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.

energy and treachery

2007-05-02T11:54:00.000+02:00

Who was it, who said Living goes forward, understanding goes backward?

(Yes, it's a cliché. Yes, I think there is truth in clichés. And yes, I realize the last phrase is another cliché. Perhaps it boils down to this: everything has already been said in some way or another, but I am figuring it out anyway, I am twisting and turning those good old truths to figure out my version of them, because there is no other way to know what they mean even if they have been spoken a thousand times).

My version of the phrase, then, would be: so much is going on now, while my reflective moods seem to pertain events that took place some year ago, - when a lot was going on, too, and things were also moving fast, and when I was incapable of reflecting on them immediately.

I am such a reflector, and then sometimes I am such a live-r, a dasher, a bouncy impulsive do-er. Once, I asked a friend how he was doing and he said it was going alright, he was rolling with the punches. Going with what happens, moving forward, letting things come to you instead of pursueing something. Life moves fast and I love it when it does, but then on many levels I don't really get it, yet. I am not sure how I am moving and where, although I am pretty sure something is happening.

Energies, are the concept I tend to use to get some grip, at least. The energy level I experience with a person or a a group of people may be high or low, a person may have positive or negative energy. My energy may be blocked or flowing. My energy may be focussed on the place where I am, which makes me feel Zen, like it was always intended for me be right here, right this moment. Or it may be lost in space, focussed on another place, another time.

When that happens, it feels like treachery. A friend may call from Geneva and say 'Hannah, where are you, we are sitting by the lake, these people are here, it's Easter and we always do an Easter picknick', and my heart might break a little. I might have accepted a job and find myself sitting behind a desk whereas I had promised myself I would be in Berlin now, writing my first manuscript, for no other reasons than my very own.

When that happens, it may be hard to turn on the reflective mode. Because how did I get here? How did I lead myself astray? Which factors triggered this deception?

Perhaps the questions are too hard to answer, now, and thus, instead, I reach for the past, where there is belated figuring-out to do. Figuring-out that may eventually catch up to a time closer to the present, may eventually tell me how I got here (although it may not convey - whether I want to be here).

I know who it was that said perhaps she still has something to learn before she will gets what she wants. It was a wise young woman and a true friend, one of the people that make sure I don't bounce astray too far, one of the guides that pull & push me closer to the silver lining.

This is not goodbye

2007-04-30T23:26:00.000+02:00

"I was walking with a ghost."

- Tegan and Sara

The last thing I told them: “This is not goodbye.” And slammed the car door; and crossed the street; and took the tram to a see my friends at a night I had called a semi-goodbye drink, an evening disguised as a thank-god-it’s-Thursday drink, an
I-am-in-complete-denial-about-my-departure-tomorrow-morning-already-from-my-city-my-spot-in-this-world-god-i-am-so-sad-i-cant-deal-with-this drink.

For an entire summer, we had sat outside on the stairs and smoked. There had been the three of us, and night, and an empty economics faculty. Many, many nights of working had seemed one long night, one long night of running programs on multiple computers and watching black screens with white letters. Green letters if things went well. Red if things went wrong.

On green letter nights, we worked, we took ten-minute breaks, we took our coffees back to our desks. On red letter nights, we sat outside on the stairs and smoked. Discussed the state of the world. Felt like we were trapped in time, would never be able to escape our secret late-night universe of working and paper-writing. We were critical of everyone else, fitted the world into our views, felt everything was wrong and we were not missing out on anything by hiding away in work, self-directed, self-imposed, paced with the speed of a snake, slippery and uneven.

We were ghosts to the day-people, and they were annoyance to us. Nobody knew of our late-night presence although we had keys, and access to all the offices, and used the beamer for movie sessions. Although there was one professor who moved through our space past our coffee machine without greeting, a ghost in a parallel surreality, wearing Hawai shirts, to his office where meter-high stacks of papers were piled along the books filled with walls, leaving only a slim path to his desk.

We would drive home late, in the dark, take the long route by the lake to smell the water and see the city lights reflected.

I was the first to escape, to finish my work (which was about one-tenth of their work. One friend finished his work weeks later, the other is almost there, taking his time.) I had started with reds, ended with greens (and blues, and yellows). I had spent one night reading the green letter results, intermittently phoning a friend in a different city, and in that night had written something down and submitted it. I kept coming back for a while, kept haunting the faculty, kept staring at the stars from the stairs at the centre of the U-formed building. One afternoon, after a Ph.D. defense, we talked to a Nobel Prize winning economist. We dropped him of at his hotel, we drove by the lake some more.

Then, I had to go and check in with reality. And slammed the car door.

Rain

2007-04-25T01:38:00.000+02:00

A few drops of rain were falling on my skin, as I was biking, biking, away from the office and back to town. A few drops fell on my warm skin and I wanted it to rain more, to rain hard, to pour down from the heavens. I was biking, biking, purging my energy from office politics, disappearing from a day of pretending, unable to accept 'The Office' is a reality other than a joke, not giving up on the truth of here-i-am-talking-to-you, to you and no one else, here i am communicating one mind to another, one soul with another, wanting to believe what Céline said in that classic movie 'Before Sunrise':

"I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt."

Blossom was raining down on me as I was running, running, away from town and back to campus. Blossom rain poured softly on my head and I wanted the tree to shake, to shake at its very core and cover me in its early-spring flowers. I was running, running, away from town and back home, to one of the myspaces in my book, to the familiar smell of buildings I lived in, to the mocking and laughing of friends and to their analysis of deeper darker motives.

Storm is in the air, is weighing heavily and is pressure on my temples as people are sniffing and whiffing and complaining that hasn't rained in weeks. Storm air is pressure on my head as I wait for the downpour that has to come, inevitably, as sober hard-working weeks are followed by a night of exquisite, exotic partying. It is weighing, weighing heavily on my conscience, this downpour that is about to come.

A downpour might come with the passion of the singer, singing with his heart&soul - at the concert I attended last weekend, after a little roadtrip to Strasbourg (another place called home). A downpour might come, as his songs fell on our heads and swept us away to a land of passion and activism and silver-silk movement. He sang with his heart and soul, wearing a t-shirt from the 'one'-campaign (Bono, Jeffrey Sachs et.al.), talking of standing up to militancy with peace (in a time, which is not the sixties, in a time when electronic music has us tripping, in a time when a certain US administration seems to have a never-ending monopoly on danger and idiocy).

The singer sang his song like a prayer for peace, played his music like an expression of a desire for what-is-not-now-the-case. The song here is without words, but his other song goes "Well there's far too many questions to ask,/to answer any of them tonight. /For I wear too many masks,/to tell if any of them are wrong or right. /And confusion casts a shadow up on me,/like a great big cloud in the sky. /And now I pray for rain, /cause it's been so long since i let myself cry. "

And we all sang the refrain right back at him.

Summertime.. life is good

2007-04-16T13:44:00.000+02:00

Summertime, and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high
Oh! Your Daddy's rich and your Ma is good lookin'
So, hush little baby, don't you cry . . .

One of these mornin's you're gonna rise up singin'
Then you'll spread your wings, and you'll take to the sky
But 'till that mornin' there's a nothin' can harm you,
with Daddy and Mammy standin' by . . .

But 'till that mornin' there's a nothin' can harm you,
with Daddy and Mammy standin' by . . .

Wisdom for the 67th post

2007-04-11T13:24:00.000+02:00

My gospel, found on grouphug.us:

"People tend to really piss me off on a regular basis. come on, get a life! if i can do it, so can you. life is beautiful, all your problems have been dealt with over and over again by generations of people, and however bad it may seem, both body and mind are designed to forget pain. so grit your teeth and quit your whining.

or else why should i have to."

Unsustainable Business Plan One

2007-04-10T11:33:00.000+02:00

I proudly present, a new business plan from the Cosmo Corporate Conglomerate, with the (Human Rights Watch inspired) name:

Fashion Watch International (FWI, which hints at the short-hand FYI, - For Your Information. We could also go with 'FYF' - For Your Fashion. Or just with FYI.)

Inspirations: the plan is much inspired by recent observatons in London, a highly confusion experience in terms of fashion.

perhaps some 6% of women are Zara-style fashionable, with high-waist jackets combined with other recent looks
there is the large proportion of London youth that prefers the infamous Londonese sporty/trashy style with jeans and whatever-wear, throwing in some more recent trends such as leggings under skirts
I saw a ton of actual Ugg boots, the ones that were hot two winters ago
other individuals (maybe 3%) went overboard with completely eccentric creations, coloured hear, etc.

It really struck me that given the fashion trends of any given moment, fashion is different in the streets of different European cities. I.e. in Milano women of all ages (including 50+) strictly wear fashion that will be hot next year, while Geneva is a great place for inspiration on a timeless classic office look, (albeit it slighlty too timeless and too Louis Vutton ), and Barca is another colourful anything-goes place. So how to pack one's bags before travelling?

The target group. Style-sensitive, (young) professional women, who would be happy with a fasion update before their trips.

The plan. Our customer could receive a portfolio of pictures taken on the streets in the past week tailored to her specific desires. I.e. she would indicate her age and overall dress style and we would send back suggestions.

The niche. The business plan is different from buying a magazine because magazines give overall current trends, whereas FWI would involve specific and exteremely up-to-date information for the city a person would be visiting.

The necessities. All we would need, is a photographer/trendwatcher in each major city who is continuously uploading a picture data base. And a very talented trendwatcher who creates portfolio's from the data base.

The playing field. We will focus on Europe first, an area with sufficient fashion divergence while it is still an area that can be travelled in one-to-two hour flights.

poem

2007-04-06T10:48:00.000+02:00

Poem may be a little rough on the edges.
It happened this way. Here it is.

Phone

calls, once vivid, once friend, are
now hung up, in my purse, I am

crawling a city, it stretches its arms,
absorbs me, entirely, emptily,

recedes only (in my ear) to voice
and sound of rain, high heels

clattering, to twists of truth,
turns of faith, earrings dangling,

whispers, vaguely reverberating
consoling, to voice and sound of

probing, to echoes of allegation
and (in your face) ambiguation.

velocity

2007-04-05T20:44:00.000+02:00

A confession: I am on-campus, in the building named Voltaire. I know, very uncool of me to admit. I'll be uncool any day of the week if it means I can write about it. I will simply say a lady never justifies her actions, toss back my parka-scarf thing and storm of with my hair (which will be long and flowy in this scene) sweeping behind me.

