Sunday, February 06, 2005
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
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
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
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
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...
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...
Saturday, January 01, 2005
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.
Out of many possibilities only one asserts itself. The others might exist, only in different lives.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
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
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
Sunday, December 12, 2004
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...
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...
Monday, November 15, 2004
Prelude
I feel very happy now. Very calm and happy. And airy. As if I’m made of some kind of cottony substance, all fuzzy and soft, and it feels good, so so good. Fall is finally here. The air is thin and chilly- I love waking up in the morning and going outside to smell the air and feel the milky light raw on my skin… I have a longing, some kind of a craving for fall, for real fall with colors and dry leaves and smell of chestnuts and wet soil. It’s never like this in Florida.
Last night, sitting outside smoking a cigarette I suddenly had a kind of a revelation, a realization about how much I had let my life run out of control…I thought about plans. Plans that would require long term commitment and hard work. I thought about future with its endless possibilities. I am finally thinking about facing what everyone around me seems to be struggling with these days-the human condition with its hopelessness and finality, and helpless despair… and for the first time I am facing it as it comes to me, without the despair. Perhaps I could change it somehow? Perhaps it’s not how it is, you know? All my life I’ve been feeling helpless and trapped in circumstances not of my choosing, feeling claustrophobic in my limitations and limitations imposed by circumstances. And suddenly I realize that it wasn’t because of these circumstances- it’s because of how I chose to see them that made me feel trapped and hopeless… for surely there’s a way out, for surely every day is a chance to try and change something about these damn circumstances… for every day it’s another day where I get to push the limits of my own reach...
Then I think about the whole creativity concept. Creating a life like you’d create art… how different would it feel if we treated our lives as we treat art? Or rather, as an artist treats his lifetime creation? These are not my thoughts, although they resonate with me so strongly now...
It’s almost that time of the year… a cycle is coming to an end... A phase is coming to a gradual end, the way circumstances have played themselves out, my mindset and emotional state all indicate a logical ending of the old me, and the emergence of a new me. I feel in some sort of metamorphosis. A state of transformation. As if I were a caterpillar going into a cocoon. I don’t know how long till it’s time for me to emerge as a butterfly, but I know that I am no longer the ugly greedy shapeless caterpillar I once used to be.
I feel change in the air. I feel this change within me. I am very happy at this point. I have never been so calm and so happy in my life before. I am growing up. This blog is a project of recording of the process, one small step at a time, one day at a time, a day in a world of wonderful, amazing possibilities...
Last night, sitting outside smoking a cigarette I suddenly had a kind of a revelation, a realization about how much I had let my life run out of control…I thought about plans. Plans that would require long term commitment and hard work. I thought about future with its endless possibilities. I am finally thinking about facing what everyone around me seems to be struggling with these days-the human condition with its hopelessness and finality, and helpless despair… and for the first time I am facing it as it comes to me, without the despair. Perhaps I could change it somehow? Perhaps it’s not how it is, you know? All my life I’ve been feeling helpless and trapped in circumstances not of my choosing, feeling claustrophobic in my limitations and limitations imposed by circumstances. And suddenly I realize that it wasn’t because of these circumstances- it’s because of how I chose to see them that made me feel trapped and hopeless… for surely there’s a way out, for surely every day is a chance to try and change something about these damn circumstances… for every day it’s another day where I get to push the limits of my own reach...
Then I think about the whole creativity concept. Creating a life like you’d create art… how different would it feel if we treated our lives as we treat art? Or rather, as an artist treats his lifetime creation? These are not my thoughts, although they resonate with me so strongly now...
It’s almost that time of the year… a cycle is coming to an end... A phase is coming to a gradual end, the way circumstances have played themselves out, my mindset and emotional state all indicate a logical ending of the old me, and the emergence of a new me. I feel in some sort of metamorphosis. A state of transformation. As if I were a caterpillar going into a cocoon. I don’t know how long till it’s time for me to emerge as a butterfly, but I know that I am no longer the ugly greedy shapeless caterpillar I once used to be.
I feel change in the air. I feel this change within me. I am very happy at this point. I have never been so calm and so happy in my life before. I am growing up. This blog is a project of recording of the process, one small step at a time, one day at a time, a day in a world of wonderful, amazing possibilities...
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