Personal olfactory branding
Posted by: lucie
If you're really sure you're not gay, shouldn't your cologne reaffirm that?
Tom isn't dead, he's just in Canada
Posted by: lucie
If there's an emotion I haven't felt in the last two weeks I certainly couldn't name it. Pure joy, exhilaration, inspiration, deep sadness, a little bit of regret (wasted time), fear of the unknown and everything in between. Tom is gone. Boy, that sure pulled me right back down to earth.
I'm prone to speaking of Tom in the past tense now, as though he has died, and then reminding myself that he only went to Canada and I shouldn't be such a drama queen. Still, it feels like a deep deep loss. I will miss his warm smile, the rich timbre of his voice, the way he humored me when I thought I knew everything, the way he actually did know everything (stunningly well-read boy), and conversations that truly, no exaggeration, went on for twelve hours without a lull and always found us staying out far past our bedtimes because we couldn't bear to let them end.
What a bunch of wasted time, my temper tantrum over that ex-girlfriend thing, which was none of my business and which I had too much pride to admit or realize was in large part about my jealousy. Dammit. Precious last weeks we could have spent having more conversations and sussing out the world. And what a shame for me not to have realized until the very last minute that it wasn't just I who loved Tom, but that he loved me as much back - a truth I stubbornly rejected on the grounds that there is no such thing as bad timing. You're just either in or you're out. If you love someone, you jump. Sometimes, it seems, you just can't jump. I surmise this from the actions, or inactions, of others. I'm just a jumper.
I'm only going to admit this possibility once: maybe there is such a thing as bad timing. Maybe.
At least we had, on our last night together, one more chance to wrap up in each other's arms and entwine our fingers so tightly it felt as though we were clutching onto the last shreds of the earth.
Our final 12-hour stint began with dinner at 7:30pm and ended with a taxi at 7:30am. His place was an absolute disaster when I arrived, as he'd said it would be when I asked him how the preparations were going. "Awful," he'd replied a few days prior with a self-deprecating, what-do-you-expect-from-a-guy-like-me laugh. "It's my production!" As I walked in last night and sucked air at the sight of it, his face fell. "I thought I was doing pretty well," he said sadly, which is so Tom. He's bloody useless, you know. Love him to death but damned if the boy isn't incapable.
We went back to the pub near his house that we visited the morning after that night so long ago, had some food and a couple of drinks, and another friend came out to have a farewell drink. I felt like I was spending my last night with my boyfriend and just wanted him all to myself. The other guy, it seemed to me, was overstaying his welcome. He overstayed it until about 2:00, when we returned to Tom's exceedingly overflowing, entirely unpacked flat, drunk and stunned at the work to be done. It was all too much. I asked his permission to stay and help out, he accepted, and we resolved to sleep off the booze for a couple hours. There was nothing else for it.
For two hours we snuggled up, hung onto each other and listened to each other's breath as we fell half asleep. We hit snooze a few times when the alarms went off, then jumped up and raced around packing all his clothes, crossing paths and stopping for a sorrowful hug every ten minutes.
"I'm really going to miss you," I finally told him, burying my head in his shoulder.
"You have so much on your plate," he replied soothingly, as if it was going to make a difference.
"I have nothing on my plate."
"Oh baby," he told me, closing his eyes, shaking his head and alluding to our recent hours-long conversations about my intention to change the world, "Nobody has a plate like yours."
Who says things like that? We embraced sadly, finished packing the clothes and went back to sleep for another hour. Some more running around ensued; I don't know, it's all a blur now. There were boxes to put into a taxi; things to drop off at a friend's house, and we'd stop at my place on the way. We were hungover, underrested and nearly at the end.
I sat behind him in the cab and wondered why it had never been so obvious up until this last night how much we really loved each other, and why it still didn't make any sense that we couldn't love each other when we had the chance. Looking back, that was sillyness - I could tell you five very logical reasons off the top of my head why it wouldn't have worked out. But when you're hungover, tired and about to say goodbye to someone you love dearly, things aren't so black and white. I wondered whether we would kiss goodbye, and whether we'd tell each other we loved each other.
We did neither, but we didn't have to. That's me and Tom again: mutual masters of the unspoken. It was not a dramatic goodbye; several repeated hugs and kisses on the cheek, one or two tiny moments where lips nearly met, looks into each other's eyes and mentions of him getting Skype. Life is not a romantic comedy, after all. But somehow everything resolved.
Love is never simple; more often than not it is confusing and nine times out of ten it ends up hurting like hell. Still, even in spite of the way it rakes us over the coals, we're lucky when it exists.
Goodbye Tom
Posted by: lucie
Tom is leaving on Saturday and I'm gutted. I know, I know I said all those things about him, and I meant them at the time. We didn't see each other for two weeks. Then one day he emailed and said "Hey Miss L, let's go catch that documentary we couldn't get tickets for the first time. What?"
So we met up and acted like nothing had ever come to pass. So nothing ever did, I guess. We watched Darwin's Nightmare and had a drink - just one, how about that - and chatted, and didn't even talk about men or women or dating. Another week passed, then we spent all day Tuesday together. At 2pm we got a pizza. At 3pm we went for one overpriced tourist beer on the old square, with views of the old gothic buildings and the bluest sky you'd ever seen. It was like the blue screen the weatherman stands in front of when it looks like he's pointing at meteorological maps, but in real life there's nothing but the bluest blue. From incredible sky blue to royal blue to midnight blue as we sat drinking beers that cost three times what they should have, talking about everything you could think of to talk about and periodically looking back at the beautiful, beautiful sky blue royal blue midnight blue sky.
