"My best days don't look especially different to the rest of the world than my very worst ones do. In my own head, though, I feel just a little bit better, a little more hopeful, a little more like it may not always hurt so much, like it may not always be such hard work to get through a day without doing things I wish I didn't do or thinking things I wish I didn't think. "

T.S.T

Patience

"What do you wish you had more of in life?"

"Optimism..."

"Falling up like silent paper,
holding on to what may be...

It's a funny time of year,
there'll be no blossoms on the trees..."

It's become changeable like weather. My mood. Gradually getting worse, as days get darker and colder. It's interesting to realize that there is a clinical term for this- fading daylight anxiety syndrome- or even seasonal affective disorder. To realize that moodiness is caused by simply not getting enough daylight and that all the sadness is simply because of some part of the brain not producing enough of one kind of hormone or another. Or fails to connect one kind of neurotransmitter to another. Nothing but biochemistry. Sounds complicated, but not more than trying to get to the core of what really saddens me at this time of the year... Cause i will get lost before i reach the core anyway. That's what antidepressants are for. Although these days i merely sedate myself with advil, David Gray and sleep, and the other day i caught myself saying "i almost wish it was over..."

The smells of fall, late fall, bitter sweet and tart, of wet leaves and soil, of chestnuts…. And I’m craving cider and cooked apples, cinnamon and nutmeg and roasted almonds, hot steam, wet soil again, and leaves and trees and rain…

Charlottesville...

It's amazing how selective memory can be. Certain events come in smallest detail, when entire months are vague and completely blurred. when i try to remember, i get a splitting headache, and then, it comes back, a scene, a detail, like a shooting pain- and i recall names, faces, random events... i have to wonder whether i really was here once... that it really did happen. that i spent an entire summer and part of fall here, once, six years ago. But then i have to remind myself that if it didn't happen, i would not be where i am today in the first place. I dare not call it fate- but then what do you make out of this random play of circumstances? A self-fulfilling prophecy that brought itself into life? Or maybe gods trying to tell me that you cannot run away from your past- it comes back to you when you lease expect it- the reminders of those months, six years ago, right next to me, now, as i look back, watching the city disappear in twilight.

And five summers back i wrote:

"I feel like I’m tied to a rope and am constantly testing the limits of my reach. I am standing at the crossroad, in an endless wait for the right tick, right tock, the right moment in time... All i have is a speck of hope, that of a fool, and the fool is me.

And yet, deep inside me i know that I am happy— so i go on holding on to this hope...

It may sound pathetic, but I am not desperate, not even whistful. Perhaps somewhat inadequate. Scattered and split. A little bit cynical, and that is starting to scare me. But no longer desparate. It went away when August was over.
Now it's everything after. And I am happy.
That changes a lot of things.
And I find this almost reassuring."

Indolence

Propinquity

blow the eyelash off your finger.
make a wish. turn it into a dream. draw it, like you'd draw a picture.
paint it with bright colors and whistful longing.

make a snapshot of the dream to capture it in its smallest detail.

that's your dream. it's pretty. implausible yet almost real.

now fold it up, tuck it away and put it in the farthest corner of your mind. to never think about it again.

then one day, years from now, take it out, whipe the dust off of its yellowed surface, colors faded, outlines dimmed, thinking to yourself "i once dreamed about this. i made the pretty picture- i must have been really happy then..." to suddenly realize that you made the dream come true by simply letting it be, and letting it linger and that you're living that very dream in quiet everydayness...

You are where you are and there's no way of going back. not only because it's not possible, but also because you no longer want to- and yet, at moments you see a glimpse of your future, still vague and undefined projected by your past, reflecting everything that brought you where you are now and where you will be at whatever random point in time.

i'm here. i'm real.
i'm breathing. i can see and hear.

i'm happy...

i'm happy to be here. happy to see you. happy because it's a nice day and it didnt rain and that i found a new song and that starbucks has come up with a pumpkin spice latte. i'm happy that the summer's over.
it's quiet.
and peaceful.

i'm in love.
with life.
with this city,
with you.
there, i said it.
can i go home now?

Richmond. Downtown.

the heat will start breaking after the storm-
the summer is almost over...
it's the end of august
and everything after...

It's raining and rain brings relief. I can feel the tension in my neck and my back slowly go away-it seems like i've been hodling my breath for way too long... I seem to have won yet another battle with myself- i wonder if there's ever an end to this seemingly neverending struggle- and once again i have to remind myself that acceptance is the key to understanding, and if i have to learn the hardest way, at least i can be happy for having gotten out of this alive for yet another time.

it's raining and rain brings acceptance
it washes away all doubts and fears.

i can see it clearly now. i seem to know the end with an almost astounding clarity, as if it's happening now... A picture of a moment in the future frozen in the eye of the mind, like a snapshot- and yet this time i can no longer put myself ahead of time and try to live in dual vantage points- for what's between now and the end is what i do not know, cannot see and cannot foretell. i dont even try to. Cause what's between now and the end is an interval of time that's infinite in itself, filled with moments like the present-too bright and too intense for me to want to look beyond it.

Waking to a gray morning of milky light and thinning shadows, to step outside, still warm from sleep, to watch the start of the day... And somewhere close by a train gives a long whistle; the day is slowly unfolding as I watch the sky change color and the rays of sun touch the tops of the trees.

And somehow, in my frenzied and wistful search for “real” life I let myself forget that after all, it’s the simple everydayness of ordinary things that make life as real as it is- and life, as it feels now is truly amazing.

Lately i have been running into people who seem to be carrying some cryptic message for me. Lately i've been running into strangers that make me stop and think whether this is merely a coincidence or there really is a reason for me to stumble upon them. It seems like everywhere i go these days i meet someone who's ready to reveal a snippet of their life to me, all so disturbing and drastically different from my own, and yet each with its own catch, a connective point- makes me wonder what i can possibly have in common with them all when trying to imagine what it's like to be each one of these people the lonely people, strange people, happy people, sick and disturbed people, young and reckless people. To ask myself whether it's them i see or only their stories, making them as grotesques, and i wonder if by trying to, for a moment, be them i am merely relating to that one side, that one aspect that i can relate to and can find in myself as well- and once again i have to ask myself how adequate i am in my perception and maybe it's just me, all in my head, perhaps it's time to once again reset the configurations of my own perception and make it better tuned to the reality so that i can truly connect with what's around me...

This day-of all days

just like the song foretells
it's almost like a desease-being free and being happy
if only it didn't come out of so much ugliness, misery and so many mistakes...
if i could take away all the pain that has been on the way of the becoming.

cause i'm slowly becoming,
and it's happening...

Over the lies, you'll be strong
You'll be rich in love and you will carry on...

[but no- what's not bound to happen, wont happen,
i never asked for more- only what is mine...]

-matchbox 20

...i wonder whether the reality as it is, stipped off of all its illusions and fantasies may appear more unbearably surreal than a delusion itself...

reAl v. suRreal v. unreal

sense of normality, if it ever exists.
the neverending issue of adequacy. how close can you get to objectivity?

do i have to give up the subjectivity of individual perception to be able to learn what normal is like?

Thinking of all the places and faces and things i remember, and those i can't forget and where i am now and where i will be in a month, a year, two years...

It's Richmond today.
At moments it's still hard for me to grasp that of all places in the world this is where i ended up, and that i'm actually here, at this very moment, when i might just as well be say... in Gainesville, or Jacksonville, Minneapolis, Boston or Yerevan for that matter. Or i could have done as I was advised-put my finger randomly on a map and go to a place where i do not know a single soul, like a vagabond in search of real life... perhaps i will do that at some point- i was still too scared to do it this time- and today I'm in Richmond-and i still have to wonder whether this was a choice or an inevitable consequence of the past years that brought me here...