I never got around to writing about campus when I lived here, caught up as I was in running around (why? one may wonder blasphemously in hindsight, but I must warn thee: life was filled with important activities. do not question the urgency of oncampus activities). A sound-check of Voltaire on any given Tuesday for you: the background noise of busy fingers typing away, the rustle of papers, the heavy sighing and in a corner, always, voices carrying on a submerged conversation. A silence all the more interesting for what else it conveys: the passing-through of campus people, the meeting and the greeting, the high-headed breezing past, the abashed moving through, - because Tuesday night is bar night, so why is it everyone is still here, working in Voltaire till midnight before going to the ball, like modern-day Cinderella's?

I had 1000 other ideas to write about but it seems I am out of practice. I just asked my presently-on-campus-friend (also, elementary-school-best-friend, also we-used-to-climb-trees-together-friend, also we-still-want-to-become-pirates-(one-day-when-this-is-over)-friend), I asked her How should I start an email in Dutch without using the word 'ik'? (It's some rule of Dutch etiquette never to start a letter with 'I' and I, I am re-learning to write in this language), to which she instantly replied How should I start a research?

How should I start? How do I start a story that has travelled with me for years? (Another confession: there is a story that has travelled with me for years).

I'd thought I'd tap into some Voltaire-energies; there must be a frequency among all these hard-working vibes atuned exactly to writing. Some say deadlines help; some of my heroes wrote their books in a rush, in a flow, in a warped time-zone-thing. Such as Eggers.

Ah, Dave Eggers. He was such a hype. I love Eggers for throwing the complete irrationality of much of our thinking onto his pages, into our faces, in a book called 'you shall know our velocity'.

One more confession: I have no beginning and no end but I have a flow. I have a velocity and a vibe, I have busy fingers typing away, a parka-scarf-thing to toss behind me and global earth-encompassing ideas to analyze. But first, I am dragging my presently-on-campus-friend of campus for a drink.

walls

2007-04-03T14:26:00.000+02:00

'Writing on the wall' was once invented as a phrase heavy with foreshadowing of wall-writing activities to be. I was to step out of student routines and reconnect with an inner rebellious and creative self. The type of self that writes on walls regardless of further consequences, just because she feels like it.

There is the expression 'to read the writing on the wall', in reference to the story of mysterious foreboding words that appeared on a wall at a party thrown by King Solomon; the Destiny's Child cd 'the writing's on the wall'; the other blogs that were inspired by these words, including one John Kerry fan site and one online journal of a person who works for an animation company.

Concretely, I

assisted in idea creation sessions where everyone wrote ideas on walls at my favorite place in Switzerland
thought a great deal about painting on the walls of the room I lived in in Amsterdam
assisted in painting Nintendo figures on the walls of the student house I live in for a house party; the Toad creation was all mine
also created some lime walls in that house
am currently participating in creating a 'wall of inspiration' in the office I share with my co-worker. Here's something from the wall, something another colleague said: 'don't bother trying to influence that; it would be like trying to stop the tides.'
have been reading about 'surface engineering' and 'coating techniques' for my work. As it turns out, there is quite some chemistry involved in keeping walls&buildings intact.

post economics

2007-03-27T09:11:00.000+02:00

Someone in my surroundings (no names shall be named although guesses may be posted) is infamous for saying that all men are autistic. While this may be something of a strong statement, - I shall surely refrain from further commenting on it - , I think that it is fair to say that as a social scientist, to elect modern, neo-classical, mathematics-based economics as a field of specialization frequently feels like electing a form of autism.

Previously, my co-author & me independently made the journey from the realm of the mainstream economist joking to post-autistic economist joking. In the latter field, there seems more fun to be had, more resentment to be felt, more resonance of our criticism, more audible echoes of the days when students protested against their professors. It goes without saying that we each discovered the post-autistic world while officially attempting to finish our respective economics master's theses, keeping in mind the ancient adagium 'when forced in one direction, one shall run in the other.'

Post-autistic economics includes such un-heard-of sub-domains as 'ethics', 'pluralism' and 'hetorodox economics', all of which would completely bewilder any straight-thinking fan of the Pareto Magic (= the 'markets-are-perfect') Paradigm. (Come to think of it, if markets were perfect, economistis would be unnecessary altogether. The mere existence of economistis undermines their most sacred belief.)

Post-economists are those people that read Schumpeter and write articles on labour rights in China. They discuss Romer's model of endogenous economic growth, and explain the assumptions he makes as a result of his having been 'thoroughly socialized in the paradigm of neo-classical theory', denying the fact that the model formed any kind of 'revolution' in economics.

Excuse me for becoming jargonistic for a second. The translation of the last sentence would be: 'Romer is a smart guy, but it's still economics we're talking about. Unfortunately, Romer cannot be called a post-autist.'

When I developed a secret and admittedly very vague but passionate interest in theories of innovation and change, innovation economics had little new to offer me. While its main asset seems to be an awareness of the facts that economies grow and there is no mathematical way to explain it as of yet, its liabilities included a want both of theoretical models and of appropriate data. Especially, the field seems to lack a desire and a vision to depart from the mathematical paradigm. (Don't get me wrong, I don't object to the use of mathematics; but I object to math obstructing theoretical thinking).

Which is why, in my current post-economics life, with my post-economics anti-rational decision-making and my post-economics ability to produce nonsensical texts and my post-economics enjoyment of non-self-interested-activities, I am opening the floor to

(Un)Sustainable/Post-Autistic/Non-Rational Business Plans

Send me ideas if you have any, and stay tuned for there is more to come.

My blue unicorn

2007-03-26T18:25:00.000+02:00

Just to share some amazing lyrics on this sunny day.. sin muchas novedades here, although actually many that I would like to share in person with the co-author of this blog but not the entire world (the entire world being defined as my co-author, me and the epsilon (infinitesimally small amount, haha, economist joke) that are reading this blog). Am never sure how to spell infinitesimally, but refuse to look it up. As for things that are not too private for publication: I am considering writing a diet book "Be Broke: Lose Weight!", which will make me so rich I no longer have to worry about when the catholic salary administration *cough*mafia*cough* of my university deems itself worthy of transferring my salary. I went there to, as a subtle hint, leave my bank account number, and their Delphian comment was that "we don't have any need for that." to which, as a response to my questioning facial expression, was added, semi-threatingly: "yet." I wonder if they are conspiring to fire me before even having officially hired me. But it's spring, no time for conspiracy theories, and coffee is still free. Also, if the diet book doesn't become a bestseller, I could write a book on fusion cooking (fancy word for mixing together random left-overs, also inspired by lack of funds to go grocery shopping). But then there are more serious problems in the world than my temporary caloric deficit.. such as losing one's blue unicorn.

Silvio Rodríguez - Mi unicornio azul

Mi unicornio azul ayer se me perdio,
pastando lo deje y desaparecio.
Cualquier informacion bien la voy a pagar,
las flores que dejo no me han querido hablar.
Mi unicornio azul ayer se me perdio,
no se si se me fue, no se si se extravio...
Y yo no tengo mas que un unicornio azul,
si aguien sabe de el, le ruego informacion:
cien mil o un million yo pagare.

Mi unicornio azul,
se me ha perdido ayer,
se fue.

Mi unicornio y yo hicimos amistad,
un poco con amor, un poco con verdad,
con su cuerno de anil pescaba una cancion,
saberla compartir era su vocacion.
Mi unicornio azul ayer se me perdio,
y puede parecer acaso una obsesion,
pero no tengo mas que un unicornio azul
y aunque tuviera dos, yo solo quiero aquel.
Cualquier informacion la pagare.

Mi unicornio azul,
se me ha perdido ayer,
se fue.

in between places

2007-03-15T20:09:00.000+01:00

Headaches make sounds louder
lights brighter,
moods slower.

Sun spills in through new shine-through white curtains, but the air that spills in when I pull up the heavy window is cold, could belong to earlier weather.

I am in-between places; in between-places.

It is no-longer-winter-not-yet-summer. I was ill-but-getting-better this week. I am not a student but my friends are. I have moved into a new life, but my mind is wandering time and place, revisiting earlier era's, involuntarily considering future scenario's. I am watching old episodes of favourite series, waiting for the new to kick in. I gave up some paths now I am left to create others.

I fell and hurt my head while trying to wrap my head around betweenness (not the best strategy). I am staying in these places for a while. My new hypersensitivity to sound & sight is slowing me down, forcing me to hear every bike that passes by, every song on the radio in the kitchen, every bottle that gets thrown away in the recycling container across the street.

Drawing my attention to wind blowing in
a bouquet of roses in peach and yellow and dark white,
and the gift of time to catch up.

Gwen's escape

2007-03-08T18:43:00.000+01:00

Silly poppy song officially recommended by Anna & Hannah :)
There is no excuse.

Happy International Women's Day!

timequakes

2007-03-06T22:26:00.000+01:00

Six months ago, I cried on my friend's sweater. I was in the netherworlds but it wasn't right, I wasn't supposed to be there yet. I couldn't fall asleep and if I did, I dreamt of being trapped or of finding a baby lying in the snow. My shoulders led a life of pain of their own. There was a dragonic thesis waiting for me in the lake area.

It isn't wise to compare time according to my customized version of a zen-style theory on living in the moment. My drama teacher said try to be in the moment, when I had to be angry in a scene that took place on the underground. We all practiced by breathing in and breathing out. Being where your body is. Experiencing the cold as well as the heat. Not turning away from the here and the now. Facing things, the way they are. Breathing in, breathing out.

Moving between nether and lake and other world, nothing changes but for small timequakes. I return after weeks or months and nothing has changed but the moment. I have tried to face post-timequake places, for their own sake, without comparing. Breating in, breathing out.

Then my friend asked are you sure you are alright?

work

2007-03-01T23:22:00.000+01:00

My first time around, I taught French to four 14-year-olds and used all my big sister skills to cover up for being 15 myself.

