but then, there are moments when i'm happy, like i've never been before and the dark, desolate place of sadness appears far, far away and it seems that i've never been alone, helpless, sick and depressed... and i hold on to those moments as closely as i can, because without them there will be nothing left, and nothing is a terrible thing to be holding on to...

"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.