The tale of the cities that never ends...

A whole new city and a new tale of red brick and magnificent trees, an old house in a quiet neighborhood and me suddenly at home in this still unfamiliar place... and i remember how it felt when i first got here- sitting at the VCU campus, struck by the realization of how much freedom i had at that very moment and how scary but at the same time intoxicating it felt... and how i asked for a day to turn into a week, but it wasn't until several weeks later when things started falling into their places... i wonder what could have happened in those few weeks and how things actually did end up turning out, how easily, after weeks of strain, they found their resolutions and quietly settled down...

it's been exactly three months and i can finally breathe... I am at peace and truly happy and even though the currenlt life may feel nothing but temporary, it IS happening, right now and right here, life- the life in slow motion and all i can do is live it, moment by moment, each in its [simple complexity].
before it all dissolves in the air...

and yet, on a brighter note:

It takes some silence to make sound
And it takes a loss before you found it
And it takes a road to go nowhere
It takes a toll to make you care
It takes a hole to make a mountain

since i still find the lyrics somewhat touching


-jason mraz, life is wonderful

It takes a crane to build a crane
It takes two floors to make a story...


and endless story
sounds like too much of an effort, at this point

time to reconsider...
and this time, no more twists and tricks, cause i should know better what that can get me into...

well... perhaps i am

am i?

what's on your mind-cause i can't read it...

search in vain for the right lyrics and the right tunes- and still you wont find a song that fits the current mood
make a riddle out of what's obvious- and spend the rest of your days trying to decipher it.
how fucking ironic, like it always is
ain't no love and you know it
dont judge, dont scoff, dont turn away
say it, say it out loudly- it's right there, staring at your face...
no need to wonder, and yet i do...

As painful as it is, it's become equally painfully easy to deal with it now. At some point i decided that it should no longer be so complcated anymore. It needn't be. The effort always turns out to be a waste anyway. You're right, laugh it off or shrug it off- move on, walk on- there's always a turn and a bend, and who knows what's around the bend. Something better or something worse- if there's such a thing as better, and not what goes best with the given circumstances. You always believed in circumstances anyway- the queen of randomness, a convert to chaos, no longer looking for cryptic reasons and cosmic causes- there's too much randomness in the universe for your little mind to figure out- how arrogant for you to assume that you could, even for a moment, get a glimpse of what lies there, beneath the thick layer of what you have finally come to call reality.

And yet, there was a time when i tried to see a pattern out of chaos, there was a time when i believed in reasons and meanings and pretty ideals. I laugh at myself now. I shrug it off. Turn away and leave. Since i no longer want to stand there watching the last hero walk away.

and so it is...

Just like [you thought] it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time

The shorter story
No [fuss], no glory
No hero in [the] sky...

*

life in slow motion somehow it dont feel real...

reality overlap

" i see things that happened. i encounter images of myself in various places, but only at distance, as though i were watching someone else... it's out there, beyond what i can feel or touch, beyond anything that has to do with me..."

Paul Auster
Urban/modern nothingness

Laugh it off, shrug it off, joke it off, sleep it off- it will pass, like everything else... and yet, who am i kidding? it's not the clouds moving in the sky, it's my mind shifting, back and forth, from uncertainties of the day to firm determination to complete lack of orientation to sudden awareness and realization... and back again, always the same circle that gets me trapped inside my own mind.

I'm too old to be delusional. Too tired for this sort of thing. I should have been thicker skinned instead of crying over something so elusive that i cannot even grasp.
Shrug it or fake it, or better ignore it- it's something you blacklisted yourself and shunned it away. you say you dont want it. You're not cut for these sort of things. Not for this lifetime, anyway. So shrug it off or cry it out... and move on. You will be gone- soon.

uncertainty

the already way too familar eerie feeling that stems out of the unsureness with the reality. Sleepwalking through some kind of black and white world to switch back to sunlight and color again... yet the creepy feeling persists and it makes me shiver...

a part of me wants time to pass more quickly. I want to see what's going to happen, impatient to find out how the events will unfold themselves and where i will end up after i take another breath to stop and look back.

for right now, i'm clueless...

and yet, sometimes i have to stop and ask myself whether it is really necessary to twist everything around and put myself in the most absurd and least expected situations in order to be able to achieve that sense of normality that i've been looking for. I wonder whether there is a safer way of staying in touch with my own sanity and not break my back without having to fold over backwards, in a vain attempt to brings lose ends together...

Let me find my own definition

even if i myself wish to stay undefined...

Perhaps a lack of definition is in some way a definition of its own...

Give me a day,
Make it a week,
Everything will fall into their right places.


Give me a day,
Make it a week,
There an entire summer yet to be lived...

Spective. Reoccuring-rephrased

You think it’s easy
Sometimes it’s easy
But it’s not easy- you’re gonna break down and cry
You’re not important
You should be grateful
And if you’re wondering why…


There are questions you do not ask….
Because you no longer want to know the answers. You don’t need them, just like the questions themselves, they’re pointless…So you push these questions far back to the corner of your mind, keeping them quiet and still, locked.

And there are questions you do not ask no matter how badly you want to know the answers. You try to ignore them, hoping that these questions will outlive themselves and disappear completely from your event horizon…
It’s not important,
It does not matter- you keep saying to yourself… cause you know that deep down you already know the answers to even the unborn questions and the only thing you can do is accept them each in its own time.

And you live day by day in self inflicted bliss of denial and ignorance, choosing it as your only mode to exist, knowing that the only thing you can ask and hope for is that you wake up the next morning…

* I no longer question. I merely accept. And I’m no longer afraid of pain- you don’t question pain just like you don’t question your own happiness…

I’m no longer afraid of getting hurt- and by having realized this I seem to have somehow eliminated all the possible pain I may have to endure at whatever point in the future.

Still, I wonder whether this is yet another sign of being jaded or another step towards “self-liberation” (and I laugh at myself for having to use the “term”)

Gone. Disappeared. Vanished without a trace. Dissolved in the air. As if i never existed. Shifted realms, entered a new paradigm and in my dream I'm dreaming about a dream that is the future long lost to the past only to wake up and find it in my reality.

[perhaps this should have been posted under paranormal]

In the arms of a different sky

"make a circle in the sand
make a halo with your hands
make a place for me to land..."

cc

["Sometimes in this world there are things that make us question who we are. Question why we treat people the way we do and how people treat us. A cold night, grey sky, a lonely apartment, a phonecall. No matter how hard we try to figure out who we are and why others are the way they are, there is no single answer, no true solution. Time is the essence of it all, the ticking of the clock determines the fate of the world, the family, the relationship, the individual. The wrong tick, the wrong tock, the wrong moment in time. Yet with every passing tick it gets easier, with every passing tock it gets brighter. As time passes with sunrise and sunset, the air gets colder, then it gets warmer. There is no physical way to put it in reverse, look through the rearview mirror and take that right instead of that left. We are all bound by time, place, limits. Sometimes we just wish we could take that U-turn, back to the intersecion, stop, step out, look around, ask the same question with a new perspective and take a different path. NO REGRETS. We are limited to who we are now, not then, not going to be.
I will never forget.
I will always be here with my car in drive, listening to the clock go tick-tock and waiting for the next intersection. I will always be here. I will make time."]

In retrospect... quoting

"Because i was permanently confused, dissatisfied, unhappy, tormented by inadequacy, driven by wanting towards every kind of impossible future... I dont think i saw people except as appendages to my needs. It's as if i lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires...
Maybe this is only a description of being young..."

