the power of no, the power of goodbye, the power of now

it may all be rather countable, but i have lost track of how often the situation of a missed "saying no" does arise. but what is saying no?

i found myself in the oddest of situations last week. i was feeling excited, even aroused, and the last thing i could have dealt with at the time was falling in the arms of a man, even one of those most desired ones on my list. my relationship to men as sexual partners is like my relationship with food as sustenance for the body. i have preferences. sometimes it is just the animal hunger that needs to be satisfied, other times, it is my fine and delicate taste buds that need gentle and subtle satisfaction. like in food, i must not have variety, i need the essentials that provide me sustenance, and that do not cause an allergic reaction either on the long or the short term.

have you never been hungry, have food in front of you, and have known that if you eat anything, then you will just feel ill? that was the situation last week. all i knew was that my state of arousal was unusable information, and that what my body needed was a few miles of running, not sexual activity. i found myself around the dinning table explaining this to my friend, and i found him being rather respectful of the situation, and admiring. nothing else would have endeared me more towards this man. is this then what all humans seek, a bit of respect? it was the right attitude at the right time. there were many other ways of having kept away from a sexual encounter on that day: i could have not opened the door, i could have made up a silly excuse, i could have played some bitch role. yet, i chose to just share with him my emotions and needs of the moment. afterwards, it occurred to me that perhaps, making love has nothing to do with sexual activity, it is all about being vulnerable and respecting one's own integrity.

today, i wrote an email to a friend to tell him that i was sorry that i had missed an opportunity to say good-bye to him before he goes abroad for professional reasons. this friend showed up in my life recently, more than one year ago, and then i had to deal with my ego's ideas of whom this person was. my ego and i do not always agree when it comes to men. i missed seeing him on the 20th because i read one email much too quickly. indeed i was sorry, anybody who has provided me with an opportunity to wrestle my ego, somehow becomes friend or muse, or both. with him i have had the great joys of racing each other up hundreds of stairway steps and then laugh like a total fool, like a kid. pleasure is indeed simple, very simple.

a few weeks ago, while in the alsace, an aikidoka asked of a zen master about what happens with the joys of life, laughter and fun, when one spends one's days in some form of meditation or another. the joys of life, what are they?

what is more important, to join sexually, or to be respected when you do not?

what is more important, to gracefully say goodbye, or to be upset about a missed encounter?

i like asking the questions. to those questions i have my answers, they are mine, yours could be totally different.

for the past week i wrestled once more with my ego's idea of what i should be and should not be doing, in particular, with the events of the last weeks that had me bubbling and shivering, feeling vulnerable and powerful, to say nothing of very alive.  saying no, is saying yes. when i say no, it is the ego that takes the back seat, then the ego gets its impositions declined, and i give in to that which is truly mine. when i surrender to what is truly mine, freedom is the result. what is sometimes perplexing is that while listening to that inner own voice, while surrendering to my own self, my ever so stubborn ego emanates all these feelings that i find rather irrelevant to my well being. one of my muses says that the ego is the horse that you ride, and it seems that i am learning to mount this horse of mine.

when the zen master answered to the aikidoka, that in meditation experience becomes so rich and joyous and every moment so precious, there is nothing that one misses. to me, that seems to be so clear. as fear and ecstasy quaver my being, i am stunned by the simplicity of it all. could it be so easy?

Technorati Tags: ego, floue, fluage, freedom, movement, muse, no, relationship, self, zen

if you must know...

i must have been less than 10 years old the last time that i wore shorts other than for running... and then yesterday all hell broke loose and i bought myself a pair of shorts! ok, it is not that radical, at best, the garment can be considered shorter pans, two-third pants, or bermudas,  or whatever, they do end below my knees. i think i got them for the big pockets at tight level which afford room for about everything except the kitchen sink.

but did you know that i get most of my casual pants from the men's department? these "shorts" were no exception.

if they are not from the men's department at a place like H&M, then they are from the pages of LL Bean, but then, who cares?

then did you know that in my wardrobe, besides of few saris, you will also find a few kimonos and hakamas  to say nothing of the bland black consultant warfare disguise?

fashion is a bit like religion in my book, i have a prompt disregard for both. i believe, and i am clad like a scavenger of comfort.

anyhow, the emperor's new clothes do mark the beginning of a new epoch. it is an epoch that i will be writing about here with some irregularity.