We tied up a lot of loose ends on that square, ordered overpriced beer after overpriced beer, understood each other easily, and somewhere along the way I was gripped with a deep sorrow at losing him, though of course I'm not losing him. He's leaving here; how silly of me to be sad about it when I am in fact leaving too. And if we didn't lose each other over that face-off about the ex-girlfriend, well, geography isn't going to do it. Because some people you have a connection with, and that's all there is. You know your people when you find them, and they stay your people. You share with them an understanding that can't be expressed, nor does it need to be. You watch them fuck up and do offensive things and make bad calls and talk shit, and they watch you do the same, and you let it go. That's some kind of love.
Tom hints periodically, with this funny gaze in my direction, about bad timing. This, I am to understand, is a reference to our little dance. And I appreciate the implication. He's wrong, of course - if people really loved each other they'd love each other regardless of timing. But I get what he's trying to say. It's a nod to the way we both feel it could have been great if we'd managed to love each other, but it was never going to fit, and we both know it's a crying shame.
Poor Tom has severely overstayed his welcome in this part of the world; he's been stagnant, passive and melancholic for most of the time I've known him, though he is better than he makes himself appear. He desperately needs a whole-life shakeup. I'm glad he's moving. It's long overdue. And again, I'm not here long myself, so I have little right to cry over it... but it draws into sharp relief how few people you meet along the way who understand everything you want to talk about, and how lonely it feels when you have to go your separate ways.
So tomorrow is his last day here, and he's chosen to spend it with me, which means a lot and puts our relationship into some perspective. I don't know what we'll do; probably go for 'a drink' and then get out of hand again. Tomorrow is the end of me and Tom, at least in a local manner. I think I'm going to cry. A lot. I think I'm going to make an ass of myself.
Rebecca has heard all my rants about Tom, not least the indignant monologue about the ex-girlfriend. She happened upon us at our table on the square the other day and had one beer with us before wandering home. "You so totally got laid last night!" she SMSed the next day. "I absolutely did not," I messaged back. "We just always have that vibe." We look like a couple in love. Everyone we have ever hung out with thinks we're a couple, even when I explicitly tell them otherwise.
Turns out I now feel like I'm losing my boyfriend... so I guess maybe they were onto something. Well, I love him. I guess that much has probably long been obvious to any semi-insightful Overarching reader. What can you do.
Took this picture on the way home the other night. Can't figure out the meaning of it yet.
The modern girl's Hume
Posted by: lucie
Hume, I'm told, said that regardless of the ideas one forms in one's study, one must still go out and drink, converse with other men and enjoy society.
Having spent a lot of time forming ideas in my "study" (read: lying on my living room floor) recently, living a bit too much in my own head, I am inclined to agree.
However, in the interest of balancing white European male-centric philosophy to suit other portions of the population, I submit the modern girl's version of his statement:
Regardless of the ideas one forms in one's flat, one must still occasionally don a pushup bra, slap on some makeup and jewelry, drink cosmopolitans with one's girls and enjoy society.
Rebecca's birthday couldn't come at a better time.
On interconnectedness
Posted by: lucie
A young Afghani man works in the convenience store across the street from the newspaper office. He reads behind the counter from 8 to 5, smiling at customers but saying little; seems to speak the language very well but keeps his head down. He is bored. Those of us from the paper who popped in from time to time to purchase snacks used our rudimentary Slavic skills to speak with him (as we are accustomed to believe is polite), never stopping to consider that English might make a better medium.
His English is perfect, it turns out; Jeff discovered as much one day when he went in to buy his 500th tin of salted peanuts and they finally struck up a conversation. The man revealed that he was Afghani, and that he was unhappy here. Jeff, an American with an understandable reluctance to admit as much, claimed Canadian citizenship. Ah, Canada, our Afghani friend exclaimed - I'm trying to emigrate there; I am stuck in this convenience store until my paperwork comes through. It turns out most of his family is in Canada already, in Toronto, where he would like to go to university. There seems to be something wrong with the papers he submitted. His brother in Toronto is trying to figure it out but it's as if they need a lawyer to decipher the bloody system. No one knows exactly what is wrong.
Jeff comes back to the office and recounts this tale. Interesting, I tell him - I met a guy in Nepal who lives in Toronto and has just started practicing immigration law. Clearly fate is at work here in its roundabout way. We must put them in touch. So I fire off an email to my friend: not sure whether this will amount to anything financially, but here's an opportunity to help someone out. Can I give him your email address? Of course, he says.
So I pass it to Jeff and he emails the next day, "You have made a young Afghani very happy. Your reward, surely, will be in one of the heavens."
I consider the idea that a man could be reunited with his family through such an international chain incredibly romantic. There was my friend Toronto with the man's brother all along, but he had to go to Nepal to meet me, I had to return to Europe to meet Jeff, Jeff had to strike up a conversation with the guy at the counter (who had to come here from Afghanistan) after months of silently purchasing peanuts from him, lie to conceal his shameful nationality and elicit this tale of immigration woe.
The funniest part is that all involved met in real life, and not one meeting occurred on anyone's native soil. American and Afghani paths crossed in Europe, Canadian and U.S. connections were made in Nepal.
Nepal, America, Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Canada - and not a single relationship forged over the internet. Crazy old world.
Things to do when your head is in the clouds
Posted by: lucie
As is probably obvious from yesterday's post, the inspiration is overflowing over here. I'm drunk on knowledge and abuzz with ideas and half-baked, seemingly grand theories about how life should be lived... walking around with a stupid grin on my face and the silly notion that I understand the whole universe. It took me three hours to get to sleep last night; I just lay there staring at the ceiling, then got up and did an I Ching reading (which said James and I would get married, I swear), read part of a biography of Freud (I don't know why, I just felt like reading about Freud - I do think he's an ass, but he's one of us, the obsessives) and finally drifted off at about 3.30am.
When I woke up this morning I thought maybe it was over, but the buzz came back. So I had to decide what to do with the buzz, because honestly, this feverish state is in no way conducive to the study of algebra. To study algebra I'd have to climb down from the dizzying heights. Otherwise I could take a day or two away from the books and contemplate ways to change the world.