Doris Lessing

It's spring behind my window...

Hitting the bottom to climb up again

What does it take to recover?
Why is it taking so long?
Does it have to get worse before it starts getting better?

I've lost the count of days in an endless wait.
stuck in between two worlds, neither here, nor there, but somewhere else, in the back of my head... trapped inside the four walls i so tried to once escape...

and yet, the more i think about it, the more i realize that there really is a reason to all this. perhaps i'd never have another chance to face all that i once wanted to forget, trying to deny the roots of my origin- this very room, the old view from the window, the endless hours spent dreaming of the moment when i'd be able to leave it all behind, and go without looking back.

it's only now that i know that there are always things that you can't leave behind

the gutter you've come from will always be with you- it gives you more room to spread out your roots. and yes, you are rooted to where you have come from and i'm finally coming to accept it.

Choirs of winter birds are calling...

Restless

and i'm restless again. restless for life, a kind of life at the rawest edge- raw, unpolished, sharp, scraping though the skin and cutting through the bone, a life of extreme that's almost on the verge of insanity... i keep saying to myself "all I need is some sense of normality..." and yet i keep throwing myself from one extreme to another, as if walking through some kind of mine field, constantly testing the limits of my reach, the limits of my freedom and my own sanity...

Spective

I used to wonder whether it was really possible to remain mentally and emotionally unaffected by certain experiences and whether it was this immunity that determined a certain level of maturity. I used to wonder whether this level of maturity was determined by the ability of putting certain experiences behind and moving on without looking back, without the feeling of remorse and regret. I used to wonder whether this is what made one jaded, and whether there was a limit to how jaded one could get.

Now I wonder whether there really is a point in trying to seek answers to questions that are better left unanswered. Makes you look like a fool when you ask anyway. So you let go- a simple act –once the hardest thing to do-almost effortless now…
Releasing the static cling from everything that once you held on to for mental and emotional support, using it as appendages to needs that didn’t need to exist anyway.

Acceptance is the key. It brings relief, Opens new perspectives.
Nothing more enlightening. And liberating.

I seem to have finally learned to reconcile the past with the present. I am finally able to look at my younger self with kinder, more loving and forgiving eyes. I have learned to put both the experiences and memories behind me and move on.

I have finally learned to stand on my own feet without the support of a concept or an idea, or any emotional stamina. And by doing so, I really have overcome my biggest fear of all-the fear of living.

Nine months

I remember waking up one Sunday morning in our white apartment, looking at the spotless walls and sun pouring into the room, getting up and wondering around the quiet and empty rooms with a growing feeling of discomfort. I remember looking at the clutter of familiar objects and feeling displaced, uprooted, out of place. Looking at myself from aside, in this spotless apartment in this perfect vision of happiness and domestic bliss and suddenly becoming afraid of how easily I was getting used to this life of comfort and how slowly and gradually I was getting sucked into it….

I had everything to be happy.
The scariest part was that I was happy in this bliss and I could see myself living an entire life like this, in this cloudless and comfortable existence which didn’t even take much effort to create and maintain. I remember the feeling of discomfort growing into panic and then restlessness with the thought that despite its promise of comfort and happiness this was not what I wanted, and that I did not belong to this life just like this life did not belong to me and to continue living it would be the greatest betrayal I could ever commit towards myself.

And now...
Sitting in a crowded bus, moving slowly on a desolate road, in the silence of hills and nothing but miles and miles of snow, thinking about that other life that seemed so remote and almost not real.

Almost nine months…
I could have had a child in this time.
I could have stayed in this almost perfect life that had everything that one might need. Including happiness.

Instead I shunned it away, rejecting it as something unwanted and almost unpleasant, and choose to return to a place that I once ran away from, to this godforsaken land of destitute that once held me captive and landlocked in the chain of mountains that once I wished to escape….

To go against all senses of rationality, to interrupt an entire life and leave it in shambles and disarray, and come here, of all the places in the world, at the brink of a nervous and physical breakdown and somehow, magically manage to stay alive and in one piece, and instead of breaking down, finding a different kind of happiness, the happiness of self-discovery and self-fulfillment…

[I laugh at myself, this whole story sounding so banal, no matter how drastically I changed it almost overnight, and how crazy were the events that followed afterwards… A textbook version, or rather, almost fiction, as if I was following a pattern, the steps already trodden by so many feet. The Fear of Flying. Children of Violence. The Hours…. And so many more similar untold stories….A woman at the brink of self-liberation…. Words like self-realization and self-discovery sounding almost like clinical terms.]

And yet...perhaps this was not the only thing to do. Perhaps this was not the smartest choice to make. And what I did or discovered was nothing new, nothing that was not known before. And yet this was my choice. A free choice, and not one offered to me among some other options. I made it, aware of the consequences. I made it, even though I myself was afraid. And by doing so, I overcame my biggest fear of all-the fear of living.

And as it turns out, I was not running away from, but running towards to. And perhaps what I needed was to return to the roots of my origin, and by merely coming here to claim my freedom back I found a home that I had been denying to myself for as long as I can remember, a home that will stay with me no matter where I go.

and a new day dawned

One day too late, a day too soon...

I get out of the cab and close the door, cross the street without looking back, losing myself in the crowd, walking through the mist of raindrops hanging like a veil over the brightly lit city, cars and people passing me by, steam and laughter behind my back… I quicken my pace and walk into the building, climb the flight of stairs, short of breath, open the door to a room that suddenly seems to have acquired so much space, breathing in the silence that has settled in…

There is nothing more comforting and beautiful than solitude…

I stay up late, watching the lights in the windows go out one after another, and somewhere far away it is Christmas day – a life that seems so distant and remote…and once again I’m dreaming of places I’ve never been before and long past midnight the night sky speaks to me and it comes- the snow- light and flaky, a cloud of silver butterflies, bringing dreams to the rooftops of a city that I call home.

just come to istanbul...

Come... i'll show you

how many more dishes did i have to break to finally let go...

to all the unbroken dishes and the unspoken words
unreleased anger and spiteful grudge...
i'm letting it all go
and it's falling, falling at my feet

"every chip from every cup, every promise given up,
every reason that’s not enough
is falling, falling at [my] feet.

everyone who needs a friend, every life that has no end,
every need not ready to bend
is falling, falling at my feet.


[they]'ve come crawling, falling at my feet.

[You]’ve come crawling, now you're falling at my feet.

all fall down...

all the manic taste faces that you pull,
all the action is none of that you control,
the graffiti rolling down on five feet tall,
and the compromise you make for soon.

all fall down...

all the effort makes it all the bigger deal.
all the radio waves, electronic seas.
had to never give? had to simply be?
to know when to wait this blessed simplicity.

in hope shall I trust. in heaven I’ll be staying.
teach me to surrender. not my will, my will.

-u2

Blue morning...

Night is turning down, dawn is getting close and it always comes soon, oh way too soon. And this morning the air smells of snow...

***

Living out the dream

A woman alone in a big city...

and once i said
"i think i am happy..." how do i know?
I still dont know what it is that defines happiness, just as i do nt know what makes me so ultimately happy, but what i do know is what this happiness feels like."

Once I dreamed of decadence. Now it’s all I’ve got—life of decadence, in the very heart of downtown Yerevan, in the city that like me, seems to have turned restless, throbbing beneath my feet with its rapid pace, in its incessant stream of cars, humming, roaring behind my window, glowing at night, dawning its morning light on me as I come out, arms wide open, embracing the day.

Yerevan, I can’t hold you close enough.

