Scatterbrainy

when things come close enough to them they twist and turn like tornados and disappear into them.

Last week, I passed by Taco Bar, with the slogan "A little piece of Mexico".
I should have started twisting and turning right there and then,
but instead I found myself step into the bar and order.
Out of all the exotic dishes with names designed to attract, I chose Chicken Hombre without further ado.

The menu showed the tasty ingredients, but it turned out dry and disappointing.

What seemed like a good idea, in reality left a strange taste in my mouth.

Was it bitterness? Was it disguised déjà vu?

Now everything is spinning and I better stop before I fall into that hole.

This is why it is so hard.

For crowded streets, the noise of morning traffick and the smell of freshly made cappuccino.

Or for wide open fields of savannah, the occasional lion and Kilimanjaro without its cap of snow.

For catching my breath when looking out upon Macchu Picchu and trying to imagine it as it was.

But mostly I long for that point in time when I know I have found what I was longing for.

It is so easy to let the search become the engine, but where does that lead you?

If looking for the treasure is the whole point, you'll be looking your entire life.

And never ever find whatever it is that will make all the difference.

No matter if it's the savannah, a boardroom or a man in an Italian suit sipping cappuccino on piazza del Duomo.

Dimmi perchè 
hai vento tra le dita e non ti alzi 
guardi passare i giorni e non ci rientri mai 
Lascio una luce accesa 
lì ti scalderai.

But there are also those crucial instants of nihil, nada, of absolutely nothing.

Leaving you wondering if it was always nothing and you just conjured it all.

Perhaps because you needed a castle, so you build it in the air.

How do you transcend old ways of being and create new ones? Can you?

Something dangerous turns mundane, what was once intense becomes tepid and a little too diluted.

Is either/or sometimes better, easier?

Craving the cake, tasting it, having it, spitting it out and trying to eat it again..does that ever work?

And if you want to make it work, does that mean you are weak?

Or do I mistake pride for strength again?

Not everything that comes back is the same.

The old metaphors are tinted with bitterness, but they still echo in my mind.

After all, words are weapons that continue to cut long after the sound is gone.

And old wounds must be covered by new smiles, not the memory of past ones.

There are those who forgive and forget,

go on with their lives happily, unbothered and untouched by past failures.

Me, I'm a dweller.

Dwellers obsess. They refuse to move on, obstinately remaining where they are.

Despite all their better judgment. Comme ca.

I feel tempted to say I am playing with fire

But fire is actively burning, red, hot and with a big warning side, albeit metaphorical.

I seek out the ardouring ashes and blow new life into them.

I don't play with fire, I make fire.

I am the fire. Or is it you?

No amount of water could put it out. It insists on its being.

We were here once, is that true?

We shared our insides and then we shared a mistake.

Immediately erasing all those rights with one wrong.

Two wrongs don't make a right, they make an end.

But,

Maybe the end is the beginning.

We are here, is it not true?

Always here in this space I created for us, this bubble that I imagined.

Reality has nothing to do with it. Why should it?

I see your silhouette and I reach out to touch it.

There's no scent, only skin.

No illusion, only what was always there.

Imperfect humanity.

Strong and solid on the outside, but fragile at the core.

Sitting on my window sill I find myself having thoughts I wouldn't in any other place

Saturday mornings in the sunshine, or late at night when all is still.

It is the kind of thoughts I've long buried, repressed or just succeeded in forgetting.

But today I had a thought. No, I had many..

I replayed parts of my life over a cup of coffee. Spoke to myself as if I was speaking to him again.

I did not change the story...it is engraved in me as it must be in him.

I did not change the meaning. What does that mean?

And I understood, perhaps, how powerful the feeling of importance is.

To be seen when others are rejected, to be heard when others are discarded for idiots

And to be accepted when all is complication, difficulty..why does nothing matter as much as that?

There's plenty of fish in the sea but I must be the only one you want to catch.

 

One foot in front of the other,

that's how life is made.

We keep on walking, always continuing forward, always .

Passing places, people;

changing plans, intentions, motivation.

Every big step starts with a small shift of balance,

pick it up put it down...

the left foot in front of the right, and then the other

And before  you know it you're looking for something you didn't know you wanted to find.

Other times you find things you did not think you were looking for.

What's the difference anyways?

Lately, German words come to me subconsciously in a weird, irrevocable manner.
Wanderlust, Vorhandensein, Weltschmerz.
Perhaps it is because of the general feeling that Vonnegut described;
"How nice- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."

I do not want to get all the credit and none of the realness.
But I see the impossibility of being fully alive everywhere around me.
No time, no space, no thoughts.
No desire to feel, to be confused or lost in contemplation.
I want to stay lost in contemplation as long as possible.
I want to see the skin of light.


Some people have mastered the art of seeing beyond, of transcending between worlds
between dreams, thoughts and different realities.
Jeanette Winterson, Joanne Harrison, Gustav Klimt, Salvador Dalí.
They share the wish for something that is not ordinary, for what cannot be believed- but is there.

And I wish, sometimes, that I could wander in their worlds.
Where everything is slightly flawed but magnificently beautiful.
And most of all, where everything is heavy, raw and true.

Weltschmerz:
a mood of sentimental sadness based on the understanding
that the physical reality will never live up to the demands of the utopian mind.

A heavy week, but very rewarding.

Today's conference on economic growth and development was so interesting and I had the opportunity to meet committed politicians and local government functionaries with key positions in business and trade.

But, because of all these engagements, I haven't had a chance to enjoy my newly furnished apartment during this whole week. I just received "I is another" by James Geary and will enjoy it in my lovely living-room with a glass of rosé. TGIF :)

     



Friday quality.

It seems the destiny of humans, this continued struggle between dark and light

fear and courage, defeat and victory.

Is it true that darkness hesitates less to enter than light?

Why is it so much easier to succumb to fear than to rise up to courage?

(metaphors creeped in, can you detect them?)

Do we really welcome the darkness, favoring it over light?

It is always easier to believe an insult than a compliment, but what does that tell us?

Perhaps it is not a sign of extreme modesty, but mere laziness.

Indifference, bordering on depression requires next to nothing,

while courage, strenght and happiness need a lot of work.

Can we simply not be bothered?

But what about the burden that keeps our lives true?

What about the unbearable lightness of being, the importance I give to difficulty

and the impossibility of accepting anything that comes easy?

A crash-course in deconstruction punctures any alleged dialectic between dark and light.

Maybe it is all nonsense.

Soon on a wall near me!