I picked the latter, of course, and even opted, rather than climb down from the dizzying mental heights, to climb up to the highest physical heights I could find in an attempt to bring the two into harmony. Hills are good places to clear one's head, I learned in Nepal, so I climbed up the big forresty lovers' hill in my beautiful city armed with a takeaway bagel sandwich, sat in the grass and thought some stuff.
Specifically: the only challenge that matters at all is the challenge of making some positive change in the world. It's not that I'm such a philanthropist or anything; I don't claim to have a heart of gold. I just don't see the point in the pursuit of ordinary success anymore. It lacks meaning. I don't want to build an empire. I believe that if I wanted an empire I could make one, but it wouldn't mean a damn bit of difference to anything but my ego and, as such, it may as well not exist.
Then I climbed higher and sat amongst the big, friendly roots of a very old tree and fantasized some stuff.
Namely: James and I should fall in love, change the world, get married and have kids - not necessarily in that order. I'm flexible on the order. I'm also flexible on the marriage and kids part, I suppose. But again, I can't shake the feeling that we were supposed to meet and are meant to do something big together (and maybe that something big is, like, everything). He set this train of thought in motion this morning with an email about the various volunteer and legal aid projects he was taking on, musing that he could imagine carrying out such work for a couple of years but that there had to be something more that could be done. We toss these ideas around from time to time. You seem to have some ideas about changing the world, he said - let me know if I can help. So I took that idea and went off on one hell of a tangent.
There was a leftover, tattered Easter beatin' stick on the ground and I took a picture of it.
Then I thought about the skills James and I have between us. I'm good at the soft stuff, the marketing, PR, creative strategy and such. He is equally creative and blessed with technical skills; the complexities of law, finance. We both have wills of steel and the confidence to believe, however insane, that we can achieve whatever we set out to achieve. We're both charismatic. We're both just obsessive and crazy enough to pull off something huge, and just sane enough to know that doing something this crazy would be the only way to make our lives meaningful. We both kind of fancy continuing to move around.
My vision, and I'm not going to get into specifics here because it's too nascent and vulnerable, would require a nomadic kind of lifestyle and involve using the rules and games of economics and business to help people in desperation improve their lot in the everyday, conventional reality of life. Microfinance and small manufacturing/fair trade distribution ventures, that kind of stuff.
Anyway, the point is that I wouldn't actually do it on my own and I don't think he would either, but maybe we're just crazy enough to put our heads together and have a go. To be fair, though, such an undertaking would be unlikely to happen outside the context of a committed relationship... because you don't just go running around the third world with someone and forgoing the idea of finding someone else to settle down with when you're in your 30s and think you might want to have kids someday. Sorry, reality.
Not that reality had anything to do with it because, as you can clearly see, I was wildly fantasizing away. Then I climbed even higher, because at the very top of the hill in my beautiful city we have an interesting tower, and if you pay a couple bucks you can climb up the inside of that tower and look out onto the world. So here's the view from the top of the world, at least where I live:
I thought some stuff up there, mostly about how beautiful my city was and how lucky I am to live here, and then I walked home across town, stopping for a cup of tea at one cafe and a glass of juice at another, and catching up on issues of The New Yorker. When I got to the square down the street from my house, I hung out there for a few minutes, too, because it was placid and quiet and beautiful.
It was a good day.
crazy but that's ok
Posted by: lucie
Been thinking today that the line between the peak of inspiration and the beginning of insanity is thin and dangerous, and that the great minds of each generation are those who walk just this side of it with the highest degree of courage and skill, rubbing up against it and, if we're lucky, expressing what they've seen there in some manner the rest of us can understand. At least for a little while, though some inevitably slip, fall across it and cut off an ear or have a nervous breakdown over a cart-horse and spend the last of their years in a mental hospital.
It seems the obvious extension of what happens to the rest of us on a simple, average day of ordinary human inspiration. The kind of day when you have the grandest of ideas about life and the universe - understanding that evaporates as quickly as it arises, but arises again and again with each passing moment, leaving you paralyzed with wonder at the complexity and beauty of the world. The kind of day that is at once exhilarating and lonely because your thoughts feel so epic they hurt, every leaf that falls from a tree imparts entire canons of knowledge, and hardly anyone seems to get that.
The Artists and The Philosophers walk a thread's width from the line and the rest of us migrate between the varying degrees of latitude or longitude, each negotiating the distance at which we can live the most meaningful life possible without becoming so caught up in shades of meaning that we lose track of what's real and what we've simply begun to make up. So I've been thinking the key is to surround ourselves with others who set up camp a similar distance from the line.
To put it another way, those of us with a tendency to get creative with our thoughts are faced with the challenge of finding people who appreciate the way we organize reality (ie don't think we're talking nonsense), but who can also tell when we've floated a bit too high into the clouds. Friends with whom we have a common understanding of what constitutes the dizzying heights of the mind and what counts as too far gone; who know when we're in questionable territory but can discern whether we need a reassuring tug on the kite string (it's okay, I can still see you, you still exist) or to be reeled in a bit before the psychic winds begin to tear us into pieces.
What I think I'm trying to say is that to be understood is the grand prize. And what I'm beginning to suspect I may mean is that with that understanding, you could develop the faith to take it a step further; that two people who get it right could not just inspire each other, unlock one another's potential and make each other better people but actually conspire to reorganize reality and change and broaden the landscape of sanity.
For example, if you think I sound totally nuts right now, you and I would not make that sort of pair.