Oh the decadence, raspberries and truffles, overpriced bagels and apple walnut crepes, hours spent at my coffee shop, lazy afternoons as I sit and watch the city from above, slanted rays sliding over the rooftops… Late night outings, loud music and laughter, endless talk, and the rhythm of the day and night, day and night as I’m living every moment of a life that I once dreamed of and am watching now to turn into my reality…intoxicated with my own freedom in its absolute shape and form that’s almost too sweet to bear… This is how I know that I am happy. And I accept it, unquestionably.
And I walk on, with the lines of my song blasting in my ears…

“And you feel like no-one before
You steal right under my door
And I kneel cause I want you some more
I want the lot of what you got
And I want nothing that you’re not…”

I kneel cause I want you some more
I want you some more, I want you some more…"

-u2

notes to self

I sit and marvel at the thought of how easy it has become to let go. I’m slowly letting go and every minute brings relief. Every breath comes with that much more ease. No more weight pressing upon my shoulders, no more chains tied around my chest.
I no longer wonder. I no longer dwell.
I’m letting it all go. And I’m slowly becoming.

Too late for fall

The smells of fall, late fall, bitter sweet and tart, of wet leaves and soil, of chestnuts…. And I’m craving cider and cooked apples, cinnamon and nutmeg and roasted almonds, hot steam and the smell of wet soil again, and leaves and trees and rain…

***
Gray morning and the sun hardly touches the ground. Streets half asleep with no one around, and we come out, still warm with sleep and head to the coffee shop right around the corner, where they serve strong coffee and early breakfast and I smile as I watch you eat and the day begins.

We stroll down the streets in the afternoon chasing sunrays and looking for bright spots and you laugh at me cause I always run into people and stumble on the little cracks on the pavements, and we walk into that park set aglow with sun and golden leaves, and I have an urge to grab a bunch of them and throw them all over you and I laugh as you try to take me in your arms, and we fall on beds of leaves, laughing, laughing like kids and I watch the sun caught in your eyelashes that are almost white and your eyes are pools of light that bear the reflection of the sky and the sun is now on my face and the instant freezes in the eye of my mind while the world swirls in a collage of vanishing leaves.

It’s twilight and long shadows start to stretch, The sky turns pale, the first star appears, street lamps come out one after another and the city is lit with neon lights. We’re still in the street, a little dizzy with cold and too much happiness and steam comes out of your mouth and I’m craving for a smoke and at home there is dinner and the night grows dark and thick behind the window, you turn off the light and let darkness in and I curl next to you, listening to your even breathing, fading into you and into a warm soft pit that closes us in…

And long after midnight I go into the kitchen and turn the heater on and we sit at the table drinking tea, and the night is long and an eternity away from dawn and tomorrow we’ll sleep in and I look at you and realize that I’m in love with you all over anew, and yet it’s too late, and I’m dreaming love again, we’re too late for fall and I love you.

The horizon lost...

The view from my window

all the leaves i came to love are falling...

running with my wet face on
today i woke up feeling sad
i know that you said that one day i would be glad...
hold the choirs of winter
birds are calling to me
all the leaves i came to love are
falling
ribbons on the evergreens, owls that pull them apart
i can hear you singing my funny valentine
oh you know that breaks my heart
running with my rain face on
no idea of what to say
no idea of what to do
in this fear that never goes
waiting for all my dreams...

faithless
evergreen

mean

... just leave

Change of the season...

A woman asleep in a lonely apartment downtown.
Late in the afternoon and it’s raining.
She wakes with a start and sits up. She lights a cigarette
and goes to the kitchen to make tea. It’s cold. She
places her arms over the stove. She coughs. She coughs
constantly.

She remembers her dream.
In her dream she is with a man. She can still feel the
warmth that was present in the dream She can’t see the
face, but she remembers every touch. Firm muscles under her fingers. The feel of the skin. The weight of his body,against hers. The grip. The tight embrace. The intensity.

She slowly bends down struck by sudden attack of pain.
Never has she known a longing stronger than this. A longing of warmth, of touch, physical contact. Never has she known it could be so fierce, so painful…The body, her own body with a mind of its own, is speaking it now in little sobs that grow louder an louder until it is unbearable to hear, and she can’t understand what it is that her body wants and why it hurts so badly.


A woman leaning over a notebook, writing her dream with
rage and fury, while hot tears run down her face. She tears pages on after another, but places them in front of her. She tosses those half written pages and runs her fingers through her hair, rubbing the temples the cheekbones, lines on the forehead…

She cannot put an end to the dream. She cannot complete it. There is no closure. This is a dream with no end. A dream of craving. Craving for warmth.

It's raining- the circus is closing

Today I woke up feeling cold, and for the first time this year I had to close the window and get another blanket. And I knew that it’s only now that the summer’s officially over, and not a few weeks back, when I closed the door to that other apartment, thinking that it was the end…

The summer’s over now, although I have already put my summer clothes away, the summer’s over, even if I have already said all my goodbyes, and just like I neatly folded and packed away my clothes, I will have to pack the memories away, wrap them up, seal them with wax and put them away, on the top shelf in the back of my mind, where they will be safe and free of dust— yet another summer of kaleidoscopic events, of the heat and the sun, watered streets of Yerevan smelling of freshly cut grass, blue and cloudless skies, and me, happy, delirious, a butterfly on the sidewalk with rainbow colored wings, crazed and dazed with the sun and with my own freedom- and now it’s gone, the summer, - I have outlived it, I have outgrown and survived it- my summer of becoming, the summer of acceptance…

The circus is closing…
I stand there, watching them all leave and I wonder about things that they will let me keep, things I’ll remember, and what I will forget, and what it is that I will be missing most, when I look back at what seems now only a colorful swirl that seems to have lasted only an instant…
The circus is leaving- and yet I remain.
I’m slowly becoming.
And I proceed…

Harsh

What makes you think that what happens to you is special in any way?
Is different, has some meaning, rather than being a weird play of circumstances, just a sequence of random occurrences of one kind or another? What makes you think that you’re special in any way, that your story somehow stands out from the millions and millions of other stories of other women? What makes you think…. that all that happens to you has some kind of purpose, other than being one of the millions of the experiences that so many people have, simply adding up more weight to the sack of your own experiences that you carry on your back, refusing to part with them and tiring yourself to death dragging it on and on… This is what makes you jaded… and you wonder why you’re as apathetic as you are now?

What makes you think that giving different names to things that already have their objective, already used and abused and overly common and banal names would change them even a bit, make them different, yours only, and hence unique? What makes you think you’re unique anyway? Aren’t you human after all? And thus subject to all human emotions and thoughts and everything else? Do you think it gives you any sort or kind of excuse to justify your own behavior which you perfectly well know is unjustifiable? And that the overall picture viewed from aside is exactly what you’re trying to ignore- putting yourself in some kind of denial, merely looking for delusion after delusion and thus ending up in the most absurd and ridiculous situations? You stamp your foot on the ground and say that it’s through this absurdity and nonsensical behavior that you get to experience what you wouldn’t have otherwise. You say that it’s through randomness that you learn to see a pattern… You say that you’ve changed, that you’ve grown and matured and have learned the lessons for which you had to pay such great prices and suffer so many losses… And yet, can you not see that the way you act and react is not much different than what it was when you were sixteen? At least you didn’t have the arrogance back then to make assumptions of being always right for choosing to do whatever would come to your mind at the spur of the moment…

How many more blows can you take? Till when can you continue to destruct yourself causing more and more harm to your body and soul, tormenting them like you wouldn’t treat even your own enemy… Are you your worst enemy? Is it what you think you deserve? Shouldn’t there be some kind of self-respect towards your own self before you can appreciate the respect of the others? These days you are rather annoyed when there is even a hint of praise directed towards your way… and why is that? Perhaps because you do not have much respect left for anything or anyone, and first of all towards yourself? Afraid to face what comes so close to being the truth? Yes, it is the truth, and I am speaking it to you, the judge, the harsh critic that’s been living in your head all this time, and the voice that you’ve so successfully learned to block and repress lately…Why do you always have to learn through pain, through the hardest way… because for some reason once you have told yourself that you do not want an easy life, a life that has at least some grain of rationality in it? So what kind of life do you actually want? Life that makes no sense, even to yourself, life that’s confused and nonsensical any way you try to look at it? But this is what I want, you say, and now, left to your own devices, all you do is sit and wait for some kind of sign, another cryptic cosmic message so that you can confuse yourself even more?

