My birthday

Let’s see what I wrote last year…ok…

Well, here it comes again:

Now that I am 26 and that today was just another nail in the coffin, let’s write out a few guidelines for the coming year. But first, let’s us see what good resolutions I kept:

-I completed my dental reconstruction.

-Yes, I do shave my legs more often (no more lazy hairy yeti), and I even take care of my hair (straighteners, curlers, shower cap).

-I’ve not produced a lot of fiction, but a good deal of academic writing, as well as a good first-try painting.

-I do get along with my colleagues and pupils this year and am looking forward to pursue my career.

-I am doing that translation/interpreting course.

Other things that happened to me:

-I’ve explored Scotland a little bit more.

-I’ve booked a trip to Norway.

-I’ve improved my Spanish.

-I’ve made new friends and kept old ones.

-I’ve got a clear picture of what I want to achieve artistically, academically and professionally and how to reach it.

-I’ve discovered a lot artistically, in the realm of cinema and music. Not as much as I wanted, but, the hell with it…

The black stains that cannot be washed off:

-I’m still very much anorexic and my weight has plummeted lately. I’ve taken to something like five coffees a day and often do 48 -hours days.

-I’m not happy where I am and it makes me mad with frustration + I’m fretting out about the incertainty of my future job/country/salary/language.

-I will not be happy until I achieve what I want to achieve and get proper recognition for it (which I will resent, of course, but I’ll still be better).

My guidelines for next year:

-Try to cope with the frustration by creating, without starving myself, though it seems impossible to do that alone.

-Go on learning and producing, it can only better my prospects for the future.

-Keep in touch with people I like AND who are good to me.

-Try to enjoy life without thinking I was born to do a special thing in Norway, or meet a special person, because it’s not coming and my not knowing what it is just make me feel frustrated (yet, the feeling is there).

Let’s see how it goes and hope I’ll be there next year.

 

A little piece of humankind

Last Wednesday, during the Einsturzende Neubauten concert, came to me a revelation about children and the motherhood which I may, or may not, experience.
I realised I was yearning to have, not a baby, but someone already formed, already experienced-marked, and our relationship would grow on that - maybe - crumbly ground, but which would suit me perfectly.
Why then bring something to the world, if I only place importance in what has been before me, away from me without knowing me, away from my influence?
So I am and so I shall remain. I own the so un-western opinion that only adults count, those who are already formed, and not of the vulgus pecus, no, sir; la crème, only.
Why did these ideas come during the concert, I have no idea.
It was a great moment of representation, spectators watching artists representing, and accepting their roles perfectly.
Where does the ability lie to communicate words written in several languages and interspersed with screams? What is the difference between music and noise? Maybe a little bit of humanity, and that is what made me think about the creation of a small piece of humankind that awaits the moulding of my hands to grow to its full potential…
Of course, you have seen the lie, the irony. I have still not had the opportunity to influence someone, and I do not believe that I am able to create something fully malleable. I believe that everyone is born with a very special sense of individuality that is almost to amend for fear of uneasiness, to restrain for fear of suicide.
I do not think I’m powerful enough to take on the responsibility for creating someone so different from me that I could love them, or so identical that it could not move forward.
In fact, my interest lies the notion that someone has been able to live so many years without knowing me and the fact that I would become part of their psyche as much as they are part of mine is simply stunning. This makes me think of fate, bringing me slowly towards something which I call “home”.
And then I die.
I was toying with that thought yesterday afternoon, my eyes fixed on the cobblestones of Gordon Street, my head pounding with a migraine so strong even a glass of Kro couldn’t beat it.

I thought about my depressions, the movements of life, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, and every time I thought I could say, "Okay, I will stop here, this is the last time that personality opens its eyes. " And I continued to survive, of course, and I have opened my eyes on a lot of beautiful things.
Yesterday I thought about the moment of my death, and that I will see it come, in the end, that I will be “bien vieille à la chandelle“, and that I will recognise this moment as the last one and that the end is imminent.
On that particular moment, will I remember everything that has happened to me? Will I carry the weight of my life after me? Life is long (relatively). Even if once the obstacles are overcome and the difficulties long gone by, every little memory counts, for it has been a moment of life, a movement towards the end.
The truth is that I should stop lying. I year for peace. But that stability once achieved, I know that I will not recognise it as the ultimate goal, as my own good even if not the highest I can reach, and I will want variety, everything and its opposite, once more.

Across the Looking Glass

This evening, I have taken in the full berth of my narcissistic personality.

Why do I feel such a strong need to love and be loved?

Why can’t I find my acts validated if I don’t come across, at one point, the glance of another being?

This is one of my themes in La Tombe; I’m trying to make Douce-Amère escape from this attitude. Glances and stares – re-writing of fantasies that come to overlap reality.

I shall manage to cross the looking-class.

From now on...

Now that I am 25 and that yesterday turned out to be my best birthday ever, let's write out a few guidelines for the rest of my life (or at least until I turn 26).

-On the topic of health and personal care:

-I will shave more often (doh!)

-I will always try to have matching underwear AND matching fingers and toenails polish

-I will complete my dental reconstruction

-I will try to put on weight and eat for pleasure. Hopefully I'll get my big boobs back (watch out for competition, Leigh-Anne!)

-On the topic of career and literary production:

-I will write as soon as I get inspiration, and do not allow myself to lose wonderful ideas because I'm too lazy to pick up a pen

-I will complete a diploma in translation through evening classes (NB ask for a loan at the Co-Op...again)

-I will try to get along with my colleagues and pupils even if most of the time I only want to Xerox their head

-On the topic of relationships:

-I will be me, dress as I want, open my big mouth when it has to be open and make new friends (oh...and take them as they come)

-On the topic of MEN:

-Stop going out with girls: they like something that makes me happy...difference

-When the rest of the resolutions are well on their way (by September, probably), FIND A NICE BOYFRIEND:

-As usual, let fate guide me. One day, he'll just happen to be here in front of me...