The couple upstairs
Posted by: lucie
The young couple upstairs have a baby, and it isn't going to be their last. These two things I can tell from various sounds that float down through the flimsy ceiling (/floor) between us. Gracious, what a pair. Every night. And I'm not talking about a few creaks of the bed, either - this is full on movie-style enthusiasm. First she starts in, loudly moaning her pleasure for a good minute or so before letting it all out, then it's his turn about a minute later (like clockwork), and it all inevitably ends with a very primal, manly rhhhhwwwwwwaaaaaahhhh, the likes of which I've never heard in my own particular experience, close-up, if you know what I mean. Sometimes a few roars. I'm telling you, those two work well together.
It does compell one to stop and wonder how public one's own goings-on have been, what with some of the thin walls in apartment buildings. I mentioned this to a friend, who told me a story about a girl who loved her boyfriend very much and lived in a building with thin walls. One morning the girl found a note on the windshield of her car from the older lady who lived next door. "We don't want to know about your personal life," it stated.
Yesterday was a holiday in this particular part of the world (Easter Monday, the day for beating women and getting drunk), so both my upstairs neighbors were home from work and, as such, interrupted my afternoon studies. This doesn't make me uncomfortable, nor annoyed, nor does it turn me on; I just look up at the ceiling with wide eyes, let out a hint of a schoolgirl giggle and feel genuinely pleased for them. Happy young lovers. That's good stuff.
Of course it doesn't make the best sonic backdrop against which to study algebra, let alone read Buddhist sutras. So one can only pause, make a cup of tea and collect one's wandering thoughts.
My roommate Jarrod, back in the day when I shared a house with five boys (6 DJs in a house, 12+ turntables, endless noise), once wandered into the living room to ask if anybody had a cigarette. He'd brought home this Brazillian girl, absolutely gorgeous woman, and wanted to make it clear to all of us that he'd just conquered Brazil in the other room. "Any of you guys have a cigarette? She wants a cigarette," he informed us, all puffed up, swaggering around until another of the boys caught the obvious hint. "Did you just -?" one of them said, and Jarrod looked at us aghast and, perhaps, slightly disappointed. "What - you guys didn't hear that?"
Some weeks later, when he'd had enough of his Brazillian conquest and ignomoniously kicked her to the curb, she cornered me at a club to express her disdain for him, holding up a pinky and saying he was crap in bed anyway. That's funny, I told her - he seemed to think you were all about it. "Yeah, whatever," she sniffed, rolling her eyes and taking a rueful drag of her cigarette. "I made some noise. I know how to make a man feel good about himself."
Careful, boys. If you can't treat a woman with respect out of common human decency and regard for her feelings, do it for fear that she'll go around telling everyone you have a small penis. I've still no way of knowing whether Jarrod was, in fact, poorly endowed, but the claim brought a smirk to my face whenever he acted like a dick thereafter (which was, unfortunately, often).
Speaking of sex, did anyone else find the sex scenes in Brokeback Mountain kind of strange? Stop reading here if you haven't seen it. I was disappointed. Friends had led me to believe this film was a heartbreaking tale of forbidden love, but I saw no love in those scenes. They weren't romantic at all, were they? And may I share here a view that was enormously unpopular with my cinema-going friends, namely that Ennis should have pulled himself together, admitted he loved Jack and got on with it? Especially after the divorce. My friends found this simplistic and unfair and pointed out the traumatic childhood event, oppressive society, etc, to which I say hey, life is rough and we all have to deal with our fears; if you aren't willing to drum up some courage and put your ass on the line for love, well then... what's the point? I argue further that he had like FIFTEEN YEARS to mull it over. They thought this rather cold, but I figure it makes me the most ridiculous romantic of all. Circumstances be damned. If you love someone and they love you back, that is a rare and beautiful thing. Deal. Do what love demands of you.
Anyway, if Jack had been a girl and Ennis had treated her that way (as he did with the other women in his life, please note), would we have had sympathy for him? If she'd been a girl of another race or class or something else of which society disapproved? No. We'd think he was a jerk for messing her around, or just a six-letter word starting with P that rhymes with wussy. Come on, I know we're not used to seeing movies about love between people of the same sex, but let's not get carried away and drop all our standards of emotional maturity here. Thank you, I'm done.
And with that in-depth critical film analysis (joking), I bid you adieu. I'm heading out into another beautiful, sunshiney European day; out amongst the hungover men and bruised-ass women recovering from the festivities of Easter Monday.
The compulsion to know someone
Posted by: lucie
I've been thinking I fixate on people and find myself with a near-compulsive urge to get inside their heads, and wondering why this is so. Sometimes I (do we all? am I unique in this?) just clock someone, pick up on a few things they say, get a few bits of insight into their character and feel an urgent need to know them, to understand them, to know what goes on in their mind -- maybe to figure the world out one person at a time.
Or maybe I'm just talking about James.
Up and down it goes, back and forth with the email, back and forth on the possibility of him coming to visit this summer; he's again indicated that he's thinking about it, but I take such threats less seriously these days, consistently choosing "you are always welcome" as my reply. Just when I begin to wonder whether he's getting bored of the email game (or whether I am?), he peels off another layer or actually apologizes for being so reserved. This is where we are now. "You have been pretty patient with me," he writes. "I still tend to be kind of slow in opening up. I love to talk about all kinds of things, but I usually keep a lot to myself. I'm just more used to listening than talking."
Duh.
I had to put in work to get this boy to reveal anything of himself to me. I don't know how to explain it. He hides very elegantly behind a delicate, scarcely noticeable veil of knowledge and listening skills. People talk, James listens, they ask questions, James answers, they bring up various matters, James shares in their reflections, and no one ever quite catches onto the fact that they know nothing of him. Something about him grabbed me, so I made the odd effort to satisfy my curiosity, but it was work. I'd ask him something, share something, try to get him to share something back, and he'd ask what I thought, what I felt, or something else about me. I'm not talking about past relationships or childhood trauma here, either - I mean anything. What he thought of the course. What he thought of the teachings. What he was going to do when he got home.