Is there a limit on how jaded you can get? Is there a limit on how much pain you can endure? Is there a limit to how much time you waste and to the degree of damage you cause to yourself before you kill yourself and drop dead without even noticing how you slowly extinguished yourself, and what a waste… Such a waste, Such a waste of time, and faith and everything that went into making you, on who you grew to become, on who you really are, and who you could have been had you had more foresight in the past, have you had more reasoning and common sense… You said you wanted to be a woman alone. A free woman. What makes you think that this was the path to your womanhood, that you have chosen it right, that this is the only way to go, the only road that you can claim as yours among so many that lay in the vast expands of endless possibilities. You say that’s what you want, these unlimited, neverending possibilities, because without them you say there is no freedom, because without them your life comes to its end...
So what do these possibilities offer you, what is it that you have? Womanhood interrupted? Ruins and shambles and once again the real risk of falling apart within a blink of an eye, within the slightest blow of the wind, and the slightest breath of the wintry cold… You know you are going to fall apart, even if you stay intact from the outside, you know that sooner or later you will have to face what you’ve been avoiding all these years, face and accept and perhaps swallow all these truths that you knew were there, and yet you were too proud and to stubborn, even to yourself, to accept what was so obvious right from the beginning… Has denial become your new mode of existence? Have these quasi-relativistic speculations become your only tools of dealing with what you have no courage to deal with? There pretty much is Right and Wrong, you chose the easiest relativist path, the lowest level of the most abject nihilism so that you can try and justify yourself, but you know the wrong of your own actions, you know what you should and should not have done, you knew it right from the beginning, didn’t you? When all you wanted was to jump headfast in to the whirlwind of crazy events and let them carry you away, because in speed you tend to lose your mind, because speed is faster than the flow of your thoughts, and thus you have an excuse not to think, not to do anything, but merely float and how little effort does it take to try and stay afloat? You know you’re going to fall apart even if you say to yourself that you’re holding yourself in one piece— in this latent breakdown that you are already going through…

How little effort does it take to try and stay afloat and what does that accomplish?
Is there a limit on how jaded you can get? Is there a limit on how much pain you can endure? Is there a limit on how long you can go on, trying to pretend that you’re strong and tough and so very perfect. Will you ever get rid of your self-righteousness?

And if there is a limit, where is it…

The loss that you cannot replace...

I've been dreaming about losses. The kind of painful and strenuous dreams that leave you numb and drained in the morning- you no longer notice the physical pain, all there is is the bottomless pit of emptiness, pressing hard against your insides, creating a sort of vacuum that's almost unbearable, and you move through your day as a sleepwalker, knowing that at night there will be the same dream waiting for you in that dark corner of your mind and you dread the minute of going to bed, because you know you won't escape what you've been trying to avoid in broad daylight.

They say the price for knowledge gained through experience is your innocence. And yet, there are certain things i wish i had never learned- i wish i could claim that innocence back, giving up all that knowledge that i've gained at such a high price...
the experience of pain... the experience of loss. A kind of loss that you will never fully come to comprehend, let alone to reconcile with... A kind of loss that cannot be replaced or recovered from... i wonder how long it takes to heal... as much as this healing is possible in a given situation...
a month... a year... or until another loss and anothe pain come to replace this one?
or until you find something that will at least partly fill that void that will stay within you for a long long time...and what do you do till then? How do you continue living with this loss that you know will not be replaced...

How long does it take to heal...

"...Tears stream down on your face
when you lose something you cannot replace
tears stream down on your face
and I will try to fix you..."
Coldplay

and another... short story

A man, relatively young, and yet already jaded- running away from something or rather, from himself, into a distant part of the world, in search of some kind of sanity, or rather normality, in a place where everything appears skewed and crooked…

He runs around, sleeps around, makes himself acquainted with these unfamiliar ways, and makes himself comfortable in his new surroundings so much that he has no wish to return to the place where he has come from. Meets a woman, conventional in every way- a solid, bulky, traditional woman who promises only stability and devotion, unlike the eccentric and neurotic flighty pieces he used to end up with… A woman with a good hand and a stable head, the woman who will know how to run the house, how to hold the family on her shoulders, how to raise the kids… a woman who’s a great investment into a future that speaks of stability and prosperity and is as conventional as it could be…the only thing slightly out of ordinary being that she’s foreign, but that’s also rather banal, isn’t it? Seems to happen all the time- foreigners, and mostly Americans, marrying women from cultures drastically different from their own- these women either being the exotic pieces or those stable, devoted women that know how to take care of their men… so overall, a banal story, and by writing the outlines I pinned him down and now he’s done, finished, limited to a conventional life he chose to live… but I’m still not convinced and I wonder what it really is that makes American men resign to these godforsaken corners of the world and end up marrying foreign women to live their lives happily ever after?

And i'm dreaming of improbable places again...

"i want to live in a small town in deep South in the States. I want to live in a town where summers are hot and long and careless and women are full figured and wear long dresses and practice magic and men speak in this almost musical Southern drawl and there's music seemingly everywhere…and there's a street named Sullivan Street…"

"Why's that?"

"i don't know. I can just see the place, that town with its people, it all seems so real, uncomplicated. Funny, of all places in the world i want to be in this middle of nowhere place. Do you know a place like that?"

"Well, i am not sure. You're asking for too much, lady. Long dresses and magic...Move to New Orleans."

"But that's a city, I want a small town"

"How's Tennessee? Not quite deep south, but still… Maybe Memphis?"

"Not quite…"

"What then?"

"Don't know. I guess you'll have to find it yourself…guys would call you sweetheart and tell you you're pretty" he said this in this deep southern accent, purrty, made me laugh.

***
and the next day...

"i'm sad..."

"why's that?"

"that whole small town dream... i just want real life. with real people. real men. there are no real men left anymore. they're either fags or too pretentious, too snobbish or too stuck up. or too young even at the age of thirty. sigh. are there really no real men left?"

"hmmm, you're looking at one..."

"yeah, but you don't count..."

"thank you very much i don't."

"perhaps to your missus... i just want real people with real lives. lately i'm getting a feeling that all i see around me is some kind of immitation of life that's being lived elsewhere. yeah, i'm going to move to that southern town one day. just to see how real THAT feels"

"Oh, come on, you just want to get yourself some southern love..."

"Maybe...or i'm just confusing real with redneck. go figure."

"...true potential manifests itself in the one who could, but at present prefers not to act. only in the moment of suspended action does potentiality show itself in its pure form..."

It's August...

... it's not over yet, the summer is not over yet, the heat will persist almost until October, but it will end, eventually, like everything else... sooner than I think, sooner than i'll have time to notice.

I've come to accept the end...

it's not over yet, but it has already ended in my mind, for i know exactly how it is going to be, i can see it so clearly. It's a surreal feeling being at two points simultaneously, a situation when your mind is two steps ahead into the future from where you actually are at the present moment. And i watch myself, from this advanced vantage point, and last night i said out loudly.
«Ever been able to view everything from a point somewhere in future, able to predict your each and every action, watching yourself as it you're watching something staged, already known...»

