topotales

I passed that math test with flying colors.  After a month on the internet looking up random math shit that every eighth grader knows, I passed.  And I signed up for my first class of the summer - Bio: Anatomy and Physiology.

I took the job at the climbing gym.  And apart from the young despot manager who enjoys making menial tasks seem monumental (”You know what you could do with these last few minutes?  You could just take this plant and move it over there, then slide the pamphlets on over”), I adore it.  I love teaching kids, and teaching them to climb is a bonus.  I’ll happily scrub floors and toddle plants from one end of your desk to the other if I get to spend the majority of my time with a group of kids, teaching them to love the sport and be safe.

Pnut and I, for the first time, have taken an extensive break from climbing ourselves.  It’s been about six months.  And we don’t really miss it too much.  Probably because we have been spending so much time getting our little plot of land into order.  Raking, planting flowers, making stone walls, and clearing firewood.  It has only rained about four times this spring.  In Brussels, we’d be happy if it only rained four times a day.  And we’ve been fishing every weekend.

Did I mention that my mom is cancer-free?  Yes, she is.  She has one fancy prosthetic boob and zero cancer.

DYFS of New Jersey has been to our home twice now, and our paperwork for foster kids is well underway.  We are thrilled and terrified in turns.

Tomorrow, we are going to Mexico for our honeymoon.  Tickets are booked, and we shall sit by the ocean and drink Margaritas and maybe learn to scuba dive.

The hardest thing about sitting down and writing something these days is that things are going well.  Not because I don’t want to share that with you, but because things are going well and I am walking on eggshells, holding my breath, waiting for the bad.  Because it’s been so long since I have been able to breathe, so long since I didn’t feel like an elephant was sitting on my chest, that I have forgotten how to talk.  Sometimes, I am afraid that I have forgotten how to be happy.  Each new breath of nothing-bad-happened-yet both exhilerates and scares me.  I wonder what’s coming next.  I had my first mammogram last week, could that be it?  Every time the phone rings, I shiver.  I wait for it to go to voicemail, so I can have those few extra breaths before I have to face something new.  And I know that this is life.  I know that the good cannot last.  And I am trying, trying to remember how to be happy, trying to remember how to breathe.

A girl so few of friends in a strange land after four years, though she has tried incredibly hard to make them, sitting at home, alone.  It is the night before a bank holiday.  She will soon lose this job (like everybody!) that she hates, but then she doesn’t know what she will do.  Her fiance has taken one of the two dogs and gone to another country to climb for a long weekend.  She has nobody to talk to and nothing to do between his calls.  So she has rented three movies of which she has already watched two, mostly.  She wishes the dog would come to her from the couch, lay warm and loving against her legs.  Mostly, she is pressing the reload icon on her computer over and over again, wishing there was somebody out there, listening, caring, maybe even wanting (just a little bit?) to tell her they are there.

What is a nervous breakdown?  It is not wanting to spend another second in your skin.  It is hating yourself for feeling that way, for laying that burden upon those around you.  It is knowing that the only way to make quiet is to remove your brain from the equation, and also knowing the only way to do that.  It is your brain in salty water, calling to you like a siren - SILENCE ME, SILENCE ME! - trying to pull you under.  Then you tie yourself to a pole so that you cannot do what everything in you screams to do, and try to weather the storm.  And you don’t know why.  It is dancing delicately on Occam’s razor, trying to find anything that makes sense and finding nothing at all.

There is no easy answer.  There is no logic.  There is only the disease, sucking at your soul, an alien in your brain.  In my case, unipolar depression, which is (as I jokingly told a friend today) like having bipolar disorder, only without any of the fun of the upswings.

Now, four months into the scary medications, something is coming back together.  My hands still quiver and shake while I search for the right words, but I can search for them!  I can see the outline of where I once stood; I just need to figure out how to write the paragraphs, then the sentences, then the words.  I was never good with punctuation, anyway.

