mr. berlioz

Ever since I've moved to live on the other side of the tram tracks, paranoia has been seeping in - what if I get run over, what if my head gets cut off, like Mr. Berlioz'...?

hunter (gatherer?)

After careful consideration and facing the facts I can testify that the whole essence of my being can pretty much be summed up by the following:

I (can) fuck your brains out - and that, not in a good way...

st.petersburg

I waited four years and you delivered. Your own way, a different way.

I took you in and held you. I slept. And slept and slept. In a room with shabby windows, where the frames, for the most part, performed as windows purely on their own free will.

And then there were makeshift windows that dotted the outer walls. People had craved and carved for light. There were doors that used to be back entrances, now front entrances. Courtyards beyond courtyards that can take you from one end of the block right through to the other. Beyond and beyond. Endlessly, it seemed.

The wind swept and the skies were iron-colored and heavy. It was cold and dark, but somehow it felt warm underneath. There were churches. People inside, coming and going. They all knew the routine - which crucifixes to kiss, which altars to bow at, which candle-stand for the living and which ones for the dead. Sacred water in the corner. Just drink.

I did.

commission.crimes.brussels.spring

It had been raining 24 hours straight, I was walking up the street and felt sorry for my shoes.

The wind made the rain fall vertical so that the drops were splashing on my eyeballs, blurring my vision. I blinked, my eyelids forming human windshield wipers.

There was a tiny black bird on the railing singing it’s little heart out in the jam of 5pm traffic.
Rue de la Loi.

The spring was pouring in.

impossible is nothing

Impossible is nothing.

We start out like that. That impossible is nothing. You get sent to kindergarden and then you get sent to school and the uni, and you simply know that impossible is nothing.

And then life kicks in, and sometimes you know that not all is possible. That there are disappointments and broken hearts and that your net salary is nowhere near of what you had in mind...

Not all is lost on life’s petty details- not all if you still find it in you to know that at times impossible is nothing. No really!!!

you know what?

You know what? ... Whatever!...

liirum-laarum

The thing is that... if you go for lunch and agree on just one beer and give in to persuasions of an another one you'll simply end up drunk at work at 3pm...

typical situation

It had been a typical day of grand thoughts and insecure thoughts, dreams and decisions.

I’d been very very late for work. I’d been worried about kitchen design and worried about the choice of tiles for the bathroom. And of keeping things together.

I’d been multitasking by making it to the pub, collecting a Xmas present from one end of town to watching a neurotic Woody Allen movie with you on your über and beyond entertainment system in the other end of town.

It’d been cold. As I left, you headed for the park. I measured the distance – 5 minutes.

At 11:30 pm I sat in the car at a car wash watching water turn into ice on my windshield. 7 minutes fit a phone call and a more than slightly worrisome thought of Hillary Clinton failing Iowa...

It's a typical situation
In these typical times
Too many choices, yeah
It’s a typical situation
In these typical times
Too many choices.
(Dave Matthews Band)

rites of passage

We’re the kind that come together on a graveyard. From different corners of the country like little magnets we get pulled - to congregate and stand by the grave-side of the ones that do the pulling. Those that had been and are now gone. Those that define, and those that went so long ago that there’s no-one left to remember. Someone in their time that had to leave in their time. On my family plot - I bring flowers and I bring candles and I walk across and on top and all over their graves and... do they even know..., much less about me?

We discuss funeral arrangements, and who wants to be and rest where and how we want to be disposed of. It’s morbid, so we joke to make it easier.

And then we take a drive back and we feel whole. We get take-out coffee that so appropriately comes in Xmas-red cups, and probably feel the closest we’ve felt in a long while. With my sister at the wheel and no longer my dad. Mom fussing with snacks and soft drinks. We rise questions and make family council decisions. A rites of passage for the best family in the world.

- I love you -

builders union

How do you construct a person. How to build character. Where would you start. Which layers would get laid first. What is the foundation. Is it a pyramid. Or is it a block of flats? Or a semi-detached? What abilities should tower?

What makes it solid. Is it a brick of belief, or brick of trust or the brick of endless love.

What if one day, after years of careful(?) labor you sit back and realize that nothing is the way it should be. That the foundation is the ceiling, and the ceiling is the wall. The floors are tilted. The electricity of hope and desire and joy gone haywire - power's out.

What do you do. Where do you start the reconstruction of putting things back together? How do you help. What goes first.
What to do with the fucking carpet that keeps sliding off the floor...?

suspended in-between a wurlitzer and a rhodes

I finally admit defeat. Allright. Allright. I emptied out my car and lifted out my skates. I'd so hoped that I'd still have another go.
Winter you bitch!

Items fished out my boot:

Empty plastic bags - 10
Plastic bags full of weird stuff/junk - 5
Bag full of CDs - 1
Empty windshield washer fluid containers 5L - 2
Full windshield washer fluid container 5L - 1
Sleeping bag - 1
Shoes - 4 pairs
Cycling shoes - 1 pair
Slippers - 1 pair
Rollerblades - 1 pair
Helmet - 1
Sports vest - 1
Sports gloves - 1 pair
Band-aid (duct)tape for taping feet for roller blading - 4 rolls (2 wide, 2 narrow)
Screwdriver - 1 normal, 2 for skates
Dirty sports socks - 2 pairs
Strap-on water bottle - 1
Big empty carton box - 1
Backpack - 1
Empty Coke and water bottles - 20
Old Newsweek/Time magazines - 10

... something else, I'm sure I forgot.

fishing in the rivers of light

I think new heights have been reached if one can write memos of meetings that one has not attended. Particular horizons were broadened at work today - collectively.

we were

See, I'm stuck. The kind of stuck that it really doesn't matter whether I turn left or I turn right, I'm stuck, was stuck and will be beyond stuck - no matter what. Forgive me.