"You're talking riddles..."

Talking riddles, talking riddles, talking riddles...
There seem to be way too many puzzles and riddles these days, way too much symbolism around. And now the most symbolic month of the year has started... and i'm talking riddles.

In two weeks i'll move into the apartment downtown, it will be four weeks of absolute solitude amidst the busy life of the city crazed and jaded in the summer sun. i can see myself locked inside that apartment, spending hour after hour in nothing but silence, while the city roars behind the soundproof windows... i can see hours stretching long and thin, as i sit motionless playing the game i've always played... i can see myself at the end of the month, packing up my things, not to leave even a trace of my existence, closing the door to the apartment, and the summer gone, but never to be forgotten...

There is only one word to be said in the end, acceptance.
i have learned to accept.
i've come to reconcile with what seemed to be the most difficult thing to reconcile with in the past. i have already accepted and i know i will move on, gone... as if i never existed...

it's not time ...
it is not over yet
august has just started today
august and everything after...

"World, i cannot hold you close enough..."
or is it how it goes?

***

The essence of scepticism is the refusal to accept any choice unconditionally...

***
Jesus is the fat lady...

***

it was exactly what i needed to hear.
i need to find and read that book one more time. before august and everything after comes...

***

When you come to think about it- it’s the simple everydayness that makes up for everything… it’s this everydayness that contributes to this overall happiness that I am feeling now… orange juice in the morning, apple and walnut crepes in the afternoon, late evening ride to downtown, watching the string of lights at night as the cab takes me home… going to bed tired yet knowing that the morning is going to bring yet another wonderful day and it’s all that matters….

I miss certain aspects of living in the states… I am coming to realize that.
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,,,

And the summer is slowly progressing...

The other day, sitting at Mariott cafe with a friend, talking about future plans that are still vauge and full of uncertainties i caught myself thinking out loudly, more as a note to myself than an actual conversation "It's amazing how you continue living your life day by day in a way you've always lived, doing the same things you ordinarily do and yet with the knowledge that every day is bringing you closer to whaever you've set to accomplish. It's a wonderful feeling..."
He gave me one of his sly smiles, saying "That means you're growing up..."

***

*
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...

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.

U2, the trip and everything else...

Notes from the trip

“It hasn't finally clicked in that this is happening. Still stuck in that one moment when the escape seems inphantomable, when the hopelessness of my confinement in my own condition is all that i will get-and yet, here i am, almost halfway done with the journey, and all i can do is count hours, and hope for the best, perhaps pray for the best, whatever the best is...”

It's been a while- seems like forever, and I cannot fully grasp what is happening, And once again, I'm traveling alone, and I find myself in random locations, surrounded with people as strange as they can be, and I am starting to recall how much I hate airports and traveling alone and I literally count every hour until this whole nightmare is over and I am finally home…

The whole trip is in a haze. Vaguely I remember the uncomfortable ride to Orlando, tension building up between us as he drove silently, occasionally giving me a critical remark or another,,, Tension that wouldn't let go even when I was up in the air, all the way until I landed in JFK- dirty, crowded, depressing… The moment I stepped out I knew I was on my own- I could have chosen to step out of the airport and lose myself in the city- New York, the place I fell in love with only a few months back, the place I still dream I'll be able to live in who knows what distant future- and yet, I knew I had to go home, not even New York with all its temptations could keep me back- and here I was, loaded with a ton of luggage, running around in circles, trying to find some stupid terminal 3- yes, the airport was as depressing as it could be- and yet I entertained myself by talking on the phone- it helped to kill some time as I waited for Aeroflot to finally start checking in the luggage. The crowd around me was even more depressing- Russians from New York or who knows where, flying into Moscow. The only good thing left from New York was the guy with dreadlocks who was flying to India- although I never got a chance to talk to him… The flight itself bad- I was desperate for sleep and yet all I could do was curl in my seat and listen to music- U2 again and pray for a safe landing…

“And I'm trying to figure out how to spend the next 20 or so hours without going completely insane over the fact that this is finally happening. I try to imagine what it will be like, and yet, i know there is no use doing something like this, the imaginary never matches the real, and yet, all i want is to open my eyes and see mount Ararat again, all i want is to walk along Sayat-Nova avenue, to breathe the cool spring air, to listen to the Yerevan sounds, and watch the streets, and stream of lights, in my city of lights...

I wish i could sleep. I really do want to sleep, or perhaps i could try and make a list of hundred and one things that went wrong with my relationship during these last 2 years... Or hundred and one things on why life is so beautiful and getting better as i slowly progress into my recovery. Or hundred and one reasons why i should stay in armenia, although i guess that's too dangerous an issue to speculate over...

And again i listen to U2, i've been listening to U2 for the last two months, my freedom songs, the songs of hope and my liberation, the songs of past and a brand new, almost impossible future. Whatever that future might hold, it's the freedom that makes it so attractive, the freedom that will perhaps be my own salvation...


I listen to u2 and entertain all possibilities, and yet this time i do not want to force any decision upon myself. I will let it happen, i will let it fall upon me rather than force fed it to myself and him... although there's a lot at stake, i think i will put my inner peace and well being first this time and see how it goes.

I wish i could stay at home longer. i wish... i really wish i could just stay there... and not return. i really wish...”

Russian Airlines sucks, but that was pretty much expected. At times i think that it really is worth it to spend some extra for comfort and everything else. Moscow, and the airport nightmare started all over again, although the worst part was yet to come- by the time I stepped out of the terminal I was so tired and grateful for my uncle to be there to meet me that I was about to collapse in his arms- and yet, obediently I let him walk me to his car, although the last thing I wanted to do was talk, I did find some energy to make a quite a decent conversation and even joke. Six hours, a glimpse of Moscow- the city was too bizarre or maybe the time interval too short, and me way too tired to form any definite impression about the place. But at least I can say that I've seen the Red Square if that makes any difference at all. Flying out of Moscow was the worst- luggage, passport control- and I completely panicked and broke down for I could already sense trouble coming towards my way- trouble I was not able to deal with yet- too tired, too ravaged, the only thing on my mind being to finally get home.

Stepped off the plane into the night, all my luggage safe and in one piece thank god- walked out of the gate and saw my mother and my brother- and again, I could help the tears, and I cried like I had never cried before with the realization how much I had missed them in these past two years and how much I needed to be with them at that very moment. Calmed down while waiting for the taxi- and we talked, as if nothing had ever happened, as if it was only yesterday that I had left, and it gave me a very strange feeling of dislocation as if it was not only the space that I crossed, but time as well, and here I was, back in two years, at the exact spot that I was right before I left.

Our apartment at first sight looked more shabby than I remembered, not much had changed and yet it looked like the apartment itself had aged, whereas my mother and my brother looked exactly as I remembered, A surreal feeling- sitting in the living room, drinking tea and talking- and I kept thinking about the place that I lived the last few months, and couldn't help but compare. The strangest thing was going to sleep- I thought of the bed, my bed, and our bed- the white bedroom and everything else, and it gave me a painful pang in the stomach, and a creepy feeling that I would never see those things again….

The last i wrote on the trip...

“And I never really got to say goodbye to Gainesville, anyway, despite the fact that i kept changing my mind- or rather situation kept changing- every other day, i still think that most likely than not i will be coming back, i have no choice but do so, and how much i hate situations like this, when even though you know you're doing the only possibly right thing, in the end you will end up regretting about your choice bitterly, blaming your fate and the one single life that you've given, and dream about another life of a different choice under different circumstances...what can one do in situation like this? I really wonder and admire those who are able to make a decision and stick with it till the very end, without experiencing any feeling of remorse.

