greed

it is xmas that is around the corner, all that i can think of is greed and that i hate this season. i hate it even more when i am going to be away from my whole family. my friends are all going to be with their families. i have friends whose families feel like my own and that would welcome me at this time of the year, but it just is not the same thing. i really do not understand what goes through my head at this time of the year. which ever way i slice it, i do not like it. i never liked it. my memories of it are a mess. i never understood what this time of the year is supposed to be about.

i am sitting in one of the local watering holes, and at the table next to me, they are speaking arabic. from the tone, egyptians. a look at their faces tends to support the misr hypothesis. yes, i miss the nile, it is good to hear the speak. it is warm there now. it might even be that next week i take a short hop over there, stay for a few days. get lost in the masses, wear a head-cover and boring unpretentious clothes that do not allow any imagination as to what kind of feminine curves i might have. i really like the anonymity of traditional islamic grab. the funniest thing that i ever saw however was once a man walking in alexandria wearing a white robe and headdress, carrying a bag of groceries on each hand and exhibiting one hell of an hard-on. i just burst out laughing, and it was a good thing that i was not the one driving. so much for the idea of what that kind of dress can hide in a man when there is a bit of wind and the good man did not wear what would have been proper, that is, the long cotton underpants. it was summer, and it was funny, and it has nothing to do with xmas or greed, but a whole lot with the irony of what life is all about.

am i pleading, begging, arguing or just dreaming of getting the hell out of here? it could be.

but what is it that i am trying to escape?

life could not be better. all the indicators are up. i am surrounded by dear dear friends, yet. i am pissed-off. i am in a fighting mood.

tuesday i had a crash of sorts. i had a discussion with one of my colleagues with whom i work intensely and well on a matter that had to do with me and my mimic. i was telling him one thing, and he claimed that my mimic was saying something else. fuck! i actually argued with him that he does not have a clue about my mimic and what it means.

just monday evening i found myself with some like-minded people in a restaurant in another city. among them one whom i particularly like. i had a two hour train ride back home and the discussion was going well, i would have loved to stay longer, and moreover i would have loved to stay with that one particular person. so as it is with these intense geek moments, i asked if i could crash on his couch, he declared having no couch, but a bed. there in front of everybody, and my little wonderful mind told me that was exactly what i wanted, and i gave him a look that he interpreted as reproachful, and all that was going on for me was surprise and sheer embarrassment. look, i do like my private life private, but all of a sudden, it looked like i was arranging to share a bed at the dinner table like a casual affair. i was not ready for it, and then when somebody else offered me a bed, then i realized two things that yes i wanted to share a bed with him and in all likelihood we would end up at the very least talking until the wee-hours and i had a deadline that required my presence back home the next day. after maneuvering myself in such a tight spot, for once i was saved by my own procrastination that required my presence back home, or something like that. i wonder what the real big deal would have been if i would have just accepted his offer. is it not that everybody sooner or later finds out about who is sleeping with whom?

again, my mimic got interpreted in a way that just did not correspond to my internal state by someone who clearly is also on my good side on monday. on tuesday, the same happens in a different context. it just often happens that my face lies. my mimic rarely corresponds to my words. it is damn frustrating and i am pissed-off about it. on occasions my face actually expresses to others what my internal state is, however when it is something about my affections and private life, it does not. i have only recently gotten to the root of this strangeness of mine. it is not a pleasant one.

today i decided that it is time to attend to my needs. why on earth do i ignore my own needs?

and, yes, i am fine, very fine. xmas will pass, it always does.

1.1 metamorphosis without the butterflies

i woke up one morning this week remembering a dream that involved a swedish thirtyish male somewhere in a kitchen half-naked à la Tyler Durden but without the attitude. needless to say that i woke up laughing and humbled by the thought that this is how old age is sneaking up on me. for my mid-life crisis i married a man eight years younger than i, so this dream, is clearly marking the advent of old age. it came sneaking by having a rather prototype male appear in my dreams in the absence of eros.

when the day starts with such psychological petty crimes and then the phone rings and a past lover is on the other side, life is taking its course. a colleague of mine has these days taken to hinting something or other about my men. oh, i get him loud and clear. i will need to face that one straight one of these days as it becames necessary, if it becomes necessary.

on wednesday i walk into my therapy session and the therapist happily announces that she has found my file again. again, i had to laugh, that internal laugh that is half irony, half satisfaction and two-thirds insight, because that very morning i had thought about this episode of the loss of my therapist's notes on my case a few months back. now, it is not everyday that a therapist and member of the medical profession loses a patient's file, and i remained most unconvinced of its loss, and took the view that it had been misplaced somewhere in the office and its many papers and shelves, and in due time it would surface again. it did, it was among the empty file wrappers.