The second thing I did was printing T-shirts for the company my neighbour had in his garage.

The coolest job I had was as a photographer, albeit a soccer teams photographer. I got to boss boys around all day, ages 3 to 18+.

The worst one was not the one where I worked in a big factory, but the one where I was an au pair to four kids whose parents were always of having busy lives.

The best-paid one was when I translated half a book in two weeks; two exam weeks.

The most serious as well as the least serious one was the ILO internship. One fellow intern was planning a documentary entitled "coffee with Hannah - a short film funded by the ILO".

The one nobody ever took serious as a real job was where I was a receptionist at my own graduate school. More coffees. More socializing; and the discovery of Blog World.

The first real job was today. It involved an office, and colleagues, and writing a report, and even some stress. Someone brought coffee while I was in a meeting, and everyone else drank more coffee than me. Mmmm... (suspicious glance into the air while rubbing hands together); let's see where this is going.

A day in La La Land

2007-02-26T10:51:00.000+01:00

There can be turmoil, there can be tensions; and then there are those days when the gods bless us with time spent in La La Land.

Imagine you are travelling, and meet someone new and unexpected whom you find yourself spending an entire day with. Everything the other person says is interesting, everything you say sounds funny. It feels as if, in a different parallel place, you would have been best friends. By the time your plane leaves, the person takes you to the airport and you are almost crying when you say goodbye. This, my friend, is La La Land.

The thing about finding the entrance to La La Land is you cannot. Entrance will always be unexpected. Your prejudice about someone is disproved and talking to them proves to be balm to your soul when you need it most. You show up at a party a little too fashionably late just after the police came; the party seems over, you miss your ride home, it is three in the morning. Just when you think what a nightmare, someone comes over and takes time to listen to your (bedtime) stories for another couple of hours.

La La Land is a happy place that exists between our set ways and expectations. It is perhaps easiest found while literally moving between worlds, in travel and in change. Still, it is possible that the doors to La La Land open in the exact same physical space you move through to go to work on a daily basis. Suddenly, the musicians on the tram are playing your favourite songs. The ladies at the make-up stands switch of their unfriendly go-away faces, take half an hour to teach you a new make-up technique - now pay attention, because I want you to see how to do this curve, and load you with free samples.

La La Land is a place where you can see a full rainbow, each end raising from the water. Wind will be blowing your hair out of order and it will still look great, you will warm yourself in the sun and soothe your hangover with endless walking. Swings will be waiting for you to play around in, and a baby beach to leave your footsteps on.

Surreally happy as the land is, you'd probably become nauseous if you couldn't turn of the La La Charm. "But oh, those La La nights." (from Grease, more or less). And oh, how those La La days help you through the rougher patches.

Beast of burden

2007-02-23T13:08:00.000+01:00

Just sharing some lyrics of the song that's on my mind, Beast of Burden:

Ill tell ya
You can put me out
On the street
Put me out
With no shoes on my feet
But, put me out, put me out
Put me out of misery

Yeah, all your sickness
I can suck it up
Throw it all at me
I can shrug it off
Theres one thing baby
That I dont understand
You keep on telling me
I aint your kind of man
Aint I rough enough, ooh baby
Aint I tough enough
Aint I rich enough, in love enough
Ooh! ooh! please
Ill never be your beast of burden
Ill never be your beast of burden
Never, never, never, never, never, never, never be

I dont need no beast of burden
I need no fussing
I need no nursing
Never, never, never, never, never, never, never be

Spring

2007-02-22T17:00:00.000+01:00

I left(Geneva) on the first day of winter ('the lake wild, dark blue, waves beating against the shore'), only to return months later to a town unchanged apart from the fact that all spring has broken loose. The lake, - calm as a lazy day in July, transparent enough to see birds dive to the bottom and drift right back up.

I may be big on personifications (it's not just a literary style form, it's a way of life), but come on, this one is just screaming for attention.

Wild, blue and beaten as I may have imagined myself to be upon departure, I return to a city at ease, and to my grand suprise I find myself to be as much a part of it as I ever was.

On top of this, my translation is advancing slowly but steadily. Incidentally, it involved looking up an inspirational&poetic quote from a book no less than the bible book Isaiah (30:15, for full reference ;)

-
“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

How about that.

And yes

2007-02-19T22:18:00.000+01:00

I am leaving; leaving, to the sound of Utrecht rain. (This line is a variation on a line in a song called 'Londen rain' by Heather Nova, whomever that may be. I listened to that song aprroximately 347 times last summer.)

Here is how I finished painting my walls: I didn't bother covering up the last couple of smudges I made. Here is how I picked the carpet: I went to the shop, bought the cheapest left-over they had and took it home with me on the tram. The tram-driver gave me the best advice on how to cut it out so it would fit the room. Here is how the rest of my room got fixed: my dad came over. Here is how I packed my bag: slowly, while listening to music. Here is how I am travelling: by plane, although I want to be an environmentalist and take a train. Maybe next time, maybe on my way back.

The other things, I will fix those too.

Soundtrack

2007-02-17T23:24:00.000+01:00

Almost midnight, in an empty space that was newly transformed into my room today. Another room, another spot for me.

And all is well. I was painting walls, to a soundtrack I created for the occassion. There are new teenagers that wrote new songs of hopes&fears. As if they are the poets of our days, literate and concise and so wise for their age. Even if it were a million years ago that the Backstreet Boys happened, and cocoon crashing, and jeans that went up to your waist, when people that were 22 seemed from a different planet.

I have spent three evenings socializing with the inhabitants of my new living room. They are approximately my age, students, in a city of mine, and ever so friendly; yet we are approaching each other from different planets. One girl asked me if I still felt like living in a student house and I was mumbling an answer. It is a new experience for me to be the oldest, the person with excess experiences that are hard to convey even if one is asked for advice; the person that listens and lets others figure things out for themselves coz' there is no other way to learn.

My walls are white&lime and the floors are dark grey. A friend from Geneva emailed, saying I can't believe you haven't made it down here yet. I am taking a break from creating new space in Holland; it's hard work carving out a niche in a preconceived world. But when I will return to the Netherworlds in a week or so, there will be a little area without furniture, with lime walls and grey floors and punkrock songs waiting to become big.

Utrecht, or The Way Things Used To Be

2007-02-15T22:58:00.000+01:00

I thought this place was history, I thought it was the past. I thought I never really lived here, just skimmed the outer walls, barricaded behind campus fences.

And every Wednesday afternoon, we'd have our day off, we'd escape the walls and run right into each other in town. We'd be surprised, how was it possible, this coincidence of walking into campus people when we'd just manage to get off-campus, for the first time in a week? We tried out our newly learnt statistical theories to explain the event.

Then, today, I wandered Utrecht streets while I was on the phone. My mind was with the conversation, the city was just décor and in the unconscious state of mind brought about by isolated speaking & listening , I found my way around. I knew the cobble stones, and I knew what to expect if I turned a corner, I wandered to de Dom tower and back without hesitation.

I knew my way; there is no way I can get lost here; (getting lost, my main focus in life); yet I could still breathe; I was not afraid. The past was not jumping at me from behind the walls, memories were not choking me. There is new history to find still, these streets have not yet been worn out by my walking, and my talking, and my late-night phone calls.

Wilhelmina Park,Parkcafé, de grote AH, and de kleine, Voorstraat, Neude & Mr. Jacks. This place could still be home.

the stata master

2007-02-12T14:57:00.000+01:00

"you ain't got a job - it's an agreement for you to show up and enlighten them on various issues that trouble the world"

said a friend, a colourful character I'd like to introduce, who likes to refer to himself as the Stata Master. In his world, my assigned and only name is Junior, in reference to my status as an apprentice of of Stata, an econometrics program. Other characters in this fictionalized realm involve

Jovencita (a non-existant Spanish word invented for a more advanced stata apprentice of Latin American origin),
The Russian Authorities (a girl of given nationality),
Walking Work Conscience (a hard-working Ph.D. colleague),
mme. Avantage (a member of the establishment, i.e. a senior secretary of disputable reputation)
the mafia ('to be befriended rather than to be fought against', -Italian Ph.D. students),
one or two not-so-friendly names for disrespected characters
and 'those kids' for all other individuals.

The worst thing one can do, according to the stata master, is go to or co-operate with Babylon, which is, apparently, the reggae word for 'the US'. The best one can do, is keep jamming, over shisha, or spend time on alcohol appreciation sessions. His aforementioned comment reminds me, - that fiction can be the best reality check.

day of snow

2007-02-08T16:52:00.000+01:00

Professionally, speaking, I would not want to go sentimenand talk about a day when snow kept falling, with tea and a lit fireplace inside and girls in pink jackets drifting by outside on their sledge and no obligations, no place to go, just perhaps the neighbourhood to explore, the streets of this copy-of-Amsterdam-village to leave fresh footprints on.

But. It is. That kindof afternoon.

Blancina

2007-02-08T00:04:00.000+01:00

I believe it is white-out in the English language, typ-ex in Dutch, but the generally accepted word among Genevan economists was the Italian version. (For reasons that shall further remain undisclosed and that had nothing to do with our parody of the absolutely adorable Italian-english accent.*)

Blancina, the solution to mistakes, the friend of every neat-freak; blancina, the promise of whiteness to grey pencil smudges; blancina, here to cut us a break when we need it most.

The dream of a white page, a clean slate, a new start seems tempting in times of chaos. Leaving behind the old stories that drag behind, never quite resolved or resolving; the old mistakes made by me, unforgiven by me; the issues that got entangled and no longer seem to involve clean-cut choices.

During Madelyn's (my computer's) operation, a folder containing nine months of my writing accidentally did not get back-upped. And it makes me wonder. Most of the writing was a stream-of-consciousness, the last thing I did before going to sleep. So if I hadn't written those thoughts down, I would have never owned them in the first place. Will I miss them now? I get attached to my little bits of writing, but some of my own thoughts are hard to read back, too. Do I want a white page, an empty writing folder, when I am handed one?