"Мы разбегаемся по делам
Земля разбивается по полам
Сотри меня, смотри в меня
Останься
Прости меня за слабость
И за то, что я так странно
и отчаянно люблю..."
(z)

riga goodbye!

As my time neared the end, Riga presented itself in top form from every possible angle. She laid out a panorama bathed in hazy summer glow that I find hard to resist. And then she presented people sans the barriers. And I think that half way through, when I’d found my appreciation, she really truly liked me back.

I moved into a new office and I moved out of the apartment. I was constantly cleaning. I worked late nights to finish something that hadn’t really even started - to close another door.

And I didn’t really feel anything. Yet. After too many days and nights and months alone. And countless hours spent driving back and forth - 55.000 kilometers too much. Too many stops at lonely Statoil stations. Too many potholes and traffic jams, weird customs and concepts that would simply surprise.

CDs and shoes and books and clothes piling up in my car, 50 empty water bottles and 15 empty coffee cups seconded by something always displaced, missing or lost for good...
All of this will always remember me of her – my sweet and wonderful Riga.

a number of new highs for today

+32C outside and sunny
25 K of rollerblading
5 K of running
not a single drop of alcohol in about 2 weeks
number of car crashes seen - 4
number of food items bought and not eaten – 10

number of times thought and talked about sex in any of it's forms - 75
number of times talked about death - 15
number of times thought that I must be losing it – 100

there's something exciting about leaving everything behind

It was supposed to be a grand day, the grandest. Carefully planned for months ahead, from across the Atlantic. Yet we were fighting. As always.

It started when we got lost. We had printed out two sets of instructions. There was a heap of papers in your lap that kept taking us around and around.

With ample time supply we waited around a lot, just sitting, never really managing to get close again.

Everything seemed orange that day, even the sun, and the dust and the beer bottles that I bought in some little town.

I’ll always remember how there were flashes of light that were dancing around from one end of the sky to the other. Silently. Rolling, illuminating the skyline and the simmering mountain air.

The landscape changed from red rocky to flat to big boulder rocky. Secure in our borrowed car we climbed up and down the road, crossing ridges and mountain passes of sharp turns and flash flood warning signs.

The flashes were above and below. There was multitude of colours in the warm damp, pitch black summer night.

We climbed. I think you were asleep, I don’t really remember.

one of the wonders

You know, on the outside I might seem nice.
Say nice things and smile at you.
I could be civilized and look smart.

But on the inside – sometimes - there’s a monster.

Just a little unsteady, cynical and bitter.
Who looks past and through principles.
Who never reaches one’s personal best.
The one that says one thing and does the other…
I'm sorry!

they say I must be one of the wonders
of god's own creation
and as far as they see they can offer
no explanation
n.merchant

Kyiv-Simferopol-Sevastopol

I’m not quite ready to let go of the week spent in the Ukraine. Because for once. Over a period of endless eternity I was happy and (care)free. I held your hand and popped my beer at 11:55 am.

Holidays.
There’s something about holidays. There’s escape and an upward drift of a sort instead of drowning with no escape. Yes, but I want to escape with you!

Like we did escape in the dark churches of a thousand flickering candles, and of underground caves preserving mummies of sacred religious people, revolution and defiance of ordinary people. An old train to Crimea overnight.

You harbor tenderness and care. I’ve never been cared for like this in my life. Stepping from winter to spring and taking a step back in time, in all those Lada cars and Volgas and old trolley buses, we covered the distances of your native land. You told me of war and heroes and ships that were sunk. You told me of your roots and family. You showed me blood and history.

We had bitter cold, and the snow falling silently on Kyiv, its’ countless bars and live music, strangers that became friends. Your eyes and your passion and your breath and most of all – your smile. I’ll always remember your smile.

I think we stepped out of time.

take both pills

I’m a firm believer in the power of duct tape, but there are things in life that cannot be taped back together no matter how well one has mastered the tape thing .

London - the city of silver linings has the power of slapping its’ own colorful piece of tape on me. Each and every time. Covering up and pulling on all that needs holding together.


So I am. Together.

I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking so hard just lately that sometimes I find myself driving on a street I wasn’t even intending on driving on, or climbing the stairs to walk right past my apartment. Thinking.

time takes too much time

There is a tiny cornfield tucked away near some obscure village on the road to Riga that, every time I see it, takes my breath away.

I used to live in the middle of rolling hills and green cornfields that were dotted with Amish silos and white wooden churches with white picket fences around them.

We had boat houses, line dancing, Olive Garden and Confederate flags in driveways. We had York mall.

We had boys and girls. And we had me falling in love, and probably being the happiest I've ever been in my life in the middle of all them beautiful cornfields...