Technorati Tags: rambling, trivia, vanity

normal: insanity and art

by now you have the idea that you know me. while i will never be able to assert the validity of your assumption, what i know is that you could be very far from knowing me. just a few days ago a friend and i realized that although we have known each other many years, and that while we trust and love each other unconditionally, we are both very far from knowing the other. i could add that this is not surprising, i am also very far from knowing myself.

yesterday i had the privilege of being guided through the exhibits at the psychiatric museum in berne by the museum director, a faculty member of the well known waldau klinik. the institution is well known in switzerland and outside in particular in the art and literature worlds mainly due to the fantastic opus created by adolf wölfli, its most famous patient to date. besides an historical perspective of the treatment's evolution of those whose behavior falls out of the normative, the museum gives a sampling from the creations of other patients in the clinic. i could have spent hours and hours looking at the drawings, paintings, and sketches exhibited which constitute a very small fraction of the collection.

sobering is not only the fact that while the treatment methods and therapies have changed greatly throughout the 150 years of the existence of the clinic, the percentage of the population needing psychiatric treatment (mostly schizophrenia ) has remained constant. what is more alarming is that the number of depression patients is increasing. in europe, switzerland has the highest rate of suicide.

what does all of this have to do with me?

i do not know, what i observe is that normal includes a small fraction of schizophrenia, manic depression, depression and other unsettled states of mind.

while walking out of the park like grounds of the clinic i went past some hedged in rabbits; one of them was just sitting there staring blankly at the grass with its front limbs hanging in front of its chest, to me, he was the most zen rabbit that i have ever seen.

life saving pain The Scientist :: Life without Pain , Mar. 28, 2005

The Scientist :: Life without Pain
, Mar. 28, 2005

:
Life Without Pain

note that you may need to register to read the article.

yesterday is gone, today is a fresh new days

i slept well and i went to bed late. i returned home from the evening training yesterday and although i was unsure of what i was doing, i did answer an email that i had gotten three weeks ago and that by some sort of odd circumstances i had not yet answered. not the it was imperative to answer, the question posed was a rather tongue in cheek question, still, it was the right question, at the right time.

frazzled and free i went to training yesterday evening. after every kihon technique i kept looking at the clock,  sure that the hour and a half was infinite and i would be caught in an endless loop of sanbon oi-tsuki. if there are days when i push myself to my limits, yesterday was one of them, and i kept pushing myself beyond my comfort limit, i felt nausea and that vomiting was imminent. i concentrated on breathing and let my body do whatever came. i did not feel like fighting or punching anybody, i just felt like vomiting. i endured, and frankly i do not know if it was a good or a bad thing, it just was that way.

then i sat down at my desk, opened up the computer and felt the impulse to again answer that email. the first time i had spent a good hour composing an answer, and it had landed in the trash bin and accidentally deleted, but even that i am not sure. it could be that it went off and the copy of it is what got deleted. without verification and without a reply from the other side and given some irrational feeling that somehow this person ought to get an answer although i suspect that he does not expect one, i started composing my answer.

when it was all done, the feeling was one of having done that that i needed to do. the frazzled was gone, i felt free. between that email and a long phone conversation at lunch time, that feeling that nothing is in my hands returned. i feel sad and just a bit blue, and very very free. this is nothing that i can really explain. yet i observe how it is my body that somehow works my emotions, and although my own disposition would have me do no physical activity, my body and mind need the movement and the effort of disciplined training. it is not about indulging my wants, or feelings, somehow there is something like need that has me on the mat and training.

i feel, still i am not this cacophony of feelings. what i feel is irrelevant, if not irreverent, towards what i need or want. the past five weeks have been an intense dialogue with myself and an even intenser discovery of who i am and bridging the gap of acceptance and surrender to that very nature which is mine. if i have often felt tired and exhausted in the past, some of it has to do with my resistance towards my own being.

today is a fresh new day!

