habitual ritual

it was a strange night this last night
i saw someone online whom i loved
but we might not talk again now

it was a busy day yesterday
calls repeating themselves like the dreams
that came back about folks i've never seen

and about the tiny lavender bloom
that fell off the bunch where it belonged to
a feeling that we might share with you
when one stays oneself out of the two

Stereotypes, archetypes

I came through this poem of mine from a few years ago, and though it brought back some memories of why I felt like writing it, the details are not so clear anymore. Nevertheless it stood the test of time, and means just as much to me. Even though back then I wasn't working in call centers or service desks, but obviously felt the same way about my job. The only thing that's changed is that in those days I talked of myself as useless, but also did that with some irony. Now it's more than apparent to me that it's these kind of jobs which unfortunately seem to be the only ones available for some while, that make people feel totally brain-washed and so useless, not deserving any creativity, instead making them abandon even what they have. Well, hopefully we don't feel that way of our lives, as that's something else, even if we have to spend so much time of what we have at work.

The other reason why I found this poem interesting was that at this place I work now, where some people have just brought their friends as colleagues, I found them looking, but more than that, behaving in this or that way very similarly to some of the folks I made friends with at an earlier point of my life. Of course, that in itself doesn't make them be really like my own friends, however it made it easier for me to socialize with them, feeling - and that was the tricky part - that I knew them to some extension. Later on this sort of illusion also made me feel like stepping back when I learned their other faces.
Anyhow, this is the poem.


Stereotypes, archetypes

(do we have to close the circle yet tighter, when we aren't given much choice at all)

i'm nonfunctioning highly
not up to the standards of this society
i'm not an intellectual
don't know much of your morals

i won't be the one you expect me to be
don't play television quizes
don't look like your commercial models
 
i am a simple human being

and if you ask me how i'm doing not
i'll answer how i am doing
coz i'm sick of being sick
only wanna be myself

and yet i can be with you
can be someone else, too
and you can be me, if you want to
 
i don't regret, i don't refuse

i'm not really from this world
rather speak with my words
stay in the books i read
when i was a child, so sad

in the horror stories of ghosts
where i learned to face my fears
there i went to meet my hosts
was not ashamed of my tears

and if my friends meet my other friends first
and they say it felt like they met before
i don't think of reasons, don't feel that thirst
as i gave up on searching, not anymore

now i'm sinking back into myself
all the powerful twirlpools have left
and i'm regaining something again
that's obviously part of the game

The sound of silence

I was told several times since I started to take calls in my new job, a telephony service desk, that I should speak up. Funnily not by the customers they understood perfectly what I told them. It was a colleague who rejected to help me with the learning, but fortunately there were many others who did help, and still don't feel it is a burden for them. This colleague however is always eager to find something wrong in what I'm doing, and emphasize it. I had to write this down for myself more than anyone else. Most of all because I like his kind of humor and first I mistaken it for a sign of an easy-to-get-on-with personality. In truth it's a whimsical one, but this is not the story.
I was about to tell what I found interesting with speaking up and listening. It's like relationships, those involved always depend on each other, and everything goes both ways or nothing goes, and there's no relationship. So no matter how loud I talk if the one I'm talking to wouldn't listen, and instead is focusing on what they're telling me. Thus even if I want to help with my answer, with no attention my words won't reach them. On the contrary if they're really interested, then they give it an ear, and by listening can easily understand what's said.
So to catch more attention or any at all we might raise our voices, but even doing so, could only make the other half do the same which then result in an argument about nothing. Both parties might talk about the very same thing, but feeling more important than the other, could think that whatever they say can only be true or make sense, thus don't even think it might easily match their talking partner's opinion.
In the end it all comes to communication again, like many things I write about here, in my blog. Maybe this goes on a different level, somewhat deeper than talking with words, and finds the frame of it, the so called metacommunication. That is to find out whether we really listen when we talk to someone and ask them, or prefer to hear ourselves, and so can only miss the very meaning of a conversation.