The first time I had to actually call him on it. Stop asking me what I think about things - you're not my therapist. Why do you do that therapist routine? Do you do that at home?
Chip, chip, chip... I tapped away at him, slowly got him to talk to me. By the time we made it to Boudha that night he was happily chatting about his life and history, we were laughing and sharing and enjoying each other's company and I felt like I'd earned it, this dropping of the guard.
So now it continues over email, and it ebbs and flows - sometimes he tells me things, other times his replies seem polite at best and I'm left to wonder if he's just too kind to say he doesn't want to correspond anymore. "Bored of the routine, are you kidding, I love these exchanges," he writes back the first time I hint at these doubts, then apologizes for being slow to open up.
It's odd. Being a thoroughly talkative and open-book type, I obviously don't understand it at all. He's guarded, but for what? What's to guard? Or is it just that he's just not in the habit of sharing anything of himself; that he's been getting away with this guarded routine for so long he doesn't even know how anymore?
But for better or worse, I want to know this boy, and have felt this way ever since I began unwittingly observing him. I don't know why, but I can't shake it off. Now, despite a clear understanding that the romance side of things is unlikely ever to come to fruition - unless he suddenly finds it in his heart to become a jumper, because that's what it would take - it's past the want phase, wanting him to myself, wanting to keep him, but there remains this desire to understand.
Maybe it's just an attraction thing, despite my purported acceptance of the odds being so tremendously stacked against any romance ever developing. Maybe I'm infatuated (though infatuation tends to lean more toward an unrealistic assumed understanding of someone, so that doesn't seem right). Maybe it actually boils down to narcissism, since despite his tendency toward silence I think our minds have some things deeply in common. Maybe it's just the challenge, and my obsessive tendencies. I don't know.
There's something intriguing going on, anyway. And I'm learning a lot in the process. So on it shall continue to go.
International Easter Culture
Posted by: lucie
Coming to Central Europe for Easter? You're going to need some supplies and a bit of background information. We don't play around with Cadbury Creme Eggs and chocolate bunnies in these parts, and there isn't much talk of the Big J. Indeed, this is one of the least religious countries in Europe (this narrows our location down - Central/Eastern Europe and we certainly ain't in super Catholic "because the last Pope was OURS" Poland), so religious ideas don't pick up much momentum. Churches and monasteries in this country are for tourists, not the faithful.
No, Easter is best known around here as a day to beat women and get drunk. You think I'm kidding? I'm not. Sisters, we seriously get the short end of the stick. The braided willow-twig stick, to be exact.
Don't they look festive with all those pretty ribbons dangling off the end? Boys, should you ever find yourself around here at Easter, you're going to need one of these. Why? Because you get to WHIP WOMEN with it all day! In years past the tradition was to braid your own, but now everyone just gets them at the Easter market in the local square.
Okay, now that you have your supplies, stick with me while I tell you how to plan your day.
First, get to bed early - especially if you live in a smaller town or village. Let's just assume you do, because things aren't nearly as exciting in the big city, what with all their notions of modernity. Thank God the villages still know how to hold it down. Anyway, get a good night's sleep on Easter, because the real action happens on Easter Monday. Plan to be out your door by about 7am, stick in hand.
On Easter Monday morning, your mission is to whip women with your stick - and collect gifts for doing so. You have two options: go around to their houses by yourself, or tour the village with a pack of local boys. Simply go to each woman's home, wield your stick and whack her on the ass! Keep going until she gives you presents.
Which brings me to the girls.
Sisters, as I said, this holiday sucks for you. It really does. The boys all get to beat you with a stick, and what do you get? You get to give them free stuff. Sheesh. Anyway, tradition is tradition, so what's a girl to do but suck it up and go shopping? Here's what you'll need:
Eggs! So there's a bit of crossover with Western (Christian?) Easter after all. But these aren't just your kiddy-dyed or shrinky plastic-wrapped sort; they're hand-painted. You can do them yourself or buy them from ladies like this, who have considerably more experience:
Buy a bunch, because you have to give one to each hoodlum who beats you. Chocolate eggs are an acceptable substitute, or - and be careful with this - shots of booze. The latter is more popular than eggs, unsurprisingly, with the older crowd. In truth, the booze isn't really a backup plan anymore; it's pretty standard. So yes, go buy a bunch of eggs and a few bottles of liquor, set your glasses out and have it all near at hand.
Now, a word to the wise: you might want to wear some extra pairs of underwear or even stuff some other sort of padding down your pants, ladies. Make it subtle - you don't want to get caught - but protect yourself as best you can. Because guess what happens as the men get shot after shot of booze in them? That's right, they get rowdy and drunk, which makes them rowdy drunk men with whips and cultural permission to use them on your ass. This can lead to bruising, so do what you have to do.
You may be wondering why all this business kicks off at 7am. That's a pretty chipper hour to begin throwing back shots, you may be thinking. Yes, yes it is. But the big men with their sticks get started early because they want to get as much business done as possible before you are allowed some small measure of retaliation. At 12:00pm, and not before, you're permitted to, uh, throw water on them. Yeah, that'll make your welted ass feel better. Well, do your best with it - add perfume and other smelly stuff they'll hate. Bend the rules.
And all this in the name of tradition - a tradition that seems to harken back to Pagan fertility rituals. You get it, right? The men have big sticks and the women have eggs and... uh, wetness.
I'm not going to spell it out for you any further (I'd get loads of porn spam if I did).
Happy Easter!
Darwin's Nightmare
Posted by: lucie
Darwin's Nightmare, a documentary about the fishing industry in Tanzania, is depressing as anything, but very illuminating.
Apparently "someone" (this is not really explored) introduced a rather aggressive breed of Perch into Lake Victoria several decades ago, and it has since completely overtaken the ecosystem in the lake and the economy in the surrounding area.
