Writing on the Wall

In the absence of new posts...

2008-07-01T20:39:00.002+02:00

this is the best one, anyway.

out of order

2008-04-01T12:46:00.000+02:00

till further notice

dropping, breaking, spilling

2007-12-12T10:27:00.000+01:00

Aah, do you have a flat tire? A scrunchy looking man outside of the Salvation Army in Spuistraat is making conversation as I walk by.

I tell him, no, no flat tire, it's just that I lost one of my bike's lamps and broke the other, again, and it's getting dark and the police has been so active in stopping people and giving them fines and I really can't have another one. The other day, I almost started crying when a police officer stopped me for biking in the wrong place.

I break things, I loose things, I spill them, too. I drop drinks that were just bought for me. I dropped three in one night once. It bothers me a lot. It bothers other people more; or less, I cannot be sure. Sometimes I want to hide underneath my blankets, build a tent and not emerge untill I am done with that. I am scared of entropy, scared of all things that keep breaking and falling and leaving me. My things like me, actually. I will have you know. I had a bike that really liked me but it got stolen anyway.

So I am walking.

My new friend looks compassionate. Did you know, he says, that by law, you are allowed to bike without lamps for half an hour after dusk sets in? He says look it up, I promise you it will be ok.

You will go a lot faster.

Time Out!

2007-11-12T16:59:00.000+01:00

During the last semester, I taught a class on communication skills.
Still a student, I became a teacher, too.
It was exciting, it was scary, it was excilarating.
All the funnest things I had been taught, I wanted to pass them on.

My favorite thing: saying"Time Out!"

"Time Out. Stop the exercise. Let's talk about what we just did. Let's reflect on what just happened. Here is feedback."

This blog was my Time Out Place for a while.
Now, I am putting my Blog on a Time Out.
It feels like a good thing for now.
I think there might be another blog that will show up at some point.
A different one.
A white one.
A blog that wants to share what it has discovered.
A blog that is less about doubt. Doubt was a hard thing. Doubt was a good thing.
It's time for a change.

In the mean time, thank you Blog. Thank you, Anna for feedback. Thank you, Universe, for a wall to write on.

Decision-making

2007-10-29T22:35:00.000+01:00

Complete journals are devoted to decision-making, political and sociological and economic and legal decision-making procedures.

But no one will you give you definitive news on personal decision-making. No one will tell you about different voices in your head, all at the same time. No mathematical models will help you solve the emotional waves that hit when decisions get made.

I decided. I gave the voices in my mind a year of wandering and freelancing and quitting jobs and looking for hints on what to do next, to be what I want. They gave me a decision.

Emotionally, I will always find it though to move places.
Ideally, I would abduct and move all my friends around every time I move.
Intellectually, I just want to do research.
I am tired of freelancing; I will freelance more, later, not now.
I want an empty Stata screen and thirty fresh articles.
Call me a nerd.
I will be the nerd with the Baileys bottle in her office.

So there, a decision in your face, universe. Now I wish for a campari orange and dancing to make all this grown-up life decision-making go away.

And we will. Here is my latest insight/hope/self-invented truth:

Over time, everything sorts itself out.
Over time, time flies
Over time, everyone will assemble somewhere and will be older and will have jobs and errands and new funky words, found in various places, and we will patch all of it together and write complete new episodes together.
And we will forget decisions altoghether.

Mi poema más corto

2007-10-25T00:05:00.001+02:00

nota sobre el amor:
amar la poesía
no es lo mismo
que amar al escritor

Berlin II

2007-10-05T06:08:00.000+02:00

I am seeing the Berliners, wearing what they love. Very occassionally - an item from the latest fashion, but mostly, wrapped up in warm coats and boots and in sweater over dress over jeans, and sometimes, in punk.

I want to say Ich bin ein Berliner al lot, or really, I want to say out loud Kennedy’s whole line All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner!'. I am here, I am from here, I am back, translating, again, still, and everything else is a year ago, two years ago, another time.

I can see groups of friends, smoking, talking about their uni life (but not as loudly as Dutch students would). The girls coloured their hair red, or black. The boys wear sjawls, army colours, anything.

