بارس | بيروت | بكين @itinerantblossoms - Tumblr Blog

"I'd like, once again, to feel what I know"

It is difficult, nowadays, to compose coherent updates about my inner life. I genuinely marvel at how systematically M records his thoughts/ feelings. Even when I was writing the memoir in beirut I just let the words flow, and order is fashioned in retrospect. I find myself incapable of writing otherwise.

M asked today, why made me decide to go for therapy? I could add a follow-up question, what have I made of my sessions? Funnily enough, I think they have disabused me of intentionality; slowly, I learn to recognise what comes to the surface, and to voice it, however much of a non sequitur it seems. I learn about my stubbornness, my pride, my sense of humour, my occasional eloquence, the areas where I do not wish to venture... I learn about the extent of my selves. (Again when M asked what my "key takeaways" from Club Med were, I thought of this. Imagine my selves as a kindergarten classful of students, each raring to speak. Me giving each student her/ his time and space.)

I've also experienced the tempests of my rage, the times when something catches in my heart and I cry discreetly when I know Jackie can't see me. When I wish she would speak but she doesn't and we just, breathe, over the patchy skype connection. Or when I see her in the flesh again, and she asks me if I'd like the window open, just like old times. I can't forget the time when I snuck up on her at the traffic junction opposite the Archway tube station, the moments before my approach when she struggled to zip up her winter coat.

I think I've learnt to observe my moods with more serenity than I previously possessed. I am twenty-five but I feel... like things could change (hat-tip G). I have to admit that I do not know what will happen next year, the year after that... Which desk will I be? Which friends will I spend my time with? What activities will occupy my days? Whom will I love, lust over?

Perhaps that will suffice for now, like Rilke said, living my questions.

On the cusp of my first holiday at the 3-month mark of starting Work!!!

Have definitely learnt to cherish the small things. Stolen moments in between work, appreciating the sunsets on the days when I knock off before 8, occasional leisurely lunches with deskies, the 'institution' of morning coffee among the flunkies. My pre-dawn walk around Trocadéro and Passy bridge. That lovely Saturday afternoon in the café in Vilnius, and then two whole hours at the cinema/ music museum, and then vintage store shopping. Those 30 seconds I had when we entered the QDO dining room, before I rushed to my seat and started scribbling frantically.

Between Vilnius, Minsk, Nay Pyi Taw and Paris, I feel like much of my introspection has taken place on air, the only time when work is literally taken out of my hands (though not always).

I'm still adjusting to being back, to inhabiting old spaces with new aspects of my self, to finding and letting go of old friends. It's been a bumpy ride but Jackie was right, I do have so many people and resources around me whom I can count on, who will hold space for me all the times I'm not at my best. :')

V's wedding, Sundara Mahal, July 2017

- a storm is brewing but when will it break?

- blithe, excited corgis make my day

- all the waves cresting internally; unarticulated, inarticulate thoughts

'Us vs. Them'

Director Carly Wijs:

'...the only thing that seemed to count for the children in the documentary [Children of Beslan] was that the story was told as accurately as possible.

[...] Sometimes children flee from horror, straight into the comforting arms of imagination. In the documentary, a boy fantasised that Harry Potter would arrive wearing his invisibility cloak and kill the terrorists one by one. Others fantasised that they were part of a film and none of it was really happening to them.

[...] As adults, we apparently have a need for an overly dramatised perspective, that leads us into black and white thinking: 'Us' versus 'Them'. The refreshing thing about a child's gaze is that it is not coloured by the need for dramatic interpretation, because that view of things does not connect to their own life. And if it does connect to their own life, it is tackled through imagination. That is what Us/ Them is about.'

Jorge Luis Borges

Mass movements, Hoffer argues, are distinguished by a “facility for make-believe … credulity, a readiness to attempt the impossible.” What, one wonders, could be more impossible than suddenly vetting every single visitor to the U.S. for traces of Islamic belief? What could be more make-believe than a big, beautiful wall stretching across the entire Mexican border, paid for by the Mexican government? What could be more credulous than arguing that we could pay off our national debt through a global trade war? In a conventional political party, and in a rational political discourse, such ideas would be laughed out of contention, their self-evident impossibility disqualifying them from serious consideration. In the emotional fervor of a democratic mass movement, however, these impossibilities become icons of hope, symbols of a new way of conducting politics. Their very impossibility is their appeal.

From http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html

Jan Micker, Bird's Eye View of Amsterdam, 1652

London, New Year's Eve fireworks, 2016

#london

One of the most touching moments for me in 2016 was finding this biography of Edith Piaf, written by her half-sister Simone Berteaut, in a second-hand book store near my place, with a review of the book (in 1969, at the time of its publication) enclosed.

To understand the significance of this moment I have to return to the time I watched Piaf's biopic, La Môme, at the French Cultural Centre in Beijing with a good friend.