I no longer want to live regretting...”

*Interlude

To leave, in such a state of mind, the irony and fucked-upness of the whole situation, who would’ve though... i thought i was the victim here, and yet, i guess, we both are the victims of some cosmic fucked up joke that’s being played on us. Maybe somehow this is a sign for us to wake up, and open our eyes... although whatever that cosmic message might be i still don’t have any interpretations. perhaps i should really consider being alone as my only option, and the more i think about it, the more attractive the whole thing seems, and yet at the same time i think about him, after i’ve left, him, devastated, lost, hurt and torn into pieces, a caricature of himself, mean, spiteful, cynical, hateful... if he were to tell his story to someone at a random bar, i would be the bitch who ruined his life in that story. yes, i would be that one, the evil bitch, that was the end of him.... But at the same time, is it worth ruining my own life for the sake of his happiness? not even happiness, for if we go back to the old ways, it’s going to be yet another nightmare that neither one of us deserves. So tis there possibly an answer, a kind of solution that would be the least hurtful for both of us?

And it's happening again...

Reoccuring
“Sometimes all you want is a place you could go to and
feel safely hidden and lost. An unfamiliar place in a foreign city, a street without a name, you walk into a bar you’ve never been to, order a drink you will not drink… Talk to yet another stranger, smile a disappointed smile, give a shrug, and walk out, sober, leaving only cigarette ashes behind… For you know better, you should- you’ve spoken to way too many strangers…

You walk into a building undistinguished in any way, open the
door to a room that has no personality; look at the bare
walls and a single chair in the corner. In fading daylight
coming through the stained glass you are alone. You walk
into that empty space, sit on the floor with a full pot of
coffee and smoke cigarettes one after another. Watch the
smoke curl above your head and melt in the air. Watch the
air turn blue and heavy as hours pass…

…and you’re still there, on the floor trying to recall who
you are and where you have come from. Trying to remember
what was today and what was yesterday. All those faces and places, and bits and snippets of conversations… They swirl around your head- distant echoes of forgotten voices, past instants flashing before your eyes… here you are at sixteen, here you are at twenty… now you no longer know your age, it’s been too long since you stopped to ask. Scenes from the past flashing before your eyes, scenes that seem to belong to someone else’s life, you’re merely an observer with indifferent eyes, watching a poorly cast movie with badly matched characters. You go through each one of those scenes, one by one dismissing them all, letting them roll into the dark void of oblivion, without experiencing any regret. Hardly feeling a thing. What a waste…

Nothing remains. Your mind is yet another space, bare and empty, uninhabited- there is nothing left to remember. Nothing to evoke even a slight resemblance of what you once used to call an emotion. There are no more thoughts, none of the moments of past holding you
back, making you want to return, no useless weight holding
you down. You could interrupt the film at any moment, leave that life as it is, unfinished, yet suggesting no logical ending. You could chose never to leave the room and no one would even notice… Leave the body behind, dissolve in the air in search of the eternity… And as
you stand staring into the huge dark eye of the unknown,
you’d know that’s where you have come from."

*

“You need to see a shrink.”
...and although I was quite surprised at his comment, I simply shook my head and told him that there was nothing in this world the shrink could possibly tell me that I didn't already know.

“You've got to figure out whether you're running from or to, you'll be just fine when you know for sure…”
...and it makes me wonder...

Notes to Self

... since i've had no time.

o When they ask me what I miss most about the States…
o Toxic wife
o Met a stranger at a bar…
o Stories.
o Does it have to get that bad before it starts getting better?
o The city
o Letters to a friend
o Comments on the blog
o Spective
o The reality
o In another life we could have something…

Scenes

A man and a woman in a room, barely looking at each other. Heavy silence has settled in the room and in this silence they sit, each with a thought of their own, excluding the other. One wonders what they can possibly have to tell to one another…

A scene with similar settings but a different context.

A man and a woman, this time facing each other, while the necessity to speak brings anticipation that drifts in the room. She is hurt and is waiting for him to speak, to make a move in a word or an action. She has an urge to get up and put her arms around him, yet pride makes her remain where she is. He is baffled and confused for he does not understand what he has done wrong to make her act the way she does. It pains him and in his turn he is waiting for her to speak. An awkward silence prevails.

Two in a room, her back turned to him, while he restlessly paces the floor. Tension growing in silence, tension that rejects, is repulsive. Unable to stand any longer he walks towards the door and steps out, closing the door quietly behind him. She hears it, but remains where she is, without even turning her head toward the door.

***
Once, long in the past, in real life, she ran after him, down the stairs and into the street, where she caught up with him and took him by the hand. They walked together, without speaking, holding hands and avoiding looking at each other.

They returned late at night to the same room, where they lit candles and sat in each others arms, still not speaking. They fell asleep, on the floor, while the candle slowly died in the dark.

***
Now i no longer run after you, you no longer stop to look back, we've had too many scenes of silence, they do not matter anymore, only the haunting heavy presence of the other, the desire to escape, to be elsewhere... Now i am only glad when you slam the door and leave, or else i run out of the door, away, away from this dark and destructive place, the eye of the storm that will inevitably swipe away everything and send me off spinning.

....

it's dark in the house, dark in my room, we either screwed all the light bulbs out, or we deliberatlely do not turn the lights on, hoping that the darkness will hide us, protect us, save us from looking at each other, from cruel confrontation... darkness is soft, it's soothing, warm, protective, ever absorbing and there really is no need to talk, to look at each other, to see the other's face, pale, pained and confused. Darkness soothes the pain, the confusion, we're merely two people in a house, each in a separate room, and we know it's the end and darkness brings acceptance.

...

And I sit and think, sit and think, as I finally have the time and luxury to sit doing nothing else.

No one can be held as a source of your contempt. Or maybe it's me who's being held in contempt, held captive in something that lacks the power to nourish. Who is it to blame or is it really necessary to have someone to blame?

The past couple of days were spent in a haze. The house is in disarray. Chaotic days, days without shape, with no destination, no apparent relation to anything familiar, estranged days, weightless, shapeless days. Days spent neither here nor there but rather in a place deep within myself.

And today i wake up feeling pacified. I’m amazingly calm, happy and relieved. The decision that at first was being forced upon me found its resolution and the resolution brought relief. Suddenly i feel such an elevation that it feels as if i’m weightless. i do have a destination now, i do know what i need to do and where i will be going now. And i have an incredible feeling of freedom, again, the kind of feeling when only the sky’s a limit and i’m slowly letting go...i'm going home...

To reach a point where one realizes that love is not the most important thing in life, to realize that happiness is not the only priority or aspiration, that there is more to life than finding self-realization in a relationship and someone else, to reach a point where personal freedom and the need for self-expression are of pressing emergency, that the voice that’s been put to sleep deep within oneself has awaken and now speaks of desires and aspirations that go beyond the limits of the current life, beyond the confinement of a relationship... to reach that point and realize that it is possible to carry on one’s existence without the other, that there is another life, not of the impossible future but the life that is possible, tangible, real... the life alone, the life without...

With or without you...
So liberating
With or without you...

I can live with or without you... without you... without

Outrospective

If you place a thing into the center of your life,
that lacks the power to nourish,
it will eventually poison everything that you are
and destroy you.
A simple thing as an idea
Or your perspective of yourself of the world
No one can be the source of your contempt.
It lies within you,
in the center.

Faithless
Evergreen

This day of all days...

