Monday, July 25, 2005
Monday, July 18, 2005
***
I am also coming to realize that despite the fact that I am so incredibly happy here in Yerevan, and move and breathe with so much ease, from aside i act as an American… and I think I enjoy acting as one, although I know I am not… a funny thing, when in the states I used to feel my foreignness, my armenianness almost all the time, and here… yeah, I am acting like a damn westerner- yet I’ve never been more myself than now. I’ve never felt more comfortable in my own skin, more content amidst all this shit that brings nothing but dissatisfaction… and yet, I miss the states. Chris asked me today what it is that I miss, and the only thing I could come up with to define this vague feeling was “the everydayness... and bagelland” and I told him about that morning, right before we left, when I had gone to bagelland, right after we had had one of our last fights, and sat there for three hours, my head in complete disarray, grateful for the fact that I was leaving in four days. And I remember those kids who sat at the next table- they were young and happy and so decadent- and so everything I wish I had had when I was their age- and it made me want, for the first time I can ever recall, this decadent living, this careless, easy living of simplicity, when days are filled with sunlight and color and you’re unaware of the time ticking away, when every day has a life of its own, every day a threshold of discovering something new, unknown… when life is nothing but an endless string of possibilities and yet it’s not your turn to make your choice yet, and they shift and flicker according to your whims and you never know what’s the next day is going to bring…and I want this life more than anything I’ve ever wanted- and I get a funny feeling that now is the only time I’ll ever get a chance to have anything that comes even close to that kind of life, and I have to have it before I run out of time,,,
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
And the summer is slowly progressing...
He gave me one of his sly smiles, saying "That means you're growing up..."
Sunday, July 10, 2005
***
how do you reconcile the knowledge of the present with your past self?
... for looking back i cannot help the feeling of dismay and I laugh the laugh of malie at my younger self, the laugh of spite at my own innocence and naivite.
*
what you lost in return of the knowledge you've gained is the innocence.
*
and when you realize that there's no going back to this innocence that's when you know you're old...
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Stories
An almost banal, overly sentimental situation.
A man and a woman in a relationship (for this instance I'll use the "terms" man and woman only out of convenience, since they were not ready to accept these roles and play them properly or with dignity of adults.) They have everything to be happy, from outside it looks like a perfect idyll, and yet the relationship is as dysfunctional as it can be- at least on of them, the woman, knows that they are not happy, that she is not happy despite the man's constant denial of the fact or rather his inability to notice what should be apparent to the eye of an insider. Perhaps he IS happy after all, at least during the moments when everything's quiet and things are going seemingly well. He is happy because she's there, with him, he couldn't have possible asked for more, and yet what troubles her is the awareness, the knowledge of the fact that his happiness is because of her, by the mere fact of her existence, and her proximity to him. This makes her extremely uncomfortable and restless, she realizes she does not want the responsibility of being the sole provider of someone's happiness. Even if this someone is the man she loves more than anything in the world. Here is where the discrepancy lies. He's content, does not want anything else, she's trapped, feels burdened with the responsibility of being the reason of happiness she knows she cannot bear it anymore, especially when she knows that she no longer has or wishes to be giving anything any longer. One day she leaves.
He's devastated. He's lost, hurt and unhappy. One moment he has what seemed to be perfect happiness, the next moment everything is gone and the world he thought he knew is no longer the same... He doesn't fully comprehend the fact, only notices the emptiness of the rooms and the cold spot in bed. She's gone, miles away, and for the first time in a long while she realizes that she can breathe freely. She's happy.
Another story
A man and a woman, apart. Separated because of the will of the woman, in the most painful manner ever possible to imagine. She runs away to a place where he won't be able to reach her- halfway across the world, and only when she knows she's beyond his reach, she finds herself finally at peace with herself and happy. She's like to shove this happiness to his face, for he was the one to accuse her constantly for not wanting to be happy... "You just like being unhappy. That's the only way you know how to be..." A statement that's been haunting her for as long as she could remember, and perhaps her departure was partly because of this, and out of spite to prove him wrong, that no, she can be perfectly happy and content, that it IS possible to be ultimately happy, and that her source of happiness does not come from the outside, but lies within her.