There's a bridge in my mouth

It doesn't lead to another side, save another side of me I haven't known myself
It could be the Bridge of Sighs 'cause it caused me some trouble though no-one crossed it
But there's a tooth living underneath it, and it seems like it's got stuck down there
Like a poet who left everything just to find the meaning of the very life he's living

Life's A Gas

Why does it still make me feel uncomfortable to fart while using public transportation? It doesn't have any bad effects on human health like smoking that they had to legally stop even in the stops. Is it then because I don't like to play around with it, instead just let it go, and then it comes out loud. But then they talk so much and also quite loud on the trams, trains, buses and it usually doesn't make more sense than that sound coming from another hole.
Also they push a button recently on the tram I have to take to tell us stories of events from half a century ago which some folks decided a few years ago were revolutionary. I don't agree with them as those back then doing these 'revolutionary' things wanted to kill my Grandfather and his whole family, because he literally believed in communism so he helped everyone in that goddamn little village, even when his eleven kids needed food and clothes just the same. And then those people he helped the best he could turned him on the hands of these 'revolutionary' men. But the 'evil' Sowiet soldiers appeared just in time, so amongst others my Mom didn't have to die because of human greed, lies and so on.
But then again, why on sweet fucking earth do I have to listen to such revolting lies and also pay for taking the public transport. I didn't ask for being treated with lies there, I can listen to them on the news if I please.
Finally the noise made by most of these trains going under- and over ground would cover any noise I can make. Most of all their noise, in best case scenario, would mean we're making progress, and getting to our destination, unlike in some cases as it happened lately when the noise meant fire or other unplanned events along the line. Should they pay me for the chance of such events at all?
Back to why I'm not just taking it easy, and do whatever I feel like doing. Now it might be up to having been brought up in a way that in times passed seemed and worked as the right one, but now it's all useless and make people suffer only. Exactly like when they try to hold it back.

...and tell you of my dreaming

What Brussels really wants from us? Gipsies don't have to sit in the back of the trams, actually even the police here is trained how talk to them not to hurt their minority feelings, whereas they can provoke anyone with their behavior with no consequences at all. At the same time the word Jew is used as an insult more than ever before. And I can't hear Jews saying Gipsy or Goy in the same way ever. But then again it's like self-made machos and strong gals or whoever then can refer to cocksucking faggots as a disgusting group of people. On the other hand you never hear gay folks say 'Oh those pussy-licking squareheads! They've got such big mouths and yet no-one use them even as public toilets... I wonder why' At least I don't hear anyone say such stuff, but I do wish I could finally see some changes in a world where people are so deeply pushed into fears created for them from everything which actually someone else doesn't want them to try and find out for themselves if they like it or not. However everything else that makes money for those who already have a lot of it, like drugs, cigs, booze and all the rest goes for all from a very young age, and nobody can (or maybe want??) to do anything against that... and many other things.
These are some of my daydreams while using public transport, socializing again with people at work, and also some of my nightmares... It's the things I'm much more worried about than some new end of the world prophecies. It would be big time for the beginning of something new finally.

For if we don't find the next little dollar I tell you we must die

For some reason I was selected for the job I traveled to be interviewed for on that morning I mentioned in my last log. It doesn't pay as much as the multinational companies, however people don't seem to act so stressed either. Also they seem to pay more attention to how well the newbies learn their job, for instance help me a lot, and make me feel like I'm an idiot if I'm not able to understand something from official descriptions, and don't refuse answering me. All in all they seem to behave much more like human beings than those back in the big chaotic corporate systems. I believe I can consider myself lucky to get this job now.
Well, there's a certain range of jobs available for me with my background, like for all of us, which reflects quite truly how this country got slowly (or maybe rather fast?) destroyed, and thrown to the global chains. And while people here like everywhere else are still chasing dreams of luxury (affordable each to their own status) instead of considering realistic values and chances, and still jumping to politicians' and puppet governments' slogans, we're getting deeper and more inevitably into a situation that thus becomes the harder to get reversed. That's how democracy caught us unprepared.