Technorati Tags: feelings, floue, fluage, friendship, resistance, strasbourg, surrender, trafal, training, unfocused, words, work

for whom the bell tolls...

it has been a long while since i thought much of my hero hemingway, the very dead one.

now if you really want to know how i am doing, i will tell you: i am dead.

dead and that is good news. being dead, being in love, being.

i do not know if i have the necessary vocabulary to express what it has been to feel myself for the past week. it is something from being intensely alive and facing death with each breath.

just last friday i was the only one that showed up for training at the dojo, it was sensei and i, and it was far more intense than a regular training with more people. at one point i managed to totally get inside my head and do the exact opposite of what needed to be done, i killed myself with my own breath, literally. i misunderstood the instruction, i did something that i thought was wrong, but i did it, and it just did not work, i tried harder, it worked even less. when sensei realized what i was doing he told me about it, and i looked at him with big eyes, the same big speechless eyes i have given my muse when he corrects me, and i am lost in my head. the difference is that my local friday sensei is not my muse and when i look at him with big eyes, it does not mean anything to him, it is me just looking at him with big speechless eyes.

i caught myself shivering and on the verge of tears on a phone conversation with a very real and very dear friend of mine who recently popped up back into my active life and before i knew it, i had let him under my skin. it felt good, and it is frightening. frightening. but what distinguishes fear and ecstasy? perhaps it was just ecstasy and it feels so much like fear, and is so rare that i am lead to confuse the two. i am dead and unaccustomed to ecstasy.

the fear died.

Technorati Tags: aikido, alone, floue, fluage, strasbourg

how to

how to start the day without trying: just listen to this.

if you listen to it, you will know the only reason that has me go to churches on occasions.

Technorati Tags: music

feelings

feelings, originally uploaded by intutum.

and
sometimes i wish that i did not wish
sometimes i wish that i knew
sometimes i wish that i did not feel

sometimes i wish that i did not love
sometimes i wish that.

and
sometimes i forget

sunday

i woke up tired today. tired and after about 9 hours of sleep. it was short before noon before i popped out of bed. having the windows covered by scaffolding is not helping, like my midnight excursion also did not help. i went to bed late, woke up at the usual 5, turned around and fell asleep again. in the afternoon i went for a jog along the aare with a friend, and now i feel like a very very old sack of potatoes. i have been working on the mountain of things to do on my desk all day, and there is still so much to do, so much that i want to do. so much to write, so much to plan, so many decisions to take!

it is not the blues, i just have one of those deep funks when the only good advice i can give myself is "do not think."

Technorati Tags: fluage

you

i am thinking of you, i always do.
i think too much, i am told.

but too much of you?

never!

and who are you?

tell me...

oh tell me!

i keep looking in your eyes, and i do not know what i see...

are they blue?
are they brown?

what is behind that sparkle that i see?

i see and i do not understand.

i do not want to understand, i want to see.

i want to experience.

i want to die spent, used, and ready.

you or me.

who am i?

Technorati Tags: fluage

privacy, anonymity, authenticity and all the beautiful words

...or the humbling experience of being on a win98SE PC while my PowerBook is being repaired due to mechanical problems. this means that i am writing directly  on blogger without the help of my ever so comfortable ecto that is not installable on this machine.

i spent all of yesterday in a meeting out of the atelier, and on returning i find the building scaffolded on the side where i have my living-room. given that the scaffolding is tarpped up, the room is dark during the day. i like light, it is going to take some getting used to this situation for the next couple of weeks while the facade gets renovated. this had been announced, still, the fact and the knowledge are still one bridge of experience away. it will be a good time to contemplate the meaning of the word cage.

