Friends and the City

I recently heard a joke: "The criterion of a true friendship: When you invite him/her over, you don't tidy up your apartment". I am a neat freak, so friend or foe would rarely see my apartment messy. Yesterday I went half way across the city to a flower market to get small egg-yolk yellow roses, - so I could complete the atmosphere of feminine romance in my room.

They say, there is a piece of joke in every joke. If I read the friendship criterion as a metaphor, it says that you don't have to tidy up your feelings before you let a true friend in. That definition would limit the number of my friends to one: Andrea. He is the only person I can tell anything to, including "I am not in love with you". He is the only person who makes me feel that secure. He is the only person that allows me to be both myself and not myself.

Today I was talking to Kate, - if one calls monologue a conversation. How do I always end up listening to other people's monologues? And it's not like people have something important or valuable to say, - they just talk and talk and talk. Normally I am the sweet girl listening, laughing and smiling, - no matter what kind of innocent crap they tell me. But today, for once, I would like to be a bitch. Today she crossed the limit of my tolerance. For two hours, not stop, she went on talking about all the men that ever found her interesting . In every word and in every occasion she saw a further proof of her irresistible charm. She could have gone forever if I didn't stop her, saying I have another call. Did she even ask how I was doing? Nope. How lonely and depressed I have felt for the last couple of month? Nope. She just went on raising her self-esteem, hurting me with every word she said. I wasn't jealous... She just made me feel even more lonely, both with her stories and with her lack of care for me. She was so involved in her self-promotion speech that she couldn't even care if I replied anything.

Was it my fault? Should I have just honestly said: I am sorry, I am in no condition to listen to this now. I am happy that you are having a good time, but I don't care who you sleep with and who you have been out with last night. Did you ever notice that all our "conversations" are always about your self-esteem, and you telling me how much everyone loves you, except for that selfish Italian bastard?

Is that friendship if I cannot tell her what I really feel?

Or am I missing the point? Is she trying to teach me something? Should I also master this art of mental masturbation? Tell everyone about all the people that were dying to get my attention, starting with the embassy boy who wrote me very touching anonymous cards. ...Oh, and then that guy, who kept on telling me every day how beautiful I was... and then he got so jealous over that handsome boy who tried to get my number that night, all night, but got into a fight with that other guy who kissed my hand... oh, and that reminds me of that evening when I was as usual the center of attention and... I am so amazing, - I can hardly believe it myself! If you are not in love with me now, you are simply in denial!

Picture Sources: Kissi by Lampeduza

Silent tears of a stupid heart

Friday I was restless. Typical for a person who spends way too much time at home alone for absolutely no good reason. I was questioning whether Andrea and Kate were right. Is it really possible to love someone special and have sex with other people while away from the special one? They confessed that it felt quite natural under certain circumstances. I told them, I understood. But... I didn't. 

I thought about Andrea's secret ex-lovers at the time when our relationship was still alive. I knew it was now irrelevant, as he promised that it was all a mistake of the past, - but while living without a present, I couldn't help questioning that past once in a while. I wondered what it felt like for him to flirt with and to kiss someone else for the first time. I always tremble and my self-control becomes retarded.  Could sleeping with other women really be compatible with his love for me? I wouldn't know. I haven't been on that side of the tracks. I could only trust and believe. So I blamed myself for being selfish, possessive and lacking faith in the power of love. Topic closed.

Within the next 24 hours the topic was accidentally re-opened.

Shopping on a Saturday in one of the biggest malls in town was becoming more of a torture than an entertainment, and Sergey suggested that the three of us go catch a movie at a local cinema instead. He is a friend of Kate's, and I have just met him. He is charming, relaxed and nice to be around. It felt refreshing to finally meet a new person after over 4 weeks of self-imposed isolation among books, photographs, movies, music and textiles.

Later that evening, Sergey and I joined Kate for a night of baby-sitting of her 2,5 year old niece, - for company. At 2 a.m. the baby was still awake and running around like a pink Energizer bunny (her parents believe that their child should only go to bed when she is actually tired, not by the clock). But the guests, who were slightly older than the adorable brown-eyed girl, had a hard time keeping up a conversation due to rapidly fading concentration. Kate suggested that Sergey and I share a big bed in one of the available rooms to stay away from the noise and get some sleep. 

- Don't worry, I will not abuse the opportunity, - he said reassuringly.

- I'm not. I can bite, - I made an attempt to joke.

- You know what would be perfect? - he said a few minutes later, as we were lying on the opposite sides of the bed.