Now I have a wedding to plan.  Yes, P and I have decided.  I don’t know why he loves me, but he does.  This disease is horrid.  It is inexplicable.  I am hard to reach, even for myself.  I don’t deserve his love.  I feel like a wretch from the gutter, a liar and a thief who has been unknowingly ushered into the dance of the faeries.  And I want do dance, I do!  I want the soft relief of his steady arms, his steady mood, his steady love.  I just hope I don’t bring occam’s razor with me.

Nobody does Indian or Canadian comedy as well as Russel Peters!

Here’s what he thinks about the Italian language…

oh, … and, sooner or later, we’re gonna hump ya!

So now somebody tell me what Indian + American + Italian kids would be called?

I know, I know… again, MIA for too long. But I have good reasons.  The nervous breakdown (number two), already anticipated, finally arrived in all its glory and tears.  This time, Efexor and a multitude of other equally scary drugs arrived as well.  People tell me they are good for me, but I have to say that I’ve had better bad trips than these drugs.  No fun at all, people.  And I remember a couple of times in the good old days when I actually ganked antidepressants off of friends while out drinking, just to have a good time.

So now I have to tell you one of the best things about living in Belgium.  I can go to a doctor, get all weirded out on anti-depressants, and he hands me a note that says I don’t have to go to work.  And then he hands me another note.  And another.  And hopefully, two weeks from now, he will hand me yet another.  Because this is some seriously nutty shit, these drugs.  Sometimes I have good days, and I think - yes, this is over, I can go back to living my life.  But about twenty minutes after the Efexor kicks in, and I’m crying hysterically into Paolo’s shoulder, unable to process any thought except - cry, cry, cry… I realize that no, I’m not ready to go back to anything.  Not work, not home, not reading, not me.  Then I take the tranquilizer that “evens it out”.  I find that I’m taking drug after drug, trying to balance myself out.  Is this how it’s supposed to work?  Is this how I’m supposed to be living?  Who lives like this, cutting a human form of water and molecule by using drug after drug, trying to make something resembling a normal person?  Is the psychiatrist an artist, giving me the tools to reshape my psyche?  Why isn’t the lump of molecules good enough on it’s own?  Take anything, give it the appropriate context, and it is art.  So was I art before this, simply out of context?  Or am I art now, mangled and woven by the context of norms that I don’t understand?

In the interim, Paolo and I went to Venice.  Previous plans to fix his car and see his family, plus give me a taste of Carnavale.  I’ll have to catch up on that trip another time.

In the interim, let me get back to something I should have done weeks ago!

…….

These excellent questions were asked by Kerri of The Blonde Merryweather:

1. What is the best vacation you’ve ever been on?  Was it great
because of the place you went, the people you went with, or the stuff
you did while you were there?

I took my favorite “vacation” when I was 20.  After a summer of classes in Madrid, I hitch-hiked from Alicante, Spain to Málaga, Spain with my best friend, El.  It was two weeks on one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world with nothing but a backpack and a bit of luck.  We cajoled fresh, salty sardines off of fishermen for free.  We smoked hash and drank wine on hidden beaches with generous strangers.  We ate the best squid I have ever tasted with white wine.  We were robbed and chased the thief across a beach.  We carried an enormous drum that I insisted I would learn how to play along the way.  We fought, we laughed, we made friends, we got brown, and finally we fell madly in love.  There are enough stories from each day of that vacation to fill my entire lifetime.  And indeed, almost every day I am reminded of some incredible moment we shared.

2. Have you ever had something that you were convinced you were never
going to be able to do, and then you managed it?  Be it mastering some
skill or keeping up motivation for some resolution.  How did you keep
up your motivation while you were working towards the goal?

