchored in some exchange with a long time friend.

i wonder what is really going on. i had a busy weekend complete with intellectual debate, philosophical musings, the discovery of paul klee's paintings, my curiosity about his journals. all of sunday, i wondered how it is that it has taken me so long to discover this painter, and i was in awe as to how deeply his works can touch me. in part i know, i was not ready until now. there is nothing like out of town guests to discover the local treasures. indeed i am very fortunate.

monday was here before i knew it. i got up at 5, and i would have rather turned around and gone back to sleep. not an option, not today. tomorrow also promises to keep me busy. all i have is now.

while i did not feel like talking to my friend whom i have known since my teen years, and i was happy to just exchange deep, meaningful, pregnant, and loose sentences with him, i was delighted spending two hours talking with somebody whom i do not know, and could not see, on the phone. imagine that on the other side there is this melodious voice, and that there is nothing to lose and nothing to gain, nothing to distract me, just the words, the tone, the rhythm of the conversation... yet you have the possibility of writing a new story, a real one, not fiction. what do you do?

i wonder what it is that i am seeking? is it admiration? is it understanding? is it warmth? is it comfort? is it acknowledgment? is it affirmation? is it validation? am i even looking for something at all?

"At this point, it seems to me that the best one can ever do with another, is to experience the other. I certainly have no idea if I will ever know who i am, much less whom another might be. The experiencing, the interaction, the sharing, that is what makes life the wonderful wonder that it is."

once again  i find myself right back in that immense plane of my struggles, that plane threatens to be an arid plain, for in this life of mine, in this being in love with it all, in this loving of existence, i am about to lose something familiarly stubborn, abusive and destructive, i am about to surrender to that which has frightened me for so long. first, there is all this emotional pain embracing me, and then i want to cry, just cry. i do not want to find myself in the arms of a muse and be held, i want to cry alone in my solitude, for alone i have been all of this life, alone i shall be of all of this life, yet nothing will be as it was before.

that two hour conversation that i so much wished for, with that specific person, was essential. when the phone rang i had some expectation of my brother being on the other side, and some hope of it being who it was. was that all that i wanted? i wanted to think out loud, i wanted to be liked, i wanted to be wanted, and i wanted nothing at all. i wanted to dare to just be me. when i hung up the phone, i was feeling raw, vulnerable and totally exposed. that is fine, that is how it is, that is me. it is complex, yet simple.

i found myself being confusing and imprecise, i found myself trying to interpret silence, and i found myself to be overwhelming, even to myself. i found myself vaulting over all preconceptions of what ought to be and should be, and i found myself being just me. oh... me.

i do not like emotional pain, yet, this is how this wound is going to heal, and how the broken bone is going to mend. somehow it reminds me of the process of cleaning out the cellar after years and years of neglect, it is a mess, there is nothing else to do  other than put on protective gear, wear gloves and start cleaning. it is not a glamourous job, it is  a necessary one.

oh... and you wanted to know how i am.

is it not that we are born complete?

Technorati Tags: alone, fluage

the thing with the storyteller (first)

there was once upon a time a little girl who lived in a far, far away land. this girl was the most naive of all girls, like all girls are when they are seven years old, and live in the country. she was the kind of little girl who threw little chicks up in the air so that they could fly, the kind of little girl that planted coins, so that they could grow, the kind of little girl who did not know where babies came from. she was a little girl who liked to sit around the fireplace and listen to stories being told. she was a little girl who though all children were evil. she was screamed and yelled at by the grown ups for all the silly things she did. still, she liked the stories, she loved the stories.

then she learned to read, she learned to read very fast. she learned to read much faster than she learned to talk. she read all the books in the house, she went to the library and she read more books. history she could not understand, history made no sense. she preferred the stories, the fables, the tales, the fantastic, the what if... of it all, the wonder of abstraction, the passion of fantasy. that was her world.

she wanted to grow up,  then she imagined that she would not be so bad. the grown-ups, oh those! they were perfect. they were always telling her all the things that she did wrong. then there was this thing with religion, catechism, and the whole shebang of what the church harbored besides pipe organs and the most uncomfortable seats. she went to the catechism and never understood a word of it, none of it made sense. she felt that she needed warmth and care, but that was nowhere. the grown ups were kind and generous and gave presents of food and clothes to the needy, but no, she had no right to any of it. she did not understand. the little girl like the sound of the pipe organs, she could listen, and listening she forgot.

she wanted to be a storyteller. the grown ups did not like storytellers, they liked doctors and lawyers, engineers and more doctors. if no storytelling, what about plowing the fields? she wanted to be a farmer. no. girls do not become farmers. she wanted to build houses, she wanted to draw, she wanted to paint. the grown ups were not listening. nobody listened to the little girl.