*NB: in order to practice Italian-English, pretend you are singing an opera while you try these: 'yez-hhh' (yes), Bud Áaan-ah (But Hannah, seriously, what do you think you are doing with your life?), blan-Céé-nah (white-out),

Tegan & Sara

2007-02-06T15:14:00.000+01:00

My new heroes (your old ones) are here to brighten up your day. I think they're twenty?, they're twins, they constantly argue on stage, keeping them real.

I could probably listen to this forever. >

One way or another

2007-02-06T13:29:00.000+01:00

I’m living in a city of one-way streets and farmacies. Do the myriad of one-way streets drive people to drug-use, looking for remedies against the resulting claustrofobia and singlemindedness? The signs are seemingly randomly scattered, breaking up single streets into several parts of opposed one-way segments. I keep having to get on and off my bike, alternating riding with walking like a contestant in an involuntary duathlon.

I’m living in a home that is my home, only the people are missing. I miss the people. Inquenchable thirst, even playing solitaire doesn’t help. To make matters worse, I live in a multiple one-way street, above a farmacy. Many things that seem random are actually ordered, but even more things that seem ordered are actually random. What did I do to deserve beginning all over, suffering all the insecurities again? Overhearing conversations about me I’m not supposed to overhear, I walked back down and up the stairs hoping they didn’t hear me coming the first time. What the hell am I doing here? The question is never answered, after a while it just gets drowned in routine or sleeping pills.

I’m listening to the radio: it just reported how some British beauty queen has been forced to relinquish her crown because she was going to pose nude for a men’s magazine. Apparently she was not supposed to put the concept on which beauty pageants are based to further use. I wonder how she feels now: probably much like an unsuspecting biker who went into a one-way street, only to discover the direction of the one-way suddenly changed. We’re losing faith in the system. Maybe she started taking pills to stop looking for the sense to it all.

Punkrocker

2007-02-05T16:48:00.000+01:00

Bear with me, as I colour-coded some related ideas them for you, and placed them in ascending order of complexity

The song by Sandi Thom probably describes it best:

Oh I wish I was a punkrocker with flowers in my hair
in '77 and '69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late into a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

There is an opinion on truegrit, a blog I accidentally found:

"...the video of the Bangladesh Benefit concert. Remember that? With George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, Leon Russell, and Bob Dylan? That was when there was still a bit of idealistic humanitarianism remaining after the sixties love revolution had shown its decayed underbelly.
When I listened to this song it rang of truth, still. But its voice got lost on the wind, the words are changed for everyone now, as the ideology has coalesced into lumpish stereotype figures
and crass polarizations.

Then, there is Nicole Kraus again: "What is literature, really? Boiled down to a single sentence, I'd say it's this: a endless conversation about what it means to be human. And to read literature is to engage in that conversation. There seems to be a growing tendency among people to disengage: with the ideas, with the world around them, with other people, with their own feelings. To say whatever, because it's easier than actually caring."

Some more criticism of the zeitgeist can be found in Thomas Moore's (Dark nights of the soul) discussion of how the word "cool" is indicative of this era.

Here is me: in the middle of another round of quarter-life crisis, in the middle of musings on how life moves too fast, how years fly by and how I wish I could be a student and protest in the streets, I realized I had never actually observed protests in the streets. I missed any sort of assemblage of people with opinions, rebellions and criticism of the way things are.

There are pockets of mini-resistance. I found a group of philosophers in Amsterdam, who are looking to publish their ideas and carry out some actions in response to a society that values money over mind. I found a group of clowns, who elect to express their criticism from behind the veil of the traditional character of a joker. The French are notoriously skilled in protest, as can be told from the recent emcampment of clochards. I am not giving up on the Zeitgeist just yet.

Madelyn

2007-02-04T15:22:00.000+01:00

... is my computer's first name. Her full name: Madelyn Eowen Sterre, plus my last name. I had a bike called Veronica. My camera, which I earned by getting up early a couple of dozen Saturdays to take pictures of kids in soccer outfits, proudly carries the name Max. I have a stuffed animal lion who was named Adrian by me and Romeo by his fairy godmother. For my scariest exam ever, I carried Adrian Romeo to school with me, and back through the Rue de la Conféderation, and I swear it brought good luck.

Anything without a name is bound to be lost by me sooner or later, mostly sooner. (In France, my friend Juliane once accidentally said à plus tot instead of à plus tard and we instantly adopted it as our standard greeting. I lose things au plus tot.) Wallets, passports, keys, jumpers, books, any item that can be carried around: these are completely unsafe against my abandonment unless I have taken it upon myself to forge some bond with them by assigning to them a personality, an identity, the culmination of which is their name.

Madelyn just returned from a rather heavy operation, her hard disk having been replaced after she had only been in my care for 10 months. I feel slightly guilty for any possible part I may have played in this early accident. My stomach still turns when I remember my first bike got stolen in Utrecht by some horrible junky with big scissors (Have you not heard of selling news papers? Could you please get rid your addiction instead of stealing the bike I grew up with?). Although I remind myself that these are things, material&replaceable items, after all, it is no good: once I have personified an object, there is no turning back. The item will fall under my responsibility and I will miss it when it's gone. So welcome back, Madelyn.

Scribbling on a wall

2007-02-03T16:06:00.000+01:00

It started as an experiment, and while it still is in many regards, I find myself quite addicted. To, ehm. This. This doodling and dabbling and vaguely contemplating on an imaginary wall that is growing more real. It appears to me as if I, we, are taking sips of writing as one would with wine. We sniff and smell and observe other word tasters. We let drops of words roll over our tongues, we take a thirsty gulp and choose our favourite bottle. Then, we quickly look up to see if other people think anything of our choice. It's different you see, writing by yourself or writing on a wall that is potentially public, a public secret, as in the Dutch expression publiek geheim. We're tasting words en plein publique and maybe we'll get better as we go.

Nicole Krauss got me thinking about writers all over again. I have this thing for writers who write about writing. They often do, in some way or another, end up talking about their own daily occupation. Boys will be boys; economists will talk about trade-offs and writers will write about writing. But. It's also helpful for anyone who wishes to learn a thing or two about the writing business.

Now Nicole, -I am sensing we are on a first-name basis-, does this marvelous thing were she brushes on a hundred thousand themes with all kinds of deep potential, including the Holocaust and Love and Growing Older and Death and Second Generation Migration, and all of these are just the background of a tale of an eighty-year old man named Leopold Gursky, who discovers the book he wrote and lost before anyone read it as a young man was published after all and changed a few people's lives. Each of Nicole's characters has personality, but more than that they have a great sense of humour that helps them face the aforementioned realities in capital letters with all their human clumsiness. Here's what Leopold says about writing:

"A couple of months after my heart attack, fifty-seven years after I'd given up, I started to write again. I did it for myself alone and not for anyone else, and that was the difference."

Bright lights, cute city

2007-01-29T23:46:00.000+01:00

It ain't hard to fall in love with a city.

A city will change with its people; a city will have different face at night than it has by daylight; a city will have a different voice in the description of each of its inahbitants; a city can bleed and a city can smile. A city will always be a challenge but the level of it's complexity will be a function of my desire, courage, energy for something new. I can skim through and live at a city's surface (hiding in it's shops, visiting familiar places) or I can hunt down deep (for hidden treasures, chance meetings, some small collectors' gem). There is ample supply of new wild cities to draw on, Mexico City, Manilla, Mumbai, to paint a picture. A city can't get angry, or hurt, it can't go anywhere; yet a city will reflect my mood like the surface of water, a city will feel grey or elated or nervous or absolutely terrified with me if I so order it around.

Then how come I never pictured Amsterdam? at all? untill I was practically dropped on the Leidseplein, untill the grachten were thrown in my face and I stumbled upon an inner city maze (my favorite thing! getting lost!).

This place is no Rome, no foreign metropole, it's not outside the known zone. But it's close. Twice, I ended up receiving directions in French (those boycotters of the English language). Many times, I was comforted by the familar sight of American college kids reassembling, never failing to act exactly according to their inherited stereotype (those that have not one doubt on their perception of Europe as one indescernible entity). Somewhere around New Year's, I identified a group, not Italian, not Spanish, but Portuguese (those un-travellers, those safe&sound).

Best of all, my American cover has been nothing but succesfull in this environment. Dutch and Americans alike buy into my un-Dutch-ness, when I refuse to speak and retreat to English. When I am done, bored, angry with this country because I expect more, I can hide away, disappear, run for cover. In Amsterdam.

On moving

2007-01-23T15:30:00.000+01:00

The transient, the empty page, the first month of the year.

January, named after the god with the two faces, the beginning and the end, the early and the late. January this year has turned into the period of silence I tend to observe when I move places. I was dropped of in a dormant city in France and slept a week before slowly fitting in time for fascinating fellow students and erasmus lifestyle. A plane landed me in Geneva and I spent six weeks wandering by myself before finding those who were to become my close friends.

I know the routine, the ritual of mental cleansing, the retreat and silence necessary to allow myself to remember good things past without aching; to find it in myself, somehow, miraculously, to be open to whatever comes next. Yet my arrival here was a whirlwind. At some party, at some point, someone asked how long I had been back and I had to think hard to do the math. The math was: I had been back for two months, Geneva seemed home and The Netherworlds seemed temporary; contrary to the facts of my new job here and my finished activities there.

I have let the math sink in now. I have sat myself down on a bench in the Vondelpark, stared hard at the water and lectured, - it may not be perfection but here is the latest truth you created for yourself. In the middle of a whirlwind, of your activities of confusion and distraction, these are the choices you made, now stick with them. Now stay, and stay well.