It was a six-year goal to move back to Europe.  After living in Spain illegally for a couple of years running a small bed and breakfast I needed a change.  I figured I could move to the US, get an international job, and be back in Spain within a year or two.  I may, possibly, have underestimated the power of a degree in English Literature.  So I went from international company to international company in St. Louis (located in Misery, the armpit of the USA), pressuring as many people as I could, picking up as many languages as I could.  I took night classes and worked my way towards a degree in International Relations.  Finally, I got a break for a job in Belgium.  It took very little convincing to get me 1500 miles closer to Spain.  But the goal is still there - a place in the sun with friendly people, great calamari, good wine, ocean, mountains and… someplace I can write without needing a corporate day-job.  I don’t need to try and keep my motivation - it’s always there, waiting… that image of myself in a cottage by the sea surrounded by a rainbowed family, an enormous library of books, dogs, and a couple of horses in the stable.

3. If you found yourself with $1,000 that you had to spend in the next
24 hours, what would you buy?

I’ve been dreaming about having one of these tarp tents for a while.  So, that’s be first on the list.  Then, probably, a decent mountainbike (I’m totally not even qualified to know what that means) so I can think about trying a Triathlon sometime this summer.

4. If you could get back in touch with anyone from your past that
you’ve lost touch with, who would it be?  Why did you lose touch with
them to begin with?

Actually, I’m in touch with pretty much everybody I’d like to be in touch with from the past.  The El I mentioned in question number one is currently in Malawi, Africa.  We’ve stayed close despite spending very little time on the same continent and a number of potentially lethal mistakes both on her part and mine in our relationship (both when we were together, and later as friends).  But a great deal of tension has built up around that relationship over the years.  It’s a great regret of mine.  I always thought she was the great love of my life, and I messed that up.  But there’s no reason that a great love can’t continue on in different ways.  Or am I mistaken on that?  I’d love to hear what others think about that one.

5. What website do you visit most often?  Is there a guilty pleasure
website that you visit that you’d be somewhat embarrassed to admit you
enjoy?

Oh dear.  I am a total blog addict.  Currently, my favorite blog is written by schmutzie.  I suppose because she feels like a close  compatriot in the battle against crazy.  As I’ve mentioned before, I also love sweet-juniper.  I guess my guilty pleasure website would be sweet and salty, but not because I’m embarassed to read it.  Just because I’ve never lost a child… I’ve rarely even wanted to have one!  So I feel a bit like a sneaky, unwanted interloper when I’m over there.  But something in her writing touches me very deeply.  And that’s the mark of a great writer, isn’t it - somebody who can touch your soul and make you understand something completely foreign to you!

I’m feeling a bit rubbery and tendonless today.  I have that distinctly uncomfortable self-awareness that comes in the middle of a hangover as you try to replay the evening before.  You’re almost positive you made a fool of yourself somewhere along the way, but not sure exactly when or how.  Except I’m not hung over, I just do this after almost every social event.  It’s a social hangover for the emotionally unevolved extrovert.  At least I can count myself among the blessed few not suffering from real alcohol poisoning today.  Paolo is still in bed moaning for ibuprofen and juice and it’s past noon.

Two friends at our party last night each recently ended five-year relationships seemingly headed for marriage and family.  One of those friends commented that he had underestimated the importance of communication in the relationship.  That he had all of these feelings he thought he was expressing, but in the end it turned out he wasn’t expressing them in a way his partner could understand.  It seems to me that I’ve been through several important relationships that ended for the same reason.  That little communication crack turns into a deep divide.  You ignore it most of the time because you love the person and they love you and clearly the relationship is right.  But one morning you wake up and you’re lying next to somebody who might have been your soul-mate but who is now a stranger.  And things are too complicated by life and by habit to go back.  And then the divide starts nagging at you every minute of every day because you feel lonely.

What effected me strongly was the way this friend expressed himself.  It was clear that he had spent a long time thinking about what went wrong, exactly, and he was full of regret.  And I know that sorrow too well, of losing somebody that feels so perfectly yours.  Of letting go somebody so beloved that it’s more painful to keep them the wrong way than to free them the right way.