yesterday's meeting made me think a bit about the subject of identity, and with it the matter of authenticity. the meeting was of a committee that meets a couple of times per year to review a specific set of innovation projects. it is the kind of work that i love doing, it is a chance to get to meet first hand budding entrepreneurs and people at their very best in the struggle to make some sense out of this life. we introduced ourselves by giving an abbreviated resume of our lives and activities. for me such an occasion always meets me unprepared, i have to recall in what function and capacity i am there and which parts of my curriculum are relevant in that particular community. on these occasions i am very present to life being one big stage on which different plays of assorted authorship are enacted. i may be no foreigner to the ongoing of boardroom and executive committee's, yet i have for the most part of this year been busy writing, so it is with fresh eyes and ears that i re-enter this world that is also part of my life, the world of entrepreneurship and economic decision making. it a long long story... a fascinating one.

Technorati Tags: atelier, backoffice, bern, enterpreneurship, fluage, innovation, zurichairport

contrary to popular belief...

whatever you call it, i was never much for it: belief, credo, destiny, fate, doctrine...

and i say i am gullible?

it seems that the path just began, and she had warned me of it! (this is a heavy code note to myself, shall i ever forget what i remember now or at least have the illusion of understanding)

contrary to popular belief i am living in switzerland. i could say that i am trapped here, or i could look at it in a more effortless and empowering way. i also could never tell where freedom really resides, or on which side of the cage is better. there are cages, they have a perimeter that defines two sides of the equation, but which one is better? must one be better?

here i am, contrary not only to popular belief, but also to anything i ever imagined possible; i am in switzerland. i still miss the ocean and my dreams remain unchanged, still the details as to where i pay my taxes remain rather mundane and unimportant on the grand scale of things. the grand scale of things must be that power that that other got a small taste of and had him run as fast as possible away from me, while the clueless me tried to figure out what on earth had i done wrong. it has been both an humbling experience and an extraordinary fortune to be alive and waking up during the last three years. thanks to all who have chosen to, or haphazardly share this insignificant and adventuresome existence on earth, i am not alone. i mean, i think we are on earth, but on some days i have my doubts.

in the last two weeks i did not once leave switzerland, however i feel like i took one long trip somewhere and that i discovered precious and far away treasures that i had imagined being out of reach. the celebration of the expansion of my horizons took place on saturday when a colleague and i ended up on a drive around the hills in lausanne. during this drive i got motion sickness and quite a few opportunities to shoot the landscape onto the digital camera's memory card. motion sickness in itself is something very new to me, i did not use to get it, however in the last couple of years unless i am behind the wheel on a mountainous road, it gets me; i just do not like nausea, it makes me wish that i was dead and would not feel. wishing to be dead and not feel is perhaps a good reminder on how much human nature has it ingrained in its core that escape is an option. it is sometimes, not all the times. feelings and nausea do have something in common, most people that i know just do not cope well with either and i have spent a whole lifetime trying to understand and get under the latter.

it could also be that the long trip inside switzerland and my being was well pollinated by the events and experiences in the alsace just a month ago -- although it feels like a long long time since then -- and it could be that indeed it was time travel. if anything, it feels like i went from the past into the present, and the present, the here and now, is exactly the place where i want to be. or did it start in barcelona when i found myself besides my being at a bar chatting trivia and photography with the italian bartender?

who am i?
where am i?
what am i doing?

thanks sensei!

Technorati Tags: alone, altstadt, beach, berne, bibliothèque nationale suisse, blueeyes, california, cyborg, enterprise, floue, fluage, literature, london, movement, muse, new york, out of context, portugal, schemata, sensei, switzerland, zen

the art

it has been years since i last entered the london shop of floris. for years i have kept one empty bottle of "floris 127" for a reason that will always elude me, today i discarded it. oh what sweet and fragrant memories those are of entering that shop and choosing a fragrance!

is it that those sweet and fragrant memories of working in london are all coming back to life in the present?

i can ask the question, the answer is however not one that i know.