It's pretty flabbergasting to see people talking about the famine in Tanzania and in the same breath explaining that no one can afford to eat any of the millions of tons of fish they export because they can't match what the Europeans are willing to pay for it. Surrounded by these giant fish, starving to death.
Cut to EU diplomats visiting Tanzania and holding press conferences about how encouraged they are to see things running so smoothly, the fish being high enough quality for the European market, etc, then to homeless kids sniffing glue to help them pass out in alleyways at night, orphans dying of AIDS as their parents did before them... Just heartbreaking.
I really wish I were smart enough to understand what on earth could be done to fix things like this. As it is, I can barely get my head around the fact that such places and situations exist on the very planet on which I live my ridiculously privileged life.
Oh sweet morning
Posted by: lucie
Yesterday my editor fired me. Today I woke up in a world full of promise.
I blog before you, my friends, a woman reborn - free from the constraints of mind-numbing, desk-bound, advertorial-writing, editor-dreading monotony, poised to suck up all the knowledge the internet and my books and audiobooks and podcasts and Odeo lectures and online MBA-prep programs have to offer. The world is my library and life is sweet.
Suddenly the tangled web of thoughts that comprised my mind yesterday feels more or less organized - if slightly (happily) overwhelmed by possibility. Today I can do and learn whatever I want, in peace, giving my full focus and attention. This is because my editor, a classy man, decided to get back at me for handing in my notice by firing me during my notice period.
He sure showed me!
Little did he know that I'd told my colleagues that the best thing I could imagine would be for him to fire me early so I could get on with my study plan. I couldn't, in good conscience, walk out - it would have gone beyond unprofessional, plus I couldn't really afford it - but I knew if he fired me I could make do. Unfortunately it seemed unlikely as there wasn't anyone lined up to take over. Hell, they can't even keep anyone in that particular position for more than three months.
Well, God only knows what the old man is planning, but yesterday I got a call from the HR girl at about 5 o'clock, after no less than two full days of sitting at my desk with no assignments, asking me to come downstairs for a minute. There he was in her office, jaw clenched, brow furrowed - this was not due to the immediate situation at hand, I should mention, it is simply the norm with this man, a former friend of mine who has lost all contact with his own and others' humanity and seems to be driving himself to a heart attack - staring at me in some attempt to be intimidating. They asked me to sit down, so I sat. The HR girl sat. Bossman stood so as to loom over me as frighteningly as possible.
"This will be your last day at The Post," he said. "So you can settle up with Jana and go."
"Brilliant," I replied without missing a beat, smiling up from my chair.
Bossman looked down, clearly expecting more. Some argument or display of emotion would have been appreciated, I think. This reaction rather took the wind out of his sails. He rested his intense downward glare heavily upon my head for another few moments.
"I'll settle up with Jana, then," I added, giving him a questioning look that translated to, "Why are you still here?"
He walked out.
Poor Jana, who thought I was being thrown out on the street without any notice or severance pay, looked deeply troubled until I explained that I'd put in my notice on Friday and was more than happy to leave early. "That man," I told her, "Is a piece of work." She nodded miserably.
The whole experience has been sad. I came back to Eastern Europe full of hope and excitement about working for this man again; my previous experiences with him had been so gratifying. Most of what I know about journalism I owe to him. He took a chance on me as a relatively inexperienced freelancer and edited my stories with an elegance that was, I understand from my fellow journalists, extremely rare. While other editors have a control-freakish tendency to line-edit, rewrite sentences in their own tone and even add "facts" (ie often mistakes) where they see fit, completely overlooking the fact that the person who researched the story probably knew best about it, Bossman always left copy intact except where absolutely necessary. When he moved a comma or changed a word, you not only understood why, but you were grateful. For example, I once wrote that an opera singer had earned "many gratifying nicknames" in his career, and Bossman changed it to "many gratifying sobriquettes." Those were great moments in editing, my friends - it's a beautiful thing when an editor only improves your work and you learn from his modifications.
We got along, too, back in the day. It's hard to believe now, but we did. I was on a very short list of people that he didn't consider complete assholes. There were perhaps two others of whom I was aware. Of course there were moments wherein I suspected such a state of affairs could not last; one need only think back to middle school and what inevitably happened soon after you found yourself uttering the words, "Well, she's never done anything to me." We all know what happens to those of us who pal around with people who treat others badly.
By the time I got back to town, Bossman's Good List no longer seemed to exist; either that, or I was the only one on it. Naturally that lasted for about two weeks. I openly disagreed with him about something - which would have been acceptable back in the day, as we're all thinking people capable of disagreeing and discussing things - and it was all over. He berated me harshly and we stopped speaking except when absolutely necessary.
What happened? Some combination of overwork and emotional distress, if I'm to understand correctly. Last time I worked for him he was just the Features Editor; since then he's taken on the Editor-in-Chief role (without giving up features) and begun teaching a journalism class at a local university. Plus, as we all know, he is more than lightly involved in the affairs of the advertising department. He works seven days a week, usually past 8pm. Rumor has it he got himself a girlfriend last year - one of his journalism students (early 20s at best, and this man is well into his 50s) - but she apparently dumped him just before I got back. That's when he went from incredibly tense to incredibly tense and mean.
It's sad to see someone you used to consider a friend in such a permanent frenzied state. Just being in a room with the man is emotionally taxing. He huffs and puffs, hums and whistles in the most disturbingly aggravated style, whispers to himself, sighs loudly and sometimes sounds as though he has actually forgotten to breathe, suddenly gulping in a panicky lungful to make up for this oversight. By the end of my tenure at the paper, when one of my colleagues was preparing to say something about him and would mouth "Is he here?" (he sat around a corner - we couldn't see him), I would simply hold my hand up as if to request silence and listen for 3-5 seconds. If we couldn't hear him, he wasn't there. They never felt entirely comfortable with this method of assessment, preferring to poke their heads around the corner and double check, but it never failed. You could always hear the frustration emanating from him.