The main problem with disappearing for well over a month is that you then feel the need to come back with a BANG! To rehash all the exciting things that happened over the last few weeks. To excite your loyal audience (hi Chelsea!) with titillating observations and snarky commentary. You get all hyper about how to do it. You construct run-on sentences in your mind. You edit them. You delete them completely and come up with a new subject. You do this pretty much every day until you realize that everything you’ve been wanting to write about is utterly meaningless in comparison with the bag of tortilla chips on the coffee table and the cushy couch growing out of your ass. You compose tender and reassuring poems to your growing ass. Finally, your ass gets so big it doesn’t fit on the couch anymore and you have to get up and go to work. Dammit.

So as you can see, I have returned to work now have nothing better to do than post.

I’ll just give you the overview of the last eight-ish or so weeks. First, I got depressed. Well, actually I got depressed sometime in October. Instead of waiting for Total Meltdown this time, P found some cheap tickets and shuttled us both off to Chicago for Thanksgiving. I saw the whole family, which was really fun except my mother’s version of “hello”, which was as usual a lyrical exercise in criticism. This time it covered (primarily) my knack for losing things and my lack of common sense. Always a good time. After the US, I had one week of pretty happy. Then I crashed into Total Meltdown mode for all of December (in case Ian Curtis below didn’t clue you in). TM mode means I walk around the house bleary-eyed and crying a lot for no specific or apparent reason. P looks at me and I cry. I put my shoes on and find it incredibly sad. I comb my hair - waterworks. I come home and go straight for the couch. P hugs me, I cry. P makes me dinner, I cry. I go to bed and bawl all night. And this whole time sad-me is being watched by psycho-me. Psycho-me turns everything I do into a potential act of suicide. Drive to work- why? when it would be so much easier to drive into a tree. That would quiet things down. Then I feel this incredible bourgeois guilt: “What the fuck is wrong with me? This isn’t the 1800’s that I can inherit my uncle’s money and check myself into a sanitarium for le malaise. I’ve got this thoroughly rich life and I am being a big fucking baby about it. People are suffering all over the world and I’m blubbering about jet-setting around Europe.” Unfortunately, depression is a disease, people. And you can’t really apply logic to a brain that isn’t functioning properly. Unless that logic happens to involve ways to kill yourself.

I feel absolutely horrid writing about this. Because I find it embarrassing to be a weak, whiney baby. Because I have no less than three friends who have lost their parents or other people close to them to this disease. But I don’t want my life or what I write to be bullshit. I want to have real friends who know and love me for who I am. Who love me when I’m fucked up and depressed, and not just when I’m running around making up fun magical adventures. And if you decide you still love me, well - thank you, please leave me a comment so that I know who you are, and I love you too.

Moving on… this TM depression state lasted pretty much through New Years, which was a total effing disaster this year. Pretty much everybody we knew left the country. We didn’t really have the money to go anywhere because P’s divorce got finalized suddenly and he had to fly to Italy to sign the paperwork in front of a judge. The few friends that we do have here were doing their own traditional things (Belgians, like St. Louis people, have this annoying tendency to keep hanging out with the same people they went to highschool with… not that I’m bitter about being left out!).  I was so depressed and couch-ridden for the week P really did everything he could to get me out of the house. A colleague of his was nice enough to scrounge us up tickets to a VIP erotic party. Let me say here - not something we do. But we went to a club earlier this year out of curiosity and thought the people and the ambiance were really relaxed and interesting. Besides, it was P’s only option apart from a) staying home listening to me cry or b) knocking me on the head with an ice axe. The party was not relaxing and the people were not interesting. It was a meat festival and at some point I just gave up and started downing Vodka/redbulls.  After I was altogether too drunk I had a massive freak-out and P drove me home. The end.