(to be continued)

Technorati Tags: alone, fluage, story

how are you?

answers of the past 2 days:

to a new acquaintance:
How am I? Uhm... busy, which means nothing. In the middle of my life, which is normal. A bit overwhelmed, which is frustrating. I'm alive and kicking, or something along those lines.

to a good friend, accomplice in culinary arts and other decadent enterprises:
i was in italy friday and saturday, returned home last night past midnight. my southern border crossings are due to one fellow, whom i met not too long ago (during this whole crisis). last and not least, it was also in trying to sort through the feeling of "being in love" that added to my own clarity.  it made me seek help sooner than i might otherwise have done. a good thing! there are indeed some childhood traumas that i either internalized or never dealt with, that have made me susceptible to abuse... and for a long time i have wondered why on earth i occasionally found myself in such situations.

tethering on the edge of disequilibrium in not that easy, but that is where my path has taken me. i do not know where i will emerge on the other side of this pass... i am confident that it will work out, somehow it always does, i am also very fortunate to be surrounded by very good friends. without a doubt, it is rather good to take stock and to realize that in spite of a few "bad" relationships, for the most part, i have been very fortunate and wise enough to have some great people around me. when i am down in the hole, it is not always easy to see this. what gets me out, is to start looking at the real accomplishments. my relationship with money and wealth is not quite so clear yet, but i suspect that this too will be resolved.

so, let's do lunch some time soon...

to a long time loyal friend:
indeed!
YES!

Technorati Tags: floue, fluage

the old mind-body problem

The Quest for Consciousness: is a book that i am reading right now. i  picked it up while at the caltech campus more than one year ago, and am finally reading it.

it is a book along the lines of "where the rubber meets the road" or to use more conventional language, it is about the biology of consciousness. it is a tall order any day, and it is one of my long standing interests.

Technorati Tags: consciousness

on the threshold

on the threshold
Originally uploaded by intutum.

there is silence

happiness is a foreign concept.
foreign, extraneously foreign.

how would i know that i am happy?

how would i know that i am pretty?

no. you are not the judge of my life.
i am.

i know peace.
i know war.

my war is my jihad, and my demons are in my psyche and the whores of my ego. i know my war, i know my life.

i know peace.

peace is silent.

peace is simple,
peace is patient,
peace is compassionate.

silence is not void,
silence is not empty,
silence is not meaningless.

silence has no meaning.
silence is absolute.

the miracle

yesterday i had nothing more fascinating to contribute to the coffee round after aikido training than the fact that for the past week i have been greeted twice a day by a moth. each time i kill the moth, and subsequently question my buddhist attitude to life. i have gone through all in the kitchen, especially the cereals, and i saw no trace of such buggers.
now the moths do show up first in the office, but... i have no food stored in the office other than coffee, or so i have been thinking. then today invariably the evening moth came to greet me, and i decided to follow my sensei's advice during our coffee discussion. she suggested that this time i open the window and let the moth out. i questioned, seriously questioned my sanity, and i opened the window and let the moth out. then i closed the window, and looked to the counter where the coffee machine stands and it was then that i noticed that i had a basket with peanuts from last year still standing there. i inspected said peanuts and their shells, and there i found my culprit!

uhm, i guess a buddhist attitude does work in getting rid of food moths. i just had no idea.

Technorati Tags: buddhist, life, moths, sensei

another hill...

Tri-mantra (to be hissed or groaned at any unfriendly hill)

In my world,
The water is cold,
The wind is hard,
And the road never ends.

In my world,
There are no losers.
Only competitors
still on their way,
And spectators
waiting to be inspired.

In my world,
Victory is not weighed in gold,
But in determination and courage.

In my world,
There are no boundaries,
No limits,
There is no end.
Every day is the last day of my life,
And the first.