I could have just staid here, far away, between before and now. I could have saved myself trouble, sitting by the window, writing, being elsewhere, being one of those who belong nowhere and therefore everywhere, being ein Berliner. I could have avoided returning, avoided fears of being somewhere less exciting, being someone less intriguing than a citizen of the world, could have avoided fears which came out and hit me, but then, I would not have known. I wanted to live here, badly, but not now, not so much.

I can perceive the families, with their teenage boys, too long and too shy and too self-conscious. They walk up the street together, the father holding the map, the oldest son opening a rugsack to grab his ipod. They sit at the table next to us in the restaurant, the mother smiling with an arm around the chair of her youngest, making conversation with her silent almost-grown-up children.

I was here, at the Rosenthaler Platz, trying to find back the perfect café unsuccessfully but now cafés jump at me. I was watching people in the U-bahn before, but people look at me, now, too. I was crying on the inside but now I cry on the outside when it feels that way. What do you want more, a counselor said, what less, and what do you want the same?

I notice the lady on the escalator, with carefully picked pink bag and fake curls in her hair, feeling pretty. I am seeing elderly ladies in pairs of two or three, finding their way together.

More – European cities. The same – walking. The same – freelancing. Less – doing things because it seems to be accepted. More: funky clothes, feeling pretty. More – travelling-but-not-alone. More – crying; more – shyness; more - sharing. Less – running away.

Something I wanted to share

2007-09-28T16:57:00.001+02:00

by the great poet, songwriter Joaquin Sabina:

Lo peor del amor cuando termina
son las habitaciones ventiladas,
el puré de reproches con sardinas,
las golondrinas muertas en la almohada.

Lo malo del después son los despojos
que embalsaman al humo de los sueños,
los teléfonos que hablan con los ojos,
el sístole sin diástole sin dueño.

Lo más ingrato es encalar la casa,
remendar las virtudes veniales,
condenar a la hoquera los archivos.

Lo peor del amor es cuando pasa,
cuando al punto final de los finales
no le quedan dos puntos suspensivos…

On hysteresis

2007-09-28T16:42:00.001+02:00

Path dependency, economists love this stuff. I hesitate to call myself an economist, but one could argue that I am an economist in training. People in training, or converts, or born-again-whatevers, are usually worse than the people who were the thing they are all along. Path-dependency can sometimes also be called hysteresis, but the exact difference never became fully clear to me, and I am too lazy to wikipedia it. I always wondered why it is called hysteresis, it sounds like a panicky path down to where no one wants to go. Hysteresis abounds. Look down at your keyboard. Does it say QWERTY? There you go. Technological lock-in or whatever. How about your relationship? Probably hysteresis again. Your job? What you put in your coffee in the morning? I hate posting this over Hannah's confidence entry. Go back to that entry. Hannah is the only person I know who is not subject to hysteresis. She breaks free effortlessly, you name it, she's done it. How does she do it? (I know you claim this isn't a blog- so a letter to you in third-person shouldn't be a priori inappropriate) To all the other people who read this blog (at least, to me): don't let the hysteresis catch up with you.

Confidence, mademoiselle

2007-09-27T00:02:00.000+02:00

Almost, a year.

A year since ending, a year since the night I poured Baileys in my coffees and made myself popcorn and phoned my friend in a different country, pretending it was no big deal we were both writing up our theses in the very last twenty-four hours imaginable. I still have to write a conclusion, I said at four in the morning, and he gave me this, he said I am working on the results.

I'd given an early presentation before, I'd tried. I stood up before a board and a class and I'd told myself confidence, mademoiselle. My referee had burnt my research down and left me to scramble up the pieces in the left-over months. All summer, I told myself confidence, I told myself you can do it, just keep going.

At eight in the morning, I saved my thesis on a USB stick, dressed and left to work at the reception in the hall were all the people passed by who were handing in their theses. All morning, I sat and worked on my thesis a little more. At one, my friend missed his deadline with me, at one-thirty I left during my lunch break. At two, I handed over both our theses to the copy shop. At three, I finished my mini supply of Baileys. All afternoon, friends dropped by with nightmares in their eyes and also, with relief.