i wake up wanting to do all sorts of things, unable to decide, i opened up a cupboard and started sifting through it and discarding objects that have been there for years as though i was discarding an irrelevant past. is that what i am doing?

i started composing an email to send to a friend now in south africa, on thinking that the email presents no satisfaction for the longing i feel for him, i discarded the draft. but that thought was not even in the foreground when i decided not to mail it... it was something else, something that actually is going to make me wonder.

on friday evening i spent at least one hour composing an email to a muse of mine, when i was finished for some odd reason it ended in my trash bin, i tried getting it back to the out box and although i heard the sound effect of when an email is beamed out, i have no copy of that message on my sent box. when this glitch in my actions happened while doing something that i have successfully done thousands of times, i wonder if it is just the whims of technology or the universe sending me a message. possibly it is neirther, it means absolutely nothing. i always forget.

Technorati Tags: alone, angel, beach, blues, communications, fluage, inspiration

details

recently a newly won teacher tells me in the middle of giving me instructions that "i am not german, this is not about details." and proceeds to explain to me the main principles of the action which i was studying. i found his remark interesting from the point of view of the perception of character traits and regional origin. upon hearing his remark it immediately appealed to me, and i added that i also am not german. my addition was a so called mute point, he knew, and it was irrelevant. details and i do not naturally occur, it is a matter of training. anybody wanting to accuse me of being a perfectionist does not know of my disregard and oblivion to details.

still, details are important, very important. but right now i am exhausted, and my sleep is waiting for me. the story with the details will have to wait for another time.

update: i am the lousiest self-editor when i am tired, and i am not that good at it when i am not tired.

Technorati Tags: aikido, berne, fluage, labaroche, unedited, unfocused

room with a view

i am blogging from lausanne at the start of a new enterprise and listening to Mahler's 5th. it is may 12, and i am at this point too lazy to hack around with my colleague's adsl and connect to the web. this post will be uploaded sometime later when i either got over my laziness or have wlan access again.

these days it is my bones that feel those words spoken to me by a senior faculty member when i was in my early twenties, a graduate student and teaching assistant at the university, half asleep, half awake, full of dreams and possibility and not daring while trying to be bold. but how can one not dare while trying to be bold?

it could be that i never tried to be bold, it could be that i was innocent and naive enough to not think of the so called "probability of success"  that my dreams had. during a discussion with that senior faculty member about my motivation to do graduate work in physics, at one point he looks at me straight in the eye, and declares "you are too good to be true." i never quite understood these words, i tried to have him explain, and although i could get the gist of it, i never quite got what it had to do with me. still, this is a recurring scene in my life. during my training in communication, this happened at least thrice with different words, same angle. i never got it.



there are days when i could not care less about the world of blogging, news or communication: it is one of those days.


but finally i got what the man was trying to tell me, i mean the senior faculty member. i got it last week when another tells me to be careful with my defense. it was a precious moment. he delivered merciless straight punches  at me in a rapid sequence that had i not deviated them, he had had me flat on the floor, and then he tells me to be careful with my defense! in the instant i tried to make sense of it, i decided that to be on the safe side i would take that as a warning, not as a complaint of my hard and equally merciless defense, immediately i proceeded to another defense technique which was softer on him. he ended up very pleased with my flexibility. if i had never seen somebody fall flat on their face in such a situation, i could have discounted it all as yet another senseless dialogue during practice. these are rather controlled situations, but a fight is a fight, when a person is in front of another and the idea is to fight, forget the fact that you are a light weight woman and that your opponent is 30 kilos heavier and 20 centimeters taller than you, it is irrelevant.

a friend of mine would at this point accuse me of being a damned writer who always keeps you hanging and looking out for the punch line.