- What? 

- Back massage really helps me to fall asleep.

- Well, that should not be a problem, - I replied. After all, he was just a slightly narcissistic friendly friend.

- Let me show you how it is done first... Turn over on your belly. 

- ...Oh ...Is that really a friendly massage? - I asked as I felt the tips of his fingers slowly wander up and down my  spine not so safely protected by a teeshort.

- Sure, I do it to... all of my friends! You are trembling... Does it turn you on? - he asked, perfectly knowing the answer. I could hear he was smiling.

-  Yes, it actually does, - I had to admit.

- You know, there is also a variation with the tongue... 

- No!!!

- Alright then, enough torture for you. My turn. Don't worry, it's only women who get turned on. For men it is simply relaxing.

He later admitted that giving me a massage and hearing my  uneven breath... turned him on. He made our bodies feel so smooth against each other as if that was the most natural way of being. It was a struggle to push him away. But I did, because I felt I would be betraying Andrea who was just about to buy a ticket to Moscow. Would I? I told him I loved him...

Lying in bed with Sergey, I thought that, perhaps, love for one man could co-exist with attraction and affection for other men. Crossing the boarder line of pure platonic did not feel vulgar or inappropriate despite my feelings for Andrea. Sleeping in Sergey's arms felt warm and cosy, like sleeping with a fluffy teddy bear when I was 5 years old. As a woman, I needed his attention, his tenderness, his passion. I needed that physical connection that made me loose the sense of time and space. Like Olivier Messiaen's "Abîme des oiseaux" does or Mozart's "Lacrimosa dies illa", - but in a totally different way...

In the morning life felt slightly more confusing. Apparently, the nearness of him was an addiction, and I wanted more. Was it just an unhealthy reaction to keeping an emotional and physical fast too long?  Hopelessly trying to get rid of those thoughts, I realized, with perfect clarity, that I made a mistake. Not last night. I made a mistake by telling Andrea I loved him. I do love Andrea. But I am not in love with him. Otherwise, how could I do what I did?

Picture Sources: Tickle by solecism and The last ballad by Rodrigo Adonis

While making a dress...

I have been overcomplicating my life for the last few weeks, turning questions into problems, and problems into disasters. Andri asks me: "Do you want me to come over to Moscow and spend some days with you?" I hear: "Do you want to marry me and give up your personal freedom for the rest of your life?" I am not sure that even the most qualified audiologist would be able to resolve that problem. So, in an attempt to stop this neurotic buzz in my head, I decided to sublimate my overwhelming energy, and use my hands instead of my brain. Sew.

The dress - which is done, - has yet to see the world, but the therapeutic effect is undeniable. I wonder whether it was my girly gene, but selecting the proper thread color required full concentration and brought as much happiness as solving a math problem for Georg Mohr annual competition at the age of 17. The satisfaction of being a winner of that math battle made me feel smarter and more self-confident (for about half an hour), but didn't get me a date with the cute guy that lost. Clearly, I had the wrong priorities at that age: no one told me that making a relationship work was much more important than working out a math puzzle. Now I am making dresses to stop thinking of relationship puzzles.

My mother stores a lot of fabric from the times of the Soviet Union, when everything was in deficit and buying something was already an occasion to celebrate. I decided that before those antiques decompose in the darkness of the storage room, I might use them to brighten up my days.

Storage. I stored all of Andrea's text messages since the first day we started to see each other. Naively, I thought that re-reading his sweet words would make me feel more relaxed and secure. Like the worst skinflint, I was trying to store love, collect more and more of it, - so that some day it might fill the half empty glass and I would finally feel happy and complete.

I deleted those text messages, all of them. Words of love should not be stored on an electronic device, but rather - in my heart. Left idle in my mobile for months, they die and loose their vital power like fallen leaves. Moreover, as they decompose, they excrete poisonous fumes that might cause temporary hallucinations. I look back instead of appreciating the present. I check what exactly he told me, while he was (apparently) courting other women. That is unnecessary masochism. 

I now am learning to treasure the love that is given to me while it is being given, - without having to store it, afraid that some day the flow might stop. I am learning to appreciate it, without doubting it as I did before. I am learning to open myself up to the positive energy coming from people. I am learning to be happy, be part of the positive energy flow. 

If I say "yes" to Andrea coming to visit me this August, I am guaranteed a row of colorful days, but will that lead to another year of long distance confusion, my heart being pricked with jealousies and insecurities? The good thing about sewing was that when my mind started to wonder outside of the present, I did prick myself with a needle.