This is the trip, and this is the business we take

I color my eyes with evil night thoughts
and bad doubts to which I can't say no
They slowly wash away my common sense
like waves would swallow the grainy sand

All those what if's and the way it could've been
I beg them to leave, but they won't set me free
Please, do me a favor, save me from myself
if it's really me, and not someone else

'And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart...'

My father who is Jewish could only escape from the death camp in the last minute because the Nazi retreated when the Soviet army got closer. My mother's father along with his family was saved from the execution by extreme right wings because on that morning when it was due, the Soviet troops have arrived to his little village. His only sin was taking the idea of communism literally and trying to help everyone when he didn't have enough to give to his own family. Some people thanked him by turning him in for the dictatorship's slaves.

So I never believed in any of that crap stuff about the change of the system, as it only served the better of a few who were already rich as hell, no matter what country they were from, or whatever they called themselves. I believe in honesty, and I can see with bitterness that most people prefer to live their lives lying to themselves and everyone else around them. It might be a consequence of being brought up by folks who behave the same way, I don't know about that, fortunately.

What I don't see why it's always better to torture each other, and cause pain directly or indirectly. Sometimes it gets en gros, and then malevolence knows no limits, and needs no reasons. I wonder what's behind that uncontrolled hatred that makes mankind turn into their very own slaughterer. And it's not only a phenomenon of this past century, but has been there all throughout history.

for my late cat

small head big head grim face ranger

after many years you were a stranger

striking cologne you didn't wear

nor a handful of grease for your hair

you washed it all clean and shiny

and when you ran it was blown by the air

you were a free spirit between the walls

and left behind someone who recalls

the shockusanimohl

I'll die during a job interview with a rather convincing smile on my face, and then for eternity will read refusive emails saying "While we were impressed by your skills and experience we did not feel that your application was best suited to the role currently on offer."

Future Legend?

'like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts'
London

'this is genocide'
Oslo

faraway horizons

standing on the highest mountain top
from where you can see the distant ridges clear
and only staring hypnotized at them
while thinking without a real thought about the thereabouts

on media

those horrible news
they reach you everywhere 
while you're waiting for the muse
they don't teach you, they don't amuse

burning high, burning down

I said 'Look'
you asked 'What'
I saw the fires
you meant the sunset

you stared at the rays
I gazed at the flares
you and I, amazed by the fiery colors
of the very same day

a wordless world

the neurotic kid runs frantically
      locked in between the four walls
his parents busy with drilling-hammering
      every now and again in intervals
unable to enjoy the blessed moments of
      silence; afraid of their own thoughts?
but not a single syllable you can hear
      to leave their lips at all

only some inarticulated rolls of laughther,
      if you can call it so
is it their imprisoned longing for the
      discreet noises of nature?
their way to express what they're missing
      in their false comfort
the thunder, the water, the birds and bees
      where we all belong
a world with less words

nonsense

It was early April or even before that when I was praying for sweet release. From what? Uncertainty of not seeing where my life was going, after losing a job again. But then later on it was the uncertainty at the new job where nobody wanted or as I see it now, simply couldn't explain to me what to do and how. Well, I've been unemployed for two months now once again, and feeling rather desperate in lack of answers for my applications.

But back then a few months ago, I remember I was thinking about the trees while looking at them on my way home, as they started to revive themselves by the road side after their long winter sleep. And that made me wonder why we humans have to rush through our lives like day flies. Why not give it a break now and then and start again when feeling ready for it. So often even those few hours spent with sleeping cannot give the gracious comfort of temporary oblivion.

In the meanwhile there were also many a bad thing happening here which I've tried to balance with some better ones. Even if the fleeting moments of happiness seemed to pass just like brief lives, leaving behind but more yearning for them. One day I got an email from a good old friend of mine, explaining to me that the lyric of a Finnish song I could still recall from almost thirty years ago, were just made up words. So they didn't have more to do with her mother tongue then my imagination that was trying to convince me when I first caught fragments of her language and believed I heard Hungarian for it sounded so similar to it.