It’s that time of the year. That very month. It’s the day. This day of all days and I’m miles away under a radiant sky and around glorious palms... Elsewhere the sky is heavy and overcast, the ground glazed with ice, trees, magnificent buildings and broad streets covered in snow...

Yerevan, gray and dull in February, almost lethargic and yet how much I miss it right now, on this very day, how much i miss the mood, the state matching with the month. Nostalgia, a wistful longing for a moment in the past, a particular event, a mood, emotional state.


Two years, two whole years and I am still having seconds thoughts, still allowing myself to return to the event, living through it, speculating over the outcomes other than what followed, what has shaped my present now. My heart still hurts when I think about it, that time, the house, the city, the gallery, the artist, our meetings, the snow, the cold and me, dazed and restless, sleepwalking and yet awake, only wakeful in some other kind of reality where I was free of circumstances binding me... and yet, even in that life i would to be bound, not as much to the idea of him but to my own solitude.

And two years ago I wrote

"I open the door to chaos and let chaos in. I plunge myself into it headfirst, letting it consume me more and more. I become a tiny ripple caught in the storm, swirling rapidly in a downward spiral.
Drifting away from what used to hold me once. Drifting away from the future that lay before me unfulfilled."

"I draw a scene. It's dull and barren. I color it gray and let shadows swallow the light. I watch the light grow dim. The outlines blur and the air thickens.

I create a mood— I let the mood create itself out of the scene.
I draw the mood... I draw myself in it— small, dark, brittle, almost transparent.
I watch myself from above, I watch the mood drift through the thick air. The entire scene is on my palm. I let long hours pass as the slanted rays slide over the scene and there I remain, shivering in the wind, looking dolefully at the sky."

And today I write

"February and the sun is bright. Outside my window palm trees stretch towards the sun. The sky is blue, the kind of blue that can only be seen in a place that does not know cold. And yet I think about a place, that place under a different sky, laden with heavy clouds, the world white and trees covered with snow. And i long for winter, for the snow. Somewhere there, under a different sky, I could’ve had a different life. Somewhere there I would be waking up to snow and not to sunshine. Somewhere under a different sky I would be in the city, with a chance of running into him in the crowd. Somewhere in that other life i would be living in one of the old buildings made and carved in stone, and somewhere in that other life there would be a chance that he’d come knocking on my door only to be gone the next morning. But as long as i lived that other life, under a different sky, there would always be a chance of running into him in one of those art galleries - giddy with wine, he would take me home with him, and maybe, just maybe another masterpiece would be born of the outlines of my curves in bold strokes on canvas that he'd cover by a cloud of golden mist..."



I am repeating myself, over and over again, the same thought, dressed in different clothes, made of different words, appears again, and again and again, and i walk in circles. with this idee fixe. Will writing it down set me free? Will i be able to leave the event behind, to hang the canvas on a wall of some unknown gallery of the past and walk away?

I feel like I'm running out of time, and I'm full of longing, the most painful longing and wistful nostalgia for a place that stands now as the very symbol of my freedom and solitude.

Yerevan...

Sometimes an utterly random event can knock you off your path and let you go spinning in a whirlwind of chaos and confusion, disturbing what you once thought to e perfect order and stability. And yet, the mere occurrence of the event opens your eyes to completely new possibilities you never considered before— but those are possibilities you’re never bound to know. They are always left unknown, because by choosing one over the rest you set the path your future will take, and close the door to the rest of them.
 
Out of many possibilities only one asserts itself. The others might exist, only in different lives.

This time, last year...

or was it two years ago?

i wish sleep was the only thing i had to fight.
i wish the shards of broken dishes weren't here to witness how far i've fallen along a cursed downwards spiral-a descent into my own hell- and this day of all days- on my own birthday, i wish i was back in my old room, fighting sleep and watching snowflakes falling quietly, wishing me a happy birthday...


[2 am
And again I am desperately fighting the desire to sleep. Ahhh sleep— so tempting, so inviting, it appears as a perfect vision of rest and peace, opening its arms to take me to that land of bright colors and light and it’s hard to resist, yet there’s always that voice, that same voice louder than ever before, drumming in my temples with its “You must not sleep, you must Not sleep. Must not, must not sleep.”

I am tired. I am so tired. An overwhelming, over consuming exhaustion that makes my body sag in its own heaviness, and my eyes seem to be made of lead, and even closed they hurt, they burn and my brain presses hard against the back of my skull that’s like an iron cage where voices ring. Those voices, too many of them all speaking at once… and I can’t, I can’t listen to them anymore… and from their chaotic hum emerges the one, that one that gets louder in the stillness of the night, telling me to open my eyes, wider and wider… you must not sleep, you must not…

*
Dropping into sleep to come back again. I wonder what this night holds for me. I sit here, waiting for that sign, a falling star in a dark sky…

**
Awake, restless with fever, writing in fury trying to recapture a moment, a vision, an evasive thought… trying to write it out, find its outline, draw it on paper. But the pen scratches the smooth surface of the page,  leaving a dull echo…

I find it difficult to separate the beginning from an end. I find it difficult to give shape and order to this jumbled mess that’s been swirling in my mind for oh so long…

I suffer from reminiscences that leave me with regret and I want to cry out over all that’s gone, and I feel old and today I turn twenty two— and for the first time I am afraid, and that’s the fear of aging, the fear of time slipping away, a feeling of losing the stable ground, of losing the firm grip of moments that don’t belong to me anymore and it becomes unbearable to hear the clock ticking seconds away, further into the dread…

Disruption.
A life that seems disrupted, somewhere along the way it has given a crack, an unnatural, brutal interruption that excludes continuity of any kind and the cleft swallows up the future while the past is lost in a haze… I remember how I used to think that if I kept writing I would let the events continue, smoothly flow from one to another… Now I wish I could draw - I would draw a life, my own life, in little sketches and find a place for every detail that has been left out…

I lack completion. I seem to have lost my sense of cohesion, the integrity and wholeness of the self that could be me...

Now I am too tired. I have grown tired of living, a dangerous state of being neither here and there that leaves me feeling utterly uprooted and displaced… And I am aware of the danger of growing too used to this numbness, that is pleasant and soothing… almost like sleep, perhaps even better.

Almost like sleep…

Sleep….
I seem to have dozed off. With a start I wake. How long has it been? A minute or ten? An hour?

It’s dark and cold behind my window, the light in my room leaves long shadows on white …In the dark you can see white on white against the black starless sky…

It’s snowing.
Millions of little diamonds fall from above and if I listen close enough, I can hear the sound of those finest splinters of crystal touching the ice… Beautiful. It’s a beautiful night…

Happy birthday.]

December 18, 2002

The apartment

Picture a room, an entirely white room.

A white couch in the corner, a glass table, shelves built in the wall. A large picture on the wall. A white living room in a white apartment on the top of an old building in a nameless city of no geographical location...

The apartment is my safe place. In the beginning there was light, out of the light i created this space and a place to dwell. Slowly, one detail at a time I created this place, designing each and every detail, slowly, carefully, lingering on every object as if breathing life to it, before giving it its own place. A fresh coat of paint, white on white, the very few pieces of furniture, that single painting on the wall. Every object placed for a sole purpose to enhance the space, the vast, unlimited space to be filled with whatever I choose to bring into it.


I moved into that space. Slowly first, a few minutes every day, to simply lay down on the floor, eyes wide open, drinking in the light and whiteness, feeling the touch of solitude against my skin, soothing, warm, filling me with peace and tranquility... I started coming here more and more often, each time reluctant to leave, spending hours, then days surrounded by this whiteness, this silence and peace...

Here in this room I am happy. Alone and at peace with myself. This room, in the white apartment, in a building on a nameless street in a nameless city that has no place on the map...