What I've been up to? What I've been doing on my self-proclaimed gap year? I've been chilling. I have been loosing my way all over again. I have been severely homesick for Geneva. I have found there are no easy solutions. I have realized there are many things I can do, and all are not a nightmare. I have been teaching myself. Confidence, mademoiselle.

Pocahontas boots

2007-09-25T19:51:00.000+02:00

I had it last year, too.

This sense. This strong urge. I dug up my Pocahontas boots from one of the boxes with my winter and other unused clothes. (I didn't name them that. I fell for them and walked around in them for two winters, soaked them in snow once, broke their laces, wore them with skirts and with jeans, walked them into the ILO for a coffee and the friend of my friend said with his sing-song Californian voice look at you and your Pocahontas boots).

I am having it this year.

I am stepping outside at ten at night and drinking in a cold breath of air. I am smelling the turn of tides. I am seeing the stars, I am noticing how lights shine in the cafés, how the people huddle over the bar and flirt with the bar girl. I am being drawn to bookshops and universities. I am hearing that people are finishing the theses they wrote over the summer, I hear they are having goodbye drinks and returning to college or grad school.

Last year, I finished late, I went to Oxford and found a circular bookshop in which to hide. I felt the draw of the tides but I was happy to leave it, to not be part of the academic calender for once.

This year, I am teaching one hour a week. I am taking a baby step back. More importantly, I am kicking my Pocahontas boots around in early gold&red leaves. I am going for runs again, runs that start as runs and become walks and end up with me staring out over the water with new thoughts and more acceptance. I am returning home and drinking tea and listening to stories of what other people do.

who am i kidding about this being a blog?

2007-09-09T12:52:00.000+02:00

Anna!

Never sure which gmail-address to use with you, so I thought this would a safe way to communicate ;)

So. I am just gonna leave it up to you to send me a date and I'll come over :).

Big hug,

Hannah

This Summer's Inspirational Songs

2007-08-22T17:17:00.001+02:00

"Breek" - Jeroen Zijlstra

It was late, there was a train, there was an incident with me spilling lemonade & Polish vodka over her book, and then she said "I have a song for you" and the song pretty much made me cry.

... voor de kunst van het proberen/ook al blijft er niks meer van je heel...

"Happy ending" - Mika

I heard this song at a happy performance at Lowlands. Although it's not a happy song essentially, (This is the saddest story/that I have ever told) there is something optimistic & melodic about it, too. (a little bit of love, a little bit of love)

"Dear mr. President" - Pink

I lóve that she still makes political music (it's been less of a trend these days) and the song is so very to the point - let me tell you about hard work/ how do you sleep at night? .

To record, to write, to not forget these nights that happened and these songs that coloured my days. To not forgot these efforts, these attempts, these moments of new insights and these doors that opened all around me. To be grateful, so very grateful for these days.

testing

2007-08-14T10:47:00.000+02:00

Once, I was a writer, writing a friend, writing to think, to get closer, to find something that was always just around the corner.

"My friend" I wrote, and then, such things as "I have been thinking about what you said the other day.""My friend, I am no longer sure of the things I was sure of." "My friend, I read this story." He sent me songs, I sent him books. I sent him doubts, he sent me reassurance. He wrote to me once, many years later, saying "I remember you as a thinker, someone always looking for the Truth behind the truth."

I was surprised before I saw the accuracy of the statement. I had forgotten how much my writing, to me, is the equivalent of searching, of describing & analyzing, of testing my ideas, of getting closer, of finding something just around the corner. When I write, I have no need to travel. When I write, I don't want to go anywhere, or see anyone, or move an inch from exactly where I am, curled up on my bed, with my laptop on my lap.

This past month, I have been not-writing, for reasons, mainly beyond my logical explanations. I realized it when I read Keri Smith's analysis of her own summer slowness on her blog:

if you look at nature you might start to notice that animals slow down at this time of year. they retreat to a shady spot or wade lazily in the water. they are not pressuring themselves to exercise or create something for others.

eat, sleep, retreat."

It is summer that made me want to not-write, not-seek-out-truth, not-puzzle-on-words. I went to an Antillian music festival with lot's of salsa dancing. I had a long midnight feminist discussion over women & engineering. I walked in the grass with bare feet. I read books in trains, I walked around cities in flipflops, I moved all my stuff once again.