The truth is, I still have a place in my heart for the poor guy. It's a shame things turned out the way they did and I certainly wouldn't wish to work for him again - not this new version of him, anyway - but I do worry for him. He's almost certainly driving himself to a heart attack or a stroke. It's not difficult to imagine how the world appears through his eyes, and you know he must have moments of doubt. "Could it really be that everyone around me is a complete asshole? Everyone?" he must occasionally ask himself late at night, alone and miserable. "Could it be me? Something about me?"
But you also know that he quickly recovers from such moments of doubt only to reassure himself that everyone with whom he is forced to deal in the unfortunate circumstances of his daily life is, in fact, a complete moron.
Anyway, my boss fired me yesterday. it's a win-win situation, I figure - I get out of there early, he gets to believe he flexed his wrath. Everyone is happy.
My budget is a bit tighter, but it's not even lunchtime and I've already showered, had a lovely relaxed breakfast, read some philosophy, meditated and written a blog entry. DJ Chill Will's Dub Session podcast is bumping out the speakers, Bossman's huffing, puffing and aggravated whistling are nowhere to be heard, and I'm about to do some math... then maybe read about economics. Part of me feels that I should ritually clean my flat from top to bottom, scrubbing every visible surface in a symbolic illustration of beginning anew, but I really haven't the time. There's a whole world of knowledge out there, and after so much time with a melting brain, I'm not just hungry for it - I'm actually in desperate need.
Blub blub
Posted by: lucie
Continuing with photos for a few more days, at least, due to lack of fully-formed thoughts to share. Lots of thoughts on lots of things coming down the line, but right now they're all too intertwined.
Hang on while I peel this orange
Posted by: lucie
Best wishes to the singularly kind and peace-loving people of Nepal, who are currently taking a stand against their dictator king and staging protests across the country in an attempt to win back their freedom and right to democracy. Such things don't come easily.
Take this job and shove it
Posted by: lucie
Decisions sometimes come fully formed, and this was one of them. The realization that I needed to get out of the newspaper popped up suddenly upon reflection on the work itself and on my state of mind of late. It's probably fair to say my connection with reality has thinned in the last few weeks. Nothing dire, but indicative of a balance thrown off. "I seem to need an awful lot of time alone these days to keep my head on straight," I kept telling myself, and Rebecca, and the Internet, convinced it was the lack of such quiet time taking its toll on my head. But to return to a recent theme on Overarching, I've quite suddenly come to the conclusion that it relates more closely to job satisfaction - or the complete absence of it, about which I've been far too complacent.
Patience, I've been telling myself. The job at the paper is mind-numbing, the stories are boring as anything, the ethics of getting assignments from advertising are questionable at best, the boss is blustery and gruff - but suck it up, keep perspective, take deep breaths and learn lessons in patience. For a while it was alright, even bordering on good. I could knock out the stories in a couple hours and have the rest of the day to myself to write emails, read Salon and everything else in my Bloglines queue, listen to podcasts, learn about philosophy and think about what I wanted to do with my life.
Really, it did work for a couple months. After the initial period of frustration and disbelief at what had become of the boss I formerly loved, and the realization that I couldn't, in good conscience, continue to interview for tech jobs knowing that I'd only be in town for another six months or so, I quite successfully changed my attitude and practiced patience as hard as I could, stopping several times a day to take deep breaths and remind myself "it doesn't really matter," calming my nerves and blocking out my editor's strangely anxious singing, humming, whispering, audible breathing, exasperated sighs and whispers to himself ("Okay, what have we got here" several times a day, as well as the occasional "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.").
I've read everything on the internet now (twice) and emailed everyone I know. Despite the constant influx of good content on Urho, refreshing it 20 times a day - especially with the time difference between Europe and the west coast - doesn't yield enough to keep one occupied (plus there's the added risk of someone looking over my shoulder and taking an interest). Checking Myspace gets pretty boring after a while, though I have made contact with a few interesting blasts from the past (cf Martin who, by the way, never messaged back after I said I wouldn't be in his particular postal district any time soon - told you so), and you can only listen to so many Stanford lectures a day (hard to concentrate on listening whilst half-convincingly pretending to work).
My brain has been turning into a pile of mush. I've been sitting at a desk eight hours doing almost nothing. Doing nothing sucks. Doing nothing has a very bad effect on my mental health. Being bored, I've concluded this week, is dangerous for me. My brain breaks. I start obsessing on things and just thinking in weird ways - and what's worse, these days of staring at the computer screen led to some whacky compulsive internet use, and I KEPT DOING IT when I got home. Really, I started to feel like Howard bloody Hughes. Broken brain.
Patience is great, don't get me wrong, but when patience is all you stand to learn from your job, that's a pretty good sign you should get your ass out of there as quickly as possible. I mean, come on. Anyway, you have to stick with what you know, and patience isn't a skill that lends itself to full-time study. So I put in my notice on Friday. It wasn't pretty, but it could have been worse, and I feel incredibly free now.
Naturally, in the larger context of "what the hell am I going to do when I get out of business school," there have been further realizations this week regarding my personality type, short-to-medium attention span and need for constant challenge and inspiration. For me to stick with anything longer than a couple of years, and to be a happy, mentally healthy person, I think, I'm going to need a hell of a lot of change and variety. Right or wrong, for better or worse, that's just the way it is.
So anyway, the problem wasn't, as it turned out, about needing time alone. Sure, we all need a requisite amount of time to ourselves, but if you're doing work you enjoy, that counts. And when you're doing work you hate, or sitting at a desk with a numb brain for 8 hours a day, you need the rest of your time just to recover.
Three weeks to go.
Perspective
Posted by: lucie
Today, a photo in honor of the Spring cleaning I've just done on my head and, you know, my couple-weeks-overdue decision to (slowly) look up from the fascinating shiny rocks at my feet and see that there's more going on in the world, thank you very much.