Moving on

2007-01-22T15:29:00.000+01:00

Talk to me softly
There is something in your eyes
Don't hang your head in sorrow
And please don't cry
Guns 'n Roses - Don't cry

I get so sick of metaphors, and double meanings, and multiplicity, although I love the words. I feel like I've become an accomplice to ambiguity, an accessory to aesthetic alliteration. I'm moving on, struggling a little to keep imposing meaning on things I've already assigned and deprived of meaning at my convenience so many times before. I know this is all real, or none of it is real, and it really doesn't matter. But it has to matter to me, because I need something to propel me out of bed every morning (or afternoon). The afternoon talkshows tell me we do everything for a reason. I hate tautologies. My life is in boxes now, or not my life, but my earthly belongings. I wonder what's happening to my uneartly belongings, and what they are. They could be things I carry with me always, like a bad mood in the morning or a shadow in the dark. They could also be the things I lose most often, despite carrying them around with me, like memories of song-fragments I wanted to look up but never did and forgotten phone-conversations with old lovers. Some philosopher whose name I cannot recall (perhaps Hume, but I don't want to burn myself here) said that human beings are nothing but bundles; bundles of perceptions of memories and experiences. No wonder we fall apart so much. I need to organise my bundle, but it makes me feel boxed-in, aware of the limiting dimensions of my mind and its cheap cardboard walls. There's nowhere to pull away to. Everywhere I look are memories and choices, and worse, the realisation that I cannot even summon my own memories or choices. Try closing your eyes and moving them from left to right in their sockets, you'll see what I imagine are green eyes of the memory-monster lurking in the back of your head, feasting on the things he pulls from your brains, the unearthly things you'll then forget. Sometimes he throws you a bone, but you're at his mercy for melancholy. Sometimes he bullies you by taking away adjectives or expressions, names of highschool crushes, where you left your keys; leaving you helpless and frustrated until he tires and relinquishes the information. We live vicariously through him, not vice versa. But I'm moving on, leaving nothing behind, carrying with me the same old belongings and the same old boxes. I won't be clawing for common ground, either.

Silence before the storm

2007-01-11T01:06:00.000+01:00

The weatherman said there would be storm tomorrow, so this must be the silence before the storm.

Normally the silence before the storm should be something that is defined in hindsight, because how could there be silence if a storm has been announced? As when people say, remember when we were walking around unsuspecting, going about our daily business and routine? That was the silence before the storm. The mundane becomes ominous, but only in hindsight. If people could predict the winds, would there really be silence? Who would be so foolish as to say hush, the storm is coming?

Perhaps the silence before the storm is just a relative concept; the storm makes us aware of the silence we are living most of the time. The silence is there, touching the leaves that remain, it makes the windows smile, content with the sounds of the streets, lingers in the common complaints about the rain, and in the sneeze of a dog.

¿Quién me ha robado el mes de abril?

2007-01-07T16:18:00.000+01:00

En la posada del fracaso,
donde no hay consuelo ni ascensor,
el desamparo y la humedad
comparten colchón
y cuando, por la calle,
pasa la vida, como un huracán,
el hombre del traje gris
saca un sucio calendario del
bolsillo y grita
¿quién me ha robado el mes de abril?
Joaquín Sabina

Some things are too crude to allow for complication or adornment. Who stole the month April from me? I kept it in the drawer where I keep my heart. It's about sadness, the defeat that makes us ask useless questions. No one stole April from me, but I ask all the same, the pointless cry of looking for that which never was lost, never was. I never had April. Lágrimas de desamor, yes. Or not even tears, just desamor. The word doesn't exist in English, but it would be un-love, maybe. Desamor is not the end of a love, it is the unglamourous realisation that love was not there to begin with. The drawer was empty all along. Maybe a few dusty illusions, but not enough to evoke the fear of Pandora's box. Damned hope floats, un-love or no un-love. It's feeling slightly dirty for having fallen into such a transparent trap. But to end on a semi-optimistic note, as we tend to do? "April lies just around the corner." "We may have dislocated April, but there's always August." The equivalent of filling another drawer. But who the hell knows? The orgin of April is uncertain, but may be from aperire, to open. Maybe I'll try to impose importance, or sadness, just until March ends and the drawer opens to leave us with only ourselves, or what is left of that.

The still of winter

2007-01-04T17:31:00.000+01:00

Say I'd wake up at four pm and stay up till six in the morning. Would it make a difference? Would I even miss the feeble daylight hours bestowed upon us in these midwinter times?

Say I'd behave like a drama queen, my quintessential self, and call a party the End of an Era? Would anyone bother to mind my drama? Would they secretly love dressing up as much as I do if I asked them?

Say we'd fill the space with candles, red candles at the chimney place, tea-warmers on the shelves lined along the two-story-tall walls, and purple candles on the four steps of stairs leading up to the podium that is the kitchen place? Say we'd spend endless hours sitting in front of the stove, laying down our tarot cards, analyzing our little situations and finally, after all said and done, reading some Marion Bradley; say we'd secretly enjoy despicable Endemol productions and watch old romantic movies; say we'd do all that and manage to cook actual vegetarian meals in between; say we'd have our few glasses of red wine a night, say I'd smoke with your boyfriend before falling asleep? Your boyfriend, who said count your fucking blessings, weet je?

Would it be such a crime to live that way, to allow for such enjoyment? Or could we just call it our wintersleep? Our overwinteren, our very own temporary life style? Could you imagine a better way to survive the dark, to prevent depression? Could it be what induced one of our guests to say the Amsterdam apartment had a 'bohémian feel' to it. Oh yay. Oh yippie hurrah.

How grand would it be, if I joined forces with your secret world, all over again? Hide away from current events; steal away time; nights strung together, in the still of winter.

Little things

2007-01-02T00:04:00.000+01:00

I have a love-hate relationship with the little things. It's those that make or break my day. Perhaps because all the big things in my life are anyway going fine so there's not much unhappiness or excitement to be gotten there? In any case, it's the-elephant-and-the-mouse syndrome: the big things in my life are afraid of the little things. Someone being rude in the supermarket, a big full moon, an acquaintance not returning an sms, a pleasant comment from someone I just met, someone calling when I'm in the middle of something (and I'm always in the middle of some other little thing). Could be a variation of the classic case of people overestimating small probabilities and underestimating big ones. Or rather, the disproportionate focus on the little things could be the more general case of the probability-bias. I wonder why we (conveniently generalising my little personal experience to the entire human race) are like that. Of course the evolution-theory can offer some tautological explanation: because the big things are the regularities, the givens, and the small things are the anomalies, the things that you have to watch out for. The little things are the potential opportunities and the potential dangers. But they also chip away at our perspective, and leave us like myopic little ships floating around at the mercy of every single drop of rain.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Pack our bags

2007-01-01T17:52:00.000+01:00

Happy new year's baby/we could probably fix it if we clean it up all day/or we could simply pack our bags/and catch a plane to Barcelona 'cause this city's a drag
- quoting our national anthem by the Counting Crows here because it works so exceptionally well for today.

I managed not to cry this year!

Maybe my pre-emptive midlife crisis is finally over and I am getting used to the fact that time goes by entirely beyond my control. It could have something to do with the incredibly stylish James Bond party we attended, dressed up as James, Moneypenny and Onomapatov (or whatever her name is). Maybe it was a good idea to crash a party full of unknown individuals rather than being surrounded by all kinds of beloved family members, of whom I can never bear the thought for one second that they could possibly grow a year older.

Maybe things are different, now I know that there will always be Barcelona.

In the movie 'Manhattan', Woody Allen lamentates we will always have Paris, while saying goodbye to his girlfriend; meaning someting like - 'you are moving to a different continent but we can always meet there, we will always have that middle ground in that symbolically charged city'.

Barcelona seems to symbolize just the opposite to me, - I am in the country I know best; picking up the latest expressions; celebrating December the way it is supposed to be since the olden days; eating the food I grew up with; re-adjusting to a social code that I once knew. I am (re-)learning the rules of a place where I already belong essentially. It's freaking me out, it's reminding me of how I disliked living in the eastern part of the country when my family first moved here after I was eight. But things are different. I have a bank account now, and access to EasyJet.

And Barca is just around the corner.

The End of an Era

2006-12-30T14:22:00.000+01:00

At the end of an era
I found myself
biking a Rotterdam street
alone with paper boys
no tigers to slay
and the sunrise of today
made the feeling incomplete

When in doubt, doubt

2006-12-21T20:07:00.000+01:00

Life is cutting me too many breaks these days. My laziness is spreading like moss on wet stones.. I need some external pressure.

Little poem of apathy

I could say
(or do)
something
(or someone
but then, who?)
in pursuit of
some endeavour;
does it even matter?
and so on and so forth
or whatever.

In honour of a solstice day, past and present

2006-12-21T12:04:00.000+01:00

I don't think I shall stay up for this one. But I did for the last one, writing

...I staid up during the solstice… not as a celebration of life necessarily given the minor detail that I have been writing mini-critiques for my classmates' econometric papers. Forget about that.

This is my celebration of life, my pay-back time for the past few days. I started the night with friends, watching the Holland-Argentina game in a square with hundreds of people, dancing on a stage and enjoying hooligan behavior. Tonight I have drunk coke, I have assembled my favorite music, made CDs, thought of quotes, I have imagined a great plan for next year...

I staid up the night of June the 21st, oblvious to my surroundings, forgetting I hadn't slept during the night of the 19th either, when I had cried at the end of the night and scribbled little notes before, -

Finally, the cacophony has calmed down and Geneva is at rest…. Much like I am used to. I never thought I would thank the gods for silence and calm. Perhaps they were teaching me a lesson by having the Fete de la Musique coincide with the weekend before my paper-presentation. If so, their lesson was harsh and against the Universe’s Laws on Fun and Enjoyment.

Although I have cared very little for the institutions of learning and their methods for many years now, the past week certainly marks one of the all-time lows. The Djajic exam was an all-consuming exercise in suppressing my feelings about learning other people’s thoughts by heart, “which I hate” (obviously).

Now, I am writing about creativity and I have no one but myself to blame for the lateness of the hour.

(…) 05:46 De zon, de zon komt op.

I slept a total of maybe 20 hours in five days. I kept saying I am too old for this. (I did. 22-year olds have a right to feel too old for things, too). Maybe it was worth it, maybe it made me feel alive in a bizar way. I was so inexplicably angry and high on life at the same time. At last, somehow, strangely, I found myself smoking a cigar and sitting by myself on the street for a moment, in my mini-dress and absurd heels, while everyone was attending the last class dinner, inside. Keeping myself together but only the best I could, and the best was not so good; cherishing my instability, the emotional fragility that comes with depriving oneself of sleep; fuming at friends at their every word; living the drama of departure.

Yeah, goodbye was a long time ago.