Also - I have been confusing you people, I have taken distance from this blog so that you would not read it. There. I may write, but , perhaps because my writing is like thinking out loud, I am not sure I am ready for a reader.

Also - I have been employing different methods to test the grounds, to get closer, to find something just around the corner. I have been talking, I have been saying things out loud to test their reality, ful well knowing that if my phrases did not overlap entirely with reality, this was only because reality was still in the making.

"I am applying for Ph.D.'s", I would say, and then "I am taking some time", and "I am working with a travelling theater group". I'd throw in a funky one, just for kicks: "I am a random encounters guru." I said: "I am an economist", and "I am a translator" and once, driving through the night in a car with a musician-composer, softly, just above audibility level "I am a writer".

Hannah is....

2007-07-14T13:19:00.000+02:00

... listening to Paul Simon's "Graceland", (AGAIN).
... mixing in some pop (everybody get on the dancefloor).
... running around Utrecht and Amsterdam in flipflops, with her Body Shop linen bag of essential items - notebook, colored pens, reading book, apples, wallet-keys-phone. (NOTHING NEW THERE, REALLY)
... spending almost all her time with the theater people, who are professional, warm, funky.

... missing her Geneva friends, her lake city in the sunshine, (AGAIN, STILL, ALWAYS).
... contemplating her life's direction (AGAIN), wallowing in her self-proclaimed third wave of quarterlife crisis (they shall continue till she manages to walk her own freakin' path & dance to her own freakin' music).

... looking for a place to live, which would be a lot easier if she knew where she wanted to go.
... trying to finish a story, which would be easier if she wasn't running around so much, thinking about everything so much. (SIT STILL, WOMAN)

Hannah is... referring to Facebook, of course (Facebook is soooo 2008, Facebook is the new hyves, the new bee hive, the new big-brother-esk space to see and be seen, to stalk and be stalked, to represent and to confront the forces of popularity and social restlessness. To care more and to care less. To be kinda intrigued by everyone else without forgetting, - it's only life, after all).

... quite content with writing about herself in the third person, the first person gets so tedious after a while.
... enjoying giving herself feedback.

... not writing on her blog so much.
... not so sure what she's doing and not so sure what she's writing.
... busy figuring things out, hesistant to share.
... feeling dramatic and poetic and inspired (IT'LL BE FINE).

Kaos & Love

2007-07-01T13:24:00.000+02:00

Yo yo yo.

I have some excitement to share with you.

Team One has been selected to start Kaos Pilots, the "international school of new business design & social innovation". I participated in their admissions workshop and loved it. It's all about teamwork, and learning from each other and the giving & receiving that happens when a group of people is trying to achieve something new & completely insane with each other. After the workshop, we started a mailing list, many emails of which ended with the signature 'Kaos & love'. I won't be part of this team but I'll be following their every move.

I am absolutely loving the Notes From the Universe. They arrive in my mailbox every day with a new message of positivity and dreaming big and believing that what you dream will happen, too.

For the past three days, I have been helping in the kitchen to serve Polish food for a play called de Kantine, by a theater group called Polly Maggoo. The music is excellent, the play brings to life an era in time that is intriguing & close to our time (the Polish strike that commenced the downfall of the first Communist regime).

Kaos & love!

responding

2007-06-17T21:24:00.000+02:00

A package came with the mail and I picked it up at my family's house. I knew what it was, because an employee of Rotterdam airport had phoned me a week ago to tell me he'd found my Moleskine notebook, the one I lost about four months ago, and had finally gotten around to sending it. Something enthusiastic in his voice made me think he probably read it. And why else would he go through the trouble of sending it after months? I wondered if he'd written something inside but he didn't.

The notebook is a little time capsule. It has paint stains from when I was working on this room that I now have a history with. It has notes for the story I am now not-so-succesfully trying to pour into a script form. It has career goals I have now thrown out of my window. It talks about silence, while I am now all about the music. It features earlier internal soul-searching & discoveries that I am now starting to accept, saying, -

"Life hurts a little tad bit too much these months, for all the change, for the loss and the gain, for the realization of some dreams and the giving up of others. In this process, words are my sword and my shield. Words are the tool with which I carve my way through stone." ... and also - "Sometimes, I think writing helps, as a remedy to life. Then I doubt it."