Making a beautiful dress inevitably leads to a couple of pricks and other accidental damage. But the result is more than worth it. So how comes that fear of pain stops me from something potentially breathtakingly beautiful when it comes to relationships? 

After all, as the Scarlet Sails fairy tale tells us, magic is created with our own hands. 

Post design inspiration: My Marrakesh

The truth behind the pick-up lines

"You are not of this earth", - said a grey-suited man. Rudolf, - that was his name - believed in horoscopes, was a big fan of antique books and immediately wanted my number. 

"Not of this earth..." He was more right than he thought as he tried to charm me with that pick-up line. In a silky grey dress, with curls full of fire and a tea-rose in my hand, enlightened by the upcoming "date" with my beloved conductor at the Bolshoi Theater, I sure might have looked very attractive. 

But what is the value of the external beauty? In any case, it is not a justification for a mindless life. With my polished looks and self-confident behavior I was fooling myself into thinking that I had a right to indulge myself in dreams, - as opposed to dealing with reality. After all, I was not a Bridget Jones sitting at home with dirty hair and finishing the tenth ice-cream box in front of the TV, - I was an elegant female, reading books, going to the theater, attracting male attention. I was socially acceptable, and even admirable, from the outside, - all that to conceal how lost  and socially inept I felt inside.

"You have to stop reading that book," - Andrea said, disturbed (?) by my pessimistic reflections on "The Magic Mountain". But I could not. Not because it was breathtakingly entertaining, - I almost had to push myself through it, - because the personal decay that I saw in Hans Castorp was very characteristic of me. Although what is decay when there was nothing healthy and fresh in the first place?

I could have been a perfect Berghof patient. In fact, I am already acting like one, with all the symptoms minus the higher temperature. I let empty hours sum up into empty days, and I don't feel them passing, except for useless tearing of corners in the "Daily Planner". I let my life be washed away by rain, leaving not a slightest memory in my mind. I escape the city of Moscow and the year 2008 by reading books, listening to music, going to theaters, watching movies, writing this blog. None of those activities value time. Instead they painlessly absorb it, blurring my mind like an anesthetic. None of those activities involve direct interaction with people. Instead I talk to ghosts of the past. I live in my own world.

Settembrini made a very good point about music being politically suspect. I couldn't agree more. I always use it as a legal means to escape social responsibilities. Who ever dares to call a classic music concert a waste of time? No one. But it could very well be, legalizing hours and hours of daydreaming. In his notes to the "Quartet for the end of time", Olivier Messiaen wrote that musicians should get listeners involved in the feeling of eternity of time and space. This is dangerous for a weak soul lacking tenacity, and I am afraid I have misused art. I made it my substitute for life, turning a delicacy into a daily main course. 

Time and space might be eternal, but I am not. I misuse not time, I misuse myself. Why do I choose to be "not of this earth"? Because I am scared to accept that I am of this earth? That I am mortal? I prefer to eat the same meal and listen to the same music and read similar books and dream the same dreams, - all to make time and space seem infinitely similar? My world is soft, warm and safe as tender ocean waves licking a southern beach. Forever. 

Real life is finite. People are finite. Their time, their patience, their attention, their love, their ability to calculate, their ability to make children, their bodies - everything is finite. A cup of coffee is finite, a kiss is finite, a job interview is finite, an emotion is finite, a relationship is finite, a life is finite. I am finite. How can I get myself to understand this?

Everything ends. So does this post.

Picture Sources: "I'll wait for you".

Female

     

     
  
     
   

Rewriting the ending

Last night while reading "The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann in my bed, I suddenly found myself dreaming about the upcoming premier of "The Flames of Paris" and my favorite conductor. Nothing special: reading and daydreaming are my two biggest hobbies. The surprising part, though, was that I could finally think of other people, other than Andri. 

Comforted by that deep introspection, I looked at the blue digital numbers of the clock and realized that it's only a couple of hours until dawn. I opened the balcony door to let in the rainy freshness of the mid-summer city, turned out the last light and cuddled under my fluffy blanket. Everything went still, I could only feel my heartbeat. 

Blue digital numbers changed at regular intervals. I watched them. I couldn't sleep. And suddenly, I knew why. I was having slight pricks of pain in the left side of my chest. No, those are not dangerous; I have had them before: I just have to breathe deeply a couple of times and they would be gone. 