Portrait of a Young Musician

2006-12-20T19:41:00.000+01:00

You return to the house in the dark. For a second or ten, I wonder who this is, unlocking the door, hovering in the black kitchen, returning so late. Hours ago, little brother, you stood one-legged, tall, (taller than me now,) leaning on your other leg, folded underneath you on the kitchen table. Your guitar lay prominently in your arms, your eyes wandered as you played around, thoughtfully. And if for one instant, your concentration fell away by my clapping and cheering, I glimpsed the you I knew.

And you sang

Autumn day
(published with your permission, and it’s unfortunate I cannot reproduce the melody)

A soft breeze blows leaves my way
I feel like I am being the king of this autumn day
But as a matter of fact
I am just a fellow citizen

Nothing in here could strike me down
I am like a leaf that’s flying all around
But as a matter of fact
I am just on my way home

(Chorus:)
It’s a pity that these days are so cold
It’s unfortunate that these days are so short
Now the leaves are made of gold
But don’t let it make you go inside
Just waiting for a night

Coz the golden leaves are flying out of your greedy hands
So I tie my shawl a bit a tighter around my neck
I turn so that the wind is in my back
And take my detour home

Where a cup of chocolate calls on me
Bye bye leaves of mystery
I hope to see you another day

(Chorus)

A soft breeze blows leaves my way
I feel like I am being the king of this autumn day
But as a matter of fact
I am just a fellow citizen

The First Day of Pre-Christmas

2006-12-20T16:46:00.000+01:00

We are enthusiastically greeted at the florist's in the Next-Door Village, - I haven't seen you in a long time. We tell the story, the accident, caused by a seventeen-year-old on a scooter; he nods, sympathizes, steps aside to reveal his shop of wonders.

Long tables rest against one wall, covered in greens and whites and December smells. The wheel chair barely makes it through the paths, as we stop to admire compositions in black & white, an aubergine-red rose enclosed in christmas green.

Simple christmas carols sound on the system - wham and last year, I gave you my heart. The same the same, each year, wham gave their heart away last year; but this year I can take it, this year is new either way.

We walk away with pre-spring buds and a sober bouquet featuring white roses; fill the living room with candles, moreover, in celebration of the first day of pre-christmas

On that note..

2006-12-18T23:47:00.000+01:00

Here goes an ad-hoc poem I wrote in Dorothy Parker style

A Wise Lesson for the Female Student of Antiquity

Student! As you read about
how that ancient war
which, as you know
(I have no doubt)
started over Helen’s face,
soon escalates into a show
of man’s stupidity and disgrace:
Achilles was stubborn,
Menelaus possesive,
Agamemnon gullible,
Hector aggresive,
Sinon a liar,
Ajax a mistake
Odysseus slyer,
Paris deluded,
and Patroklos fake;
what can be concluded?
Man’s idiocies combined
left Helen quite speechless,
and Homer quite blind.

But oh! My dear student,
what lesson to draw
when reading that tale?
That though times have changed
all men will be male:
still stupidly fighting
and just as deranged.

Live out Loud

2006-12-17T22:54:00.000+01:00

Anna,

I would cut these out and give them to you but they are just too good, you should have them now.
It makes sense for us even if we are not exactly full-time artists, even if we may just happen to also be tredding a known path or two. I hereby deem writing a thesis an art, as I do translating a book. Economists of the world, don't forget to live out loud a little.

yours,
Hannah

A Tribute to Dorothy Parker

2006-12-16T17:18:00.000+01:00

Theory

Into love and out again,
Thus I went, and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen-
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Some one dropped me on my head?

Words of Comfort to Be Scratched on a Mirror

Helen of Troy had a wandering glance;
Sappho's restriction was only the sky;
Ninon was ever the chatter of France;
But oh, what a good girl am I!

Purposely Ungrammatical Love Song

There's many and many, and not so far,
Is willing to dry my tears away;
There's many to tell me what you are,
And never a lie to all they say.
It's little the good to hide my head,
It's never the use to bar my door;
There's many as counts the tears I shed,
There's mourning hearts for my heart is
There's honester eyes than your blue eyes,
There's better a mile than such as you.
But when did I say that I was wise,
And when did I hope that you were true?

Resumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Philosophy

If I should labor through daylight and dark,
Consecrate, valorous, serious, true,
Then on the world I may blazon my mark;
And what if I don't, and what if I do?

On Being A Woman

Why is it, when I am in Rome,
I'd give an eye to be at home,
But when on native earth I be,
My soul is sick for Italy?
And why with you, my love, my lord,
Am I spectacularly bored,
Yet do you up and leave me-
then I scream to have you back again?

I Know I Have Been Happiest

I know I have been happiest at your side;
But what is done, is done, and all's to be.
And small the good, to linger dolefully-
Gayly it lived, and gallantly it died.
I will not make you songs of hearts denied,
And you, being man, would have no tears of me,
And should I offer you fidelity,
You'd be, I think, a little terrified.
Yet this the need of woman, this her curse:
To range her little gifts, and give, and give,
Because the throb of giving's sweet to bear.
To you, who never begged me vows or verse,
My gift shall be my absence, while I live;
But after that, my dear, I cannot swear.

Experience

Some men break your heart in two,
Some men fawn and flatter,
Some men never look at you;
And that cleans up the matter.

On deadlines

2006-12-15T16:15:00.000+01:00

Did I mention I really love deadlines before?

I really love deadlines, I wonder why
this obsession features
the permission to be shy
anti-social, compulsive, immature.

It could be the compensation
of favorite music, dancing, elation
the rush and the adrenaline
and oh, the secret writing

Terryman

2006-12-14T17:29:00.000+01:00

Anna,

In view of the not so overwhelming popularity of our experimental writing so far, I thought I would just write you now. It all started with me laughing my eyes out over your emails anyway and thinking someone else should read this.

This still technically being a blog and all, I would like to promote our new hero, a first act of groupy-ism. Not only will Terry jam the night away, he will teach you a truth or two and will sing don't go, don't don't go when your date is leaving.

So, dear millions of readers out there, check out Bourbon Street, a club so steamy Westlife was having their beers there yesterday night. Well, honestly, Youp van 't Hek also showed up and was an easier blend with crowd. But you may bump into us, you see.

Hugs & kisses, chica, I had a great time.

Pulp Fiction

2006-12-11T19:29:00.000+01:00

Berlin, baby

Between the familiar feel of the unfamiliar and the unfamiliar feel of the familiar, the former has overcome. The world I know and love involves comfy youth hostels, another tube, a whole new strange city.

I am cheating on facing the unfamiliar, though. I joined the boy scouts, formerly known as the first years, in their latest quest. Being part of the group involves drinking beers and jump-dancing, almost break-dance-fighting (that’s a quote, you know from which movie or else, find it out) in a “Russian disco”, to unknown, possibly obscene lyrics. A party with a dress code I could not anticipate, feeling very un-punk, overdressed in jeans, feeling genèvoise.

Walking the U-bahn with the guys, I channeled Pulp Fiction, wearing a head scarf, witnessing pointless (not to say Seinfeld) conversations of the following kind.

J: "What time does our plane leave?"
PL: "Two twent-five. Do I look like a fucking clock? I am not a fucking calander, ok?"

And

F: "You know the rule."
S: "I am not listening."
F: "Don't fuck up."

maria mena

2006-12-07T22:55:00.000+01:00

Maria in her dark turquoise babydoll pirate dress, sang never mind me and sorry and filled the paradiso hall with her voice. Sang with her hand on her stomach, stretched her hand and retrieved it for safety. Danced on stage, channelled all energies, was surprised by the audience's enthusiasm, said this is the best christmas gift.

Maria, little lady, wrote her first heart-breaking song at twelve, wrote a song as a thank you to a friend who brought her hamburgers when she wouldn't eat, wrote songs about a love that never happened. Maria, powerful girl, was shy, was brave, took my breath away.

state of the union

2006-12-04T22:40:00.000+01:00

A glass of wine, some candles, some phonecalls.
Tonight features a solitary state of the union for the month.

I listened to some 'Oreja de Van Gogh' while my flatmates watched some beauty and the nerd. Igual que la poeta que decide trabajar en un banco. (...) Me calló porque es mas como enganarse, me calló por ha ganada la razón al corazon. Pero pase lo que pase.

The Carry Bradshaw approach would entail begging the question: I couldn't help but wonder, how do real-life job opportunities compare to vague dreams?

I had everything planned out. I had planned to take the odd path, to surprise people and not care. I was going to go on a spiritual pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago and encounter all kinds of hidden challenges, secret truths, interesting individuals. I was going to find the bohemians in Berlin and the creative spirits in Barcelona. I was going to return to the mythical childhood lands of Manilla and Batac.

I had planned wilderness.
And now.
An actual job crossed my well-designed path,
messing with my wilderness.
So.
You know.

If I am all that open to options and all that adventurous,
perhaps I should step up,
just to step up to the challenge.
I've done the travelling bit.
Been there, done that. (Although,
one can never be done travelling,
real or imaginary.

But, still.)
Maybe it's time for a change.
Maybe it's not such a big change,
maybe Manilla is still an option.

A Typical Friday (?) Afternoon

2006-12-01T15:30:00.000+01:00

15.30 open thesis.doc, or rather, thesisalmostdonepleeeaseversion2.doc, get distracted instantly
15.31 think about life-rhythm, or lack thereof, and general scarcity of discipline
15.32 vow to get up before noon tomorrow (OK maybe on Monday, tomorrow is weekend after all.. not that there is such a thing as "week" and "weekend" for thesis writers. normal conversation between thesis writer and normal person: "what day is it today?" "tuesday." "really?" "yes, why?" "interesting!" And same conversation, but between two thesis writers: "what day is it today?" "wednesday?" "really?" "well, I'm not sure" "it feels more like a friday to me." "come to think of it, it does!" "or possibly tuesday." "yes, obviously, tuesdays are always the hardest to detect.")
15.33 fret about whether inviting long-time crush over for an entire week was good idea
15.34 realise that there's no going back anyway. vow not to get emotionally attached again.
15.35 wonder where time went

Nano something something

2006-11-30T21:11:00.001+01:00

The deadline being only hours away, I think we're probably too late for this year, but check this out. We should join next year!