Do I know what I am writing about? Do I know where I am heading for? Do I know what step is next? No. But I am here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot.* I stumbled on a blog that has an icon saying "seriously, if I knew what I was writing about, it wouldn't be called blogging, would it? " Lastly, here's a quote from the book I am reading: "Art does not come from thinking but from responding."

I am becoming more responsive, more responsible, too. I am thinking less, acting more, sharing more. Quoting other people just a tad bit less and saying my own stuff just a tad bit more. Caring less if a stranger reads my notebook. Dancing for no reason more, accepting invitations more, talking to clochards on the street more. Listening better, accepting that some things are just not possible more. Creating more trouble, sticking with my beliefs about this world, standing up for the truths I want to create.

I am here. I am giving it my best shot.

PS. Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows talks about art & passion in the following beautiful rendition of Rain King.

... "I belong/ in the service of the queen,/ I belong/ anywhere but in between/she's been crying/ and I've been thinking/& I am the Rain King."...

* A paraphrase/quote from Hansel in Zoolander, the movie I quoted at all random times for about a year. ;) Old habits die slow.

saying grace

2007-06-13T00:45:00.001+02:00

I am saying grace tonight, this night in the middle of everything, this night as I face my fears, as my demons have appeared once more and I fight them on a new battle ground. I am saying grace for the great things that have happened, so that the demons will realize their power is but limited, but a very small part of the reality I live.

The demons and the angels of my psychology, all of them are here to stay, all of them have travelled with me, and with me specifically, for me to fight and for me to fall back upon. Other people will have their own angels&demons, will have their own fears to face and their own sources of pride.

Tonight, I am having my own little non-religious thanksgiving - so as to scare the demons away, so as to feel strong with the power of good things that happen all the time, so as to summon the courage to take this step tomorrow - I am saying grace ...

... for close escapes
... for walking in the sea with bare feet
... for eating chocolate chip cookies
... for accepting different truths to co-exist
... for listening to stories being told & developed & enlarged just a little bit
... for truth be told and for secrets
... for bikes, for my fear of them, my bike helmet and for getting back on the bike.
... for red wine stains and salt to solve them
... for finding (back) friends
... for sitting on the floor, leaning against blue cushions and out of the window, drowning a bottle of wine and talking and discovering even more aspects of life, even more perspectives and views
... for planes... for my laptop (a portal)
... for business suits and high-heeled snake shoes, ... for little black dresses.
... for writing down quotes and using them inappropriately, for making fun of people and testing if they will laugh at themselves, for gaining trust, for learning to trust, again, and again.
... for bowing deep, deep to cunningness and learning from that, too, for fighting back, for knowing, for being absolutely clear that I'll bounce back on my feet all the time, all the time.
... for the good, and for the bad
... for falling deep and learning from mistakes
... for the La La days
... for the ZsaZsa Zsu
... for all the details and all the generalizations
... for the ferry boat episodes
... for the intuitions and the rationalizations
... for the fragility and instability and the transciency
... for the people, all the people in my life
... for getting closer, closer to me, closer to true, closer to abso-#*-lutely magnificent.

This year

2007-06-12T23:38:00.000+02:00

In August, I worked. I got up in the early morning and swiftly moved through the Rue de la Conféderation to Bel Air, walking by the grey-blue lake, shimmering with a low and encroaching sun, following the lake all the way to the parcs in the North, arriving at my crisp desk exactly at a Swiss 8 'o clock in the morning. I swam in the hot lake on my lunch breaks. I took constant baby measures on improving my thesis and getting a grip on a complex large field of thought, a field, which spends most energy on its complete denial of its own limitations (not unlike yours faithfully, as I was only to find out much later. Me & this field of thought, we were two peas in a pod, denying larger realities).

In September, the muscles in my shoulders had grown tight & solid with worries of how to reach the summit of my mountain; and after the summit, with how to descend.

In October, I mourned my approaching indefinite flight away from the city with which I had come to entertwine my being, my essence, my very self. I walked the streets with a heavy heart, wearing my flipflops in the rain, carrying a Starbucks coffee around in my defense. I had last dinners at my friends' new apartments, I was happy for the beginning of their new year even as I resented not being part of the continuity of things, resented not having a part in the initiation of the new Geneva arrivees.