In my world,
The word "can't" does not exist,
And nothing is impossible.

by Olivier Blanchard
Greenville, SC

change happening: it is like this...

listening to patricia kaas puts me right back in the alsace, and that is one piece of earth with a very old and long history for me. every now and then during the past twenty years i find myself returning to that place, that very special place. you got it, the present story has to do with the alsace in some tangential way. first it has to do with story telling, and it has to do with choice.

i had a day of rest. had one long long call with my brother, he needed to talk to me, i needed to talk to him. we talked about psychotherapy, abuse, suicide, life, physics, love, not necessarily in that order. the conversation went for over an hour, if not two, i did lose track of time. by the time i got off the phone it was 11 in the morning. although i got up at 5, there was not much that got done, at least none of what i thought that i needed or wanted to do. the conversation exhausted me somehow, i laid down on the couch in my office, and took a nap. it was past 3 in the afternoon when i woke up. gloria! i must be getting back to being normal me, my sleep cycles are back to 4 hours.

in the midst of all of this, i feel change happening, i think of my angels, my muses, my loves, my passions. i think that today, in all the confusion of doing nothing, i did not do zazen, and that tomorrow is another day.

somebody asked me the other day about my believes? what do i believe in?

i gave him one doubtful side glance, and asked what he understood by belief.

belief is a mental action, condition, or habit, of trusting to or confiding in a person or thing, at least according to the oxford english dictionary. while i am quite ignorant of the bible's detailed contents, in my own bias, i also consider it  factually incorrect, while the dictionary is my daily companion and servant, it is also my best friend. frankly i do not know what i believe in. to believe is one powerful instrument, and i prefer to not have it permanently pre-programmed on auto-pilot, i want all the choice in the world about what i believe in. i know that no other mental action is more powerful than belief.

strangely enough my ethics reference book sends me to religion when i look up belief (german, glauben). this is slightly annoying if i forget the true origins of the word, which are unclear, it is either the latin relegere (re-read) or religate (to bind) meaning that its meaning has changed with the contextual cultural bias of the times. this is change. of the many things that surprise me, what surprises me the most, is that i would be witnessing a time when religious fanatics can terrorize the world over with what are rather dark ages, ignorant, and unenlightened interpretations of human destiny or what human rights might be. granted that human rights is a modern day invention, but when we proudly tout iPod's and mobile phones, what is wrong with intellectual innovations such as human rights?

still, you read the charter, you look at what is happening in the world, you look how powerful nations brutalize weaker ones, and you wonder if any of these people ever bothered to read anything like the charter of fundamental rights of the european union?

what does this have to do with me and my personal belief?

one gazillion of a lot!

am i going to leave you there in suspense, and have you wander for a while, you may also wonder, at what it is that i am pointing you to, and let you just struggle? yes. this blog here, once more, is about my own journey, my own self-discovery, my own jihad, my samsara, my life, and i am far from having it all figured out.

so, i gave one doubtful side glance...

and the man in black asked me what it was that i needed to be able to do what i want to do.

Technorati Tags: angel, archives, floue, fluage, muse, strangers, strasbourg

nobel and i

i give up! here is how i am: i am delighted about this year's nobel prizes.

every year around this time, announcing the coming of the much dreaded christian holiday season, the names of this year's nobel prizes winners are made public. somebody pointed out to me recently that i actually know a few of the laureates in both the post and pre award phases of their lives. i never gave this much thought, but indeed that is a fact that even i can not banter out of existence. it is not like it all has gone unnoticed by good old absent minded me. i do remember one occasion when i actually caught myself in a discussion with one of these good persons, and realized that i was explaining to him something that he did not know, or had not yet thought of. shortly thereafter i remember thinking to myself that i must have one hell of a lot of nerve to just not bow to his superior accomplishments and keep my big mouth shut. to be fair, i have to add that we were talking about my work, but then i was in my early thirties and a bit wet behind the ears. not that i am much wiser now, i just am at a different place.

why am i so thrilled about this year's nobel prizes? is it that i know two of the laureates? is it that i am delighted that one of my favorites, got it?

well, when it comes to the nobel prize, i have had a peculiar relationship to the whole enterprise. first, one of the business in my family is explosives, so clearly the man who created the foundation and the legacy of such a prestigious prize and i do have something in common, it is called dynamite. then there is my perception that at one of the places where i worked for a few years, that most of my colleagues were bent on getting one. so far two have, and neither of them was bent on it, they both loved and lived their discipline. so, yes, i am thrilled pink about seeing their life's love honoured.

second, i sometimes claim that i left the world of experimental physics because i just did not share my colleagues' ambitions of a nobel prize. there is some truth in that statement, and there is some funny logic in it too.