no, i am not bragging, far from it. it took me over twenty years to figure out something that someone told me while i was a graduate student, that, in spite of the fact that the same message had been delivered to me at regular intervals whenever i was searching for answers to those questions that nobody can ever answer! it is quiet here on the hills above lausanne on the edge of some village in a house in a cul-de-sac and i have the company of my musings, a green eyed mutt of a cat, and a few birds whose names elude me. i have nothing to brag about, like i have nothing to be proud of, or ashamed of. strangely enough this is all about amour propre. that, and something else that goes beyond self-confidence and has the feel of surrender to the self and the own needs.

while here i have been having a few midnight discussions with my friend, colleague, host and associate on all sorts of subjects from finance, innovation, intellectual property, to personal relationships and family, and always centered around our shared passion, the business of counseling entrepreneurs in strategic matters where very specialized knowledge is necessary. while the writing is always going slower than i want it to go, is perhaps worthwhile to consider the fact that somehow all the pieces of the puzzle are falling together at the right rate, and that i am doing exactly what needs to be done. why would i doubt myself? after all, in the fuzzy logic of it all, that is what the senior faculty member was trying to tell me. still communication is an odd undertaking to which we are rarely tuned to. i don't know if i am all too aloof or that i just resist the immediately evident. what matters now is that i am starting to develop a new relationship to the all that is immediate and evident.

some weeks ago i had hoped that i would now be in strasbourg and that the manuscript of "schemata" would be finished in its rough draft. instead i am in lausanne and the parts of the manuscript that are already written have received an heavy hand of editing. "but it is exactly the ability to compromise that makes a man noble" or so says leper in the film "braveheart"  while my friend in lausanne keeps on citing him and i kept on disagreeing until we compared notes on what is meant by such a statement and how we interpret it. then last night between a beer and a late dinner we came to an agreement on the meaning of what compromises are and are not.
meanwhile the geeks are at work and the birds are chirping away on a sunny afternoon... while my powerbook display keeps on flickering. just get the mechanics right, will you!

Technorati Tags: floue, fluage, lausanne

meeting of strangers

yesterday i went for dinner at the brasserie lipp in zurich after i participated in a formal gathering at the hotel widder. i was most delighted to keep myself some company in a nice place on a quiet monday evening.  all went well, i ordered after much consultation with the kitchen as to what i could and could not eat due to my food intolerances, and after i finished eating i took out my paper notebook and proceeded to make some notes on the experiences and observations of the day while indulging in a few glasses of still mineral water while contemplating that all too difficult decision of ordering an expresso.

on monday evenings, even in the bustling busy downtown zurich, most restaurants are relatively calm and there are plenty of tables. at the brasserie lipp last night that was indeed the scenario. then, while i am busy writing away, this one man in an orange shirt comes in, and for some odd reason, he asks to be seated next to me and tells me with a broad smile that he will be quiet. i suppose that while he was eyeing the table i gave the orange clad man one of those famous looks of mine which have the inviting sex appeal of telling you to drop dead on the spot.

the good man had an A4 sized notebook with him, an english paperback from a well known publishing house, and he too started writing something or other. at one point he asks the waiter what the date is, and the waiter says it was the 8th. at this point i intervened with a smile and said that it was the 9th of may. my neighbor was delighted and he was bursting to start a conversation. we initially spoke in german, and he was once more, like anybody else who first meets me, curious as to what my language was while confessing that he could not place the accent. this is a recurring  scene in my life. sometimes it annoys me, other times i play with it. i was in a playing mood yesterday. while he could eliminate that i would be swiss german, he was willing to make me a francophone swiss. the man had a good natural curiosity that bubbled through and seemed beyond categorization. still it is difficult to get much out of me if i am not in a conversation mood. we shared a bit about himself and his language habits and we ended up chatting in english for a few minutes before his dinner arrived. the arrival of his food was for me a perfect chance to wish him "bon apétit" and return to my note making. i ordered an expresso.

that was it. i took my expresso, paid the bill, and left my neighbor to enjoy his meal and note writing at the brasserie.