One of the strange things about being a student is that beginnings and ends, for me, are not contained within a calendar year. But precisely because of this, reflecting about 2016 within those bounds provides me with snapshots of me at various stages of my life:

- the two-week trip across Yunnan that allowed V, A and I the chance to explore one another, the one-week trip in Xinjiang that was as emotionally turbulent as it was beautiful, farewells said in Beijing;

- the colours and chaos of summer: conflict studies in hospitable Turin, the lovely people and the self I rediscovered in Plum Village, visiting L and P in Fujian and Wuxi, travelling with H and seeing G again in Melbourne and Gold Coast, conversations with family & friends in Singapore, both affirming and challenging;

- taking in Paris again, having the privilege of meeting multiple generations of A's family, reliving old memories to have the courage to make new ones; and then settling in London;

- in London, at first the rushing and the sentiment of not having enough time, of the sadnesses felt way in advance about impending goodbyes, about not being able to let go; and then with November came autumn and undeniable truths, reckonings. Realisations that picking myself up again also involved giving myself the permission to roll around in the mud once in a while, to meander and not think about outcomes, to stay put for once for Christmas and take in the festive quiet around me, the silences pulsing with life.

So really I just wanted to celebrate 2016 and revel in the mystical, improbable connections that continue to define my life: Who would have thought, all those years ago struggling not to fall asleep in various MOELC classrooms, and not understanding half my classes in the first semester of uni, that I will one day converse with a French navy veteran who was in Singapore in the 1940s? Or do archival research in French? Or that I would meet a friend I'd lost touch with since primary school in London, and that we would find each other again through the many turns that our lives had taken in 10 years?

Thank you 2016, and to everyone around me who has supported me, held space for me, celebrated and cried with me, and gave me safe spaces to return to however far I may journey. I hope to do the same for you ♥︎

Our tress limb-heavy and silver– the beautiful never more on the edge of breaking – and the indiscriminate freezing rain slicking the side streets and back alleys, the long driveways of the rich. Nothing moving except kids, the stopped world just slippery to them permissive, good. Our cupboards are near empty. The liquor cabinet, too. Under the eaves unfrozen logs in case the electricity goes. Bosnians, Sudanese, flicker into our lives, flicker out. To think of them is to lose any right to complain. Will the mail get through? What is uppermost and most deep down? I’d like to feel, once again, what I know. Now a lone car, braving it, going slow kids on its fender. Icicles exclamatory from the shed’s roof. What’s underneath is sure to have something underneath it. All the way in: that’s where crazy is. The cable’s out, or down. The t.v. screen is snow. A branch snaps. and the comparison that come are whipcrack, gunshot – the almost dead. What to do with the barely living before they die? Exhaust them, I say, shellac them with our tongues. Isn’t overuse a form of love? Like a gunshot; like a whipcrack; both, one last time. The forecast is more of the same. And then a few things worse. I feel like making a little path from house to car, then I’m going to scrape. Wait until it all stops, my wife says. Is she a realist or an optimist? I’ve got my coat on. I’ve got the hard-edged shovel in my hand.

'The Living' by Stephen Dunn, from Loosestrife

#stephen dunn

Ten days after I set foot in London, and already the sheer abundance of possibility defines my daily life and gets me out of bed before my alarm (shocking, I know). It feels like Sciences Po again, only this time I am surer of what I want and what interests me. Watched two astounding plays at the National Theatre (Chekhov's Platonov and The Plough and the Stars, about the 1916 Easter Rising) for five blessed pounds, both times with a surprisingly excellent view, letting the child in me run riot and marvel. Attended conferences by Riad Sattouf (L'Arabe du futur) and Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, and loved the concision in the Q&A segment, the reactive (and comfortingly pro-EU) student audience. LSE is truly a city university, where the choices threaten to overwhelm and commitment (to a class, societies, friend groups) is rarely imposed.

Epicentres of my life, 8.2012 - 8.2016

[Credits: Pete Souza]

#obama

Friendship

“Okay, so you’re in Chicago, and you have close friends there. You say ‘Ah, I’ve got this great opportunity in Washington…’ and [your friend] goes ‘Julie, you gotta take that!’ [She’s] essentially saying ‘You’re free to go. Go there, do that, but if you need me I’ll be here for you.’”

I wish he wouldn’t use me as an example. It makes me sad.

From The Atlantic, How Friendships Change in Adulthood

#friendship

it may not always be so...

it may not always be so; and i say

that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch his heart, as mine in time not far away; if on another's face your sweet hair lay in such a silence as i know, or such great writhing words as, uttering overmuch, stand helplessly before the spirit at bay; if this should be, i say if this should be— you of my heart, send me a little word; that i may go unto him, and take his hands, saying, Accept all happiness from me. Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

[e.e.cummings]

#e.e. cummings

When they taught me that what mattered most was not the strict iambic line goose-stepping over the page but the variations in that line and the tension produced on the ear by the surprise of difference, I understood yet didn't understand exactly, until just now, years later in spring, with the trees already lacy and camellias blowsy with middle age, I looked out and saw what a cold front had done to the garden, sweeping in like common language, unexpected in the sensuous extravagance of a Maryland spring. There was a dark edge around each flower as if it had been outlined in ink instead of frost, and the tension I felt between the expected and actual was like that time I came to you, ready to say goodbye for good, for you had been a cold front yourself lately, and as I walked in you laughed and lifted me up in your arms as if I too were lacy with spring instead of middle aged like the camellias, and I thought: so this is Poetry!

Linda Pastan, 'Prosody 101'

#linda pastan

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

بارس | بيروت | بكين