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.

how am i?

i, little me, how the fuck am i?

let me tell you. it is 16:13 according to my friendly local mac sitting on my lap, and my stomach is growling.

i spent the best part of the morning researching a paper, and i think some circuit overheated and i forgot to eat. then i decided that my dizzy spells were due to lack of fresh air and went for a walk and to return a few empty bottle and aluminium for recycling. a few times i had to hold on to the next anchored object as i felt that i was losing equilibrium and would fall down if i did not steady myself. i stopped at the local grocery store on the way back and bought some food, however i had plenty of food at home. i ate when i arrived home, but i need to slow down and cook myself a good soup, and i am feeling more on speed than on anything else. my stomach keeps on growling, it too must be on speed however it feels like it is on laxatives.

i am slightly confronted with my therapist's assertion that my psyche is doing rather well. although there are still a few psychosomatic mysteries in my physiology, the dirty work is done. indeed the depression is gone, and i remain convinced that that depression was necessary in order to illuminate and deal with childhood traumas that were indeed blocking all my self-expression. it has been an interesting road, but the one ahead promises adventures of another flavour and depth. i am anxious, yes, but the good kind of anxious that gives me inspiration each morning, and makes very clear as to why it is that i get up every morning.

clearly, i do not get up to eat. on the way back from my walk, recycling center and grocery parade, i met somebody whom i had not seen in ages. she said something about me needing to eat, i look very thin. i do not feel very thin, and in comparison to one year ago, i have a couple more kilos. i am however lean, and between my muscles and my skin there is indeed not much of a fat layer.

i am as i am!

anyhow, what time is it in tokyo?

or the colour of dissonance

yesterday something strange hit me in the morning and i found myself wearing two mismatching jumpers and a pair of old blue jeans discarded by my son many moons ago. i just could not not wear those two jumpers. one is mustard colour and it has light and dark blue plaid and the other is khaki green. the khaki green and the mustard just dissonated in all tones. this is how i arrived at the dojo for morning aikido practice. morning practice yesterday was a catastrophe. so much so, that the fact that we were almost all slightly off, is not even a consolation. shomein uchi nikyo? you must have been kidding! i could have given you kote gashi or shio nage, but nikyo was temporarily not available (it reminded me of what happens when a server goes down and a service is not available). i do not know if my particular bent for such jumper colours had any influence in my body's ability and aptitude in aikido techniques, but what is certain was that i was fully absent at one point and caught myself thinking of the analogy of learning aikido with the subject of a new project that i just started last week and that will be absorbing me until the end of the year. i was thinking of potentially paid work while on the tatami. i was thinking of the work, and i was thinking of money. i was thinking? oops! yes that project involves looking at some data from japan, but really... it is far far removed from anything martial or anything fictional.

then this morning under the shower i found myself having some strange ideas. i recalled a conversation that repeated itself twice this weekend, the matter of what language is my mother tongue. i do not take well to inquiries into my mother tongue. it ends up being a rather long story and most people end up much too fascinated by it, and that to me is uncomfortable. i like comfort, and english is my primary language, and no, i was not born in an english speaking country, and the rest is history. so when on saturday and then again on sunday somebody started the conversation, i warned them that they did not want to get into it, it would get complicated. well, it was not my concern for their ability to follow a somewhat errant life that preoccupied me, it is just that i remain intensely private, and i really do not necessarily care, or am uncomfortable with revealing all the facts of why my language history developed the way it did.

so this morning i am holding one of this long shower-monologues and saying to myself that it is not easy to be myself. then i caught it! being myself is the easiest thing in the world, it takes absolutely no effort what so ever. no effort! yes, being me, takes no effort what so ever. then i got back to thinking of the catastrophic training yesterday that had me on the verge of tears at one point. when this one aikidoka complained about my ukemi - still nikyo - and i was more than mildly irritated by my own contention that it was this tori's technique that sucked, not my ukemi, then i felt that there was something that i was not getting. it really can not matter how good or bad his or her technique are, if i am attacking and taking ukemi properly, that is, without falling apart at the seams or separating like mayonnaise, then if he or she is complaining, what does that mean? in a morning when training was going so catastrophically, it is amazing to discover how much was happening that was precious and brilliant. by the next round it was i who was tori and sensei uke, and i got to feel how my own technique was full of holes and got hit several times in a way that that our sensei is rather good at: mercilessly and ruthlessly with all the love in the world. come to think of it, such catastrophic and dissonant days are precious indeed, there is much to learn, if one is thirsty for the lessons.

but what time is it in tokyo, really?

i had a fantastic weekend in france! i was in the city where some of my dreams began when i was barely fourteen...