I guess the freakout I had at the party was cathartic, because I came back to life sometime last week and started feeling human for the first time in months. I finally managed to detach the tumor - I mean the couch - from my ass and found that I had gained 6 kilos. That’s a lot when you’re five foot two and started out at 50 kilos.  So I started climbing again, took up Pilates (which is a real workout, unlike the “breathe, use your mind” yoga crap I hate), have done a few woodcarvings already, and …well, voilà… poorly written stream-of consciousness, but at least it’s a post, eh?

–

Feeling broken and healed all at once feels almost exactly like this perfect rendition of Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley’s version of the original Leonard Cohen song.

I spend a lot of time disparaging myself (to myself) about almost everything I say and do,  wishing I were a more regulated and exact person- stricter about how my environment should be, how to do things properly, and where to draw the lines on socially acceptable behavior.  But this self-criticism comes to a halt when I travel.  Then, it’s easy to remember why it pays to be flexible in your behavior but pure in your basic concept of self - to be able to take your understanding of acceptable behavior and stretch and broaden it without breaking personal ethics: you see more, you learn more, you understand more.

What does it take to make that break, to allow that internal flexibility?  How does a person learn where to draw the line between what they will and will not allow themselves to experience?  I can come up with countless examples to mull over, but Dooce comes readily to mind- somebody who lived in a strict religious community only to wake up one morning and feel that everything wrong in their life is just everything they have ever been taught- and no longer believe!  We all have those uncomfortable wake-up call moments (Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy stuff), but perhaps the stronger they are, the more difficult it becomes later to construct a solid reality around yourself.  The advantages are numerous: empathy, social flexibility, ability to help others find clarity of what they truly believe/want (because you’re always questioning, you know what questions are critical), and/or rebuild in the aftermath of self-discovery (it’s always easier to help somebody else than yourself).  The disadvantages are: a total instability of ego because you lack solid barriers and protection from outside assault, and a constant nagging tug-o-war between your tradition and your own intentions.

These are all things I was thinking and writing about during my stay in Athens.

If you’ve already been to Athens before the Olympics but not since, I highly suggest that you change all of your previous estimations of the city.  Personally, I don’t know what it looked like before the Olympics face lift but I do know that my experience of the city did not match the dubious descriptions I got from folks who had not been there in a while.  I thought Athens was a gloriously beautiful city.  The Metro, for one, is clean, cheap to ride (at 80 cents for a one-hour pass) and covers this broad, sprawling city to its outskirts.  Several stops had very modern-looking widescreen video that, had it been installed in another big city such as Brussels, would already be completely trashed.  The stop with the Acropolis is even conveniently marked with a huge picture of the Acropolis - in case you weren’t sure where to hop off.

The Acropolis itself is hugely interesting, and not just something to tick off a tourism checklist.  It is totally worth the crowds that you will inevitably elbow through to see each interesting part.  Personally, I enjoyed the almost continuous stream of tour guides.  You can walk from group to group and get educated on what you’re seeing without actually paying for your own guide. If you speak multiple languages you can stroll from group to group with an extra level of stealth.  I went totally James Bond and put my headphones on as well.  What was weird- a lot of people completely missed the most interesting bits which are actually on the slopes of the Acropolis and not at the top where all the marble buildings are.

I was surprised to have the caves of Pan, Zeus and Apollo plus the sanctuary of Aphrodite to myself.  Upon seeing the temple of the Goddess of Love I was of course inspired to make an offering… and I wasn’t the first!  I won’t tell you which gift was mine, as I already feel Her breathing down my neck for showing you pictures of Her lair…I mean home.

Dare I say, better than the Acropolis itself was the graffiti art in the streets around it.  Athens has some of the most beautiful graffiti art I have ever seen.  What I find fascinating is the feeling of soft creativity so much of it has.  It ranges from disturbing to playful, and in some cases almost childish,

to strange and thoughtful.