In November, I finished my script, left it with my friends, and set careful foot in the outside world. In that place that exists when one is not in Geneva, not in a bubble of highly educated, polyglot, diplomatic party people who ski on their weekends and talk politics on their breaks. I loved London for Portobello Road and diversity, I had a short-lasting love affair with Berlin a little later, and I immediately claimed Amsterdam as my own, my one and only.

December, oh December in the Netherworlds. Tea and tarot and best friend and home and siblings with their music and sitting around the fire and reading the news papers and magazines and parents with their discussing the endless debate of psychology vs. sociology vs. economics vs. political science. Sinterklaas came once again and so did fireworks and snowball fights.

January, I spent it in a deep wintersleep in a borrowed little tidy place hidden in the chique corner of Amsterdam. I went running every day, I translated, I read books, I watched the cat and taught it some lessons, I slept.

February was a slow and snowy home month. Translating, running, watching dr. Phil with great interest.

March, March was a self-chosen hard on a double front. ('Never fight a double-front war!' - I can still hear my high school history teacher say. How often must a person learn?) Much descended from my Akropolis, I fell into the very epicentre of Dutchism, the sub-world of the student societies, to my initial detriment. I also started getting used to rhythmic life, getting up at half past seven every single day, no more exceptions possible; getting used to testing the water with colleagues and realizing the disappointment of unreal expectations.

In April I found and claimed my alumna identity. I re-met my people in Utrecht, the people that I had grown up with for a while, those that had been here all along and now wanted to hear what proces I had undergone that led me to change my name to Hannah now.

May, I spent it following my nose around. I nosed around in concerts and a festival and campus parties and in other corners of Holland, with my before-people, my people that knew me when I was only a teenager, active and critical and ready to take on the world; I nosed in a coffee shop and in some restaurants, too.

June. June is here with me now and let me tell you, she is quite the nymph, the muse, the myth, already. She is wearing a white robe, like the greek godesses, like Athena, godess of war, counselor. She is telling me: you go girl. You have waited long enough, doubted long enough, tried to fit in for long enough. Now is your time to write, and to shine and to polish the shine in the people around you. Now is when you strike with your sword in one blow and hit well, now is when you check in with the larger course of things and act as in trance, in a zone of concentrated nonchalence attuned to what is happening already.

In July; in July I shall dance on the grass with bear feet for my midsummer night celebrations. I will listen carefully to the sounds that arrive with the wind, while I align my energies to aid a group and an activity in life that I believe in. July is a sneak preview, July is my gift to me. Oh yeah, my gift to me.

i heart the kooks

2007-05-31T19:25:00.000+02:00

I was there! so this is the one I had to share, of course :)

Little else i am gonna share ;p.

Ooh la.

PS. Merci, mon pétit frère, pour la recommendation et le disque et en générale pour partager ton monde magique de musique avec ta grande zeur ;).

change of strategy

2007-05-22T14:10:00.000+02:00

Enough, enough already.

Enough with the moody writings on the wall!
Enough with the vague philosophy!
Enough with imitating my favorite blog-writers!
Enough with not caring that nobody posts comments!
Enough with finding a fine balance between the personal and the public!
Enough with people being completely uncomfortable about me insisting on having an ecclectic blog! Enough with the experimenting!!!

Yes, my silent friend, I am through with that.

Even Hannah's have a limit to their perseverance.
I ain't got no answers, honey. I don't even think I have mood swings left to share at this point.
If it ain't working, it ain't working. I love writing, but not in a vacuum. I love writing in the dark most of all, but I shall wander by myself before sharing. It's time for a change of strategy.

I thought of deleting this blog all together.
Yeah. So. But.
My mum made me promise not to, some time ago. Plus. Every single time I have been exactly on the brink of deleting it before, someone sent an email with positivity & happiness regarding my writing. That must count for something. The universe must care a little bit.

So instead, I have a writing project to work on, another script to write for the summer. I'll post some observations based on that for the time being.