It sounds like a tremendous amount of fun.
I miss having deadlines.
I keep setting them for myself, but it doesn't compare to the ones set by The Authorities.

Poetry thursday part 2

2006-11-30T12:16:00.000+01:00

My November Guest - Robert Frost

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grady
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so ryly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

Life goals (eternally editable)

2006-11-30T12:02:00.000+01:00

In no particular order:

1. Be able to sing along Jacques Brel's Ne me quitte pas (as far as lyrics are concerned, never mind carrying a tune)
2. Create chaos
3. Remember most things (including where I left them)
4. Live where peach trees grow

Hannah, any additions?

Don't even get me started

2006-11-27T17:40:00.000+01:00

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better. ~Ellen DeGeneres

All beginnings are hard, or so they say, especially for us animals of habit. As my high school economics teacher said: "learning is painful". Growth is painful. Beginnings are the worst. Everything seems bigger, insurmountable, or at the very least peculiar. Odd and out of place. I remember starting university in a different city, travelling to a different continent, and moving into a new room. It's the feeling that a dense lake of possibilities comes flooding in, and even though you have some faith that you can swim, you have no idea how deep the water is under your feet. You stretch your left leg without letting your head submerge and if you don't scrape your foot or knee you still have no clue. It's the feeling of meeting someone with the same density as your imagination, someone who changes like the Dutch sky on a November afternoon. Or standing at the foot of a lighthouse, looking up and thinking, against better judgment and past experience, that it will fall over right on top of you, yet not being able to stop looking up. Definitely beginnings are like that.

infiltrating the communist party

2006-11-23T09:58:00.000+01:00

This story can only be told in CosmoPosse style, -grandiose and with many TMI details.

Wednesday night was national elections day in The Nether-lands. If you wonder why you hadn't heard me mention it before, it's because I have been oblivious to the political situation down here up untill my arrival two weeks ago. I have been an outsider, feeling like an observer for some foreign news paper. It's been a treat to witness the situation. Compared to the elections four years ago, everyone is way more involved as a result of all the post-political-assasination-discussions.

Wednesday night, after I had barely managed to cast my vote (my main point there was that I wanted to vote for a woman), I was preparing to go out for some partying with Eveline, my friend who was in Geneva last summer. Bravely, I ignored criticisms of being disitnerested, uneducated, revolutionary, addressed at me by commited Dutchmen for having no intention of watching election night on television.

To put it in Carry Bradshaw fasion... I couldn't help but wonder, is it so evil to elect partying over politics?

Some major detours through Amsterdam ensued, finally resulting in a place that seemed to have a steamy party going on. As soon as we realised we had located the headquarters of one of the main political parties, we hesitated not and marched on to crash that drink. Regretfully, we took a wrong turn, were quickly identified as individuals without an invitation and thrown onto the street once more.

This outcome was not to be accepted. We took our sweet time to confiscate some cheap drinks as we crashed a first year tennis club drink in a bar closeby. We checked out another bar and picked up two local Americans doing their one-day tour of Amsterdam. As soon as they started talking about their homes in North Carolina, Eveline enquired if they were interested in going to a communist party?

This is the point were I should tell you that the headquarters we had located belonged to the Socialist Party (SP) in The Netherlands. There name is misleading, because there is also a more centrist socialist party, while the SP is much more leftist (although nowhere near communist), and based on protest. Their symbol is a tomato, that pretty much sums it up.

Our new friends were interested in going to a communist party, so that we regrouped in front of our target. Wiser now, and more experienced, we launched our attack from a different angle. The doorman asked for our invitations, we said we had left them inside half an hour ago because we had gone to get some weed and the other doorman had said that was fine. He asked what the other doorman looked like, we said we couldn't remember. I don't think he really believed us but somehow he let us through.

Hurrah! We dumped the Americans and made our way to the podium as fast as we could to show those people what dancing is all about. You should imagine, everyone in that entire room was dressed in red, we were wearing our black clubbing outfit. People ranged from our age to much older. They also looked serious, they looked like they believed in something, they looked like they had supported their party for years. We felt like capitalists.

Still, our dancing rocked, people looked happy to see us. We requested some attributes with red tomatoes on them and made some new friends. By the time the party was officially ending around two o'clock, our new friends proposed that we should crash another political party's party. We encouraged this plan enthusiastically. I thought it was a marvelous double-infiltration scheme.

Somehow we ended up going home instead, to finally find out why the party had rocked so much: the Socialist Party had gone from 9 to 26 parliamentary seats. I got slightly nauseous for about half a second coz I really find some of their points too extreme. Still, I think it beats watching parties on television. In four years, maybe I'll crash a celebration of the party I actually voted for.

Poetry Thursday

2006-11-22T15:57:00.000+01:00

As a first (completely and totally optional) idea from Poetry Thursday, I am sharing a favourite poem by Nadine Stair that has travelled with me for a while, without translation because it just sounds prettiest with all those foreign words in it. It's all about living life without carrying an umbrella. It's about making mistakes and eating ice cream. All the good stuf.

“Instantes”

"Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida
en la próxima trataría de cometer más errores,
no intentaría ser tan perfecto, me relajaría más,
tomaría muy pocas cosas con seriedad,
sería menos higiénico.

Correría más riesgos, haría más viajes,
contemplaría más atardeceres, subiría más montañas,
nadaría más ríos...

Iría a más lugares adonde nunca he ido,
comería más helados y menos habas,
tendría más problemas reales y menos imaginarios.
Yo fui una de esas personas que vivió sensata y prolíficamente
cada minuto de su vida;
claro que tuve momentos de alegría.

Pero si pudiera volver atrás,
trataría de tener solamente buenos momentos.
Por si no lo saben, de eso está hecha la vida,
sólo de momentos; no te pierdas el ahora.

Yo era uno de esos que nunca iba a ninguna parte
sin un termómetro, una bolsa de agua caliente,
un paraguas y un paracaídas;
si pudiera volver a vivir, viajaría más liviano.

Si pudiera volver a vivir comenzaría a andar descalzo
a principios de la primavera
y seguiría así hasta concluir el otoño.

Daría más vueltas en calesita,
contemplaría más atardeceres
y jugaría más con niños,
si tuviera otra vez la vida por delante.

Pero ya ven, tengo 85 años y sé que me estoy muriendo."

Grey, dusk, winter

2006-11-22T00:11:00.000+01:00

If I’d do twenty paintings, each
would be a different shade of grey, each
would depict a city just
after sunset, before the night.

I used to hate the not-even-an-actual-color grey, as I did the dusk. My objections against the latter included: it lasted too long in the wintertime that I despised in the first place; it preceded the night that I didn’t fancy much either; in short, it was an unclear time of day with no purpose for as far as I could see and way too much foreshadowing about it.

Recently, I realized the small hour or so between the light and the dark has become my favorite hour of the day. In Geneva, when immersed in thesis-writing, it would come not that long after I woke up, it would be my last chance to be part of the world of the day-people. I wanted nothing to do with their shopping bags and their free time and their happy ice-cream eating. I desired isolation, but I’d need my shot of light each day and a glimpse of reality. So I’d make my rounds between eight and nine (then between seven and eight, six and seven). I’d walk a daily inspection tour of the old city. I couldn’t stand day people during their distinctly purposeful mornings or evenings, but the city was all mine during their transition time, their rush hour, their lost and meaningless moment between work and home.

So grey, dusk, winter, - I can so take you on this year.

Definitely maybe

2006-11-20T10:57:00.000+01:00

Berlin, now that's a city that needs some psychoanalysis. I have preached my obsession with the city for a few months now. But why?

At an economist's class dinner late June, people never stopped asking what my post-graduation plans were. I suddenly heard myself telling one person I was moving to Berlin or Barcelona. Then another, and some morer. One friendly classmate enquired whether these were job options I was talking about? Nope. These were cities I was considering.

Berlin, or Barcelona. Moving there anytime soon now. Definitely maybe. It's an option, for sure.

Summing up my knowledge of the city:

various people told me positive things, altough I don't remember who they were and what they said exactly. Something about the party scene.
I imagine artists and vagabonds painting their guerilla art on city walls, sitting around in smoky cafés discussion the state of the world. I imagine their mood as a combination of the dandyism associated with Oscar Wilde and the student activism of our parent's days. (The student activism I waited for these five years. I figure it won't come to me without some effort.)
my father once told me a story about checkpoint Charlie and the situation in the city before the wall had fallen
foreign airplanes supplied west Berlin with food for months in an intergalactic power struggle between the Sparta and Athens of those long ago times
lastly, the obvious, - President Kennedy said Ich bin ein Berliner

I have talked about travelling around the other half of Europe for forever and now I seem to have nominated Berlin as the place to be in Europe right now. In ten years, Prague. In twenty, Bukarest. In twenty-five, Chisinau.

Loss of East

2006-11-16T12:05:00.000+01:00

I came from Geneva, carrying a laptop’s worth of ideas, a book of to-do list’s, an agenda filled with good intentions, - Ph.D. applications, translation, family visits, discussions with friends and don’t forget the enjoyment of wintertime. I knew I would have to readjust, would read new things into the familiar feel of December in The Netherlands. Something would be of, I just couldn't predict exactly what was it going to be.

The difference lays in the details. The days carry their little thorny issues into my world. Where shall I put my suitcase? Where do I find the coffee? Which tram shall I take?

Rushdie wrote a book about transitions. He called them “Disorientation. Loss of East.”

American

2006-11-06T19:39:00.000+01:00

Only a street away from the Notting Hill gate stop on 'the circle tube', we walked into a shop filled with happy hippy clothes and got busy moving around the racks. Upon our enthusiastic exclamations, the owner of the boutique, also the author of the collection, started a conversation. Her name: Ginny. When someone asks her ‘what do you do in life?’, she answers I make things. In essence, she considers herself a very lucky person, because she does what she loves to do. She asked what my nationality was, then told me Dutch women are boring. They don't appreciate eccentricity like we do in England. Characters that stop by her shop regularly include a colourful stand-up comedian lady from California as well as big American labels that decompose, then mass-produce her designs. She doesn’t mind because they mess the pattern up anyway. She does, however, mind that Portobello Road has come under the influence of big American companies, ever since that movie.