leaving experimental physics was perhaps my first act of rebellion against my parents. i was well over thirty, and i had yet to go through adolescence, i just had to start sometime.

by whatever interpretation mechanisms i had activated early in life, the impression that i got from my parents was that i was to achieve something great in the hard sciences, if i had declined to chose a profession that would make me rich, like medicine, engineering or law, then i better make it big in the hard sciences, something albeit esoteric, but considered serious. actually i was much more interested in architecture, agronomy, dance and sports but obviously i received no encouragement in that direction, and as a teen i was not into getting into conflicts, muss less with my parents. then in my early thirties i find myself in the ivory tower of academia, going through a five year long litigious divorce, raising a challenging boy, and i find out that for all the glamour and glory of it, that is not where i want to be. after the divorce, i was exhausted. at the time i expressed this exhaustion by saying that i wanted to be put in an envelope with no return address and be mailed to china. i left academia then, and i still love physics. it was in recalling the fond memories of a few discussions with one of this year's nobel laureates that i realized how much i had and do love physics. this is really important to me, and it surprises me that i had almost forgotten how much i do love physics.

i tend to think that the idea of the nobel prize in physics had been somehow instilled by my mother. it is perhaps no wonder that i projected that internalized extraneous and foreign to me idea onto my colleagues, like it is not surprising that i found joy and satisfaction in discussions with colleagues who shared in the love for the discipline, the curiosity for the wonders of matter, and the detachment from any form of acknowledgment or honours.

oh, i could go on an exhilarant random ode about my love for physics...

Technorati Tags: fluage, focus, history, life, literature, nobel prizes, physics, reality, refections, success, survival, zoom

nursing egoism: facts, fiction and fallacy

why are we here?

i wish that i could tell you, and i also do not give a damn about the fact that i do not know and that i can neither give you an answer, nor know why i am here, much less why you are here.

once upon a time, in a far far away reality, a man told me that my prose is arrestingly seductive. i laughed, not in his face, but i laughed at what to me then seemed such plain and undecorated  flattery. i have yet to discover a graceful way of dealing with compliments or flattery. last week i got an e-mail from a reader of this kitchen sink outpour, and it made me think that perhaps my prose does  seduce. perhaps, perhaps it does.

if you asked me what i came into this world to do, i will tell you: i came to live out loud. (Emile Zola)

yes the story seduces, drama seduces, swift little pirouettes seduce... my whole fucking life seduces!

still this morning, this very morning, i woke up seeking something else. it is the month of ramadan, it is the fasting month of ramadan, and it is time to get back to what is essential, and to surrender to the human condition. what was i seeking this morning when i left the house before 8 on the way to a crucial appointment? (that was friday past, that was my therapy session)

ah! the emperor needs new rules, the newest is that what i write on my filofax gets done. the electronic diaries serve other purposes, the planning purposes, but the filofax is imperative. i love imperatives, and i love residing in them. within all this mumble-jumble it occurred to me that there is one great myth about instant gratification and that very myth is about to be assaulted by the emperor. (what worked on friday, did not work on monday.  monday i woke up somewhere in the outskirts of strasbourg...)

but here it is how i am feeling today: after the morning meal, my stomach is full, so is my head... i am tired of feeling tired. i am tired of feeling tired and wanting to climb trees and walk on the walls. i am tired of procrastination, i am tired of good excuses. am i tired, or am i impatient?

what has struck me recently is that i am awfully impatient. i am impatient and i look calm, i move slowly... and other times i am faster than light. go figure.

life is as right as ever, it keeps me busy pursuing my two challenges, writing and starting up a new company. in addition i have another project called "nursing egoism" that also takes me off-line quite a bit, blogging is light.

these are times when i take retreat to my cave, some people call it depression, others the blues, and for some odd reason, i call it "my insignificant and meaningless life". so, what is it like, this exciting life of mine?

it has elements of getting up at 5 in the morning, of conference calls at 10 in the evening, of iaido practice on monday evenings, of therapy sessions on a wednesday afternoons, of daily long hours with the mac getting one word after another out, one letter at a time, making mind maps on large pieces of paper representing the story that i am writing,  the services of the company, or the wonders of my own existence. then it also has elements of weekends in italy, germany, czech, england, france or portugal.

why? you want to know why?

Technorati Tags: fluage, ultruism, undecided, unedited, unfocus