This mental Spring cleaning brought to you by a 3-day raw foods cleanse. More on this some other time, maybe.
The longest of weeks
Posted by: lucie
Before I get carried away with self-absorbed ramblings about coming apart at the seams, let me share another pretty picture:
There we are. That's one of my very very favorites. May it offset the rambling about to ensue.
The ground has shifted this week - and the psychic walls and emotional furniture have all been rearranged without notice. Decisions, realizations and frustrations have snuck in fully formed and made themselves known. Now being known, they are being acted upon. It's been interesting.
Realization 1: James does not exist. James doesn't appear to be the type of guy who thinks it is okay to get on a plane to explore this situation, and I can respect that. In fact, if he thinks the whole thing has been a fantasy, I wouldn't even go so far as to disagree with him. Of course it has, and it's been exhilarating. I would have been up for seeing if that fantasy transferred into reality, but I don't think he is - at least not for another six months or something, by which time I'll hardly be holding my breath. So in the simplest of terms, James doesn't exist. He's an emailable entity - an idea in cyberspace, and possibly in Canada, though I have no way of proving this. Once I spent some time with a boy named James, and I'm led to believe this is that boy, but who knows. I may never see him again. The emails are beginning to fade as we both realize, I think, that without plans to see each other again, it's just a little silly. Hopefully we'll keep in touch.
Realization 2: Just because decisions are based on emotion and not logic doesn't make them wrong (cf yesterday's entry). My job is sucking the life out of me and I'm quitting a month early. I gave myself enough time to think it over and make sure the decision was sound, but of course it is. In fact, I'm lucky to have become so frustrated yesterday that I had the minor temper tantrum that led to this initially irrational idea. Of course I should take slightly more time to prepare for the massive investment I'm making in this MBA course. It will make the difference between getting by and getting the most out of the experience. It's a no-brainer. Notice goes in tomorrow.
Realization 3: I'm strung out. Having a friend in town for ten days, eating out too much and drinking far too many nights was only the beginning. In that time I also left about five stories until the last possible minute because they were too boring and soul-sucking to face. Three are done and I have to wrap two of them up tomorrow somehow. I haven't been to the gym in a week and haven't meditated in a few days. I'm not even going to try to rectify this until this ridiculous week is over. But it does make one wonder how I'd even begin to hope to maintain a healthy lifestyle whilst under the pressure of an MBA program. If one houseguest and a few deadlines run me off the rails, I clearly have some work to do. Why is it so hard to just be healthy? A healthy day including (besides work) going to the gym, meditating and cooking a healthy meal hardly seems to leave time for anything else. Do normal people find this so hard, or is it just me?
Ordinary beauty
Posted by: lucie
Despite the moderately industrial appearance, all they produce in this building is bread and cakes. For some reason I found this little baked goods factory, in this setting, beautiful. I don't know what it is. I like its shape, and the way the chimneys are echoed off in the distance.
I share this picture with you, dear readers, in lieu of news about how I fantasized today about walking out of my job, or stories of showing up for interviews only to be told by the interview subject that the piece I claimed to be writing was not what they had discussed with our advertising department (ie not what they paid for). I cried a few tears of frustration today after a bitchy meeting with my editor, who somehow blames me for these issues, then tears of laughter later in the afternoon whilst discussing the absurdity of my position with my colleagues.
I may quit at the end of this month. I'll give it the weekend, but here's my best argument: When you're about to pay for an MBA and a year's worth of living expenses, it's hard to find justification for staying at a job in a little Central/Eastern European city where you earn a paltry $1000/month. Seriously, that's what I make. Compare that to the cost of an MBA, and it seems you have a pretty good argument for bailing a month early to study math, finance and economics. I mean... right? $1000 sounds like a lot of money until you add it to your tuition and living expenses tab for an MBA program. Then it's pennies. And I'm just guessing that if I sacrificed those pennies and hit the books, I'd get a lot more out of the tens of thousands I'm investing in the MBA.
Just because this argument is rooted in emotion and not logic doesn't mean it's wrong.
In happier news, my friends, I'm internet famous! I know, I can't believe it. Me, just a girl from a small town in Oregon, on the K5M show - the best new iChat talk show format on the web! If anyone had told me I'd be on the K5M show back when I was just a teenager in Oregon, I swear I would have thought they were crazy. The host was very charming. I think he'll go far.
Sprung
Posted by: lucie
Ossuary
Posted by: lucie
Once upon a time the abbot of a little Bohemian monastery took a trip to the holy land and brought back a handful of holy dirt to sprinkle over his local cemetary. Word got around, and soon enough everyone wanted to be buried there. Rich people started buying their way in. By the time the plague rolled into town in the 14th century, and the Hussite wars in the 15th century, real estate was ridiculously tight and the locals were getting restless.
"Those rich bastards have been sleeping in our backyard long enough!" they cried. "They're taking up all our good burial space!" What to do? The concensus was to build a chapel on the site and include in it an ossuary (a resting place for bones) to house the 40,000 skeletons cluttering the graveyard. In 1511 church officials tasked a half-blind monk with digging up all the skeletons and stacking their bones in the chapel.
A few hundred years later, someone decided that the unsightly bones should be arranged in a more aesthetically pleasing manner. The ruling Schwartzenberg family called woodcarver Frantisek Rint in to spruce the place up in 1870 - you know, maybe make some decorations out of the bones or something? And he was like "Okay, as long as I can sign my name in bones." And the Schwarzenbergs were like "Wow, you can do that? Wicked, will you do our coat of arms too?" Rint said "Sure," and got to work.
He made a chandelier that contained at least one of each bone in the human body, garlands of skulls, candleholders of skulls and crossbones, and lots of other fancy decorations. And everyone lived happily ever after. The end.