 

Blue digital numbers changed at regular intervals. I was still watching them. My usual technique wasn't helping this time. Instead the pain grew stronger. It went through my left chest like lightning through the sky. Every muscle in my body got tense. I started suffocating: my throat seemed to have narrowed down to a fraction of its normal size. I had to make an effort to simply breathe. I could no longer think of sleep. After having recently finished over 400 pages about Leo Landau's last years between life and death, and seeing how complexly fragile a human body is, I was simply scared. 

Before I could finally go to the doctor in the morning, I have been through pages and pages of health Q&A on the net. Explanations ranged from dysbacteriosis to black magic spells assisted by innovative technology. Believe it or not,  for about ten seconds I was actually contemplating whether that weird accountant guy that I rejected on multiple occasions could have been a secret member of some demonic sect! He has a very heavy stare, especially when angry. 

   

Jokes aside, it seems I actually have cardiac neurosis, also known as Da Costa's syndrome. Even as I write, this stubborn pain still hasn't let go. My emotional heartache has turned into physical heartache. I wonder whether Andrea's revelation of his unfaithfulness was the last drop among painfully disturbing issues like switching educations against parents' wish and lack of close friends (who are now miles away)?

Having written The other side of the fairy tale, I haughtily refused further contact with Andri, put a smile on my face and continued living. For about a day and a half. I assumed my feelings would go no further than foolish pride and burning desire to treat those sexually hyperactive ladies with all the sophistication of Marquise de Sade torture techniques for having attracted the attention of my passionate amatore. 

Then I took a closer look at myself. Secretly, I was enjoying the state of being a victim. I was back at my pedestal as an innocent pure-hearted angel, mistreated by a selfish testosterone-driven man.  My long-term guilt feeling about ending our relationship easily turned into aggressiveness for the purpose of re-establishing my "moral superiority"! 

Yet it wasn't quite that straight-forward and simple. He said he loved me all this time despite all other women in and out of his bed. How do I deal with that? Wouldn't it be narrow-minded to blame a man for fulfilling his biological needs? It is his one and only life, and he should enjoy it as much as possible. What right do I have to intervene in his freedom of choice?

As I started to dwell upon the philosophical/biological/sociological questions of personal freedom and love versus sex, I lost track of my logic, because I realized that feelings which I assumed to be long dead were arising back from ashes like a phoenix. Something tender. Was that my old love? I got so confused, I needed to talk to him. And there we were, joking and laughing on the phone again, - walking a hair-thin safety line across the mine field of forbidden conversation topics. I was balancing between kind thoughtful understanding and fierce pain blasts. 

The more my confused heart bled, the more enchanted I felt by the memories of the times of passionate kisses and loving stares. And it continued bleeding, no matter how hard I tried to stay away from imagining Andrea in between the legs of... Never mind. Intoxicated by the sound of his voice, I found myself earning to be in his arms and pretending nothing of the past 9 month has happened. 

***

Although my love revival was only an illusion, I do feel close to him again, perhaps even closer than before. As much as he lied partly for my own sake, he told me the truth to relieve me from my feelings of guilt about ending our relationship. What seemed horrible, heartbreaking and dirty becomes just another stroke of paint in the sophisticated picture of life, - not better, not worse, not to be forgotten, not to be forgiven, not to be judged. Sometimes I stand way to close to the picture and see only a fraction of it, forgetting about the broader perspective. 

I guess, it takes heartache to learn. I still feel pricks of pain in my chest, but my heart is much better.

Picture Sources: My heart is breaking, A kiss

No Comment

"What paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop" (Oscar Wilde, De Profundis)

The other side of the fairy tale

I like surprises. I really do. That is why, when I questioned our relationship, I sometimes also attributed my doubt to the fact that Andri didn't surprise me enough when we were together, - I mean surprise to the point of a shock and temporary inability to speak. Bear with me. It was my first relationship: little princess expected a breathtaking fairy tale!

The fairy tale is now over, but it seems that I have accidentally skipped some pages while reading...

I received an email from him today. It started with some comments to my "Healthy Egoism" post. They were fair, but stemmed mostly from a misunderstanding: I was not writing directly about his actions or intentions, but what my sick mind has induced me to feel and think about our relationship. I knew it was mostly my problem, and I felt sorry that he got offended. 

As I continued to read the email from my ex-boyfriend, letters suddenly started to jump around on the screen and I couldn't compose them into words. One last word froze in my mind: "November". Unfortunately, this was the biggest surprise that he has ever arranged for me. Or at least the one I reacted strongest to: I bursted into dry and painful tears of a numb shock. Naive princess was way too naive. 