that morning my thought of that misplaced file was that when i entered the therapist's office for the first time over one year ago, it was because i had more than just issues to resolve, i was in the throws of a depression that was choking my life; i needed help. there is here one person who clearly does not have her shit together - that is me - and goes for help to this other person - the therapist - and that together-person then looses the file containing all those notes about who is related to whom and who did what to whom, where and that whole relatory of recollections that get spewed during the course of therapy. ah! perfection is also not to be found at this address. what a delighful relief!

when a past lover rings early in the morning, i am barely awake, and he has good news for me. for a while back there while i was in the throws of some deep funks of depression a few months ago, i did worry about the state of affairs of his marriage following one long call with him. he is a good friend, our separation was a necessary step for both of us, we remain faithful to each other for there is nothing that can separate good friends. now it was easy to joke about the postulate that perhaps he did not need a maitresse, as is common in france, and a few other places in the world. in fact, having more than one relationship that involves copulation is very common among the human species. it so is that the invention of marriage and the preaching of some alledged morality principles within a few degenerate doctrines has caused this de facto practise to be one that is frowned upon. i know, how in our family the gossip of other people's affairs is often used to preach what should be. needless to say that in this very same family of mine, all sorts of overt and covert relationship behaviour is to be found, however nobody talks about it. that is what they call normal, and that is what i call hypocritical behaviour. but then, that is me, the moral me.

all social criticism aside, it was good to talk for a while with this dear friend of mine. it was especially good to remind him that he too is human, like the rest of us. and like the rest of us, he also does not always have all his shit together, and does not always behave ideally. he is a fantastic friend, and always was, yet he too is not perfect. i too often forget that i do belong to the human species and am vested with all the wonderful incongruities and caprices that so characterize the beasts whom we are.

recently i was visiting a friend and cousin for a week and we ended up discussing a lot of our private issues about lovers, loves, life, fortune and fame. she is the ever wise art historian, and i am the insane writer. while i was visiting her, i was also in the midst of a sweet confrontation with one of my dearest muses who was in town at the same time. at one point she declares that he is not up to my level and that i idealize him. i do idealize him and what pleasure that is! on the other hand, inspite of all my cousin's deep insights into french men's behaviour, this is not a question of levels or worthiness. when is another being worth another? never. we, human, we deserve nothing, have a right to nothing. we are alive, we breathe, we eat, we sleep and sometime in between sometimes we connect with each other. sometimes there is poetry, other times there is ease, and most of the time there is nothing at all. in all cases, i say there is life and relationship.

i return to my lovers. literally, i often do that. i return to them for the lessons learned and return to them for the caresses and the pleasure of their company. sexual copulation is not always involved. lover is a word that makes me wonder. lover is often riddled with meanings belong to some social canonry to which i do not subscribe. but then i already have trouble with the concept of falling in love, and certainly no understanding for that other concept that involves perfection when it comes to the object of one's affections. it was exactly to this point that my therapist and i returned on wednesday. if relationships fail these days, one reason can be sought in the idealization of the relationship itself, and the requirement that it has to be perfect and compliant to several concepts of social canonry, and that is so oblivious to the needs of our soul, spirit and psyche. we need dreams, ideals and angels on occasions. i do well surrounded by a few muses whom i love and respect, and who give me the raw pleasure of sincerity.

at this point i recall another french man in my life, another past lover, one whose tracks i have lost, one with whom i conceived a child. one man who was pure poetry. our child left us both before his farewell, and in the deepest core of my being there is this taste of life lived to the fullest that has stayed with me. he is one of the rare people that have departed to not be heard of again. i have no idea of where he is living now, or if he is living. does it matter? no. he enriched my life with his presence. what more could i possibly want? i have my peace of mind.

perhaps this is not old age at all. it can be that one night i dream of an unknown swedish adonis by the kitchen sink, and then the next night it is somebody whom i know, and it is something totally different.

the trouble with us

first let's be clear who that us is. it is you and me, it is us or how we relate to each other as humans. the trouble is that we are animals, and we are the kind of animal that does not want to be one. in short, the human condition is about being an animal, and wanting to escape it.

what leads me to such brash, rash and abrupt conclusions?