Fa shizzle (= the latest word to say 'cool'/'for sure') that for this script, I will be returning to a Zoolander-level of writing. I will be writing about a place not uncomparable to the Zoolander Centre For Kids That Can't Read Good And Want To Learn To Do Other Things Good Too. Other inspirations: School of Rock, l'auberge espagnol. And Braveheart of course, can't forget about Braveheart.

When that's done, who knows? Perhaps I will have travellings to tell you about. Or partying stories. Perhaps not. For now: "Deal with that!"

Je voulais juste marcher tout droit

2007-05-18T13:44:00.000+02:00

It was July, it was last year, it was the last day of the Paleo festival in Nyon. Since me and my motor-cycle-diaries friend (my party-crashing, NGO-inventing friend) were not in the possession of tickets for sheer lack of planning, we decided to have go on a hike instead. We took a train from Nyon, up into the Jura, and spent about six hours walking down from the mountain, like old wise hermits do. At the foot of the mountain, we painfully walked straight into the festival area.

Another year prior, I had also stood outside closed festival doors. My date had negotiated with traders, all the way down to a reasonable price for tickets thanks to bluffing and a free ticket from a friendly passer-by. We had staid for all the performances, even Indochine, and the after-parties, right untill my wallet got stolen.

Now, I failed to realize that luck had brought me far before, fearing we would have to spend fortunes on a ticket if we tried to trade our way inside.

Instead, we decided to simply climb over the fences. This genius plan seemed simple & highly effective, as we sneaked our way around the parking lot and I quickly ascended . Indecisively, I came down before succeeding in my bold attempt, as Eveline cried out to warn me security people were near.

Quickly, we drew out our most innocent looking facial expressions and although we clearly saw the security people talking into their walky-talkies and following us around as we circled the terrain, the strategy sufficed to keep us from being arrested.

Far from giving up, we were all the more intrigued by the noises blowing with the wind from the festival area. What to do, what to do?

Finally, the solution came to us, as a par pulled up and a man lowered the window, asking us if we had an interest in two tickets that he had left over from his set of entry tickets for the entire week? Suspiciously, I asked him for the price. He answered he really just wanted to give them away, handed me the tickets and drove away before we even had time to jump up and down shouting.

Here's the blue eyed Frenchman we both fell in love with that night, as he sang, his guitar a quintessential part of his attire, sang to the wanderers of the world:

He sang "y parait que la vie n'est jamais aussi belle que dans tes rêves que dans tes rêves" ... (it seems life is never as beautiful as when you dream, when you dream) and when I think of this unexpected evening, it makes me laugh, it makes cry, - " ...quand les poches sont vides alors allons rire." (when our pockets are empty, alors, let's go laugh).

Ben

2007-05-10T00:56:00.000+02:00

Do you know those cute-but-almost-generic blog entries about meeting someone on the street and describing that meeting and between the lines it turns out that there is a lesson to be learnt?

Yeah, this is gonna be one of those.

I noticed Ben when descending an escalator in the mall attached to Utrecht station. It was almost six (official shop-closing time), it was very busy. Among all the people, Ben looked up the escalator and caught my eye as the only person that didn't only have his eyes open but paid attention to the situation and saw what was going on.

What was going on, was that he was selling the newspaper that is written and sold by the homeless people and no one was buying. Something that is true about crowds, is that the more people there are, the less people will react when someone asks for help.

When Ben looked up the stairs I could tell he was pretty desparate, potentially about to give up. I don't always buy homeless newspapers, I feel ambiguous about them, and never actually read them, but I instantly bought a paper from Ben. He was completely genuine in thanking me, not embarrased of his trade, as we discussed the best times for selling his paper. Before I continued, he told me to read his story on page 5 of the newspaper.

His interview tells the story of how he lost everything after getting hospitalized without insurance and had been surviving for a couple of months on the streets. What struck me, was his complete acceptance of his situation and the realism of his expectations (on the short termy, figuring out ways to obtain medecine, & on the long term, trying to use the address of an acquintance to register and receive state benefits).