-...but PLEASE let him:

-have an office job (steady money + suit)

-have a tiring office job (want a massage with your bubble bath, honey?)

-have no workplace canteen (you must be starving. More cheese cream on your tagliatelles, love?)

-love flirting, tickling, cuddling, leashes and blow jobs

-accept me for the artyholic that I am and have a time-consuming passion himself

-accept my difficult past and enjoy my open-mindedness towards the future

-have love handles (nobody's perfect)

Rendez-vous in one year! See what happens.

A good raspberry to quench my thirst

 

I am drinking a good beer in the De Klompf. The omnipresent music is not Depeche Mode this time, but rather one of those heavy-glam bands straight from the 80s, like Dokken or something. I am alone, so I'm writing on an old scrap of paper I found in the recesses of my bag.

I'm thinking about all the beers I could have drunk in pubs all around the world, as well as all the good novels I could have written if I only moved my ass a little (eheh, my narration would be as cut as the booze).

When I was writing the last words of my master's thesis, this is what I did; except that I went to the Deux Freres, this no-man's-land of a salsa bar.

Next time, instead of spending money on food, I'll take a few sheets and will come here to create or re-write. At this time of day the bar is empty and I can think clearly. As Henry and I found out last time, once you're inside, a rickety French pub is no different from any rickety pub in any other country. You can find yourself there, while travelling at the single cost of a little glass of some delayed beer.

I'm back from Cagnes, where Nicolas and I had an in-depth talk and decided to go on seeing each other even if for nine months we'll not be living in the same country. After all, it's worth it, isn't it?

I'm asking, I do not know...I still can't believe I woke up after having taken my pills last Sunday, and then fade out...I'm back – after all.

The mirror in front of me is reflecting the face of this reporter in Haifa. The world is exploding and all I'm thinking about is Scandinavia, my books also, going fishing, that someone is waiting for me somewhere, and that this someone is me, or Heathcliff. Nelly, I am Heathcliff. I am Him who is strong, who travels through mountain, river and wood, I am Him who is cold, I am Him when he lies on the grass and closes his eyes (Is he sleeping? Has the bear stole him from me?), I am Him who returns with his hides and catches. I am Her who opens the door and the fire crackles.

I had a weird waking dream today. I remembered the tractor we saw in Tourrettes last Saturday and how much I would love driving a tractor. I would be heard for quite far away, with the dingy noisy cart behind, the fox tail hanging from the mirror and little father Culto barking « Too Old, Too Cold » in the necro-sounding amplifier. Alright! I throw my beer can through the window but forget to open it.

The girl with the bandage over the left eye; because of the bouncing beer can. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I'm somehow witless, a little Asperger (well, we shall have it confirmed in Scotland).

Instead of that, I gulp down my beer and think about that shitty poem I wrote some other night about I cannot remember what. It's no better, it's only going to move elsewhere, and maybe shift to another language.

Good resolves for Scotland: go fishing, go hiking, broaden even more my musical tastes, get better, write La Tombe du Pasteur.

Woman at work...to be Him.

Church of Imagination

Oh no, that old feeling again...like I'm an oyster clinging hard to its dreary piece of rock, slapped in the face by the hard salty tide of all the bad daily events.
Too bad... I'm getting melancholy.
Too bad...I'm getting thinner; I harden myself against that future I did not call for, never called for, already regret.
My handwriting's getting smaller; familiar words escape my reach. Wordless: bodiless.
Still a few more years of death-like boisterous life, and I'll tear open my ribs, rip apart this fleshy jail and take my flight to find passage, to this other/real world of shapes, colours and sense...
I take a deep breath and go on sipping my coffee, in the solitary confine of my bed, in the wee hours of this sleepless night. Unhonourable fate! I'm lucky enough to have an intellectual freedom, lucky enough. But there's the devil to pay, they say. My tribute to the Black Man shall be mighty dear, for I live, breathe, feel, comprehend more than the average man. My words are harsher, my meaning higher, my humour wittier; yet my despondencies more...bleak.
I should lay the foundation of a new church: the church of introspection, self-reading, self-analyzing, self-knowing.
How come we seem to have forgotten this centuries-old activity?The world goes all awry with immediate actions, unthought shows of power, false values, broken mirrors.
We are everybody, and we suffer deeply, so deeply that we have cut all roads to the heart, blocked every sentimental bodily highway in order not to feel the pain anymore and, above all, the guilt and shame we brought upon ourselves by the building up of misruling societies abiding by unnatural creeds.
"Long live the state of Nature!", say I with my civilized words, than roll on the side, gnash my teeth, and die of shame.

Exploding bubbles

But I grew up without having lived anything, and my childhood and my little protective bubble are now broken forever. What am I to do? I never loved to live and cannot make me live. I feel so many things at the same time and my imagination and my memory are so developed that I am happy being only a simple witness of things. I should have studied sociology or ethnology [it is not too late]. I am fascinated by rites, by the sacralisation of objects, of gestures or words. Of human meaning over natural actions. It is as interesting as instinctive, animal gestures, inthe middle of a rigid and well-polished social interaction.

Iconoclast

C'est étrange, mais je comptais vraiment ne rien écrire ce soir. Curieusement, je me suis sentie un peu plus mal physiquement mais un peu mieux moralement.
J'ai enlevé toute représentation anthropomorphique de ma chambre (allez, zou, les posters!) et je dois avouer que j'ai été beaucoup plus concentrée que d'habitude. Autrement dit, je n'ai pas parlé aux murs de toute la soirée.