in the absence of some form of relating there may be you and i, but there is no us. so it was that a week ago i sat next to a man and he proceeded to behave in a way that i would call oscillatory. he went from deep personal confessions to bad jokes within a short period of time, and then back to the deeply personal and intimate, and so on. now this man is wonderful in my eyes exactly because he exhibits such behaviour that makes his doubts palpable and his fragility evident. other than oscillatory, he behaves like the prototype macho. he seems very real to me, and he feels very far from the idealized utopic view of what a man ought to be; and he struggles with his ego and whatever will and drive he has. he remains animal and he keeps on censoring the animal as though that animal had no right to exist. this is how i chose to describe this man's fragility.

take for instance his smoking. he says that smoking is not a good habit, yet he confesses to not being able to stop. i get that, i certainly get that he feels like he can not stop smoking. i also sense that he is making some progress in coming to terms with his own limitations, he has stopped counting how many cigarettes he smokes in a day. this knowing and not acting according to the knowledge is the kind of behaviour that i find in many around me, and certainly one that i know well enough from my own experience. i know what i ought to do, i feel a craving, ignore the good intentions, and do give in to the craving that the animal whom i am commands upon my rational illusions. but not always, not on all of life's little issues. the animal is simple, and the animal is not linear.

last night my son gave me the key for what i was looking for. i had been thinking about self-confidence, however he pointed me to self-esteem. yes, they are not the same. one being can have loads of self-confidence and zero self-esteem and the result is the animal being out of control. the animal me that is, not necessarly the man. that man from last week is one whom i admire and one that has me being grateful that he ever showed up in my life. he showed up at the right time, with the right attitude. it has taken me years to see him a bit better for who he is. my delay residing in the fact that he seems so much like me, that i end up hardly ever being able to distinguish between what is his and what is mine.

i remember that when i first became aware of his interest in me, i could only feel the attraction that admiration catalyses. i felt that and i felt my own confusion about being attracted to the man and at the same time seeing a father figure in him. at that time when this had happened i had not yet gone through deep psychothereapy and i had a few unresolved conflicts floating around in my mind gnawing at the very essence of my being and paralyzing any expression of what is mine. the idea of engaging in sexual interplay with a man whom i saw as the father that mine was not, was at best disconcerting, it was incest. impossible was the overwhelming feeling of the whole encounter and our interactions that followed, totally impossible. my immediate reaction was to send him a letter in which the tenor was that he was to keep away from me. imagine desiring him, and imagine not being able to imagine anything more than to be held in his arms as though we were both asexual. for months, years, i censored my desire for him, i wanted him to be my missing father. the psyche had censored the animal, and reason was beyond hope then.

then we fast forward to last week and his admissions of his own daughter's sexual advances towards him. at that point i felt like i had fallen victim to my own fiction, and that my madness was the only reality keeping me sane. within seconds i had a whole tempest of feelings back on my lap, and i had invited none of it. we were sitting next to each other, and my immediate thought was how very much i did desire him, and how good it would be to forget all social convention, pierce through all the barriers, and experience the complete sexual beings that we are with all our weaknesses and strengths. yet, i did nothing and said even less. i offered good, reasonable, sound counseling. the coward whom i am, retreated, my animal's cravings for his body were censored and discarded.

the day after this rather intimate and personal exchange there were a few moments when we could have met, we both were in the same building, however between the many floors and the crowds, neither made much of an effort. the next day we exchanged emails and i returned to being my very intellectual mask, a real mask as effective as a man's macho mask, and once more the animal got to take a back seat to that very much in command intellect.

it could be that one of these days one of us will be foolish enough to grab the other, and just let the natural animal satisfy its cravings away from psychology and concepts of propriety. it could also be that nothing ever happens, and that we are left with the assurance of the knowledge that nothing outside ourselves can cause any trouble.

tell me, why do you write?

above all i write for myself, because i need to communicate, and because often when the time would have been right, i can not find the words. i call this writing, fiction. yet, the fiction of this life of mine is based on my experiences and on that which i feel, whatever random and associative thoughts meander through my mind that find their way to my fingertips. the whole of the fluage blog is special to me as it is the one that is dedicated and above all inspired by my most adored muses.

last week one of these muses and i spent the whole of sunday evening together with a group of other aikidokas. those few lines i thought that i had forgotten were inspired by that evening and our interactions which i fail to understand. i feel that i have no way of reaching the man, and all that i have access to is the muse: he inspires me. i am aware that the man is far from perfect, but then humans are only perfect when they are not perfect. it is exactly his fragility, weakness, sincerity and so very human condition that inspire me.

i write for myself and my very selfish need to share life as it happens.