Let's flip back through the pages a bit to reconstruct the old tale...

Since I left Denmark in the end of August, I went to bed every day thinking of Andri, wishing we could hold each other close, play, make love. I wanted to talk to him every day, hear his voice, even if I had nothing to say. I needed him more than anything. The sound of an incoming SMS was the sweetest melody on Earth, because it might have been a message from Andri. The little sparkling pleasures of a long distance relationship.

After he visited me in Russia in October, he said he loved me stronger than ever. Ironically, when my love for him finally became mutual, we were living miles away. Ironically, my heart has already started to cool off. Back in October though it was still merely a couple of snowflakes, and I missed him with the same insanity as in early September.

30th of October:

"I am incredibly jealous about every single moment of his life that he spends without me. The day after he left, we were chatting in gmail, and he said, he had to hurry to dinner. Fine. Fine? Not in my world! I imagined him with other people, smiling to other people, laughing with other people, exchanging those glances of common understanding of something in between the lines with OTHER people, making conversations about other people's lives, smelling other people's bodies, feeling the warmth of other people's blood. I couldn't take it. I started crying. There were no more thoughts behind the tears. I simply felt empty, naked, insecure and vulnerable. I felt betrayed. He was giving himself away to other people, and he was getting into the minds and the souls of other people. Ignoring me, in need of attention... - as usual... Of course, all that self-pity was absurd, because the dinner was just a matter of normal flow of life, when we are separated by 1558,52 kilometers of land and water (2010 kilometers by motor ways).

I pretend to fight my irrationality, but those thoughts come up in my head time and again... every second minute of the day. They come up when he is silent, they come up when he sends me an sms and I misinterpret every single word, they come up when he mentions other people in our telephone conversations..."

I knew that jealousy was a bad sign. I once read a very sensible explanation of that poisonous feeling. It is very likely that the person being jealous unconsciously wishes to cheat, but suppresses that wish and instead projects it onto his/her partner. I questioned myself on a daily basis whether that was true. I questioned whether I really loved him, and came up with multiple alternative explanations of my attachment. But at the end of the day I just wanted to be with him. And I was still jealous.

When I was a single virgin at the age of 21, I didn't believe in jealousy. I thought that mutual freedom is the essence of true love and long-lasting relationship. I thought that it is absolutely normal that I and my potential boyfriend would be attracted to other people. I thought that denying such natural feelings would be most unhealthy. Therefore, I expected jealousy to be nothing more than a theoretical concept in my life. As long as we trusted each other, we could be absolutely free, even including loving and making love to other people occasionally. The smart girl has safeguarded herself in advance!

Yet there was a flaw in my logic. One thing that studying economics taught me was that models are based on premises. I forgot a crucial premise that was inseparable from my model of a perfect relationship: partners have to be absolutely self-confident to trust each other completely. So when it came to practice my beautiful model collapsed as a house of cards, because my mind was as full of insecurities as an ocean full of fish.

Now I question whether an insecure person can ever really love? Was I just compensating my insecurities through another person? If I have to be honest, I don't know. But I believe that I loved Andrea. I am not talking about a feeling of gratitude for how much he has changed me, I am not talking about appreciating him as a person, I am not talking about something that can be rationalized. I believe that I loved him. But the feeling was fading the longer we stayed apart.

Then in December I met the Swiss guy, "mon cher". He was very different from Andri, almost a complete opposite in many ways. He has awoken other sides of my personality, other childhood dreams, other associations, other wishes. I didn't even want to resist. I am thankful for the things that he made me learn about myself. I am thankful for the hours when he held me in his arms. I am never going to say that he didn't mean anything to me. He did and he still does: he is part of my life. But what he means to me is very different from what Andri means to me.

Back in December, I couldn't possibly imagine being with Andri again, - I felt biological aversion. I thought that my heart has reached the freezing point. I was also fully consumed by "mon cher". As much as I felt bad about hurting Andri, I was even more scared that he would be thinking and dreaming of me, while I was in someone else's arms. I believed that this would be humiliating, disrespectful of the trust that he had in me and simply sadistic. 

I felt guilty and ashamed for being happy while he was sexually and emotionally frustrated. A mature 30-year old man was being faithful to a girl, who moved to another country for an indefinite period! Yet I couldn't deny my lack of passion for him and the growing feelings towards mon cher. The bes