I wish I'd bought four.

the song of the wanderer

2007-05-07T11:12:00.000+02:00

When my wallet got stolen on El Rastro in Madrid (an obligatory part of the Madrid experience), I had just one bus ticket left to return to my one-and-only Madrid albergue. The albergue, where I had spent nights talking to a rich girl from Argentina and a poor girl from Mexico City, who had just flown over to find work in Madrid. The same albergue, where a Chech girl, reading Paulo Coelho's "eleven minutes", had taught me about the difference between travelling with someone and travelling by yourself (-either way, you will have friends and people to talk to; it's just that when you travel with someone, you already know who you'll be talking to).

One bus ticket, and the albergue-host was nice enough to give me just enough left-over stale breakfast bread to have dinner; just one bus ticket to return to town the next day and hang out in the museums that are free on Sunday; just one bus ticket to go to the airport that same day to take my flight.

I met someone who belongs somewhere, who seems to know where he is from; he asked me “where do you feel like you're at home?”; my most truthful answer was "in youth hostels." I went and talked to an older, wiser person for council; he told me: "by now, you have figured out that you will never really get lost but you love the feeling of getting lost and you keep trying."

Here's an eternal and unanswerable question for ya - in travelling, do we flee what we leave behind or do we seek to find what's next? Do we leave the country on the run for emotions we don't know how to answer, for emotions we'd rather ignore; or are we seeking something more, something deeper, another layer, somehow? Is departure an escape or a quest? Is it both? Am I hiding away in travel, because in any other place than the in-between I will be confronted with the simple fact that I have no idea where I belong? But then: are we all not travellers? Are we not the nomads of the present day?

All of this, I don't know; although I know that travelling forward seems easier than travelling backward in place. Another youth hostel seems more appealing than a simple trip to the city I spent my teenage years in. Too many memories, too many ghosts. Too much of what I am running from. It takes more to keep oneself together when travelling between worlds. It takes more to keep oneself together, and to loose oneself, too.

I also know this now, I have figured this out: a person can move back in place, but never in personality. One shouldn't be afraid to get lost, to get lost between worlds or lost in one world. Even in my return to these Netherworlds, I am growing forward.

As I move, I loose bits of myself, and I find back others, like shatters. I am travelling back and I finding back me, as a rebellious teenager, me, hanging out with the though kids although I seemed a goody-goody person in every other way. I am finding back a little self-conscious girl with big ideas and big dreams and lots of will power.

Many things don't travel with me, and I struggle to keep it together. But words have travelled with me; this song has travelled with me for eight years now, mysteriously resurfacing every once in a while, soothing the rough edges of the journey away.

A theme song in a midnight of seeking out a labyrinth.

Under the Rose
The song of the wanderer
- by Walter de la Mare

Nobody, nobody told
what nobody knows.
But I know where
the end of the Rainbow is
I know where grows
a tree called Tree of Life
I know where flows
the river of Oblivion
and where the lotus blooms
And I, - I tred the forest,
where in flames, pink and gold,
burning to death and rising forever
the Phoenix lives.

Nobody, nobody told me
what nobody, nobody knows.
Hide your face in a haze of light
that goes with silver shoes.
You are the stranger I know best,
who I love most.

cry if i want to

2007-05-03T00:32:00.001+02:00

Last night, just now, just hours ago; it was a night of unexpected and scary freedom, completely wild new truths and the merging of a dream with concreteness. A red-haired girl with freckles on her nose looked me straight in the eye, asked me what my dream was and waited calmly, seriously. It was not a hypothetical question. It was a question that meant 'so what are you gonna do about that dream, woman'? I told that girl about The Patchwork House.

Today is my day, - "It's my party/and I'll cry if I want to." One of the lines from the Posse archive pf songs -to-sing-out-loud-late-at-night is "We're gonna party/like it's you're birthday." (Another one was that line "you and me, baby, (.... ) ...discovery channel").

Yeah, baby.

There may be the eternal pain in my arm due to excessive computer-contact, there may be skin troubles and all those psycho-somatic signs indicating I have been pursueing a path that is wrong for me.

But.

There is my posse, my girls, my people and the strength they represent.
There is a dream, scary as it may be, completely bewildered as it may leave me.

There is today, today which is my day. I will cry, if I want to. I will get angry, I will overdramatize. I will hang out with people that fascinate and bewilder me and leave me speechless (me! speechless!?!). I might even get my driver's licence and drive a fast car. No wait. I'll probably just find someone to drive and read the map myself. Keeping it real.