lunch

lunch
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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
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"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