I wonder what this says about the artists here who make the streets their canvas versus the hardened, beaten quality that a lot of American graffiti art possesses.  What are the motivators for these artists to pick up their spraypaint cans and break the law, and where does the source for what they need to express deviate between Detroit and Athens?

Some final observations and thoughts on Athens:

-My Indian roots are of course always on the lookout for a rip-off or a good deal.  Greeks are famous for their ability to gently (and not-so-gently) coax Euros from the pockets of visitors.  But overall I had the feeling that the “ripping off” of the tourists was being done very tongue-in-cheek.  Like naughty kids just waiting to get called out and caught.

- The word ONLY or JUST in Greek is MONO.  I had an entire conversation in pidgin Greek, which was rather alarming both for a certain waiter and for me since I don’t actually speak any Greek.  But he very kindly pointed out the if I did not want salad (apparently, SALAD is how you say SALAD in Greek), one must indicate by saying MONO MOUSSAKA.  This all made sense once I translated to English, of course.  After that, MONO VINO came pretty easy… and though I might have been saying ONLY YO MAMA for all I know, I must have said it nicely because the wine appeared.

- Stray cats and dogs were in abundance around the city, but they all looked lazy bordering comatose, and I didn’t see any skinny animals.  Life on the streets can’t be all that hard, living off of leftover moussaka, lamb bones and pita, then padding up to the Acropolis to sun yourself at the feet of the gods.

-Stray sparrows, on the other hand, are vicious thieves and should be kept under constant observation if in your immediate vicinity.

-Oh… and you might want to protect your nuts.

highway lights scroll by
spread wide open like blistering buds
behind the sockets of eyes: the scalpel
cry: what is dry is barren

blink the smoke of these sleepless dreams away
blink your gaseous instrument and heroic veins away
blink your virtue and your blame away

and all other passing static

it is gone
it is all gone
it is all gone

(Lisa Gerrard)

Some thoughts I had last night at TGI Fridays in Athens, Greece.  (Yes, I am slightly ashamed of myself.)  I’ll update on my awesome day today once I have pictures uploaded!

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Sitting in a TGI Friday’s in Athens, Greece.  This is not as strange as McDonalds in Mumbai (Bombay), but I am still finding it fairly surreal.  And annoying.  That people think this stuff is great.  That they … That they  I take it all back.  I think I’m jealous.  That other countries and cultures can take the worst of US consumerism and treat it properly like what it is, not warp it out of proportion.  Here, it remains as an interesting bit of AmeriKana - a treat.  I suppose there was a day when it wa like this in the US, but it is long gone.  Now we have to have the biggest and the most before we’re (n)ever satisfied.  Quantity over quality.  An ass-backwards approach.  Two major differences (TGI Greekies):  1.  Everyone smoking everywhere  (theme?)  2.  Soccerballs where there would be baseballs.

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Like other places I love in the Mediterranean, people here seem to enjoy being out and about, talking in a loud, smokey bar, making merry without being on a schedule - letting the night take them where it may.  Or is is it that I cannot see more subtle signals between parties?

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Dad would be pleased to see Newcastle Brown and Sam Adams in the bar fridge.

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The women here feel happier, more sure of themselves, stronger emotionally than women I’ve seen elsewhere.  They feel warm but balanced.  Not insecure enough to need gaudy baubles like the French or Italians, but not cold and unfriendly like the Northerners nor fake like the Americans.

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Female volleyball players have the best asses ever.  Or is it the shorts?  Doesn’t matter, I like volleyball.  And why don’t they show women’s volleyball more often, anyway?

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Strange to think of Greek Orthodoxy, traditional religious life, old women in black nylon.  Then remember that this is the country that had had gay rights BC.

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I keep remembering two things: 1. The stories my violinist friend told me about “Her Greek”, most of which revolved around his small penis being convenient for buttsex.  2.  My Big Fat Greek Wedding… “What do you mean, you don’t eat no MEAT!? …  … It’s okay, I make you lamb”.