Then a bit later I found out that one of my favorite songs, Vangelises Tales of the Future only sounded like Arabic, but it was a mere gibberish, a make-belief. Well I fell for it, and still love it. And it's much better this way around, then what I can see in the so-called real life, where we try to deceive each other when it comes to the serious issues like making a living, or living our lives and letting the others live their own. Not to mention the laws that are supposed to help in making it right if it goes wrong. Or the medical help which those working in that field swore for to save lives and give remedy to those in need. Instead it all seems like you can run around, turning to different authorities or in that case from one doctor to the other, and you get only rejected or in best case redirected. It just doesn't make sense...

we'd rather be scared together than alone

Yes, I've been listening to Hunky Dory recently. Visited an old friend after a long time, and she told me that her younger son, a mere toddler, chose this Bowie album from her collection. And he also liked most of it a lot, specially Kooks to which he used to sing and dance whenever he heard it.

I guess I chose this line as a title because I feel that troubles are rising. Not sure if the trouble is with me, more precisely that I don't want to face the trouble. I've just quit my job before my probation ended. Wouldn't think I'd do that but during the training we had in the U.K. there were more and more things pointing into that direction. Unsettled issues, questions nobody wanted to answer, but we badly needed those answers to be able to take over that job from them. I did hope even after we came back that our management would care more seeing there were no progress, but they didn't seem to bother at all. Not even when one of my colleagues from our already undersized team resigned.

Been recommended by a friend, a former colleague for a job, and had the interview last Friday. Another friend forwarded my resume to the company she's working for. So fingers crossed and good luck. Could also go back to the Employment Center as I'm still entitled for some support while I'm looking for jobs. And I do, searching the net, answering job ads, looking at companies' web sites for openings. At the same time, I'm not sure at all where I'm going. I know it's all for making a living, but it feels more and more useless on the long term and it's undermining my soul ruthlessly. It might be aging, too, that makes it feel worse than before, but I just know it's not me keeping office hours. But then I never had the time and the chance (money) to study what I like, writing, drawing, music. So how can it ever change when I barely have enough salary for living even when I do have a job.

Babel

Recently I've felt a lack of communication with anyone at all, family members, friends and colleagues. Even though made some new friends I don't feel I can trust them they way I need to do so that I can feel we're friends. And also it's the closest family members and friends I don't seem to get through when talking with them. Unfortunately or it's how it was supposed to be the big family, like aunts and uncles, and their kids, we didn't keep in touch ever since Granny died. Actually I can feel very lucky that my aunt on my father's side, who's his step-sister cares so much about me, while my dad just forgot both me and my brother.
But then this is something different, something very bad, that I'm experiencing these days, well, for a good while now - It's making me feel very upset, when we talk to each other, but it feels like two lines go parallel and never meet. I feel so helpless and very often get so angry that then it's preventing me to try and find the way to make myself understand. It could be such everyday issues, little daily nuances that used to take so little of effort to agree on. I stand numb for a few seconds and then just lose patience so fast whenever I have these useless conversations lately where a word wouldn't reach the others.
Now that I have a job again for a bit more than a month I can see these walls in between so many times. Especially between two of my colleagues, but then we only got new team members this week and the previous. So now that they're there it became obvious for me that they talk but wouldn't listen, not to me, not to each other, not even when it's a simple solution for a small thing.
It's so hard to accept the very fact that filters through all this - that there's no need for communication! People don't care if there's a solution, an answer to what they say, they just talk and wouldn't listen, even if they could find help in the answer. I'm not sure why. Maybe we've lost faith in the others, but we still feel the need to get rid of whatever on our minds. Or it can be blamed on the media that can only make you want things right now, but don't make you think why or if you really need any of it. I wonder where all this goes, and if it is still going anywhere.