Sunday, October 30, 2005
Friday, October 21, 2005
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
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…
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…
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
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…
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…
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