In Oxford, my old professor looked up in the middle of a lunch conversation and said Do you know what you've managed to do since we last met? You've managed to sound more American! Britain did that to me. The waitresses at Segafredo actually spoke with an Italian accent. The Lebanese restaurant could just as well have looked out on the streets of Beirut. The tourists spoke French or Spanish or Danish or their respective languages in the streets. I heard 63 new shades of British. I felt foreign on a whole new level.

Finally, a man at a bar got it right, saying Dutch women are difficult before he left.

Winter

2006-11-02T18:30:00.000+01:00

Today is the first day of winter. The lake has gone wild, dark blue, white waves beating against the shore. The air has changed, somehow colder, somehow stranger, somewhat freezing and dry compared to the endless Indian summer that preceded.

I wanted it to be winter when I leave. I wanted to smell fondue in the streets, I wanted to see the new first years econ students, I wanted to witness the festival Cinéma Tout Ecran. I wanted everything to continue as if nothing had changed, so it wouldn't matter that I was leaving.

But who would have thought today would be it? Tell me, who would have predicted this would be my last day? Would have predicted me, waking up at seven, waking up in Lausanne and taking a train directly to Geneva. Me, worrying about what to write for goodbye, what to write for a Ph.D proposal, what to tell my professors about recommendation letters. Me, denying that tonight will feature a goodbye drink, and me, standing helpless before this departure.

I am sitting with my laptop in Maison Grütli. This is my city, how can I explain how unrealistic it is that I am leaving?

City I loved, city I hated. City I tried to leave, city in which I tried to stay. City in which I wrote my first, full, clueless script but script nonetheless. I printed pages of writing today, pages I will give away in two hours. I will give them away and they will never come back, they are done. City full of friends. City whose streets I have worn out with my walking, and my talking and my mobile phone calls. City whose cafés I have come to know better than my bedroom.

I don't know how to go about this missing, but I invoke the magic of names. Café Papon, Bain de Paquis, Alhambar, Old Town, Veille Ville, the Chess Boards, Plainpalais, Café Cuba, Parc de Bastions, Rigot, The Lake, Carouge, Villa Barthon, Place du Cirque, Villereuse, Sécheron, Coop City, Calamar, Globus, Portes du Soleil, Baby-plage. Oh Geneva, oh city of mine. Stay well.

Back

2006-10-29T14:22:00.000+01:00

A month ago, I stopped writing on this wall, this public wall that I created, even though I haven't even told people in my daily world about it. I have not been sure.

A friend called blogging a "massacre of the tradition of diaries" and meant that a blog shouldn't be too personal. I agree. I know what I don't want. No literature reviews, no political opinions (not that there's anything wrong with that). No public display of self-importance or self-destruction, no sharing of boring or embarrassing details.

Yet I admire good writing above anything, whether it is in a book or on a webpage. I admire good writing, I am addicted to words and this year comes with resolutions. Resolutions of self-expression, of writing this world into my pocket, of twisting realities with words untill they suit me better than the reports in The Economist.

"There is no truth" my friend said.

Then again, Chuck Berry sang "Let's twist again/like we did last summer."

Myst

2006-09-27T10:48:00.000+02:00

The House at the end of the neighbourhood stood surrounded in myst. House with the broad window frames painted in shiny white, house with the carefully tended cottage garden, neighbourhood built as a village remake of old Amsterdam.

Sitting on the big grey couch with the white cushions, three sisters were unable to distinguish whether the slowly moving particles outside the safeness of the living room were rain or bits of cloud drifting along. The bike trail disappeared into the fog at ten meter distance, the church in the village next door was nowhere to be seen. Nobody knew where the myst had come from, nobody knew how long it would last.

Don't overanalyse, one sister thought, as the other two took their bikes and vanished, on their way to school. Was it not in a movie featuring myst that a character named Ulysses got away with saying these things?

"My footsteps, somehow they lead me here."
"The first thing God created was the journey. Then came doubt, and
nostalgia."
"To the eternal sea, the beginning and the end."

a rather official institute

2006-09-22T15:40:00.000+02:00

Ten things to try out at the reception desk of a rather official International Relations Institute on a busy day with little sunshine.

Mismanage a phone transfer to the director, make him comment on a perdu l'ambassadeur de Thailande
Announce to a visitor that the directer is expecting him while the director is, in fact, in a meeting with the public relations officer
Secretly fetch Nespresso's from the machine reserved for personnel for friends that keep dropping by, your boss commenting tu fais un journée café, toi
Console and support several senior secretaries that are unsure whether they can enter into the director's office while he is in a meeting.
In between receiving phone calls, make your own private phone calls to Amsterdam, Lausanne, Vienna, Amsterdam again, Lausanne again.
Stick some of those etiquettes on those enveloppes. Try sticking them at a different angle, why not? Go crazy on the sticking.
Have an argument with your colleague receptionist. Write the human resource manager a long email about it. In between friendly help-seeking lines, hold her accountable for the messy organization of shifts and vacations.
Help the catering clean up after a coffee break of the Official Conference with Officials from Berne, some of whom unintentionally sent a junior secretary into a near nervous breakdown by not announcing their attebdance. Have the catering guy say you can pick a fruit, have a mini-croissant, too.
Find a minute to check out the kitchy paintings they put up yesterday, featuring the lake of Léman in different seasons.
Tell everyone you're fine. Ca va, ca va. You're fine.

Three weeks ago, home

2006-09-21T15:04:00.000+02:00

Three weeks ago, home, the sky an unexpected baby blue and the smell of a late summer. (zoals liedjes soms beginnen)

At the ten-people garden table, my laptop stood out against the faded wood. I sat myself down, msn-ing with my twelve-year old twin sisters. I could see one of the two, behind a twin laptop at the kitchen table inside the house behind. The other, I could hear her giggle behind me, in the office in the small separate house in the garden. We had so much fun.

They carried heavy school books and sighed over homework, the school year had only just begun and came with Latin, drawing exercises, new television programmes. Me, I was still in a different time zone. Me, my last year hadn't ended, my summer hadn't really happened, I was struggling to finish, I didn't know how.

Another Ph.D. student just stopped by my desk, saying I am finishing, I am converging there, moving his hands towards each other as if diving.

I remember homework that would be handed in the next day, done. Fun or painful or boring, but done. I remember about September, about fresh books, a new theme for my agenda and notebooks, new quotes by classmates to write down, new teachers, an empty grade card. I remember assessing the material, staring it down, setting out strategies, deciphering what would be my favourite subject this year.

An ancien professor of economic thought just introduced himself, -vous pourriez etre ma pétite fille. One of his greatest prides: Dornbusch quoted his Ph.D. thesis in an article. (Vous connaissez, Dornbusch? Vous connaissez, Tinbergen?) One of his regrets, - cette vogue mathématique, ça est arrivé dans les années soixante. Aujourd' hui, on dirait que l'histoire économique commence en 1990. He shook his head.

I bought myself a new study book today. It is called "The Artist's Way", it's written by Julia Cameron, I would have never found it without the online community of writers, poets and artists. (Thank you, fiona, keri, awfully serious). This year, I am determining my curriculum, will sit at the kitchen table with my sisters, will make homework, will be good. I am supposed to read the introduction before tomorrow.

Rigot

2006-09-20T11:40:00.000+02:00

We have a coffee machine that takes a full two minutes to manufacture deep black, remarkably addictive drab. (Made with love, an unknown individual told me once, after I complained)

We have a character called Dixit-Stiglitz (say it out loud), we have ghosts that live here when everyone has gone home. (They work on their Ph.D.'s and once in a while, they will smoke a shisha out on the steps; sigh, slowly watch the smoke spiral up, say something about econometrics).

We have a history to tell. (The place was built by the Swiss government as a temporary place for refugees after the Second World War. The refugees left and economists moved in. They have since refused to move out. Or so our trade professor will have us know.)

We have economists and some political scientists (They leave their Wall Street Journals everyhwhere, walk around with their mathematical notes and their heads full of problem-solving, they occupy fourty offices and two class rooms, scribble on the boards and talk jargon to each other.)

This is the micro-world called Rigot. (don't pronounce the t.) Mark my words because they want to finally break down this worn-out place with grey linoleum floors and dark wooden window shutters and backless comfy couches, on which you can lean against the central heating with a hot coffee in your hands in the winter and revise your notes. They want to build the Maison de la Paix.

secret for a while

2006-09-18T12:20:00.000+02:00

Do I know what I'm doing, starting a blog out of the blue?

No. I don't think so.

Let me tell you this; it's an experiment.

I started reading a few blogs not so long ago, blogs by poets and artists, by the bohémiens of this world. Turns out they would share their craft, their writing and their creativity, just like that. And their words were so useful! And it turned out I could get in on the fun and start a blog of my own! And so here it is!

It will be a learn-as-you-go, find-out, try-out blog. I'm gonna keep it secret for a while, and tell you about this when I feel more comfortable typing words away at the world.

Amazing. Do you realize what this means? Anyone can publish words and anyone can read them? Historians in the future will have to invent new techniques for history analysis, adjusting for selection bias, dealing with insane amounts of information (history will become more mathematical than economics! let's hope not!). Journalism may just loose some of it's monopolistic power over information. The personal is drawn into the public, but then again, the personal is self-censored in anticipation of public reactions.

It's all very exciting.

magical about midnight

2006-09-15T02:02:00.000+02:00

Something magical about midnight

about the hours before dawn , i always

forget, the fun of staying up

nights, working on

paper dataset presentation,

i forget till it happens, i suppose

it wouldn't be this good if urgency

did not impose, coming with baileys-coffee,

all-out music mixture, despair and

so-inspired theories. If only a

horrible impossible capitalist

thesis were due every week.

medias res

2006-09-13T15:23:00.000+02:00

Starting in medias res so to say
(this blog, and my thesis).

All tools lined up all information at ease
Let me tell you later.

October

2006-09-12T10:48:00.000+02:00

October will come with its weary ways.

This, too, shall pass.

In the mean time I will

drink die-hard

expresso's, and

retaliate

my thesis,

writing emails, not

yielding to its unforgiving stance.