Technorati Tags: alone, scaffold, strangers, words, zurich

from here to there

blogging from zurich with love and the uncanny ability to predict nothing.

i had a few days in the bernese highlands and returned to the pied-à-terre yesterday for a few hours, that is, long enough to change my travel luggage from a 50 liter backpack to one of those trolley bags with wheels and a bit more comfort. needless to say that the contents of the luggage had to be heavily edited from those containing attire suitable for sweating and physical activity to the more brainy attire one wears in the city.

if you had asked me a few months ago what i would be most likely to be doing today, the last thing that would have occurred to me is that i would be sitting in all comfort in zurich with the powerbook in front of me while my friend's husband has gone shopping for groceries. this after we shared breakfast with their sports page devouring eight year old and i  delighted in the pleasures of coffee and three gummy bears. this is not my usual breakfast, but then nothing is usual these days, not here, not with me. although i hang to my routine as an anchor to rope, that same routine has been interrupted since wednesday and it shows no indication of returning until next week.

while i suspect that my motivation for the foray into the bernese highlands is to be found somewhere in the opportunity to rough it and share sleeping quarters with another twenty women, thus giving me the opportunity to keep them awake with my snoring, the lessons learned in this little retreat did surprise me. it did not surprise me that after three days of wonderful camaraderie and nice clean fun, i did declare to have reached my asocial stage, and that i really was not much for conversation.

in the highlands two things did surprise me: one is that i forgot that i do snore when i have a cold and my respiratory track is not free, and the other is that a man would complain, perhaps even threaten, when this light weight of a woman defends herself from his attack. perhaps i ought to be surprised that i am capable of defending myself. this is not a surprise, it is a commitment, if not a very natural instinct to just defend myself. my observation is that our wonderful society works hard on forming women's identities to the shape of defenseless victims.

it also did not surprise me that when asked for the umpteenth time as to where i come from, my most immediate reaction is that of wanting to punch the interrogator. i am tired of that question, it does feel like an attack. i know that my accent can not be placed, not even by people who are good at such things. i am tired nonetheless of that same question. is this the transition to indifference or is there something that i am fighting? when i resist the question and say something that is unexpected, i am always faced with the other's irritation of not having his curiosity satisfied. perhaps it is normal for people to want to know where i come from, perhaps that could explain something to somebody, but deep down me i resist the invitation to fulfill somebody's expectations of how i ought be.

in short: i am alive and kicking and my friend's eight year old boy keeps on trying to understand and anticipate the performance of the various football teams after lunch while the rest of us sit behind lcd screens with keyboards trying to write.

welcome to my life!

Technorati Tags: 2005, fluage, kcb, zurich

the uselessness of words

a good friend of mine, whenever i have asked him that all silly question of what to do, has told me that when i do not know what to do i might as well do anything. i have been at that point of not knowing what to do, not knowing which way is up or which way is down a few times in this life, and that, in several different declinations, hues and variations that seem infinite and are very finite.

the same friend, a man in my life, has a few good memories of our after work dinners at the Westbury Hotel in London a few years ago, while i remember those timeless events with a vague memory of sweetness and freedom. upon returning from a week of intense self discovery in the alsace, with a full program of "to dos" on the agenda, the same friend comes for a visit and to me time stops, the work can wait, even if it is super urgent. nothing, but nothing can prevent me from just being that elusive and abandoned being that i cherish being. when he asked me last week if i was in love, i forgot to add this being who i am to my list of those with whom i am in love. i forget, i often forget. i forget the good, i forget the bad, i just forget.

having looked long and incessantly for the acknowledgment and reassurance that i felt missing inside me, having looked for it out there in others, having found it in me and catalyzed by an "en passant" innocuous remark from a muse in the alsace, i returned home last week on the other side of me. i do not remember being here before, or it could be that i just forgot like i often do.

i remember that other drummer from long ago, that drummer who is mine, that drummer with another beat, and i now hear that drummer again. it is the drummer of my own self confidence and esteem that has returned. it could also be that that drummer never left me, i may  just have forgotten it, if not ignored it for so many years, like i forgot myself. i forget.

Technorati Tags: floue, freedom, friendship